I thought I would share a little theological exegetical reasoning I engaged in, almost 28 years ago now. This was before I had ever received any formal theological training; read any deep theology books; learned the original biblical languages, so on and so forth. But I had been a Christian since a young child; I had grown up in the home of a spiritually sensitive pastor’s home (my dad); and was around ‘biblicist’ churchy thought my whole life. So, it wasn’t like I had no theological resource, indeed, we operated with what today might be called Free Grace theology.
I was plunged into the depths of anxiety and depression, which was really the way the Lord apocalyptically intervened in my young 20 something life. He got me back on the right path, the path I had erred from after high school. I endured dark dark dark nights of the soul, most of it was deeply spiritual stuff. Part of that was that I went through a time of doubting my salvation. What didn’t help is that I was attending a semi-charismatic church at the time that didn’t offer any critical resource. Indeed, they veered Arminian when it came to thinking about soteriological matters; particularly, as that was focused on ‘keeping or losing salvation.’ This wasn’t what I needed. Even so, the Lord knew what I needed; I needed the concrete of His Word to minister to my bruised reed soul. Here’s how He did that at that point. This was the theological exegetical canonical reasoning the Spirit provided me with during that dark season. It went something like this:
23 for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For,
“All flesh is like grass,
And all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
And the flower falls off,
25 But the word of the Lord endures forever.”
And this is the word which was preached to you. –I Peter 1:23-25
17 But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. –I Corinthians 6:17
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? 33 Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; 34 who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 Just as it is written,
“For Your sake we are being put to death all day long;
We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. –Romans 8:31-39
28 and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.” –John 10:28-30
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. –II Corinthians 5:17
14 I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. –Ecclesiastes 3:14
2 for the sake of the truth which abides in us and will be with us forever –II John 2
15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. –Romans 8:15-17
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. 19 We love, because He first loved us. –I John 4:18-19
11 And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 12 He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. 13 These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. –I John 5:11-13
13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. –II Timothy 2:13
The Holy Spirit had me engage in a disjunctive syllogistic type of reasoning, with the realities of the above passages as the premises. This was before I ever knew about syllogistic or logical reasoning like that; but nonetheless, I had been saturated in Scripture enough to have picked much up of that up through Paul’s reasoning, in particular. So, the reasoning went something like this:
- You are in Christ, Bobby; a new creation.
- You are one spirit with Christ, Bobby; in union with Him.
- You have been born again of an imperishable seed, Bobby.
- And what the LORD does is forever.
- And the truth [who is the Christ] abides with you, Bobby, forever.
- There is no fear in the Spirit, but only a knowledge of God as your Father, Bobby.
- And if there is fearfulness of God, a fear that He might leave you, Bobby, even if you FEEL like you have left Him at points, this is not God’s perfect love; indeed, Bobby, God has loved you first::the burden is on Him to keep you, and not you. No man, not even yourself, Bobby, can pluck you out of the Father’s big hand. You might feel like you’re falling at points, but that’s only the space between the top of His hand to the bottom.
- As a result of all of the above, since the LORD is for you, Bobby, nobody can be against you; not even yourself.
- And even if you FEEL like you’re not “believing enough,” have fallen into sin, the LORD will not deny you Bobby, because you are part of Him now; and He CANNOT deny Himself.
- And it is because of the work of the Spirit, bearing witness with your spirit, Bobby, that you can know, without a doubt that you always and forever belong to the Lord.
- So, if all of the above is true, Bobby, then you belong to Jesus forever. There is nothing you or anyone else can do about that.
The above was the type of biblical theological reasoning that was running through my head over and over again, by the Holy Spirit. I found great comfort in this type of reasoning, to the point that whenever the Enemy would attempt, once again, to persecute my soul, I could stand on the more sure Word of prophecy from the Lord, as if bound up in God’s Gordian knot in Jesus Christ. Eventually those types of fears faded away with the wind, as the grass they were; indeed, the Word of the LORD endured, then, as it does now, and will forever.
Maybe you find yourself in these types of troubling waters of the soul. Maybe the “persecutor of the saints” is coming at you with these types of erroneous doubts; doubts that would cause you to look deeper into yourself, rather than higher unto Christ. Maybe the reasonings of the Holy Spirit, the ones He used (and uses) to comfort me, can comfort you. What the above reasonings should indicate, in fact, is that a doctrine of assurance of salvation isn’t really even a biblical category. Once adopted into the family of God, nothing can separate you from the love of Christ; not even yourself; not even sophisticated sounding theological arguments that turn out to be of that serpentine forked tongue doctrine known as semi-Pelagianism. Rest in the Christ. He first loved you that you might love Him. And He became you, He became sin, that we, by the grace of the adoption of His life as the Son for us, might become Him; co-heirs with the One whose life is an indestructible life.
Is it any wonder when I came across the Christ concentrated theology of Thomas Torrance (and Karl Barth) that it resonated with me so deeply? A passage like this from Torrance:
God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualised his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour.” -T. F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, 94.
Later in life I ended up writing a chapter for one of our edited books on a doctrine of assurance of salvation. But even without referring to that style of theologizing, hopefully the type I have shared in this post will serve sufficient for you to find an anchor for your soul in the resurrected and priestly humanity of Jesus Christ.