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##### Make Secure Your Portion of Heavenly Treasures

{Since the Heavenly Trade Is the Best Trade…

Exhortation and Counsel to Professors of Christianity

Make Secure Your Portion of Heavenly Treasures}

Another part of your heavenly trade is to secure your portion in heavenly things. This is part of people’s business in the world: to secure their investment in the things they have. They mark their goods, brand their cattle, and write their names on the things they have so that their ownership of them might be known. And, this is the great concern of wisdom’s merchants also: to make good their claim to the things of Heaven and glory, and prove572 their ownership of them. These are worth securing because they are things of infinite worth and eternal duration; other things are not. Oh, what folly is it to strive for shadows and lose the substance. What folly to get and secure houses, lands, and hereditary honors for your children—and lose your souls! This is as one who complained when he was near death that he must burn in Hell forever; that he got an estate for his son, but neglected his own soul.573 “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26 NKJV). [This is] to make everything else sure and leave God, grace, and glory to an uncertainty. As Cesare Borgia bewailed when too late, saying when he was near death, “I have endeavored to secure myself against every danger but death, and having never thought of death, must now die.” Eternal things will be seen as the greatest when people near death. Then a portion in God, pardon, and salvation will be valued beyond ten thousand worlds. And is it not worth making sure of this now?

And what can make up for the loss of that soul [person] who miscarries in everything and has nothing left but the tormenting sense of what he has lost and the intolerable burden of what he has gotten as the fruit of his folly, folly against which he was often cautioned? It is a dreadful thing to have one’s hope of salvation disappointed. What if you should miss glory at last, and your end should be to be cut off and have your portion with the hypocrites in that lake that burns with fire and brimstone? There, the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched (Mark 9:48).574 How could you bear it if you think you will enter into the joy of the Lord, but in a moment are thrust into the place of torment? And what if you dream of being carried up into Abraham’s bosom where are eternal pleasures, but fall into the [wrathful] hands of God, who is a consuming fire? This is fearful.

And yet, this may be your case. Think how it is possible, indeed how easy it is, for people to be deceived in lesser matters. Often those who have had the highest confidence in some future blessing have been mistaken at last, and all their hopes have expired like a falling meteor and come to nothing. “For what is the hope of the godless when God cuts him off, when God takes away his life?” (Job 27:8 ESV). People may think they are something, yet be nothing (Galatians 6:3).575 One may go with confidence to the Bridegroom’s doors and demand an entrance as the foolish virgins did, but be rejected. “Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’ But he answered and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you’” (Matthew 25:11–12 NKJV). Deceived people may seem to have some reason for their claim, and produce evidence of their hope, yet be turned away as workers of iniquity. “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’” (Matthew 7:22–23 NKJV). The heart is deep and deceitful, who can know it (Jeremiah 17:9)?576 None but He Who searches the deep things of God can reach this bottom and bring to light the hidden things in it. The work of grace is a secret full of mysteries that none can open and fully know it, except the eternal Spirit Who formed it in the womb of a believer’s heart. Seeming grace has such a close resemblance to saving grace that it puzzles the most curious and searching eye unless it is enlightened with a beam from Heaven so as discern the difference. In addition, there is the combination of:

- The slender measure of the Spirit that most people have attained to in this life.

- The subtle insinuations, false representations, and treacherous prevarications of that bloody and irreconcilable enemy of all mankind [the devil].

These conspire to put a cheat on the professing Christian and render his salvation exceedingly doubtful.

And suppose your state should be safe. How perplexing and full of anxiety is it to have the least suspicion of [spiritual] unsoundness and to have the life of your precious soul hang in suspense and to be unresolved concerning that great case of whether you must live or die to all eternity! Oh! How tormenting and heart-sinking this is! An awakened soul who cannot rest in sin, nor yet hope in grace or any promise of Scripture so as to definitively determine his real portion in God and things eternal is like a troubled sea that cannot rest. Musical instruments cannot allay its disquiet, and no creature comforts can charm its heart into a peaceful composure. Even people who are really saved, if they only suspect that their eternal welfare is not good and think they read this handwriting on the wall: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin: you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting (Daniel 5:25-27)577—nothing in all the world can be a bandage broad enough to cover such a wound and no cordial [medicine] can cheer those hearts. Until grace decides the controversy and assures those souls of an unquestionable title to the Heir of All Things (Hebrews 1:1–2),578 and to the inheritance with the saints in light, they will remain miserable. And do you not thus have reason to be restless until your ownership of these glorious treasures is authenticated? This is difficult, but possible and feasible to all who follow wisdom’s counsel to obtain it. The eternal truth [Scripture] has opened a way to decide this question: whether I have eternal life or not. Scripture has also laid down certain marks of a soul entitled to things above. “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13 NASB). “He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life” (1 John 5:12 NASB). “We know that no one who is born of God sins;579 but He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:18–20 NASB). “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death” (1 John 3:14 ESV).

The Lord has imposed upon all who profess hopes of glory these duties: to make their calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10),580 to examine themselves whether they are in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5),581 and to test their own work that they may have rejoicing in themselves (Galatians 6:4).582 The Lord would not have imposed these duties if they were impossible. He has also promised the Spirit to help them in this work, lead them into all truth, and bear witness that they are the Lord’s (John 16:13; Romans 8:16).583 And, for this very reason, God exhorts them to holiness that they might not impede the sealing work of the Spirit (Ephesians 4:30).584 And, when one arrives at this certainty, God has ensured great consolation and advantage (1 Peter 1:8–11).585 All of these Scriptures would mean nothing and indicate unrighteousness in the Spirit of truth if evidence of the right to these heavenly things were not obtainable.

572God does not need this proof, but we and others who care about us do.

573If someone actually said this, that someone did not understand the gracious and precious Gospel of Jesus Christ; no matter how evil one’s past, there is always forgiveness in Christ upon repentance and faith in Christ, and this forgiveness covers all one’s sins, past, present, and future. Only at death is the door to Heaven firmly shut and the trapdoor to Hell opened wide for the unrepentant.

574“Where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48 ESV). Worm here refers to some kind of creature in the body that will cause great pain. The precise identity of this creature (or creatures) is not known and may not even be classified by modern zoologists as a worm or nematode. It may possibly even be a creature unique to Hell. Matthew Henry suggests that the worm is the reproaches of conscience. Let the reader not be deceived by the fact that most (but not all) modern cases of parasitic worms cause little discomfort or are asymptomatic; Hell’s worms will be ferocious tormentors.

575“For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (Galatians 6:3 NASB).

576“The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 NKJV).

577“And this is the writing that was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin. This is the interpretation of the matter: Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting” (Daniel 5:25–27 ESV).

578“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds” (Hebrews 1:1–2 NKJV).

579The context of Scripture as a whole (for example, 1 John 2:1) implies that this statement does not demand moral perfection (a trait never true of any human but the God-man Jesus Christ) but refers to the unrepentant practice of any sin. Yet, there is a warning here that must be taken seriously: a person who unrepentantly cherishes any known sin, no matter how supposedly “small,” can have no assurance of salvation.

580“Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble” (2 Peter 1:10 NASB).

581“Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” (2 Corinthians 13:5 ESV).

582“But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another” (Galatians 6:4 NKJV).

583“But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come” (John 16:13 NASB). “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16 NKJV).

584“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30 ESV).

585“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories” (1 Peter 1:8–11 ESV).

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