ALAMO-GIRL: the phenomenon of uncertainty. It seems to result from a sense of separate-from-God responsibility for doing good works and a lingering doubt that anything they could do would be good enough.
AMEN! This is the nagging fear and doubt that nearly drove Luther mad. In struggling to be righteous in his own mind and heart, and to perform enough good works he realized nothing he could do would be good enough to merit salvation.
FOREST KEEPER: Whatever God's threshold is, those who have done "enough" will see Heaven, and those who haven't done enough, regardless of faith, will be sent to the down escalator.
Exactly! As Forest Keeper and A-G both said so well, the imprecision and ambiguity of God's supposed "thresh-hold" of good works needed for salvation inevitably leads to anxiety and uncertainty and even to a kind of self-loathing because we fear the "thresh-hold" is beyond us.
And this error is exactly what Paul so lovingly works to dissuade us of. Who better than Paul to assure us of God's love? Paul, who hunted down Christians in order to destroy them. Who could be more foul than that?
And yet God chose him to illustrate that if and when God lays hold of a man, that man will finally see and know and believe not because it is his will to do so, but because it is God's will that he do so.
Knowing that, who can fear anything? Knowing that, who can doubt Christ's sacrifice covers their sins completely?
I didn't always believe this. But since I have, I have read the Scriptures with new eyes, and on every page I find my name, and the names of all those who love God. Why? Because He first loved us.
Blessed assurance. To the RCC it is the "sin of presumption." The Council of Trent actually anathematizes all those who believe in assurance; who believe they have been saved.
But to one who knows whom he has believed, assurance is a gift from God to confirm that our Father is faithful and His promise is true.
Calvin wrote that "the furnishing of the heart with assurance is more difficult than the communication of knowledge to the understanding."
How true we've seen this to be. Some say we blithely think we're saved and that's the end of it. But in reality while this fact may be easy to read in the Bible, it's not so easy to really, truly believe that Christ has done it all for us. Trusting God completely is not in our DNA.
But, by the grace of God, when we do manage to put all our concerns at the foot of the cross, our lives are different and our problems become surmountable because we know and believe and trust in the truth of Paul's words...
"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." -- Romans 8:28
No wonder the world tries to dismiss Paul's certainty as being superficial or polemic. He was certain. He trusted completely. Within him there was no doubt.
And lest anyone should say we rely too heavily on "outside sources," anyone who reads the red letters of the Bible knows that Christ spoke in absolutes. His sheep were named from before the foundation of the world. He came to earth for the very purpose of dying in the place of His sheep. And we know for a fact that He will lead His sheep home because He rose from the dead to prove it all true.
So again I offer a few lines from Calvin who realized the temporal world was obscuring the work and purpose of the Holy Spirit. And nothing good can come from that mistake. Only more fear and uncertainty and loss which is the opposite of what Christ gives to His sheep.
"The true conviction which believers have of the word of God, of their own salvation, and of religion in general, does not spring from the judgment of the flesh, or from human and philosophical arguments, but from the sealing of the Spirit, who imparts to their consciences such certainty as to remove all doubt." (Commentary on Ephesians 208)
Amen
“Thank you to Alamo-Girl and Forest Keeper for two splendid posts!”
Oh, and thank you Dr. Eckleburg and Alamo-Girl and Forest Keeper and irishtenor and wmfights and Quix and the_conscience and, let me see, oh yes I see that hand over there, thank you too, for the splendid posts!
I don’t know how I ever could have won this beautiful award without your help.....Oh, that’s another thread.
Sheeesh, what is this, Valentines Day?
And, yes, blue-duncan, every day is a day of love (or Valentine’s Day) for us!
And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. – Matthew 22:37-40
It always seems to come back to this: Who do you believe?
If we believe God directly, we will have His many blessed assurances both by the words of God and the power of God.
Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: - Luke 24:25
For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.
But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called [me] by his grace, To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus.
Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother. – Galatians 1:11-19
Any group that calls itself 'christian' and yet, doesn't teach this truth, that one ought to know one has eternal life, is preaching a false Gospel.
And AMEN to your AMEN! :) That's a great historical reminder that the issues we have today are in many cases the same as they were at the beginning of the Reformation. One difference would be in what has been made up since. :)
Some say we blithely think we're saved and that's the end of it. But in reality while this fact may be easy to read in the Bible, it's not so easy to really, truly believe that Christ has done it all for us. Trusting God completely is not in our DNA.
AMEN again, Dr. E. We are accused all the time that our theology says that once we "know" we are saved, what use is there in leading a Christian life? Why not just go out and live for wine, women (or men, or whatever they call the third option nowadays) and song? YET, in my perusals of tens of thousands of posts in my short time here, I have never once, not a single time, read a Bible believing Christian espouse such a philosophy. In fact, by the testimonies I've read, it is rather the Bible believing Christians who are really pulling the wagon, and doing Kingdom work. How can that be?
In further fact, there are many of my Baptist brethren, who believe in the plain meaning of OSAS, those who would be MOST susceptible to shirking Christian responsibility, who are among the most active among those I know. How can this be? It can be because the accusation is FALSE and hollow. Changed hearts do not care about earning points, changed hearts WANT to serve God, so they DO! :) As you said, it is not in our DNA to trust God completely so God changes our DNA to make it happen. After that, selfish desires go way down and desires to love and obey God go way up.