Though the mountains may depart and the hills; be removed, the covenant of his love shall never depart from us. “For,” saith Jehovah, “I will never forget thee, O Zion;” “I have graven thee, upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.” O Christian, that is a firm foundation, cemented with blood, on which thou mayest build for eternity!

Many Christians are happy to affirm Scripture’s teaching of eternal assurance, sometimes summarized as “once saved, always saved.” However, many are more hesitant when it comes to affirming the Reformed doctrine of effectual atonement or definite atonement, namely that by his death on the cross, Jesus not only made salvation possible, but He accomplished salvation for His elect, he actually saved them and purchased them by His blood. And yet, as Spurgeon points out in the sermon “The Death of Christ for His People,” on 1 John 3:16 (“He laid down his life for us.”), the logic of eternal security rests on a belief in the finished work of Christ. It is only because of our hope in an effectual atonement that we can have confidence in our eternal assurance. Listen, as Spurgeon explains the source of our security:

We, who know the gospel, see, in the fact of the death of Christ, a reason that no strength of logic can ever shake, and no power of unbelief can remove, why we should be saved.

There may be men, with minds so distorted that they can conceive it possible that Christ should die for a man who afterwards is lost; I say, there may be such. I am sorry to say that there are still to be found some such persons, whose brains have been so addled, in their childhood, that they cannot see that what they hold is both a preposterous falsehood and a blasphemous libel. Christ dies for a man, and then God punishes that man again; Christ suffers in a sinner’s stead, and then God condemns that sinner after all! Why, my friends, I feel quite shocked in only mentioning such an awful error; and were it not so current as it is, I should certainly pass it over with the contempt that it deserves. The doctrine of Holy Scripture is this, that God is just, that Christ died in the stead of his people, and that, as God is just, he will never punish one solitary soul of Adam’s race for whom the Savior did thus shed his blood. The Savior did, indeed, in a certain sense, die for all, all men receive many a mercy through his blood, but that he was the Substitute and Surety for all men, is so inconsistent, both with reason and Scripture, that we are obliged to reject the doctrine with abhorrence. No, my soul, how shalt thou be punished if thy Lord endured thy punishment for thee? Did he die for thee?

Read More