The Persistence of God (Part 3)

So, we have seen that God is the one who initiates and is solely responsible for salvation, showing the persist character of God. We have also seen the persistent cause of God in salvation in that it was His intention to bring redeemed sinners into fellowship with Himself. Finally, let us note the persistence of God in fulfilling His ultimate conclusion in salvation.

Not only did God do everything in order to bring you to salvation, but He does everything to bring you to the conclusion or end of salvation. For again, Paul wrote, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you, will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Here we see God’s purpose in saving us.

We must never forget that God has not saved us simply to save us. There is a purpose in His salvation, an end to which He is after. Philippians 1:6 tells us that not only did God begin this work but that He will persistently and continually perform this work until the day of Christ Jesus. What is the goal of God concerning our salvation? We are not being given a verse here to solicit the warm fuzzies. God is not simply telling us here that everything is going to be alright until we finally get to heaven because God will keep us secure. That may be true, but this verse is telling us that God has saved us for a specific purpose, an explicit end – “a good work” – the perfection or completion of “a good work.” God is absolutely and persistently intent on finishing that work and will keep on refining us until that work is accomplished – what persistence!

And, as we look even closer at the verse, we see then attributes of God that we don’t always stop to consider. God is determined. God is persistent. God is unrelenting. God is resolute in accomplishing this good work. Who can thwart this end? But just what exactly is this good work? We have alluded to the fact that our salvation is certainly the beginning and the ending of this good work, but to what end? What does God achieve as the result of our salvation?

Philippians 1:6 does not speak directly but we do find the answer in another passage – Romans 8:28-29 –

Romans 8:28-29
28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. 29 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;

God’s good work – His purpose for every believer in Jesus Christ – is to become like Jesus Christ. What an awesome thought! God the Father is so delighted, so pleased with Jesus Christ His Son that He has called countless millions of sinful human being to Himself so that Jesus might reproduce Himself in the lives of His people. God wants our character to be like that of Jesus. Remember that the purpose of life of Jesus was to glorify God in all things –

John 17:4
I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do.

Are we aware and living in light of God’s goal for us to be like Jesus? This whole process of becoming like Jesus is what the Bible calls “sanctification.” Sanctification means to be set apart or holy for God’s use and glory. In other words, it is to be like Jesus in thought and character. How does this happen? Well, as we have seen, it begins with God doing His work in our lives, but it does involve us as well. And what is our part in “sanctification”? In terms of salvation itself – nothing – God makes us perfectly holy by His own doing. This is called positional sanctification. But in terms of our ongoing relationship with God, we are to strive for more and more holiness to be revealed in our lives. We are to pray for and labor after being like Jesus – not to contribute to salvation, but rather to reveal the reality of our salvation. To be more like Jesus we must first discover how much unlike Jesus we are, that is, we must see how sinful we really are. To ask people to consider how sinful they are goes against everything we hear today. Yet, to recognize and acknowledge sin is not only Biblical, it is absolutely necessary. I know all this sounds like a contradiction. How do we become like Jesus? We don’t do it by becoming aware of how perfect we are becoming. In fact, those who are actively involved in the process of sanctification are those who are more and more aware of their own sinfulness and recognize more and more their need to turn to Jesus for cleansing and forgiveness.

I like to think of this in terms of my schooling. When I first started Bible College, I had only a handful of questions and a lot of answers. I believed that College was simply going to reinforce the answers I already knew. Well, I went to school knowing so much and came out realizing that I knew far less than when I started. My college experience revealed to me just how ignorant I really was. It is not as though I didn’t learn anything. Just the opposite – I learned a great deal. And the more I learned, the more I realized how little I knew.

Such is the Christian’s life. When we first come to Christ, we tend to think of ourselves as not being too bad. We are proud of ourselves that we are at least better than others who don’t believe because we have believed in Jesus. But as we move along in our walk with the Lord, we begin to learn just how sinful we were and are and how great our need for the Lord really is. In other words, instead of priding ourselves on what we know about our salvation, we ought to be seeing the depth and vastness of our salvation as we have been lifted from the pit of sin and death and transferred to God’s kingdom.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse used to say this – “There is no Christian listening to my voice who will think as well of himself five years from now as he does this morning.” Does this means we are to be depressed and without joy? On the contrary, it should cause us great joy to grow in our knowledge of our depravity in sin because through the greater understanding of sin comes a greater appreciation of the grace of God in our salvation. And this, to me, is a most joyful thing. To rejoice in the depth of my salvation. To know that god is sanctifying me, revealing to me my sinful nature so that I might be drawn to conformity to Christ’s sinless nature. This then is God’s good work – the end to which He is bringing the many sons of glory. This is a work that God is persistently and actively engaged to see accomplished.

The idea of God’s working salvation in us is a repeated them in the book of Philippians. Please consider –

Philippians 1:9-11
9 And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; 11 having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.


Philippians 2:12-13
12 So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

Philippians 3:8-10
8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;

It is God who beings the work. It is God who completes the work. And our role, our responsibility in all this is but to joyfully believe and live our lives in light of that belief. We truly do have so great a salvation, from start to finish, accomplished by the persistence of God. Let us thank God for this work in our lives and let us, like Paul, be confident of this very thing – that God is bringing to completion or perfection that which He has started in everyone who has called upon the name of the Lord Jesus for salvation, the deliverance from sin to be transferred to the blessed and blissful Kingdom of His beloved Son.