Am I Truly Saved? Part 1

Assurance of Salvation and the Burden of Doubt

Welcome everyone once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I am your host, John Harris. We have a special guest with us today. We have Pastor Joel Webben from Right Response Ministries. He's also the pastor at Covenant Bible Church, which is in Georgetown, Texas.

That's outside of Austin. If anyone is listening and is in that Austin area, you may want to go check out Covenant Bible Church. But the main reason that I'm having Pastor Webben on is because he wrote this book and the title of the book is, Am I Truly Saved?

And he'll tell us where we can get a copy of this and he'll explain the contents of it. But the reason I want to talk about the contents of this book is because many Christians struggle with assurance of salvation.

I was one of them years ago, especially throughout my early teenage, mid teenage years, I wondered whether I was saved. I remember every day, sometimes I pray again to receive Christ just to make sure that I was sincere enough that God would accept me.

And I know that I'm not the only one who struggle with that. Many Christians struggle with that. And I think one of the things that ties this into some of the content that I've been producing lately, and I know Pastor Joel talks about this content as well, is the fact that the social justice movement tends to blur the distinction between law and grace and they infuse the law with their social justice initiatives.

And so you're not a good Christian unless you practice equity, diversity, inclusion and whatever policies are associated with that. But it's even more than that. It's not just that you're not a good Christian sometimes.

It's that. Are you even a Christian at all? If you're not even in some places marching with BLM, are you even a Christian? If you're not loving your neighbor by getting the jab, are you even a Christian?

So I know that there are those who are oppressed, true Christians who are oppressed by this thinking in churches where they're told that they may not even be saved because they're not on a political bandwagon enough.

And it's like the priests in Hebrews just trying to offer sacrifices over and over with no assurance. And that's not the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He gave us full assurance. He said it is finished on the cross.

And but this is a very legitimate struggle that I think many Christians do have. And so I thought that this was a really good resource on that. I've seen other resources. This is my favorite one. And Pastor Joel, thank you so much for joining me to talk about it.

Absolutely. I'm always honored to get to partner with you, John. Thanks.

Yeah, very kind of you. I just I wanted to find out first, before we even get into the book, did this come out somewhat? Did it come out of a struggle maybe that you had? Did you struggle with doubting your salvation?

1 John as a Book of Assurance

Absolutely. So the whole book, as you know, maybe they were able to read. I've got a copy also. But, you know, it's called Am I Truly Saved? A Study Through 1 John. So the whole book focuses on that particular book of the Bible, John's first epistle.

And that book of the Bible is significant for me. All the scripture is, but especially that book, because that was my least favorite book of the Bible. And if I were being maybe perhaps a little bit more honest, I think the language I maybe want to say this out loud, but in my heart, there was a time where I would have said in my heart that I hated 1 John.

I hated that book of the Bible. And obviously that's a dangerous place to be, to hate any portion of God's word that was sin. On my part, sin, fear, ignorance and arrogance on my part. But the reason why I really detested 1 John is because every time I read it, I would walk away from the word of God feeling assured that I was going to hell.

I would have like an anti-assurance, assurance in the wrong direction. Because I would read 1 John and it's just the statements are so explicit and so dogmatic and so they were just heavy ultimatums that just if a man is like this, he's he's not in Christ.

He is not a Christian. You know, if you hate your brother, you know, you know, if you say that you love God, but hate your brother, then you are a liar. The truth of God is not in you. And just so many texts like that throughout 1 John that are just so black and white.

And I would walk away thinking, well, you know, I don't think I'm a hateful person per se, but I don't always love all my Christian brothers. I have had resentment in my heart towards my fellow brother in Christ.

And so anyway, so it was just I was always discouraged when reading that particular book. But the Lord began to change my heart. And eventually I decided to preach through 1 John. And so the book is basically, you know, taking my my sermon manuscripts and then doing lots and lots.

I didn't just put my sermon manuscripts in there, but doing lots of work and basically transitioning them from a sermon manuscript format to a more concise devotional style. So it's like each of these, I call them lessons.

I break it up into lessons and it's basically just going text by text from the beginning to the end of 1 John. Each lesson has starts with scripture, a passage in 1 John, and I put it in this devotional format with even devotional questions.

You could use it in a small group or you could use it as an individual or husband and wife. And basically one of the big takeaways that changed my perspective of 1 John is I call it and hopefully your listeners will be encouraged by this, but I call it shotgun assurance.

Shotgun assurance. And what I mean by that is 1 John has multiple different tests to see whether or not you are in the faith. As Paul actually says elsewhere, examine yourself to see if you're in the faith.

There is certain fruit that we can look to. And it's again, we have to be careful in distinguishing law and gospel, you know, and so it's not if you do these things, you'll merit salvation. No, that's a heresy.

That's legalism. It's if you are doing these things, if these things are manifest in your life, then this is a sign or proof or evidence that you have, in fact, believed the gospel. Right. So the Protestant equation rather than Roman Catholicism and the Council of Trent would say faith plus works equals salvation, faith plus works equals salvation.

Whereas we would say faith equals salvation plus works, faith equals salvation plus works. And so John gets into works. It's not all gospel, John, you know, no entire book. Galatians might be one of the closest, but the Bible is filled with gospel and law with indicatives and imperatives.

And there's this law gospel hermeneutic that we find throughout scripture. And John has a lot of law, but he's using these laws not as a road to salvation, but saying this is the road from salvation. If you are saved, you're going the third use of the law.

It's a lamp unto my feet. It's a guy not showing me how to be saved, but showing me how to respond in the spirit of gratitude for the free salvation I've already received by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Do you have this fruit evident in your life? And John lists multiple texts. And this is my point with shotgun assurance, multiple tests, I should say, multiple tests. And so I would read 1 John and I would look and I'd be like, OK, well, I think I'm doing my God's grace.

I'm doing fairly well in this one. And then I'd read the very next verse and be like, dang it, you know, then I'm in trouble. You know, I was encouraged for, you know, for one verse and then I got to the very next verse and I'm discouraged again.

But I don't think that's John's point. I don't believe after reading 1 John again and again and again and doing some of the scholarship and working through various commentaries and devoting it all in prayer to the Lord, I believe John's purpose of doing so many tests is is not to say you've got to pass, you know, you've got to pass 47 tests.

And if you fail one of them, then you don't belong to Christ. No, I think it's actually the opposite. I think that John's goal is to say, if you're not doing well in this area, hold on and read the next verse.

Maybe there's some fruit in this other area or some fruit in this other area or this. Here's another opportunity to see if you have fruit, the fruit of being converted, the fruit of salvation. Here's another opportunity to see if you have the fruit of conversion, the fruit of salvation.

I think what John is is doing, what we have to remember is, is that hell, hell is filled and will be filled. Hell is is filled with people, not with some faith, but not enough or little faith, but not enough.

Hell is filled with those who have no faith, no faith. And so what we're looking for when we're doing the work of assurance is what we're looking for is, do I have any fruit in my life? And all that being said, I don't think that assurance is a pass fail system.

I don't think it's an all or nothing, 100 percent, zero percent. I think that the Christian is meant to grow in assurance as they grow in sanctification because because sanctification, again, it is dynamically distinct from justification.

And we have to keep the distinction. But sanctification is often the fruit of justification. Sanctification is what we look at to see the fruit of the spirit exemplified in our lives to be able to say that Christ actually died for me, because that's the issue at the end of the day.

Most Christians that I talk to are wrestling with assurance, as I have. Their problem is not that they don't believe in the historical figure of Jesus. And it's not that they don't believe that he is truly God and truly man, that he actually is the second member of the Trinity or the incarnation, his substitutionary death, his bodily resurrection, his glorious ascension to the right hand of the majesty on high and his promise to return to judge both the quick and the dead.

They believe that. So they believe the gospel because the gospel is in our life. The gospel is not your testimony. The gospel is the testimony of Jesus. It's his life, his death and his resurrection and his glorious ascension to the right hand of the father.

So the gospel is all about Jesus. It's not about the work of Jesus in me. It's the work of Jesus in his life, his death and his resurrection. Most people believe the gospel in that sense. But but all that gets you at the end of the day is it gets you to believing that Jesus died for someone somewhere out there.

But what we have to come assurance is is reaching the point where we can say, as the apostle Paul said in Galatians three, he says, I'm convinced that that the son of God loved me and died for me. It's not just that Jesus loved someone and died for someone.

But how how can I take all the promises of scripture and and who Jesus is and what he did, his person and his work and personalize it, assure myself, can be convinced that that Jesus work was for me, that I am included in that target of audience of who Jesus lived and died and rose again for.

How do I know that Jesus work is for me? And so in the book, I say multiple times one of the big statements is Jesus work. Although we must keep the distinction, Jesus work through us or in us is what assures us that Jesus work was for us.

So the work of Christ through us in sanctification and in us in sanctification is one of the clearest signs that Jesus work for us in justification actually was for us. How I know that it wasn't just for someone, but it was for me.

Confession, Cleansing, and the Nature of Saving Fruit

Yeah, well, that's good. I'm reminded at the beginning when you get to first John eight and nine, where I mean, right at the outset of the book, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And and so that to me means that the people reading this, he's not expecting that they're going to be perfect people never sinning, but he he is expecting, though, that they are going to bear some fruit.

And so this is where I think the discussion comes in. What kind of fruit is is actually good fruit? What's permissible fruit? What's like, OK, so are there some sins that God really hates? And if I do that one, man, I flunked it.

I missed it. I did the unpardonable sin. Right, right. Hebrews 10 comes into this where, you know, I I had it and then I just I chose to sin and that willful choice that that was it. And so could you talk to us about that a little bit?

What when people struggle with? Well, I've crossed the line somewhere. What is that?

The Unforgivable Sin and the Security of the Believer

Absolutely. Yeah. So there's only one sin that we see in Scripture that is unforgivable, and that's the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. And I personally believe and I believe strongly that that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is a sin that only an unregenerate person can commit.

So I believe in the security of the believer. I believe in the perseverance of the saints that, you know, once saved, always saved, which I think better stated would be if saved, always saved. If a person is truly saved, they will always be saved.

They will persevere. And the perseverance of the saints, the reason we can be so confident of that is because of the preservation of the Lord. So so it's God preserving his people, which is precisely why his people persevere.

So we will persevere because he preserves. So I don't believe you can lose your salvation. So I don't believe that a Christian can blaspheme the Holy Spirit or commit any sin that would cause him to forfeit this salvation.

They didn't earn it. They can't lose it. There's nothing they did to gain salvation. There's nothing they can do to lose salvation. And likewise, as a Calvinist, not only is there not something that they could do to earn salvation, but there's also not even a choice that a person can make.

Right. So I think of elsewhere where John says it's not the it's not by the will of man. Right. Or the blood, you know, so it's not it's not the work of man, but it's also not the will of man. God is the one who saves us sovereignly.

He causes us to be born again. A person, John chapter three, a person cannot even see much less enter the kingdom of heaven, but he can't even see it unless he first be born again. Right. That's kind of the heart of the Reformation is that regeneration precedes faith.

You must first be born again, a work of the Holy Spirit, a sovereign work of God by the power of the Holy Spirit caused to become a new creature in Christ Jesus. The heart of stone, Ezekiel 36, is removed and replaced with a heart of flesh that's malleable, softened, receptive to the things of God, that the scales of your eyes, they fall off.

You're given spiritual eyes to see spiritual ears to hear and immediately endowed with the gifts, not works to be conjured up by man, but the gifts of God, of faith and repentance, two sides, two sides of one coin.

Right. To repent is to turn from our sin and to have faith is to turn to Christ. So we're turning from sin and turning to Jesus. We're not just trading one idol for another. We're turning from sin, turning to Christ.

That's the gift of faith and repentance, like two pedals on a bicycle working in tandem, faith and repentance, which are gifts given to to those who have first been born again. Right. That's the logical order.

Chronologically, I believe that in conversion, this all happens in a moment. The person is given a new heart, made to become a new creature in Christ Jesus and immediately given the gifts of faith and repentance to make a credible profession of faith that Jesus is the Christ and and to renounce their life of sin, to repent and to vow to following Christ in obedience, not to earn salvation, but as a response of gratitude for the free gift of salvation they've already received by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

So all that being said, I don't believe that there's a particular sin. And you're right, John, there are guys who they oftentimes you hear sexual immorality or adultery or or perverse forms of sexual immorality or just longevity in a particular sin.

There's no particular sin that can separate us from the love of God. There's no sin that could cause the free gift of salvation to all of a sudden be canceled. God is not a man that he should change his mind, is what the scripture says.

So when God makes a choice to save someone, and we find this in First John, super encouraging, but it talks about how, you know, certainly the devil can condemn us. But First John actually talks about how our own hearts at times can condemn us.

And and and then John immediately counters that that bad news with the promise, the encouraging good news that God is greater than our hearts. And he doesn't just say that. He goes on to say, when your hearts condemn you, it's going to happen for all of us at various times and to various degrees.

When your heart condemns you, it says, but God is greater than your hearts and he knows everything. So John points to the omniscience, that particular attribute of God, that he knows everything, that he knows the end from the beginning.

And God knows everything because we believe that God has ordained everything. And so God knows everything. And so what John is saying is when your heart condemns you, what your heart is doing ultimately.

And in terms of that word, when, right, so when, what is the moment, what is the time? Well, often the time in which our hearts condemn us is when we as finite beings, as finite creatures who are not omniscient, when we come into new information about our own depravity.

Right. So when you and I sin, it's news to us. Like we know the general reality that we are sinners. We know the general reality of our depravity apart from the grace of God. But there are times in our lives where we commit sin that we never thought we would, you know, when we are actually surprised by our own sin, where we fail in a particular area or to a particular degree that really catches us off guard.

And so basically what's happening is that we are being presented by our own sin, by our own failure, by our own actions. We are being presented with new information. This is news to us. It's like, well, I knew I was bad, but I did not know I was that bad.

And it's in those moments that our hearts rise up and begin to condemn us. Right. Because all of a sudden we're reworking the formula, as it were, in our minds of the love of God, the grace of God for sinners.

And we're reworking this this formula in our mind of whether or not God really loves us because because now there's some new variables to plug into the formula. Right. So I had already worked through, you know, the idea that God chose me, that God loves me, that he'll never leave me or forsake me.

But I worked through all that knowing who I currently was. But now it turns out I'm worse than I previously thought. And so now I'm working back through these things. And so, John, he counters that immediately, the condemnation of our own hearts by saying God is greater than your heart.

So first, I think what he's saying is don't listen to your heart. Don't follow your heart. Your heart is speaking. Your heart is speaking. But what the Puritans always said, this is just Reformed Theology 101, is don't listen to the sermons of your heart.

You preach sermons to your heart. So don't listen to your heart. Don't let your heart preach to you. You, Christian, preach to your heart. So you don't need to be listening from your heart. You need to be speaking to your heart, reminding your heart of the truths of the gospel.

And so when your heart rises up and begins to condemn you, God is greater than your heart. So first, the word of your heart is not the final word. It's God's words. God is greater than your heart. Just like the blood of Jesus speaks a better word than the blood of Abel, right?

The blood of Abel cried out from the ground to God, crying out and asking God for vengeance, for justice. But the blood of Jesus cries out for mercy and forgiveness. Even Jesus himself says, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

And so the blood of Jesus speaks a better word. Well, likewise, God speaks a better word. He is greater. So his word is more promising. His word is more hopeful. It's a better word, but it's also a bigger word, a stronger word, a more authoritative word than the word of our teeny little hearts.

Our hearts speak very discouraging words at times. And the good news is that our hearts don't carry weight. Our hearts don't have any authority to speak the final word. So God is greater than your heart.

But then the very next thing, his omniscience, and he knows everything. And I think what John is getting at there is he's saying, this is news to you. You just committed a sin that you never thought you would.

You just fell in a particular area or to a particular degree that you never thought you would. But this is not news to God. He knows everything. He knows the end from the beginning. He knows the number of hairs on your head.

He knows every decision that you would ever make. And with that knowledge, knowing everything, God, before the foundations of the world were laid, he chose you in love, in love. He predestined you, right, for knowledge to be pre-loved.

It's not that foreknowledge is not just omniscience, but that gets to a particular kind of omniscience of God. It is an intimate knowing. God foreknew you before the foundations of the world. And in this pre-love, this intimate foreknowledge, he predestined you.

He chose you. And he did it not because he looked down the corridors of time and knew that you would make some good decision or you would choose to follow him. No, it's quite the opposite. God chose you in love, looking down the corridors of time, despite all the bad choices that you would make, knowing how sinful you would be.

So when our hearts rise up to condemn us because we've committed some kind of sin that we've deemed to be unforgivable, but the Bible has not said is unforgivable, when that happens, it's news to us because we're finite creatures.

We're not omniscient. It's something that we did not previously know. So in that moment, our heart seizes that opportunity with this new information, a new depth of our depravity, and uses that to preach to us rather than us preaching to our heart.

And it preaches a sermon of condemnation rather than a sermon of hope and promise in the gospel. And we don't need in that moment, John says, don't listen to the preaching of your heart, which is a preaching of condemnation, but rather listen to the preaching of God, the gospel of God, because one, his sermon is more authoritative than your heart because he is God.

He's greater than your heart and he knows everything. This isn't news for him. So whatever word he spoke over you before included knowledge of this. Therefore, God is not a man that he should change his mind.

He doesn't change his mind because God is not in process. God is not coming into new information. Right. This open theism and process theology is from the pit of hell. It is a heresy. It is well outside the banner of orthodoxy.

And I think that's what John is combating.

Predestination, Reprobation, and False Assurance

What would you say to someone and this is, I think, a common thing in the sort of neo-reform circle. So that's who I'm thinking of someone from those those arenas. What would you say to someone who comes to you and says, Pastor Joel, that's all good news.

I'm so glad you shared that. But the thing is, for me, I look at these encouraging passages because that's John 10, Romans 8, Ephesians 2. These are all supposed to be encouraging passages. But I look at these and they're discouraging to me because it just makes me think, well, maybe there's no hope for me.

God didn't choose me. And that's just it. God made his choice. It wasn't me. And clearly it's not me because I don't know. I looked at pornography last night or I I accidentally used foul language and shocked myself by using that.

Or maybe it's more serious. Maybe it's something like I I actually I mean, it could be someone in jail. I murdered someone, you know. I mean, I take however serious you want that sin to be. But I did something that, like you just said, it surprised me.

But I'm going to take that that curse, not the promise. I'm taking that curse for myself that God has has predestined me the other direction. He's it's really I'm part of reprobation now. I am. There's nothing I can do.

And I've heard this kind of thing. And I've heard Christians or people who profess to be Christians at one point use this kind of discouraging language. And my usual response is like, I never the doctrine of predestination is never supposed to be a doctrine that we take as a curse to us.

It's always a blessing. It's always something that's brought up to encourage the hearts of Christians like you're using it right now. But what would you say to someone who believes in that and has it flipped?

The Aim of 1 John: Knowing That You Have Eternal Life

Yep. Great question. Yeah. And I've wrestled with that. I, you know, I wish that my battle for assurance of salvation ended the moment that I embraced the doctrines of grace. But that wasn't true. And I always heard, you know, reformed guys, you know, that's one of the big selling points, for lack of a better phrase, you know, for reform theology, as they would say, you know, don't you want to give up that, you know, that that puny Arminian doctrine, you know, that you're constantly wondering, am I going to lose my salvation?

But the reality is that the battle for assurance within reformed theology, it just it, yeah, it just it just gets gets flipped. And so now, you know, basically you're struggling with assurance on the front end instead of the back end.

So for the Arminian, it's this struggle of will I lose my salvation? But for the Calvinist, the struggle is just as real. But in another sense, the question is, have I ever had my salvation? What if what if I was fooling myself?

What if I had false assurance, which is certainly a real category? So one of the things that I would say is this, this is the final page of my book. It's the closing remarks. I wrote this throughout the book.

The first John, there has been a massive emphasis on what we as Christians can know for certain. John writes by this. We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. That's first John two, three.

John writes to fathers because they know him who has been from the beginning. That's first John two, 13. He writes to children because they know the father. That's first John two, 14. Then he says, we know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren.

That's first John three, 14. At the conclusion of his letter, John belabors this theme of certainty one final time by saying, these things I have written to you who believe in the name of the son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

That's first John five, 13. So John does not merely want his readers to have eternal life. He wants them to know that they have eternal life. Therefore, the assurance of salvation is the ultimate aim of John's epistle.

The apostle does not carefully outline critical components of authentic Christianity so that all those who read his letter walk away feeling discouraged and doubting their salvation. We must remember who John is writing to.

His dear little children in the faith. So each test of authentic Christianity presented in John's letter is not meant to prove that his readers are unregenerate, that is not born again, but that his readers truly have been born again.

No one other than Jesus Christ has ever passed every single one of these tests with flying colors. So if you find that you are failing in one test, humbly acknowledge that failure as sin and strive by God's grace to repent, then move on and look at the next test to see how you are doing in that area.

The question to ask yourself is this. Are there any vital signs in my life at all? If so, you should possess at least some measure of assurance of salvation. Allow this assurance to comfort your doubting heart and propel you into more excellent joy filled obedience, which inevitably will produce an even stronger assurance in the future.

Remember, it is not the will of God that any of his precious children would constantly wrestle with doubts about his fatherly love for them. God wants us to be confident in his love. God wants us to rest in his love.

And by the power of the Holy Spirit, God wants us to begin to live out of his love with courage and strength. So all that being said, the point is, again, it's that shotgun assurance mentality. Think of that phrase that I used vital signs.

Think of that as an illustration. Right. What we're determining if someone is saved, what we're saying is that they're spiritually alive, that they have been born again, that there is some some degree, any degree at all of spiritual vitality.

Right. So if we're if we're looking at, you know, I mean, take physical birth. Right. That's that's the analogy that's used again and again throughout the scripture, likened to the new birth to spiritual birth.

Well, when a child is born, oftentimes it's very obvious that that child is alive. Right. They're crying, they're screaming, they're wiggling their arms and their legs and, you know, all those kinds of things.

They're making sound. But sometimes that's not the way it goes. Sometimes a child is born and their skin is is a deep purple or blue color. They're not moving. They're not crying. They're not making any sounds at all.

And that's what's most concerning. A quiet baby is is is far more concerning than a screaming baby, at least at the moment of birth. And so immediately what you're doing, what, you know, a doctor will rush into the room and they'll maybe get a tube suction and try it.

Maybe there's some some ambiotic fluid that's that's stuck in the child's throat or lungs. You know, the child isn't getting oxygen. There's those kinds of things. And immediately they're what they're doing is is they're they're running certain procedures, but they're also running certain tests because because the screening of a child and the movement of a child are not the only test of vitality.

There's also the pulse of a child. There's also, you know, there's there's other vital signs to look to. And I think that's what John is getting to when he gives all these different tests, is he's saying there are a lot of vital signs, just like with physical birth and physical life.

There are multiple vital signs. Some are more profound or more prominent than others. But if you have any vital signs, that's an indication that the person is, in fact, alive. Dead people, dead people don't have few vital signs or some vital signs.

Dead people have zero vital signs. And so so again, it's this shotgun assurance. It's not saying here are all the tests and you've got to pass them all to know that you're a Christian. It's here are all the tests.

That way, if you're failing in some that matters, it shouldn't be taken lightly. You need to acknowledge that a sin, repent before the Lord and ask for him to give you grace to grow. However, if you're failing in one area or two or three, you can look and keep going because there are other tests, look in other areas to see if if there is any vital sign, if there is any assurance.

And just regarding the test real quick, you know, in the very beginning of the book about this throughout the book of First John, the apostle brings together three primary tests. Right. So these are three headers and there are multiple smaller subsets within them, but three primary tests of authentic Christianity.

Number one, the truth test, the truth test, which is a biblical and personal confession of Christ. Number two, the relational test, which is love for God and his people. And then number three, the moral test, which is obedience to God's commandments.

So so one of the first tests that John gives us, the truth test or the test of doctrine, the doctrinal test is, do you have a biblical confession of Christ? Right. And John even goes into this and he talks about who is the Antichrist, but the one who denies that Jesus has come in the flesh.

Right. So immediately there is some measure of assurance that comes merely by making a credible profession of Christ. And, you know, can someone make a credible profession of Christ and not truly be born again?

Can they belong to the visible church without being a part of the invisible church? Certainly. But that is possible. But at the same time, I think that it's important for us to say that one of the reasons why we gauge a profession of faith is because a credible profession of faith that is biblically sound and and and personal.