If you do not make salvation to be wholly of the Lord, depend upon it you will have to clip salvation down, and make it a small matter. I have always desired to preach a great salvation, and I do not think that any other is worth preaching. If salvation is of man, then you do not wonder that man falls from grace. Of course he does. What man begins, man also soon ends in his own way with a failure. When God saves he saves eternally. Some one said to me the other day, “I do not quite know about that doctrine of final perseverance whether it is true or not.” So I said to him, “What kind of life does Jesus Christ give his sheep?” He answered very correctly — “He has said, ‘I give unto my sheep eternal life.’” Very well, does not that settle it? If he has given them eternal life, they have eternal life. “But,” he said, “might they not die?” I answered, “Is it not clear that those who die have not eternal life? If they had eternal life, how could they die? Does eternal life mean six months’ life?” “No.” “Does it only mean six hundred years’ life?” “No. It must mean nothing less than life which has no end.” Death is out of the question. I must live if I am one of those of whom the Great Shepherd says, “I give unto my sheep eternal life.” But what is next? If you cannot quite see the truth from that one expression, what follows? Will the sheep of Christ ever perish? Here is his answer. “They shall never perish.” Does not that secure them? What language could better describe their security? But another question is raised: — May it not mean that, if they get away from the Lord Jesus, they shall perish? Then comes the next sentence — “Neither shall any pluck them out of my hand.” Does not that answer it? Oh, but perhaps the Savior might fail! We think not so: but listen again: “My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

- C.H. Spurgeon, “A Testimony to Free and Sovereign Grace” – [mp3]