Security vs. Assurance

When I was a young person I encountered some Bible teachers that insisted that I remember my "spiritual birthday". They insisted that someday I would feel unsure about my salvation and I would need to recall that day in order to "tell the truth and shame the Devil". That sounded like a pretty good piece of advice. I used that strategy a few times when I was in college. Occasionally, while in mid-debauch and my conscience began to ache a bit, I would shut it down by recalling "April 1970". I was taught that once you "prayed the prayer" you were safe from Hell and it was only the work of Satan if anyone challenged your salvation experience.

It's really amazing how much garbage I have been taught about the Bible that just flat didn't turn out to be true. I once met an elderly Jewish business man who said, "Trust everybody, but cut the cards!" That certainly applies to Biblical truth. I would love to spend all of my time teaching people the things that God has revealed to me in the Bible, but unfortunately I spend most of my teaching time helping people unlearn myths and faulty preconceptions that they have picked up over the years. Most of these distorted ideas either arise because these folks only want to believe what makes them comfortable or because they have been exposed to careless teaching. The Bible speaks to this in 2 Timothy 4:3-4 "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths."

When it comes to security and assurance there are many divergent views, but most of these can be cleared up with a simple definition. It is very important to distinguish the difference. Security is the work of God. The doctrine of security holds that once you are saved you can never lose your salvation. Assurance is human confidence in one's salvation. There is an enormous difference!

The juxtaposition of these concepts automatically creates four groups of people. There are those that are saved by the regenerating work of God and are also certain of that salvation. There are people that are saved, but they are not really sure if they will be in Heaven when they die. There are some people that know they aren't saved and indeed they aren't. Unfortunately, one of the largest, if not THE largest group is that mass of people that are convinced that they are saved, but they aren't.

First, we need to talk about God's role in the security of the believer. If my salvation was dependent on my behavior from moment to moment, or on whether or not I could access a priest or a prophet to grant me some form of absolution from time to time, I am in big trouble. Only a very small view of God would allow me to be audacious enough to believe that I only sin "little sins", so that very few of them would cause me to lose my salvation. God's standard is PERFECTION. Matthew 5:48 “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." God makes it very clear that ONE sin is too much and that it only takes that ONE sin to doom me to an eternity in Hell. Romans 3:23, 6:23a "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God . . . For the wages of sin is death."

Let's be straight forward about this, a human can barely make it five minutes without sin. I fall short of His standard every day in almost every way. In Matthew 5, Jesus made it clear to "good" people that they didn't really understand how impossibly high the standard actually was. He told them that if they had ever been angry, they were murderers. If they had ever looked at anyone with lust, then they were guilty of adultery. He told them that they really didn't love unless they loved their enemies. Have you refused to love your enemies today? Did you get angry or feel that someone insulted you or violated your "rights"? Have you thought any nasty or covetous thoughts about anyone? Me too. If you have lived a perfect life up until this point and have just slipped up ONE time, you are done. You are condemned to an eternity in Hell. (My wife just walked in and interrupted my writing and I was short with her. I didn't even make it through this paragraph without sinning!)

All this being said, if it were up to my good behavior to maintain my salvation, I have no hope. It is all God and His work. John 6:37-39 “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day." The moment that God declares the unrighteous sinner "not guilty", it is done. Nothing can separate us from God. Romans 8:38-39 "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

OK, that is all well and good, but all of us know people that have made professions of faith in Christ and later they have walked away. What about them? These are people that have the appearance of being believers but they NEVER WERE. Does this group actually exist? 1 John 2:19 "They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us."

Next is assurance. How do you KNOW that you are saved? I touched on this in an article last month, but in a nutshell, the tests of salvation are nicely summarized in the little epistle of 1 John. There are 13 tests that help us to discern whether or not we are really in the faith. These tests can be boiled down to two basic things, a theological test and a practical test. The theological test is simple. Do you have a relationship with the Jesus of the Bible? If someone dedicates their life to helping orphans and widows, reforming the government, giving to the Cancer Society and Jerry's Kids, and they don't know the God of the Bible, they are not saved. On the other hand, the practical test is love. Do you love God and love others sacrificially? If you have intellectually apprehended all of the facts of the Bible and know everything that there is to know about Jesus and you don't love other people, you aren't saved. It is amazing to me how at every non-Christian funeral that I've attended, there are always mourners that are quick to create their own theology and give the poor deceased person a pass. "I am sure that so-and-so is looking down on us from Heaven." Oh, yeah?

That brings me to the difficult topic of that group of people that believe that they are saved but in reality they are not. First, I need to answer those teachers that insist on using a "spiritual birthday" to avoid confronting this topic: 2 Corinthians 13:5 "Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?" Paul himself directed us to check ourselves against the standard. It is implicit in the directive that some people that examine themselves will FAIL the test. The worst situation, and the one that plagues the church and society at large, is that MOST people don't take the test and if they did, MOST people would fail it. Simply put, most people believe that they are saved, but they really aren't. How can I make that over-the-top kind of statement?

Matthew 7:13-14 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. “For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it." (italics mine) There are many teachers that would have you believe that this is a reference to Christians entering through the narrow gate and pagan folks entering through the wide gate. That is simply not true. The group entering through the wide gate are people that THINK that they are Christians and that the wide gate is leading to Heaven. It is unfortunate that many English translations set verses 13 and 14 apart from the rest of the text, but that is poor editing. The discussion following verse 14 is about false "prophets". This is not people that are prophets in the Old Testament sense, but simply people that profess faith in Christ. In verses 21 and 22 they call God "Lord, Lord". That is certainly not the cry of the pagans! The same MANY mentioned in verses 13 and 14 are again mentioned in verse 22. Matthew 7:22-23 “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’ " To me, these are the scariest verses in the Bible. This passage is speaking of people that are standing before God on Judgement Day and pleading their case. Lord! I did all kinds of wonderful works in your name, (obviously NOT pagans!), and I DESERVE to get in to your Heaven! God answers, "You have no relationship with Me. Go away!"

For those of you who love Jesus and belong to him, do not fret. Nothing you can do can separate you from God. For those of you who made a commitment to Christ and really are not sure whether or not you are a true believer, please test yourself. Read 1 John and examine your life! For those of you that know you aren't a Christian. Fall on you face and beg Jesus for forgiveness, and ask Him to take over the lordship of your life. For those of you that have made a commitment to Christ in the past, and have never thought about it since, I would beg you to read the Bible for yourself and don't let some human opinion that you have adopted as "truth" endanger your soul.

His servant,

D. L. Culiver