Those in Christ have God dwelling with them and are not only sure of supplies for the present, but to all eternity. They not only have such mercies as other people have, temporal blessings and favors; but they have everlasting good bestowed upon them; for God will forever be with his people as their God. Psalms 48:14, “For this God is our God forever and ever.” When all those earthly things fail, yea, when their bodies fail, God won’t fail. Psalms 73:26, “My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.” God will save and defend them from evil forever. Isaiah 45:17, “But Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end.” Christ has promised that his sheep shall never perish. John 10:28, “And I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish,” and none is able to “pluck them out of my hand.” And God will not only defend them from evil forever, but they shall be supplied with everlasting good. He will “feed them, and lift them up forever” [Psalms 28:9]. They have an everlasting inheritance that they shall be eternally rich in the possession of. 1 Peter 1:3–4, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, that fadeth not away.”

—Jonathan Edwards
Adapted from The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Yale University Press, 2001), 462.

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