Today’s confession deals with assurance of salvation. What happens when
we are in serious sin? The comfort for true believers is that God himself, by
His spirit will seek and save those who are his.
Two examples of this in scripture:
King David, a man after God’s own heart, commits adultery with Bathsheba, and
then murders her husband to cover up his sins. Even in his deepest sin, God in
his grace and mercy sends Nathan to rebuke him. And in his spirit God brings
David to a place of repentance and restoration. True believers are not left in
despair no matter how great the sin or how perilous the situation.
Second example is that of the apostle Peter. When our Lord Jesus Christ was
arrested and sentenced to be crucified. Peter denied knowing Jesus three
times. Even in Peter’s darkest hour, Christ did not leave Peter in his shame
and guilt but instead brought him to a place of repentance and restoration.
God’s salvation is not conditional on our obedience and we do not lose God’s
salvation in our disobedience. God’s salvation is God’s grace to us by faith in the
work of Christ. Our sins grieve God, grieves his spirit but it is not so great that
God cannot forgive nor are they so bad that we cannot be restored back to him.
4. True believers may have the assurance of their salvation shaken, diminished,
or temporarily lost in various ways: as by negligence in preserving it, by falling
into some special sin which wounds the conscience and grieves the Spirit, by
some sudden or violent temptation, or by God’s withdrawing the light of his
countenance and allowing even those who reverence him to walk in darkness
and have no light. Yet, true believers are never completely deprived of that seed
of God and life of faith, that love for Christ and fellow believers, that sincerity
of heart and conscience concerning duty, out of which—by the operation of
the Spirit—this assurance may in due time be revived; and by which, in the
meantime, they are supported from utter despair.
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