A frequent listener of the podcast emails in this question,

Pastor John, my name is Soren. I am from Romania, but living right now in Germany,

my question is this, how do you understand John 151-10 in a Calvinistic way,

because the text tells us things like this. He cuts off every branch that bears no fruit,

or if you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away in withers.

Such branches are picked up thrown into the fire in burns. What do you say, Pastor John?

That's a really crucial question, because the biblical, reformed Calvinistic view of union

with Christ, ofine in a branch, is that if we have been united to Christ in a new birth

and in an effectual calling, we will never be cut off from Christ. We will be eternally

secure, and we base that on lots of texts. For example, John 1027, my sheep hear my voice,

and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life. They will never perish.

No one will snatch them out of my hand. My father, who's given them to me, is greater than all.

No one will be able to snatch them out of my father's hand. The point there is, if you're my sheep,

you're secure, or Romans 830. This is for me the most compelling. Those whom he predestined,

he called, and those whom he called, he justified, and those whom he justified, he glorified.

Nobody falls out of that chain. If you're justified, he says, you will be glorified.

There are no justified people who get lost between justification and glorification,

or Philippians 1-6. I am sure that he will begin a good work and you will bring it to completion

in the last day, or 1 Corinthians 1-8. He will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of

Christ. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, or John 1st

on 2-19. They went out from us because they were not of us. For if they had been of us,

they would not have gone out, but they went out that it might be plain that they were not of us.

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