HOW CAN I BE SURE THAT I HAVE BEEN RECEIVED BY THE SAVIOR?

We need to know who we are, specifically, that we are children of our Savior. The late and esteemed Rabbi Abraham Heschel had claimed that we need to know why we are here, and this includes the need to know who we are:

·       It’s not enough for me to be able to say ‘I am’; I want to know who I am and in relation to whom I live. It is not enough for me to ask questions; I want to know how to answer the one question that seems to encompass everything I face: What am I here for?

Taking this a step further, we also need to know that we are loved, valued, and esteemed by our Creator. Once we know this, we can begin to accept ourselves, despite our many failures and rejections.

Psychologist James Hillman had written that the way we think about ourselves is also the way we feel about ourselves:

·       We dull our lives by the way we conceive then…By accepting the idea that I am the effect of…hereditary and social forces, I reduce myself to a result. The more my life is accounted for by what already occurred in my chromosomes, by what my parents did or didn’t do, and by my early years now long past, the more my biography is the story of a victim. I am living a plot written by my genetic code, ancestral heredity, traumatic occasions, parental unconsciousness, societal accidents.

If we are merely the accidental result of our environment and our genetic inheritance, it will be difficult to feel good about ourselves and to find any satisfaction that we have a purpose in this life, apart from passing on our genetic material. The problem is compounded if we believe that we are just a member of the animal kingdom, no more valued than a mosquito.

 

Satan also understood that we need to know who we are. He therefore tried to make Jesus doubt His divine self-identity, at the time of His greatest vulnerability, at the tail end of fasting for 40 days:

·       And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” (Matthew 4:3 ESV)

And again, the tempter:

·       said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” (Matthew 4:6)

Only after it became apparent that the tempter was unable to shake Jesus from His self-understanding, he issued his secondary temptation:

·       Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” (Matthew 4:8-9)

There is nothing as crushing as a blow to our self-identity. Even more importantly, after we have surrendered everything to follow Jesus, we need to know and to be assured that we are truly His. Jesus also understands that we have a crying need to know, in this world of constant disappointment and suffering, that we have been given a grand commission and inheritance. Therefore, in the next chapter, He called His disciples to aside to explain to them how blessed they are:

·       “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:3)…they shall inherit the earth (5:5)…for they shall be satisfied (5:6)…they shall see God (5:8)… they shall be called sons of God (5:9)…for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (5:10)…your reward is great in heaven” (5:12).

Scripture gives us many assurances of our blessedness. Paul assured the Church:

·       See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. (Colossians 2:8-10)

When we fail to understand our blessedness, we are easily taken “captive by philosophy,” promises of the happy of life, or various fears and pressures. As a result, we find that we are unable to live a robust and confident Christian life. Therefore, I want to offer some reassurances from the Scriptures, the same reassurances that have helped me:

·       “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out…For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:37, 40)

Paul had also assured us that anyone who calls upon God will be saved (Romans 10:12-13). However, as a compulsive doubter and self-examiner, I continued to wonder, “Have I really come to Him?” However, I began to see that the typical man does not have such doubts or concerns. The entire question is ridiculous to him:

·       The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)

Evidently, I couldn’t be that “natural person.” The things of God were important to me, but doesn’t everyone who feels like a failure want to feel better about themselves? Perhaps my reasons for seeking God were just selfish and self-centered? However, the Apostle Paul hadn’t even been seeking God at all. Instead, he was killing Christians and forcing them to renounce their faith, and yet God revealed Himself savingly to him:

·       The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:15-16)

Paul hadn’t done anything to merit salvation. Instead, he was the worst of the worst, and yet, God had mercy upon him. He even had mercy upon Israel’s bloodiest king. It was only after Manasseh had been imprisoned by the Assyrians and had humbled himself before God that God had mercy upon him and restored him (2 Chronicles 33:13).

If God could have mercy on Paul and King Manasseh, it seemed that He could also have mercy on me. Yet, I continued to think about those who seemed to have faith but really didn’t. Jesus taught a parable about the Word of God which had been sown in various soils. Some soils (people) seemed to receive it in faith but then rejected the Word (Matthew 13). Would that be my fate?

I found that the Scriptures give us many ways to test our faith. Ordinarily, we love the darkness, because it does not expose our many self-deceptions. Jesus taught that if we come to the light, it shows that there has been a meaningful change:

·       “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:19-21)

There had been a change. Increasingly, I needed to know the truth, even when it hurt, and resorted to the Word of God. The book of First John provides many ways to test the genuineness of our faith. Even though I fell short in regards to all of these tests – and this grieved me – I began to see that I was beginning to approximate God’s standards.

In any event, these things are impossible with us (John 15:4-5; 2 Corinthians 3:5) However, if we pray for the assurance of the Lord’s love, He will give it in His time. Why? Because we are praying according to His will:

·       And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. (1 John 5:14-15)