A lesson on the perseverance (or preservation) of the saints. As we continue our study of Christ's High Priestly prayer, we encounter this petition of Jesus that His disciples (and by extension all believers) would be "kept" in His name. To unravel what that means, we must first understand what we are kept from. In our flesh, we are constantly tempted to backslide and deny our Savior. Were it not for His sustaining grace, it could be supposed that we would all fall away from the faith in an instant. But praise be to God that if our faith is indeed genuine, we can be 100% confident that it will not ultimately fail. To be "kept" in Christ therefore is to remain in Christ despite trials and tribulations, to continue in Him, even until the very end.

We can be confident that our faith will be kept, not due to any strength of our own, but by God’s hand alone. Since it is by God’s grace that our faith is founded (and indeed granted,) likewise then, it is by God’s grace that it is preserved. For the person whom God has elected to rescue and set His unmerited grace and mercy upon, nothing and no one can ever cause that believer to fall away permanently from the faith. They may wander astray for a season, but God Himself gives us personal assurance through the testimony of His Word that He will sustain us through thick and thin, when it comes to the battle to believe. In contrast, those that apparently fall away, as we will see with Judas Iscariot, never had true saving faith to begin with. All who apostatize reveal the true state of their soul. It is not that they once were saved and then somehow lost their salvation; no, they were never saved to begin with.

Preservation should not be confused with assurance however; that only lends itself to a false premise of salvation. Christ Himself warns us that not everyone who claims Him to be "Lord" will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only those who do His will. It isn't that the obedience itself merits the inheritance of eternal life; Christ alone has accomplished that. Rather, obedience is the mark and natural desire of a true disciple - one who has been given to Him by the Father. They obey and abide in Him, not in order to be saved, but because they already are saved. Trials and temptations nevertheless remain, but the greater the trials, the greater the grace. And the greater the need for grace, the greater the providence of God to supply it. God keeps His people to the end. They are His, and no one nor anything can separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.