JC Ryle comments on John chapter 8: "There were many, it seems, at this particular period, who professed to believe on our Lord, and expressed a desire to become His disciples. There is nothing to show that they had true faith. They appear to have acted under influence of temporary excitement, without considering what they were doing. And to them our Lord addresses this instructive warning.--"If you abide in My word, then are you My disciples indeed."
This sentence contains a mine of wisdom. To make a beginning in religious life is comparatively easy. Not a few mixed motives assist us. The love of novelty, the praise of well-meaning but indiscreet professors, the secret self-satisfaction of feeling "how good I am," the universal excitement attending a new position,--all these things combine to aid the young beginner. Aided by them he begins to run the race that leads to heaven, lays aside many bad habits, takes up many good ones, has many comfortable frames and feelings, and gets on swimmingly for a time. But when the newness of his position is past and gone, when the freshness of his feelings is rubbed off and lost, when the world and the devil begin to pull hard at him, when the weakness of his own heart begins to appear,--then it is that he finds out the real difficulties of vital Christianity. Then it is that he discovers the deep wisdom of our Lord's saying now before us. It is not beginning, but "abiding in" a religious profession, that is the test of true grace.
.....Patient continuance in well-doing is the only sure evidence of grace. Not he that runs fast and furiously at first, but he that keeps up his speed, is he that "runs so as to obtain." ....Where there is spiritual life there will be abiding and steady perseverance. It is the man who goes on as well as begins, that is "the disciple indeed." (From John Charles Ryle's 'Expository Thoughts on the Gospels')
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