2 Cents

It's a very stressful thing to think you've become a Christian but not to feel like one.  Or to be constantly worried if you're living up to the standard God has set for you.

The Key to Unlocking Assurance

One thing my favorite seminary professor, Dr. Jack Cottrell, taught me that I will never forget is this:

The key to having assurance of your salvation is a proper understanding of GRACE.

Let me explain.

Most of the time people are unsure of their salvation because they are afraid they're not good enough for God.  

The thing is... you're not.  

No one is good enough for God.  Galatians 3:10, James 2:10, and Matthew 5:48 make that perfectly clear.  

That sounds depressing but it's actually incredibly liberating.  Liberating because we know, we're assured that we cannot save ourselves.  We need someone to step in and give us what we don't deserve.

On the cross Jesus paid for our sins.  He took the wrath of God that we deserved so we wouldn't have to.  And because of that, those of us who have put our faith in Christ are forgiven and our names are recorded in the Book of Life (Rev. 3:5; Rev. 21:27).  We have been saved.

Surely we did not deserve this.  Surely we did nothing to earn this salvation.  It's a gift, not something we worked for, as Ephesians 2:8-9 clearly tells us.  (See also Titus 3:4-7; Romans 3:28; Romans 4:5)

And when we understand this, the worry about whether or not we're good enough to be saved is obliterated.  

We can be sure of our salvation because our salvation is grounded not on our list of good or bad works but on Christ's finished work on the cross.  It's not based on what you do; it's based on what he did.

Are Good Works Of No Importance?

Having said that, we need to be clear that the Bible mentions numerous times that our actions, our works, or what it often calls our "fruit" reveal whether or not we are truly saved.  This means someone cannot simply go through the steps of obeying the gospel while continuing in unrepentant sin, failing to exhibit any evidences of a changed life, and yet still be saved.  

Our actions matter.  Our works matter.  

But they have nothing to do with our salvation.  They are simply the evidence that salvation is truly there.  This is what James is talking about in James 2:14. 

Jesus was very wise in choosing "fruit" as a metaphor for this (See Matt. 7:20) because fruit does not make a tree live, it only reveals whether or not the tree has life.  The same is true of our good works.