# Which Belief Gives Greater Assurance?



## Jared (Jun 30, 2010)

I am discussing assurance on another forum. Quite a few of the people on this forum believe that you can lose your salvation. They are trying to tell me that I have less assurance than they do because I said that I could in the end prove to be non-elect, even though I believe that I'm saved. I told them that I don't doubt my salvation, but I test myself from time to time to see whether I'm in the faith or not.

What I don't understand is that when I believed that I could lose my salvation, I constantly doubted my salvation and now I don't

Anyway, I just wanted to know your thoughts on this.


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## py3ak (Jun 30, 2010)

Let Augustus Toplady answer the question:

"Yes, I to the end shall endure,
As sure as the earnest is given.
More happy, but not more secure,
The glorified spirits in Heav'n."


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## Jared (Jun 30, 2010)

py3ak said:


> Let Augustus Toplady answer the question:
> 
> "Yes, I to the end shall endure,
> As sure as the earnest is given.
> ...



Could you explain this a little bit? His prose here is kind of difficult for me to follow.

BTW: Can we know with 100% rock-solid assurance that the earnest has been given?


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## py3ak (Jun 30, 2010)

Possibly because it's poetry, not prose? 

He is saying that his perseverance is certain - as surely as he has received the earnest of the Spirit, so certainly will he endure to the end. Thus it is that though the glorified spirits in Heaven are happier (not having to deal with the body of this death) than he is, still he is just as secure as those who have already arrived.


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## Jared (Jun 30, 2010)

py3ak said:


> Possibly because it's poetry, not prose?
> 
> He is saying that his perseverance is certain - as surely as he has received the earnest of the Spirit, so certainly will he endure to the end. Thus it is that though the glorified spirits in Heaven are happier (not having to deal with the body of this death) than he is, still he is just as secure as those who have already arrived.



Could you say this and say as John Piper does that you could prove to be non-elect?


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## MLCOPE2 (Jun 30, 2010)

The whole book of 1 John gives hope to the security of the believer in Christ. It also offers insight into true and false christianity. Any believer who is truly in Christ can be sure that they will be with him in glory.

1 John 3:10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil; whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

1 John 5:13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.


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## SolaScriptura (Jun 30, 2010)

At the subjective level, people can get "assurance" from just about anything. So arguing about what gives (a sense of) more assurance is quite pointless.


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## Jack K (Jun 30, 2010)

Which belief gives greater assurance?

Whichever one depends on God, who is sure and compassionate, rather than man, who is frail and evil.


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## Semper Fidelis (Jun 30, 2010)

What is the basis of their assurance? That, today, they haven't committed a mortal sin? If you probe you will note that they are basing their assurance upon something within them.

What's the assurance? That they are so confident in themselves that they know they would never fall away? Are they really so deceived? Ask them if they've ever done or said something that surprised even them?

The issue isn't the faltering character of men. The issue is whether God saves to the uttermost.


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## Dennis1963 (Jun 30, 2010)

Jared104 said:


> I am discussing assurance on another forum. Quite a few of the people on this forum believe that you can lose your salvation. They are trying to tell me that I have less assurance than they do because I said that I could in the end prove to be non-elect, even though I believe that I'm saved. I told them that I don't doubt my salvation, but I test myself from time to time to see whether I'm in the faith or not.
> 
> What I don't understand is that when I believed that I could lose my salvation, I constantly doubted my salvation and now I don't
> 
> Anyway, I just wanted to know your thoughts on this.


*I believe the greatest assurance is believing God in His promises.* He promises to never leave us, and never loose us, and nothing can separate us from Him; we are held by God's power, not ours.


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## py3ak (Jun 30, 2010)

Jared104 said:


> Could you say this and say as John Piper does that you could prove to be non-elect?


 
Without more context it's hard to say. But if you are making your calling and election sure....


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## Galatians220 (Jun 30, 2010)

If any or all of us could be lost, then we would be believing in Christ for this life only and we'd be among the most miserable of men. If He did not hold us ever so tightly, in a grip roughly but more lovingly the same as the one that puts universes in their places, we would certainly be in a dangerous place. We would also be in that horrible place that some cardinals and even Mother Teresa were at the end of their lives, where, frail and dying, they cried, "But I still don't know where I'm going to be!" Anyone who says that the Lord has left any of His elect in that state of lack of assurance, doesn't know OUR Lord in the first place. (Probably.)

Margaret


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## Grafted In (Jun 30, 2010)

Semper Fidelis said:


> What is the basis of their assurance? That, today, they haven't committed a mortal sin? If you probe you will note that they are basing their assurance upon something within them.
> 
> What's the assurance? That they are so confident in themselves that they know they would never fall away? Are they really so deceived? Ask them if they've ever done or said something that surprised even them?
> 
> The issue isn't the faltering character of men. The issue is whether God saves to the uttermost.


 
So well said! Walter Marshall in _The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification_ says of those who ground assurance on introspection: 
"They that assert, that the Spirit witnesseth our adoption, only by assuring us of the sincerity of our faith, love and other gracious qualifications, and by the reflex act of faith, do teach also commonly, that you must again try, whether the Spirit thus witnessing, be the Spirit of truth, or of delusion, by searching narrowly, whether our inward grace be sincere or counterfeit; so that hereby the testimony of the Spirit rendered so hard to be discerned, that it standeth us in no stead; but all our assurance is made at last to depend on our own certain knowledge of our own sincerity."

It is not a pious act of humility to doubt one's salvation, rather it is a deprecation of the honor and word of the One whom the promise of our salvation has come from. 

My guess is that the people that you are discussing this subject with have a Roman Catholic view of justification, which claims that there is initial justification, which is by faith, and final justification, which is by works. There is no assurance to be had in this model, only the despair and doubting of the double-minded.


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