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Salvation is the most complicated subject in Holy Scripture. The longer I study it, the more convinced I am that no one has a total grasp of its meaning since in the end it is an act of God that we cannot fully fathom.
I walked a lot of aisles during those days. I think I’ve been saved at least once in every denomination.
Salvation is not a prayer you pray in a one-time ceremony and then move on from; salvation is a posture of repentance and faith that you begin in a moment and maintain for the rest of your life.
2011 Barna study1 shows that nearly half of all adults in America have prayed such a prayer, and subsequently believe they are going to heaven, though many of them rarely, if ever, attend a church, read the Bible personally, or have lifestyles that differ in any significant way from those outside the church. If the groups described in Matthew 7 and Luke 8 are not referring to them, I don’t know to whom they could be referring.
The Enemy—one of whose names in Scripture is “the Deceiver”—loves to keep truly saved believers unsure of their salvation because he knows that if he does they’ll never experience the freedom, joy, and confidence that God wants them to have. But he also loves to keep those on their way to hell deluded into thinking they are on their way to heaven, their consciences immunized from Jesus’ pleas to repent.
The biblical summation of a saving response toward Christ is “repentance” and “belief” in the gospel.
You can “ask Jesus into your heart” without repenting and believing, and you can repent and believe without articulating a request for Jesus to come into your heart.
Before you leave this place, breathe an earnest prayer to God, saying, “God be merciful to me a sinner. Lord, I need to be saved. Save me. I call upon thy name.” Join with me in prayer at this moment, I entreat you. Join with me while I put words into your mouths, and speak them on your behalf—“Lord, I am guilty. I deserve thy wrath. Lord, I cannot save myself. . . . I cast myself wholly upon thee, O Lord. I trust the blood and righteousness of thy dear Son; I trust thy mercy, and thy love, and thy power, as they are revealed in him. I dare to lay hold upon this word of thine, that whosoever
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Some have noted that Jesus’ language in these verses is laden with Jewish wedding imagery. In Jesus’ day, a young suitor would travel to his beloved’s home, throw a party, and request her hand in marriage. Assuming she said yes, he would return to his father’s home where he would begin construction on a room attached to the family living space. When their “place” was completed, he would return for her. Before he left, he would promise her that he was coming back.6 He did not want her to worry. Worry might lead to doubt, and doubt would cause her to be open to the advances of other suitors. He
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a student at the University of Virginia and I was attending a seminary in North Carolina. The hardest thing for us to do was to say good-bye each weekend and return to our respective homes to endure another week of classes apart. The last thing I would have wanted was for her to wonder if I really loved her. If she doubted that, she might be open to the advances of other guys. So throughout our engagement I assured her repeatedly that nothing was going to stop me from marrying her. In fact, I gave her a big fat diamond to wear on her finger to prove it. She and I both knew that if I didn’t
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Every religious message except for the gospel uses doubt and uncertainty to compel obedience.
God’s great love for us is what produces love for God in us.
(This must have been a really important issue to John. He recorded the three metaphors we looked at above and made assurance the subject of his first letter to the church.)
