Part 21

The Spirit Among Us

John 20:19–23 (ESV) —  On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”  When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.  Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”  And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

The Two Relevant Questions 

Two months ago, in the 20th installment of this newsletter series, we recapped a bunch of the ground that we’ve covered. It was worthwhile to recap because we had just finished a 5 part sub-series that focused just on the fact that the Holy Spirit can be lost. It’s an unpleasant but nonetheless true teaching of the Bible that gross unrepentance can separate you from the saving grace of God. This doesn’t happen because He abandons you, but rather it is because gross unrepentant is an abandonment of the gift of salvation. 

In our 16th article we defined this gross unbelief as current, continuous, ongoing, deliberate and unrepentant sin and we briefly noted that the antidote to this is repentance and faith. 

How does one attain such faith? 

Romans 10:17 (ESV) —  So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

And just as the gift of faith is given through hearing, so also is the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit. 

Galatians 3:2–6 (ESV) —  Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?  Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?  Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?  Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith—  just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

The indwelling Holy Spirit and the faith to receive Him are both gifts of grace. They are received entirely apart from our works. In fact, not only are they received by grace, it's grace that holds us in them. 

Colossians 2:6–7 (ESV) —  Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him,  rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

The first question we must ask ourselves when we consider the reality that we can walk away from our saving faith is, “Ok, how do I avoid that?” The answer is very simple: you continue to receive the grace of God the same way you first received it: by continuing to make diligent use of the Means of Grace. 

This, however, is just a theological and doctrinal answer to a theological hypothetical. “How does a person remain saved?” is an abstract and impersonal question that doesn’t quite give us enough to find personal assurance. It doesn’t address our lived situation because it only speaks about general truths. It gives us a foundation to answer personal questions about our relationship to Jesus, but it doesn’t completely answer them. 

When we refocus it and make it personal we find a second question entirely. “How do I know that I’m still saved? How do I know I haven’t forsaken the Holy Spirit?” The Lord has given us good answers to the second question, but to answer it, we go to different Bible verses than the first. 

The Battle For Assurance

We have to humbly re-assess what it is that we’re really asking when we present this question. First, we need to understand the answer to the first question. If we don’t know that it’s through the Means of Grace that Jesus promises to give us Spirit and Life (John 6:63), then we will look to our works for our assurance of salvation (instead of Christ). This is an unfortunately common but also tragically destructive impulse. There are many pastors or ministers out there who will proclaim in one breath that works merit nothing and that salvation is by grace, but then when faced with a brother in Christ who needs assurance of salvation, will point that brother back to his works as proof of his salvation. When that struggling brother needed his eyes lifted to the cross (1 John 4:9-10), they were instead shown his sinful members (Romans 7:7-25). 

This is why there are a number of pastors and theologians (like me) that spend a ton of time talking about the Means of Grace. Our society is saturated with pastors and theologians that actually deny the promises that the Bible affixes to the Means of Grace. The net result of that action is that a great many of our brothers and sisters have come to know Jesus through His Word and have even come to believe that He can fully forgive them and even wants to, but they still have no assurance in their souls that Jesus actually has. They keep crying out to Him for forgiveness, but the voice that’s supposed to declare Christ’s Word of forgiveness back to them denies the Word of Christ. 

Baptism saves, and Jesus gave us baptism fully intending we would know that it saves. Jesus didn’t give us the gift of Baptism so we could have a magical rite to save people. It’s not the rite that saves. The Savior that promises to attach us to Himself and Himself to us is what saves, and He promises to give us that salvation through Christian Baptism. (We looked at this in previous articles, parts 9-13). Baptism and Communion are objective proofs given to us for the purpose of assuring us that we have been and continue to be saved by grace through faith. 

The pastors and theologians that deny the promises made to us in the Bible about the Means of Grace have put blinders on their people. Deny the efficacy of the Means of Grace and you blind your followers to the proofs that God has given us to assure us we are saved. With nothing objective to hold on to, their followers are relegated to groping around in the dark. Inevitably the only thing they find is their own works. Then, if they are honest with themselves, they will see their sin and assume they are lost. There is no assurance of salvation to be found in our works.

This blindness, and the bad theology that spreads it are not new. As long as there has been a Church that was saved and made righteous by grace, there have been others telling us we’re arrogant for believing we’re righteous. This theology of legalism has worn many different masks throughout history. It reached its highest point just prior to the Reformation, when all of Western Europe was captive to it. Yet the Word of the Lord stands forever (Isaiah 40:8) and eventually the gracious promises of God were again made the center of the Christian life (at least for some congregations). 

The battle for assurance begins with surrender. To have assurance of salvation you must surrender your whole self to Christ (Romans 12:1), trust that you have died in Him through baptism (Romans 6:1-11, Galatians 2:20) and stop looking to your works for proof you are saved (Romans 7:15-18). You must trust the Words and promises that Jesus has given us, and must trust that they give the Holy Spirit (John 6:63). 

Have They Worked?

So if we know that we must trust that the Means of Grace will create faith in us we have answered the first question. We know how Jesus saves us, gives us the Holy Spirit, and even how He keeps us saved. 

But we still deal with the nagging question: Has He? We know how He would save me if He was going to, so has He actually done it? Am I saved? Am I still saved?  This is the gnawing question at the base of our need for assurance. How do I know “it worked”? How do I know I have the Holy Spirit? 

When you break it down, you find there are two specific things that need to be addressed. The first is that we need to be assured we have received the indwelling Holy Spirit and the second is that we need to be assured we have not pushed the Holy Spirit out of our hearts and lives through gross unrepentance. The Bible gives us tools and promises for us to know both of these things. 

Assurance We’ve Received the Holy Spirit 

We spent many articles explaining the promises that the Bible makes about Baptism. 

1 Peter 3:21 (ESV) —  Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

When we receive baptism, we receive salvation and we enter into faith. This is the bedrock of our assurance. 

Even so, we may still long to know this faith has been created in us. Scripture does not fail us on this point either. 

1 Corinthians 12:1–3 (ESV) —  Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed.  You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led.  Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit. 

Confession of faith is a God-given evidence of faith. Confession of faith is evidence of God-given faith. No one says “Jesus is Lord” except by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. The main reason we confess our faith every Sunday (almost always using the Apostles’ Creed, though we could use other confessions) is as an evidence to ourselves that this faith has been created in us. The Means of Grace have worked. When you confess the Apostle’s Creed you are not only encouraging your brothers and sisters, who with one voice confess the same faith. You are also giving yourself evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work in your life. 

Similarly, when you partake of the Lord’s Supper, it’s an objective declaration to you that you are part of the Body of Christ, which is the collection of saved believers who are bound together by the “one Spirit” (Ephesians 4:4). 

The Holy Spirit, through Paul, explains to us how the table shows our connection to each other and to Christ. 

1 Corinthians 10:16–17 (ESV) —  The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?  Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.

Every time you come to the Lord’s Table, you sit down with Him, in His presence. He speaks with us there, in that close intimacy. And what does He say? He could recount our sins and failures, but doesn’t. He could exhort us to try harder, but in that moment, that’s not the conversation He’s interested in. We draw near to Him and He says “your sins are forgiven.” 

His blood was given for the forgiveness of your sins. The supper is a declaration to you, in as physical and objective a way as possible, that you have received that forgiving blood and been incorporated into that saved body. 

Assurance We’ve not Cast Aside the Holy Spirit

The only thing left after all that is for a believer to know that they haven’t cast off the Holy Spirit through their sin. As Christians continue to sin, we need to know that our sin is somehow not evidence that we have rebelled against the Holy Spirit and thrust Him out of our hearts. 

1 John 5:17 (ESV) —  All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death.

How do we know our sin is forgiven? How do we know we are still in grace? Is there even more on top of all the evidence given us by our baptism, our confession of faith and our reception of the Lord’s Supper to tell us that we’re forgiven?

There is. It’s the declaration of the congregation. Jesus has empowered His Congregations to tell the believers in them “your sins are forgiven.” He has given us His signet ring and given us not only permission but a mandate to speak the truth on His behalf. He has also commissioned us to tell those outside of faith that their sins are not forgiven. The declaration of the congregation has been given by Jesus to you, so you can know with perfect assurance the state of your salvation. 

Matthew 18:17–20 (ESV) —  If he refuses to listen to them [and repent], tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.  Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.  Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.  For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

Jesus has given us the Holy Spirit to empower us to do this work. That is the significance (in John 20) of Him “blowing” on the disciples and then saying “receive the Holy Spirit”. The Spirit that is at work in all of us and at work binding us together is also at work speaking through us. 

He commands us to declare the forgiveness of sin to repentant believers. And so, every Sunday, the absolution is declared. The absolution is not a magical rite whereby the pastor expunges your record. The absolution is a Holy Spirit empowered declaration of the Gospel truth that your sins are forgiven for the sake of Jesus Christ. Those who believe should hear the absolution as if Jesus Himself tore open the sky to yell it at us. 

But conversely, the congregation has also been given the right and responsibility to tell people when their sins are not forgiven when they persist in unbelief. It may seem like the absolution given on Sunday is a blanket statement cast at a randomly assembled crowd, but you should all be assured that if we were under the impression that you were living in current, continuous, ongoing, deliberate and unrepentant sin, we would tell you “the absolution does not apply to you until you repent.” 

This makes everyone uncomfortable. If you are a sinner sliding towards deliberate unrepentance, this is uncomfortable simply because you might get (possibly publicly) called out. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ who just loves people and naturally extends grace, this is uncomfortable because it feels judgmental and not gracious. But here we have to recognize something that is even more uncomfortable: unbelievers have not received the grace of salvation. It’s not that the grace isn’t there for the taking, it’s simply that they’ve managed to refuse it. They are outside of salvation and Jesus has called us to speak the truth in love to them about that very fact. Not to heap scorn or public shame on them! But for the sake of their eternal souls. 

1 John 5:16–17 (ESV) —  If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that.  All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. 

Matthew 18:15-20 lays out the steps for congregational discipline, and there are many other relevant Bible verses related to congregational discipline. This article cannot dive into the intricacies of how congregational discipline should work, or even when. But the thing we should see here is that one of the reasons Jesus has given us the congregation is to strengthen our assurance that we have not fallen into gross unrepentance. 

If you know that you are living in gross unrepentance, well, you should repent. If you suspect that you live in gross unrepentance, but are not sure, come and talk to me. That’s a huge part of what a pastor is supposed to do: apply the Word of God to the life situation you are in. But if you are not aware of any current, continuous, ongoing, deliberate and unrepentant sin in your life, and we haven’t talked to you about any, then rejoice! The Holy Spirit of God, the maker and giver of life Himself, dwells in you. 

That is an incredible gift and Jesus has given us numerous assurances that it is ours.