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I. THE GROUNDS UPON WHICH THIS COMFORTABLE PERSUASION IS BUILT.

II. THE MANNER IN WHICH THIS PEBSUASION IS PRODUCED AND PROMOTED IN THE SOULS OF TRUE BELIEVERS.

1. The knowledge of Christ, which is necessary to produce and promote the comfortable persuasion expressed in the text, is partly derived from testimony.

(1) God the Father has in all ages borne witness to the power and faithfulness of His own beloved Son, our blessed Saviour. This He did of old time by visions and voices, by prophecies and typical ordinances.

(2) Christ Himself likewise thus testifies concerning His own power and readiness to save (Matthew 11:28).

(3) Nor must the testimony of the Holy Spirit be forgotten. "It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth."(4) All the saints who lived in former times, the whole company of the faithful, all the patriarchs and prophets, the apostles and martyrs, bear testimony to this interesting fact. They all died in the faith of its comforting truth.

(5) Our fellow-Christians, likewise, in the present day, may be produced as witnesses to the power and faithfulness of the Redeemer. They live in different and distant places; their cases are various, and their attainments unequal; but they all will unite in declaring that ever since they were enabled to commit their souls to Christ, they have found a peace and joy to which they were strangers before, and that not one word of all that He hath spoken hath failed to be accomplished.

2. That this knowledge is likewise in part derived from the believer's own experience (see John 4:42).Concluding reflections:

1. How much are they to be pitied, who have no interest in the Saviour, who have never been thoroughly convinced of their wretched condition as sinners, and who, consequently, have not committed the momentous concerns of their souls into the hands of Christ.

2. That we may abound more and more in this hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost, let us study to grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

3. Have we committed our immortal interests into the hands of Christ, and shall we not trust Him with all our lesser concerns?

4. Let us look forward with believing expectation to the day when it will appear with Divine evidence, how faithfully Jesus has kept all that has been committed unto Him.

(D. Black.)

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KJV: For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.

WEB: For this cause I also suffer these things. Yet I am not ashamed, for I know him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to guard that which I have committed to him against that day.