Can I know I'm saved?

[jonathan_hili]

Hi all, this is primarily addressed to our Protestant brothers and sisters.

Now, my ideas here with regards to your views on salvation might be wrong, so please let me know if I’ve misrepresented a Protestant perspective.

From my experience, there seem to be two general approaches to knowledge of salvation (regardless of the means of salvation), namely:

(i) Once saved, always saved - in this case a believer has eternal assurance of salvation, which cannot be lost, regardless of behaviour, apostasy, etc.

(ii) Salvation by faith alone - in this case a believer is saved by his faith (through the grace of God and Christ’s salvific work on the cross) and he knows he has saving faith by manifesting actions that accord with this faith.

It’s this second viewpoint that I’d like your opinions on. I’ve always found it troubling because, from those Protestants I’ve encountered, I get the impression that if someone commits a grave sin, such as adultery, the conclusion is that he never had saving faith after all. That is, knowing one is saved is dependent on works after the fact. My main gripe is that, really, nobody would ever know if he is saved until the point of death because a grave sin could be committed at any time.

That’s why I find the Catholic perspective more reassuring because we can hold a moral assurance of salvation and know that our faith is always saving faith when it is coupled with our actions in accordance to the will of God and His Church.

Any thoughts?

God bless.

Jonathan

 

[FabiusMaximus]

Hi all, this is primarily addressed to our Protestant brothers and sisters.

Now, my ideas here with regards to your views on salvation might be wrong, so please let me know if I’ve misrepresented a Protestant perspective.

From my experience, there seem to be two general approaches to knowledge of salvation (regardless of the means of salvation), namely:

(i) Once saved, always saved - in this case a believer has eternal assurance of salvation, which cannot be lost, regardless of behaviour, apostasy, etc.

(ii) Salvation by faith alone - in this case a believer is saved by his faith (through the grace of God and Christ’s salvific work on the cross) and he knows he has saving faith by manifesting actions that accord with this faith.

It’s this second viewpoint that I’d like your opinions on. I’ve always found it troubling because, from those Protestants I’ve encountered, I get the impression that if someone commits a grave sin, such as adultery, the conclusion is that he never had saving faith after all. That is, knowing one is saved is dependent on works after the fact. My main gripe is that, really, nobody would ever know if he is saved until the point of death because a grave sin could be committed at any time.

That’s why I find the Catholic perspective more reassuring because we can hold a moral assurance of salvation and know that our faith is always saving faith when it is coupled with our actions in accordance to the will of God and His Church.

Any thoughts?

God bless.

Jonathan

It depends on who you ask. A very large number of non-Catholic Christians simply do not believe in Once Saved Always Saved. It should also be noted that Sola Fide does not mean that one believes that if you backslide, “you never had the faith at all.” On the contrary, many of us have always believed that you can lose your faith.

Believing in salvation by faith alone does not mean that we are immune from sinning or that if we do, it’s because we tricked ourselves into believing that.

From the belief in which I grew up, it’s always been that we can be confident (or at least serene) about our salvation if we have lived a holy life, with faith in Jesus Christ (the former being a manifestation of the latter).

 

[jonathan_hili]

Thanks for the response, Fabius (by the way, you were always my favourite - was not a big fan of Scipio :knight2.

I guess I’d ask: if you believe in salvation by faith alone and you sin - let’s say seriously, like murder or adultery - are you still saved? If you are, isn’t this “once saved, always saved”? If you’re not, don’t you then have to do something in order to assure your salvation?

 

[FabiusMaximus]

Thanks for the response, Fabius (by the way, you were always my favourite - was not a big fan of Scipio :knight2.

I guess I’d ask: if you believe in salvation by faith alone and you sin - let’s say seriously, like murder or adultery - are you still saved? If you are, isn’t this “once saved, always saved”? If you’re not, don’t you then have to do something in order to assure your salvation?

I like Scipio, too. But I think Fabius Maximus really embodied Rome’s strength, faith, and wisdom. He was completely unconventional, and hardly had to move a finger until the Romans realized that he was absolutely correct. Hannibal in his arrogance believed he could have crushed Scipio. And perhaps he might have had he not underestimated him. But Fabius Maximus for sure made him curse himself over and over again.

As for your question: one would have to repent of that sin. I think it’s one thing if a person sins and is remorseful. A man might be overcome by temptation with a woman, and yet feel immediately guilty as a result, run home, or to church, and repent. If the person doesn’t repent, then I’d say at the very least he is on a course of backsliding. It might not appear obvious all at once, but I think the new course in that direction will have begun.

 

[jonathan_hili]

I like Scipio, too. But I think Fabius Maximus really embodied Rome’s strength, faith, and wisdom. He was completely unconventional, and hardly had to move a finger until the Romans realized that he was absolutely correct. Hannibal in his arrogance believed he could have crushed Scipio. And perhaps he might have had he not underestimated him. But Fabius Maximus for sure made him curse himself over and over again.

As for your question: one would have to repent of that sin. I think it’s one thing if a person sins and is remorseful. A man might be overcome by temptation with a woman, and yet feel immediately guilty as a result, run home, or to church, and repent. If the person doesn’t repent, then I’d say at the very least he is on a course of backsliding. It might not appear obvious all at once, but I think the new course in that direction will have begun.

I agree, on both Fabius and your answer.

But if one has to repent, which is clearly biblical, to restore salvation, how can one be saved by faith alone since I presume “repenting”, which is an action, is not faith.

 

[VDMA]

We don’t look to ourselves, anything we have done, or anything that we will to for the assurance or evidence of our salvation. We look outside of ourselves to Christ and his cross. We ask ourselves “Were Christ’s works sufficient for my salvation?”. If the answer is yes, then we can be assured in our salvation by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, for the sake of Christ alone.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Some bad answers here. Like Paul, we must work out our salvation in fear and trembling. Anyone who tells you he knows he is saved is just deluding himself.

 

[jonathan_hili]

We don’t look to ourselves, anything we have done, or anything that we will to for the assurance or evidence of our salvation. We look outside of ourselves to Christ and his cross. We ask ourselves “Were Christ’s works sufficient for my salvation?”. If the answer is yes, then we can be assured in our salvation by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, for the sake of Christ alone.

Thanks for the response, VDMA, but I ask the same question then: does that mean you cannot lose your salvation? And if you do (through sin) how do you regain it?

 

[FabiusMaximus]

I agree, on both Fabius and your answer.

But if one has to repent, which is clearly biblical, to restore salvation, how can one be saved by faith alone since I presume “repenting”, which is an action, is not faith.

This is where we have a miscommunication. Faith alone to many Protestants and Evangelicals does not mean simply an intellectual assent. The works and “actions” that you do in accordance to your faith are part of it, not separate.

I don’t believe the Catholic “faith + works” is really different than how we see it.

Catholic = (Faith) + Works

Evangelical = (Faith + Works)

 

[jonathan_hili]

You know, Fabius, I get that impression a lot too when I talk to Protestants and they tell me what they mean by “faith”: it’s quite an expansive category.

I wish we could all sit down and work something out about this!

 

[FabiusMaximus]

You know, Fabius, I get that impression a lot too when I talk to Protestants and they tell me what they mean by “faith”: it’s quite an expansive category.

I wish we could all sit down and work something out about this!

I sense there would be great opposition from both sides. Catholics who think there could be the possibility of watering down the Catholic faith, and Evangelicals who would probably believe that this kind of ecumenicism would bring about the whore of Babylon.

 

[jonathan_hili]

A shame.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

To answer succinctly, no, it is not possible to have absolute knowledge that one is “saved” during this life. You may have a general idea of where you are based on your current moral state as well as if you’ve committed any mortal sins that you haven’t’ confessed; but there is absolutely no way of knowing until you sit before the throne and are receive God’s judgment.

 

[VDMA]

Thanks for the response, VDMA, but I ask the same question then: does that mean you cannot lose your salvation? And if you do (through sin) how do you regain it?

Hi jonathan_hili,

We can absolutely lose our salvation if we reject our faith in Christ (our trust that because of Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection our sins have been forgiven and we have been declared righteous by God). We would regain our salvation by acknowledging that we are sinners unable to save ourselves and again trusting that Christ has completely won our salvation for us.

 

[jonathan_hili]

Hi jonathan_hili,

We can absolutely lose our salvation if we reject our faith in Christ (our trust that because of Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection our sins have been forgiven and we have been declared righteous by God). We would regain our salvation by acknowledging that we are sinners unable to save ourselves and again trusting that Christ has completely won our salvation for us.

But what if you don’t “reject faith in Christ” but just sin, badly, for instance, committing adultery. Would that lose you your salvation?

 

[ProdglArchitect]

But what if you don’t “reject faith in Christ” but just sin, badly, for instance, committing adultery. Would that lose you your salvation?

Yes. Sin is, ultimately, the rejection of God. It is this rejection that causes us to turn away from him when we die and chose Hell. Adultery, being a mortal sin, causes a person to chose hell when they die, likely out of shame.

Note, however, that this lose is only there until the person partakes of the great gift that is the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

 

[Monergistic]

Assurance of salvation comes down to the indwelling presence of the Holt Spirit. This concept is quite different from the reception of sacramental graces, and what I’m about to describe doesn’t even quite reduce to Calvin’s description of the sensus divinitadus. So, the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is a person. This is the first thing that distinguishes Him from sacramental graces- they are not people. God (all three persons, actually) tends to be fairly elusive. Hidden, even. But a second thing that distinguishes the person of the Holy Spirit from the Catholic theory of sacramental graces is that the Holy Spirit is not always elusive; He does not always hide Himself. There are times when God makes His presence known to us, a pneumatic epistemology owing to a personal divine Spirit. And there is a third thing that makes the Holy Spirit different from a sacramental grace. The Holy Spirit, along with being a person and a freely given presence, is an inviting and transformative presence that seeks fellowship with humans.

Sacramental grace is not a person. Sacramental grace is technically freely given (sort of), but hardly a “presence.” And while sacramental grace is sometimes but not always described as transformative, it does not seek fellowship with humans. God does. The Holy Spirit does. He does. Therefore, God’s indwelling presence and transformative activity produces a transformative and incarnational epistemology that allows a redeemed, regenerated follower of Christ to have personal knowledge not only of God’s existence but also of his/her own salvation.

I suppose you could believe in either perseverance or loss; I don’t think it would really make a difference in discerning the preceding at any given time.

At any rate, this is where I’m coming from. As far as good works go, we may think of this incarnational epistemology as requiring that human inquirers themselves become evidence of God’s reality in virtue of becoming God’s temple. To me, it seems that a desire to gain such personal knowledge of this elusive God through His relational indwelling presence naturally goes hand in hand with a desire to increasingly become evidence of the same. And if that’s not entirely clear on the face of it, God makes it clear as a part of His relational activity in the lives of the ones that He indwells.

 

[VDMA]

But what if you don’t “reject faith in Christ” but just sin, badly, for instance, committing adultery. Would that lose you your salvation?

No, that would not cause the loss of our salvation. Christ has already paid for that sin on the cross. It is forgiven.

That however does not mean that sin is no big or should continue willfully sinning. Christ has set us free from slavery to sin so that we may do the good works that he has prepared beforehand for us to do.

 

[jonathan_hili]

No, that would not cause the loss of our salvation. Christ has already paid for that sin on the cross. It is forgiven.

That however does not mean that sin is no big or should continue willfully sinning. Christ has set us free from slavery to sin so that we may do the good works that he has prepared beforehand for us to do.

See, this is the thing I don’t get, VDMA.

Are you saying that if we sin, our sins are automatically forgiven even if we are not consciously repentant and ask for forgiveness/confess?

Moreover, if this is true, how is sin a big issue and why shouldn’t we continue sinning since it has no bearing on our salvation? If Christ’s sacrificial death has cleansed us from all our sins, repented sins and unrepented sins, what does it matter how many sins we continue to pile on?

 

[VDMA]

See, this is the thing I don’t get, VDMA.

Are you saying that if we sin, our sins are automatically forgiven even if we are not consciously repentant and ask for forgiveness/confess?

Moreover, if this is true, how is sin a big issue and why shouldn’t we continue sinning since it has no bearing on our salvation? If Christ’s sacrificial death has cleansed us from all our sins, repented sins and unrepented sins, what does it matter how many sins we continue to pile on?

Since I am not a trained theologian, I’ll point you to the following notes in the Lutheran Study Bible put out by Concordia Publishing House:

Note on Romans 6:1-14
We may be tempted to make grace an invitation to sin. Because God will forgive me, why not do what I want? This immature attitude misses this point: Christ unites Himself to us. In His death and resurrection, we receive forgiveness and life. He calls us to live in His life, not to turn back to a life dominated by sin. He enables us to live in the freedom of His grace.

Note on Romans 6:15-23
Although many people consider freedom to be the ultimate human right, no one is truly free spiritually. We were slaves to sin and bound to death. Knowing this, Jesus came to serve us by giving His life on the cross and rising for us. Freed from sin, we can now serve God. Only when we are “slaves” to God will we have freedom to be the people He created us to be.