By Martin Morrison
There are many Christians who lack certainty about their relationship with God. Very often they are anxious whether they are good enough for God. Periodically, they look for some or other sign from God to give them assurance in their spiritual journey. I have often wondered whether people who continually look for signs or miracles or special experiences from God, are not in fact looking for assurance. Unconsciously they hope that the experience or miracle will assure their troubled soul of God’s presence in their lives.
Lacking assurance as a Christian is not what God wants for his children. In fact, the Bible is quite clear that those who have trusted and submitted to King Jesus ought to have full confidence that they are God’s children. They ought to have complete security that they belong to Jesus for all eternity. They should have the absolute certainty echoed in Paul’s teaching, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). “No condemnation”, can that really be true?
Contrary to what most people think, the basis of that assurance is not found in what we do or achieve. No, it lies entirely in what Christ has done for us on the cross. The basis of assurance is not found in our efforts or our experiences, but it is found in Christ who died for all our sins, past, present and future. “Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Paul tells us, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ… and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:1 – 2). This is amazing, wonderful and true! No matter how bad you have been, what harm you may have caused, how unworthy you may feel, when you trust in our Lord Jesus Christ, all your guilt is taken away and you are given a new standing with God that makes you acceptable to him.
Think for a moment of all you have done that makes you ashamed or causes regret. Do you think you are worthy of forgiveness or acceptance? Of course not! What God has done for us in Jesus is for the unworthy, for people like us. Because we do not deserve it, it is called “grace”. Randy Alcorn correctly says, “God knows everything, so no sin surprises him. He knows all our worst secrets. No skeletons will ever fall out of our closets. Jesus will never say, Had I known you’d done that, I’d never have let you into heaven. He’s seen us at our worst and still loves us. Or as David Powlison said, “Are you too bad to receive grace? How could you be too bad to receive what is for the bad?” I love that!
Let me try and illustrate this amazing concept. “…just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin” (Romans 4: 6 – 8). The first part of verse 7, tells us that the truly happy, blessed man is the one whose sins or wrongdoings are forgiven. Then in typical Hebrew poetic style, this statement of forgiveness is repeated, whose sins are covered.
Frank Retief explains the word covered by showing us how this word “covered” is used elsewhere in Scripture which fleshes out this concept. Firstly, it is used in Genesis 9:23 of the action of Shem and Japheth when they covered their father Noah who was lying naked in a drunken stupor. Clearly, there was something shameful which Noah’s two sons correctly covered. The word is used again in Exodus 15:10 after God had miraculously saved the Israelites from the Egyptians through the Red Sea. Moses and Miriam extol God’s greatness and sing, “You blew with your wind: the sea covered them”. The Egyptian army was completely covered by the waters and annihilated. Thus, we get the idea of how this word is used. It means to cover over shame, enmity, defeat.
There is a third example to note. This illustration occurs in Deuteronomy 23:13. It is a daring analogy of what it means to have our sins covered. “And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you relieve yourself, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement”. Have you ever wondered how the vast number of Israelites wandering through the desert for forty years, took care of their toilet arrangements? How amazing that God should legislate about such a thing! Each Israelite, had to have a kind of spade or paddle. With this he covered up his own excrement so that there would be no disease in the camp.
There is a connection we should grasp. The same word used to “cover” human excrement in Deuteronomy 23:13 is the word God uses in Psalm 32:1 to describe what he does with our sins. Can you imagine anything as gross as someone going back and digging up their human waste! Yet this is what we often do in relation to our sins. When God has covered them, we dig them up. We use them to plague us with anxiety and doubt. No wonder we are robbed of our assurance.
Turn again to Romans 4: 8, “Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sins”. The Lord will never count it against us. Did you get that? Often our friends or family or conscience continue to hold our failures against us. But the wonder of the Gospel is that when we come to Christ in faith, God takes our sins and covers them.
So the basis of our assurance, is that God has covered our sins and no longer counts them against us. Assurance comes from knowing this. This assurance is breathtaking! It means I can have absolute certainty that I am right with God, that I am his legally adopted child, that I am destined for heaven. You don’t deserve it, you don’t earn it. It is yours by faith. It’s grace. It’s a gift.
For Further Reading: Randy Alcorn, Grace: A Bigger view of God’s love. Frank Retief, Blessed Assurance.