Tuesday, October 10th, 2023

Scripture: Col. 1:23 if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which, I, Paul, was made a minister.

Teaching: After describing the work of Christ and its sufficiency to reconcile all of creation to Him, Paul then relates what we as believers do in response. We continue firmly in the faith...not moved away from the hope of the gospel. There are some that teach that one can fall away from faith, losing their salvation, by a lack of works or a lack of conviction, but such teaching undermines the power of the Spirit. There is no passage in the Bible that contends that once given the Spirit, by poor performance or lack of conviction, one can have the Spirit taken away. As Paul asserts in 2 Cor. 5:17, we are new creations if we are in Christ – the old has passed away. Believing that one can have their salvation taken away by poor performance as a Christian is belief that God takes away His Spirit and gives us back our old Spirit. It is nonsense.

Still, we must grapple with the reality that some do espouse faith publicly and then renounce it. Any who would renounce Jesus Christ, by Paul’s description of a Christian here, show themselves to have not been a Christian to begin with. What Paul asserts here, and the writer of Hebrews echoes in Hebrews 3:12-14, is that a Christian is one who endures, steadfast and established, in the hope of the gospel against all manner of temptations and trials in life. Why is this the case? Because they trust the sufficiency of Christ’s work and resolutely place their hope in it.

Takeaway: Spirit indwelling is evident over time, as the Spirit of the Lord is not ineffectual. In time, the fruits of the Spirit will be shown, or not shown; they will not be bottled up or left to rot on the vine. This is why we are told by Jesus that we will know false prophets by their fruits (Matt. 7:15-20). What we each need to understand for ourselves, though, is that Christianity is not a religion of works but of faith; trust that if you have believed in your heart and professed with your mouth the Jesus is Lord, trusting in the sufficiency of His work, you are saved and that cannot be taken away from you. The Holy Spirit, given to regenerate each believer, is God’s downpayment to each of us, as Paul says in Ephesians 1:13-14, and what God has started, He will bring to completion (Phil. 1:6).