God is faithful

Good morning. We began last week in our study of 2 Corinthians, so we'll proceed with the last half of the first chapter. And we have, as you will find matching in most cases on your handout, the slide For those of you who may be unfamiliar with how we do it, we have the slides pretty much matching what you have in your handout, and the page number is on the lower right-hand corner. And I'm sitting here pointing at this, and you can't see what I'm pointing at, right? Okay. One of the things that becomes clear in this passage is that there are mutual doubts between the believers in Corinth, or at least some of them, and the Apostle Paul. They had their questions of Paul.

There were some who still questioned his apostleship and even challenged his integrity, and we'll see that as we get into this passage. And though Paul loved them clearly, he said that again and again. He said it at the very last of the end of 1 Corinthians, and he's going to say it again very shortly. In 2 Corinthians, he had invested his heart and life in them, as he did with every church.

He was having to continue to define what it meant to be the Lord's apostle. And there's actually a benefit in that for us, because he's going to say, this is the character of an apostle. This is what it takes to be qualified as an apostle. And that helps us, because then it spells out clearly who is an apostle and who isn't. He also urges them to be more discerning. And we're going to see that throughout the book as well. We've seen it already. We're going to see it some more.

I want to tell you a little story about discernment. From first grade to eighth grade, I lived in Los Altos, California. And we lived next to a larger chunk of property with a variety of fruits and nuts. Of course, California has lots of fruits and nuts, so you know that.

OK. In this adjacent piece of property, there was a tree that dropped chestnuts and nobody else seemed interested in them. So I always found them fascinating and collected them as they fell. And the property owner was a friend of the family and so that was no biggie. Well, at the end of eighth grade, we moved up to this little town called Philo, California. And if you've never heard of it, congratulations. Nobody else has either. Anyway.

There, I found that there was something that looked very similar, which was in fact, I discovered buckeye seeds. Well, I collected those and thought I'd share them with one of the families who lived there in the farming community. And I said, boy, aren't these great chestnuts? And they looked at me and said, those aren't chestnuts. You better be careful because they are poisonous. So chestnuts are edible when roasted, as the song goes, on an open fire or some other means. Buckeye seeds are poisonous unless the poison is leached out.

Very important difference. They may have some similarity, but the discernment is important. And just as being discerning in physical matters is very important to one's physical health. In fact, the only thing that eats those buckeye seeds is squirrels. So also being discerning in spiritual matters is very important to one's spiritual health.

So, it's come to this. You ever heard that? It usually means, uh-oh, we've got to do the right thing. And so, it's an interesting thing. It's come to this. We've got to stand on integrity. What's he talking about? Paul will be telling them that God is faithful. And God is consistent. And just as God is faithful and consistent, that's exactly what we've been doing.

God is not a God of mixed messages. God is not a God who tells you one thing and says another. God is not a God who does things that seem inconsistent. And neither are Paul or his followers, those fellow teachers who worked alongside him. They're appointed by God. They're conveying God's message, which is not mixed. They would not be saying one thing and doing another.

Since Paul didn't do exactly as he had hoped to do, in other words, he had told them back in the letter of 1 Corinthians, actually twice, we have the references here. Twice he told them, I hope to come to you. And this 1 Corinthians 4.19 is an important one. That's the first time he says, I hope to come to you. And he wrote it this way. I will come to you soon if the Lord wills. He put that condition in it.

And we make note of the fact that that same phrase is what James 4.15 also includes. If the Lord wills. If it is God's desire, then I will come to you. He puts that caveat or condition on it. With the idea the Lord could will otherwise and I might not. But that's what I intend to do.

You see, it's quite possible to have our plans get tossed up in the air. You may have noticed that as you go through life, right? I planned this, but the Lord had something else in mind. I told Nancy, I'm never getting married. You can't serve the Lord that way. But the Lord had something else in mind, right?

Okay. Also, to paraphrase an American proverb, it only takes a few alligators to change your plans, right? Things happen. And that's what happened to Paul. He had intended to come to them there at Corinth and basically take a trip by ship across the water from Ephesus over to Corinth and to see them. But other things came about. One of the issues that comes out in the very first verse here is an important one.

Paul used a word in 2 Corinthians that means confidence or exulting. The King James has it variously translated, boasting, glorying, rejoicing. He also used another word for confidence and trust. It's carried across both ways. Between the two words, he uses the two words in combination about 12 times throughout the book. It's a big issue that he's dealing with. It's not just in one part of the book, it's spread throughout it. He's going to continue to address confidence.

The important point is confidence leads to trust. I have here, for example, a suspension bridge. As you can see, it's taken from up high, but the bridge itself is also high. If you have confidence in the bridge and the way it's constructed, then you will trust it enough to walk across it. Confidence leads to trust. I'll give you another example.

Here is probably one of the world's most precarious roads. It's here in the United States, by the way. So do you have confidence in your ability to drive on that road? Do you trust it enough to take the little route? I think I'd be afraid to go backwards an inch.

But nonetheless, that's the kind of question that Paul has here. Confidence... is the basis for trust. We trust what we are confident in. Paul has his concerns. He's expressed some of those in 1 Corinthians. The book is full of all kinds of issues. Some of them, as we found out, are issues where they have written him with questions. Some of it is also things that he's heard about. He addresses them both.

He has his concerns about these believers in Corinth, and they also have concerns about him as well. But what he wants to do is not just throw up his hands and say, ah, Corinthians. But instead, he wants to establish a basis of mutual assurance and spiritual confidence. He wants there to be trust in the relationship, and he wants them to trust the Lord.

Trust is important both individually, in our individual relationships, and also among ourselves as a church body. Trust is based on confidence, and our confidence is to be in the Lord. So that's the real question, isn't it? What's the basis of our confidence? Is it all confidence in human abilities? Is it all confidence in what we are as humans? Or is it a confidence in God Himself? And what he's trying to get them to understand is the confidence is ultimately in the Lord, because He's trustworthy.

Now, in verse 12, there's a poetic pattern. He says, "...for our proud confidence," and he doesn't mean pride in a fleshly sense, In an evil sense, he means instead a positive sense. For our proud confidence is this, the testimony of our conscience that in holiness and godly sincerity, that's one thing about conscience.

Ever heard the phrase, let your conscience be your guide? Be careful. Some people don't have any. But what he's spelling out, these are qualifications of conscience. two positives actually three if you include the and statement there in the first line and one not this not negative it's not this statement so that in holiness and godly sincerity that's the positive statement with two parts not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God. So it's a conscience that is qualified spiritually, not just any person's conscience as it stands. It is possible to have a conscience that is broken. It is possible to have a conscience that is tainted. But the testimony of our conscience, as it starts with, how are we doing spiritually? Where is our dependence? Where is our confidence beginning with our conscience?

And then he goes out to, this is how we've behaved. Based on that, we have conducted ourselves in the world, especially towards you. Based on what God is doing in my heart and in my head, I then act that out, live that out in the world among the various people the Lord has called us to minister to, and especially to those here in the church that he's addressing and concerned about. Our confidence and therefore what we trust, okay? Among ourselves and also in the world is addressed here.

Starts with a clear conscience that's based on God's own character. Did you notice that? Holiness, godly sincerity, the grace of God. It starts in who God is. That's what our conscience must be founded in. That's the basis of being able to move out in the world on a solid, sound biblical footing, and to move among ourselves as believers.

In the next verses, there's also a poetic pattern. He says, For we write nothing else to you than what you read and understand, and I hope you will understand. And notice, hope you'll understand until the end. He wants them to continue to understand.

Just as you also partially did understand us that we are your reason to be proud, and again that's not a fleshly negative sense, but in a positive sense, as you also are ours in the day of Christ Jesus. There's a parallel here, in the end and in the day of Christ Jesus is referring to the same thing. Biblical understanding is the basis of our confidence and trust. Do we have a biblical understanding? That's the basis of our confidence and trust. We can face the day. We can face the time ahead.

All sorts of question marks out there in front of us, aren't there? There are things in many realms that we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what the outcome is going to be. Lots of question marks. But we go with confidence. Why? Because of God's character and we have an understanding. That's why he focuses on the understanding. There's one other thing. The understanding has a time perspective until the end, in the day of our Lord Jesus.

Verses 13 and 14, and this is a slide not in your handout. Verses 13 and 14 are in reference to what has been called the rapture, where the Lord takes believers home to be with Him. whether that believer is asleep in the Lord, as we mentioned a couple weeks ago, has been sown or planted, or whether that believer will be taken at the moment the Lord Jesus comes, taken alive, if you will. In the next verses, 15 and 16, Paul sincerely had the best of intents. His intent when he first talked to them and wrote to them twice, chapter 4, chapter 16, about going to Corinth was just to go straight across the water. He thought, I'll go over and see these people.

But as soon as he signed this letter, it headed off and things changed. Circumstances said, oh, wait a minute, we've got some other priorities here. Something's come up. If the Lord wills, and apparently the Lord willed otherwise, if the Lord wills, we'll do this and do that. No. The Lord had something else in mind.

He would take another route, kind of the northern route, that would be longer and more circuitous and would require that he make stops in other places so he wouldn't show up to Corinth as quickly as he had first anticipated. Paul said that he hoped to bless them and for them to bless him. with a direct visit to see them soon. That's exactly what he said. But he said, if the Lord wills. He didn't make that straight across trip and get there quickly as he had anticipated.

As things worked out, he made it to Corinth by way of Troas, delaying his arrival. Troas is one of the places, you recall, that Eutychus, I guess Paul was preaching way into the night. I hope we don't do that today. Paul was preaching way into the night and this fellow Eutychus fell from the upper story window. That was a troas.

So just so you have some familiarity with that. Paul's plans were godly and not fleshly. The change of plans from what he originally intended didn't signal that his spiritual teachings were also unreliable. Just because I had circumstances and other directions from the Lord that changed my plans doesn't mean that everything I'm telling you is vacillating. Somebody, maybe it was even a small group, but somebody was vocal enough to say, see, you can't depend on what Paul says. Nothing can you depend upon with what Paul says. But was it because Paul didn't care? Not at all. He writes later on in this letter of 2 Corinthians, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for how many of the churches? Some of them? Most of them? Few of them? The ones I really like? No. For all the churches. And he even has some questions.

Who is weak without my being weak? He says if somebody is struggling, I'm struggling because I'm wrestling with their weakness. who was led into sin without my intense concern. He did in fact care for what was going on with the believers in Corinth. The change in situation that draw him to take this northern route was not because he didn't care.

And the things that he taught did not vacillate. He said repeatedly, this I teach in all the churches. This is what I tell all the churches to do. Paul was not saying yes, yes and no, no at the same time, okay? He was not giving mixed messages and that's what you see in the passage there. You know, yes, yes and no, no. He was saying, I don't mix up the two, okay? I am telling it to you straight. You need to understand, if I give you a different indication as to what my schedule is that has nothing to do with the truth or non-truth of what I say. What I tell you is true, I am certain of it.

One of the things, it's very interesting, as I was looking this up, you got these cool programs these days where you can put in phrases and multiple words and find those. Boy, I will tell you, in times past when they had paper concordances, you couldn't find that stuff without going crazy. It's real easy in an instant to end up with some really specific listings.

And this is, God is faithful. It's interesting. Paul said it three times. Every time it was to the Corinthians. I wonder why they needed to hear that, right? They needed to hear God is faithful. He didn't write it, as far as I can tell, to any other church. But he told the Corinthians three times. They really needed to hear it.

This set of verses has some basic truths about God, including God is faithful, and also about who we are in Christ. He wants to spell that out. He's basically told them this, look, you guys are concerned that you can't count on what I tell you is my schedule. But let me tell you some things you can count upon. You can count upon who God is, and you can count upon who we are in Christ. Those aren't going to change. That's fixed. He says you can count upon that.

So let me tell you some things about who God is and let me tell you some things about who you are in Christ that you can absolutely count on it. And no circumstances are going to come up in my life that are going to change that. God is faithful here in these three verses including the third time in this passage that we're looking at here this morning. What does God's faithfulness mean?

Well, it has a couple of different meanings. One is that He is unchanging and that He is consistent within Himself. He doesn't love you and hate you at the same time. God is not both gracious and merciful and cruel. God does not have a mixed character. God is completely of one character.

He also does not change. He doesn't say, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him up until 1950. And after that, who knows, right? God does not change, right? God does not change. He is consistent within Himself. He is consistent over time. And He is also unchanging and consistent in what He says He will do in our lives.

In 1 Corinthians, the very first chapter, And it says, our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here's this day of the Lord Jesus Christ again. God is faithful. That's the first time he told him that. Through whom you were called into fellowship with the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. God is faithful.

Now, here's an interesting thing. He will confirm you to the end. Now, this word confirm is here on the screen, it's not in your handout, but I'd like you to take note of three things. God will conform you. God will confirm you. God will transform you.

As a believer, God will conform you to the image of Jesus Christ, Romans 8.28 and 29. That is for sure. It's going to happen. It's not a maybe. It's not a, Vern says so. It's not a, I hope so. It's not a, you hope so.

He will conform you to the image of the Son, Jesus Christ. If you're a believer, that's going to happen. You can count on it. He will also confirm you to the end. He's going to make this happen. He's going to pull it off. And thirdly, He will transform you In addition to this conforming process, and by the way, that happens through circumstances, and some of those are difficult, the transforming process comes as we behold the Lord Jesus Christ through His Word.

We're going to see that in 2 Corinthians 3.18 when we get there shortly. He will conform you, He will confirm you, He will transform you. Those things are absolutely certain. He will do it to the end. There is no question. You can count on it. He will do it. He will pull it off. He will make it come to pass.

God is faithful. He doesn't change. He doesn't make a promise and say, whoops, change my mind. I'll transform you as you behold the Lord through His Word up through 2009. And then we're done. No. To the end. To the day of Jesus Christ. These verses, 18-22, also say, who establishes us in Christ is God.

When we studied, here's again 1 Corinthians 1.30, what does it say?

By God's doing, you are in Christ Jesus. Did you get in Christ Jesus because you really worked at it? Did you get into Christ Jesus because one of the deacons here kept track of how many times you came to church in a row and finally, ah, now I'm in Christ Jesus. Is that how it happens? No. You're in Christ Jesus because you believe God did all the rest.

He placed you. He did the placing of you into Christ Jesus. God himself is the one who does it. He pulls it off. He's faithful. All we ever did was believe. God says, that's all I need. I'll do the rest. All we ever did was believe. That's it. No more.

In both cases, This establishes, and when I mean both cases, I mean that 1 Corinthians 1.30, as well as this one. It's present tense. God is the one who is now keeping us in Christ Jesus. It's not our works, not our feelings, or anything else. Only Him. It does not matter what you had for breakfast or lunch. That does not have anything to do with keeping you in Christ Jesus. It's God's job. He does it. He pulls it off. Who you are depends on Him alone and not us.

What's interesting is as believers we're kind of born with spiritual amnesia. Have you noticed that? People say, well, I believe Christ died for my sins and was buried and rose again and they're saved and all of a sudden God just does a whole bunch of things that we have to take years to catch up to. Isn't that amazing? We're born with spiritual amnesia and have to kind of relearn who are we.

Some of the truths about the believer that are spelled out in this passage are really good ones. Being anointed is a truth of position, that is, who we are in Christ. It's popular in some charismatic circles to use the word anointed to say that a song or a sermon made you feel blessed or feel spiritual. Some of you are aware Nancy and I were in a church that was overtaken by a charismatic group and essentially the group that came was splitting off from another very large church and about two-thirds of the church within a matter of weeks was suddenly charismatic.

And one of the fellows came up to me afterwards and said, boy, that was really anointed. I looked at him and I said, what? And he had to explain it to me and he was puzzled that I was puzzled. That's how it's said. There's a certain event or something you did or a song that you sang or something like that. That's anointed is the terminology. The books of the New Testament never talk about anointing in that way. Never. They don't talk about being anointed in a comes and goes kind of way.

You will find songs in these charismatic circles that talk about, you know, the Holy Spirit come back. I don't know how he leaks out, but somehow he does. And the idea is you've got to plead to have him come back. And he goes and comes, you know. And basically what they're looking for is a feeling that reinforces the Holy Spirit's presence.

The Bible just doesn't talk that way at all. Only believers are said to be anointed, not songs and sermons and things of that sort. Believers are the ones who are anointed, and it's always a done deal. It's always past tense. It's completed. We are anointed as the Holy Spirit indwells us.

Acts 10.38 makes clear that anointing is the Holy Spirit's indwelling. It's permanent. In Romans 8-11 it goes like this, "...the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. He who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you."

Okay? Permanently. Nancy and I have a friend. Years ago we were studying with them and she had been brought up in a charismatic background. She says, wow, I didn't know the Holy Spirit was with me all the time. I thought He just came and went. And came and went and came and went and came and went. No, He is with us all the time. He who indwells you. He who dwells in you. Permanently.

Paul also talks in here about being sealed. Now, the seal isn't one of those kind of seals, right? Not that, okay? And it's not the kind of seal that goes and shoots bullets out of the end of a gun. None of those, okay? This is instead a seal where a particular specific marking is put either on a hot wax or on a soft clay that dries and then hardens. As that clay dries and hardens, by the way, Jezebel, this is Jezebel's personal seal out of the Old Testament.

And by the way, if you have people that complain about, you know, this or that's just myth and story, a great many of the people in the Old Testament have either the seals or the next thing I'm going to show you, the seal impression recorded. Hezekiah, Jotham saw Jezebel. Ahaz. This one is Jeremiah's scribe Baruch. Two of his seals have been found and one of them has his fingerprint. This is called a bulla. It's not a bull, it's a bulla. That's the impression that the seal makes. So whether you find the original seal that makes the mark or the bulla, the impression that it makes, that's the idea.

They would put it on documents to say, well, we'll talk about what it means. It was put on the tomb when Jesus was buried. They had the seal of Roman there to keep anyone from breaking into the tomb. And in addition to that, they had a guard of about 12 to 16 soldiers there to further enforce the seal. Being sealed in biblical times meant several things.

We'll go into this in a little more detail. It meant protection from modification. There was no tampering. It meant no unauthorized disclosure. It meant also judgment, and we'll talk about that in a minute. It meant authorization and certification of the contents and finally ownership.

So here we have one of the two bulla. seal markings from Baruch here in the picture. And by the way, that whole area is a great area of study. Even in the last few years, biblical names found in the Old Testament have found either the seal or the bulla is the impression for a number of the biblical names. Our being sealed by the Holy Spirit provides all those things for us believers until the day we see Christ face to face. Nothing will mess with who God has made us to be. Nothing will mess with who God has made us to be. Nothing.

Jesus in John 10, 28 and 29 He says, my sheep, I keep constantly giving them life, and they will not perish of their own doing. And he uses the word para for not, that is the most extreme way you can say absolutely not perish of their own doing. And then he says, and no one can take them out of my hand, and the Father who gave them to me, no one's going to take them out of his hand either. Nobody, nothing is going to mess with who you are in Christ. Not going to happen. Okay? Here are some of the advantages of the seal. Protection from tampering. That's why I say nobody is going to mess with who you are in Christ. Not happening. They can't touch it.

It's like I've told you before, my friend Dick Hillis was over in China. He's gone home to be with the Lord just a few years ago. was over in China and he was a missionary there when the communist Chinese took over and the communist lieutenant took a pistol up to his head because he wanted Dick to give him the names and locations of all the Christians. And Dick said, I'm not telling you. And so the lieutenant put the pistol up to his head and said, don't you know I can blow your brains out? And Dick said, that's all you can do. Protection from tampering. The Chinese lieutenant with a pistol up to Dick's head couldn't do anything to change who Dick is in Christ.

The next thing, protection from disclosure. It doesn't mean that we go around guarded all the time, but in the end, the Lord is the one who searches our hearts. And nobody else is going to go in there and fathom the depths. I don't care how many hours we spend on the therapist's couch, he's still not going to see what the Lord sees. The next one, protection from judgment. Find a few examples and references there on your handout. We have protection from judgment as we are sealed by the Holy Spirit. Who is going to be the one who judges us ultimately? Christ. And if you're a believer, His judgment is, how can I reward you? Nobody else is going to mess with that.

The next one, authorization. We have authorization as Christ's ambassadors here on this planet. My citizenship is elsewhere, but I have the seal of the Holy Spirit while I'm here. I am authorized, and if you're a believer, you are too. You have an authorization that comes by being sealed with the Holy Spirit. That's authorization. Certification of contents. Telling you, this is who you are in Christ, and I absolutely certify it. The certification of contents. Ownership or possession. You are the Lord's. You are the Lord's.

Our son Ed went through a period of time in his life, he doesn't feel this way now, when he came and he said, do you mean to tell me that if I don't believe in God anymore and I don't want to be saved, that I'm still saved anyway? We said, yep. And boy, he was mad. He was ticked. When you say, sorry, you know, it says here, you're, you know, the Lord's and you're not going to change it. Sorry. Well, now he's glad, but, you know, at the time he was really upset. He's the Lord's and that's not going to change. And finally, authentication. This is the real thing. This is the real thing.

As we've gone through here, we've identified some of the seal impressions. Here's a seal impression, the bulla from Ahaz, son of Jotham. That's the one who was listed there in 2 Kings 16.1. And then the seal of Jezebel, which we showed in a larger picture before. Finally, the Holy Spirit is a guarantee.

Here is a picture. I'm sorry, Ben and Autumn, I didn't get authorization from you before, so I hope this is okay. This is Autumn's hand. See, so what happened is half a dozen or so years ago, Ben came to Autumn and said, would you be my wife? And she said, yes.

And he said, okay, here's the guarantee that I'm going to follow through on that. And that's what you see here. So, God has left the Holy Spirit in us to carry on the ministries, and I'll generalize with about two dozen ministries of the Holy Spirit, to minister to us and to minister through us in every way that God has said. And that Holy Spirit not only carries on those ministries, but the Holy Spirit is that guarantee that, yeah, I'm going to follow through. Yeah, I'm going to carry this out to the end. The Holy Spirit is that guarantee that all the promises will be fulfilled. Will you be conformed? Yep. Will you be confirmed? Yep. Will you be transformed? Yep.

Here's the guarantee. Christ had promised the Holy Spirit would come. That's in the Gospel of John there and even into the first chapter of Acts. Christ had multiply promised that the Holy Spirit would come. There's no question about that. But then when the Holy Spirit came, that was the guarantee of the ultimate promise for everything that God has promised that would ultimately take place for us. The continuing presence of the Holy Spirit means not only these ongoing ministries, all of them, about two dozen, but the guarantee of everything that God's promised us. Yeah, it's going to happen. Let me leave on deposit with you the Holy Spirit. You can keep Him in your heart all the time until the very day that you see the Lord face to face. Paul then calls God as witness. Essentially, it's kind of an oath. to testify that Paul did not come directly to Corinth, but he would come later.

But he changed his plan and came to see them later, since he came to see that actually not only did other things pull on him and demand his time and attention, but he actually found out, no, that actually would be better for them if I didn't come right away. He did come there, by the way. but just not right away. And the delay, he thought, was actually the best thing that could happen. You see, he makes clear in this passage too, he says, the intent of my heart, he says, one of the reasons I don't come to you is my intent is not to control and micromanage every thought and movement.

I don't want to sit there and direct every little thing in your lives. That's not my place. He says, rather than to stand over you and order you, do this, do not do that. Stop. Go. Get moving this way. Don't do that anymore. Instead of ordering them around and commanding every little move, He says, we're workers along with you. We work alongside you. Coming alongside at a later time, would actually be to your benefit. That would actually be a help. That would actually be what God has in mind.

Now, the last verse here, and this is not in your handout, I'll catch up to you with it in Expanded and Explained, which I'll have separately. And those of you who I have somebody with you who are not familiar with what I mean by Expanded and Explained, you can expand and explain it to them, okay? Alright. It starts off like this, not that we lord it over the faith of you, and that's very similar to what your translations have, but, and this is a word of sharp contrast, there are three words for but, B-U-T, in Greek, three primary words, and this is the one that means a sharp contrast, big difference.

We don't want to lord it over you and be in dominion and command every move that you make and don't make. But instead we want to be workers together with you, alongside you. Not in commanding, domineering authority, but we want to work right alongside you. To what end? For your joy. For that purpose. We're just working together with you. We're not sitting and trying to control everything.

For in the faith of you, the translations have your faith, but in this way it has the definite article, the faith of you, And here's something where I've expanded it into several lines. And there's a reason why your translations don't have several lines, because the people who publish these Bibles wouldn't allow that. So I have lots of words where they have a very few. But the original language goes like this.

You once stood firmly as a completed past action when you believed. And that is continuing to have its result now and on into the future, implying a permanence. Oh, he had already told them more than once, stand firm. But here he's talking about the position that they have. He says, you've believed in your eternal position that you have, who you are forever. In your eternal position, you stood and have been made to stand and are continuing in that. Nobody can mess with who you are in Christ. Nobody. Can't touch that. I'm not trying to get cute, right? Can't touch that. Nobody can touch it. Nobody can mess with it.

Who you are in Christ is entirely God's doing, and He's the one who is faithful to make sure that nobody messes with it until you are conformed, until you're confirmed, until you're transformed, until you look like Jesus from the inside out. That's exactly what He's going to do. It's exactly what's going to happen because God who is faithful has promised it. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this passage here, your character stands out and who we are in you because of your character stands out as well. All we did was believe. It's not a work. It's faith alone. It's your accomplishment and not ours. It's to your glory and not ours. And so we give you the praise and the honor and the glory and the thanks. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.