Assurance

After preaching about the assurance of eternal life, an Asian lady from this church in Queens, New York, was overcome with emotion and pure joy. In just those few moments, she related to me how she had lived in fear and uncertainty and how her relationship with her Creator had hurt her family relationships. I don’t know who captured this moment, but I am so thankful to have it. The photograph depicts what I pray for you concerning the doctrine of assurance in Romans 8:12-17.

Uncertainty and love do not coexist in peace. Imagine a child not knowing if his father or mother really loved him. Imagine a woman not knowing if her husband loved her. Love can exist without assurance, but where is the joy in that? You can be saved without knowing that God will never let you go, but your life in Christ will be tentative. That is not what God desires for you. God loves you because He made you and sent His only begotten Son as an atoning sacrifice to save you from your sins. Christ also lived a perfect life and provided you with a righteousness, not your own, one that we must have to stand before a holy God. When the Father looks on you, He sees His Son and is satisfied. It is impossible for God to love you less or more if you are “in Christ.”

This message seeks to open Romans 8's treasure chest, find the magnificent pearls of truth about assurance of salvation, and adorn you with those riches. May you know the joy of the Lord and the unchanging love of the Triune God in “Assurance,” a sermon on Romans 8:12-17.

Thank you for your prayers for those of us in Western North Carolina. It has been a very difficult time. Yet, there are doxologies in the darkness.

We continue to ask God’s mercy on those in need.

Correction (with a caveat): Let the reader be aware: Prior to the Scripture reading, I made the statement that “doctrine and truth are the same word in the Greek.” I should have said that “doctrine and teaching” are from the same Greek word (the lemma, i.e., the cognate): “didachē · teaching; instruction.” The Greek word for truth is alētheia. This should be noted. I apologize for the mistake. However, the force of the argument remains. I should have said “doctrine” and “truth” in the New Testament (and in the Hebrew Old Testament) are used in the same way. Truth is the compendium of biblical doctrine, the corpus of Jesus’ teaching. Truth is doctrine and doctrine is Truth. Thus, we read:

The Greek word for truth (alētheia) carries a more intellectual connotation. Truth is something that can be “known,” not just trusted or relied upon. The NT authors all employ the Greek word, but they are sufficiently steeped in knowledge of the Jewish scriptures to use the word in a sense heavily influenced by the Hebrew meaning. This is in part because the NT authors knew those scriptures primarily through the form of the lxx, where alētheia translates ’emet. The word “truth” occurs mainly in the Pauline writings and, especially, in the Gospel and Letters of John.

Paul can use the word in the Greek sense (Rom. 1:18), but more often he uses it with the same connotation it has in the Hebrew Bible: truth is something to be obeyed (Rom. 2:8; Gal. 5:7); truth proves reliable (2 Cor. 7:14; 11:10); the opposite of truth is not falsehood, but malice and evil (1 Cor. 5:8). The Greek idea of truth as “correct knowledge” appears most clearly in the Pastoral Letters. Here, one is to know the truth (1 Tim. 4:3; 2 Tim. 2:25) and avoid false beliefs (2 Tim. 2:18; 4:4).¹

1. Joanna Dewey and Mark Allan Powell, “Truth,” in The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary (Revised and Updated), ed. Mark Allan Powell (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 1072–1073.