Without A Doubt - The Essentials Of Saving FaithSample

Good people go to heaven. This might be the most common universal belief in America today. We aren’t told what the standards are for being a good person or any details about heaven, but there is this imagined “better place” that apparently has an 18-hole golf course in the sky, where Uncle Bob plays every day. A major cause of false assurance is the confidence in one’s own standing as a good person. What makes this an easy barrier to get trapped under on the road to the assurance of salvation is that this belief in oneself being a good person is usually correct by the world’s standards of what it means to be a moral, ethical, and an individual who possesses values. As long as you practice the moral version of keeping up with the Jones’s, it is easy to believe that there is a grand golf course in the sky waiting for you to swing your golden driver at heaven’s country club after you die and head to the better place.

The problem is not in thinking one is a good person, the issue is that the wrong comparison is being made. It doesn’t make sense for a 5-star steakhouse to compare itself to a fast-food restaurant, or for that fast food restaurant to compare itself to an elite, fine dining restaurant. Those places aren’t the standard for each other. When we compare ourselves to others, it is easy to believe that we are good people. When we compare ourselves to God, we fall short every single time. This wrong comparison issue goes back to the assurance barrier of belief in a generic or vague god. Sinning against a “Big Man upstairs” leaves one with no reason to worry when they sin. This god won’t think it is a very big deal. This god functions as a Mother Nature figure or a divine Santa Clause figure. Worst case scenario, there will be coal in your Christmas stocking. God as a distant force leaves one without any fear. J. I. Packer wrote, “Unless we see our shortcomings in the light of the law and the holiness of God, we do not see them as sin at all.”

As a middle school student just starting my teenage years, I would have never considered myself a sinner. Did I occasionally do something wrong that would cause my parents to send me to my room all night? Yes, but what’s the big deal? I served my punishment by missing out on the movie or whatever my friends were doing that weekend. I would have my privileges back on Monday morning. “Sinning” was something reserved for really bad people, like the ones I learned about in my mainline Protestant Sunday school. Goliath, Nebuchadnezzar, and Jonah (before the fish swallowed him)—those were the bad guys. I wasn’t a sinner, because I went to church, prayed before dinner, and did more good deeds than bad. I was also a member of the Inserra family, and we are good people, after all. It has been said that the most important thing is what comes to our mind when we think about God. Based on my generic theism, and what came to my mind when I thought about God, I wasn’t worshiping the God of the Bible. I was giving occasional nods to a superhero character who beat the bad guys in the Old Testament but was also kind of like Santa, who would answer my bedtime prayers if I stayed off the naughty list. Falling on the right side of the list usually meant not being that bad, like the bully at school, or the kid that always got put in a timeout during recess on the playground.

When other people are the standard of goodness, you can always find people a little worse than yourself. But when God is the standard, and I compare myself to Him, the only response can be, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” That plea doesn’t exist without recognizing the holiness of God. When we finally realize we are great sinners, we can finally understand that we have a great Savior. Paul claimed that if good people go to heaven based on their personal morals, then Jesus died for nothing. I can’t think of a more swing-and-miss belief when it comes to personal assurance of salvation than functionally believing that Jesus died for no purpose. Of course, nobody claiming to be a Christian would ever admit they believed Jesus died for no reason, as that sounds so terrible, but the moment we believe our morals get us to heaven, we are holding up a large neon sign that declares the cross of Jesus Christ was worthless. Galatians 2:21 couldn’t be clearer. To have assurance and an actual conversion to Christ, we must realize well-intentioned good deeds don’t change the fact that we are sinners and need forgiveness. Comparing ourselves to others, rather than to God, is the theological version of “apples and oranges.” A person who believes in God yet doesn’t see the personal need of redemption is a person who should have the word “assurance” banned from their mind and vocabulary. There is nobody on the planet who should be less confident in their salvation.