If you are going to complete anything that you have started, what should be a quite obvious step? Never going backwards from where you had just come from. Dump a 500 piece puzzle on a table sometime and you will find this out to be true. You might start out by finding some of the edge pieces and connect them together until you have a nice little frame made. But unless you keep adding those other loose pieces onto what you have already completed, how could you ever hope to finish the puzzle? What if you got about maybe three fourths of the puzzle put together but then instead of attaching the last quarter of the pieces you instead began taking pieces away? That would be just ridiculous, wouldn’t it? You must continue going on forward, completing what you have started.
In the same way, when someone becomes a Christian it is a process of construction, so to speak. You begin “building” your new life towards the service of Christ, each day working towards completion. There can be no turning around and going back to the old sinner that we used to be, living in the sins of the world. To do so will only bring about a very certain destruction in the future. The reason why is because we know what the teachings of the Bible say, and how we should live our lives, but to go back into the sin of the world is simply moving backwards towards the place you came from.
2 Peter 2:19-22 “While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.
For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.
But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.”
The world is a sinful place, completely void of the love of God; why would someone go back into it after tasting the mercies of the Lord? Just like a pig that was washed clean from all of its filth, each sinner that receives the free gifts of grace and forgiveness has been cleansed from their sins. Why would anyone want to go back and live in sin?
Salvation is not a one-time lock up, where once you become saved through Christ you can go back to your previous way of life of sin. Like a cup full of water it will only stay full if you keep it upright, but if you turn it upside-down it will disappear, we need to continue to walk in the teachings of Christ.
Ephesians 4:1 “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,”
John 8:31 “Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;”
Day by day a Christian needs to walk in the footsteps of Christ, always forwards, never going back. It is a narrow path, to be certain, with the threat of temptation on the sides, but we need to keep our eyes on the prize and continue to remain steadfast in the faith. If we happen to stumble in a weak moment we need to get right back up and overcome it; that is the reason that Jesus continues to offer us grace, so that we can overcome. Complete what has been started!
In Christ,
Andrew
Teufer Lake King James Bible Church 