Assurance Of Salvation (part 3)

This is part three, talking about assurance of salvation, the doctrine of assurance. I did want to touch on something that we talked about last week. I just wanted to clear something up. There was a little bit of confusion after Sunday School last week.

The Biblical Case for Calls to Repentance

We talked a lot about altar calls and decisionism and some of the perils that are there. And I did want to just quickly say that there's nothing inherently wrong with an altar call. We see in Scripture time and time again, there are calls to action, there are calls to repent.

John 4, 17, from that time Jesus began to preach saying, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. There's a call to action there. Luke 13, and he, Jesus, answered them, do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way?

No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will likewise perish. We see it in Acts 2 and Acts 17, Peter and Paul, in their preaching, they command repentance, they call for repentance. There is a biblical precedent for a call to action in preaching.

I think there was some confusion last week about that, and I just thought I would touch on it again and say that the issue is not with the idea of the altar call, but the problem is when we rely on the fact that we have gone to the front as our salvation, the fact that we have made a decision at one point in time, and that is where the peril comes from when we look at that idea, that idea of an altar call.

So, I just wanted to touch on that very quickly to hopefully clear that up a little bit, hopefully resolve some of that confusion. So, last week we talked about the R .C. Sproul, and he had these four positions when referring to people in their assurance.

He said that there's people that either are saved or aren't saved, and people that know it and don't know it. So, you combine the two of those together, some bitwise logic for all of you technical people.

So, we have people that aren't saved and know they're not saved. There's people that are saved and they know that they are saved. There's people that aren't saved but they think they are, and that's false assurance, and that's what we talked about last week.

Doubts About Assurance in the Truly Saved

This week we're going to focus on people that are saved and have doubts about their assurance. So, either they just don't know or they're struggling with their assurance. One of the things I mentioned last week was that assurance of salvation is something that is a particularly Protestant issue, specifically a reformed Protestantism.

There's a really great book, it's actually in the, if you were in the first service, it's in that spiffy book room that Pastor Steve was talking about called Assured by God, has a bunch of really great essays about assurance from a series of different authors, and I'll be quoting some of them, but Rick Phillips wrote one of those, and this is something that he says that I think is really interesting.

He says, Roman Catholics do not pursue assurance of salvation and are strongly discouraged from doing so, since for Rome justification is a process that can be sure only when it is completed. The Roman Catholic is no more secure than his or her most recent visit to the priest.

The only assurance is in continued good performance. The situation is little better among Arminians who deny assurance on the grounds that salvation may be lost at any time. The Arminian insistence on a general salvation rather than a particular one, that is a salvation that is open equally to all but effectually to none, effectively rules out assurance in this life.

And then Rick Phillips quotes Ian Murray who says, every brand of theology that is not grounded in the particularism which is exemplified in sovereign election and effective redemption is not hospitable to this doctrine of the assurance of faith.

This is why assurance of salvation is a field of theology and Christian experience plowed only by the reformed. So I just thought that was a far more eloquently stated reason why we can really focus on reformed Protestantism as where we're going to see this struggle with assurance, this issue of assurance.

Again, I highly recommend that book. I was really encouraged by reading a lot of that. So last week we talked about false assurance where we have essentially this barrier of entry that is so low that assurance existed where it ought not to.

And this week we're dealing with sort of the opposite side of that spectrum where there's this kind of barrier of assurance that's so high that we begin to doubt whether or not we have attained salvation.

Of course, that salvation is only possible through Jesus Christ. It's not something that we have done. The Westminster Catechism, Chapter 18, talks a lot about assurance. And this is what it says in Part 4.

True believers may have the assurance of their salvation diverse...bear with me, it's the Westminster Catechism, it's not normal English. True believers may have the assurance of their salvation diverse ways shaken, diminished and intermitted as by negligence in preserving of it, by falling into some special sin which wounds the conscience and grieves the spirit by some sudden or vehement temptation, by God's withdrawing the light of his countenance and suffering even such as fear him to walk in darkness and to have no light.

So those are a bunch of different ways in which believers can lose...tend to lose their assurance and we'll talk about that a little bit in colloquial English soon. Yet are they never so utterly destitute of that seed of God and life of faith that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart and conscience of duty out of which by the operation of the spirit this assurance may in due time be revived and by the which in the meantime they are supported from utter despair.

So there's many ways in which we have assurance or we can potentially lose some of that assurance through some struggles that we deal with but ultimately for the Christian, for the believer, there is always going to be a spark because we are saved, because that is this judicial declaration that will help us to regain that assurance because assurance is a feeling.

It is an emotional response to a judicial act which isn't even of ourselves in salvation. True believers can doubt their salvation but they will never lose their salvation and those are two things that I specifically want to make sure that I distinguish between.

Assurance and salvation are not the same thing. Assurance is a response, an emotional response to salvation. Can anybody give me some examples of maybe symptoms I guess that would lead to doubting salvation?

We'll talk about the erosion of assurance later but maybe some symptoms of doubting, like why would you doubt your salvation? Anyone? So Job went through many trials, trials is certainly a very good example of why we would doubt that.

Why are we going through this trial? Why am I dealing with this issue? If I'm saved, especially in a culture where there's this idea that well if you're saved everything is going to be great. It's in our culture this idea that come to Jesus and all your problems will be solved.

Well even though we know that that's not true, it is still easy to slide into this concept where why am I going through all these trials if my salvation is sure? Can anybody think of anything else? Sin?

Absolutely, sensitivity to sin is a huge one, especially when you're a brand new believer. You're saved, God has saved you, he's quickened you and you turn around and you look at the life that you led before and you're like, oh my God, how could I have done this?

How can I do these things? Paul talks about it in 2 Corinthians 4, he says even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.

Before we're saved we can't even really tell, we have no concept of what sin really is. So as soon as we're regenerated, quickened, we look back at that and it leads to some immediate questions. Going beyond that, as we grow as Christians, our sensitivity to sin increases.

So as our holiness goes up, our sinfulness, net total sinfulness goes down, but our awareness of that sin increases. What did Paul say in 1 Timothy? What did he call himself? The chief of sinners. The apostle Paul called himself in 1 Timothy, he's writing divinely inspired scripture and he calls himself the chief of sinners.

Why is that? Because his sensitivity to sin was way up. As our understanding of sin and our ability to identify it increases, we can have increased doubt because maybe we see the sin that we've been doing all along and as we've grown we were just blind to some sin that we were committing.

As we were becoming more sanctified, we were getting rid of other sins, we were committing certain sins less and less, but something else was there and then we sit under a message or whatever it is that happens and we begin to realize that, oh, there's these sins that I've been doing all along, how can I have been doing those things if I am truly saved?

Don Whitney said, sin, this is interesting, sin grieves the Holy Spirit and since he is the one who gives us the experience of assurance, when we grieve him, we may temporarily lose our assurance. It's a broken fellowship, that's what sin is, it is a broken fellowship with our God and because of that we can have a lack of assurance.

There were a bunch of hands, John? Sure, absolutely. Spiritual immaturity is a huge one, it's actually the first one that I put down on my list. Lack of awareness of doctrines, right? The doctrine of election, that's a pretty big one when we're talking about assurance of salvation.

The doctrine of the finality of justification, it is a once declaration, it happens once and it is over. Sinclair Ferguson said this, I love his quotes, they're really great one-liners, he said, the theology of assurance is simple and logical, justification is final.

Done, end of story. I can't say it the way he does because he's got that cool accent, but I mean we look at Romans 8, right? Romans 8, 29, 30, it's the golden chain of redemption. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. Alan Muller comments on these verses particularly, he says, he leaves no room for equivocation or doubt concerning the matter.

Believers, having already been justified, are promised that they will also be glorified. Thus they are to trust in God and rest in the assurance of God's omnipotent power and saving purpose. We should not be surprised that some Christians who lack understanding of this divine saving purpose or lack an adequate understanding of the gospel should be unsure of their salvation.

And the other thing that's interesting about that verse, and you see it all over the place in scripture, is that who's doing the foreknowing and who's doing the predestinating and who's doing the calling and who's doing the justifying?

It's not us, it's God. We're just recipients of this divine glory. So definitely spiritual immaturity is right up there with sensitivity to sin. Were there some other hands? Deb, are you reading my notes?

Absolutely. Comparison to others is another one where we're called to do it. We're called to discipleship, for example, which would be, you have to compare yourself to have a good sense of who is a more seasoned saint that you could sit under for teaching.

You certainly want to make some of that assessment before you ask someone to teach you. So it's good to look up to more seasoned Christians. We see Paul takes Timothy and Epaphroditus under his wing. He talks about them in Philippians 2, about how Timothy served Paul as a son in the gospel work.

But sometimes it can get discouraging. Maybe you and somebody get saved at our GBY camp together, and it's all God's timing. Your sanctification is not your timing, it's God's timing. And maybe they're somehow on the fast track to becoming a pastor, and you're just kind of muddling along at whatever the pace is.

You can get discouraged by that, because it's like, well, what's wrong with me, this guy, that I know we got saved at the same time because we sat around the same fire and passed the same talking stick back and forth, or whatever it is.

And so we can definitely doubt our salvation and lose some assurance because of that. Anything else? Anybody want to add anything else to that? These are kind of symptoms or ways that we can doubt our assurance, or reasons why.

I have one more on my list. That would go back to James, who would talk about counting it joy when we experience trials. The idea is not, if you have assurance, you won't have difficulty in your life.

So assurance, again, is an emotional response, which may or may not be proper. If we doubt our assurance, God has quickened us, God has saved us. So our assurance does not affect our salvation in any way.

So it is merely a response to it. I mean, I couldn't speak for what Tyndale was thinking. Maybe he did have struggles, but he persevered through those because of the encouragement of Scripture, and because of possibly the encouragement of those who are around him.

Absolutely. Yeah, I had one more thing on my list, and that was, it's almost an ironic one, I think. It's childhood conversion. Anybody here who has grown up in a Christian household could probably speak to this.

This idea that, do I believe what I believe because God has saved me, or do I believe what I believe because it's the only thing I've ever known? Not that I'm encouraging people to go out and get a contrasting experience so that they can do that, but not having that experience of growing up unsaved and then being saved, or being called by God, it becomes a little bit difficult to really look at that life and say, am I doing this just because I don't know anything else, or am I doing this because God has changed my heart?

So those are some of the reasons why we can have doubts about, oh, Harry, do you want to talk? How did he respond to that? Not very well. And so what's the problem with that rededication thing? It's, I'm going to do this thing.

I'm going to say that I'm going to promise myself to God again, instead of going to God and saying, help me, help me fix these problems in my life. Encourage me, help me to understand where I need to go, who I need to put myself under to learn more about you, and to just push these things aside, not because I'm taking the act of pushing them aside, but because I'm putting myself under scripture and letting my desire to serve you in joy resolve all those problems.

Is there a hand over there? Did I see a hand? No? Okay. So let's take a little bit of a step in the other direction. Let's say, so now we are, we're Christians, we're living, we have assurance. What are some of the things that maybe can erode our assurance?

Instead of like a cause for doubt, but what are some of the things that, instead of this sort of punctuated problem, I'll give you an example because I'm getting some confused looks. So the first one on my list is spiritual laziness, right?

Get up in the morning, I have to be at work at 8 .30, it's 8 o 'clock, what's more important? I got to get to work on time, right? I'm not going to do my devotions, I'm not going to pray, I'm not going to do all these things.

The next morning I get up, I got up at 7 .30, but I'm kind of tired, I'm just going to read the paper, you know, and so now two days have gone by and I haven't done my devotions, I haven't prayed, I haven't read my Bible, I haven't spent time in prayer, I haven't done all these things, and over time our actions don't drive us back to the text, and don't drive us back to scripture, and then over time we begin to become this sort of spiritual neutral place because we're not following our spiritual disciplines, and we can begin to have a lack of assurance in that way.

Does that help? So instead of these very specific examples, I compare myself to other people and shame, you know, woe is me. I grew up in a Christian household and so I don't have assurance because of that, or things like that.

So I have a couple here. Can anybody think of anything else that might erode our assurance over time? Right, put a finger in his face. Sure, absolutely. Unrepentant sin is a great thing, and even, you know, as, again, sin breaks our fellowship with God, and so we don't have that closeness of fellowship with him, and even before we're called out on that, it can definitely sort of push us down and pull us away from that communion that we have with him.

I also have trials. We talked about trials already, touched on them a little bit. Certainly satanic attacks on us, on Christians, you know, those kinds of things can draw away our assurance. A lot of these I pulled from that book that I mentioned before, How Can I Know That I'm a Christian by Don Whitney.

One of them that he added here was God seeming to withdraw a sense of presence or blessing, right? Everything's going great, now everything's not going so great. Maybe it's not quite a trial, but it's just, I don't know, God was really blessing me before, and now he's not blessing me quite as much as he was.

What's going on there? I put puppy love right after that, so a lot of people, when they first get saved, they're super passionate, and they want to go out, and they want to preach to 500 million people and do all this stuff, and then reality sets in, and they can't do that.

Maybe they can't spend 35 hours a day preaching, whatever it is, and so that huge rush of emotion, again, this is an emotional thing, assurance is an emotional thing, this huge rush of emotion that we have after first getting saved, or after some, we go to the Shepherd's Conference, and we have this great spiritual experience, we come back supercharged, and over the next couple of weeks that kind of peters out a little bit, and so we're not really feeling God's blessing on us the same way, and then just having the wrong focus, focusing on self, right?

Instead of, this goes back to Harry and that whole thing with rededicating ourselves over and over again, because we had this focus on ourselves, but when we focus on ourselves, and we think about us, and the first question that we ask in the morning is, how can I serve me, not how can I serve God?

These kinds of things will slowly separate us from God and decrease our assurance when we lose assurance, and we doubt our salvation, or we have this kind of erosion of salvation in our lives, because it will happen to all of us to some degree.

It's helpful for us to look at the things that we base our assurance on, not necessarily like tactics for increasing our assurance, but the basic reasons why we should have assurance. These are helpful things to look at.

Bases for Assurance: God’s Character, Christ’s Work, and God’s Promises

Thomas Watson said this, if you have assurance, be careful you do not lose it. Keep it, for it is your life. Keep assurance first by prayer. Secondly, keep assurance by humility. Pride estranged God from the soul.

When you are high in assurance, be low in humility. Saint Paul had assurance, and he baptized himself with the name chief of sinners. The jewel of assurance is best kept in the cabinet of a humble heart.

I like that line. So what are some of the things that we can look at for bases for our assurance? There's some real softballs here. Right, absolutely. The character of God is a perfect thing for us to focus on and base our assurance on.

Who here has read The Attributes of God by A .W. Pink? If you have not read it, there's a, what was the word, fancy bookstore? Spiffy bookstore. I already forgot. I said it 20 minutes ago. There's a spiffy bookstore in the back.

And not only is Assurance of God, that book I talked about before, in there, but The Attributes of God is also in there. I highly recommend you read that. It's a fantastic book. It's very consumable. It's like three-page chapters.

It talks about like 20 different attributes of God. This is one of the things that Pink says, talking about the faithfulness of God. He never forgets, never fails, never falters, never forfeits his word.

To every declaration of promise or prophecy, the Lord has exactly adhered. Every engagement of covenant or threatening, he will make good. For, quoting numbers, God is not man that he should lie, or a son of man that he should change his mind.

Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? There's a lot of examples in scripture that we can look to for the character of God. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me, and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. We can look through Ephesians. Even as he chose us before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will. Second Timothy 1 12. For I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.

So the character of God, the permanence of his promise, his unchanging and perfect spirit is a huge basis for our assurance. Romans 8 16. Because we know, we have a knowledge that will inform us and we can be sure even though we don't feel it.

That's definitely true. Can anybody think of any other bases of assurance, Harry? Yep, definitely true. Does anybody have anything else they would like to add? Any other bases maybe that they can think of our assurance, things that we can look at and get assurance from?

Man, that's a scratch. I have a couple. The work of Jesus Christ. His work is accomplished. Think of Redemption Accomplished and Applied. I didn't read that for this, I ran out of time. Another book, probably in the Spiffy Bookstore.

So specifically beyond that, a proper view of the work of Christ. He didn't just make salvation possible. He accomplished it. He completed it. Our salvation is sure because of that. He, God the Father, has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

That's Colossians 1 13 and 14. First Timothy chapter 1 verse 15. We know this. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Heidelberg Catechism, another one.

Westminster was before. What's the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism? Does anybody know? Bob, of course it's Bob. What is thy only comfort in life and in death? Only hope. Same. It's good. It's good.

It's good. Close enough. Government work. That I would body and soul, both in life and death and not my own, but belong unto my faithful savior, Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins and delivered me from all the power of the devil.

And so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly father, not a hair can fall from my head. Yea, that all of the things must be subservient to my salvation. All things, including our sense of assurance.

And therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life and makes me sincerely willing and ready henceforth to live unto him. So we have the character of God, the work of Christ. We have the truth of God's promises.

We know that God never lies. We already looked at that. We see that also in Titus. We know that he never changes. God is immutable. That we can see in Hebrews 13, also in AW Pink. We can look at the promises in scripture that God has given to us.

John 3 .16, we know. John 5 .24, truly I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in him who has sent me has eternal life. These promises are made in scripture. Acts 2, and it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Acts 16, as they said, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. This is not something where we're taking one line out of context and trying to make it say something. It's over and over in scripture.

We see the promises of God and we can have assurance in knowing that God's promises are true because God never lies and he never changes. You can also have assurance in the finality of election. We touched on that before with Sinclair Ferguson, talking about justification being complete and being final.

Ephesians 2, 4 and 5, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.

This goes back to, Amelia, what you're talking about, Romans 8 .16, the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. We have this, the Holy Spirit is given to us as believers.

We're enabled by the spirit of God to understand the truths of scripture. The word is foolishness to the unbeliever. We can't even understand it without the spirit of God in our lives. The spirit testifies or bears witness with us.

It props us up. We see in scripture that the spirit intercedes for us with growing too deep for words even when we cannot. The spirit works on us and with us to help us to understand these doctrines. Let's talk about some ways that we can increase our assurance.

How to Increase Assurance Through Self-Examination and Faithful Obedience

Obviously, like I said, this is something that we will all struggle with at some point in our lives. There will be a point at which we all struggle with assurance in some varying degrees. You can give me some examples of maybe some questions we can ask ourselves.

We talked about looking at our life over time. Some questions we can ask ourselves when we're struggling or maybe ways that we can analyze our lives to work through this issue of assurance. Rather, Peggy, absolutely.

It's a complete change in perspective. It's something that we can look at over time. It's something that we talked about Pindell briefly. He didn't have a great time there. There were ebbs and flows in his life.

I'm sure there were ebbs and flows in his assurance. But what there is is there's a general upward path. If we look at the beginning and the end point, that slope is positive. Does anybody have anything else anybody else want to add, Dave?

Right. So we talked about the promises of God being one of the bases for our assurance and certainly focusing on those and spending time going over those and things like that, Bob. And that's something that Brian Bartlett brought up last week.

Do I have a present trust in Christ for salvation? Not did I make a decision, whatever, getting back to last week, but do I now have a present trust in Christ for salvation? Is there evidence of regenerating work in my heart?

Right. First Corinthians 3 warns us about that. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become manifest for the day.

We'll disclose it because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. So the works that we perform in our lives, are we doing those with the right motives? Right.

Those works can be the same, but if we do them with wrong motives, they're wood, hay, and stubble, not gold, silver, and precious stones. Do I see a long-term pattern of growth in my Christian life? This is something we touched on before.

John, did you have, was there, no, John, okay. Do I have a continuing desire to obey the commandments of God? That's something Peggy, you touched on. Sinclair Ferguson broke down James 2, and he has faith A and faith B, and we're pretty much out of time, but I'll finish on this.

He said faith A is faith without deeds, faith in contrast to deeds, faith in itself without action, or faith that is alone or isolated from deeds. Faith B is a faith shown by what it does, faith accompanied by actions, and faith consummated by actions, and there are scripture references for those, but I'm, you know, it's all in James 2, so that's where we're looking.

So his point in this breakdown is to show that actions proceed from a saving faith, right? If there's no spurring to action of service in our faith, we should be concerned. Going back to Westminster Confession, it says, faith is the alone instrument of justification, yet it is never alone in the person justified, but it is ever accompanied by all other saving graces and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.

Do you show your faith by your works? Is faith something that you keep in your fanny pack, you know, it's part of, you got it around, or is it something that encompasses you and is very much a fiber of who you are, right?

So the idea is, when we look back at our lives, do we see a point at which we said, you know, I've got my cargo pants on, and I'm going to take faith, and I'm going to put it in my pants, and that way I can bring it with me wherever I go, or is it something that has created, like Peggy said, a new creation?

Has it fundamentally changed you, changed your direction, changed your outlook, changed your desires, right? And that is a way that we can look back on that, and we can have assurance, or not, right? Maybe we look back and we see that those things haven't happened, and that should cause us to question, but if we look back and we see the action of God, the power of God working in our lives and changing us, then that certainly is something that gives us assurance.

Does anybody want to add anything before we wrap up, Harry? Right, and another way to look at that, I was talking to somebody a few months ago now, after somebody had passed away, and their spouse was still living, and said, you know, when this person has entered into glory, because glory is outside of time, there is no chronology to it, they're already with their spouse, in the sense that they're worshiping God together.

Why? Because they don't have to wait for their spouse to die. They're outside of time. They're already there, right? And so God is outside of time. He's not... God has declared us righteous at Calvary.

He doesn't have to wait for us to sin, and then say, okay, that sin's taken care of too, right? God is outside of time. He has declared us righteous, and so when we think about that invitation, that declaration of God, it's not like there's that split second between when I sinned and when I get forgiven, because I'm a believer.

It's already done. It's already taken care of, and that is certainly something in which we can have assurance. Does anybody want to add anything else? So it's interesting, because under false assurance are a lot of things that we would kind of look at and be like, oh, a lot of those are good and noble things, but those aren't basis for salvation, right?

Anything else? All right. Let's close in prayer. Father, thank you for these last three weeks, for the study of the assurance of salvation. Just pray, Lord, that you would work a miraculous work in all of us, that even if we are strong in our assurance and confident in our salvation, that you would strengthen us even more.