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I have designed this to be an interactive session, so I'm hoping that I can get some feedback from the audience today. As Harry mentioned, I'm going to work through a three-part series on assurance of salvation.
I think this is a pretty interesting topic that has come up in my ministry in Cornerstone, and I thought that it would be something that would be well-suited to working through with the full congregation.
So, when we talk about assurance of salvation, who would like to define, dictionary definition would define assurance of salvation for me? Don't all raise your hands at once. Anyone? Is there a hand over here?
Sam. Sam Farah. Sure. So, God's confidence, I'm sorry, confidence in God's saving power over you would be an example of assurance, maybe awareness of the doctrines of grace, right, and how those affect us with regard to our salvation.
We think about the perseverance of the saints, you know. There's a lot of, this is a very interesting study for me because in looking through scripture and in looking at passages that talk about assurance, there's a lot of Greek words that have this sort of idea of assurance, and the closest one, you can see in 1 John 3 .19, the Greek word is peito, it says, by this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him.
And this word reassure here, this is in the ESV, another translation, the word is set, the idea here is that based on knowledge that we have, we can be assured in what we know is true. D .A. Carson defined assurance as a Christian believer's confidence that he or she is already in a right standing with God.
So assurance is one of those kind of tricky things, it's, as we saw from Sam, a little bit difficult to put in words sometimes, it's this thing that we know. We are assured of our salvation and it manifests itself as a confidence that we have.
If you've ever had a discussion about assurance, and assurance is something that lends itself very commonly to discussion, there's often one primary question that is asked when we're talking about assurance.
Does anybody know what that might be? Any guesses? Just one quick. Can I lose my salvation? Very common question. Or how can I have more assurance about my salvation? This is a topic that comes up a lot, right, I mean, this is, it's a huge, huge deal.
So there's other questions, there's, you know, is assurance of salvation a good thing? Believe it or not, there are differing answers to that question. Should I have assurance of salvation? And then, like I said, how can I have more assurance of salvation?
What we don't hear is, why do we have assurance of salvation? What is the cause for it? Where does it come from? What, what is the more encyclopedic definition of assurance of salvation, and not just this dictionary definition, which is certainly valuable and it's a good thing to have, but this encyclopedic thing.
We've heard Pastor Mike say this phrase, theology leads to what? Doxology. Doxology leads to methodology. Every time my, Pastor Mike says this, I think of math class, because I'm a math guy, and I think of formulas, right?
So there's, there's all these proofs and formulas that we have in math, and the way it always seems to work, much to our chagrin as students, is that we have to work through the long process of figuring out what the formula is before we're allowed to use the formula, right?
So you think of, like, I don't know, the formula to calculate the area of a circle, right? Which is, anybody know? Pi r squared, right? Which is the ratio, so pi there is the ratio of the diameter of the circle to the circumference of the circle, and that always is 3 .14159 blah blah blah blah blah blah.
But we can't just use it, we have to prove it first in geometry class, and so we measure a bunch of circles, and it's this painful process, but then we get to the point where we now understand, okay, we've proven this to ourselves, and now we can move on and function because we know that it is true.
And with assurance, I think that, that tends to happen. We are familiar with this idea of assurance, and then we operate based on knowledge of this thing that we have, and it's not something that we tend to go back and sort of prove to ourselves, like, what is it about assurance?
Let's find some more encyclopedic ways that we can look at assurance and define assurance and really understand why we have it and how we have it. So I'll ask you guys the questions, just for the sake of conversation here.
Is assurance of salvation a good thing? Yes, yes, we would say that, yes, in fact it is. And should we have it? Yes. All right, good, see? So now we understand some of that methodology, we have those final answers.
So let's work back through those. Let's ask ourselves why. Why should we have it? What is the scriptural basis for that? A deeper understanding, I think, of some of those straightforward doctrines will really help our praise life, our doxology, our ability to praise and worship God.
D .A. Carson, and this is sort of the launching off point of this whole thing. This is something that he wrote about assurance, which I thought was really good. And so far as I know, there has been no English-language full-scale treatment of the biblical theology of Christian assurance for more than 50 years.
There have been countless studies of related biblical themes, perseverance, apostasy, the nature of covenant, the nature of faith, justification, and much more, too many to itemize. And there have been numerous popular treatments of Christian assurance.
But although at one time assurance was not only a question of pressing pastoral importance, but in certain aspects, a test of theological systems, in recent decades, it has not received the attention it deserves.
So there's a book in the New Testament that talks a lot about assurance of salvation. That's 1 John. In fact, when I was speaking with Harry, the first thing that he asked me was, oh, you're going to be working through 1 John.
And we'll get there, I think. But what I wanted to start with is taking a look at assurance of salvation and how the views of assurance of salvation really change through the history of the church. Because I think that this will give us a little bit of an understanding of how related doctrines built up and informed our perspective of assurance.
So rather unsurprisingly, I guess, I couldn't find a lot of direct commentary on assurance. But as we study doctrines and how they evolve a little bit through church history, it begins to become a bit clearer.
So after the Council of Nicaea and the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church in the 4th century, there was definitely a perspective in the global Christian church that became well-defined in terms of assurance of salvation.
And that's because we had the Roman Catholic Church, right? And so their view of salvation was based on what? Works. Sacraments, exactly. So no longer was it the traditional biblical view of faith that we would get to in the Reformation again, but it was this works plus faith system.
And the problem with works is that they're temporary. They're in time. They're things that we do. And so what did that do to assurance of salvation? It totally derailed it, right? The Roman Catholic system, where there are works involved, where you have to take the sacraments, where you have to do all of these things, destroyed this idea of assurance of salvation because there was always this perspective that you had to do something else.
And how could you be assured of your salvation if it wasn't something that was already secured for you, right? And it involved what you were doing. So like I said before, is assurance of salvation good?
Is yes, can we be sure of it? Some of these questions begin to get a little bit muddled when you look at the theology that's not necessarily the theology of assurance, but theologies that would prop it up or support it.
One commentator said, the consensus in the period leading up to the Reformation related such assurance as conjectural, since knowledge of God's saving grace depended on good works and penance that tied forgiveness to ecclesiastical authority.
So now we're talking about this doctrine of forgiveness, but that has an unmistakable effect on assurance of salvation. Assurance at this point was an elusive thing. Or it was tied to your coin pouch, right?
And that's what happened when Luther went to Rome. He saw, what did he see in Rome? He saw the selling of the indulgences to finance the building of St. Peter's Basilica. And early 16th century, he gets disgusted by this.
He begins to preach against indulgences. And later on that year, was it the day before Reformation Day, right? So it would have been October 30th, the day before Halloween. He nailed the 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg.
The Reformation follows in this explosion of this new, this different perspective that is really divergent from that Catholic idea. And this increased focus on scripture as the sole authority instead of the ecclesiastical tradition and forcing people to rely solely on scripture.
And that's where we get the five solos of the Reformation, sole scriptura. So at that point, there's this very large change in the confidence of a believer's salvation because no longer are they having to trust on things that they've done.
But instead, they look only to scripture. This idea of reconciliation with God no longer is a function of works. And repentance through faith alone takes place in this idea of assurance through faith grows.
Carson said, not only did the Reformation, by emphasizing scripture, reduce the intermediary authority of the church and therefore its role in binding and loosing the Christian conscience, its virulent emphasis on sola fide led Luther to see assurance as an element of saving faith.
And so this is the big, huge change. As we look at theology in the church and this change in the perspective on assurance, this is the biggest change in church history when we go from this idea, at least in Protestantism, of faith plus works to faith alone.
And then there's still some other debates within Protestantism that are a bit more subtle, but certainly still present. And this is where it gets interesting. So when talking about assurance of salvation and where that assurance is founded, there's two camps, essentially.
There's the first one, which is essentially started by Calvin. And I had to study this and read this over like four times, so if you don't get it the first time, that's okay. We'll talk about it again.
The first view is this, faith is fundamentally passive in nature. It is centered in the mind or understanding. It is primarily to be viewed in terms of certain knowledge, such that assurance of salvation is the essence of faith and is grounded extra nos, that is, outside ourselves in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
So that's the first one, right? So assurance is grounded outside of ourselves in the person and work of Christ. The second perspective is this, faith is primarily active, centered within the will or heart, and that assurance is not of the essence of faith, but it is a fruit of faith and is to be gathered through self-examination and syllogistic deduction, thereby pacing the grounds of assurance intra nos, within ourselves.
Clear as mud, right? All right. Does anybody want to comment on that before I explain in, you know, English what that means? All right. So the first position is the primary position of Calvin and like the old school reformers.
And it essentially is that our faith is separate from our assurance. Okay, we have faith, right, which is a gift from God, and we can look externally to things outside of ourselves, beyond faith, like a changed life, right?
Reassurance in the life of Christ, these kinds of things to base our assurance on. And the second position is one that ties assurance and faith together. The idea is essentially that if you have faith in God, in Christ as your savior, then you have assurance because you have faith.
So the problem here is that people that would support that would support the idea that trusting Jesus as savior alone is adequate, right? Because you have faith, and that faith, the fact that you have it, is your assurance.
Okay? It's beginning to come together a little bit, I hope. This idea denies lordship salvation because the thing is that if we trust Christ as Lord, then that means that we obey him with our lives, and we obey his commandments.
That is a transformed life. That is something that is external, right? That would be extra-nos. So they deny lordship salvation because they say that looking to a transformed life for assurance suggests that now you have this sort of works-based righteousness.
You're looking to your transformed life, and that must be works, and so therefore it's not faith alone. I think the movement is called like the free grace movement, is what it's referred to. Yeah. That would be like Zane Hodges.
That's his big thing. And so it's this non-lordship kind of thing where the only thing that you have to trust is the fact that you have decided that you have this faith that is incomplete. So those are the two camps that we have now, essentially.
The biggest ones, the most vocal ones is this idea that there is this external proof, essentially, of our salvation that we can look to, that we can be confident in, versus that internal one. And I don't think that we need to drive on that, I think, too hard because it seems like we're kind of all on the same page here.
Does anybody want to comment on any of that, by the way? Anybody confused? Would like more clarity or anything like that? Okay. All right. So the first couple times I read this, it seemed like this internal thing was good.
Like, oh, yeah, well, internally, you know, we don't want to be looking at other things to prove our salvation. But in studying it more, the key to understanding here is that what we are driving our assurance, our personal internal assurance, is from evidence that we see in our lives and evidence that other people see in our lives because of saving faith.
Okay? So it's not that the works are this kind of goes back to that idea in James, right, where we say, who has faith that does not have works, right? Not that the works are saving, but that they are evidence of a changed life.
Well, I mean, there was there's certainly like, a lot of this has to be gleaned from subtext, basically, in commentary. Just like Carson said, it's not really a popular subject. Actually, what Carson noted about this is that there's popular treatises to this, but nothing that's in depth.
So it's something that is vocalized in culture, but it's not something that has really been properly sat down and studied. Of course, he said he didn't have much time, and he wrote a 30-page paper about it.
So that's D .A. Carson for you. Are you stretching or raising your hand? Okay. I think that's a great perspective. And I think that that's certainly very true with, really, the entire breadth of our salvation.
Everything about our salvation is rooted in Christ and Christ's work, right? We have, you know, as Mike likes to joke, we have a works-based salvation. It's the work of Christ, not our own works that save us.
And so that's certainly true, that everything that we have and can do is looking to Christ and looking at what Christ has accomplished. And, Steve, going back to what you said, it's interesting because it's almost...
One of the things, I think, that makes it so hard to define assurance is that it's more like a soft skill doctrine. It's not something where we can unequivocally say, well, you know, we know these things to be true.
We know that Christ came, Christ lived a perfect life, Christ died a death that he did not deserve. He, you know, sacrificed his life for all that he had chosen have come to him. And these are concrete facts.
And assurance is something that is almost on this spectrum, right? Where we can say, well, on the one hand, you know, we can be accused of this very legalistic perspective of saying that unless we have fruit in our lives, we could not possibly have been saved and therefore we shouldn't have assurance.
On the other hand, you know, we had this easy-believe-ism that you talked about where we don't really want to push the issue of assurance with people and encourage people to look back and see if they sprung up from rocky ground or if they truly grew because that's kind of this offensive thing.
And so it's just this easy-believe-ism which, you know, many of the defenders of that would, I think, balk at that term to say that it's critical that people look to their lives and make sure that they're, you know, in obedience.
But it's, you know, they would stop short of saying that that can be a representation of their salvation if they have no fruit in their lives and that maybe that means that they're not saved at all. They would stop short of that.
And so it's, there's no extreme that is correct, right? It's sort of, there's somewhere, obviously, on the Lordship Salvation side, but there's somewhere on that spectrum that is the right place to be.
Does anybody have anything else to add? Hair is being fixed and stretches thoroughly or something? All right. All right. So what I wanted to do is actually now that, I just want to dust over church history.
I just went over many thousands of years in 10 minutes. So what I did want to do is actually look at some scripture that would support some of this conjecturing, I guess, that I'm doing to, again, help us to frame our understanding of assurance based on how it's actually presented in the Bible.
The first passage is from 2 Peter 1, verses 3 to 10. All right. 2 Peter 1, verses 3 to 10. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.
For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.
Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. So there's actually two pieces in here that I really like, and one of them is verse 5.
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge. That's not to say that virtue and or knowledge save, right? We know that they don't, but certainly that they are symbols of obedience that you would do these things and that they are further ways that you can be sure of what the scripture says.
The second one is verses 8 and 10. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, well, we know that salvation is a moment in time, right? It's this punctuated thing that happens, so how can something be increasing if it's punctuated?
So certainly there's a separation there, there is something. They keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then verse 10. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election.
We see from the pen of Peter that there are many ways that we can look to our own lives to have more assurance. Okay, does anybody want to add? Anybody have any thoughts? I was never Catholic, and I know there's some former Roman Catholics here who might be able to comment on this.
According to the Catholic Church, when are you actually saved? Right, well, obviously, because of the works-based salvation, they don't have assurance of salvation. So when is that point? I can certainly research it.
So it's something that's determined at post-mortem, essentially? So that would be that sin of presumption. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, now does it? Even though they could have done something.
That's interesting. John? Right. Just got to get the clear coat on. All right. All right. And, I mean, that goes back to one of the things that you were saying before. The irony is that the Catholics kind of know where their assurance falls.
Whether they have it or not at the current time, you know, depends on what they're doing. But at least they know, right? And that's why, oh, well, what about this case? Okay, let's add some more rules to figure this thing out.
And that's, you know, it's like the IRS with the rules. I don't even. It's like Xbox Achievements. We're far off. Please do. Absolutely true. I mean, you're 100 right when we talk about the perseverance of the saints.
In fact, if that were talking about the saints and the actions of the saints, then that would not, in fact, be God's righteousness and God's actions. That would be works. If it's about us persevering, then that would be works-based, and that's not at all what it's about.
It's about God's saving power reaching down to us and our confidence that that is always.
There, right?
And one of the great things about the Catholic idea of salvation and the life afterwards versus the Protestant one is that the Catholic and many man-made religions have this idea of, well, let's see, we love and we obey, and by doing so, we merit salvation, right?
Whereas the biblical equation is the opposite. It is that we put our faith in Christ, Christ chooses us, and because of that salvation, we love him and we obey him, right? So it sort of takes that and turns it on its head.
And Bob, to your point, even going back to 2 Peter, when it talks about those people being blind and having forgotten and that they're in this moment in time, not only are they in this moment in time and they're not progressing as fast as either they would want to or maybe the people around them would want to, but they are progressing exactly at the rate at which God wants them to because God is the one who is doing that sanctifying.
Absolutely true. On Hebrews, actually, my notes started in 611, which is funny, but it's okay. So I'll actually go there next since hopefully some of you are following along and you already have your books open to Hebrews.
Starting in verse 10, for God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
And then, as Pastor Bob has noted, he speaks about what those promises are, those promises that are rooted in the immutability of God and not in our very morally flexible character. Anybody want to add anything else before I go on?
Okay. Charlie's playing in the back. All right. I'll just do one more, Galatians 5 verses 16 to 26. Galatians 5, 16 to 26. But I say, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.
Now the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.
I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the spirit, let us also keep in step with the spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another and being one another.
So again, this goes back to this idea that once we are saved, once Christ has redeemed us, there is a clear divergence in our actions. You can tell a saved person versus an unsaved person in the way they act, in who they call Lord.
Is it the things of themselves? I mean, you can go on Facebook and look at what people are doing and you can tell pretty quickly whether or not their focus, their Lord, they might not call it Lord, but you can tell pretty quickly what that focus is.
And as we look to assurance, we can look at our own lives and look at what those things are that we're engaging in and seeing the general tenor of our lives. Certainly there's dips and we're not perfect and God is working to sanctify us, but as we look at what it is that we're focusing on, we can have an understanding of what that assurance is and that is separate from salvation.
That the easy-believism idea that we talked about before says, you know, once saved, always saved, do what you got to do and have a good time at it. And certainly that is not true. It is inconsistent with biblical teaching and it does not lead to assurance because you cannot root your assurance in your actual salvation, but in your sanctification performed by the Lord.
And finally, the last one I wanted to leave you with was from 1 John. 1 John 2, verse 24, let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father.
If that truth that has been preached to us abides in us, if it is something that we are continually reminded of, if we have repented of our sins and we've trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ and we have that focus in our lives, that is yet another example of assurance.
So that's it for today. I wanted to sort of really get a good definition of what assurance is. Next week, Lord willing, we'll talk about false assurance, the dangers of false assurance, and then depending on where we finish, we'll go on into some other aspects of assurance.
But why don't we pray together? Father, thank you for this day, this time to come to your house and worship you. Thank you for the chance to sit under the teaching of Pastor Harry. Thank you, God, that you have given us an assurance, you have given us a hope in your Son, Jesus Christ, that we know that because of his finished work, because he is seated next to you on the throne, Father, that we can have assurance in him.
I just pray, Father, that you would bless our time today, that you would bless the worship service to come. You would give us traveling mercies, keep us safe today as we enjoy the beautiful creation that you provided for us.
In your name we pray. Amen.