Love So Infinite: Perseverance of the Saints (Hodge)

One of the many biblical proofs for the perseverance of the saints is the nature of God’s sovereign love (see Romans 8:35ff).  Here’s how Charles Hodge put it in a sermon on Romans 8:1:

Moreover the greatness of the love of God is such as effectually to preserve the believer. As this love is sovereign in the selection of its object, so its degree is not to be measured by their intrinsic merit, no my brethren, it partook of the infinitude of God. It is an immensity which stretched far beyond the reach of any finite intellect, its height, its depth, its length, its breadth admits of no created measurement. Men and angels are fatigued with the effort to comprehend it, sink in adoration and confess it passes knowledge.

The expense at which this love was exercised magnifies its greatness beyond conception. “He loved us and gave himself for us,” himself in the person of his Son. Can love so infinite fail of its effect? If God spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all how shall he not with him freely give us all things? And brethren, in giving us Christ has he not already given us all things, is not Christ our all? Our wisdom righteousness, sanctification and redemption in him; our Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength in him, is all the fullness of the Godhead. They then to whom Christ is given have everlasting life. To them there is no condemnation for neither life nor death, nor angels nor principalities, can separate them from his love. He that is in Christ Jesus may be defiant to the universe and smile at the myriads of Satan as they gather for the contest, in Christ Jesus their discomfiture is easy, the right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly, the right hand of the Lord hath already gotten him the victory.

 Charles Hodge, “No Condemnation,” in Select Sermons of Charles Hodge (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015).

Shane Lems
Hammond, WI, 54015