Assurance of Salvation

Dear Weekly Readers!

God’s Peace!

   

We are now only a little over a week until the start of our annual ALC convention!  Please pray for these four days of services and meetings!   May Jesus Christ be lifted up!

This week our article is by Pastor Ron Holmgren.

   

May God Bless your Week!  John R. 

We too often look in the wrong places to find assurance that we are God's child. It is common for the "sons of Adam" to look within, perhaps searching for some feelings we have had after some spiritual experience. Or we might think that if we look for some "fruit" or "work" we will be sure of the work of God in our heart. 

Some look for some charismatic gift of the spirit. Or we might look back over our life, or at least the years since we have been a Christian, to see if we have progressed in our Christian walk. That must be a sure way to determine if God favors us. In doing this we either despair because we are never good enough or we begin to think lofty thoughts about ourselves.

But these are not the places where we will find true assurance. We must look to that "more sure word of prophecy" that Peter spoke of. There we will find the Gospel—the good news—that we so desperately need.

Luther found this to be true after so many attempts to assure his fearful heart. But when he finally found peace in the "external promise of Christ" (apart from us and our contributions) he wanted to remain there because he saw how solid that foundation was.

Read how he put this in his own words:

God will not have us rely on anything else, or trust with our heart in anything that is not Christ in His Word, no matter how sacred and full of Spirit it may be. Faith has no other foundation on which it can endure… We must seek Christ in that which is the Father's, that is, we must simply and solely cleave to the Word of the Gospel, which shows and reveals Christ aright to us. If you would effectively comfort others and yourself, then learn in this and other spiritual temptations to say with Christ: Why are you running to and fro, tormenting yourself with fearful and distressed thoughts, as though God had no more grace for you and as though Christ were not to be found, and refuse to be satisfied unless you find Him in yourself and feel holy and without sin? 

That will get you nowhere; it is all toil and labor lost. Don't you know that Christ is minded to be present and to be found nowhere but in that which is His Father's and not in that which you or all men are or have? The fault does not lie with Christ and His grace; He indeed is and remains unlost and can always be found; the fault lies in you, that you do not seek Him right, namely, where He is to be sought, because you are judging according to your feelings and expect to seize Him with your thoughts. 

But you must come here, where there is neither yours nor any man's, but God's business and rule, namely, where His Word is. There you will meet Him and hear and see neither wrath nor displeasure, as you fear, but only grace and cordial love toward you… But it means a struggle for the heart to get there and take hold of this; first it must crash and experience that all our notions of seeking Christ are futile and in vain and that in the end there is no other choice than to turn away from oneself and all other human consolation and trust only in His Word. (Martin Luther)

God help us to see this clearly and in his Holy Word find the hope that our hearts long for, found in the proclamation of the Gospel heard in the preaching of God's Word, and in the receiving of the Holy Sacraments wherein the same Word is, and Christ alone is found. We have an external hope that is not based on us or on some changing and uncertain foundation.~

Pastor Ron Holmgren,   Hockinson, WA