Written by Jared C. Wilson |
Saturday, April 2, 2022

Nobody gets out of here alive. Even the Christian must die. But dying isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you. Dying after you die is the worst thing that can happen to you. But for those who are united to Christ by faith – we have unconquerable, eternal life.

Because Jesus is God we can know that he is able to save. But we are encouraged not just that Christ is able to save, but in knowing that he has actually exercised his ability to save us.
In other words, to say that God is able to save isn’t exactly the good news, because God is able to do many things that he nevertheless chooses not to do. Whenever he says “no” to one of our prayers, for instance, we should not construe him to mean that he’s saying “I can’t.” (Unless we’re asking him to sin or otherwise act against his nature.)
I’m thinking along the lines of the old Carl Henry saying: “It’s only good news if it gets there in time.”
That Christ is able to save is no benefit to those who do not find themselves taking refuge in him!
Well, Christ is an able Savior and because he’s always on time—indeed, he has authored time itself— he’s an unconquerable Savior.
Look, for instance, at John 17:9-19, where in his “high priestly prayer” Jesus turns from praying for himself to praying for his friends. Christ’s interceding on the sinner’s behalf is GOOD NEWS, and here it rises to the surface of his prayer in wonderful relief:
I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
He has given us the only kind of life he has within himself – ETERNAL LIFE.
The primary facet of eternal life on display in vv.9-18 is the eternality of it, the forever protection Christians have by Christ himself. Review from the passage, for instance:
v.10 = all yours are mine and mine are yours, meaning we belong to God
v.11 = the Father is keeping us
v.12 = he has guarded us, and not one of them has been lost
v.15 = keep them from the evil one
vv.16-17 = sanctify them (or set them apart)
All of this points us the safety we have in Jesus!
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I’m glad a Dutchman broke my brain that day. He took me into a windowed room I’d never entered. And now the rest of the world is bathed in biblical light as I strive to stay low, worship well, and love deeply.

Learning new things is like opening doors to windowed rooms. We can enter another space we haven’t seen before, but that other space also lets light into the hallway of the present. All we had thought and experienced before is hit with new color. In some cases, that color change is so drastic that we question whether we really saw things before as we should have. Everything ripens for the thrill of reinterpretation. As we learn, we not only go to new places; we revisit all the old ones and see them as we never had.
Something like this happened to me some years ago when I was listening to an old lecture from the Dutch theologian Cornelius Van Til. The audio quality was poor (circa 1970s), and I struggled to make out all the words. I had no idea what sort of door was about to open. And then the handle turned.
We certainly cannot penetrate intellectually the mystery of the Trinity, but neither can we penetrate anything else intellectually because all other things depend on the mystery of the Trinity, and therefore all other things have exactly as much mystery in them as does the Trinity.[1]
Hmm, Amen…Wait—what? We can’t penetrate the mystery of the Trinity—sure, I’ve got that. Who would dare to disagree? But everything has as much mystery in it as the Trinity does? Who would dare to agree?
Is a yellow tulip as puzzling as the divine persons? Is grass as incomprehensible as the Godhead? Does a dog’s bone have divine depth? Van Til’s words drove me deeper into thought. I had always learned to link the doctrine of God to the doctrine of creation (the famous Creator-creature distinction). But now I had to think about how the nature of God has an effect on the nature of the world all around me.
Here’s what I believe Van Til meant, and how it’s revolutionized my approach to…well, everything.
Differentiation and Divine Threads
The Trinity is the source of all things. That much seems simple enough. But then Van Til goes deeper. In his Introduction to Systematic Theology, he wrote these cryptic words: “for a consistent Christian theology the principle of individuation lies within the Godhead.”[2] I’ll assume that sentence produces the same response in many readers that it did in me: huh? Individuation is the ability to identify and distinguish individual things amidst the panoply of creation. It’s how we can identify the significance of one yellow tulip picked from our front yard, which has many other things on it (including some forgotten kids’ toys). This is related to Van Til’s discussions about “the one and the many,” or universals and particulars, which is a whole other rabbit hole to fall into.
If this all sounds horribly abstract, just hold on; I promise there’s a point. If we want to actually identify and differentiate between the things around us—to see their significance amidst the multitude of created things—we have to go all the way back to the Trinity. In Van Til’s words, “There is a deep and rich differentiation in the personal relationship between the three persons of the Trinity.”[3] Put differently, in the Trinity, there is differentiation among the divine persons in the one essence of God. We can distinguish between the Father, Son, and Spirit without losing the unity and deep relationship in the Godhead. And so, because creation is an expression and revelation of this God, all of the myriad things in our universe are significant and meaningful because of who God is: three perfectly differentiated persons (Father, Son, and Spirit) in one perfect essence, a God who works many things at many moments all according to one plan.
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God keeps us; he guards us in his Son Jesus, despite anything that comes into the life of a believer. Thus the question, “where does your help come from” is answered with one word: Jesus.

I lift my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.Psalm 121:1-4
This is a song of ascents, which were songs of praise that God’s people would sing on their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the various festivals. In this Psalm, David recounts several times that his help comes from the Lord. In fact, he uses the word keep or some variation of the word keep six times. Thus, the melodic line or theme of this psalm is that God keeps those who are his. Further, “Anthony Cresko points out that the word samar in v. 5a occurs in the middle of the psalm – an equal number of syllables come before and after the word – and therefore suggests that the Lord’s ‘guarding’ of the psalm-singer is the central message of the psalm.”[1]
But what does the word keep or guard mean? The NICOT (New International Commentary on the Old Testament) had this to say concerning the word keep or guard:
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