2 Timothy 1:12
I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): It will be profitable to consider the point of which the Apostle was persuaded.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): The point which the Apostle expressly mentions is the power of Christ—“I am persuaded that He is able.” He had a solemn conviction of the ability of the Lord Jesus, who is able to save unto the uttermost. Let us hope that no believer here has any doubt about the power of Christ―there is no lack of sufficiency or ability in Him.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): And what might induce the apostle―and so any other believer―to conclude the ability of Christ to keep the souls of those that are committed to Him?
C. H. SPURGEON: Paul knew that the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom he trusted his soul, was now adorned with all the glory of heaven and clothed with all the omnipotence of the mighty God…Paul felt that such power was worthy of boundless confidence and, therefore, he said, “I know Whom I have believed.”
JOHN GILL: He knew Whom he had believed―His proper deity; He, having all the fulness of the Godhead, or the perfections of deity dwelling in Him; His being the Creator and upholder of all things; His having accomplished the great work of redemption and salvation, by His own arm; His mediatorial fulness of grace and power; and His being trusted by His Father with all the persons, grace, and glory of the elect, to whom He has been faithful.
CHARLES SIMEON: The offices of Christ may also be considered as justifying an assured hope of final perseverance. For our Lord did not assume the priestly, prophetic, and kingly offices merely to put us into a capacity to save ourselves; but that His work might be effectual for the salvation of all whom the Father had given to Him. And at the last day He will be able to say, as He did in the days of His flesh, “Of those whom thou hast given me I have lost none.” If He is ever living on purpose to make intercession for them, and is constituted Head over all things to the Church on purpose to save them, then He will keep them; none shall ever pluck them out of His hands.
C. H. SPURGEON: Will the Lord utterly and finally reject those who are His own, and suffer them to be the objects of His contemptuous reprobation, His everlasting cast-offs? This Paul was persuaded could not be.
THOMAS SCOTT (1747-1821): He was assured that the Lord would guide him in wisdom through life, and at death “receive” him to glory.
CHARLES SIMEON: God never yet lost one whom he had undertaken to keep: He never suffered “one of his little ones to perish,” Matthew 18:14. “None was ever plucked out of His hand,” John 10:28,29; not the “smallest grain of wheat, however agitated in the sieve, was ever permitted to fall upon the earth.” Amos 9:9. The gates of hell have never been able to prevail against His Church. Then, says the Christian, “I will trust, and not be afraid.” My Saviour, in the days of his flesh, “lost none that had been given him,” John 18:9. “Whom he loved, he loved to the end,” John 13:1; and therefore I am persuaded He “will perfect that which concerneth me,” Psalm 138:8, and “complete in me the good work He has begun,” Philippians 1:6.
OCTAVIUS WINSLOW (1808-1878): He is faithful to His promises and faithful to His saints.
CHARLES SIMEON: Paul does not merely presume upon God’s sufficiency: he is well persuaded of it―Did God create my soul, and can He not uphold it? Did He form my enemies also, and can He not restrain them? Has He numbered even the hairs of my head, and will He overlook the concerns of my soul?
G. CAMPBELL MORGAN (1863-1945): Who are the foes? Who are the accusers? Who are the separators? In answer to the first, the apostle declared, “God is for us.” In answer to the second, he declared that God justifies us. In answer to the third, he declared that none of the terrible things through which we pass to glory can separate us.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us,” Romans 8:37. This one sentence sufficiently proves, that the Apostle speaks not here of the fervency of that love which we have towards God, but of the paternal kindness of God and of Christ towards us.
CHARLES SIMEON: The stability of the covenant, which God has made with us in Christ Jesus, warrants an assurance, that all who are interested in it shall endure to the end. The immutability of God is another ground of assured faith and hope. Wherefore did God originally set His love upon us? Was it for our own goodness, either seen or foreseen? Alas! we had no existence but in God’s purpose: and, from the moment we began to exist, we have never had one good thing in us which we did not first receive from God. If then God loved us simply because He would love us, and not for any inherent loveliness in us, will He cast us off again on account of those evil qualities which He well knew to be in us, and which He Himself has undertaken to subdue? This would argue a change in His counsels: whereas we are told that, “with Him there is no variableness neither shadow of turning,” James 1:17; and that “His gifts and calling are without repentance,” Romans 11:29.
ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): Can there be anything like a yea and nay Gospel, in these solemn assurances of Jehovah? And can an assurance that He, who hath saved, and called from the first, without works, will cause His grace to be doubtful as to the end?
JOHN CALVIN: As He is faithful and just, He will not disappoint us.
C. H. SPURGEON: Paul was fully persuaded of this great truth of God. Paul also knew the character of Jesus whom he trusted. His perfect character abundantly justified the Apostle’s implicit trust.
ROBERT HAWKER: Must not every man, taught as Paul was, and through grace brought into the same views, and confirmed in the same truths, declare, that he knows Whom he hath believed?
C. H. SPURGEON: Well, this is my persuasion: “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,” Romans 8:38,39—If any enquire of us in Glory, “How did you get here?” we will answer, “He brought us here.” “Now unto Him that is able to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”
