Through
Christ our Saviour, we are led ‘in the way everlasting’: ‘God has given
us eternal life, and this life is in His Son’ (Psalm 139:24; 1 John
5:11). God’s great purpose of eternal salvation seems ‘too wonderful’ -
‘too good to be true’! ‘It is a thing most wonderful, almost too
wonderful to be, that God’s own Son should come from heaven and die to
save a child like me, and yet I know that it is true...’ (Psalm 139:6; Church Hymnary,
385). God has a glorious future planned for us. We can hardly even
begin to take it in: ‘Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty
for me to attain’. We know that ‘no mind has conceived what God has
prepared for those who love Him’ yet we rejoice in this: ‘God has
revealed it to us by His Spirit’ (Psalm 139:6; 1 Corinthians 2:9-10).
‘Lead me in the way everlasting!’(Psalm 139:24).
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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