How can we know whether our profession of faith in Christ is authentic? Today, R.C. Sproul begins his series on the assurance of salvation. Get R.C. Sproul’s book Can I Be Sure I’m Saved?, his teaching series The Assurance of Salvation on DVD, and lifetime digital access to the messages and study guide for your donation of any amount: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/3610/assurance Meet Today’s Teacher: R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was known for his ability to winsomely and clearly communicate deep, practical truths from God’s Word. He was founder of Ligonier Ministries, first minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel, first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine. Meet the Host: Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of ministry engagement for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, host of the Ask Ligonier podcast, and a graduate of Presbyterian Theological College in Melbourne, Australia. Nathan joined Ligonier in 2012 and lives in Central Florida with his wife and four children. Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
How do we know that we won't be among this group of people who at the last judgment will come expecting entrance into the kingdom, addressing Jesus in intimate terms, and then be cast out?
The Apostle Peter commands us to make our calling and election sure. Jesus warns that there would be those who address him as Lord, Lord, but Jesus will say that he never knew them. So it is vital and very practical to know for sure that you are a Christian. That will be our topic over the next several weeks on Renewing Your Mind, so be sure to join us each Saturday.
You can also study the Christian's assurance of salvation more deeply when you request this Saturday series on DVD, along with the digital study guide and a copy of R.C. Sproul's title, Can I Be Sure I'm Saved? We'll send you the book and DVD and grant you access to the study guide when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org.
Well here's Dr. Sproul to begin this series as he discusses our duty to pursue assurance.
Today we're going to begin a new series focusing on the question of the assurance of salvation, which I think is an extremely important theological question to examine.
Not simply that we may fulfill our interests in theological investigation or curiosity, but this is a question that touches us where we live as Christians because it has a tremendous impact on our senses, our feelings, our comfort, and our behavior as Christians to get it settled in our lives whether we are in a state of grace.
And so I'd like to begin this particular series by turning your attention to a text in the New Testament that I believe is one of the most terrifying texts that we can ever see in the Bible. and it comes from the lips of Jesus in the end of the Sermon on the Mount.
We tend to think of the Sermon on the Mount as strictly an upbeat proclamation that Jesus made where He talks about the Beatitudes, blessed are those who do this and blessed are those who do that, And Jesus has this reputation because of the Sermon on the Mount for being not only a popular preacher, but one who accents the positive rather than the negative.
And what is often overlooked is the climax of that sermon, which we read in verse 21 of chapter 7 of Matthew's Gospel, where Jesus says, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven.
And many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you, depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness."
So here Jesus gives us a preview of the last judgment where He says the people will come to Him, addressing Him by the title, Lord, Lord, which I'll explore in a moment. and these people will say to Jesus, Lord, we did all these marvelous things in Your name. We served You. We preached in Your name. We cast out demons.
We did all of these things, and Jesus said, I will turn to these people and say, please leave. Not only does He say, I don't know you, but He said, I never knew you, you who are workers of disobedience or lawlessness or godlessness in various translations.
Now what I find particularly poignant about this terrifying warning that Jesus gives to the church is that He begins by saying, not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom, and then He repeats that by saying, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord.
Now in other contexts, another series that we've done at Ligonier, I've explored in great detail the significance of the repetition of the title Lord. There are only about 15 occurrences in all of Scripture when somebody is addressed by the repetition of their name. Remember when Abraham…
was at Mount Moriah and he was ready to plunge the knife into the chest of his son, God intervenes at the last second and says, Abram, Abram, lay not your hand upon your son. When God speaks to Moses out of the burning bush in the Midianite wilderness, He addresses him by saying, Moses,
Moses, and we see the occasion where Jacob was afraid to go down into Egypt, and God speaks to him saying, Jacob, Jacob, the voice from heaven calling Samuel in the middle of the night, Samuel, Samuel, and so on. We see that throughout the Old Testament into the New Testament. Remember when Saul is confronted by Jesus on the road to Damascus, Christ calls him saying, Saul,
Saul, why do you persecute me? When he had to rebuke Martha in Bethany, when he said to her, Martha, Martha, and to Peter, when Peter said that he would be strong throughout all the time, he said, Simon, Simon, Satan would have you, sift you like wheat. And even did Jesus lament over the city of Jerusalem when He cries out, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
you who stone the prophets and kill those who have been sent to you, how often would I gather you to myself as a hen gathers her chicks, but you would not. And of course, the most poignant ever in Scripture is from the cross when Christ calls out, Eloi, Eloi. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And there are others, you know, Elisha when he sees the angel coming, the chariot of fire, and so on. But this rare... Grammatical structure has a significance in the Hebrew tongue. When somebody repeats the personal form of address, it suggests and communicates an intimate personal relationship with the person who's being addressed.
And so Jesus is saying that on the last day, not only will people come to Him and say, We belong to you. We're yours. But He said they will address Him in terms of personal intimacy. They will use this form of address saying, Lord, Lord, as if they knew Him in a deep, personal, spiritual way. And Jesus is going to say to them, please leave. I don't know who you are.
you who are workers of lawlessness. Now again, what Jesus is saying here is that there are many people who profess to be Christians, who use the name of Christ, call Him by His exalted title, Lord, who are not in the kingdom of God. who do not belong to Him and who will not make it past the last judgment."
That's why I say that's scary because these are not people that he's describing who are out at the fringe of the church, but these are people who are immersed in the life of the church, heavily involved in the ministry of the church, and maybe have made their reputation by being professed Christians. that Jesus doesn't know, and Jesus will banish from His kingdom.
Now the reason I brought this up at the outset is that when we make a profession of faith as Christians, we have to ask ourselves, how do we know that we won't be among this group of people who at the last judgment will come expecting entrance into the kingdom, addressing Jesus in intimate terms, and then be cast out.
How do we know that our confidence in our spiritual state, that we're in a state of grace, is sound and genuine? or whether we have deceived ourselves. Just yesterday I saw a report about a massive evangelistic campaign that has gone on internationally in which the report said millions of people have made decisions for Christ. And I read that and I thought, I wonder how many
of those decisions for Christ were true conversions, and how many of them were spurious. Again, in light of this text, let me just take another text to work on top of this, also from Matthew's gospel that speaks to this problem. In chapter 13 of the gospel of Matthew,
We read in verse 1 this narrative, on the same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea, and great multitudes were gathered together to Him so that He got into a boat and sat, and the whole multitude stood on the shore, and He spoke many things to them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside, and the birds came and devoured them. Some fell on stony places where they didn't have much earth, and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up, they were scorched, and because they had no root, they withered away." Now first of all, let's notice the immediate context of this famous parable of the sower.
What comes right before it in verse 47, somebody says to Jesus, look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak with you. But He answered and said to the one who told them, who is my mother and who are my brothers? And He stretched out His hand toward His disciples and said, here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven
is my brother and sister and mother." Notice what he's saying is the true brother of Christ is the one who does the will of the Father, not simply one who made a decision to follow Jesus. Always keep in mind that nobody forced Judas to become a disciple. Judas chose to follow Jesus.
Judas made his own decision to become a disciple, to enter the school of Jesus, and he was with our Lord during His earthly ministry for three years, and yet we are told in the New Testament that he was a devil from the beginning. that it wasn't that Judas was genuinely converted and then fell out of grace and was lost. But the point is, as close as he was to Jesus, he was never lost.
a converted man. That ought to give us pause as we consider the state of our own souls. Well, a few verses later after Jesus gives the parable of the sower, He gives an explanation of it which is one of the rare times that that happens in the New Testament. And also, this parable flows in a different manner from normal parabolic instruction.
The normal rule for interpreting parables is that parables generally have one point, and it's a very dangerous thing to turn all parables into allegories where allegories have symbolic meaning sprinkled throughout the story. But in this case, we do approach the level of the allegory as Jesus makes several applications from it when He explains its meaning to the disciples.
In verse 18, He said, Therefore hear the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, Then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received the seed by the wayside. So the first group he talks about are those where the seed is thrown and it lands in the path and it has no place to take root.
It doesn't take root at all and the birds come and eat that seed. because in antiquity the seed would be sown first and then the ground would be plowed under, and sometimes the seed would fall on the roadway and it would not be plowed under, it would have no way to take root, and that leftover seed would simply be devoured by the birds. And Jesus likens this to the birds represents Satan.
So that this seed is something that does not take root at all. And there are people all over the place who hear the preaching of the gospel, where the gospel has no impact on them. It has no roots in their lives. But it doesn't just stop there. Jesus goes on to say,
but he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself. You can go to evangelistic meetings, see huge crowds thronging to the front of the church to respond to the call of the gospel, where people like what they hear and Maybe you're moved emotionally. Make a decision to follow Christ.
But as soon as the sun sets or as soon as the sun rises the next day, they've banished this from their minds altogether. It was a spur-of-the-moment response and a spurious response to be sure. Now when we read these so-called evangelistic statistics of hundreds or thousands or millions of people who make decisions,
I don't want to be too harsh about that because one of the problems that all outreach ministry have is how to measure the effectiveness of the ministry. And churches do it by telling how many people are members in their congregation and how much they're growing in the last so many years.
and evangelistic ministries say, well, we put on an evangelistic mission and 15 people came to the altar or 25 people raised their hands or 30 people signed a card or prayed a prayer so that they have some kind of statistics to measure the response that people are making. Because how do you measure spiritual reality?
We know, and I think anybody that's ever been involved in evangelism knows, that you can't see the heart. And so the next best thing is to count the number of cards or the number of decisions or the number of whatever that people make. But Jesus warns us about that here when He says, I mean, there are many people who hear it with joy. It's like the seed that falls on the stony ground.
but it is so shallow that as soon as the sun comes up and begins to scorch this seed, the seed crumbles and there is no fruit. Then there's another group that responds, and here's what Jesus says about that group. Now he who receives seed among the thorns… is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful."
Again, some of the seed falls among thorns, and again the person receives it with joy, but the first struggle, the first time there's any conflict between the flesh and the news that he's received in the gospel, he goes for the world. because again the seed has not found the good earth.
And then Jesus says, but he who receives seed on the good ground is he who hears the Word and understands it and who bears fruit and produces. See, not everybody that hears the Word will be saved, but those who were doers of the Word will also be saved. And sometimes this is called the parable of the sower. Sometimes it's called the parable of the soil.
Because for true conversion to take place, God changes the soul of the hearer. God provides the soil for that seed to take root, to grow, and to bear fruit. There's a very serious error running through the church today that talks about people who become Christians and they're true Christians, but they're carnal Christians, meaning that they remain in the flesh.
And they, for a long season or perhaps for their whole lives, never bear fruit. And yet they're called sincere believers. And I think that's on a collision course with the teaching of the New Testament. The fruit saves no one. But if there's no fruit... That means there's no spiritual life, because where there's spiritual life, there will inevitably, necessarily, and immediately be some fruit.
Now the fruit may vary a hundredfold, sixtyfold, whatever. Not every true Christian is as fruitful as other Christians, but a true believer bears fruit he's not a believer. That's why Jesus said, you will know them not by their profession, but by what? By their fruit.
And so where we have been immersed in a Christian subculture that puts so much attention on the making of decisions, the responding to altar calls, the praying the prayer of the sinner,
that we miss the important point that making a decision to follow Jesus, let me say this as clearly as I know how, making a decision to follow Jesus has never converted anybody because it's not your decision that converts you. It's the power of the Holy Ghost that converts you.
And what gets you in the kingdom is not that you made a decision or that you walked down an aisle or that you raised your hand or that you signed a card, but that there is true faith in your heart. And that's the question we're going to be looking at in this series. How can I know whether my profession of faith is authentic? Do I really have what I profess to faith? I say this again many times.
No one has ever been justified by a profession of faith. Now everyone who is justified is called to profess that faith. Everyone who is a Christian is called to confess Christ before men. Don't get me wrong. There's absolutely nothing wrong at all with public professions of faith. They should be done.
The problem is that when we rely on that as the litmus test of our conversion, because Jesus warns these people, honor me with their lips while their hearts are far from me. So my question again is how do I know that my profession of faith is motivated by the possession of true saving faith. That's what we're going to be looking at in this series as time goes on.
That's an important question, so I do hope that you'll join us each Saturday as R.C. Sproul continues this study on Renewing Your Mind. This series, The Assurance of Faith, is six messages and has a study guide filled with Scripture readings, further reading, study and discussion questions, and more.
We'll send you the DVD and grant you digital access to all of the messages and that study guide when you make a donation of any amount in support of Renewing Your Mind at renewingyourmind.org. We'll also send you R.C. Sproul's title, Can I Be Sure I'm Saved?
That's a series, a study guide, and a short book when you donate today at renewingyourmind.org or when you click the link in the podcast show notes. But don't forget, this offer ends at midnight. How does having assurance help us as Christians? Why did Peter command us to make our calling and election sure? Find out next Saturday here on Renewing Your Mind. ¶¶