Christianity Today had a column on the assurance of salvation, addressing the question of how can you know you are saved if you can’t remember the moment of your conversion. Read it here. The conclusion:
For those who question their salvation, the best evidence is not the memory of having raised a hand or prayed a prayer. Nor is it having been baptized or christened. The true test of the authentic work of God in one’s life is growth in Christ-like character, increased love for God and other people, and the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-25; James 2:18). A memorable conversion experience may serve as an important referent to God’s saving work in one’s life. But the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in making a person more like Jesus is the clearest indicator that one has been made a new creation in Christ.
Internetmonk replies, “The ‘best evidence’ is ‘growth’ in ‘love’ and ‘fruit.’ Being more ‘like Jesus.’ Good grief. Can anyone spell ‘despair?’”
Trusting how good we are for our salvation? Getting assurance from how much we are like Jesus? It isn’t downplaying good works to question whether one can find assurance of one’s salvation by measuring oneself by Jesus! We should indeed do that, and the result should be conviction of our sin, followed by the realization that this Jesus has borne that sin and imputed to us His righteousness. (See post below.)
Internetmonk (a.k.a. Michael Spenser) goes on to refute the column in detail. Assurance of salvation, he says, comes from believing that you are a sinner and that Jesus died for your sins. That is to say, JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST.
What a great service we had again at our church. Military chaplain the Rev. Keith Lingsch was our guest preacher, and his sermon on Christ’s baptism, commemorated on this day of the
Epiphany, gave me epiphanies of my own.
He pointed out that John’s was baptism explicitly for SINNERS. (”Repent! Flee the wrath to come!”) So no wonder he was surprised that Jesus wanted this baptism. But Jesus’s baptism marked His identification with sinners and His taking their sins into Himself. “A sinner’s baptism prefigured a sinner’s death.”
This would have been plenty for a good sermon, but then Rev. Lingsch built up to this epiphany: Because of this exchange, what God said of Christ’s baptism applies now to YOU and YOUR baptism. The heavens open for YOU. The Holy Spirit descends on YOU. God in His Word says, ” YOU are my beloved son. In YOU I am well well pleased.”
I picked up John Warwick Montgomery at the airport last night. He is now back in the states, where he will serve on the faculty of Patrick Henry College. He will keep his residence in France and continue his Apologetics Institute in Strasbourg, but he will be in residence here for one semester each year. Although he and his wife had been on an airplane for some 13 hours, they were crackling with energy, wit, and insight. It will be great to have him here, and I know our students will appreciate getting to study under someone of his magnitude.
Just idly surfing the other day, I came across this brilliant essay of his, showing how his evidentialist approach to apologetics fits in with Luther’s teachings about the incarnation, the sacraments, that salvation is “outside ourselves,” and that we must learn about God “from the bottom up,” not beginning with abstractions about God but beginning with the tangible God in the manager and on the Cross. Faith remains a gift of God, not something we figure out with reason as such, but it must begin with object truth. Read the essay yourself. It’s entitled The Incarnate Christ: The Apologetic Thrust of Lutheran Theology.
Lucas Cranach was the great artist of the Reformation. He was a close friend of Martin Luther. He was a businessman, who first printed Luther's translation of the Bible; a politician, who served on the Wittenberg town council and served the city as its mayor; a chemist, who operated a pharmacy; a teacher, who trained a host of apprentice artists; a family-man, who helped arrange Luther's marriage with the two men serving as the godfathers of each other's children; and an active layman in his church, who gave his pastors important personal and material support.
As a Christian who lived out his faith in his many different callings, Cranach thus embodies the Reformation doctrine of vocation, using the gifts God had given him in service to Christ and his neighbor in the church, the family, the workplace, and the culture.
In the spirit of Lucas Cranach, this blog will discuss wide-ranging issues of Christianity and culture with a Lutheran twist.
