“Your ‘if’ is your only peacemaker: much virtue in ‘if’” — Shakespeare
This may not be the place to launch into the eternally-convoluted battle over predestination, but it might be worth considering for a moment the sheer number of times the word “if” is used in scripture. I haven’t counted up all the instances of its occurrence in The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, but they spread like lines of sprinkled pepper on page after page. According to one count I saw, the word occurs 1,521 times, if you count both Hebrew and Greek occurrences.
Now of course not all of these instances have anything to do with the issues of predestination, or the perseverance of the saints, or “once saved always saved”, or anything else along those lines. Yet a staggering number of them have a direct bearing on the controversy. I am struck by how many times the Bible tells us that if we hold to the faith – if we stay loyal to the covenant – if we finish the race – if we continue faithful – we shall be saved. Time after time we run into this conditional warning, and it seems quite unconditional, if you will. What does this tell us?
For one thing, I think, it signals something very ominous: never to rest on our laurels. There never comes a point in a Christian’s life when he or she can sit down utterly satisfied with his or her spiritual achievement – or even with the justifying gift of Christ’s salvific grace. We never reach a station where we can “relax”, as it were, and cease thinking in terms of personal progress. No, the “fear and trembling” must go on, ceaselessly, inexorably, unrelentingly. Whether our salvation is secure or not, we must act and believe as though everything in our spiritual and eternal lives hinged on what we do, and aver, next.
Does this sound too grim and demanding? After all, you may be thinking, where is “the joy of the Lord”? Where is that peace and well-being that flows from having laid down our weapons, from having accepted God on His terms? His burden is light, we are told, and – above all things – as refreshing as a river of unending water flowing from the throne of the New Jerusalem. Where is that contentment when we are told that we can never rest content with our progress?
The great Christian apologists of the twentieth century have made clear to us that our Faith lives in the Land of Paradox. In our world the spiritual, the unseen, is mashed together with the visible and material like chocolate swirls baked into a massive loaf of bread. That being the case, we often experience two apparently contradictory influences at once. Sometimes reality seems to contradict itself. Yes, there is now no condemnation of those who are in Christ Jesus. But at the same time He Himself tells us “Be careful that no one leads you astray” (Matt 24:4). “Watch out that you don’t get led astray, for many will come in my name…” (Luke 21:8). (Which suggests that some people who revere His name will be misled.)
In the Land of Paradox, the safest route is to believe the promises of Christ that He will never lose any of those whom the Father has given Him, and simultaneously to cleave to Jesus with redoubled efforts and prayers, every single morning.
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