Getting Saved (Part 3)

Assurance of Salvation

Photo by Jonas Allert on Unsplash

Previously, in Part 1, we introduced you to once saved, always saved (OSAS). In Part 2, we explored why it is a harmful soteriology. We highly encourage you to read Part 1 and 2 before continuing so that you are up to speed on where we are, though this can be read on its own. 

One of the most attractive components of OSAS is it contains extreme comfort in its claims on who is saved. As we previously established, however, it makes the error of ignoring sanctification, a necessary component of salvation. It also ignores biblical realities about the possibility of apostasy. We believe that there is true assurance of salvation found in the Scripture that doesn’t ignore these explicit realities. True assurance of salvation comes directly from the Holy Spirit, and does not rely on any person to be the personal arbiter of who is saved, whether themselves or anyone else, but rather relies on God for our salvation.

Salvation itself is not something that simply happens where a box is checked or a ticket is punched, rather it is a covenantal relationship which requires our renewed participation everyday. As such, salvation is conditional.¹ 

The Two Conditions for Salvation, Repentance and Faith

As we established, salvation is not a ticket to heaven that is punched. It is our pardon from past sin, regeneration, and freedom from future sin that enables us to be continuing members and participants in the Kingdom of God who become more like Christ. There are two conditions, or things we must go through, to even begin to find the reconciliation of salvation: faith and repentance. 

In order to be able to believe in God, and thereby enjoy the benefits of Jesus’ atonement (which is the pardon for our sins), we need faith. Faith, enabled by the Holy Spirit, is the knowing of and about God and trusting in Him. The author of Hebrews speaks of faith in this way, that “faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen” and continues to say “without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”² The early church father Rufinius would say, “In fact, there is nothing in life that can be transacted without a preliminary readiness to believe.”³

As we can see, faith in God is a necessary step to salvation for without faith in God, how can God save us? Faith, like salvation, is not a ticket we punch either, it is enabled by God and sustained by God for those who wish to draw near to Him by their response to His revelation. Jesus Himself is interceding for those of little faith that they may come to full faith and then to repentance (Luke 13:8, 1 Tim 2:1, Eph 2:18).

When Jesus began His ministry, He started by saying, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near!” (Matthew 3:2 CSB). Repentance, enabled by the Holy Spirit, is the act of choosing to turn away from sin. This occurs after the Spirit has laid heavy upon our hearts the weight of our sin and we grieve it. We know that only Jesus’ blood can cover our sin, and we allow Him to cleanse us as we make an incredible pivot and turn from sin to Him. This is the primary requirement of being participants in God’s kingdom. 

Now if it be so joyful a thing to believe that Christ died to save sinners, what consolation must it be to add to our faith, hope? To be assured that he died to save us? If to know that a ransom is paid for fallen man, and a new covenant of mercy given him, be the source of a peace which passeth all understanding, yea, of joy unspeakable and full of glory, how must he rejoice who feels within his own soul that this ransom is paid for him! Whose heart bears witness that he is within that covenant, and shall find mercy even in the day of vengeance!⁴

After repentance, we put on a new self, we are regenerated - born again, and this is where the rest of our salvation journey begins (Titus 3:4-7). This is not an ending point where a ticket has been punched as OSAS teaches, this is the beginning of the rest of our lives in God’s salvation covenant. None of this is possible to do on our own, it is all initiated by God, and sustained by Him. This requires your continued willing participation of faith and repentance as a condition after initial justification.

Direct and Indirect Witness of the Holy Spirit

Now that we have established what it takes to step into the life of salvation, we can ask: how do we know we are truly in this life of salvation? What assures us of it? There are generally two main ways in which the Holy Spirit witnesses to the assurance of our salvation, the direct and indirect witness. 

Direct witnesses include an experiential blessing where the Holy Spirit confirms in our hearts in a supernatural way that we have genuine faith in God’s salvation. Consider John Wesley’s famous testimony of his encounter with the Holy Spirit at Aldersgate:

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading [Martin] Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.⁵

It is important to note that not everyone will receive an experiential witness like this. It is more common among converts than those who have been born into the Christian faith, but nonetheless it is a way in which the Spirit commonly moves. 

Indirect witnesses include a good conscience, displaying the fruit of the Spirit, and the Spirit resolving our questions and doubts. Paul speaks often of this kind of witness, and states that this is the common experience of people who are “led by the Spirit.”⁶ John Wesley quotes Paul in Romans 5:5 (KJV) when he said that to be a Christian is to have “the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” Paul also says famously in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (CSB):

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love, preceding all of the fruits of the Spirit, is the normative witness of the assurance of salvation that all Christians share. It directly flows from the hope we have in faith and from repentance. It leads to our joy and eternal happiness, as the Rev. Charles Wesley would say,  “Such joy have all those that hope in God, and the stronger their hope the greater it is: but this is not all; for hope leads to love, and in this love happiness is complete.”⁷ St. John epitomizes this when he said, “The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8 CSB). Love, Jesus says, is the defining characteristic that His disciples will be known by (John 13:34-35). Because love is God’s defining characteristic, it acts as the universal assurance of salvation when we know and live out God’s love. 

There are other fruits of the Spirit that will be displayed among the Christian that flow out of love, which are listed in Galatians 5:22-23. The Spirit also grants gifts to certain people (1 Corinthians 12-14) and reconciles doubts in one’s own spirit. These too, can serve as assurance of our salvation. 

The Struggle As Evidence of Salvation

Knowing this we turn to the Lucta, which is Latin for “wrestle,” this is part of the a posteriori aspect of assurance that generally deals with experience. Part of what we have been going over has been part of the a priori aspect of assurance. A priori is the knowledge we come by through deduction; Christ is savior and He died for all, all who believe in Him will be saved, ‘I believe, so I will be saved.’ A posteriori proceeds from a priori, and cannot stand alone or be the ground of our assurance but it provides further comfort in our assurance. So what is this Lucta? It gets its name from Paul’s words: “For the desire of the flesh is against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, in order to keep you from doing whatever you want” (Gal 5:17 NASB). The Lucta is the struggle between the Spirit and the flesh. Why is this important? 

What the Lucta hinges on is the doctrine of Total Depravity; that every aspect of natural man is sinful and fallen, that man does not desire the things of God, he does not desire to follow God nor does he love Him, and he cannot effectively resist sin and evil. This is the natural man. How does this bring one assurance? This only reminds someone of how terrible a sinner they are. This is partly what makes one question whether they are saved or not, whether they are elect or not. However, it is this doctrine that helps give us assurance. Man naturally does not desire the things of God, he does not not desire to please Him, nor do His will. Yet, this is different from the experience of the Christian. As we have stated above, sanctification follows from our baptism into Christ by the Spirit (1 Cor 12:13). The Spirit dwells in us and conforms us to the image of Christ, teaches us, and gives us strength (Rom 8:9-11, 26-29; 1 Cor 10:13; Phil 2:13). The Christian has a new nature due to his being born again (John 3:3-6), he is not ruled by sin even though he struggles with it. This is the key. 

It is the fact that the Christian struggles with temptations and sin and is not overcome without a fight that testifies to his salvation. For nothing in man desires to keep God’s commands, yet, the Christian fights sin in trying to keep God’s commands. Natural man does not love God, yet, the Christian resists sin due to his love for God. The Christian resists, and even if he gives in, he is not lost. If nothing in natural man resists the flesh and yet man resists the flesh, it is not because of himself that he does such but something, or better yet Someone, that is in him fights it. The Spirit resists the things of the flesh, so when the Christian fights and resists, it is the Spirit in him working to do so (Gal 5:17; 1 Cor 10:13). This struggle could lead to discouragement and depression, however, rightly viewed it is instead an indication of his election and a healthy spiritual life that seeks holiness and righteousness.⁸ It is not our progress in sanctification or works that secure our salvation. We are secure only because of our faith in Christ who has done all the work, we rest in Him. This is just as Wesley said “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” The Spirit helps further assure us and testify that we are children of God (Rom 8:15-17). It is the struggle of the indwelling Spirit against the flesh that helps assure us we truly are children of the promise. 

The New Antinomians

Some advocates of OSAS will posit that such a view is nothing more than works based salvation, that people who advocate for anything other than OSAS are only one step from Roman Catholicism. However, what we have put forward in the previous section is not only what is known as the historic Arminian position but also the position of the Reformed Orthodox of the 16th and 17th centuries.⁹ Such comforts given to us through the Lucta are not the grounds for our assurance (see previous section). The Lucta is an a posteriori aspect of assurance, only the a priori is the grounds for our assurance. The a posteriori is entirely grounded on the a priori. It is a testimony of the Spirit of what is already true and what we place our assurance in, Christ’s atoning work. Thus, it is not of works but of faith. 

As Protestants, we affirm Sola Fide (justification by faith alone), yet, some object to and say that if  one can forfeit salvation then we are kept by our works. We have already displayed how that is not what we affirm here. If someone asserts that someone can still have salvation apart from continued faith because he believed at some earlier point in his life, that view makes a mockery of God’s grace. Faith is the condition for attaining salvation (John 3:16). If one has faith, he will be saved. If man does not have faith, he will not be saved. When man had faith, he was secure but the moment he apostatized, he was cut off from the vine (John 15:1-6; Romans 11:17-24; Hebrews 3:12-14, 6:4-6, 10:26-31; 2 Peter 2:20-21). The Christian does not stay on the vine because of his works, but only because of faith in the power of God to save. 

Conclusion 

Ultimately, it is the Holy Spirit, God Himself, that gives us assurance of our salvation. Whether it is through “The Struggle” against sin, the indirect witness of the Holy Spirit through us as we put on God’s love, or through a direct experience with the Spirit, God has assurance of salvation available in sanctification for those who trust in Jesus for salvation and earnestly repent of their sins. It is a common experience that all believers share in. There is nothing anyone can do to save themselves. As Tom Oden says,

God’s sanctifying work in us is not reducible to our work of moral exercises. No one is sanctified by his or her own power. Though sanctification elicits and requires discipline, it is not limited to acts of discipline. It is from beginning to end a work of free grace.¹⁰

God’s free work of grace is the grandest gift anyone could ever receive. To have confidence that one has received it is not an insurmountable task or a questioning of God’s sovereignty, but rather the recognition of the simple reflection of Christ in us and the power of the Holy Spirit’s sanctification active in us that all can and should witness to. This is our confidence. We must be aware of it for no other reason than, as Jesus warns in Matthew 24, we can reject it, and some will. 

1.  2 Cor. 3:18, 4:16; Eph. 4:23, 24; Col. 3:10

2.  Heb 11:1,5 (CSB)

3.  Rufinus, Comm., ACW 20, p. 32

4.  Wesley, C. (1816). Sermons by the Late Rev. Charles Wesley (pp. 121–122). Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy.

5.  W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, eds. The Works of John Wesley: Journals and Diaries, vols. 18-24 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988-2003), 18:249-50

6.  Galatians 5:18

7. Wesley, C. (1816). Sermons by the Late Rev. Charles Wesley (p. 122). Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy.

8.  Stanglin and McCall, Theologian of Grace, 184. 

9. Stanglin, Arminius on Assurance, 202-203.

10.  Oden, T. C. (1992). Life in the Spirit: Systematic Theology, vol. III (p. 215). Harper: San Francisco.