 |  |
'Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of
promise the Immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an Oath'
(Heb. 6:17).
(2)
Specific assurances have been given.
'Because I Live, ye shall Live also' (John 14:19).
'I give unto them eternal life; and they shall Never perish,
neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand' (John 10:28).
Full assurance is associated with faith and hope.
(a) Faith. 'Having ... boldness, ... having an high priest, ... let us
draw near ... in full assurance of faith' (Heb. 10:19 -22).
(b) Hope.
'The full assurance of hope ... which hope we have as an
Anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth
into That within the veil' (Heb. 6:11,19).
(3)
Full assurance arises out of some things that God cannot do.
(a)
He 'cannot lie', 'It was impossible for God to lie' (Tit. 1:2;
Heb. 6:18).
(b)
'He cannot deny Himself' (2 Tim. 2:13).
(c)
'God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man,
that He should repent: hath He Said, and shall He not Do It? or
hath He Spoken, and shall He not Make It Good' (Num. 23:19),
and, as we have already seen, He changes not. The whole scheme of salvation
has been so arranged, that it should be 'of faith' and 'by grace' to the end
the promise might be Sure (Rom. 4:16).
We observed that one of the Hebrew words employed to give the idea of
assurance was the same that gives us our word 'amen'. The apostle Paul, who
was a Hebrew, would not fail to associate this Old Testament term with
assurance in the New Testament sense, when he wrote:
'For all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, unto the
glory of God by us' (2 Cor. 1:20).
The R.V. reads:
'For how many soever be the promises of God, in Him is the yea:
wherefore also through Him is the Amen, unto the glory of God through
us'.
This R.V. rendering based upon the critical text is
more searching in its implications, but the analysis and applications of
these we leave to the reader.
Among the words translated 'assure' we found the word peitho, 'to
persuade'. Let us end this survey of texts that point the way to a full