Questioning Your Salvation? | Theocast

Assurance of Salvation and the Problem of Constant Self-Examination

There's an interesting phenomenon happening within modern Christianity, specifically on the internet and here on YouTube, where Christians are constantly being called to question their salvation, to examine their fruit.

We take passages of Scripture that have true purpose and meaning, and we twist them, and we use them, in my opinion, to manipulate people, to keep them on their heels when it comes to assurance and that resting in the efficiency of Christ where one is always examining their intentions, their motives, their desires, and their actions for one reason, not the effectiveness of are they loving their brother.

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Are they obeying the commands to unify the body? They're doing it to determine whether or not they're a Christian. Are they truly saved? And I have people that I talk with who struggle with this, that they have periods of time where they examine their lives, and they almost are concerned if they don't question their salvation.

If there hasn't been a moment recently where they've been off-kilter, and maybe I should examine whether I'm a Christian or not, because they are basing.

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Work of regeneration or the work of justification on their efforts on what they can accomplish. Of course, everyone would always say, no, we're saved by grace alone. It's faith alone, justifications, soul of feeding, but day by day, that's not what we trust.

What we trust is our own actions and our own fruit. Now, don't misunderstand me. It is necessary and helpful and a part of the Christian life to obey. It's very obvious that those who have been alive by the Spirit will be producing the fruits of the Spirit.

Jesus gives this illustration. Paul gives these illustrations of a fruit and tree and the production of it. But when it comes down to our purpose for these good works, it seems like they're skewed. In other words, you're always examining the amount of fruit you have for one reason.

Am I truly saved? Am I truly the child of God? And the Christian life seems to be this wheel, this hamster wheel, where we're just kind of going over and over and over again, this self-examination to make sure that we're going to enter into the kingdom of God.

Christ’s Invitation to Rest, Not Earn Salvation

And there's never that moment when Jesus says, come unto me, all you are heavy laden by the law, trying to earn your salvation, and I will give you rest. And then he says, the work that I have for you, my yoke is not going to belabor you.

He says, it's easy. My burden that I have for you to love God and love neighbor, it's light. It shouldn't depress you. It shouldn't drown you into sorrow. But yet, when we look at modern Christianity today, specifically certain kinds of preaching and teaching, even on YouTube, it's very revivalistic in nature, as far as when you look at revivalism in the early American history and what we call pietism.

Pietism, I did a whole video on that. You can look for that in the links below. But quickly, it is an overemphasis of looking at the internal works of the Christian life. We're always examining our works in light of our position, meaning that I must be doing good works to confirm that I am a Christian.

If I'm not doing enough good works, then I'm going to be proving that I'm not a good enough Christian. And that was rooted out of revivalism. And it's anti-reformation theology, reformed theology. One of the key tenets of the reformed faith that they were really trying to rediscover was assurance that you can have the objective truth outside of yourself presented to you in means of the gospel.

And if you put your faith in that objective truth, you can for certainty know you are justified. That's why it's called sola fide. By faith alone in the finished work of Christ, in the news of the gospel, we can have assurance that Christ is our Savior.

And from that sense of rest, when Jesus says, come unto me and we finally rest inside of his works, not ours, it's at that moment we pick up the burden that he hands us, which is light and easy. And he says, you will carry this until the moment I return.

And what happens when we return? All things are new. There is no more burdens. We're in his presence forever. But the burden that we're carrying, that Jesus gives us very clearly, and Paul picks up in the New Testament writers pick up, is that we are to love neighbor.

We are to love God. It's not a burden that should be of proving. The burden is not proof. The burden we carry is that to love our neighbor is going to require self-sacrifice. Philippians 2 says this, that we need to consider others more significant than ourselves.

And that is going to be a burden against our own flesh. And we have to walk by the Spirit to do that. I even just go to 2 Peter 1 .9, when he gets done listing all of these characteristics that a Christian should have.

And he says, if these are not yours and increasing, you are blind, having forgotten that you've been cleansed from your former sins. He doesn't question their salvation for the lack of the fruit and for not increasing.

As a matter of fact, he even says you can be a Christian. That's the whole point. Go read 2 Peter 1 .9. The whole point is you can be a Christian not increasing in fruit. Why? Because you forgot your justification.

You forgot that you've been cleansed from your sins. So to be constantly pushed upon, to be examining your life, to whether or not I am measuring up as a Christian, is not the pursuit of the Christian life.

Our pursuit is not assurance. The pursuit of the Christian life is to give love and to give hope because of the gospel. Ephesians 4, he says, walk, Ephesians 4 .1, walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

And what is that? He says with gentleness, meekness and patience. He says gentleness, meekness and patience is a reflection of what you have. It's not a confirmation to gain it. We don't do those things to gain the confirmation of our calling.

Because we've been called, we do these things. It flows from us. We don't do it to gain it. So preaching and teaching and books and blogs and videos, all of these, where they're always calling the Christian to wonder, am I doing enough?

The answer to that is no, you're not doing enough. How much is enough? How much fruit do you need to give on a daily basis to be able to check that box and go, for sure, I know I'm saved because X, Y and Z.

If the answer to that is not Christ and Him crucified and His work on my behalf, then you'll never measure up. James literally says, James 2, that if you disobey one area of the law, you'll be guilty of all the law.

So if you're going to use the law to justify yourself, well, then you're going to be guilty of it. You can never earn your salvation. You can never maintain your salvation and you can never confirm your salvation by the work of obedience to any parts of the Bible.

I am not saying your obedience is not mandatory and necessary. It absolutely is. Very clearly, James and Paul say that if you say you love God and you don't love your brother, you're a liar and the truth is not in you.

We need to love each other. It's part of who we are as Christians, but we don't do it as a confirmation. He was saying that because there were people who were claiming to be Christians and yet at the same time saying, well, no, I don't have to love my neighbor.

They say, well, you don't understand the mercy and grace that you have received. It was a rejection. He wasn't using that as a confirmation. There's a difference. Even when Paul writes to the most wretched, wicked churches.

I mean, you think about the church at Corinth. He doesn't call into question their salvation. One other passage I love to read is a later passage in Ephesians four. And in Ephesians four, he says that the responsibility of the elders.

This is verses 15 and following. He says the responsibility of the elders and the teachers is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. And he says, so they're not tossed about by every wind of doctrine, by scheme of men, about the shifting of theology, meaning that we can fall into those types of teachings and we can be led astray.

Fixing Our Eyes on Christ and Living Under the Law of Liberty

So just assume that a Christian's perspective and their Christian life is always the trajectory of one way. You're always moving forward and there's never any struggle. It's crazy. There's going to be struggle.

Secondly, we need to be focusing our attention on Christ. I mean, go to Hebrews. What does he say? Right. Looking unto Jesus, the author, the one who starts our faith and the finisher of our faith, our attention and our focus is to lay aside anything that's going to distract us in our own sin.

And we focus in on Christ. My problem with pietism and revivalism in modern day contexts that are still being used is that the emphasis is focused on the individual and their obedience. Are you reading your Bible enough?

Are you desiring to read your Bible enough? Praying enough? Evangelizing enough? Are you fasting enough? It's always you and enough. And the gospel, the good news of the gospel is that Jesus is enough.

So we need to definitely preach against sin. We need to preach for obedience. But because we have been set free from the burden, I mean, Paul says that I'm sorry, James says it this way in James two, chapter two.

He says that our speech and our actions are in a reflection, a response of the law of liberty. He literally says so speak and so act as ones who are under the law of liberty, James 2, 13. He means ones who have been set free from the burden of judgment and now walk by grace.

That's how Paul says it. You're no longer under law, you're under grace. So we obey out of gratitude. We obey out of necessity for the needs of our neighbors, for those who are suffering and for those who need to hear the gospel, it's really sad and discouraging.

And so my encouragement is let's rejoin the Reformation. Let's reclaim what they were working for and fighting for. And ultimately, many of them died for that. We can find full assurance and full hope in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

The confessions are very helpful here. If you go read the Lenten Baptist Confession of the Westminster or any of the Reformed confessions, then you read chapters on assurance, on even in good works, on sanctification, you will see very quickly that we find our hope and assurance in Christ alone.

And from that, after we've received grace, we are guilty people who receive grace out of gratitude. We then seek to obey. So my encouragement to you is if you're feeling that necessity every day to wake up and try and prove to yourself or to God that you're legitimate, you'll never have enough proof.

But if you want enough proof that God is sufficient enough to save you as a sinner who is wretched and deserving of nothing, that is what the gospel is. It's foolproof, 100 assurance that by faith alone, in grace alone, through Christ alone, you can be assured.

And once you find that rest and once you come to Christ and all your burdens have been lifted and all that worry about whether you're legitimate or not is gone, you'll then have the energy and the hope and the joy to go and love others because of what you received.

To learn more about that, we have a free e-book called Rest. You can find that on our website. It's just theocast .org slash Primer. And then we have a lot of podcasts that we'll put below, just ways to encourage you to think about what is the purpose of the Christian life as far as your obedience.

There's a couple of podcasts below on sanctification, things like that. We'll see you next time.