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By
Rabbi Glenn Harris
Yochanan’s (John’s) first letter was written to
those who already believed in Messiah Yeshua.
Unfortunately, these early Christians and Messianic
Jews had been influenced by false teachers who
were undermining their confidence in the Message
about the Messiah. As a result, some began to
doubt their eternal well-being. To help them,
Yochanan writes, “These things I have written
to you who believe in the name of the Son of God,
in order that you may know that you have eternal
life” (1 John 5:13).
There
are lots of things in life that we might wish
for, and many matters to pray about, but there
are some things about which you had better be
certain; and the issue of where you will spend
eternity is not one you can afford to be unsure
about! It would be cruel if God allowed us
to fumble about in the dark, uncertain about a
matter of such importance. But the Merciful One
is not cruel, and we can know even now that we
are His, and He is ours.
Do
you know for certain that if you were to die today,
you would go to Heaven? Some might say, “That’s
ridiculous! You can’t possibly know that! It’s
arrogant to think you know you’re good enough
to get to Heaven.” If gaining entrance to Heaven
was achieved by my personal effort, it would indeed
be arrogant to say I knew I had achieved it. But
I am not being arrogant when I say that I know
I’ll be in Heaven, because salvation isn’t achieved
through personal effort. Eternal life is a gift
from God. Do I deserve Heaven? Of course not!
How, then, do I know that I have eternal life?
Because my salvation is not contingent on my
spiritual performance, but rather on the work
which the Son of God accomplished, when He gave
His life as an atonement for sin.
If Heaven
were attained by personal achievement, or by righteous
deeds, who could know whether they had done enough?
Who could be certain that the heavenly scales
would tip in their favor, or whether their good
deeds outweighed their bad deeds? The death of
one of the most revered Jewish sages, Yochanan
Ben Zakkai, one of the framers of post-Second
Temple Judaism, illustrates this. While he was
on his deathbed, it is recorded that Rabbi Yochanan
was filled with fear and grief. To the consternation
of his students, who held him in the highest esteem,
he, their righteous rabbi, a Jew of Jews, wept
inconsolably, saying, “My time is at hand... today
I am to stand before the righteous Judge of all
the Earth... and there are before me two roads,
the one leading to Paradise and the other leading
to Gehenna... and I do not know which I will be
on.”
Uncertainty
is the result of any religion, by any name, which
teaches that eternal life must be earned by human
effort. The truth is that salvation is a free
gift given by God. We may be certain of it, because
He promised it to all who would simply believe
in the Messiah. Rabbi Paul declared to the believers
in Ephesus, “For by grace you have been
saved through faith; and that not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God; not as a result of works,
that no one should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Again, Paul wrote to Titus, “He saved us,
not on the basis of deeds which we have done in
righteousness, but according to His mercy,
by the washing of rebirth and renewing by the
Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). God’s holy, inspired
and authoritative Scriptures make it absolutely
clear that no human being, on his own, could ever
be righteous enough to merit salvation.
The doctrine
of “eternal security,” the teaching that one cannot
lose his or her salvation, is true simply because
salvation never depended on our performance,
but rather our confidence in the righteousness
of Messiah Yeshua. It is His righteousness
which forms the basis for our confidence.
Is there
anything that we can do, any part we are to play,
in the work of our salvation? When He was asked,
“What shall we do, that we may work the works
of God?” Yeshua replied, “This is the work
of God, that you believe in Him (referring
to Himself) whom God has sent.” Our part
in God’s work of salvation is to know and be confident
that Messiah Yeshua is “Adonai Tzidkaynu -
The Lord Our Righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:5-6).
When you genuinely trusted Yeshua, His righteousness
was credited to you, and your name was written
in the Lamb’s book of Life. When you know that
your name is inscribed in the Lamb’s Book of Life,
that is when you can have “shalom shalom” - perfect
peace. And this assurance is not reserved for
an elite few, but for all who put their trust
in Yeshua.
I know
that I don’t have much righteousness to offer
God. I’m sure that if any of the great men or
women of the Faith, that magnificent cloud of
witnesses, could speak to us, they would tell
us that their righteousness was insufficient,
but that their hope was in Messiah and in God’s
great mercy. Many years ago it was a great relief
to discover that salvation didn’t hinge on my
feelings. I spent most of my first year as a child
of God with the mistaken notion that if I felt
saved, it meant that I was saved, and if I didn’t
feel saved, then I wasn’t. I had come to love
the Lord, but I hadn’t yet been instructed in
the Scriptures. How can anyone have “shalom
shalom” when the matter of their eternal destiny
is unsettled? But I finally understood that the
matter of my salvation had been settled long ago,
with three words spoken by Yeshua: “It is finished.”
Your
eternity and my eternity does not depend on our
spiritual achievements, nor on our feelings, but
on the fact of Yeshua’s perfect life, His sacrificial
death and His resurrection. However you may
feel on any given day, however far from the Lord,
or however unworthy of Heaven, the FACT is that
there is an empty tomb in Jerusalem! That is the
source of confidence for every believer.
Do
good works and human effort have no part to play
in the matter of our salvation? Of course they
do! They prove that we have truly come to a lasting
and genuine faith. The man or woman who has
trusted in the Messiah and has received eternal
life from God, will inevitably produce good works;
but those good works come naturally, as a consequence
of new life, not as a means to obtain it. A
faith that saves results in good works, but good
works don’t create saving faith! You cannot lose
your salvation any more than you could have earned
it to begin with. If you have genuine belief,
no force in the universe will be able to separate
you from the love of God. The One who saved you
at the beginning is able to keep you. You will
persevere to the end and be saved.
These
things I have written to you who believe in the
name of the Son of God, in order that you may
know that you have eternal life. Do you
believe in the Name, the Person, the Reality of
the Son of God? Do your works demonstrate that
you really believe? Does your life demonstrate
that you really know Him? Then the matter of where
you will spend eternity is already settled!
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