We have been talking for the last three lessons about our great Deliverer. Do you remember the three things from which He has delivered us? They are the punishment of sin, the power of sin, and the presence of sin. First, He delivered us from the punishment of sin by taking our place on the cross. Then He delivered us from the power of our old master, Satan, by the fact that when He died, God saw us dead with Christ. Satan is not interested in dead people, especially when they are dead with Christ. And the Lord Jesus is coming again, some day, maybe very soon, to deliver us from the very presence of sin. When He comes, we will have no more old nature in us, to be a traitor and deliver us over to our old master, Satan.
There are some things which we would like to get rid of, but cannot. I have heard of boys who have curly hair, and who do not like it at all. They try in every way to make it lie down straight, but it always curls up again, even if they wish to be rid of it. But things do not leave us just for wishing.
A slave who had been freed would not want to go back to a cruel master who had treated him badly all his life. He would want to keep as far away from such a master as he possibly could. The strange thing about some Christians is that after the Lord Jesus Christ has bought them away from their old master, sin, at such a great and awful price, they seem to want to go back to him and leave the Lord Jesus. That does not seem possible, does it?
We have never seen a slave. Long before we were born, about a hundred years ago, some people who loved the Lord, led by a man named Wilberforce, had laws passed that bought and set free all of the slaves in the British Empire. What a time of rejoicing there must have been when these slaves learned that they were free men and women!
Suppose we ask the same question we asked last lesson: Do you have eternal life? Probably you are ready to answer "Yes,” now, for God says we may know that we HAVE eternal life, if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour. But how about tomorrow? Will you have eternal life then? And suppose you should sin, would you lose your eternal life? In other words, our question today is, "Can eternal life be lost?”
