The Necessity And Means Of Perseverance

I was recently driving with my young daughter a few days after she publicly professed her faith in Christ. She asked an important question: Not everyone who says they trust in Jesus stays faithful to him. How can I be sure that isn’t me? You can probably think of someone who at one time claimed to trust in Christ but later fell away. A contemporary term for this is deconstruction. Scripture uses a more catastrophic image: some, “concerning the faith have suffered shipwreck” (1 Tim. 1:19–20). Paul wasn’t exaggerating. He had been shipwrecked (2 Cor. 11:25). He knew that apostasy was no less tragic than the sinking of a vessel on which people’s lives depend. These apostates Paul names—Hymenaeus and Alexander—punctuate Paul’s charge to the church to “wage the good warfare, having faith and a good conscience.” How can the failures of others help you be diligent in resisting apostasy?

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