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How can I know that I’m saved? This is one of the most important questions that anyone can ask. The world—when it allows for an afterlife at all—answers it by saying: “You can’t. Try as hard as you can, and hope for the best.” Many religions say something similar. Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, Roman Catholicism—each, in its own way, ultimately leaves a person to do his best and hope that it is enough. Assurance is never guaranteed.
The theological firestorm of the sixteenth century traces, in no small part, to one man’s struggle with this very question. The Roman Catholic treadmill of justification left Martin Luther in a constant state of panic and bewilderment over the state of his soul. Not until he grasped the gospel that Paul proclaims in Romans 1:17—“The righteous shall live by faith”—did he come to see that his assurance was located not primarily in himself but, as he put it, extra nos, outside himself. His salvation depended not on him but on God.
Traditions would later divide over whether the justified can finally fall away. The Reformed confession is that they cannot: Those whom God has chosen, He keeps to the end. The elect can never lose their salvation, and by His Spirit, God gives them a real, if subjective, sense of that surety (Rom. 8:16). The ground of that assurance is wholly objective—Christ and His finished work—even as the assurance itself is a true work of the Spirit within us. So weighty did the pastors and theologians who drafted the Westminster Confession of Faith consider the matter that, even a century after the Reformation, they devoted an entire chapter to it (chapter 18, “Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation”).
The reason that the doctrine of assurance is important is straightforward: It is a matter of doctrine and of daily Christian living on which our immortal souls depend. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Paul asks (Rom. 8:31). The implication is that we may take courage, stand boldly for the Lord, and share the gospel with confidence because we know that God has saved us. Confidence in the Christian life comes in knowing that “my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth” (Job 19:25).
Dear Christian, pray that God would strengthen your faith, that His Spirit would conform you to the image of Christ, and that He would help you grasp the “breadth and length and height and depth” of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge (Eph. 3:18–19). And having known that God has saved you in Christ, rest in the joy of a future that is secure—not because you secured it but because Christ secured it for you.