Will you endure in faith all the way to the end of life? How do you know that you will still be a Christian when you wake up tomorrow morning? These and related questions are addressed in the eighth chapter of John Piper’s new book, Doctrine Matters: Ten Theological Trademarks from a Lifetime of Preaching (Minneapolis: Desiring God, 2014). Continue reading . . .

Will you endure in faith all the way to the end of life? How do you know that you will still be a Christian when you wake up tomorrow morning? These and related questions are addressed in the eighth chapter of John Piper’s new book, Doctrine Matters: Ten Theological Trademarks from a Lifetime of Preaching (Minneapolis: Desiring God, 2014).

This is a massive topic, but we’ll restrict our focus to a few passages in Hebrews 3. Piper has long emphasized that perseverance is a community project. He derives this notion from Hebrews 3:12-13, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

The point of the passage is that one of the essential means by which you avoid becoming hardened in your heart and rebelling against God is other believers speaking into your life faith-sustaining words of encouragement. Here is how Piper puts it:

“God has designed his church so that its members endure to the end in faith by means of giving and receiving faith-sustaining words from each other. You and I are the instruments by which God preserves the faith of his children. Perseverance is a community project. Just like God is not going to evangelize the world without human, faith-awakening voices, neither is he going to preserve his church without human faith-sustaining voices. And clearly from the words, ‘exhort one another’ (verse 13), it means all of us, not just preachers. We depend on each other to endure in faith to the end” (128).

In addition, perseverance in faith is the evidence that we are in Christ and know him as Lord. As the author of Hebrews goes on to say in v. 14, “For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.” Thus we see that “perseverance is the evidence of being born again in Christ, not the means to it” (129). Or, to put it negatively, “We have not come to share in Christ, if indeed we do not hold our original confidence firm to the end.”

As noted, this is a huge topic with numerous biblical texts that call for attention. Instead of trying to address that subject here, I suggest you keep an eye out for my new book, Kept for Jesus: What the New Testament Really Teaches about Assurance of Salvation and Eternal Security. It will be released by Crossway in February of 2015.