THE SURETY

A surety is, according to Webster, "a person who makes himself responsible for another; one who makes himself liable for another's debts, defaults, or obligations." This is just what our Lord Jesus Christ did in the covenant of grace. God the Father gave his elect people to Christ. He entrusted them to the care of his Son. And the Lord Jesus Christ voluntarily agreed to become responsible for their eternal welfare. By his own willful choice, the Son of God agreed to become liable to God's holy law for the debts and obligations of his elect. He became the Surety of his people.

Therefore, in the fulness of time, he came into this world as a man, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law. Our blessed Surety lived in this world as the Representative of his people, fulfilling their obligations to God's law, establishing in their stead a perfect righteousness. Then he laid down his life as their Substitute at Calvary, paying in full the debt we owed to God's holy law and justice, by reason of our sin.

And now our Surety reigns on the right hand of the Majesty on high over all flesh for the purpose of giving eternal life to all who were given to him in the covenant of grace and redeemed by him at Calvary. It is his responsibility, as the Surety, to find his sheep, save his sheep, bring his sheep home, and to present every one of his sheep faultless and blameless before the presence of the Divine glory. This he will do. Our Surety cannot fail. In the last day the Lord Jesus Christ will stand before his Father and say, "Lo, I and the children whom thou hast given me, of them which thou gavest me have I lost none." The number of those presented in perfect holiness before the throne of God shall exactly tally with the number of those given to Christ as the Surety of the covenant in eternal election. He will open the Lamb's Book of Life, which was written before the world began, and pointing to their names one by one, he will say, "Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost."

This is the eternal security of God's elect. They are chosen, redeemed, regenerated, and preserved in Christ, the Surety! Not one of God's elect shall perish. Neither the law of God nor the demons of hell can sentence one of those to hell for whom Jesus Christ lived and died as the Surety!