shall any man pluck them out of my hand,” the Saviour said. “My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all! and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one.” The person who has eternal life cannot be taken away from God. A true child of God will not go out after the doctrine that denies that Jesus was the Eternal God. A person who says that Jesus was not God is not a child of God. He cannot be, nei ther can he go to Heaven. Of God’s children we read: “Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (I Peter 1:5). In this same passage in First John, we are told that we have received an anointing, an unction from the Holy One, and we know all things. At sal vation the Holy Spirit came to live in us, and He will never allow us to be taken away and seduced with doc trines that teach that Jesus is not the true, living, eternal Son of God. These who are termed “anti christs” may speak much of the fa therhood of God and the brother hood of man, but they know nothing of this from the Bible standpoint for they are not .members of God’s fam ily- Epp declares: “The false teachers described in this passage whatever other name we want to give them, do not teach the total depravity of man. They will tell us that there is some thing good and something commend able in man. They will speak of the divine spark or something similar to that, but there is no spiritual spark in the heart of man. There is no spir itual life in anyone until Jesus comes in.” These false teachers may tell us to have faith in ourselves, but that is not what God says. God says that we should place no faith in man but put our faith in Jesus Christ. False teachers will also deny the
efficacy of the shed blood of Christ, but we will remember the Scripture which teaches us that without the shedding of blood there is no remis sion of sin. These false teachers will deny the necessity of the new birth and claim that all that men have to do is to follow Jesus an an example. The Scripture says: “Except a man be born again he cannot see the king dom of God,” and this is required not only of a few men but of all men. In verse 28 we are given a warn ing that is needed at all times. One of these days the Saviour will come, and surely we do not want to be found in such fashion that we will be ashamed before Him at His coming. Surely we would not be satisfied to be saved “so as by fire.” Instead, we will seek for an abundant entrance into His kingdom. For this to be a reality, we must use all the resources He has placed at our disposal in order that we might grow and pros per in things that pertain to life and godliness. Chapter 3 introduces love as the test of an individual’s salvation. This test grows out of the fact that the Father “hath bestowed love” upon us who are His children, and we in turn exhibit that love to others (Rom. 5:5). The first ten verses relate to the standing of the children of God as contrasted to the standing of the children of the devil. There are ba sically only two spiritual families in the world, though there are some re ligionists who would tell us that we are all the children of God. They glibly quote Galatians 3:26, but use only half of the verse, “Ye are all the children of God.” They conveni ently forget that the second half “by faith in Christ Jesus,” qualifies the first. We recall also that in our place our Saviour in speaking to certain ones said of them, “Ye are of your father the devil” (John 8:44). And here in this chapter we have the 31
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