How Can I Know I'm saved? Part 3: I Still Sin!

In the last post I mentioned Godly desires that produce Godly actions. Well, sometimes, we have desires that produce actions that aren't exactly Godly. Very much the opposite, in fact. We sin.

One of the big reasons people doubt whether or not they're saved is because they still have sin in their life. It's a huge problem, and it has kept many awake at night (myself included). Because, if we have been made new, have been given new hearts, new desires, a new will, than it should be reflected in our actions, right? We should be seeing good works, and not sin, right?

That is the main question we'll be answering, and we'll be doing it by looking at a lot of smaller questions.

If I truly am a Christian, why do I still struggle with sin? 
Let's face it: Being a Christian doesn't mean you won't sin. Everyone struggles with sin, and that includes Christians. The Apostle Paul himself struggled with sin after salvation, as he tells us in Romans 7:13-25. We just aren't sinless, and will continue to be that way until we are united with Jesus in heaven. But if Christians still sin, then what's the real difference between a believing sinner and an unbelieving sinner? The unbeliever loves his sin and looks for ways to continue in it, the believer hates his sin and looks for ways to try to stop sinning. The life of an unbeliever is defined by giving in to sin, whereas the life of a believer is defined by fighting against sin, even if that fight is sometimes lost. Nowhere does the Bible say that you can lose or nullify your salvation by sinning. But the Bible does tell us time and time again that God can forgive us our sins (1 John 1:9).

I committed a HUGE sin! How can I still be a Christian?
Some denominations teach that there are "mortal" sins that can cause you to lose your salvation, such as murder or adultery. I deny such teaching, and so does the Bible (but that's another blog post). The truth is, no sin is too great for God to forgive. King David committed both murder and adultery in the Bathsheba incident (2 Samuel 11). But his relationship with God was not severed. Does that mean his sin was okay? Far from it! He was punished for what he did, and most importantly, he still needed to repent of his sin and ask God to forgive him.
No matter how large a sin you have committed, God still loves you and can forgive you. But you must still be repentant.

I have a sinful habit/addiction that I can't seem to break.
Let's get one thing straight: If you've been saved, it doesn't matter how large or how numerous your sins are. No power can separate you from the love of Christ (Romans 8:38-39), including your sins, which he can forgive you of. However, that doesn't mean that a sinful habit or addiction is 'okay.' It's still a horrible thing, and should be attacked vigorously. With God's help, even the most powerful addictions can be broken (Philippians 4:13). However, there are some habits or addictions that you may never be able to break. The key is that even though you may never break 100% free, you must keep fighting it. Keep hating your sin. Resist it with all you have. Keep asking for God's help. That is the difference between a saved addict and an unsaved addict: The unbeliever gives up and gives in to addiction, but the believer knows that God is helping him, so he keeps on fighting addiction, no matter how many times he may lose.

There are two important things to remember, and the first is this:
Jesus tells us that a tree is known by it's fruit (Matthew 7:16-20). A good tree bears good fruit, and a bad tree bears bad fruit. Paul tells us what good fruit looks like (Galatians 5:22-23). If you are not bearing any of these fruit, but instead continue willfully in sins, whether small or big, many or few, and do not repent of them, then the cold truth is this: You have not been saved.

The second thing to remember is this: for those of us that have been saved, God can forgive any number or size of sins. BUT: God's Grace IS NOT A LICENSE TO SIN.
Paul puts it this way in Romans 6:1-14:

"What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.  

For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection,  knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin.  Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace."

So yes, God can and will forgive us of the sins we commit after we've been saved, but that doesn't mean we're free to do what we want. We should not walk in sins. On the contrary, we should walk "worthy of our calling" to "Make our election sure" (Ephesians 4:1; 2 Peter 1:10).

If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.  

Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.  

But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him (Colossians 3:1-10. I recommend reading the whole chapter)

If you are saved, then no sin you commit can separate you form Christ. You cannot lose your salvation. However, you must continue to battle against sin. No temptation is too strong to resist (1 Corinthians 10:13). We must keep fighting, and praying for God's help. And when we do fall, as sometimes we will, then we must always ask God to forgive us. He can, and He will, no matter what. Then get back up and keep fighting!

But if you're not saved, then you are in dire straights. Whether your sins are little, big, many, or few, they are still sin, and you deserve death and hell as punishment. But that's not the end of the story. God can forgive your sins if only you repent and believe. No matter how horrible a life you've lead, there is hope for you. Repent, believe, and you will be saved!

As we reach the end of this series, you may be examining your life. You may still be uncertain as to whether or not you're saved. Well, if you still aren't sure, then there's no harm in re-dedicating your life to Christ, and there is no better time to do that, than right now.

I hope God has used this series in your life to bring Glory to Him. If you're still usure about some things, or have any questions about salvation or anything else, I am here and willing to listen to you and help you in any way I can. I urge you to take advantage of the comment, forum, or private contact features. God bless.

My Testimony

Today is my rebirthday, meaning that Christ has been my Lord for an entire year. Some may think I've been saved longer than that, but hey, that's what I used to think as well, and you'll see why in a minute. In any case, I promised some friends almost a year ago that I would blog my testimony, but never got around to it (and there are actually some good reasons for that). So today, being my first whole year as a true Christian, I thought it would be fitting to finally post it. So here goes nothing.

They say that every testimony has a central theme to it, a defining and recurring subject which is core to the story. The recurring theme of my testimony is that of false conversion.

Depending on your definition of "saved," I've been saved several times. However, it is my opinion that I was never truly saved during any of my many "conversions." Why would God allow me to go through multiple false conversions? My opinion is that God wanted to make me an example. An example to myself, as well as to others, to show what false conversion looks like, in many of its forms. Why do I think this? Because every one of my false conversions was different.

My first false conversion was when I was really little. I can barely remember it at all, I was so young (probably between 3 and 5). When you're the age I was, you want to be just like your parents and siblings. You try to take over their chores, You walk around in your dad's shoes, you might even play around with your mother's makeup. And that's how my first "conversion" was. I was just doing it to be like my family. We were in the car going somewhere, and my brother, who was two years older than me, was telling me bout Jesus. Well, I ended up "saying the prayer," and thus I was falsely converted for the first time.
I like to call this the "Go with the flow" conversion. Let me tell you, it is no conversion at all. People do it out of peer pressure, or a desire to be like the people around them, to go with the flow. But as soon as the 'flow' changes directions, they change directions too. Luckily, my family never changed direction, so I was still a pretending Christian, but a pretending Christian is still not a Christian.

My second false conversion was what you might call a "crisis conversion." The way it works is during a crisis, when you feel like everything is falling apart, you call on God. But once the crisis has passed, you go right back to living the way you always did. Nothing has changed. This kind of conversion happens all the time and to lots of people, from soldiers on the battlefield, to gangsters on the streets, to folks going through a tough marriage. What was my crisis? Cleaning my room. It may not sound like much of a crisis, but at my young age, it was. I was mad at my parents, mad at my siblings, felt like everyone was against me and that everything was falling apart. So I turned to God. But sure enough, after the "crisis" had passed, I showed no signs of change. Clearly, this conversion was false.

My next "conversion" happened years later, when I was twelve. This time, I was getting what they call "fire insurance." At this point in my life, I had been thinking about hell, and was really afraid of going there. I knew that at any time, Jesus could come back or something bad could happen, and I would die and go to hell. The thought scared me so much, that I got up and went to my parents to "get saved." I was, simply put, a fear convert. This also happens to a lot of people. They hear the shouting of the sign-toting "Christian" on the sidewalk who preaches doom and destruction, they read the words of judgement in the book of revelation, some have nightmares, and some just want to be covered "just in case."
So they "buy the insurance," "put on the parachute," or "come to the front;" they say "the prayer" and maybe even get baptized. But their hearts aren't in it. And neither was mine. We want to reap the benefits of being a Christian without having to live like one. But let me tell you, this is not fire insurance. This is fire assurance.

I was still not saved, but nobody knew it. Three years later some events began to happen which would make it very apparent.

First, my family moved. We moved over 900 miles from our home in Florida to come live in Indiana. Needless to say, I was not happy about this decision. I was angry at my parents, and became exceedingly bitter about the move. Not only did I rebel against my parents' decision, but I rebelled against the will of God. Now this means two things: One, I wasn't a Christian and two: my rebellion was completely and utterly ineffective, because God's Will always wins. And eventually, His will for me would come to fruition, but for now, I was stuck in my sins.

The next thing that happened was that my Grandfather got pancreatic cancer, which practically nobody survives. Our family made two trips to Montana to spend as much time as we could with Grandpa. It was during our second trip, a several-month stay, that my Grandpa died. I was in the room when he passed. It's something I never want to experience again.

My grief for Grandpa's death mixed with my anger from the Indiana move and served to totally crush my spirit. Another result of the move was that I had very few friends, and so I had nobody to turn to (or at least, that I was willing to turn to) for comfort. I felt depressed and friendless, so what did I do? I turned to the internet to cure both. Not a good idea.

I started commenting on blogs and forums and spending time in Chat rooms, and through this I made many new "friends." Let's just say the internet isn't the safest place to immerse yourself, and the bad crowd got me into some bad things. My life became full of secret sins that nobody knew about... except God.

The year or so after Grandpa's death became a bad time for me. The majority of my time was spent laying in bed or on a couch with a computer or my tablet, watching videos, playing games, reading comics, or conversing with my various "friends." During this time, I still maintained my false allegiance to God. I knew he existed, and I claimed to be His child, even defending His existence and goodness in many internet debates. But I wasn't devoted to Him. I didn't live like one of His children. We had no personal relationship.

But all of that began to change around October of last year. My father led a Bible study for the guys in our church out of the book Thoughts for Young Men by J.C. Ryle. If you're a young man and haven't read this book, read it now. If you have read it, read it again. It was through my father and this convicting 100 year old book that God worked in me. He showed me my sinful state, revealing to me what I had denied for years: I was not His.

And then today came. November 19th, 2012. I had just finished writing 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month, and I was surfing the blogs of some of my Christian friends (none of whom are associated with the internet 'friends' I mentioned earlier), when I came under great conviction. I got out of my chair, and jumped into bed with my e-reader tablet, and opened up my ebook Bible. I opened randomly to Colossians 3: "If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God." I realized that I was not seeking those things above, and that my heart was not set on them, which was clear by all of the sin in my life. Thus, I concluded, I had never truly been raised with Christ. With tears in my eyes, I got out of bed and fell on my knees before God.

What did I do? Did I go once more through the "sinner's prayer," ineffective all those other times? No. Salvation isn't something that happens when you decide to recite a few lines. Salvation is something that happens when God opens your eyes, showing you just what kind of person you are and just what kind of state you're in: blind, dead, enslaved to sin. Nobody, when these facts are revealed to him by God, can then decide "I wanna stay this way." And neither could I. God's Grace was irresistible, and the only choice I could then make was to surrender. What exactly I said then is lost to my memory, but I do know that I asked forgiveness of my sins and devoted the entirety of my being to Christ, and meant it for the first time in my life.

Several thing happened. First, I felt the massive load fall off of my shoulders. Something many have described but which I had never felt before during any of my false conversions.

Next, I was overcome with a desire for scripture. I had always tried to make it a habit of mine to read the Bible, but for the first time in my life, it became something I looked forward to.

Many other things happened. I almost completely stopped going to those forums and chat rooms. There is only a small remnant of those internet 'friends' whom I still visit, but my intention is to spread the gospel to them rather than be pulled down by them (though I admit this is really hard). I almost completely lost the great passion I once had for computer games, now only really playing with my siblings now and then, compared to the hours spent daily in pulverizing enemy zombies, robots, aliens, and orcs. The many other destructive, sinful, and lazy habits I had were either defeated by Christ, relegated to a position where they're no longer harmful, or are still being fought against today. Whatever the case, it was made clear that my life had been changed forever by Christ. We have a relationship now. I don't just know about God anymore, I know God personally.

All that happened exactly a year ago. And though I've stumbled and fallen many times, and experienced low spots throughout my Christian walk, I can say with certainty that I am truly saved now and that Christ continues to work within my heart.

But what about you? What's your testimony? How were you converted? Does your story match up with any of my false conversions? I sure hope not. If so, then I pray that God will work in you to bring you to true repentance. If you have no testimony because you have not been converted, falsely or otherwise, then I urge you to repent and believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Double-Predestination: Does God Elect People to Hell?

This will (hopefully) be my last post before getting back into the "Speak up" and "What I believe" series which I left hanging.

Believe it or not, the internet abounds with anti-Calvinist memes and pictures like this one

In this post I'll be talking about the notion of double-predestination: that God elects some people to heaven, and some people to hell. We'll specifically be looking at it from the point of view that it is an attack on Calvinism, since Calvinists are often charged with holding this view. Perhaps a later post will go over why the idea is unbiblical.

This objection has several problems in common with the claim that  "Calvinists believe that babies go to hell," which we went over in a previous post:

First of all, it is an emotional attack, meant to discredit rather than to disprove the Doctrines of Grace. It makes you go "Whoa, Calvinists believe that? I don't want to have anything to do with Calvinism!" Instead of pointing to scripture and saying "Here's how Calvinism is unbiblical, and therefore, wrong." This is a problem for those pushing this particular objection.

Secondly, it once again unfairly paints all Calvinists with the same brush. Yes, some Calvinists do believe in double-predestination (if I'm not mistaken, my old pastor in Florida is among them), but some don't (such as my family and many others). This is because...

Thirdly, the doctrine of double-predestination is NOT a specifically Calvinistic idea. Like last time, when we see a claim such as "X Calvinist believes X doctrine" we need to ask ourselves if X doctrine really comes from TULIP or from somewhere else. Double-predestination is not found in TULIP, though it can be made to fit with it.

Those are the three flaws that this argument shares with the last one (Calvinists hate babies), and I will not go into them in any more detail here since I already did there.

On to the argument itself. As is the case with many objections to Calvinism, the claim that Calvinism teaches double-predestination stems from misunderstanding. In this case, a misunderstanding of the Calvinistic Doctrine of Unconditional Election, as well as a misunderstanding of how God judges man.

The doctrine of Unconditional Election does not teach that God elects some people to hell and some people to heaven. UE deals specifically with God Electing people to Salvation, not Damnation.

But some would argue that God not electing people to heaven is basically the same as God electing those people to hell, and that on Judgement day, the condemned sinner cold use the excuse "But God, you didn't elect me!" But that's just not how it works.

God does not predestine people to hell. People destine themselves to hell by sinning. We had our chance in the garden, and we screwed up (Genesis 3). Adam's fall brought sin into the world, and all men, being descendants of Adam, are part of that sin (Romans 5:12). The wages of sin is death (romans 6:23), and thus, ALL men are condemned to Hell, not by any of God's doing, but by Adam's and by their own.

As for the "you didn't elect me" excuse, the reason it fails is that it misunderstands how judgement and atonement works. On Judgement day, God won't choose who goes to heaven and who goes to hell based on whether a person has been elected or not. Revelation 20:12-13 says:

"And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works." (Emphasis mine)

It is our works by which we will be judged and condemned. And if that's the case, then we all deserve to go to hell because we're all sinners. This is where election comes in. I like the way the Baptist Catechism puts it:

Question 24: Did God leave all mankind to perish in the condition of sin and misery?

Answer: God, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, having chosen a people to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of the condition of sin and misery, and to bring them into a condition of salvation, by a Redeemer. (Ephesians 1:3-4; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; Romans 5:21; 8:29-30; 9:11-12; 11:5-7; Acts 13:48; Jeremiah 31:33)

So let's look at that non-elect sinner's excuse in light of what we know about judgment day. Yes, it is true that God didn't elect the person, but they couldn't use that as an excuse to get out of the punishment of hell. Why? Because they sinned, and the wages of sin is death.

As for the elect person, he has sinned too, and so is condemned to hell as well... BUT! "Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified..." Because Jesus took their sin and punishment upon Himself, the elect man has been Justified.
"...and whom He justified, these He also glorified." (Romans 8:30, emphasis mine) Such will be the case for all of God's elect on Judgement day, and I hope by His Grace that you are among them, dear reader.