"Assurance Of Faith"

Hebrews 10:22

Many people enjoy the assurance of salvation who have never experienced the grace of God at all. They claim peace and speak peace to their own hearts, but have no biblical grounds for peace. They delude themselves with a false peace. Multitudes live and die being fully persuaded that they are saved, only to wake up in hell with astonishment, suffering the wrath of God (Matt. 7:21-23). Such people base their assurance upon something in the past, a time, an event, a place, an experience to which they can point and say, "There I began to believe."

Others, who truly have been saved by God's grace have no assurance of faith in Christ. Perhaps you are among them. You now find in your heart repentance toward God, faith in Christ, and love for the Savior, but you have never confessed Christ as your Lord and Savior, because you lack the assurance that your faith is real. You have had no climatic experience that you can point to and say, "There I began to trust Christ."

Conversion is not always a climatic experience. Sometimes it is a gradual thing. We do not all experience grace in the same way. The need is the same, the grace is the same, and the results are the same; but the experience of grace differs greatly. Blind Bartimaeus received his sight in a climatic experience (Mark 10:47-52); but the blind man of Bethsaida received his sight gradually, by degrees (Mark 8:22-25). Both men were blind. Both men received their sight. They were both made whole by the work of Christ alone. But they experienced that work in different ways.

My point is this - If you now trust Christ, if you now repent of your sins, if you now love the Lord Jesus Christ, it does not matter when or where you began to do so. If you trust Christ, you are born of God! You are an heir of God! You have eternal life! It is written, "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life" (John 3:36). That is the assurance of faith, "The full assurance of faith!" If you do believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, I urge you, by an act of faith to confess Christ in believer's baptism and publicly devote yourself to him, avowing your purpose of heart to walk with him forever in the newness of life.

Don Fortner