Endurance

Last week I wrote about faithfulness. Closely related to that character quality is endurance or perseverance. To be faithful, you can’t give up, you can’t quit. Not quitting is endurance or perseverance. Fighting to the end characterizes a true believer. Someone who does not persevere or endure, that is, he defects from the faith once delivered of the truth, is manifesting his unbelief. The Bible calls this “overcoming” in Revelation 2-.3. Believers will endure or overcome and unbelievers will not. Believers will because they have God, the Holy Spirit, indwelling them, and He is more powerful than whatever might stop them. 1 John 4:4 says “greater is He that is in you than He that is in the world.” He that is in the world wants to cause you to defect, but He that is in you is greater than that. One famous passage on endurance is John 15, where v. 6 says, “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” To “abide in Christ” is to “remain,” which is to stick with Christ. Judas had just defected, which says Judas wasn’t saved, would be cast into the fire. Endurance best shows whether someone is saved, truly saved or not.. Somebody who does not stick with Christ was never saved in the first place, as 1 John 2:19 says: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.”