Assurance

We all have a need for assurance in life. We want to have an assurance that we can go to college and do well enough to get a decent job. When we marry we want to know for sure that our spouses will be faithful to us. But the most important assurance we need in life is the assurance of our salvation. We want the comfort of knowing that we belong to Jesus Christ. Everyone of us has at one time or another had doubts about our salvation. We have wondered whether or not we our children of God, or how He could love us because of our sins. Nevertheless, God gives the comfort and calls us to ask Him for what we need according to His will in faith. “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised)” (Hebrews 10:22,23). “But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed” (James 1:6). Not everyone, however, believes that assurance is a deeply comforting blessing. In the Netherlands Reformed Churches, a person must have a religious experience verified by the elders of the church. Until that time they live in doubt of their salvation. Paul talks about those who “glory in doubting”. While we all have doubts, it shouldn’t prevent us from believing that Christ died on the cross to save us from our sins. The hymn “Blessed Assurance” begins like this “Blessed Assurance/ Jesus is mine/O what a foretaste of glory divine”. We have this assurance by the grace of God of our salvation through Christ’s blood. When we have this comfort, we can, as the Heidelberg Catechism says “live and die happily”.

Kevin Rau