Assurance of salvation: guilt, grace, and justification
Assurance of salvation can be hard to hold when guilt lingers, even for faithful Christians. Through Scripture’s language of justification, this article explains how Christ has paid the penalty for sin and how that truth frees believers to live in peace and extend grace to others.
- Guilt is a legal problem, and the gospel provides a legal solution: justification.
- Salvation is God’s gift of grace through faith, not something we can earn by trying harder.
- Assurance in God’s grace frees us to live with joy and love others with the same grace we’ve received.
By Mark A. Taylor
A relative very close to me often expressed her doubts about where she’d go when she died. “I don’t know,” she’d say, shaking her head. “I just hope the Good Lord will have it in his heart to let me some way, somehow get into Heaven.”
I was too young those days, and too ignorant of Scripture, to help her. How I wish I could have offered assurance to this faithful Christian who had sought to obey Christ since the day she was baptized. But her attitude is prevalent even among mature Christians I’ve met since then. Just like unbelievers, too many followers of Christ seem unable to shake off the weight of guilt they feel for their shortcomings.
When guilt can look “useful”
Now there’s the claim that guilt can be good. Last month in a Wall Street Journal article, Jeffrey Zaslow summarized research from June Tangey, a psychology professor at George Mason University: “Those prone to feeling guilty tend to be more empathetic, have healthier relationships, and are better at resolving conflicts.” And he described how American marketers use guilt to promote everything from campfire safety to fuel efficiency.
Justification: God’s solution to our guilt
But God wants to take care of our guilt. Guilt is a legal term describing a legal problem. As anyone who’s ever received a speeding ticket can tell you, those found guilty of breaking the law must pay a price.
So the apostle Paul uses a legal term, justification, to describe the solution for our guilt. When we become Christians we are justified; we are forgiven (Romans 4:1-8). We accept what only Jesus can give: payment of the penalty for our sins, all our sins past, present, and future. “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul told the Romans (5:1). Christ died to give us this forgiveness “while we were still sinners” (v. 8), “when we were God’s enemies” (v. 10). Since that is true, as Jack Cottrell points out in The Faith Once for All, surely “such love will not fail us now that we are [his] friends.”
Grace, faith, and real assurance
We are saved by grace, through faith. “It is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). This means we never could and never can earn a ticket to Heaven. While it’s possible to lose this salvation if we lose this faith, Christians do not—they cannot guarantee their fate by working harder to pay for their guilt. The price has been paid.
Understanding this should free us to live in joy and peace as we relate to God. None of us need worry and wonder like the person I quoted above.
Grace that frees us to love others
But that’s not all. Realizing that God’s grace has removed the burden of our guilt should free us to love others the way God does to reach out to them with grace as God has reached out to us, to look at the “filthy rags” of our righteousness (Isaiah 64:6) and grieve with the sinner over the filthy rags of his failures.
We take no credit for accepting what we could never earn. We’re simply compelled to tell others how they can receive it too.
Author: Mark A. Taylor
Mark A. Taylor, who served as Christian Standard editor from 2003 to 2017, retired in June 2017 after almost 41 years with Standard Publishing (Christian Standard Media).
