Teach Gospel Assurance

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Matt Smethurst
The Lord’s Table is meant to feed us and flood our hearts with fresh assurance, just simply based on the fact that we’re invited.

Ligon Duncan
Samuel Rutherford is so good on this. He has this phrase. He says, I hang by a thread, but it is of Christ’s spinning. So this, you know, the picture of a one of those little thin strings that a spider. You’ve seen it happen. That’s all I’m hanging on by. But price spun that web.

Matt Smethurst
Welcome friends to the everyday pastor a podcast on the nuts and bolts of ministry from the gospel coalition. My name is Matt Smithers, the pastor here in Richmond, Virginia, and I’m LIG Duncan, Chancellor, slash CEO of Reformed Theological Seminary, but former pastor for almost 20 years at first pres Jackson in Mississippi. And today, LIG, I want to talk with you about this idea of gospel assurance, how we can teach our people to think rightly and biblically about what can be an incredibly vexing topic, the topic of our eternal security in Christ, and how we can enjoy that even now. So could you just situate the conversation biblically and historically? What are we talking about regarding assurance, and how have Christians thought about it over the centuries?

Ligon Duncan
We want all of our members to have a full and firm confidence that Christ is theirs, and they are Christ’s. Every pastor wants His people to know the gospel and know what it is to rest and trust in Christ alone for salvation as he is offered in the Gospel. And every pastor is going to repeatedly be preaching the gospel, not just to visitors that are coming, but to his own people, we need to hear it every Lord’s day. But every pastor also wants His people to come to the place where they know that they are Christ’s and they that they have an assurance of the salvation that is theirs by grace from God through Christ. And pastors know that people struggle with that for a lot of different reasons, and so pastors need to teach into that. That needs to be a part of our preaching, probably pretty regularly. There needs to be some kind of an application that speaks to assurance. And it can come no matter what doctrine you’re working there. You might be working on the doctrine of providence in a sermon, and there might be one aspect of your application that speaks in to assurance, because there are a lot of experiences and there are a lot of personalities that lead people to struggle with assurance. So I just think it’s something that every Bible believing protestant pastor ought to care about our people’s assurance being full and firm. And really

Matt Smethurst
there’s everyone is in one of four categories. You You have assurance and you should, you have assurance and you shouldn’t, or you don’t have assurance and you should or you don’t have assurance and you shouldn’t. And obviously, where the challenge is pastorally is with those two categories in there of having it when you shouldn’t or not having it when you should, right? You know, comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable, and not mixing those up. So as you reflect, you know, put, put on your church historian hat. What, what has been the role? Because I’ve heard the the doctrine of assurance described as this explosive doctrine that, you know, lit up Europe through the Protestant Reformation. Talk, talk about some of that

Ligon Duncan
history. One of my, one of my favorite stories on that front is from our mutual friend Mark Gover. I can I can see the clip of Mark talking that on the eve of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, nobody in Europe could wake up and know that they were saved because the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church taught them, and still teaches them that no one can know that you’re saved, and that when, when Luther and the Reformers started heralding the gospel for the first time in hundreds of years, Christians could wake up in Europe and know that if they died, they would be in the nearer presence of Christ. And Mark got moved as he was telling the story. And I get moved every time I think about him telling the story. And that is really a share that little thing. We’ll share that clip in the show. We should it’s a wonderful, wonderful presentation, and it dovetails with something. Sinclair. Ferguson is so good on the doctrine of assurance and Sinclair in several places. I’ve heard him preach on this but I’ve even seen an article on the Ligonier website where he tells this story. Cardinal Robert Bellarmine was one of the most accomplished Roman Catholic Counter Reformation apologists in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, and he wrote a book on the errors of Protestantism, in which he said the greatest heresy of the Protestants, and you’re waiting for him to say sola scriptura, or justification by grace alone, or speaking against indulgences or something like this. And he says, The Greatest heresy of the Protestants is that they teach assurance of salvation and, and Ferguson says, That’s exactly right. We do and, but it’s an it’s not a heresy. It’s scriptural. It’s something that the Bible speaks to, even when the author of Hebrews is defining faith, He wants us to have an assurance of things unseen, and it pastorally speaking, because of what you just said, we you are always going to have people in your congregation who you have good reason to believe, understand the gospel, trust in Christ, and they don’t feel like it, and they’re having a hard time believing it. And let me say one thing that we can do in that circumstance as pastors is do the best job we can to figure out why they’re struggling with it, and then make sure that they know why they’re struggling with it, that that’s one of the that’s one of the best things that you can do as a pastor, is ascertain where is this coming from, because sometimes we Are temperamentally inclined right to struggles with assurance. And we were talking off camera that, you know, we know people in our churches that we’ve loved and and ministered to for many years that have had a standing struggle with assurance, and very often that is rooted in the very makeup of their personality. They are. They’re temperamentally vulnerable to or inclined to struggles with assurances. Sometimes it’s because of people struggle with the besetting sin that they they just feel like either they they keep having a little lapses along the way, or a lack of victory in killing the sin and in vivifying graces in their life in that area. And they show up in your office, and you know, pastor I’ve been, I’ve been trying to mortify this sin for five years, and I feel like I haven’t made one bit of progress. How can I possibly be a Christian? So pastors ascertaining what it is that’s driving the assurance struggle, and then helping the congregation member know why he or she may be struggling with assurance is one really important part now, part of it is just helping him understand the Bible’s teaching on this. So where do you like to go to talk about assurance, either doctrinally, or passage wise. Matt, where do you like to take people? The

Matt Smethurst
first place, I think of is John’s first letter. So because in First John, you know, many people have observed that there are some different tests in the letter. There’s a theological test. What do you believe? There’s a moral test, how are you living? And then there’s a social test, how are you loving? And different people are going to struggle in different ways and perhaps be tempted in different ways. But that letter, rightly understood, is not meant to be a fear inducing exam, because John tells us his purpose in first John 513, I am writing these things to you so that you may know that you have eternal life. Now, clearly he doesn’t want everyone to think they have eternal life. There is such a thing as false assurance, but with a pastor’s heart, he’s saying, I’m writing this to you so that you will know that, as Paul puts it, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ, Jesus. And so I’m wanting to constantly think about, am I talking to a nominal Christian, someone who’s a Christian in name only, or am I talking to a struggling Christian, or someone whose conscience is perhaps overly overly tender, or maybe, like you said, they’re temperamentally introspective naturally before we talk about kind of binding up the wounds of the person we think is. That true believer, but is just kind of chronically doubting their salvation. I do think we should just note the fact that not everyone who thinks they’re a Christian is and therefore one of our jobs as pastors is to let the warnings of Scripture have their full force and and it’s kind of like an alarm clock. An alarm clock can be broken in different ways. You you can have an alarm clock that is going off when it shouldn’t, and you can also have an alarm clock that’s not going off when it should, you know. And so when you have a broken alarm clock that’s not going off when it should, that that’s someone the Bible describes a person with a conscience that has been seared, or conscience that is not sensitive to the Holy Spirit in the in the the leading of God. And so how would you encourage pastors in their preaching ministry and in their everyday ministry to think about nominal Christianity related to this issue, one

Ligon Duncan
is to do what you just did when you gave those four categories. And the Puritans used to talk about discriminating preaching, and that is to say, not everybody under your nose on Sunday morning is struggling with the same thing. And so if you preach your application to everybody as if everybody has the same problem and everybody is in the same state, you’re going to miss your people a lot. And so you need to think in terms of the different kinds of people that are there. Now the Puritans would often come up with a lot more than four categories, which is one reason why their sermons were longer, because they spent so much time doing what they call uses, which we would call applications, and they were often trying to apply the text, the doctrine of the text, to all the different categories. And an example of this, we’ve mentioned this before on the program, but Thomas Brooks precious remedies against Satan’s devices, which, by the way, directly addresses the issue of assurance and and struggles that saints have with assurance, and he will have a variety of different sources or kinds of struggles with assurance, and then different suggestions of different doctrinal truths and biblical passages that particularly help that kind of assurance. So that’s a good resource for people to go look at, but I would say pastors do need to remember not everybody is a is a sincere Christian struggling with assurance because of a temperamental tendency. You do have people that are they’re lost, they don’t know the Lord, and they may be church members, and they need to hear from the pulpit. From time to time, the warnings sounded, right? And so what will happen is that there will be people with tender consciences that will show up in your office when you do that. And you have to be ready for that, you know. But if you don’t do that, you’re going to be giving assurance to somebody like poison. And so I think one, knowing your congregation is a is a big part of it. Another thing is, is knowing the kinds of people that are in your congregation and the different kinds. And the more you know your people, the more you’re counseling your people, the more that you’re with your people, the more that you’re visiting your people, the more that you’re in their lives, the better you’re going to be able to do this in pastoral ministry. That’s why I tell people when I go in to preach somewhere I can’t do near the job that the pastor can because he knows he’s sheep. And I’m just going in and I’m preaching a message to people that usually I don’t know intimately. The pastor knows them and can speak into those situations. But you do need to preach discriminatingly, recognizing not everybody, and let me say, my generation, that’s that’s definitely a problem. We typically would preach trying to give assurance to everybody. And if you do that, you’re going to paper over wounds, and you’re going to paper paper over consciences that are actually ought to be under conviction, and they’re not. So I do think, you know, go back to that application grid that we talked about, that Mark dever does, thinking through the application grid is really helpful. Looking at a Thomas Brooks breakdown on the different types of struggles with assurance, thinking through the four categories that you talked about, those ought to be things that we’re rehearsing when we’re working through applications in our passages and just asking ourselves, Am I occasionally speaking to people who are very confident, who shouldn’t be right?

Matt Smethurst
You can’t lose your salvation, but you actually can lose your assurance of salvation. Yeah, meaning someone who’s genuinely saved, we believe is secure in Christ. They can’t lose their salvation. But if you think you’re a Christian and your life in no way reflects that profession, you’re habitually living in unrepentant sin, then it really doesn’t matter whether you walked an aisle or signed a card or prayed a prayer or threw a pine cone into a fire at a summer camp. Second Corinthians 13, five, Paul says, Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith, present tense, not whether once upon a time, you were in the faith and and so I think we want to be really clear with our with our people. But here’s the thing, it’s the solution, the first solution. This is not everything there is to say, but it is the first thing to say with both audiences, the nominal Christian and the the doubting Christian. Both of them need to hear the gospel. The nominal Christian needs to hear it in a way that you know, in a sense, you got to get them lost their lethargy. Yeah, you pray that the gospel will be a smelling salt right to wake them up. But let’s, let’s talk like about the fact that our churches are filled with many people who are genuine, genuinely belong to Christ, but struggle to enjoy that assurance he wants for them. As you reflect on your ministry at first pres, is that something you feel like you spent a lot of time doing as talking to people about these kinds of struggles? Well, my

Ligon Duncan
own testimony. Matt as as a young man, I sat under good, faithful Bible teaching, and my my conscience was pricked with the reality of my own sin, and though I made a profession of faith at about the age of 10, I really struggled with assurance for three or four years having made a perfect what I think was a very credible profession of faith, I struggled with the reality of ongoing sin in my life under good, faithful preaching that was both trying to assure believers, but also bring conviction To those who are falsely comfortable in their sin and what what helped me there was one to understand assurance from a doctrinal standpoint. So I realized that that the reason that I trusted in Christ, the reason that I had repented of my sins, was because of a prior work of grace in my life that the Lord had done. And if, if, if the quality of my faith and the quality of my repentance is the basis of my assurance, my assurance is built on quicksand, yeah, because my faith it it’s it waxes cold, my repentance is inconsistent. So there’s got to be some objective ground outside of me on which assurance rests. And that was a big part of me getting not that I’m not going to pay attention to what’s going on in my heart, what’s going on in my life, the fruit that’s going on, but to recognize that if, if my assurance is based on things that are subjective, I’m never going to have that assurance. So that was a big part of it for me. I was under good gospel preaching that was pointing me to those truths. But I had some, I had some personal heart work to do to get there. So if that’s the case with me, there are going to be people like that in our churches that we need to be ready to speak to. And it may be that they need to clarify some things doctrinally in their minds, but very often, I find there are things in their experience that are driving it too. You just mentioned the issue of, what if you’re, you know, you’re under a besetting sin. What your your pastor, Nathan, and you’re talking to David in the nine months between his sin with Bathsheba and the birth of that child. And David himself tells us my bones wax old, you know, when I was not repentant of of this sin. And good pastor, Nathan doesn’t give some generic okay, we all ought to be assured, because God is a God of loving kindness for giving those to 1000 generations. He goes after the sin, and that actually becomes the that becomes the gateway to a restoration of a sense of assurance for for David. And so that’s going to be the case with some of our people. You know, there may be a sin on top of somebody, and the pastor addressing that directly with that individual, probably not, you know, certainly not calling the person out from the pulpit, but in in private interaction and conversation, addressing those things may. Be a gateway for that person to get the monkey off their back and to be able to get some sense of equilibrium. So I think in the pulpit, we need to make sure we’re not just preaching to one problem, one kind of struggle with assurance. There are a lot of different kinds of struggles with assurance, and then remembering that people get assurance in different ways. I heard Joel Beeke speak about this not long ago, that he had a man in the church that again, in his pastoral judgment, this was a godly man who consistently struggled with assurance. And so Joel sort of walked him through a variety of biblical evidences of grace in a Christian’s life. And the guy had all sorts of excuses for each one. And Joel could see those things in the life, but the guy, he just couldn’t really admit that those things were going on in his life. And but Joel knew there was one particular area where this guy really, really. I mean, everybody would have said, Boy, that area, he really shines. And Joel just said, Yeah, but I see you doing such and such and and the man, he couldn’t deny that. And Joel said, you know, that’s an evidence of grace. And so Joel knew him well enough to know where he could go for his so called weak spot in his defense against assurance. He knew how the guy could Yeah, I know I do that, but I also I fall short. Yeah, I know I do that, but it’s never perfect. Yeah, I do that, but it’s not for the right motives. Joel knew him well enough where he could say, Yeah, but you do this. And the guy couldn’t say, No, I don’t. And then Joel could say, you know, the Bible says that’s an evidence of grace. And so he was, he was not telling him to base his salvation on those things, right, exactly. But he was, he was breaking through the defenses this this guy had, had thrown up defenses against being assured, and Joel, because he knew him, was able to break through and say, No, brother, I see this in your life. And only the Holy Spirit can can work that in the life of a person. And so there, again, knowing our people well and recognizing not everybody’s struggle is the same. Is a huge, huge thing in this area.

Matt Smethurst
Yeah, I love how you referenced the distinction between the objective grounds of assurance, which is the gospel of Christ, and the promises of God, amen, which is first and foremost, it is possible to run too quickly to the subjective evidences of grace, but it’s also possible not to run there at all, amen, and to assume that just because we have professed the gospel and believe it intellectually, that those evidences of persevering faith in Christ don’t matter. In his book, assured Greg Gilbert has a helpful word picture, and it’s a really helpful book. We’ll put it in the show notes, where he distinguishes between what he calls driving sources of assurance and confirming sources of assurance. It’s good as being like the difference between an accelerator, you know, like the gas pedal, and the speedometer. And I pulled up a little quote from it that I like to read, he says, Consider this, in the design of a car, there is a profound difference between the driver of speed and the confirmer of speed, between the accelerator and the speedometer. If we want the car to go faster, we push on the accelerator, we put weight on it, and the car goes now, of course, when we do that, one of the results is that the speedometer on the dashboard indicates or shows or confirms that the car is going but the speedometer is a sign of speed, not the source of speed. If we want more speed, we can’t just raise our hand to the dashboard and use our fingers to push the needle up and expect the car to go faster. In other words, we step on the accelerator by looking afresh to the promises of God and Christ in the Gospel. And I think so much. You know, we haven’t referenced the evil one in this, but we dare not neglect the reality that he wants nothing more than to slither into our consciences and into our hearts and rob us of the joy that can be ours, rob us of the assurance that the gospel is meant to give us again, not an assurance that minimizes sin or anything like that, but an assurance that enables us to enjoy the sweet communion of our Father and God is so kind from time to time, I think, to give us, despite our temperaments, you know, to give us those flashes of His love. I forget which Puritan it was, but you know, some Puritan shared the illustration of imagine a man and his son walking down. Road, and you’re watching them from a distance, and man and his young, young son, and all of a sudden, the father picks up his son and kind of twirls him around and kisses him, and, you know, nuzzles him, and then puts him back down. They keep walking. Now was the son legally any more his father’s child when he was in his arms than when he was just walking down the street. No, but he experienced his sonship in a special way. So I do think the doctrine not only the idea the reality of spiritual warfare, in terms of what Satan is trying to prevent or to rob, but also the doctrine of adoption, I think, is is closely related to the doctrine of assurance. Yeah,

Ligon Duncan
I would also add the Bible’s teaching on the covenants, the divine covenants that God initiates, and then God provides for us in and then God sustains, are also closely related to this idea of assurance. So you think of Abram in Genesis 15, he’s been walking with God for 25 years. He’s been promised an heir. In fact, he’s been he’s been promised that he’s going to have, you know, nations are going to come from him. And he’s promised a land, and he doesn’t have either of them. And in Genesis 15, he asked two questions, how am I going to know that I’m going to have a son, and how am I going to know that I’m going to have the land? And the answer in Genesis 15 is that God actually engages in a covenant making ceremony with him. So what the Bible says about and I was just looking at Tom Shriners book on covenants last night, that’s why this is on my mind. What the Bible says about covenants is very much designed to give us assurance when we’re struggling. How do I know? How do I know those things you said, Yes, perseverance before assurance, and adoption before assurance. And we could also say justification and adoption before assurance. But the doctrine of the covenants are also designed. God knows that we need reassurance, and he’s happy to give it to us. He’s not withholding that from us. And so it is wonderful as a pastor to be able to point those objective things. And I love the illustration that you, that you that you made between an accelerator and a speedometer that’s important. The speedometer can still be a helpful tool with the pastor to force somebody to see the fruit of grace who doesn’t want to see it in their lives. But that’s not the basis on which they are assured of their salvation. It’s confirming. I loved that illustration.

Matt Smethurst
And there’s another thing you said earlier, that it’s not the quality of our faith. I’ve found that this is probably where I’ve gotten the most traction as a pastor, with people that are doubting. I mean, you just referenced Genesis 15. First of all, Genesis 15. I mean, think about what you can say to a doubting believer. It’s been observed that you can say to a doubting believer that when Abraham was counting those stars, he was counting you, that’s exactly and I think that it’s so easy for us. And again, I think this is, this is how Satan comes and he convinces us that we our security is as flimsy as the strength of our faith, when really it’s based on the strength of our Savior. When my kid, we have the newborn twins, but when my other kids, who are now a little older, when they were little, and I would be walking through a store with them, we would be holding hands, but really, all that would consist of is me just sticking out my finger, and they would just be holding on, right? You’re in a store. It’s safe. That’s what it looks like. But you better believe when we exited the store and entered the and entered the parking lot, we kept holding hands, but something changed. My grip became decisive. That’s what it’s like to walk with Jesus. His grip is decisive. He will hold you fast, yeah, and I think that, as I’ve tried to remind, and this is one of those things you you have to remind your people of it almost every week, because we have so many reasons to grow despondent and discouraged and to and to, you know, take 10 looks at ourselves for every one word of Christ, rather than the reverse. And

Ligon Duncan
I, you know, Samuel Rutherford is so good on this. He has this phrase. He says, I hang by a thread, but it is of Christ’s spinning. So this, you know, the picture of a one of those little thin strings that a spider. You’ve seen it happen? Yeah, he feels that way. It feels that that’s all I’m hanging on by. But Christ spun that web, and so I’m safe and so weak faith. Faith in a strong savior. It’s, you know, it’s not the strength of our faith, it’s the strength of our Savior, that that is the source of our assurance. And so remembering that, and expecting that, not being surprised by that, being reminded of that, again, is vital. One

Matt Smethurst
obscure Old Testament passage that I would encourage pastors to study and consider preaching is Zechariah three, where Joshua the high priest, not the Joshua this Moses’ successor, but this is, this is much later. He’s the high priest, and he’s standing before the Lord in filthy garments, and Satan shows up to accuse him and just study. I think the the chapter is only 10 verses or so. I’ve preached on it before. If you want to preach a sermon in which you can touch on the glory of justification and imputation and and of our our Gospel assurance because of what Christ has done and it you even can easily get to the cross, because the one of the the promises in that short chapter in Zechariah three is that sin will be removed in a single day, yeah, which is exactly, of course, what happened on Good Friday. That’s a That’s a beautiful that’s that’s a that’s a passage I’ve not just preached, but I’ve returned to in personal counseling to help people think about how to respond to accusations with not merely look what I’ve done, but look what Christ is doing in me. I do think it’s easy, when talking about assurance, to think about it solely, individualistically. So it’s me and Jesus and I either sense his love and his assurance or not. And I think we can sometimes forget about the horizontal dimensions. If I could give this episode an alternate title, it might be blessed assurance. Jesus is ours. So how what is the role of the church in someone’s assurance? Well,

Ligon Duncan
one way is, of course, when the assurance of pardon is administered in a public worship service. And I, I see this happening more and more. I was, I was telling a group of people just a few days ago that I was in a large church. This is a large evangelical church that many people would look at and say, well, that’s a mega church. And the the young, new pastor there, one of the things that he has done is he has put a little more structure into the liturgy there. And I was, I happened to be there preaching, and I noticed he had a confession of sin and assurance of pardon. I thought, way to go. Man, I don’t know how you did that here, because that’s not how they used to do it, and he’s worked that into the service. And what happens is we, publicly, all acknowledge that we need forgiveness of sins, and then from Scripture, the pastor gives an assurance of pardon to those who have repented of their sins and trust

Matt Smethurst
just a verse or two right

Ligon Duncan
sins or a scarlet, your white as snow. You know, it might be a short passage. It might be from First John it might be from Romans. It might be from Galatians. It might be from an Old Testament passage from a psalm. But collectively, what it does, first of all, it weaves the gospel into the service. So need for forgiveness, provision of forgiveness, assurance of pardon. And it reminds the congregation Lord’s day after Lord’s day, sin is a reality for all of us that we continually have to deal with. God knows that he’s made a provision of that. And here’s the assurance from his word. So when you’re in a public worship service where the pastor is praying about that, or where there’s an assurance, a pardon given or and certainly when it’s read from the text of scripture or proclaimed in the message, that’s something that everybody there needs Absolutely. Everybody there needs forgiveness of sins, but the believers and unbelievers, they all need forgiveness of sins. But if you’re a believer struggling with assurance, you’re reminded again, God knows that he knows that need, and here’s the provision for that in Christ, and here’s how you can know that you have that so the very structure of the service can help you in that, in that regard. And so that’s one way that the church can help you. The other way, of course, is just to be, you’re you’re traveling this, this walk of faith with fellow travelers that have the same struggles with sin that you do,

Matt Smethurst
and can point out those evidences of grace that you can’t see,

Ligon Duncan
and times, maybe where they’ve struggled like like you’re struggling right now. So and elders and pastors can do the same thing. So the the issue of assurance ought to be. Dressed, you’re right, not just individualistically, but in a churchly way.

Matt Smethurst
Yeah? And also the the Lord’s table is meant to feed us and flood our hearts with fresh assurance, just simply based on the fact that we’re invited, yeah? So there is a sense in which we hobble our way to that table, and we find welcome, not only from the friend of sinners himself, but we look to our left and our right, and we see those other brothers and sisters, many of whom are struggling. And we realize, okay, this is, this is a dress rehearsal for the the marriage supper of the Lamb. We’re just helping one another get to that day. We’re helping each other toward heaven. When I preside over the Lord’s Supper, I’ll often say, Well, I’ll give the warning, Paul’s warning from First Corinthians 11, about examining yourself lest you eat or drink in an unworthy manner. But then I’ll immediately follow up that warning by saying but that doesn’t mean that sinners are unwelcome at this table. In fact, this meal is only and exclusively for sinners, but for one particular kind, one particular subset of sinner, namely repenting sinners, if you are turning from your sin and trusting in Christ’s grace, and are on this journey where we’re helping one another, reminding one another of the promises of the gospel and the glories of a better world to come, then you are welcome at this table, and there’s no place that Christ Himself would rather You be.

Ligon Duncan
Yeah, it’s interesting. The Westminster larger catechism anticipates that there are going to be some very godly Christians that struggle with coming to the table, and so it addresses this in the Catechism. It It talks about the warning that should be given towards those who are not trusting in Christ to not come to the table, but it also talks about those who need the grace of Christ coming to the table. There’s a very famous story in Scotland where John Duncan, who was a professor at New College in Edinburgh in the 19th century, spoke to a one in a church who had not been coming to the Lord’s table, and he just emphasized to her, this is for sinners, just like you just said that this is, this is not a table for people that don’t need forgiveness of sins. This is the table that provides for people who need forgiveness

Matt Smethurst
all you must do. That’s right, that’s right, yeah, amen, there’s such great encouragement for us as pastors, as we reflect on the immense security we have in Christ, I mean our our standing. This is the beauty of we’ve referenced so many wonderful doctrines, justification and adoption and imputation and assurance, but also the doctrine of union with Christ. Our standing before God is as secure as Jesus’s own standing before God. We will not lose that standing any sooner than he will lose his place in heaven. So we need to feed on that. As pastors, we need to be careful that we aren’t starting to fall into a kind of works righteousness, where our spiritual well being rises and falls based on how well ministry is going. But then what a joy we have as pastors to remind our people that, yes, if you could lose your salvation, you would, but you won’t, if you’re truly in Christ, because He is faithful to keep those who are His Amen. We hope this episode of the everyday pastor has been encouraging to you and will equip you to encourage those under your charge. If you would just take a moment to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast, we would, we would appreciate that, because we want to help you and others find fresh joy in the work of ministry.