PRESEVED BLAMELESS Part 2

The wisdom of the fathers

PRESERVED BLAMELESS Part 2

“I pray God your whole spirit, and soul, and body be preserved blameless until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calls you who also will do it.” (1 Thess. 5:23, 24.)

“He will keep the feet of his saints,” Hannah sings in her song of triumph. And even in our halting, David declares that “the righteous, though he fall will not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.” For those who abide in closer fellowship, Isaiah declares, “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.” This was also the Savior’s prayer before He left the disciples: “Holy Father, keep through your own name those whom You have given me. I pray not that You should take them out of the world but that You should keep them from the evil.”

And so Peter declares that we are “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” Paul tells us of the “peace of God that surpasses all understanding that will keep our hearts and minds (as with a garrison) through Jesus Christ.” And Jude dedicates his epistle to those “who are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Christ Jesus,” and closes with a doxology to Him who is “able to keep us from stumbling and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.”

The great Apostle opens his last epistle with the triumphant confession, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day,” and closes with the yet bolder declaration, “The Lord will deliver me from every evil work and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom.” Such, then, are some of the promises of God’s preserving grace.

(from "Wholly Sanctified" by A. B. Simpson)