Tampering With Salvation Assurance

➡ This talk by Paul, a voiceover for the ministry ‘Your Daily Bread’, discusses the concept of ‘Salvation Assurance’. He explains that certain actions and thoughts, such as recurring sin, misunderstanding the gospel, and failing to see God’s goodness in trials, can make us doubt our salvation. However, he emphasizes that if we live a life of righteousness and godliness, we can maintain our assurance of salvation. He concludes by encouraging listeners to stay strong in their faith and continue to shine their light in the world.

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God is Government called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6.11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focused discussion will be on tampering with salvation assurance. So convicting preaching, guilt over sin, understanding a high standard of holiness, misunderstanding the gospel, not accepting full and complete forgiveness, no memory of the time of your true salvation.

Those things can tamper with your assurance. There’s another one, strong impulses of the flesh. You keep going back to the same sins. Have you noticed? You don’t all of a sudden come up with a brand new sin. People say to me, why do I do the same sins? And the answer is because they’re ingrained in you. That’s the character, or the lack of character, but that’s the nature of your sinful flesh. You have sins that you prefer, and so of course you go back to those sins. You go back to them also, because you have past carnal fulfillment in those sins.

And when you think about the strong impulses of your flesh that seem to be making you recycle those same old sins, you might say to yourself, maybe I’m not really saved. Another element in life that will tamper with your assurance is a failure to see God’s goodness in your trials. What do I mean by that? Well, you find out you have cancer. You find out you have to have heart surgery, and you say, why is God doing this to me? Or one of your children denies the faith. Or you thought you had a girl that you wanted to marry, and she shunned you.

Or you had a career in mind, and a goal in mind, or an objective. It could be a whole lot of things. Life is full of disappointment. And you can get on sort of the pity side of all of that, and say, if God’s supposed to be my father, and bless me with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, why is this happening to me? Why is this happening to me? It’s a failure to see God’s good hand in the trial. It’s a failure to go below the trial to the providence that’s unfolding.

You have to understand that life is full of those things. But Romans 8, 28, right? That’s why that verse is so popular. God orders all things so that they work out for what? For good to those who are the called. So all of those things can trouble you with regard to assurance. But there’s one other thing that is the dominant reality, and it’s just simply this. Sin and disobedience. If there is in your life the appearance of sin and disobedience on a regular basis, you will forfeit your assurance for the reason some of the reasons we just mentioned, guilt and familiarity with those sins.

But also I have to tell you this. If you’re walking in disobedience, the Holy Spirit will withdraw that assurance. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, right? So if you’re not walking in the Spirit, you’re not going to experience love, joy, and peace. We want assurance, and it’s for those reasons. Let me just kind of lay it out simply. We want assurance because with assurance comes peace, joy, praise, love, gratitude, strength, patience, purity, hope. With assurance comes love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, meekness, self-control, all the fruit of the Spirit.

We want that. We want assurance because we want those wonderful spiritual blessings. But you’re not going to have them if you’re sinning and disobedient. If that’s going on in your life in some kind of routine way, even though the dominant tyranny of sin has been broken because you have been made a servant of righteousness, if you see continual pattern of sin for a season or a time, that’s going to take away your assurance, and honestly, it should. The only accurate evidence that you’re a true believer is righteousness and godliness of life, not as a perfection, but as a dominant direction.

Let me show you this. Now we’ll come to Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 2. I want to go back to this and we’ll make a few comments. Verse 4, we remember this. God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us. Again, everything is divinely designed, planned, initiated, and achieved. Even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

This is a description of our salvation and its security. Look at it. God, out of his mercy, out of his love, made us alive with Christ by grace. We have been raised up with Christ. We are seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ, which means we have a place in heaven. That’s what Peter meant when he said, we have an inheritance waiting there. That’s all said and done. And in the ages to come, the Lord will pour out surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ. So that’s the reality of our eternal salvation.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, not of yourselves, it’s a gift of God, not as a result of work, so that no one may boast. But then this. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. As surely as he predetermined your justification, he predetermined your sanctification. God prepared beforehand your good works that you would walk in them. Justification and sanctification come together. We are spiritually transformed. Our lives are dramatically changed. It’s not just that God declares us righteous by covering us with the righteousness of Christ.

He transforms us. That’s what verse 10 of chapter 2 is saying. Now I want you to go over to chapter 4, which is where we have been for the last few times in Ephesians, and I draw you to verse 17. So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, Paul and the Lord agree, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind. You don’t walk that way anymore. How do they walk? And how did you walk before your conversion? Verse 18.

Darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart, they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. Okay, that’s a description of unconverted people. They walk like pagans because they are. They’re futile in their mind, empty, darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, ignorant, hard-hearted, callous, and given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

You look at the world around you, the unrestrained world in which we live now, and you wonder, how can people be so dissolute, so reprobate, live at such an aggressive level of going from one transgression to another as fast as they can possibly go? It’s because that’s who they really are. And the last word in verse 19 is very important. Unconverted people pursue sensuality and impurity with greediness. They never have enough. They’re greedy. They never have enough. You and I as believers may sin, but we’re not greedy to sin.

We’re not longing to sin, lusting to sin. We don’t have this dominating greediness to go to the next sin, and the next sin, and the next sin, the next sin. How do I know that? Because verse 20 says this, you did not learn Christ in that way. You don’t live like that. You don’t think like that. You don’t function like that. Yes, you can fall into sin and disobedience, and you will forfeit your assurance. But if you’re a true believer, those are the exceptions to your righteousness. And you don’t pursue sensuality and every wicked thing with intense greed.

You didn’t learn Christ in that way. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of Tampering with Salvation Assurance. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].