The Assurance Of Salvation

This week was a hard one for me. On Wednesday I got all four of my wisdom teeth pulled. It's something I really should have done 20 years ago but they never caused me any trouble until now.
I had all the best intensions to write my weekly blog but the meds just kept me writing the same sentence over and over.
So I’m going to post a piece I wrote for a Christian forum a few years back in response to some asking about “once saved always saved”.
I will be a 100% for my next blog next week. Thanks for your prayers and thoughts.

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The way I see this whole issue is that all of us in our Christian walk, sooner or later, see an event happen.
We see somebody come to Christ, pray with us, study with us, attend our church, maybe even minister in some way.
We’ve seen them witness, teach Sunday school, play music, maybe even be a leader in the church or even a pastor.

Then….. They leave.

Say they give up.
Reject Christ.
“Give back their salvation.”

What happened?
All of us agree this event happened. We just disagree about the mechanics of what happened.

I don’t think they “gave back” salvation.
I don’t think that because I don’t don’t think a true Child Of God would want to or could either way.

Why do I think that?

John 6:39
"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.

People that really come to Christ are people that are given to Christ.

John 15:16
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.

If we were not the initiators of our own salvation how can we give back what we did not produce?

Romans 8:29
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;

God has a plan for us. He has predestined us to “…become conformed to the image of His Son”.

This is not an option.
He’s gonna do it.
You can come along obediently or make it hard on your self. But you’re going to be like Jesus.

Hebrews 7:25
Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.

“But this guy left. He rejected Christ and now is a bitter atheist. He won’t even talk to me now.”

I think the Bible is clear what has happened….

1 John 2:18-19
18 Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour.
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.

They were fake.
This shouldn’t surprise anybody. They were perhaps very sincere. But they weren’t truly “all there”.
Impostors have always been in our midst.

Jude 12
These are the spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried about by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots.

They are stony places where the seed was sown. (Matt 13:20-21)

Then we’ve seen the scenario “I know somebody that said they were saved. They had a Marlboro dangling from their lips and a beer in their hand and every other word they said was a profanity and they were adamant that they were a Christian. Born again and had the assurance of salvation and said that Pastor Joe Bob said that no matter what they did they’d never lose their salvation cause they stepped up at that alter call and signed that dedication card and by golly they’re a child of God.”

It's the old attack on assurance that goes like this, "You mean I can just live any way I want?"

Well... If you have the Holy Spirit within you and you are a child of the Living God;
How do you "want" to live?

1 John 1:4-10
6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;
7 but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

If anybody is out there living in hedonist sin and says he’s a Christian and a child of God, He’s a liar!
Point blank.

And how can anybody say, “But...but. He said he accepted Christ at that revival.”

I can say “I’m a toaster.”
But am I making toast?

I don’t subscribe to this idea that just because somebody steps up to the alter just because 50 other people are headed up there, says a bunch of words that nobody explained to him what they meant, and gets sent off to a side room where “our trained councilors are ready to give you a paperback New Testament and a Jack Chick tract,” is necessarily saved.
Unless they came to believe it makes no difference what words they said.
Especially when there is no evidence that such a transformation took place.

1 John 2:20
But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know.

Peter (1 Pet 1:4-5) describes our inheritance as "incorruptible, and undefiled, that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation"
He is able to keep us from falling. Are we to believe we’re more powerful than He is?

And I’m not saying we won’t fall. We fall hard.
Too often. But it grieves us. We wail and howl in sorrow over our sins.
If anyone has grief over their sins it’s a sure sign the Spirit of God is alive in them.

Romans 7:14-25
19 For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.
20 But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
21 I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.
22 For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man,
23 but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

The true believer will live in the guidance of the Holy Spirit every day. And the believer will have “war waging” within.
It is a horrible thing when the Christian back slides. (I know). The war within can make a Christian literally fall face down on the ground. Doubled over in pain. (I know).
It is full of conviction and weeping and is not something the Christian can ignore and act flippantly about.

But I admit there are times when the backsliding has been going on for a while.

Ephesians 4:30
And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.

And the voice of the Holy Spirit grows dim.
But the Prodigal Son, (the true child of God), in his filth and pig food will say, “I will arise and go to my father...” (Luke 15:18).
We are His sheep. His property. Bought with a high price.
Should we wander the Lord will come get His property. (Matthew 18:12-14)
He came and picked us out of the gutter when we were yet sinners. How much more will He come looking for us if we’re His child gone astray.

He’ll come for us.

And sometimes.....that’s not a pleasant experience.