Assurance of Salvation
Romans 8:12-13
Hallelujah! May the grace and peace of our Lord be with us all throughout this week. Today, we will take time to review the fundamentals of our faith.
Today’s message is about Creation, the Fall, and the Assurance of Salvation.
A. God’s Creation and the Fall
1. God formed man from the dust and gave him a body of flesh. He also created animals with physical bodies. However, the body has natural desires.
Humans feel hunger, thirst, and fatigue for survival. To satisfy these needs, the body responds instinctively. But what makes humans different from animals is that God created man in His own image. Since God is Spirit, He created humans as spiritual beings. The spirit has the ability to hear and understand God’s word and allows humans to have fellowship with Him. God communicates with humans to reveal His will and has given them the responsibility to rule over the world according to His purpose. Furthermore, God has enabled humans to control their bodily desires through their spirit.
2. Among the creatures that God created, there are also angels. However, some of them fell, and the fallen angel became Satan. Satan uses human fleshly desires to deceive people, preventing them from following God’s word. When fleshly desires grow stronger, the spirit loses its original function. This is like a car ignoring the speed limit, recklessly speeding, and eventually crashing. Likewise, if fleshly desires are not controlled by the spirit, they will lead to disastrous consequences in life. The first humans, Adam and Eve, also failed to control their fleshly desires and did not follow God’s command. They could not resist the desire to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and disobeyed God’s command. As a result, their spirit died. Similarly, all people face the same fate. In other words, people stopped following God’s word and followed the desires of the flesh instead. Consequently, all people’s spirits died. The Bible describes this state in Ephesians 5:14, which says: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” As this verse shows, a dead spirit is like a spirit in deep sleep. Therefore, for the dead to come to life means that the spirit awakens from its sleep.
3. When the spirit is dead, a person cannot understand God’s word even if they hear it. Therefore, God gave His word specifically to chosen prophets and had them record it. This became the Old Testament. The book of Hebrews states that the Old Testament is a shadow and a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ. This means that one must know Jesus in order to properly understand the Old Testament. What was the purpose of Jesus coming to this earth? It was to save people from sin, restore their spirit, and grant them eternal life.
B. The Grace of Salvation
1. For a dead spirit to come back to life, the price of sin must be paid. The Bible states that the wages of sin is death. Additionally, since life is in the blood, the price of sin must be paid with blood. Leviticus 17:11 says: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.” To fulfill this promise, God sent His Son into this world in the same human flesh as us. However, Jesus was without sin. Therefore, He shed His blood on the cross to atone for our sins. And those who believe in God’s grace receive the blessing of this atonement.
2. What is the grace of atonement? It is God’s love and mercy, which has opened the way of salvation equally for all people. In this sense, Jesus is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” By believing in the atoning grace of Jesus Christ, we are freed from sin, and our spirit is brought back to life. Ephesians 2:1 says: “You were dead in your trespasses and sins, but He made you alive.”
C. To Keep Our Salvation
1. Then, what is the purpose of God reviving our spirit? The purpose is the same as when God first created our spirit. That is, God, who is Spirit, desires to communicate His will to people so that they may live according to it and govern the world accordingly. Dear believers! Our spirit has been brought to life through the grace of atonement. From now on, we must not neglect prayer, which is our communication with God, so that our spirit will never die again. For a soldier in battle, having a weapon is important, but having a radio connection to headquarters is even more crucial. Without a radio, they cannot receive strategy, determine their path, or avoid falling into the enemy’s hands. Prayer is our spiritual radio. A faith without prayer is like a soldier stranded alone in enemy territory. If the purpose of a radio is to receive orders from headquarters, the purpose of prayer is to listen to and obey God’s word. Therefore, we must discern whether our prayers seek to fulfill our own desires or to follow God’s will. For this reason, the Lord taught us how to pray. This is why we have the Lord’s Prayer. If we neglect the Lord’s Prayer, our prayers may turn into a means to fulfill our fleshly desires rather than a way to control them. By examining the Lord’s Prayer, we can see that it contains no requests for fulfilling our worldly desires.
2. If Our Spirit Has Awakened, We Must Seek the Holy Spirit to Communicate with God. The Holy Spirit is a personal God, so we must acknowledge Him and have the desire to draw near to Him. For this reason, whenever we pray, we must confess, “I have been crucified with Christ.”
Such prayer is what enables our spirit to control the desires of the flesh.
Furthermore, this prayer is proof of our faith in the grace of atonement and a testimony of the Holy Spirit’s work to others.
When we pray in this way, the Holy Spirit moves powerfully. There is a movie based on a true story called 《The Cross and the Switchblade》. This film tells the real-life story of Pastor David Wilkerson, a small-town preacher from Pennsylvania, who brought the gospel to young people entangled in drugs and violence in New York, leading to their transformation.
🎥 Main storyline: Nicky Cruz was a violent gang leader, but through Pastor Wilkerson, he had a life-changing conversion and became an evangelist.
At first, Nicky Cruz mocked and opposed Pastor Wilkerson, but through the gospel and prayer, he was completely transformed. The movie beautifully depicts this journey of change. This film is available for free on YouTube, so I highly recommend watching it.
3. Today’s Scripture Confirms This Truth: “So then, brothers, we are not debtors to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” (Romans 8:12-13)
Brothers and sisters! As God’s children, we have both the flesh (sarx) and the spirit within us.
Flesh (Sarx): The nature of the flesh is that when someone speaks or acts against us, we instinctively feel irritated or offended.
Spirit: On the other hand, there is a spirit that seeks to live according to God’s Word. This spirit walks with Jesus and aims to save and bring life to others.
However, when the spirit is asleep, we easily become angry when someone offends us or causes us loss. The Bible says, “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” (James 1:20)
Yet, instead of bringing glory to God, I often found myself reacting in anger and thereby obscuring His glory. But I have come to understand this truth: When I let my anger take control, rather than transforming the other person, I end up hurting them, and the grace of God is not conveyed. So, whenever my fleshly instincts try to take over, I surrender them to God’s Word. And when I do this, I hear my conscience saying, “Well done,” and I feel the Holy Spirit’s joy. This is the true evidence that the spirit is ruling over the flesh.
Let us conclude today’s message. I pray and hope that you and I will live as one with Jesus. We have a physical body (flesh). Therefore, it is easy to follow the desires of the flesh. However, the result of living according to the flesh is eternal destruction. But, God loved us and sent His only begotten Son, granting us the grace of redemption. Through this, He has given us the blessing that the Holy Spirit may dwell within us. Therefore, what we must do now is not to live according to the flesh but to pray without ceasing, so that the Holy Spirit may come into our hearts and lead our lives. This is how we truly love the Lord, and how we come to realize His presence among us and His answers to our prayers. I bless you in the name of the Lord, that we may all live a faith-filled life with this assurance and find true happiness.