Christian Assurance
Every Christian has, at some point, questioned whether or not he is truly saved. We all deal with doubt. How do we navigate the swamps of doubt and fear back to the sure footing of God’s grace? What is the foundation of God’s love for us? And how are we reassured when we question whether or not God loves us?
First of all, we must realize that the Bible teaches that we can have assurance of salvation. John helps us understand this in 1 John 4:18, which says, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear.” When we are resting in the love of God, we no longer need to be afraid of Him. When John says love casts out fear he’s not saying we don’t have a reverent fear of God, recognizing that He has all power and holds all things together. The fear John is speaking of is one that involves torment (cf. v 19). It is a fear of consequences, being righteously, eternally judged for our sins. There’s none of this kind of fear in love. When we discover saving rest in Christ, we no longer need to be afraid of God.
We can have assurance, but how can we be reassured when we doubt whether God loves us? What should we do when we sin? Give up? Doubt our salvation and God’s grace in our lives? Assume that our sin puts us immediately out of God’s favor?
No. If we are in Christ, God loves us even when we sin. The doctrine of justification helps us remember that our standing before God is based on what Christ has done, not based on how well we are doing today.
I’m not saying that if we are justified we can go live however we want. I am saying that a believer in Christ is not any less justified when he sins. He is less righteous experientially, but he’s not any less clothed in Christ’s righteousness. God’s favor toward him is based on what Christ has done, not on how well he has performed.
Yet sin does displease God. Justification does not mean that sin should no longer be battled. Rather, justification means that those who are in Christ can return to God’s grace after they sin.
Sin and Justification by Faith
How should we deal with sin if we believe we are justified by faith in Christ’s work? If we believe this, we know that we can return to God for restoration, for forgiveness and for cleansing. Paul says in Romans 5, “God demonstrates His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” And he continues, “If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”
When did God set His love on us? When we made ourselves worthy of it? When we said and did the right things? No, but when we were at war with Him. When we were in rebellion against Christ, He loved us and gave Himself for us. We were poor, miserable, blind, and naked. God loved us then, not because of who we were but because of Christ. If that’s so, then He will continue to love us through the doubts and failings of our sanctified struggle with sin. He loved us when we were His enemies; now that we are His children, He will love us through our sin all the more.
Do not hear me say that God countenances sin in the lives of His people. Do hear me say that God does not reject His children the moment they sin. He graciously convicts them and draws them back to Himself.
John helps us understand this repentance process in 1 John 1:9. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Notice what God does in response to our confession. He not only forgives; He also cleanses. A cheap view of salvation says that forgiveness is all we need. We just need to make sure God won’t hold our sins against us. But God intends far more for us. He forgives us, and He cleanses us from sin. This is not a motive for running from God (I can sin and God will accept me again) but is rather a motive for running back to God after we’ve lost our way.
Embracing this gospel truth—that God’s love for us was never based on what we did but only ever on what Christ has done for us—totally changes how we deal with sin. God loves us still, so rather than hide in fear, we run to Him yet again for forgiveness and cleansing.
Sin and Justification by Works
If, instead of accepting justification by faith alone, we believe that we are justified by what we do (whether as a part of the reason or all of the reason), we shrink from admitting our sins and therefore remove ourselves from the forgiveness and cleansing which God promises. If we think justification is given based on faith and works, or based on works entirely, we will begin to doubt God’s love the moment we don’t hold up our end of the bargain. If our salvation rests on our contributions and not on Christ alone, we will want to excuse, cover, and deny our shortcomings, failures, and sins. We will want to minimize sin so as to minimize our failures. If we do this, we might gain a mock assurance that’s based on our performance, but never a steady assurance based on Christ’s life, work, death, and resurrection. If we think we must hold up our end of the deal, we will naturally think that we fall out of God’s favor the moment we fall short of perfection.
But this betrays the gospel. If your assurance is as fickle as your works, it may be because you are looking within yourself to find a reason for God to love you. This is a crumbly foundation for faith. Assurance and rest in Christ can only come as we trust in His righteousness alone.
Again, do not hear me say that believers can be comfortable in sin or can accept its presence as right and good and normal. Though we will fight sin until we die or Christ returns, we do not make terms of peace. We do not rest until the battle is won, even though it may take a lifetime to conquer. Do not get comfortable with sin any more than you would relax with a thief or a murderer loose in your home. True believers make war on sin.
Yet even in the war, sometimes we lose a battle. Given the reality of indwelling sin which remains even in the believer, even the best of us will sin. The pervasiveness of sin is even clearer when we take Jesus’ definition of sin whereby hate is likened to murder and lust is likened to adultery. Sin includes more than our actions, it begins in the heart. The heart that is inflamed in lust for forbidden pleasure is a heart which is not yet fully subjected to Christ. The heart which hates God’s image bearer is not yet made captive to Christ. And while that sinful seed remains, the battle continues.
So what do we do when we sin? What do we do when lust or anger or impatience or bitterness or envy or discontentment or complaining crop up in our hearts again? A works-based gospel would have us bury those things, hiding them from God. A grace-based gospel leads us to God, who loved us even when we were sinners and who by His grace will rescue us from our sin once again.
The Locus of the Gospel
Justification impacts our lives practically in another way. That is, what is our goal in life? Or rather, who is our goal in life? Understanding justification by faith helps orient us toward a God-glorifying posture in all of life. Justification is ours by grace. That grace comes from God and is given, not earned. If justification is by faith alone, it is by grace alone, and is therefore for the glory of God alone.
Paul in Romans 3 links salvation by grace alone with justification by faith alone. Though there’s much to be said, I simply want us to glean that, for the Apostle Paul, salvation by grace alone comes married to justification by faith alone. That is, if salvation rests entirely upon Christ’s work, then it cannot be gained through a work. The means by which salvation is received cannot include a work which would render Christ’s work insufficient. If Christ’s work is sufficient, then we cannot amend it or add to it. If salvation is by grace alone, then nothing can be required of us but to receive the gift.
Why does this matter? Because if we discard or downplay justification by faith alone, we are of necessity also discarding and downplaying grace. If our works are necessary to complete our salvation, then God’s grace isn’t sufficient to save. Rejecting justification by faith alone leads us to a view of the gospel that isn’t grace-based. And therefore, a view of the gospel that isn’t God-centered. If our gospel is to be God-glorifying, it must be God-centered. And if it is to be God-centered, it must be grace-based. That is, it must be about what God has done to save sinners, not about what sinners have done to make themselves worthy of God.
Why does this matter? What practical difference does it make whether salvation is grace-based or not? Let me ask you this: What practical difference does it make whether you believe your purpose is to glorify God or to glorify yourself? What is the purpose of life, the purpose for which we are made? To glorify God.
This fundamental reality orients all aspects of life. Everything you do—your work, your eating and sleeping, your interactions with people, the good things you do and the sin you avoid—everything in your life is oriented by this principle. If we believe that we are at the center, that we deserve glory for our good works, then we don’t have God-centered lives. We will naturally live in ways that make us comfortable, exalt ourselves, and make much of ourselves because we are focused on ourselves.
If we believe the gospel is about our move toward God, where we make ourselves worthy of His grace, we will focus our attention on ourselves and the things we are doing that put us in God’s favor. This is a man-centered, man-glorifying religion and is certainly contrary to Paul’s desire to glory only in the cross of Christ. If we make our works essential to part or all of our justification, we make ourselves a part of the cause of grace. We make our works the reason why God loves us, thereby claiming some of the glory of redemption for ourselves. We glorify ourselves, and not God alone.
Yet this is neither good, nor biblical, nor God-honoring. If we instead see the gospel rightly (as what God does for helpless sinners), we will naturally be led to glory in God and not in ourselves. If we are focused on God, we will begin to move toward the things that glorify God and bring attention to Him.
Does justification matter? This isn’t something that lies inert in the fringes of our lives. No, this is the center of reality. Do you live for yourself, or do you live for God? Do you live to make much of yourself, or make much of God? Do you live to please yourself, or to please God? Do you live to glorify yourself, or to glorify God? Justification by faith alone leads us to glorify God alone. This is made possible only by God’s grace and is received through faith alone. This doctrine leads us to glory only in the cross of Christ, to glory in God alone, to fix our gaze on Him—and forget everything else.
The scripture makes it clear in many places that justification (salvation) is not by faith alone.
Jesus condemned those who did not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in prison etc. and justified those that did. He also made it clear that unless we forgive men their trespasses our heavenly father will not forgive our trespasses. Both Christ and the Apostles made it abundantly clear that we enter the kingdom of God through repentance and faith. Forgiving others and repenting of our sins is not an easy work. Paul says that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of heaven, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind. If a man is justified by faith alone then it stands to reason that no work of sin could undo his justification; hence once saved always saved. The apostle James makes it clear that by works a man is justified and not by faith alone.
Justification by faith alone is the doctrine that has turned Gods grace into a license to sin and turned America and “Christian nations” into the licentious and perverse nation that it is today. Justification by faith is much like the overly simplistic scientific world that existed before Einsteins theory of relativity. Just like gravity, matter and light are all interdependent upon each other and affected by each other, faith, works, cross-bearing and being changed by the Spirit of God into a new creature are all related to the equation of justification. Salvation = Faith working in love. You may argue that Salvation and Justification are not equivalent but those who are saved/justified will be eternally with Christ and all others will be condemned.
Theologians love to codify and box God up into simple phrases like “justification by faith alone”, yet Anabaptists and true followers of the lamb simply receive with meekness the implanted word. Sometimes there are things that don’t seem to add up as we compare one scripture with another but accepting them all as truth is much preferrable to forcing them all under one overly simplistic man-made equation.
Salvation by faith alone turns the Gospel into a legalistic transaction whereby man simply believes and is off the hook without repentance, conversion, forgiveness, love, abiding in the vine, walking in the Spirit etc. It is legalism at its finest.
It is true that no work can ever undo my condemnation besides the work of Christ on the cross. It is also true that any finite work that man does can never be compared the infinitely amazing and incomprehensible work of Christ to save us. A bridle and a saddle will never get me anywhere unless that saddle and bridle are on a horse. Justification by faith alone is like a horse with no equipment to ride it. Glory should not be given to the saddle but to the strength of the horse.
Today we live in a world where people are offended at everything, and we have a push to be “all-inclusive”, Gods word makes it plain; come out from among them and be ye separate. Anabaptist flirtation with the same evangelical sophists that attempted to seduce the Martyrs has caused them to fall from the true faith once delivered unto the saints. Finally, Paul makes it clear in 1 Cor 13 that neither giving our body to be burned or having faith that removes mountains will meet the requirement that Love alone can fill. I am reluctant to enter this argument in part because the whole faith and works argument tends to be an “either or” argument and the scripture is saying that it is more than both of them, however the justification by faith alone statement is not representative of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
It’s clear that we’re on different wavelengths as to what the Bible teaches, and I doubt a lengthy discussion will benefit either of us. A few brief notes.
Justification by faith is not the whole gospel, but it is an essential component of the gospel. Salvation is “the gift of God, not of works.” It’s true that distorted views of justification have been used to excuse sin, but that does not negate biblically sound definitions of justification. Rightly taken alongside regeneration, Spirit-filling, life in Christ, and the works which will always follow when true faith is present, justification stands as a biblical doctrine. I dealt with many of your objections in a longer series of podcasts I did on justification; you may be helped by listening to those. Find them here: https://theologicaltouchpoints.com/podcast/ (from “Is Justification a Reformed Doctrine” to “Does Justification Matter?”). If you don’t want to listen to the whole series, “Living Faith” and “If You Love Me…” will be most helpful.
May the Lord bless your desire to be faithful to Him.