Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
How can we have a secure "assurance of salvation"? The apostle John likes to nail things down, to "know" this or that for sure. Some two dozen times in his First Letter he says we can "know" that we "know" the truth. Half of those times he uses the word ginosko, which means to be informed, to gain the knowledge of. The other half he uses the word eido which means to know by perception of truth, or shall we say, by common sense. He has "written unto you ... that ye may know (eido) that ye have eternal life" (5:13).
How can spiritual common sense give us this "assurance"? The answer is in verse 11: "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son." "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son" (John 3:16), not merely offered to give Him. Some five or six times in Romans 5 Paul emphasizes that God has given us the "free gift" that has reversed the "condemnation" that came upon the human race "in Adam," and as John says, that gift is "in Christ." The Father gave Christ to the world, that He might already be "the Saviour of the world," "the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe" (John 4:42; 1 Tim. 4:10).
What it boils down to is this: salvation is due to God's initiative; damnation can be due only to our own initiative in choosing not to "believe" the truth. As surely as Esau had the birthright, so surely you have eternal life in Christ. He gave Himself for you and to you. He not only offered to give you the gift of eternal life so that your salvation would depend on your own initiative; He actually gave you the gift so that in eternity you would never have any reason to "boast" that you took the initiative. It's 100% "by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God [there's that word again!]: not of works, lest any man should boast" (Eph. 2:8, 9).
Although Esau had the birthright, he chose to "despise" it and "sold" it for a trifle of worldly pleasure (Gen. 25:34: Heb. 12:16). "He that believeth not" takes the initiative in his being lost at last (John 3:18, 19), "despises" what God has given him "in Christ." Cherish your assurance in Christ, but don't be cocksure in yourself. You can trust Him but you can't trust yourself. You can very easily do something stupid. Look both ways before you cross the street!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: February 8, 2001.
Copyright © 2013 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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