The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Assurance of Salvation

Forgive the digression, but the username was in honour of a cat I once had... I had no idea of the word's N American connotations when I gave him the name.

Returning to the theme, what you say about conviction of sin is interesting and very valid. I think John Knox told the queen of Scotland that "conscience must be taught", when she objected that her conscience was at odds with his teaching. I think Paul's record of the case of believers who feared to eat meat offered to idols is pertinent; their scruples were not of God, but rather, from the flesh or the devil playing upon their fears.

Still, the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. I know there are various views on precisely what this means; a staunchly Reformed friend of mine spoke of it as an intuition, but I deeply distrust intuition, since we're back to "feelings" and impressions again. The Spirit is a person, so He somehow witnesses to our person; Paul speaks of having "the mind of the Spirit"... No, assurance is something our minds lay hold of by understanding of the Word (we are to "Get understanding"). Jesus said, "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me"; do we love Jesus with a thankful heart? Do we enjoy selfless love for our neighbour? Do we have selfless reverence for God (as opposed to slavish dread)? Do such desires have appeal independent of the assurance they imply? If the answer is yes, the Word of God promises that we are believers. No intuiton is needed to know this!

The question is, can Satan counterfeit such proofs of a work of grace? Well, yes and no. People think they love God because they love the "things of God", e.g, prophecy, reading the Bible, theology, church activities, etc., or they may have love the idea of a soppy, "Santa Clause" of a "God", and so delude themselves into thinking they love God. But if the Bible says selfless love for God is a mark of grace, and if we can say we have caught a genuine glimpse of such love in our hearts, we surely have grounds to say that we are born again. We trust that God cannot lie about His promises in Scripture, and so, we say we are His children. But assurance may waver because we doubt our love for Him, since every good work God enables us do is tainted with indwelling sin.

For my own part, assurance was absolute when I was an Arminian, but it was false asurance because it was based on my own works. Then, as a Calvinist, I totally lost assurance for a long time - all I could see was my terrible guilt and blackness of heart as the law of God crushed me with its damning, killing words. But assurance seems to be gradually increasing as time progresses.

To close, let's look foremost at Christ (His excellencies of virtue, loveliness, meekness, love, selflessness, humility, Divinity, atonement, etc.) and then may we see if God has worked in us selfless delight in Christ. Let's do this rather than looking at anything we have done that even a devil could do; if the Legion of devils could ask Jesus to spare them pain or if cursed Ahab could go softly before the Lord when under threat, let us never rest in anything less than the Bible's definiton of evidences of a work of grace, knowing it is impossible to perform even one very imperfect deed of righteousness (selfless love for God, selfless love for one's neighbour) without the enabling of Him Who works in His children both to do and to will of His good pleasure.