Replies

How do you know that the "assurance verses" apply to you?

I believe that the Bible is God's inspired word, and is inerrant. Since God does not need the Bible Himself, I assume that He wrote it for the benefit of others, namely humans. Of those humans, the Bible says that to the lost the teachings of the Bible are nonsense, and are therefore of no use. So, I conclude that the Bible was written for the benefit of Christians.

This means that everything in the Bible applies to me (at the very least for educational purposes), if I am a Christian. I first know I am a Christian because God has given me the faith to know it. What is faith if a Christian cannot know he is a Christian? More objectively, the Bible describes in very great detail what a Christian looks like, what he believes, how he thinks, what he does, and says. Upon self-examination, I am satisfied that I look very much like a Christian, including the fact that I still sin.

Now, if I may have certainty that I am a Christian, and if I may also know that the Bible was written for my benefit, then I think it is fair for me to believe that the assurance verses apply to me. They were not written for the benefit of the reprobate, they were written for the benefit of us. So, I simply accept them with all the thanks I can muster in gratitude to God. He didn't have to give them to us, but He chose to. Praise God for it. Besides, of what value to any Christian are those verses if no one can know if they mean anything for him personally? Why did God include them?

How do you know that the "assurance verses" apply to you?

I think if you spent more time actually reading Scripture rather than interrogating it, you'd understand more fully. To question those "assurance verses" is to question the work of the Holy Spirit within you.

"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh." -- Ezekiel 36:26

If a man is compelled to read the Bible and obey God, it is because he is no longer living for himself. Christ lives within him.

"And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." -- Galatians 4:6
"But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law." -- Galatians 5:18

To question the assurance of our salvation, as given us in Scripture by God, is to deny Christ on the cross. Did He die for your sins? Did He rise from the dead? Is it all true?

"For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." -- Hebrews 10:14

How do we know we are sanctified? We look around and observe the fruits of our lives.

"For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:
(For the fruit of the spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)
Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord." -- Ephesians 5:8-10

"Proving" His grace; not earning it.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.

The assurance is He writes his covenant in your heart. If you believe scripture is the inspired word given of God, its words confirm that knowledge and both parallel. As a Baptist preacher said once, "You just know that you know.."

Regards...