You must ‘hold fast’

Your teaching about salvation is inadequate if it doesn’t include the fact that obedience and endurance are essential to being saved.

1 Corinthians 15:1-2 – Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

Salvation isn’t only a matter of having accepted Christ one day long ago. I was saved on April 6, 1961 — no doubt about that. But as a journey is more than the first step, salvation is more than accepting Christ. Choose Christ every day. Keep choosing his way. Stand firm. Hold fast. When you reach the end of your road, you will be saved. You can be completely confident that Christ will keep his promise.

‘If ‘ may be a very small word, but it has a very big meaning. Its presence in this verse is no accident. When it says “you are saved, if you hold fast,” that is exactly what it means. And where there is an “if,” there also is implied an “if not.”

It is possible to not hold fast. You don’t want to go there.

You must “hold fast” to be saved.