Assurance of Salvation

[Gottle_of_Geer]

deb1:

I have to admit this version of once saved, always saved was a great torture to me. Every one in my Baptist church seemed to accept without problem this belief. Yet, it seemed to go against human nature. We have all seen examples of very devout Christians fall and in some cases loose their faith. I used to wonder what was wrong with me that I didn’t find what I was being taught in this particular church as comforting.

I remember when the Da Vinci Code came out our pastor warned us not to read it. The pastor had a good friend who told our pastor that he had begun to doubt his faith after reading the book. Now if a person has divine assurance of their faith then why warn them away from a book? That didn’t make sense to me then and it doesn’t now.

A possible answer: assurance is a personal response to the fact of a salvation guaranteed by God but not yet fully possessed (full possession is possible only in Heaven); human activity - such as being warned off a bad book - is a created means, in a particular believer’s case, which God has ordained from eternity for the benefit of that believer.​

So the “warning away” is a means to gaining the believer the fullness of salvation of which he already has a pledge, in his being filled with the Spirit. The doubting, is an activity of the believer insofaras he is not fully transformed and fully regenerated in Christ: it is an activity of what the NT calls the “old man” - not of the believer’s new and regenerate nature. Assurance does not necessarily imply full regeneration at once - one still has to make one’s “calling and election sure” from one’s own side, certain as it is from God’s side. That is one reason for the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the believer.

That is why “full assurance of salvation” (as the NT calls it)is perfectly compatible with Church authority and Church discipline - they are, among other things, Divinely-given means for helping forward the believer’s subjective, personal, enjoyment of the salvation he has already received.

It’s easy to believe it was “a torture” - but isn’t this a reason for looking to Christ ? If people look to Him only as a giver of tongues, and the rest of the various gifts; if they look only at their sins; if their attention is on their salvation, instead of on their Saviour: aren’t we setting ourselves up for all manner of problems ? How can we “forget self”, if we are looking at what concerns self, instead of at what concerns Him ? ##

 

[Matt16_18]

deb1:

Thank you. I have wondered what to call the form of OSAS my church preached and now I know.

When OSAS believing Protestants argue about “eternal security”, they usually get worked up about “Arminianism” vs “Calvinism”. In these dreary arguments, the assumption is made that OSAS is a Christian doctrine that needs to be rightly understood. But OSAS is not compatible with the Gospel of Christ; OSAS is the destruction of the Gospel of Christ. Christ did not come to destroy our humanity and our free will with irresistible grace, nor did Christ come to grant his disciples a license to sin.