The Blessing of Assurance

In 1527, Martin Luther wrote, “For more than a week I was close to the gates of death and hell. I trembled in all my members. Christ was wholly lost. I was shaken by desperation and blasphemy of God.”

His good friend, Philip Melancthon observed the terrors Luther was going through and agreed that whatever was happening to him, it was so severe that his life was in jeopardy. He was in indescribable despair, he felt his prayers met a “wall of indifferent silence,” he experience heart palpitations, crying spells, and profuse sweating.

Now, if you know your Reformation history, you know that 1527 is 10 years after Luther’s nailing of the 95 Theses on the Wittenburg Door. This is about a decade after Luther’s glorious discovery of justification by faith alone through the imputed righteousness of Christ.

In other words, Luther’s despair came after he was an established Christian. To get some background, Luther was raised in the Roman Catholic Church. In 1505 he vowed to become a monk during a thunderstorm and give up his career as a lawyer to becomes an Augustinian monk. While studying in the monastery, he struggled deeply with his relationship with God.

Those of you who have read R.C. Sproul’s book The Holiness of God are aware of some of his issues. He was terrified of God. Luther said in one of his writings: “Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God.”

He was a sinner who knew God was just to punish his sin. He knew he was guilty. But he didn’t have a solution for his guilt. Many people go on merrily without contemplating their eternal destiny further. Not Luther. It near drew him insane, because he knew God was just, and he knew he was a sinner, and he was convinced that he would die in torment.

In 1517 the glorious discovery was made: Luther wrote in his journal about his own discovery of the grace of God: “Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement, ‘the just shall live by faith.’ Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.”

Romans 1:16 - “the righteous [just] shall live by faith” was like a sunrise that dispelled the darkness for him. God would declare Luther righteousness not because he actually is, in himself, but when Luther places his faith in Christ, God gives the righteousness of his Son to him, and then legally and finally declares him to be righteous.

Friends, this is the same gospel we preach to you this morning: you cannot stand before God in your own righteousness. But turn from self-reliance and receive Jesus Christ as your Savior, he will be for you righteousness, justification, forgiveness, and pardon.

We learn two important lessons from Luther’s discovery. First, that his longing for assurance is what drove his discovery. What drove Luther to “night and day ponder” the Scriptures was a desperate longing for security. And when he discovered the doctrine of justification, it literally changed the world. According to the Roman Catholic Church, it was impossible to ever know if you were going to go to heaven when you died. No one knew. It was never certain.

Could you imagine living in the clouds of doubt all your life, and no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, no matter how religious you are, no matter how faithful you try to be, at the end of your life you may end up in hell, and if not hell, thousands of years of purgatory. And then, being shown that the Scriptures actually say, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.” That you can actually be able to say that “I know that I will stand with him on that day!” This is why Luther’s discovery set Europe on fire.

The second lesson from Luther’s discovery is that even after he made this discovery in 1517, he went through despair and doubt years later in 1527. This serves as an illustration for what is common among genuine believers. We are not yet glorified, and we live in a fallen world, we have our flesh to deal with and the devil against us, and sometimes we slip into doubt.

To speak on the issue of assurance is critical for the life of the church. The doctrine of assurance is where certain abstract theological ideas like justification meet everyday life issues like doubt, fear, insecurity. It’s an important intersection between Christian thinking and Christian living.

There are three big reasons why I want to spend time talking about assurance this summer.

# 1 False assurance runs rampant.

This is in part because of the reality that we in American swim in an ocean of cultural Christianity. I’ve spoken to many people who associate Christianity will good character, high moral values, and a conservative outlook.

These are people who are convinced they are Christians, convinced they will be able to stand before God on the Day of Judgment, and that because of something they’ve done, they will be welcomed into heaven when they die.

Why is this the case? Fundamentally, is because so many people don’t know what a Christian actually is. When sound doctrine goes, false assurance grows.

Ligonier Ministries does a State of Theology Survey every 2 years, surveying masses of professing Christians to see what they believe about crucial doctrines. We often say that a good way to summarize the gospel message is by understanding God, man, Christ, and response. Let’s see what the general professing Christian believes about God, about man, about Christ, and the response.

As related to God, 51% of evangelicals believe “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judiasm, and Islam.” So right off the bat, we see more than half do not believe in a holy God who determines who can come to him and how.

As related to Christ, 78% of evangelicals think, “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.” So almost 80% of professing Christians don’t think Jesus is divine, don’t think Jesus is God, and therefore adopt a mere human Christ who cannot save.

52% of evangelicals believe that people are naturally good, even though they may sin a little, representing a radical departure of the Bible’s teaching about man’s sinful condition.

So you have the majority of professing believers believe in a God that’s not holy, a Christ that’s not divine, and a humanity that’s not sinful. It’s no wonder so many people are falsely assured of salvation.

Now let’s get to the response: Isn’t it true that we’ve developed these unhelpful and potentially misleading cliches, like “asking Jesus into your heart,” or “giving your heart to Jesus” or “accepting Jesus as your Savior.” I don’t want to demean anyone who has used those phrases. But I do want to say they do not convey the right biblical response to the gospel. We’ll have a whole sermon on this later on, but we’ll simply say now that the biblical response to the finished work of Christ is repentance and faith, turning and trusting.

And if we present the gospel without calling people to repentance, we’ve left something out.

So if these statistics are accurate, most professing believers have embraced a wrong God, a wrong Christ, a wrong view of themselves, and a wrong response to Jesus. But they’re still calling themselves Christians because they don’t know any better.

In a sense, we should not be surprised. This was happening in the times of the New Testament. That’s why Jesus taught about the soil that received the seed with joy, sprouted up immediately, and then afterward withered. That’s why John spoke about people leaving the fellowship, and said, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us” (1 Jn. 2:19).

Turn to Matthew 7:21-23. These people who are being cast out from the presence of God are people who claimed Jesus as Lord, who claimed to speak on his behalf, who claimed to cast out demons in his name, and seemed to do many mighty works for him. Their awakening in hell will be the most surprising moment of their lives. They didn’t see it coming.

When you grow up in church and at a Christian school this becomes very real. With the passage of time, it seems more people who claimed to be saved wander away. Best friends, ministry partners, family-members. And so herein is another reason to always clarify what the true gospel is and what the right biblical response is.

God is the holy creator of the universe who made us to worship him. We have fallen in sin, are guilty, and now unable to fix ourselves, redeem ourselves, change ourselves. We are incapable of undoing what we have done, and are deserving of God’s righteous justice. And God, in his indescribable love sent his son to live a perfect life, die on the cross, rise from the dead, and invite all people to come to him for salvation. He now called everyone everywhere to repent of their sin, repent of their self-righteousness, repent of their self-reliance, and to bank their eternity on God’s mercy.

# 2 Doubt is a normal issue for true believers.

I started this sermon by describing Martin Luther’s battle with severe despair and doubt. And I’ve decided that for each introduction for each sermon in our series, I’m going to tell a story about a different believer who went through a season where they doubted their own salvation. We live in a fallen world, and even though we may have repented of our sins, trusted in Christ, and have started in a life of obedience, it’s a reality at times that you may feel doubt.

Assurance of salvation is a gift, and the child of God may and should possess a true sense of inner peace and confidence regarding personal salvation. But that is not to say that genuine faith never struggles with doubt.

It’s crucial to say this out loud: real believers sometimes have doubt. I am walking a razor’s edge here so I want to be clear: Doubt is a form of unbelief, and its origin is in Satan’s original temptation for Eve to doubt God’s Word. Doubting God’s Word, including God’s promises of salvation, is wrong.

However, to have doubt does not mean you’re faith is fake. The presence of doubt does not equate to the lack of salvation. The Psalms testify to this reality. Turn to Psalm 42.

The psalmist feels thirsty, that means there’s a longing, an ache. The psalmist is weeping, there’s a sense of loss. He describes his soul as being “cast down” and at “turmoil within” him. Verse 7: he feels like the breakers and waves are drowning him; you could imagine the feeling of drowning, gasping for air.

Verse 8: like a glimmer of light in the darkness. He’s remembering the love of God, the presence of God. Verse 9: “I say to God, my rock: ‘Why have you forgotten me?’ Why do I go on mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?’”

He feels like God has abandoned him. Remember what Luther said, 10 years after he got gloriously saved? He felt his prayers were hitting a “wall of indifferent silence.”

The Psalms reflect the highs and lows of life. The psalms remind us that there are seasons of glorious rejoicing, and there are seasons of darkness and despair and doubt.

Although it is not God’s design that his children remain in doubt, it is a normal experience in this fallen world. How do you think God wants to treat doubters? Jude 22 God tells us to “have mercy on those who doubt.”

Many of us are like the father of the demon-possessed child in Mark 9, if we’re honest. Remember what he said? Jesus says, “All things are possible for one who believes.” And the man replies, “I believe; help my unbelief.”

Behold the enigma of the redeemed sinner! Saved, yet still under construction. Redeemed, and yet in process. Sanctified, but not yet glorified. Belief, yes, but at time struggling with unbelief.

Are you a Christian with a tender, sensitive conscience? Do you, at times, doubt your salvation? Are you still wondering if God would save someone like you?

Why do you doubt that God would save you?

Is it your theology? Some people, especially those who were brought up in the Roman Catholic Church, have a hard time coming to grips with assurance, because according to the Roman Catholic Church, you cannot know for sure. Others were raised in Arminian churches that taught you could lose your salvation. But this isn’t what the Bible teaches, the Bible teaches you can know for sure the moment you believe you are justified forever.

Is it your view of God? Some people think that God is basically wanting to punish sinners and it’s Jesus who comes in and settles him down. They forget that God reveals himself as a Father, that he demonstrates his love by sending his son to the cross to die. God is a God of blessing and love and grace!

Do you believe certainty is an impossibility? Some people who’ve imbibed post-modern thinking believe you can’t ever know anything for sure.

I remember two students coming up to me after a youth group once. These were some of the more thoughtful students. They read books, studied hard, got good grades. They come up to me and one of them says, “It’s good to doubt, right? Doubt is good because it causes us to always be learning. The more we doubt, the more we learn.”

This kid was under the impression that all truth claims should be doubted. He didn’t know it, but he was taking the stance of Renee Descarte, who’s philosophical method was to doubt everything except his own existence and move out from there.

But this is not how Christians are taught to think in Scripture. There are things we can know. Christianity is all about truth. Revealed, knowable, understandable truth claims.

The presence of doubt is traceable back to a certain view of God, salvation, and Christian living. So this series we will deal with all these realities.

For now, I want to say that doubting one’s salvation sometimes happens, and though we aren’t supposed to say there, we must admit that we sometimes find ourselves there.

# 3 God desires that you know for sure

Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, Pope Clement VIII (8th)’s personal theologian, said during the outbreak of the Reformation: “The greatest of all Protestant heresies is assurance.” This was, of course, not what the Bible said, it was what the Roman Catholic Church was saying because they felt as long as they could keep people doubting their salvation, they could keep them busy trying to earn it, like a boss trying to motivate his employees by threatening layoffs and offering bonuses.

But listen to the Scriptures: 1 John 5:13 “I write these things to you who believe in the same of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.”

Hebrews 4:15 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Hebrews 10:22 “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”

Or think of Paul. Paul knew for sure: 2 Timothy 1:12 “But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed’ Or Philippians 1:21, “To live is Christ, to die is gain.” What certainty! In the face of death he does not think God has abandoned him. He rather says, “Gain!” because he knows that he is Christ’s and Christ is his.

Jesus wanted his people to feel utterly secure in the loving embrace of the father. Listen to him in John 10:

Verse 10-11: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

Verse 14-15 “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.”

Verse 27-28 “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.”

This is God’s desire for them. That they might know, that they might feel secure. We are not to be motivated by the uncertainty of fear, but by the security of love. We are not in a family where the father motivates his children by threatening to abandon them if they fail, but by saying he’ll love and care for them no matter what.

We all are like worried, anxious sheep, and Jesus keeps saying, “I am a good shepherd. I lay down my life for you. I hold you in my hand. No one can snatch you out.”

Now I want to go beyond merely saying that God wants you to know for sure. I want to say that if you don’t have assurance of salvation, your obedience will always be limited.

Have you ever been rappelling? You get strapped up, the harnessed fitting uncomfortably snug all over your body, and there’s that moment when you have to learn backwards off the edge of some sheer cliff.

That’s the scariest part of rappelling -- when you’re not sure if the rope will hold all of your weight. If you’re not confident it will hold you, you won’t lean back. I’ve seen people watch others rappel, get strapped in themselves, go up to the ledge, and absolutely refuse to lean back. They couldn’t trust the rope with all their weight. And so they didn’t move.

If you don’t trust your Savior, fully and completely, there are going to be limits to your obedience. Do you trust Jesus with the full weight of your eternity? Do you trust him with your life? If you do not, there will be certain risks you will not take. You will never lay down your life until you trust that Jesus will raise it up again on the last Day.

God wants you to be sure. Now how do I know? Well that’s what this whole series will be about.But let’s just here say two things about assurance: Assurance is a gift from God, and Assurance is a responsibility for believers.

Assurance is a gift from God. Romans 8:15-16 “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

There’s a reason that the Holy God’s most repeated command to fragile mortals is “fear not.” We’re so fragile that it’s hard for us to make sense of assurance when we come to grips with the perfect holiness and justice of God. So God helps us-- he sends the Holy Spirit to bear witness with our Spirit, and enables us to rejoice and cry out to God as our Father!

Every time you’ve rejoiced in God’s love for you, every time you’ve been amazed that he’s pleased with you through Christ, every time you’ve prayed to him and experienced the joy of speaking with your heavenly father, that’s the Holy Spirit bearing witness that you’re his child! You are allowed to enjoy this gift! In fact, when you response to your salvation with awe and worship to God, you are doing exactly what you were made to do! Rejoice in the gift of assurance, and worship God, and enjoy it!

Assurance is a responsibility for believers. It’s often the case that some of the most central Christians doctrines have an element of mystery. Are the Scriptures written by men or God? Yes. Are people saved by trusting Christ, or by God’s choice? Yes. Is assurance God’s gift or the believer’s responsibility? Yes.

Assurance is a gracious gift of God for all believers. It’s not something to earn, and it is not only reserved for special, more mature Christians. It’s for all. But listen to what Peter says about it in 2 Peter 1:10 “Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.”

He has mercy on those who doubt, but he calls you to grow in your certainty. He gives it to you. And now you’re job is to continue in obedience and growth so as to confirm the reality of your salvation. We will talk more about all these things in the future.

Luther discovered justification by faith in 1517, but ten years later, in 1527 he battled severe despair, doubting that he was saved, was haunted by extreme fear, and felt that he was abandoned by God. And while at times it felt as it he was drowning, like the breakers and waves were crashing on his head, he fought against the doubt and fear.

The despair brought him low, yes, but it taught him humility. The church must not strut. We all must remember we are but dust, we are weak, in need of a strong Savior. Luther battled the doubt by focusing on truth. And this is the lesson for us all -- the solution to doubt is Jesus Christ.

Amazingly, 1527, the year of his darkest despair, the year such intense and agonizing stress nearly killed him, was the year Martin Luther composed the Hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” It was his anthem to ward off the devil and remember the greatness of his salvation.

Think of the words in the 3rd verse: And though this world, with devils filled, Should threaten to undo us, We will not fear, for God hath willed, His truth to triumph through us:

The Prince of Darkness grim, We tremble not for him; His rage we can endure,

For lo! his doom is sure, One little word shall fell him

Luther saw the world as it is, infested with devils, threats, and enemies of our souls, but that God has will to save us, to let his truth triumph through us, and that Satan, though he rages against us, is not to be feared, for he will be cast off by a single word from Christ.

Doubting sinners, be humbled. Look away from yourself -- there’s nothing but condemnation there. Look upward to your mighty fortress, where your soul lies safe- Jesus Christ -- there’s grace and mercy, strength and power, wisdom and guidance for you there.