A Zero Balance

Ephesians 4:30

And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.

One of the great promises God gives the person who receives Christ as their personal Saviour is that He gives them the Holy Spirit to live within them. Ephesians 1:13-14 reveal this truth as these verses say, In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

We also learned in the verse above that the Holy Spirit of God seals us unto the day of redemption. To understand the word sealed, let me take you back to my childhood and something that I saw my mother do every year. Every summer, we picked cucumbers so my mother could make pickles. As my mom made the pickles, she put the cucumbers and the juice into the jars, and though I don't understand the whole process, the one job she gave me to do was to listen for the pop of the top of the jar that sealed the contents inside until we would open that jar. This is exactly what the Holy Spirit does for the believer. When we got saved, the Holy Spirit became that seal Who preserves our salvation until the day that God redeems it when we get to Heaven. Let me share some thoughts about the importance of being sealed by the Holy Spirit.

First, you cannot unseal your salvation. It is ridiculous to think that I can lose my salvation for a couple reasons. First, I did not save myself; Jesus Christ is the one Who saved me. Second, I cannot take away my salvation because God sealed me with His Holy Spirit; thus, it would take God to take my salvation away for me to lose my salvation. The reason you cannot lose your salvation is because God promised that we are sealed until the day of our redemption. In other words, you have God's promise, a God who cannot lie, that we are saved until the day we get to Heaven.

Second, if we could lose our salvation, then Christ’s payment on Calvary was not enough to cover all sins. The fact that someone could say that we can lose our salvation is to say that Christ’s payment is not enough. Christ died to pay for all sins; therefore, there is no sin that I can commit that has not been paid for by Christ on Calvary. When I accept Christ as my personal Saviour, I am accepting His payment that He made on Calvary, a payment that has covered all sins.

Third, it would make God a fraud if we could lose our salvation because He paid for all sins. Imagine paying for something and walking out the door. The store clerk comes and brings you back in, saying the payment was not enough because the price had changed since you left. You would look at that store clerk and show them the receipt for your product, which showed a zero balance at the end. When you got saved, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit shows you have a zero balance. If God took your salvation away, that means that He lied to us when we accepted His offer to pay for all sins.

Let the doctrine of eternal security give you confidence and faith that your salvation is secure. Let it challenge you to live a holy life because inside of you lives the Holy Spirit of God. The next time the Devil tries to tell you that you are not saved, remind him to look at your receipt and see the Holy Spirit proves you have a zero balance.