Thus it is immensely important to consider the question of final perseverance in inseparable connection with Christ. Difficulties vanish. Doubts and fears are chased away. The heart becomes established, the conscience relieved, the understanding enlightened. It is impossible that one who forms a part of Christ's body can ever perish; and the believer is this--"We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones." (Eph. v. 30.) Every member of the body of Christ was written in the book of the slain Lamb before the foundation of the world, nor can anything or any one ever obliterate that writing. Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith in reference to those that are His: "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I _give_ unto them _eternal_ life, and they shall never perish, neither shall _any_ (man, devil, or any one else) pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them Me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." (John x. 27-29.)
Here, then, most assuredly, we have final perseverance; and that, moreover, not merely the perseverance of the saints, but of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Yes, dear friend, this is the way we would have you view the matter. It is the final perseverance of the Holy Trinity. It is the perseverance of the Holy Ghost, in opening the ears of the sheep. It is the perseverance of the Son, in receiving all whose ears are thus opened. And, finally, it is the perseverance of the Father, in keeping, through His own name, the blood-bought flock in the hollow of His everlasting hand. This is plain enough. We must either admit the truth--the consolatory and sustaining truth--of final perseverance or succumb to the blasphemous proposition that the enemy of God and man can carry his point against the Holy and Eternal Trinity. We see no middle ground. "Salvation is of the Lord" from first to last. It is a free, unconditional, and everlasting salvation. It reaches down to where the sinner is in all his guilt, ruin, and degradation, and bears him up to where God is in all His holiness, truth, and righteousness; and it endures forever. God the Father is its source, God the Son is its channel, and God the Holy Ghost is the power of application and enjoyment. It is all of God from beginning to end, from foundation to topstone, from everlasting to everlasting. If it were not so, it would be presumptuous folly to speak of final perseverance; but seeing it is so, it would be presumptuous unbelief to think of aught else.