You rejoice in the fact that you have a living hope, that you have an inheritance that can't

perish and can't be defiled and can't fade away, that is now reserved in heaven for you

and that you are protected by the power of God through faith.

Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Charles Spurgeon said that if he didn't believe salvation is permanent, that once you're saved,

you're saved forever. He should be of all men the most miserable because he would lack any ground

for comfort. Well, friend, how about you? Are you confident that you're saved for good?

That right now you're in God's family and safely held in his permanent grip.

Helping you settle that question is what John's current study is all about. He calls it God

won't let you go. And now with today's lesson, here's John. The guarantee of scripture,

and therefore the promise of God is that salvation is forever.

And this is not a stand-alone doctrine.

This is not one that you can believe or not believe without any major effect on other

doctrines.

In fact, quite the opposite is true.

To get this doctrine of the perseverance of the saints or the eternality of salvation wrong is

to produce chaos in regard to the doctrine of predestination, the doctrine of election,

the doctrine of justification, the doctrine of sanctification, and the doctrine of glorification.

It is, if you will, to unravel all the strands in the chord of salvation.

That's why I said at the outset that the most important element in all the range of salvation

doctrines is this issue of the perseverance of the saints.

It is in the end what makes salvation salvation because it is forever.

And I know as you do that it has been debated as if it's sort of a, I guess, difficult

...