Jul 278 min read

Assurance of Salvation: Gift of Faith and Love

Table of contents:

What is Assurance?

Why is this assurance important?

Is this assurance possible?

God wants us to have this assurance.

Why don’t we have this assurance?

3 Bases of assurance

Personal tips on assurance that have helped me

Assurance of salvation is God-given confidence to a faithful believer in Jesus Christ of our Father's present appro

Assurance of Salvation: Gift of Faith and Love

Introduction: Why Do We Lack Assurance?

Faith is foundational for a Christian. Satan makes faith his primary target. The Bible is our shield and sword in this war.

Jesus saved me while I was a boy, and I had no doubts about this until the professors at Rutgers tried to argue me out of my faith. They might have been successful had I not kept reading the Bible every day

What is it about the Bible that makes this so? Is it magic? No, it is simply the fact that reading devotionally helps us enter God’s presence, where there can be no doubt.

As we read, the Holy Spirit interacts with our hearts, and we see God’s perfect truth. We also see that the Serpent’s primary approach to undermine Adam and Eve, was the question he still uses today: Hath God said? Genesis 3:1

Where do we get our information? If it is from God, we will have assurance. If from the world we will doubt.

What is Assurance?

Assurance is approval, a sign of favor, a guarantee, and something we seek in many areas. It is a gift of God, and we access it by faith and love. Here is a good definition from The Gospel Coalition:

Why Do We Lack Assurance ?

Faith is foundational for a Christian. Satan makes faith his primary target. The Bible is our shield and sword in this war.

Jesus saved me while I was a boy, and I had no doubts about this until the professors at Rutgers tried to argue me out of my faith.

They might have been successful had I not kept reading the Bible devotionally.

What is it about the Bible that makes this so? Is it magic?

No, it is simply the fact that reading devotionally helps us enter God’s presence, where there can be no doubt.

Where do we get our information? If it is from God, we will have assurance. If from the world we will doubt.

Assurance of salvation is a God-given confidence for every true believer in Christ of their present approval and future acceptance by their Father.

Why is this assurance important?

If we are uncertain that our Father loves us, we will walk in apprehension, timidity, and fear: without confidence. In this unsure condition, we cannot live for Jesus*(4BC - 30AD) as we should.

an * after a name means that person is in SPIRITUAL LIVES

The “rivers of living water” He promised will not flow, and our joy will not be complete.

“We should all be concerned about our assurance of salvation, because if we lack assurance we lack joy, and if we lack joy our life is of probably of poor quality.” – Martin Lloyd Jones (1899-1981)

Is this assurance possible?

Of course. Jesus said,

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out…

And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me but raise it up on the last day. —John 6: 37 & 39.

Here, God the Father and God the Son affirm that all of us will be with Him! Praise God!

Jesus speaks even more strongly later:

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.

My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.– John 10:28-29

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who gave His life on the cross to save us. We are His sheep, and He loves us.

God wants us to have this assurance.

We are not wandering aimlessly and hoping by chance to find salvation. We are central to God’s plan and chosen because He loves us: St. Paul* (5-67) tells us this about God the Father’s role in assuring our salvation:

According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. Ephesians 1:4-6

Chosen before the foundation of the world, we would be foolish not to believe that the Almighty God, who cannot lie, will accomplish His purpose! Our salvation is of God.

How do we get this assurance?

By becoming his sheep! Jesus lays it all out for us in the third chapter of John:

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus asked him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother’s womb for the second time and be born?

Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. – John 3:3-6

And then Jesus gives us the centerpiece of our faith, the foundation of Christianity:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16

This is presented quite clearly. God’s gift of love to the world was His Son, and all anyone needs to do is believe in Him to have everlasting life. Use the faith God has given us.

Why don’t we have this assurance?

Maybe we are not saved! Many people think that being “born again” means being saved. It does not. This act of the Holy Spirit lets us “see,” i.e., become aware of the kingdom of God, but to enter into the kingdom of God, Jesus says we must be “born of water and the Spirit.”

Maybe our faith is not strong. This was the case with the Apostle Peter (1-67). The devil was after him, just like he is after you and me:

And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has desired you, that he may sift you as wheat.

But I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not. And when you are converted, strengthen your brothers. – Luke 22:31-32

Picture the scene. This is in the upper room after they have all partaken of the Lord’s Supper. They argue about who the greatest is, and Jesus tells Peter He is praying for him.

First, that his faith will not fail (Peter failed three times that very night) and then that he will strengthen his brothers “when you are converted.”

Peter had been born again, but not yet born of “water and the Spirit.”

Most assuredly, Satan* is after us all. He is trying to trick us into doubting our salvation when we are saved and sometimes fooling us into thinking we are saved when we are not!

My testimony on assurance

I was born into the Gospel, into a godly family and brought up in the church. I was “born again” while still in my crib when Jesus came into my room.

My minister brother baptized me in water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost at Emmanuel Pentecostal Church in Elizabeth in 1958. I had a very arrogant assurance of my salvation.

But soon the devil fooled me into thinking I was so smart and cool that I could live like the world and still be a part of the kingdom. I lived fifteen years in this state of delusion, thinking I was in the kingdom but knowing I was not.

I knew that “the wages of sin is death,” but I did not understand that my sins would

grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you are sealed until the day of redemption. -Ephesians 4:30

I was lost, but Jesus found me. He came to me at a time of sorrow when the deaths of three loved ones took me to the cemetery every week.

He came to me there, convicted me of my sin, baptized me in the Holy Ghost, and gave me His assurance that He died for me, and I have lived for Him and in Him ever since. He took me back to the fold where I belonged.

3 Bases of assurance

Assurance of Salvation Is Based on God’s Promises
Assurance of Salvation Is Based on Christ’s Person
Assurance of Salvation Is Based on the Holy Spirit’s Power

Personal tips on assurance that have helped me

1,) Read the Bible devotionally every day. Live in it. Feed on His Word. You will grow, better still you will get to know Jesus. You will become friends and live in His presence where there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.

2.) Get active in a Bible-believing church. Go to Sunday school, Sunday worship, morning and evening, prayer meeting, Bible study and volunteer wherever God puts you.

Narrow your circle of friends. Fellowship with God’s people and avoid worldliness.

3.) Spend much time in secret. Go into your room and shut the door. Wait upon the Lord. Ask Him to lead you and make you a blessing.

4.) Operate on faith. Believe all He tells you, obey his commands, especially to love one another.

5.) Ask this question before everything you do: “Will this be pleasing to Jesus?”

Here are a few verses from St. Paul, James (7?-62 or 69) and Jesus that have strengthened me.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. –

For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. -Philippians 2:12-13

6.) Don’t try to fight in your own strength. Every time I did, I lost. Here is what I learned

Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. – James 4:7-8

Often, we have doubts and wonder how long our faith will last. Paul* had these thoughts too, but the Holy Ghost gave him this assurance:

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ: – Philippians 1:6

The best assurance I have received is this promise from Jesus:

If a man loves Me, he will keep My Word. And My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. – John 14:23

What better assurance can there be? Praise God!

Let’s rejoice and sing these assuring words written by Fanny Crosby (1820-1915):

listen HERE

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!

Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God

Born of his Spirit, washed in His blood

This is my story, this is my song