Believer, you should have assurance (Rom. 5:1-5)
 |
| Image from Pixabay |
But it’s one thing to believe that and another thing to experience the peace that this should bring right now. It’s one thing to believe in the doctrine of the preservation of the saints, and another to know that you are a saint who is being preserved. Unfortunately, there have been many believers throughout history who have struggled with assurance. That doesn’t mean they aren’t saved, but it does mean that they are going through the Christian life with less joy and peace and fruitfulness than they ought to have.
Such people go through life sadly singing,
In fact, there have been people who have taught that a Christian shouldn’t have assurance. The Roman Catholic church, for example, expressly denies it. They must, since they believe that grace can be lost. But there are Protestants who deny it as well. The heirs of Arminius deny it. They believe that you can lose your salvation. Those who belong to the denomination known as the Churches of Christ deny it. So they would all say that you have to live your entire life between now and death in suspense, as it were, never sure you are going to make it to heaven. They would say it is necessary to think this way, otherwise a believer would get spiritually lazy and fall into sin. They would argue that unless there is this sword hanging over our heads, we won’t be properly motivated to endure in faith to the end.
They would also point to all the passages in the Scriptures that warn of what happens to those who fall away. They point to passages like Hebrews 6 and 10 and others. So, for example, the author of Hebrews says in fact that “it is impossible . . . if they (professing Christians) shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame” (Heb. 6:4, 6). And Paul talks to the Galatians about falling from grace (Gal. 5:4).
What do we say to that? Well, I have dealt with the passages in Hebrews in the past and I would refer you to my messages on them for the details. But I would sum it up like this: none of those passages teach that a person who has been truly saved can be lost. They teach that people who call themselves Christian can end up falling away from the faith, but they were never saved to begin with. It might appear to us that here is a person who once had faith but now has none, but God, who knows the heart, knows that their faith was never real. They are like the stony ground hearers, or the thorny ground hearers in our Lord’s parable, that appeared to respond to the seed of the word, but their ground was never good; their heart was never right (cf. Mk. 4:13-20). Or, as the apostle John described those who fell away from the faith in his day: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us” (1 Jn. 2:19). Why did they fall away? Because they were not of us.
Even so, when Paul talks about falling from grace in his letter to the Galatians, he doesn’t mean that you can have grace and then lose it. He is talking to people who once claimed to believe the gospel of grace and then exchanged that for a system of grace mixed with works. He is talking about the loss of the doctrine of grace, not the possession of grace itself.
On the other hand, we have passages like this in the book of Romans. The grace we receive from the Lord Jesus is a grace “wherein we stand” (2). It is not a grace that we move in and out of. The hope that we have does not and will not make us ashamed (5). As the apostle will put it in verse 9, “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.” Those who are now justified shall be saved! This is certainty. This a ground of assurance of salvation. There is a “much more then” to our salvation than what those who claim you can lose your salvation think.
Of course there are also all the passages that explicitly teach the final perseverance of the saints. Perhaps no one put it more clearly than our Savior himself. He said concerning everyone that the Father gave him in the decree of election, he would lose nothing, but raise them up again on the last day (Jn. 6:39; cf. also 5:24). Or, as he put it in the 10th chapter of the gospel of John, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand” (Jn. 10:27-29). Doubly enwrapped in the Son’s and the Father’s hands, the saints cannot be lost.
But, as I say, it is one thing to believe that, and another thing to enjoy it. Do you personally enjoy as a believer the assurance of your salvation? Well, what I want to argue for this morning is that it is God’s will for you, if you are justified by faith in Christ, to have the assurance of your salvation. God wants you to rejoice in your salvation. Not just to rejoice in salvation, but to rejoice in your personal possession of it. In fact, there are three reasons in the text as to why the believer has a right to have assurance of salvation. First, because of what salvation gives us (1-2). Second, because of what suffering gives us (3-4). Finally, because of what the Spirit gives us (5).
Believer, rejoice because of what salvation gives you (1-2).
This is what we looked at last time, so I won’t stay here long on the exposition of the meaning of the verses. To sum up, the apostle says here that salvation, and in particular justification which comes by faith, gives us peace with God and access to God which leads to rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God. Now the point I want to make today is that God is revealing this to us through the apostle, and he is writing to believers and saying, “Therefore being justified by faith.” In other words, this is a reality that these believers are supposed to know about, and know it of themselves. They are to know that they are the justified ones. And then, they are to know that “we have peace with God.” We have peace. Not someone else. Not some hypothetical person out there. But we, we who have put our trust in Jesus. This is something we are meant to know about, and something we are meant to presently enjoy. Believer, do you enjoy this? Does this peace with God give you the peace of God? “By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand.” Again, the personal element is there. We are expected to know these things and to live in light of these things. It’s not like Paul is giving us a guided tour at the museum of salvation and having us look at things that we can never touch. No! Paul is telling every believer what belongs to him or her and that they should enjoy it. Paul is, as it were, taking you through your heavenly Father’s house and pointing out to you the things in it that he has for his children to enjoy. Paul is saying, “Here they are; take advantage of them!”
These are all things that should create rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. I must again insist that this is not only rejoicing in a kind of detached way that God’s glory will be manifested in the end. This is rejoicing in the hope that we as those who are justified will ourselves experience and enjoy the glory of God. We will see the glory of Christ and we will be satisfied. We rejoice in anticipation of it. We are confident that we will enjoy it. That’s assurance! And note that Paul just assumes that these Roman Christians, many of whom he does not even know personally, will rejoice in hope of the glory of God, and will rejoice in peace with God and access to God.
Now as I said before, there are Christians who never seem to enjoy this. They are never able to take personal possession of these gifts. They say they believe in Jesus and that salvation is by grace and that all the saints are secure, but they live with it all at arm’s length. They are afraid to own them. They are always doubtful and hesitant to fully embrace the assurance of their salvation.
There are perhaps as many reasons for this as there are people of whom this is true. I have no doubt that even physical and biological realities can play into it. What I mean by that is that if a person is physically sick, especially if it is a chronic condition, that this will inevitably effect the spirit and that can in some cases affect a person’s assurance of salvation. Sometimes I don’t think this reality is taken with as much seriousness by some pastors as it ought to be. However, some of the older pastors understood this perhaps even better than some of us do today. William Jay, for example, a nineteenth century pastor, nailed this one on the head. He understood that “Health . . . has its spiritual bearings.” He goes on: “In all the works of religion the body is the companion of the soul, but in many it is the instrument. We cannot read, or hear, or sing, or go to the house of God, without it. Many of what good people call their temptations, and doubts, and fears, are only physical effects. The frame is disordered through which they see and feel. Hence they are affected even in their intercourse with God; and when they consider, are afraid of him. How many privileges too, in the means of grace, are they deprived of while they are the prisoners of sickness, the remembrance of which draws forth their tears.” It’s good for us to remember this, especially if we are that sick person. We need to realize that perhaps what we are interpreting as a spiritual condition is really a physical one, and not allow our hopes to be dashed upon the rocks of a misinterpreted cause.
But there are other believers who are healthy as a horse, but who still struggle with assurance. Now if you belong to a church which denies that a Christian can have the assurance of their salvation, you need to get out of that church and go to a place that teaches the Bible correctly. Knowledge of true doctrine does play a part in our assurance. You see this in verse 1, for example; it’s what stands behind the “therefore” at the beginning of the verse. Paul is making a deduction based on what he has been teaching. The deduction is a deduction that leads inevitably to assurance, but you are not going to make that deduction without the teaching! You also see this principle worked out in verse 3, in the words, “knowing that.” Why can we glory in tribulations also? Why can we have this assurance even when all the world is crashing around us? Well, because we know something, and we apply that knowledge to our situation, and it brings us hope and joy and assurance. Doctrine is important; true doctrine is important! And the application of that doctrine to our lives is what gives us assurance.
Another kind of person that we need to address is the believer who has lost assurance, not because of false doctrine, but because of unconfessed and unrepented sin in the life. Though it is true that our salvation does not depend upon our goodness, yet it is also true that God sanctifies those whom he justifies. Holiness is not the ground of our salvation, but it is an evidence of it. This is the whole point of all those passages in the book of 1 John that tell us about the evidences of the new birth: those who are born again keep God’s commandments, do not live in sin, love the brethren, believe on Jesus Christ, and so on. So someone who claims to be confident in their salvation but who is living in sin without any real concern about it, who is using grace as a cover for continuing in sin, has a false assurance. The Holy Spirit who gives us assurance will not assist us in our sin. You can be sure that if a true believer has sin in his or her life, the Spirit will withdraw the comfort, and will make that person miserable in their sin. God will discipline us so that we will be partakers in his holiness (Heb. 12:5-14). King David, a man after God’s own heart, experienced this. He tells us that there was a time when he had sin in his life, and God made him miserable until it brought him to repentance. He writes, “O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath: neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. For thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore. There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin. For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me” (Ps. 38:1-4). This experience brought him to repentance, for he goes on to say, “For I will declare mine iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin” (18).
In fact, the apostle John warns us about the danger of false assurance at the very beginning of his first epistle. He says, “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 Jn. 1:6-7). So we must emphasize that the promise of assurance to true believers is not a ticket to sin. It is not an indulgence. Assurance cannot be separated from fellowship with God, and fellowship with God is impossible when a person is not walking in agreement with God’s word. So though we don’t look to our personal holiness as the ground of our assurance, for that is found in the righteousness of God in Christ, yet personal holiness is essential to maintaining fellowship with God, apart from which we cannot have assurance. And assurance apart from holiness is a false assurance. It is counterfeit assurance that produces a counterfeit joy and a false peace. To rest in false assurance is like sitting in a chair with broken legs. It will disappoint you.
However, there is one more type of believer that I feel it is important to talk about. I have observed many saints whose faith is in Jesus, who believe and even rejoice in the doctrines of sovereign grace, who are walking in the light and in obedience to God’s word, and yet for some reason they are never quite able to have assurance and get the comfort they ought to get from the gospel. This is the person I mentioned at the beginning who is always saying, “Tis a point I long to know,” and so on.
Now you would think that a person who believes in the doctrines of unconditional election and the preservation of the saints of all people would surely have assurance of salvation, but I’m telling you I’ve met a lot of these people who don’t. Why? Well, I think it is an artifact of the way they believe in sovereign grace. Don’t get me wrong! I am a firm believer in sovereign grace. But there is a right way to hold the doctrines of grace and there is a wrong way to hold the doctrines of grace. What I think happens is that because they believe that God must initiate the saving process (which is true) that they must wait for signs of his work within before they can have assurance. And what then happens is that these dear folks end up spending their entire lives looking for signs of God’s work by looking within themselves. And so their lives are taken up with introspection. What does this give them? Well, if they are honest, as they look within, they are going to see sin. They are going to see failure. They are going to find plenty of reasons to be disgusted with themselves and disappointed with themselves. With the hymn they go on to say,
What is the remedy? For, as we see here in Romans 5, this is not the way it’s supposed to be. We’re supposed to be rejoicing and glorying and joying in our salvation, not constantly saying, “Woe is me!”
Well, I think the remedy is to remember that what the Bible tells the sinner to do is not to begin by looking within, even if to look for God’s work. What does the Bible tell us to do? It tells us to look to Jesus Christ and to his righteousness, to his power to save, and to his worthiness. And it tells us, it promises us, that all who do so will be justified and saved. We are to look to Christ and take God at his word. That is our responsibility. That is where we start. Do we sometimes, even often, need to do introspection? Yes; you can’t have repentance without it. But even when we look within, and say,
Search me, O God, and know my heart today,
we do it as we trust in our Lord for the grace to save, and by remembering his promise to justify, not those who can discern a work of grace within, but the ungodly.
Believer, rejoice because of what suffering gives you (3-4).
Paul goes on to say, “And not only so;” that is, not only do we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, but we also glory and rejoice in something else. What is it? The apostle explains: “but we glory in tribulations also.” Wow, that’s strange! Why would a believer rejoice in sufferings? Well, we must put in a caveat here. We don’t rejoice in suffering for suffering’s sake. We rejoice because that, in God’s providence and grace, he makes suffering into ministers for our good.
One of the implications here is that as believers we should not be surprised when tribulations come into our lives. It is part of the good discipline of the Lord to grow us in grace. That doesn’t mean that God is out to crush us and make us miserable. But it does mean that suffering is a part of the Christian life that God uses for our good. The apostles told the churches that “we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22; cf. Rom. 8:18).
How are we to respond to this? We are to rejoice. This instruction is pervasive throughout the Bible. Our Lord himself taught it in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you” (Mt. 5:10-12). The apostle James teaches it: “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations” (Jam. 1:2). The apostle Peter teaches it: “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified” (1 Pet. 4:12-14). So this is not something you can choose to do. This is expected of the Christian.
It can of course be very difficult. The natural response to tribulation is not joy but frustration, disappointment, grief, and anger. So how do we learn to glory in tribulations? The answer Paul gives us here is to see what tribulation gives us. He says that “tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope” (3-4). What we see is that for the true Christian, tribulation doesn’t undo and undermine faith, it bolsters it. It doesn’t undercut hope; it begins with hope and it ends with more hope.
One of the ways you can detect a false believer, someone who is a Christian in name only, is how they react to suffering. For a Christian, suffering serves as a minister to build them up in the faith. For the faker, it destroys what appeared to be faith. I refer you again to the Parable of the Sower. Our Lord said, concerning the seed (which stands for the preached word of God) sown on stony ground (which stands for a certain kind of hearer of the gospel), “But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended” (Mt. 13:20-21). We can contrast that response to persecution and hardship with that of the apostles Peter and John. After they had been beaten for preaching the gospel, we are told that “they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name” (Acts 5:41).
Of course that doesn’t mean that we are always going to respond properly in every way. We are talking about the general course of the believer’s life. Job started out good under suffering, but over time he soured against God. But he came back around, didn’t he? God knows how to do that. I’m thankful for that. He disciplines us so that our faith grows in the end.
But how does tribulation, trials, and suffering bring us hope? First of all, it does it by producing patience in us. Now “patience” here is not a passive thing. It does not mean passively enduring tribulation. Rather, it is active in meaning. It refers to perseverance through trial. Believers endure through suffering because they know that God is at work in it all for their good. He is working even the suffering for their good (Rom. 8:28). This is why the apostle James exhorts his audience, “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” (Jam. 1:2-4). He is telling us to endure through the trial with joy because it will make us perfect and entire, spiritually mature.
And this is the next thing Paul mentions: “experience.” Now this word is translated several times in the KJV as “proof” (cf. 2 Cor. 2:9; 13:3; Phil. 2:22). In another instance, it is translated as “trial” (2 Cor. 8:2). Other translations variously render the word as “approvedness” or “character” or “proven character.” I think a good way to think of this word is that it refers to someone who, as the result of enduring in faith through suffering, has come out on the other side of it “tried and true.” The apostle Peter illustrates what Paul is saying when he writes, “Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:6-7). This is what suffering does to the true believer; it refines their faith, it makes it better, like fire taking the dross off the gold. It grows us and makes us stronger. It purges sin and unbelief out of our life. It draws us closer to God.
And the net effect of this is that, even though we begin the journey through suffering with hope in the glory of God (Rom. 5:2), we come out on the other side of suffering with even more hope (4). In other words, if the Holy Spirit dwells in you, suffering doesn’t ultimately pull you away from God; it draws you closer to him. And for that reason, we can rejoice even in our tribulations.
Believer, rejoice because of what the Spirit gives you (5).
“And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” Paul goes on to say that this hope which is built up through the endurance of suffering is not a hope that disappoints us, because God pours out his love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The apostle is saying that the Holy Spirit gives us an immediate sense of God’s love to us in our hearts. This is not a deduction. This is not something that we reason to. There is that. We’ve noted that doctrine makes a difference in matters of assurance. There is an element of assurance that is the result of believing the promises of God’s word. But that is not the final word on assurance. There is also this, the pouring out of God’s love in the hearts of those who are justified by faith. It is a gift given directly to the believer by the work of the Spirit of God in the heart. This is the highest form of assurance. It is this immediate experience of God.
It is this reality that the apostle refers to again in the eighth chapter of this epistle, when he says, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together” (Rom. 8:14-17). God pours out his love in our hearts. How does he do it? He does it by giving us the Spirit of adoption that causes us to sense that God is our Father, and we are his children. It is a work of the Spirit that draws us God. It is the witness of the Spirit to our spirit that in Christ the Father loves us.
Our Lord referred to this reality in John 14, when he said, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. . . . Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him” (21, 23). God manifests himself to us in order to cause us to sense his love for us. Our Lord goes on to say that the way he does this is by the Holy Spirit who comes to us as another Comforter (16-18). It is the same thing.
Now Paul assumes this is true of the believer. If you are a believer, then the Holy Spirit has been given to you. In fact, you cannot be a believer apart from the work of the Spirit (cf. Rom. 8:9-11). And so if you are a believer, the Spirit has been poured out in your hearts. And the result is that we feel God’s love for us.
But I think it is also true that not every believer experiences this to the same extent. There are saints who came to have such an overwhelming sense of God’s love to them, years after they became a Christian. It’s not that they hadn’t had any sense of God’s love to them before, but it was poured out in their hearts in a new and powerful way, and it changed their lives from that point on. I think of D. L. Moody and the experience he had on Wall Street, when God’s love was poured out so powerfully in his heart that he literally cried out for God to stay his hand, as he was overwhelmed with a sense of God’s love for him. In fact, in my reading of church history, I’ve come across this again and again in the lives of believers that have been greatly used by God that the unifying experience of them all was a tremendous experience of the love of God for them, resulting in certainly and assurance. By the way, far from making them want to sit on their hands or give themselves over to sin, it had the opposite effect; it made them into powerhouses for the kingdom of God.
The point though is this: if God is through the Spirit pouring out his love into our hearts, then that means that he wants his children to have the assurance of his love for them. This is not something that we should be afraid of. It is not something which is beyond our grasp. This is something that is right for the Christian to have and to enjoy. And to whatever extent we have experienced it, I think it is right to go on and seek for greater effusions of God’s love in your heart. Believer, it is right for you to have assurance.
What is this so important?
You may wonder why I am emphasizing this. Well, one reason is that this is the clear implication of the text. Paul is drawing out for us the implications of justification, and one of those is the assurance and certainty of the salvation that we have in Christ. Believers are meant to live in light of this, and to personally appropriate these realities for themselves. Not all of us do that as we ought. I can say that because I’m one of those people.
But why is assurance so desirable? Well, it is so because it leads to joy in God. This, as we showed last time, is also one of the themes of verses 1-11. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God (2). We rejoice in tribulations also, not for the trials themselves but because they are ministers that enlarge our hope in God (5). We rejoice in the atonement of our Lord for us which is the ground of all our hope (11). By the way, this is not just hope that we get to go to heaven when we die. It is hope in the glory of God. It is joy in God. And joy in God is the rocket fuel for world-denying, idol-killing, people-loving, Christ-honoring obedience.
Assurance frees us from slavery to earthly comforts. Now I don’t mean ascetism. The Bible doesn’t teach that, and in fact teaches that every creating thing is good and worthy to be received, if it can be received with thanksgiving (cf. 1 Tim. 4:1,ff). But it does make us into people who can enjoy this world without being a slave to it, and if obedience to Christ means that we have to give up this or that worldly comfort, we do so out of love to God. It was the mindset of Moses, who “when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward” (Heb. 11:24-26).
Saints who have assurance glorify God by their assurance. For their confidence in God is a declaration to the world that God will never lose what belongs to him. Their lives proclaim the truth that what God has begun, he will bring to completion at the day when Jesus our Lord returns (Phil. 1:6).
So, brothers and sisters, claim what belongs to you. Not because we think we deserve it, but because God gives it to us graciously, freely, and unchangeably in Christ. And if you are not a Christian, my prayer for you is that the Spirit of God will draw you to Christ by faith. Come to him, and embrace him and receive in him the forgiveness of sins, and eternal hope through grace.
Comments
Post a Comment