[Please read Part 1, if you have not yet, so that you don't take me out of context. I think it will serve us both. Thanks.]
Though I may try to act strong on the outside much of the time, I am very familiar with doubt and can very much relate to the Caedmon’s Call song that says “My faith is like shifting sand, so I stand on grace”. And most often I question not necessarily whether God is real or not, but whether I am real or not–that is, if I am really regenerate after all, or if I’ve been just playing the game the whole time. And so the doctrine of assurance is important to me, because often it is all I have to cling to, that “He who began a good work in me will bring it to completion on the day of Christ Jesus” (Phi 1:6). But there is something I’ve learned: asking the question “Am I a Christian?” is not a simple, quick exercise that has an easy answer, but rather, must involve intense self-examination and self-scrutiny, to see if your heart has truly been changed. There are several things on which you should absolutely not base your assurance: whether you feel God’s presence or not, whether you are a good person or not, and especially whether you prayed a prayer one time or not. All of those things are superficial, subjective, and very unreliable measures of one’s Christian-ness, and also quite unbiblical. So what should you base your assurance on? First let’s define what exactly it means to be a Christian.
When I say “Christian”, or “saved”, what I really mean is one who has been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred into the Kingdom of His beloved Son (Col 1:13), who has been regenerated and renewed by the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5), who shares in the heavenly calling (Heb 3:1), and who will one day be presented blameless before the glorious presence of God (Jude v24). But perhaps the main characteristic of a Christian is that he/she has “seen the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (II Cor 4:3), and has to come to see Christ as beautiful. Or as the late Keith Green so aptly said it, “a Christian is someone who is bananas for Jesus”. A Christian has tasted and seen (Ps 34:8) that all things are loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord (Phi 3:8).
Thus, the way to know if you are a Christian is to examine your heart and see what exactly it is you treasure (Mat. 6:21). Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying to test your emotions to see if you feel love for God; I mean you must look deep within yourself and test your heart of hearts. Ask yourself if you truly hate sin(Rom 7:15), or if you just feel guilt based on social pressure. Ask yourself if you really find rest and strength from God’s Word (Ps 1:1-2), or if you just want knowledge to impress people. Ask yourself if you actually care about people (Mat 22:39), or if you just serve and pretend so that you’ll feel better on the inside. And if you want a basis for this type of self-examination, look to Paul’s example in Romans 7, where he talks of his conflicting desires–his longing to do good but his flesh’s tendency to do evil–but then concludes “Who will save me from this body of death? Praise be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!”. So if you can relate to Romans 7–if you find yourself in sin, but hate it in your heart–hope in Christ, for He will save you from your body of death. Your soul has already been redeemed, and your heart is currently being changed, and one day your flesh also will be restored to perfection.
But such a test, when we are in the midst of spiritual dryness, can also be misleading. And so there is another way in which we can have assurance that we are Jesus sheep (John 10), and it’s founded in Philippians 1:6, which I’ve already quoted/referenced several times, that “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of Christ Jesus”. If we want to know if God will bring us to completion, we can look back and see whether or not He has begun a good work–if we are no longer who we were. There are some outer behaviors which man can change on his own power, but only God can change a heart, and so if we want tangible evidence of our own regeneration, we can look to where we came from and where we are now. This has sustained me in many a dry season, when deadened by my hardness of heart and desensitized to sin in my life I nearly convinced myself that I did not even love God in my heart of hearts. But looking back on the arrogance and lack of self-control and abundance of self-centeredness that used to fill my heart an mind, and seeing the progress that God has made (though there’s still much further to go) gives me hope the He’s not finished with me yet, and more significantly that He is indeed working on me. And so I trust not in my own works, nor in my own goodness, nor even in my own faith, but only in Christ’s blood, poured out for me on the cross. And the blood of Christ is good enough assurance for me.
Next we’ll deal with how to stay true to the Bible while talking about the doctrine of assurance.