Now If Then

“We are partakers of Christ if we hold fast to the end.” We are if we will (Hebrews 3:6, 14). That is a way of saying that it does not do any good in the end if we don’t carry through to the end. Our final condition in God’s eyes determines how we end up. What went before whether bad or good does not figure into how things are with God in the forward-moving “now,” the “today” of our friendship with him. Some things may be measured on an average or how we were for some period of time—as in our reputation as an athlete because of how we did during our playing years.

That’s not how friendship works either between people or with God. The kind of person we are—not were—is the ongoing issue in our “salvation” from previous alienation. And that onward “present” becomes final at the end of life.

Carry-through characterized our Lord’s life so he could end his life by saying he’d finished God’s will for his life.

The emblems we are observing now represent his consummating obedience then.

The obvious parallel with our own course is that we, too, pledge here and now to cross the finish line like he did. Well begun does not necessarily mean well done, and that’s what makes the difference.