God’s
love for us inspires our loyalty to Him: ‘Your love is ever before me,
and I will walk continually in Your truth’(Psalm 26:3). Loyalty to the
Lord involves worshipping Him and walking with Him (Psalm 26:11-12).
Walking with God is not easy. There are ‘enemies round about’ us (Psalm
26:4-5, 9-10; Psalm 27:2-3,6,11-12). What are we to do? We are to
worship God: ‘One thing have I asked of the Lord…that I may dwell in the
House of the Lord…’(Psalm 27:4). What are we doing when we gather in
the Lord’s House for worship? This is what we are doing - ‘Wait for the
Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage’(Psalm 27:14). Where
does our strength come from? It comes from God: ‘The Lord is my light
and my salvation… The Lord is the stronghold of my life’. Strong in Him,
we say, ‘My heart will not fear… I will be confident’(Psalm 27:1,3).
A response to a comment by G. R. Osborne on Berkouwer’s understanding of the doctrine of final perseverance
In his contribution to Clark Pinnock (editor), Grace Unlimited (1975), G. R. Osborne states that Berkouwer, in Faith and Perseverance, pp. 9-10, “speaks of the time less ness of the doctrine of final perseverance, founded on ‘the richness and abidingness of salvation” (p. 188, emphasis mine). This single-sentence comment on Berkouwer’s view hardly gives a fair indication of the type of thinking found in Chapter 1 of Berkouwer’s Faith and Perseverance - “Time li ness and Relevance” (pp. 9-14, emphasis mine). Berkouwer insists that “the living preaching of the Scriptures, which offer no metaphysical and theoretical views about … ‘permanency’ as an independent theme in itself, does nothing to encourage ‘a continuity which is … opposed in any way to the living nature of faith” (p. 13). Berkouwer stresses that “The perseverance of the saints is not primarily a theoretical problem but a confession of faith” (p. 14) and that “The perseverance of the saints is unbreakably connected wi...
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