Deep Dive into All of Grace: An Earnest Word for Those Who Are, by Grace, Seeking Salvation by Charles Spurgeon - The Fear of Final Falling
Perseverance for believers is inherently difficult due to a combination of internal vulnerabilities and external pressures. A major internal challenge is misplaced reliance on self for continuance. Believers who trust in their own strength, even partially, for "holding on" are setting themselves up for failure, as such self-trust is insufficient and weakens the entire spiritual foundation. This is because true religion is supernatural from beginning to end, meaning it is entirely God's work and cannot be sustained by human effort.
Furthermore, inherent human weakness and fickleness contribute significantly to this difficulty. Individuals are constitutionally unstable or naturally variable, and even the most devout find "enough folly in any one single day to make you stumble." This daily stumbling arises from internal "incitements to sin" and carelessness, underscoring that without God's continuous confirmation, believers are too weak to stand.
The spiritual journey itself adds to the difficulty, being described as a "long life" on a "rough" road filled with arduous terrains like "Hills of Difficulty" and "Valleys of Humiliation," which lead to weariness. Externally, the hostility of the world poses a constant threat. Believers live in an "enemy's country," constantly exposed to ungodliness and temptations, necessitating continuous spiritual contention.
Given these formidable internal and external challenges, the believer's great necessity is confirmation, continuance, final perseverance, and preservation to the end. This need arises because human strength is utterly insufficient; believers "could not live a single day without the divine life flowing into us from our Covenant Head." Therefore, perseverance is only possible through the constant, supernatural work of God from first to last, as any reliance on self inevitably leads to a "painful failure."
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