6/10/19 Andres (to see conversation, click HERE)
Can we as Christians be sure of our salvation? Should we, or would it be presumptuous and
arrogant to believe that we are heaven bound while other people are not?
Many churchgoers I’ve met in my outreach conversations take a
humble approach to salvation, claiming they can’t be sure and that they’ll find
out when they get there. Scripture may
seem to support that approach, such as Philippians 2:12 which advises “…continue
to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”
Most people I talk to who say that they can’t be sure of heaven
believe that such assurance would be a sign of a selfish pride and arrogance
that would work against being saved.
Better to take the humble approach they reason. But the basis of such a thought is that
heaven is something they must earn, not something given by God’s grace and
mercy in Christ.
Additionally, upon further questioning I usually find that
those who say they “can’t be sure” usually are sure anyway, but they simply
have decided not to vocalize that confidence.
Their trust is in their own human goodness or religious acts, rather
than the finished work of Christ on the cross.
Some, however, truly don’t seem to believe they are good
enough, and salvation is a source of constant worry. One person that may fit that description is
Andres, whom I found at a park enjoying his hobby of flying drones. He kindly agreed to share his beliefs, and
told me that thoughts about what happens after this life are something he
worries about every day, and that it does affect his behavior to the point
where he felt that if heaven was assured, he could relax and take it easy.
Andres appreciated my explanation that one can be confident
of salvation without being arrogant if their trust is in Jesus rather than
their own efforts. I told him that I
know I don’t deserve to go to heaven, but that my confidence is in who Jesus is
and what He has done, not in who I am or what I have done.
To be saved by grace is very, very humbling as we time and
again realize we don’t deserve it, and this, I believe, is where the “fear and
trembling” that Paul wrote of comes into the picture. Earlier in Philippians Paul wrote “For to me,
to live is Christ and to die is gain.”
He was confident of salvation, yet he advised fear and trembling for believers
regarding it.
What I believe Paul meant was that we should never, ever,
lose our sense of awe and wonder as to how such sinners as ourselves could ever
be saved, but for the grace of God in Christ.
We can and should be as confident of our salvation as our faith in
Christ, but we should never let that confidence give way to indifference caused
by familiarity. It can and should drive
our life, for “to live is Christ”, not to live for ourselves, and yet we can
have that tremendous hope and confidence that to die is, indeed, gain.
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