We have seen on the positive side that all the work that God has done and all the grace that He has given us at the time we were saved cannot be annulled by the passage of time. We can boldly say that once we are saved, we are eternally saved. Once God has shown mercy to us, we are eternally under His mercy. Once we have the eternal life of the Son of God, we will never lose it.
Although I am very bold in saying this, we human beings are still human beings. Even today many Christian workers do not see this matter. Because man's heart is filled with the flesh and the law, he cannot understand how God's grace can be so great. It is too incredible to him. It is natural for man to think this way. Man is of the flesh, and the flesh is of the law. The flesh knows only the law; it does not know grace. Anything that originates from the human flesh is of the law. But anything that originates from God, from the Holy Spirit, and from grace, is of faith.
In the world we know nothing about grace and gift. All we know is to barter. All day long, our minds are filled with how much we should work and how much we should get for our work. We think that in order to gain anything, we have to work for it. This is our life. For years, we have bartered away our lives, our time, and our energy. We think that if one is to pay a certain price, he first has to be paid an equal amount. If he has accepted a certain amount, then he has to offer certain things in return. Our life is a life of bartering. Because this is the way we live, we also think that God's grace and eternal life toward us are in the same principle of bartering. When we hear the clear gospel, we may see the light for a while. At that time, we may realize that grace is free and that it is not a matter of bartering. But this realization seems to happen only at the time we are saved. Many people still have not been delivered from the thought of God's grace as a loan to us. They think that if they do not do well, God will claim back the grace He has given. But if a man knows the Bible and is clear about the ten items of truth mentioned in the previous messages, he has to admit at the very least that there can never be such a thing.
Everyone who knows the Word of God should never doubt what he knows because of what he does not know. Since one has seen clearly the sealing and the pledging of the Holy Spirit, eternal life, the hand of the Lord, the Body of Christ, the temple of God, and the promises of the Lord, he cannot overturn what he knows with problems concerning things that he does not know or understand. We cannot overturn the facts we know. However, there are still things we are ignorant of. What we will do now is to take a look at some of the things that we do not know. We will take a few of the supposedly contradictory arguments—especially the more convincing ones—and consider them one by one.