Jesus

How Can You Know You Are Saved?

Over the last couple of Sundays at our church,we’ve worked through Hebrews 6. This chapter has been notoriously difficult to interpret for scholars, commentators, and preachers. If you wonder what I mean, take a few minutes and read through the chapter.

A variety of interpretive solutions have been suggested. I landed in the camp that believes the audience are genuine believers who if they “fall away”from Christ would lose rewards in heaven and spiritual blessings on earth. If you’re interested, here’s a link to the service and sermon on the subject. I may be wrong about my interpretation of the text, but here is commentator David Allen making a case for this view:

Three things seem clear in the New Testament. First, genuine believers are eternally secure in their salvation. The sheer weight of evidence in Hebrews and the entire New Testament supporting this doctrine is unavoidable. A key text is 1 John 2:19: “they went out from us because they were never of us.” Speaking about this verse, D. A. Carson correctly stated, “genuine faith, by definition, perseveres; where there is no perseverance, by definition the faith cannot be genuine.” Second, there is no question that apparent believers who are not yet genuine believers can commit apostasy. This too is taught in the New Testament. It is just not taught in Heb 6:6. True apostasy is reserved for the unsaved. However, believers can “fall away.” It is unhelpful and confusing to use the word “apostasy” to describe what genuine believers do when they rebel against the Lord and commit sin due to the technical meaning the term has developed. Third, Christians can commit serious sin without being disqualified from eternal life. Part of the problem with some interpretations of Hebrews 6 is a failure to distinguish between totally renouncing Jesus and/or faith in Jesus by those who were never genuinely converted and failing Jesus on the part of those who are genuinely saved. People who call themselves Christians and yet sin without regret or desire to change show that they have never been genuinely converted. Christians sometimes do commit serious sins without being disqualified from eternal life. Examples include David, Peter, and some of the Corinthian Christians at the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:17–22). First Corinthians 3:1–3 affirms that carnal believers exist. Such immaturity and carnality is challenged by Paul with stern language. However, Paul does not question their salvation. He rather addresses them throughout as genuine believers. Carnal Christians are poor examples of Christians, but they are Christians. Likewise, the author of Hebrews addresses his readers as genuine believers, but they were immature spiritually (Heb 6:1). He warns them to press on to maturity, but even in the harsh words of Heb 6:4–6, he does not indicate they are not genuine believers. Hebrews 6:4–6 does not teach apostasy, in the technical theological sense of ultimately denying Christ, on the part of believers (the Arminian position) or apostasy on the part of those who are not genuine believers (the Calvinist position). Hebrews 6:1–8 is not a soteriological passage; it is a sanctification passage, as is made clear from the context.

David Allen, Hebrews: The New American Commentary, 389-90.

Whether you agree with me and Allen above, Hebrews 6 does address the security of the believer. The writer of Hebrews goes on to state that he “feels sure of better things–things that belong to salvation” for his readers (6:9). Any reading of Hebrews 6 invites readers to examine their lives and consider the significance of the warning. Hebrews is full of warnings about: drifting away (2:1-4), continuing in unbelief and falling away (3:12-13), falling into disobedience (4:11), becoming dull of hearing and falling away (5:11-6:4-8), neglecting to gather regularly and deliberately sinning (10:24-31), and rejecting the warning about judgment and heaven (12:25-29). The validity of these warnings should motivate believers toward self-examination and intentionally reorienting our eyes and life on Christ.

So, as we read these warnings and consider our salvation, how can we be sure we are saved?

I would commend to you passages like John 10 and the letter of 1 John for a more in depth, biblical treatment of assurance. In short, since it is God’s work through Christ that earns our salvation, our labors or lack thereof cannot bring about the loss of what God made possible through Christ. I believe the Bible teaches that genuine faith perseveres (see Allen’s quote of D.A. Carson above).

But the perseverance of our faith and the assurance of our faith are not necessarily the same. John the Baptist doubted Jesus’ identity after Herod imprisoned him (Matthew 11:2-19). Charles Spurgeon, famed pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London in the 1800s suffered periods where he doubted his salvation.

So how do we experience assurance? Author and pastor Greg Gilbert in his book Assured, encourages his readers to seek assurance of salvation in the following 4 ways. The first two he defines as the driving sources of assurance: the gospel of Jesus Christ and the promises of God. The third is the supernatural source of assurance: the witness of the Holy Spirit. And the fourth is the one we go to most often, but is only a confirming source: the fruits of obedience in our Christian lives. Gilbert’s book is helpful, and if you or someone you know is struggling with assurance, I would commend it.

Practically, Gilbert reminds us of the importance of focusing on God and Christ rather than on ourselves.

The more trustworthy and faithful you learn God to be, the more you will trust him and the more certain you will be in that trust. What this means, in the most practical terms, is that you need to take specific action to remove your eyes from yourself and plant them on God. Read books about God, about theology, about who God is and what he has done, and read them for God’s own sake—to know him and love him and stand in awe of him—not just for the sake of figuring out what ‘applicational nugget’ you can walk away with. Meditate on God’s trinitarian nature, even if you can’t see an immediate application. Dwell on the intricacies of sacrifices and atonement, even if those details don’t seem ‘relevant.’ As you broaden your vision of God, you will find your love and awe of him deepening. And the result will be that you will trust him more. Your certainty that he will move heaven and earth to keep his promises will solidify. Even more, make sure you are a vital contributing member of a local church. Gather with brothers and sisters who are themselves engaged in the fight, sing hymns of praise to God, hear his Word read and preached, lift up your voice with them in prayer. What you will find is that fellowship with other believers will remind you of God’s promises, spiritually stabilize you, and reinvigorate you to continue the fight. Often the very best way to deepen our assurance of salvation is to peel our eyes off ourselves and put them on God and his people.

Greg Gilbert, Assured, 142-3.

We can know we are saved by believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ, trusting the promises of God, and being indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Gilbert is correct to connect assurance to the concrete rather than the subjective. When Jesus confronted John the Baptist’s doubt, he told John’s messengers, “The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them” (Matthew 11:5). He didn’t tell John to remember the day when he announced Jesus or to reflect on his “coming to faith.” He told John to reflect on the concrete miracles. Have a re-read of Hebrews 6. The writer feels sure of better things because God is not unjust and will not overlook the love and service of the church to one another (Hebrews 6:10).

Have more questions? Read through 1 John. Buy and read a copy of Assured by Greg Gilbert. Talk to a pastor or church leader who can help you discern the gospel of Jesus Christ and the promises of God.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Worship is Sacrificial

In some sense, this worship value is pretty obvious. In the Old Testament in particular, the sacrificial system was how Israel worshiped God. They brought sacrifices to God as a reflection of faith and obedience. Their worship flowed out of their sacrifice.

Here are just a few examples:

The Passover lambs were sacrifices from the congregation of Israel.

3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. 4 And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb.5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, 6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.

Exodus 12:3-6

David refused to make a sacrifice or build an altar that cost him nothing.

18 And Gad came that day to David and said to him, “Go up, raise an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” 19 So David went up at Gad’s word, as the Lord commanded. 20 And when Araunah looked down, he saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. And Araunah went out and paid homage to the king with his face to the ground. 21 And Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you, in order to build an altar to the Lord, that the plague may be averted from the people.” 22 Then Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. 23 All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the Lord your God accept you.” 24 But the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. 25 And David built there an altar to the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. So the Lord responded to the plea for the land, and the plague was averted from Israel.

2 Samuel 24:18-25

In another place David testified in confession:

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Psalm 51:17

It should go without saying that our worship is sacrificial. But note why and how our worship is sacrificial. We do not initiate the sacrifice of worship. God did and God does.

In Genesis 3, God sacrificed the first animal to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness (Genesis 3:21). In Genesis 22, God commanded Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. While God stayed Abraham’s hand, the even foreshadowed the ultimate sacrifice God would make on behalf of sinners. The writer of Hebrews picks up on this theme when he describes Jesus’ death in sacrificial and atonement terminology.

11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) 12 he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. 16 For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. 17 For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. 18 Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. 19 For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20 saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.” 21 And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship.22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. 23 Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own,26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 

Hebrews 9:11-26

In the book of Romans, Paul highlights worship as a response to the gospel of Jesus Christ when he describes the kind of worship that God accepts.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12:1-2

Bryan Chapell offers a helpful insight about the kind of worship Paul describes in Romans 12.

He does not say that we should offer our bodies to God so that we will become acceptable ‘living sacrifices.’ Paul says that we should offer our ‘bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God’ (12:1). ‘Holy and pleasing’ are not descriptions of what we will become; they are declarations of what we are. Before we have performed our religious duties, God makes us holy and pleasing to himself. 

Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Worship, 109. 

Here are a few important applications from this worship value.

First, worship is sacrificial because Jesus’ atoning sacrifice for us makes worship possible. It is not our sacrifices to God that make our worship acceptable; it is Christ’s sacrifice for us that makes us acceptable.

Second, when we worship sacrificially, it means that we present ourselves as living sacrifices. The imagery in Romans 12 is that we offer our bodies, not in death, but in life to Christ. This is the goal of Christian living which springs from the glories of God and his gospel represented by the “therefore” of Romans 12:1 that Paul has been describing in the first eleven chapters.

Third, sacrificial worship at the very least requires our time, attention, offerings, and song.

  • Gathered congregational worship requires invested time with God’s people (see Hebrews 10:24-25). Personal, individual worship requires time with God (see Psalm 119:105).
  • When we worship personally (our quiet times) and corporately (with the congregation), our worship must be in spirit and in truth (John 4:23). At the very least, this means that our worship must be attentive or engaged. Instead of daydreaming, sacrificial worshipers are engaged internally (minds and souls) and externally (bodies and activities).
  • Sacrificial worship offers gifts back to God. God invites generous and cheerful giving (2 Corinthians 9:6-7). Part of the way that we worship is to give back to God out of thanks and gratitude for his sacrifice that brings us salvation.
  • One of the most regular commands of the Bible (especially in the Psalms) is the command to sing. Our songs to God are praises, testimonies, and affirmations about God and for God’s people. In this sense, they are elements of sacrifice in worship.

So, I ask you this week. Will you thank God that his sacrifice makes your worship possible? Will you worship God sacrificially out of thanksgiving and praise?

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash