God's Love Never Fails and the Eternal Security of the Saints

Let us magnify the goodness of God that God's children never totally fall from grace. Though they sleep, yet their heart is awake. The prophet Isaiah, speaking of the church and children of God said ‘It will be as a tree, as an oak whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves,' (Isa. 6:13). Though you see neither fruit nor leaves, yet there is life in the root. Peter, when he denied his Master, was like an oak that was weather-beaten; yet there was life still in the root (1 Pet. 1:3; Matt. 26:31, 32). For undoubtedly Peter loved Christ from his heart. Sometimes a Christian may be in such a poor state, as the spiritual life runs all to the heart, and the outward man is left destitute; as in wars, when the enemy has conquered the field, the people run into the city, and if they be beaten out of the city, they run into the castle. The grace of God sometimes fails in the outward action, in the field, when yet it retires to the heart, in which fort it is impregnable. When the outward man sleeps, and there are weak, dull performances, and perhaps actions amiss, too, yet the heart is awake. It is said in the Scripture of Eutychus 'his life is in him still,’ though he seemed to be dead (Acts 20:10). As Christ said of Lazarus in John 11:4, so a man may say of a Christian in his worst state, 'he is not dead, but sleeps.'
This is a sound doctrine and comfortable, agreeable to Scripture and the experience of God's people. We must not lose it but make use of it against the time of temptation. There are some pulses that reveal life in the sickest man, so are there some breathings and spiritual motions of heart that will comfort in such times. These two never fail on God's part, his love, which is unchangeable, and his grace, a fruit of his love. As Christ never dies in himself, after his resurrection, so he never dies in his children.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
The Love of Christ (Bowels Opened), pp. 81-82
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