Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy
Jude 1:24 NKJV
I think it’s amazing that we have a God who not only calls us to holiness but also helps us to keep it. He doesn’t lay down rules and wait for us to stumble to give us a punishment. He establishes principles and guidelines and still helps us walk in them. He is the One who sustains us and keeps us from falling.
“Let Him that thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). There is a point where one gets to, that they may erroneously think they are standing, and that is by one’s own strength. We call it different things like “discipline” or “maturity”. We think it is by these things that we remain in Christ. No. Scripture helps us understand that it is, in fact, God who helps us to remain in Himself.
Security in the faith does not come from human effort but from God Himself. The Pharisees thought they had all the knowledge they needed to recognise the Messiah. They thought they had all the willpower required not to stumble, but they were so wrong. They thought they were standing, not knowing that they were spiritually blind and far from God. (Matt. 15:14, 23:27-28)
Even though Jude’s letter started off in a somewhat scary way, warning of impending judgment on defaulters, it closes on such a comforting note (Jd. 24). We are called to abide in God’s love—to remain in Him—but ultimately, God is the One who sustains us. God is able to sustain us and will present us blameless and unblemished in His glory. You cannot keep yourself. In fact, the more you try by your own strength, the more you realise just how inadequate your strength is. Peter trusted in his own willpower but soon found out it couldn’t help at all. Thank God he realised this quickly and went back to the One who was faithful to restore him. (Matt. 26:31-36, Lk. 22:54-62)
How scary it would have been if we had to bear the responsibility of all that God requires on our own. But thank God that He is the One who keeps us from stumbling and falling into sin.
Therefore, we can trust that as we continue to walk with Him and yield to His Lordship, He is faithful to sustain us and keep us. So, our confidence is not in our ability to hold on to Him, but in His faithfulness to hold on to us (Heb. 13:5). Even when Peter turned away from what Jesus called him to do, Jesus appeared to him to draw him back to the right path (Jn. 21). His promise is to never forsake us and part of not forsaking us is to sustain us.
The Bible tells us that God draws us to Himself, causing us not only to do what pleases Him, but to desire it as well (Php. 2:12-13). So we do not function mechanically like robots carrying out commands, nor do we act out of fear of punishment. Instead, we act from the heart because God has made His will a pleasure in our hearts. He keeps us in Himself by aligning our hearts with His will and good pleasure.
And this is one of the reasons why Scripture warns us not to quench the Holy Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19). If God is working in our hearts, giving us both the desire and the ability to do His will, we must not resist His work in us. Scripture takes such resistance seriously because our response to God matters.
How can I be sure that God will keep me from falling away?
Apart from the obvious reason that He is always true to His word, you can be sure because it is consistent with who He is. (Num. 23:19)
Before we even knew we needed saving, God made it available for us, at His own expense. He gave Himself as the exchange for our salvation. He cares that much. Now after all that, will He so easily abandon those He has redeemed?
Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:6 BSB
We are okay with believing that God keeps (protects) us from evil. We are confident in His sustenance in terms of provision. Today, He confronts us with the truth that the evil He protects from can also be sin. He challenges us with the truth that the sustenance He gives can also satisfy us in Him. If He has provided a way to salvation, He is able to help us walk that road until the very end. If He could give Himself freely as payment for the sin debt, then surely, He is able and willing to preserve us and keep us from turning away from Him (Rom. 8:32, 1 Pet. 1:3-5). And this is how we can be sure that years from now, we will still walk in Him.
However, all this talk about God sustaining us does not mean we won’t have times of weakness. We are still human after all. Instead, it means that God keeps us from a complete falling away. Even in our weakness, He does not abandon us and is able to restore, strengthen, and ultimately keep us from turning away from Him. (Jd. 24, Ps. 37:23-24)
The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.
Psalm 37: 23-24 NIV
Perhaps this is what makes the salvation of God so beautiful—the fact that it doesn’t end at the cross. He still sustains us and saves us from the power of sin, presenting us blameless before Him until the day we receive glorified bodies and enter fully into the incorruptible life He has promised us.
God began the work. God sustains the work. God will bring the work to completion.
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