“If we endure, we will also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us”

(2 Timothy 2:12 NASB)

Endurance is the perseverance that characterizes a saint of Father God!

“If” means “If, as is the case, we are persevering.” In other words, they were persevering. Endure, hupomeno, literally means to remain under but not simply with resignation, but with a vibrant hope. Hupomeno was a military term used for an army’s holding a vital position at all costs. Every hardship and every suffering was to be endured in order to hold fast, even as Paul was continually enduring. The present tense calls for continuous enduring.

We keep on bearing up under the load. “But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved” (Matthew 24:13 NASB) in this life. We keep persevering in and under trials and hold to our faith in Christ, Who holds us. True faith always has the quality of permanence, and in this sense all believers continue to endure. “But Christ was faithful as a Son over His house, whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end” (Hebrews 3:6 NASB).

We endure because the Spirit enables us to endure, and thus being a sure sign that one has the Spirit. “However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him” (Romans 8:9 NASB). Therefore, as we continue to endure in our faith, it points to this continuing experience of bravely bearing up under the hardships and afflictions heaped upon us as a believer in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus declared to His disciples in the context of the difficult events that would accompany the end of the age (believers today still live in the same age as His disciples, so the truth applies especially to us as we near the end of this age which precedes seven years of Daniel’s Seventieth Week, which in turn precedes the next age, the Messianic age when all the promises to Israel in the Old Testament are literally fulfilled) that “the one who endures to the end, he shall be saved” (Matthew 24:13).

Don’t let this verse confuse you. Jesus is not saying we will “earn” our salvation by our endurance. Endurance does not save anyone. Only saving faith in our Lord Jesus Christ saves. Jesus’ point is that the one who is genuine will endure to the end, not by gritting their teeth but because the Spirit of Christ indwells them and empowers them and will never lose them.

If someone turns their back on Christ after first professing Him and persists (not a momentary event like Peter’s three denials) in that apostasy, they demonstrate by their failure to endure to the end that they are not genuinely saved. The same idea of the so-called perseverance of the saints is seen in numerous other New Testament passages. “But Christ was faithful as a Son over His house, whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end” (Hebrews 3:6 NASB).

Let us not forget our moments when we allow discouragement to direct the paths we choose. “Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. For yet in a very little while, He who is coming will come, and will not delay. But My righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul” (Hebrews 10:35-39 NASB).

The reward of enduring now is not only that we prove our salvation genuine, but that we are also rewarded with reigning as discussed in the coming Messianic Age and then the New Heaven and New Earth. “If we endure, we will also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us” (2 Timothy 2:12 NASB).

Reign, sumbasileuo. Please, let me be careful here. Overcomers are not some select group of saints, for John teaches us that “whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:4-5 NASB).

The apostle John describes the future events in heaven in which the Lamb Who was slain received the sealed scroll (probably the title deed to the earth) from the Father, prompting those who witnessed this event to sing a new song which includes a promise describing where saints will reign. “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9 NASB). Our Kinsman Redeemer paid the purchase price in full when He shed His precious blood like a lamb.

“If we endure, we will also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us” (2 Timothy 2:12 NASB). It is interesting that the NIV translators choose “disown” instead of “deny”: “If we disown him, he will also disown us.” Denial now begets denial then!

Deny, arneomai, literally means “to say no,” to say one does not know about or is in any way related to some person or something. Arneomai means to refuse to agree or consent to something, to disclaim connection with or responsibility for, to say one does not know about or is in any way related to a person or event. To deny carries the idea of conscious, purposeful action of one’s will.

One can discern two types of denial as exemplified in the following passages. The first type would be a settled denial. Paul described some evil men in Crete who manifest denial by their deeds, professing to know God but by their deeds denying Him. This is not a momentary lapse but a settled pattern of life that demonstrates the person was never truly saved to begin with.

The choice is before us: will we endure, holding fast to our faith in Christ, empowered by His Spirit dwelling within us? Or will we shrink back, denying Him through settled unbelief and apostasy? The promise is clear. Those who endure, not by their own strength but by the power of the indwelling Spirit, will not only prove their salvation genuine but will reign with Christ in the age to come. The question is not whether we will face hardship and affliction. The question is whether we will remain under that hardship with vibrant hope, holding our vital position at all costs, like soldiers who refuse to surrender the ground entrusted to them. This is the perseverance that characterizes the saints of God.