It is consistent with God’s mercy and kindness pity that none should perish but that all should come to repentance. God therefore works with great patience and at great length to restore those who fall into sin. Therefore let the repenting one banish all thoughts of any reluctance on God’s part from his mind, for these will only slow him down or perhaps prevent him coming at all. Our fears can do us more harm than the real dangers which we face. We must always reason on the basis of what God says about himself and not on the basis of invented attributes of God that our fears summon up. He may do this twice or even three times when we might have thought that we had exhausted his patience. The number of times that he restored Israel in the times of the Judges is remarkable, though sometimes he delayed in answering them to teach them that they could not take advantage of his grace in order to sin.
We must understand that this restoration is nothing less than God bringing back a man from the pit, from hell, for we must not reason that the security of the saints means that there was no real danger after all. The perseverance of the saints is marvellous just because God delivers us from snares and traps that would otherwise be spiritually fatal. To do this he uses warnings which we must heed if we are to be delivered. It is no good saying, ‘If we do not heed this warning then God will find some other way of saving us’, for that is not the way Scripture reasons. When Paul saw sailors seeking to escape from the ship (Acts 27:30), he warned the centurion that unless these men stayed in the ship, those on board could not be saved. He said this even though he had previously received an assurance from God that he had granted the lives of all who were in the vessel with Paul. How could the two statements be reconciled and why was Paul so concerned about the men leaving the ship? Because he knew that, although the outcome had been revealed to him by God, it must take place exactly as he had been told, and not in some other way. Any deviation from the plan of God would make it impossible that the will of God should unfold as he had said. God does not tell us the future in advance as if it will fall out approximately as he has said, and as if we are free to deviate from it in minor ways. Prophecy is exactly fulfilled or not at all. Paul had been told by the Lord that all lives in the ship would be preserved, but they would preserved by the plan of God and not in some other way. That plan involved all staying on board the ship until it was wrecked. This is a wonderful lesson on how God uses means to bring about his ends. When he tells us what those means are we deviate from them at our peril. We cannot be saved without repentance and faith, however clearly our names are written in the Lamb’s book of life, and we cannot come to heaven if we do not hold on to the way of holiness, though we fall and sin often. We must be restored and continue to walk that way.