Assurance

ASSURANCE

ver: January 18 1996
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To Quotes
Some Questions
* "In repentance and rest you shall be saved,

In quietness and trust is your strength."

--- Is. 30:15 NASB*----

It is said by some that when a Christian speaks of being saved, and especially when they speak of being sure that they are saved, they're expressing a kind of religious arrogance. After all, only God is privy to such things. Besides, what if we're deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us? Not at all unlikely, given our sinful nature. We can hope we are saved, but what right do we have to say that we know it or are secure about it?

A game question. Lip service is no service at all. The modern human has learned to con ourselves and each other in ever-better ways. Our ability to 'know' anything for sure is quite limited. In a deeply fractured world even the knowledge of so-called 'hard facts' require some degree of trust -- trust in the source of the facts, trust in how they found out, trust that they checked the facts, trust that they communicated it right, trust that we understand what they communicated. Christians (especially of a fundamentalist type) forget this, and lapse into talk of 'certainty' and 'absolute knowledge'. No; we do not have naked 'certainty'. We can't have it. But it is possible to have 'assurance' : knowledge that is secure enough that one can base one's actions on it without fear.

For a Christian, that security comes by trusting the source : a God who loves us so much that it just would not do to sit around and sob over the fractured relationship with humanity, loves us so much that God made the move to re-establish the relationship and get to work at fixing the brokenness of the world. And security comes by trusting the source's communication : God walked among us, even suffering death (the 'good news'); God revealed the divine purpose and will through certain people (Scripture). And, by trusting that there has been a lot of checking and cross-checking over the course of 4000 or so years of Jewish and Christian history, to see if we understand God's communication rightly.

Perhaps it's not right to act as if the case is closed merely because Scripture or the early Church Fathers or the Reformers speak. But they do speak, and speak clearly. It is part of the message of the New Testament (with hints in the Old), the early Fathers (though less so the later ones) and the Reformers (especially Luther) that we be bold in what we do. They didn't want us to hesitate to live a Christian life just because we're afraid that we'll sin in such a way that we lose salvation and disconnect from God's grace. Their concern that we be confident was not pulled out of thin air.

When I assert that the Scriptures are the source and norm of our Christian way of life, and that the Creeds, as expressions of the Gospel found in Scripture, shape and further define that Christian living and thinking, I am saying that I hold myself to be in no place to dismiss or treat trivially what is written there -- that I recognize how the Spirit has worked through these sources, and it is through them that I can tell how the Spirit is working in me and my world today.

In those days, and now, the Spirit was opening their eyes to see that humans live under the terrible burden of their own sin, individual and collective. Christ took this weight off of us, gratis. Christ is for losers, even for the bottomest folks. Do I believe in this Christ? Yes!! Then what do I have to be afraid about? If God (not me) reconciled me to God, even with this burden, even with this blindness, what on earth can I do to separate me from God? Perhaps only if I don't care about it anymore, if I reject it. The Spirit won't work within me if I kick it out. But God, for God's part of it, won't give up on me even then. God will be the father keeping his eye on the horizon down the road, looking for a prodigal son who may well choose to live and die with the pigs at the swill and never return home.

This is about as secure as one can get. So we need not quiver in fear like Luther did back when he was a monk. We can be bold. We can even be real jerks. Not that God wants us to make mistakes; our errors often hurt others, and undermine the truth. God wants us to be as responsible as we can be. But we all are irresponsible at times, error-laden, self-deceived, easily tricked by flim-flammers and emotions and brash ideas and ego trips. God knows this better than we do, and can count the countless times we didn't remember it. And God still saved us. If our worst didn't stop God, what are we afraid of? If that leads some of us to be smug, well, God's seen worse from us than mere smugness, and God tries to break that smugness through the work of the Spirit. The presence of smugness doesn't change the fact of what God has done. How we address smugness must take place in the context of the solid security of salvation, not vice-versa.

We do doubt our salvation, but we have no cause to. God is trying to teach us to live in the gift of salvation instead of doubting in it.

!!! QUOTES

"You, who grieves over your sin: know that no fire can burn straw as fast as the grace of God and the blood of Jesus can take your sins away."
--------- Christian Scriver, *The Soul's Treasure*

"The Holy Spirit is no skeptic. He has written neither doubt nor mere opinion into our hearts, but rather solid assurances, which are more sure and solid than all experience and even life itself."
--------- Martin Luther, to Erasmus

"The existence of grace is prima facie evidence not only of the reality of God but also of the reality that God's will is devoted to the growth of the individual human spirit..... We live our lives in the eye of God, and not at the periphery but at the center of His vision, His concern."
--------- M. Scott Peck, *The Road Less Traveled* (Touchstone, 1978), p.312
To the beginning

Some Questions

(1) What is the difference between 'certainty', 'assurance', 'trust', 'knowledge', and 'wisdom'? How do (or don't) these words apply to faith and spirituality?

(2) What are you secure about in your life? What is it that you trust that makes you so secure? How did you develop that trust?

(3) How do you picture what a life of 'bold' faith would be like, within a situation of political and religious freedom?

(4) Rejecting God's work in restoring the relationship between us and God is often equated with the one sin that the Bible says will not be forgiven, blaspheming the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31-32). Why do you think that would be so? A decision of God? A requirement of justice? Is it that such resistance blocks off the way that we are forgiven? And can it be undone once it is done?

To the beginning

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