271. Faith Illustrated

A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, August 21, 1859, By Pastor C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

For this reason I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have committed to him until that day. (2Ti 1:12)

1. An assurance of our safety in Christ will be found useful to us in all states of experience. When Jesus sent out his seventy chosen disciples, endowed with miraculous powers, they performed great wonders, and naturally enough they were somewhat elated when they returned to tell him about their deeds. Jesus saw their tendency for pride; he saw that in the utterance—“Behold even devils were subject to us,” there was mingled much of self-congratulation and boasting. What cure, did you think he administered; or what was the sacred lesson that he taught them which might prevent their being exalted above measure? “Nevertheless,” he said, “do not rejoice in this, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” The assurance of our eternal interest in Christ may help to keep us humble in the day of our prosperity; for when God multiplies our wealth, when he blesses our endeavours, when he speeds the plough, when he wafts the good ship swiftly onward, this may act as a sacred ballast to us, that we have something better than these things, and therefore we must not set our affections upon the things of earth, but upon things above; and let our heart be where our greatest treasure is. I say, better than any lancet to spill the superfluous blood of our boasting; better than any bitter medicine to chase the burning fever of our pride; better than any mixture of the most pungent ingredients is this most precious and hallowed wine of the covenant—a remembrance of our safety in Christ. This, and this alone, revealed to us by the Spirit, will suffice to keep us in that happy lowliness which is the true position of the full grown man in Christ Jesus. But note this, when at any time we are cast down with multiplied afflictions, and oppressed with sorrow, the very same fact which kept us humble in prosperity may preserve us from despair in adversity. For note here, the apostle was surrounded by a great fight of affliction; he was surrounded with troubles; he suffered within and without; and yet he says, “Nevertheless I am not ashamed.” But what is that which preserves him from sinking? It is the same truth which kept the ancient disciples from too much pride. It is the sweet persuasion of his interest in Christ. “For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have committed to him until that day.” Get then, Christian brethren and friends, get assurance; do not be content with hope, get confidence; do not rest in faith, labour after the full assurance of faith; and never be content, my hearer, until you can say you know your election, you are sure of your redemption, and you are certain of your preservation until that day.

2. I propose this morning in preaching upon this text to labour both for the edification of the saint and the conversion of the sinner. I shall divide the text very simply thus: First, we have in it the grandest action of the Christian’s life, namely, the committing of our eternal interests into the hand of Christ. Secondly, we have the justification of this grand act of trust—“I know in whom I have trusted.” I have not trusted one whose character is unknown to me, I am not foolish, I have firm grounds for what I have done. And then we have, thirdly, the most blessed effect of this confidence—“I am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have committed to him.”

3. I. First, then I am to describe THE GRANDEST ACTION OF THE CHRISTIAN’S LIFE.

4. With all our preaching, I am afraid that we too often omit the simple explanation of the essential act in salvation. I have feared that the anxious enquirer might visit many of our churches and chapels, month after month, and yet he would not get a clear idea of what he must do to be saved. He would come away with an indistinct notion that he was to believe, but what he was to believe he would not know. He would, perhaps, obtain some glimmering of the fact that he must be saved through the merits of Christ, but how those merits can become available to him, he would still be left to guess. I know at least that this was my case—that when sincere and anxious to do or be anything which might save my soul, I was utterly in the dark as to the way in which my salvation might be rendered thoroughly secure. Now, this morning, I hope I shall be able to put it into such a light that he who seeks may understand, and that the wayfaring man, though a fool, may not err in it.

5. The apostle says, he committed himself into the hands of Christ. His soul with all its eternal interests; his soul with all its sins, with all its hopes, and all its fears, he had put into the hands of Christ, as the grandest and most precious deposit which man could ever make. He had taken himself just as he was and had surrendered himself to Christ, saying—“Lord save me, for I cannot save myself; I give myself up to you, freely relying upon your power, and believing in your love. I give my soul up to you to be washed, cleansed, saved, and preserved, and at last brought home to heaven.” This act of committing himself to Christ was the first act which ever brought real comfort to his spirit; it was the act which he must continue to perform whenever he would escape from a painful sense of sin; the act with which he must enter heaven itself, if he would die in peace and see God’s face with acceptance. He must still continue to commit himself into the keeping of Christ. I take it that when the apostle committed himself to Christ, he meant these three things. He meant first, that from that good hour he renounced all dependence upon his own efforts to save himself. The apostle had done very much, after a fashion, towards his own salvation. He commenced with all the advantages of ancestry. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, of the tribe of Benjamin, as touching the law a Pharisee. He was one of the very strictest of the strictest sect of his religion. So anxious was he to obtain salvation by his own efforts, that he left no stone unturned. Whatever Pharisee might be a hypocrite, Paul was not. Though he tithed his anise, and his mint, and his cummin, he did not neglect the weighter matters of the law. He might have united with truth, in the affirmation of the young man, “All these things have I kept from my youth up.” Hear his own testimony: “Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinks that he has a reason to trust in the flesh, I the more.” Being exceedingly desirous to serve God, he sought to put down what he thought was the pestilent heresy of Christ. Being exceedingly hot in his endeavours against every thing that he thought to be wrong, he persecuted the professors of the new religion, hunted them in every city, brought them into the synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme; when he had emptied his own country, he needed to take a journey to another, that he might there show his zeal in the cause of his God, by bringing out those whom he thought to be the deluded followers of an impostor. But suddenly Paul’s mind is changed. Almighty grace leads him to see that he is working in a wrong direction, that his toil is lost, that as well might Sisyphus1 seek to roll his stone up hill, as for him to find a road to heaven up the steeps of Sinai; that as well might the daughters of Danaus2 hope to fill the bottomless cauldron with a bucket full of holes, as Paul indulge the idea that he could fill up the measure of the laws’ demands. Consequently he feels that all he has done is worthless, and coming to Christ he cries, “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yes doubtless, and I count all things only as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them only as dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is by the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.”

6. And now, my dear friends, if you wish to be saved, this is what you must do. I hope many of you have already performed the solemn act, you have said to Jesus in the privacy of your closet, “Oh Lord, I have tried to save myself, but I renounce all my endeavours. Once I said, ‘I am no worse than my neighbours; my goodness shall preserve me.’ Once I said, ‘I have been baptized, I have taken the sacrament, in these things I will trust,’ and now, Lord, I cast all this false confidence to the winds.

No more, my God, I boast no more
Of all the duties I have done;
I quit the hopes I held before
To trust the merits of your Son.

The best obedience of my hands
Dares not appear before your throne:
But faith can answer your demands,
By pleading what my Lord has done.”

You cannot be saved if you have one hand on self and the other hand on Christ. Let go, sinner, renounce all dependence in anything you can do. Cease to be your own keeper, give up the futile attempt to be your own Saviour, and then you will have taken the first step to heaven. There are only two, the first is—out of self, the next is—into Christ. When Christ is your all, then you are safe.

7. But again, when the apostle he says committed his soul to the keeping of Christ, he means that he had implicit confidence that Christ would save him now that he had relinquished all trust in himself. Some men have gone far enough to feel that the best performance of their hands cannot be accepted before the judgment bar of God. They have learned that their most holy acts are full of sin, that their most faithful service falls short of the demands of the law; they have relinquished self, but they are not able yet to see that Christ can and will save them. They are waiting for some great revelation; they think, perhaps, that by some marvellous electric shock, or some miraculous feeling within them, they will be led to place their confidence in Christ. They want to see an angel or a vision, or to hear a voice. Their cry is, “How could I think that Jesus would save such a one as I am. I am too vile, or else I am too hardened; I am the old man; it is not likely that Christ would ever save me.” Now, I do not doubt that the apostle had felt all this, but he overcame all this attacking of sin, and at last he came to Christ and said, “Jesus, I feel that you are worthy of my confidence. Behold, I am the chief of sinners, I have nothing in myself that can assist you in taking me to heaven; I shall kick and struggle against you rather than assist you. But behold, I feel that such is your power, and such is your love, that I commit myself to you. Take me as I am, and make me what you wish to have me be. I am vile, but you are worthy; I am lost, but you are the Saviour; I am dead, but you are the quickener; take me, I beseech you; I put my trust in you, and though I perish, I will perish relying on your blood. If I must die, I will die with my arms about your cross, for you are worthy of confidence, and on you do I rely.”

8. And now, my friends, if you wish to be safe, you must, in the strength of the Holy Spirit, do this also. You say you have given up all trust in self—well and good; now place your trust in Christ, repose your all on him; drop into his arms; submit yourself to his power; lay hold on him. You know how Joab, when he fled from the sword of Solomon, laid hold on the horns of the altar, thinking that surely when he had laid hold on the altar he was safe. His was vain confidence, for he was dragged from the horns of the altar and killed. But if you can lay hold on the horns of the altar of God, even Christ, you are most surely safe, and no sword of vengeance can ever reach you.

9. I saw the other day a remarkable picture, which I shall use as an illustration of the way of salvation by faith in Jesus. An offender had committed a crime for which he must die, but it was in the olden time when churches were considered to be sanctuaries in which criminals might hide themselves and so escape. See the transgressor—he rushes towards the church, the guards pursue him with their drawn swords, all athirst for his blood, they pursue him even to the church door. He rushes up the steps, and just as they are about to overtake him and hew him in pieces on the threshold of the church, out comes the Bishop, and holding up the crucifix he cries, “Back, back! do not stain the precincts of God’s house with blood! stand back!” and the guards at once respect the emblem and stand back, while the poor fugitive hides himself behind the robes of the priest. It is even so with Christ. The guilty sinner flees to the cross—flees straight to Jesus, and though Justice pursues him, Christ lifts up his wounded hands and cries to Justice, “Stand back! stand back! I shelter this sinner; in the secret place of my tabernacle I am hiding him; I will not allow him to perish, for he puts his trust in me.” Sinner, flee to Christ! But you say, “I am too vile.” The more vile you are, the more will you honour him by believing that he is able to make you clean. “But I am too great a sinner.” Then the more honour shall be given to him that you are able to have confidence in him, great sinner though you are. If you have a little sickness, and you tell your physician—“Sir! I am quite confident in your skill to heal,” that is no great compliment, but if you are severely sick with a complication of diseases, and you say—“Sir! I seek no better skill, I will ask no more excellent advice, I trust in you alone,” what an honour you have conferred on him, that you could trust your life in his hands when it was in extreme danger. Do the same with Christ; put your soul in his care, dare it, venture it; cast yourself simply on him; let nothing except faith be in your soul; believe him, and you shall never be mistaken in your trust.

10. But I think I have not completely stated all the apostle meant, when he said that he committed himself to Christ. He certainly meant those two things—self-renunciation, and implicit belief in Christ’s power and willingness to save, but in the third place, the apostle meant that he did make a full and free surrender of himself to Christ, to be Christ’s property, and Christ’s servant for ever. If you wish to be saved you must not be your own. Salvation is through being bought with a price; and if you are bought with a price, and thus saved, remember, from that day forward you will not be your own. Today, as an ungodly sinner, you are your own master, free to follow the lusts of the flesh; or, rather Satan is your great tyrant, and you are under bondage to him. If you wish to be saved you must by the aid of the Holy Spirit now renounce the bondage of Satan and come to Christ, saying, “Lord I am willing to give up all sin, it is not in my power to be perfect but I wish it was, make me perfect. There is not a sin I wish to keep; take all away; I present myself before you. Wash me, make me clean. Do whatever you wish in me. I make no reserve, I make a full surrender of all to you.” And then you must give up to Christ all you are, and all you have by solemn indenture, signed and sealed by your own heart. You must say in the words of the sweet Moravian hymn—

Take thou my soul and all my powers;
Oh take my memory, mind, and will,
Take all my goods, and all my hours,
Take all I know and all I feel;
Take all I think and speak, and do;
Oh take my heart, but make it new.

Accept the sacrifice,—I am worthless, but receive me through your own merits. Take and keep me, I am, I hope I shall always be yours.

11. I have now explained that act which is after all the only one which denotes the day of salvation to the soul. I will give one or two examples however to make it clearer. When a man has gold and silver in his house, he fears lest some thief may break in and steal it, and therefore if he is a wise man he looks for a bank in which to store his money. He makes a deposit of his gold and his silver; he says in effect, “Take that, sir, keep it for me. Tonight I shall sleep securely; I shall have no thought of thieves; my treasure is in your hands. Take care of that for me, when I need it, at your hands I shall require it.” Now in faith we do just the same with our blessed Redeemer. We bring our soul just as it is and give it up to him. “Lord, I cannot keep it; sin and Satan will be sure to ruin it—take it and keep it for me, and in that day when God shall require the treasure, stand as my sponsor, and on my behalf return my soul to my Maker kept and preserved to the end.” Or take another example. When your adventurous spirit has sought to climb some lofty mountain, delighted with the prospect you scale many and many a steep; onward you climb up the rocky crags until at last you arrive at the verge of the snow and ice. There in the midst of precipices that scarcely know a bottom and of summits that seem inaccessible, you are suddenly surrounded with a fog. Perhaps it becomes worse and worse until a snow storm completes your bewilderment. You cannot see a step before you: your track is lost. A guide appears: “I know this mountain,” he says. “In my early days I have climbed it with my father. Over each of these crags have I leaped in pursuit of antelopes; I know every chasm and cavern. If you will follow me even through the darkness I will find the path and bring you down; however before I undertake to guide you in safety, I demand of you implicit trust. You must not plant your feet where you think it safest, but where I shall tell you. Wherever I tell you to climb or descend you must implicitly obey, and I undertake on my part to bring you safely down to your house again.” You do so—you have many temptations to prefer your own judgment to his but you resist them—and you are safe. Even so must you do with Christ. You are lost today and utterly bewildered and then Christ appears. “Let me guide you, let me be an eye to you through the thick darkness; let me be your foot, lean on me in the slippery place, let me be your very life; let me wrap you in my crimson vest to keep you from the tempest and the storm.” Will you now trust him; rely entirely, simply, and implicitly upon him? If so, the grand act of your life is done and you are a saved man, and on the terra firma of heaven you shall one day plant your delighted feet and praise the name of him who saved you from your sins.

12. I must add, however, that this act of faith must not be performed only once, but it must be continued as long as you live. As long as you live you must have no other confidence but “Jesus only.” You must take him now today, to have and to hold through life and in death, in tempest and in sunshine, in poverty and in wealth, never to part or leave him. You must take him to be your only prop, your only pillar from this day forth and for ever. What do you say sinner? Does God the Holy Spirit lead you to say “Indeed?” Does your heart now confide in Jesus? If so, let the angels sing, for a soul is born to God, and a brand is plucked from the eternal fire. I have thus described faith in Christ—the committing of the soul to him.

13. II. This brings us to our second point—THE JUSTIFICATION OF THIS GRAND ACT OF TRUST.

14. Confidence is sometimes folly; trusting in man is always so. When I exhort you, then, to put your entire confidence in Christ, am I justified in so doing? and when the apostle could say that he trusted Jesus alone, and had committed himself to him, was he a wise man or a fool? What does the apostle say? “I am no fool,” he said, “for I know whom I have believed. I have not trusted in an unknown and untried pretender. I have not relied upon one whose character I could suspect. I have confidence in one whose power, whose willingness, whose love, whose truthfulness I know. I know whom I have believed.” When silly women put their trust in yet more silly and wicked priests, they may say possibly that they know whom they have believed. But we may tell those who their knowledge must be ignorance indeed—that they are greatly deluded in imagining that any man, whoever he may be, can have any power in the salvation of his fellow’s soul. You come sneaking up to me and ask me to repose my soul in you; and who are you? “I am an ordained priest of the Church of Rome.” And who ordained you? “I was ordained by such a one.” And who ordained him? “It comes after all,” he says, “from the Pope.” And who is he, and what is he more than any other man, or any other imposter? What ordination can he confer? “He obtained it directly from Peter.” Did he? Let the link be proven; and if he did, what was Peter, and where has God given Peter power to forgive sin—a power which he should transmit to all generations? Begone! The thick pollutions of your abominable church forbid the idea of descent from any apostle except the traitor Judas. Upon the Papal throne men worse than devils have had their seat, and even a woman swollen with her adulteries once reigned as head of your accursed church. Go purge the filthiness of your priesthood, the debauchery of your nunneries and the stygian3 filth of your mother city, the old prostitute Rome. Do not talk of pardoning others, while fornication is licensed in Rome itself, and her ministers are steeped to the throat in iniquity. But to return. I rest no more on Peter than Peter could rest in himself, Peter must rest on Christ as a poor guilty sinner himself, an imperfect man who denied his Master with oaths and curses. He must rest where I must rest, and we must stand together on the same great rock on which Christ builds his church, even his blood and his everlasting merits. I marvel that any should be found to have such confidence in men, that they should put their souls into their hands. If however any of you wish to trust in a priest, let me advise you if you do trust him, to do it wholly and fully. Trust him with your cash box, trust him with your gold and silver. Perhaps you object to that. You do not feel at all inclined to go that far. But, my friend, if you cannot trust the man with your gold and silver, please do not trust him with your soul. I only suggested this because I thought you might smile and at once detect your error. If you could not trust such a fox with your business; if you would as soon commit your flocks to the custody of a wolf, why will you be fool enough to lay your soul at the feet of some base priest who, likely enough, is ten thousand times more wicked than yourself.

15. Was Paul then justified in his confidence in Christ? He says was because he knew Christ. And what did he know? Paul knew, first of all, Christ’s Godhead. Jesus Christ is the Son of God, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father. If my soul is in his hand,

Where is the power can reach it there,
Or what can pluck it thence.

If the wings of Omnipotence do cover it, if the eye of Omnipotence is fixed upon it, and if the heart of eternal love does cherish it, how can it be destroyed? do not trust your soul my fellowman anywhere except with your God. But Jesus is your God, rely fully in him, and do not think that you can place too great a confidence in him who made the heavens, and bears the world upon his shoulders. Paul knew too that Christ was the Redeemer. Paul had seen in a vision Christ in the garden. He had beheld him sweat as it were great drops of blood. By faith Paul had seen Jesus hanging on the cross. He had seen his agonies on the tree of doom. He had listened to his death shriek, of “It is finished,” and he felt that the atonement which Jesus offered, was more than enough to recompense for the sin of man. Paul might have said, “I am not foolish in confiding my soul in the pierced and bloodstained hand of him whose sacrifice has satisfied the Father and opened the gates of heaven for all believers.” Further, Paul knew that Christ was risen from the dead. By faith he saw Christ at the right hand of God, pleading with his Father for all those who commit themselves into his hand. Paul knew Christ to be the all prevailing intercessor. He said to himself, “I am not wrong in believing him, for I know whom I have trusted, that when he pleads, the Father will not deny him, and when he asks, sooner might he even die than he become deaf to Jesus’ prayer.” This was again, another reason why Paul dared to trust in Christ. He knew his Godhead, he knew his redemption, he knew his resurrection, he knew his ascension, and intercession, and I may add, Paul knew the love of Christ, that love which passes kindness; higher than thought, and deeper than conception. He knew Christ’s power, that he was Omnipotent, the King of kings. He knew Christ’s faithfulness; that he was really God, and could not lie. He knew his immutability, that he was “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday today and for ever;” and having known Christ in every glorious office, in every divine attribute, and in all the beauty of his complex character, Paul said, “I can with confidence repose in him, for I know him; I have trusted, and am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have committed to him.”

16. But Paul not only knew these things by faith, but he knew much of them by experience. Our knowledge of Christ is somewhat like climbing one of our Welsh mountains. When you are at the base you see very little, the mountain itself appears to be only one half as high as it really is. Confined in a little valley you discover scarcely anything except the rippling brooks as they descend into the stream at the base of the mountain. Climb the first rising knoll, and the valley lengthens and widens beneath your feet. Go up higher, and higher still, until you stand upon the summit of one of the great peaks that jut out as spurs from the sides of the mountain you see the country for some four or five miles around, and you are delighted with the widening prospect. But go onward, and onward, and onward, and how the scene expands, until at last, when you are on the summit, and look east, west, north, and south, you see almost all England lying before you. Over there is a forest in some distant country, perhaps two hundred miles away, and over there the sea, and there a shining river and the smoking chimneys of a manufacturing town, or there the masts of the ships in some well known port. All these things please and delight you, and you say, “I could not have imagined that so much could be seen at this elevation.” Now, the Christian life is of the same order. When we first believe in Christ we see only a little of him. The higher we climb the more we discover his excellencies and his beauties. But who has ever gained the summit? Who has ever known all the fulness of the heights, and depths, and lengths, and breadths of the love of Christ which passes knowledge. Paul now grown old, sitting, grey haired, shivering in a dungeon in Rome—he could say, with greater power than we can, “I know whom I have believed!”—for each experience had been like the climbing of a hill, each trial had been like the ascending to another summit, and his death seemed like the gaining of the very top of the mountain from which he could see all of the faithfulness and the love of him to whom he had committed his soul.

17. III. And now, I close by noticing THE APOSTLE’S CONFIDENCE. The apostle said, “I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him.” See this man. He is sure he shall be saved. But why? Paul! are you sure that you can keep yourself? “No,” he says, “I have nothing to do with that:” and yet you are sure of your salvation? “Yes,” he says, “I am!” How is it, then? “Why, I am persuaded that he is able to keep me. Christ, to whom I commit myself, I know has power enough to hold me to the end.” Martin Luther was bold enough to exclaim, “Let him who died for my soul, see to its salvation.” Let us ask the apostle some more questions for a few minutes, and see if we cannot shake his confidence. Paul! You have had many trials, and you will have many more. What if you should be subject to the pangs of hunger, combined with those of thirst. If not a mouthful of bread should pass your mouth to nourish your body, or a drop of water should comfort you, will not your faith fail you then? If provisions are offered to you, on the condition of the denial of your faith, do you not imagine that you will be vanquished, and that the pangs of nature will overpower you? “No,” says Paul, “famine shall not quench my faith; for the keeping of my faith is in the hands of Christ.” But what if, combined with this, the whole world should rise against you, and scoff at you? What if hunger within should echo to the shout of scorn without? would you not then deny your faith? If, like Demas, every other Christian should turn to the silver of this world, and deny the Master, would not you go with them? “No,” says the apostle, “my soul is not in my keeping, or else it might soon apostatize; it is in the hand of Christ; though all men should leave me, yet he will keep me.” But what, oh apostle, if you should be chained to the stake, and the flames should kindle, and your flesh should begin to burn; when your beard is singed, and your cheeks are black, will you then hold him fast? “Yes,” says the apostle, “he will then hold me fast;” and I think I hear him, as he stops us in the midst of our questioning, and replies, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Paul, Paul, suppose the world should tempt you in another way? If a kingdom were offered to you—if the pomp and pleasures of this world should be laid at your feet, provided you would deny your Master, would your faith maintain its hold then? “Yes,” says the apostle, “Jesus would even then uphold my faith, for my soul is not in my keeping, but in his, and empires upon empires could not tempt him to renounce that soul of which he has become the guardian and the keeper. Temptation might soon overcome me, but it could not overcome him. The world’s blandishments might soon move me to renounce my own soul; but they could not for one moment move Jesus to give me up.” And so the apostle continues in his confidence. But Paul, when you shall come to die, will you not then fear and tremble? “No,” he says, “he will be with me there, for my soul shall not die; that will be still in the hand of him who is immortality and life.” But what will become of you when your soul is separated from your body? Can you trust him in a separate state, in the unknown world which visions cannot paint? In the time of God’s mighty thunder, when earth shall shake and heaven shall reel, can you trust him then? “Yes,” says the apostle, “until that day when all these tempests shall die away into eternal calm, and when the moving earth shall settle into a stable land in which there shall be no more sea, even then I can trust him.”

I know that safe with him remains,
  Protected by his power,
What I’ve committed to his hands
  Until the decisive hour.

18. Oh poor sinner! come and put your soul into the hands of Jesus. Do not attempt to take care of it yourself; and then your life shall be hidden in heaven, and kept there by the Almighty power of God, where no one can destroy it, and no one can rob you of it. “Whoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved.”