Assurance of Salvation

Since I have been writing more side-notes than my "How to Vote" train of thought, I'm going to stop calling these side-notes. The How to Vote ones are numbered anyway.

I went to hear Steve Deneff and Chris Bounds last night on Savation and Sanctification. They both mentioned the idea that we might not just be able to be "saved" whenever we choose. The Wesleyan Church officially affirms instantaneous works available today on these issues. On this issue it actually disagrees with John Wesley and follows nineteenth century trends.

These suggestions are radically different from the concept I grew up with, namely, that you can claim salvation and sanctification at any time. The altar call of camp meetings and revival put you on the spot: come down here now or go to hell. I was an extremely shy child and these altar calls were torturous to me--and I mean that seriously, not as an overstatement.

Similarly I sought an instantaneous moment of entire sanctification. The model I remember being preached, one that haunted me, built off the picture of Jacob not letting go until God blessed him. The message I heard (although maybe I misunderstood) was that my salvation and sanctification rose and fell on my faith. The message was that I must abandon all else until I had experienced these things.

The search for these defining moments, which I took to be moments of discernable experience, may very well be the single greatest source of pain in my life--at least it must rank in the top two or three. I can also discern it at the root of some of the immense questions about God I had to work through in my late seminary years.

You see, I sought as sincerely as I knew how to have these experiences so glibly taught in my childhood and youth. I sought as someone without a clear sense of direction on how to seek--not from others, not from God. Try though I might, they would not come with the ease they had been preached and that others seemed to profess.

I prayed for saving grace (although I did not call it that) minute by minute of some days, even moment by moment (I am not exagerrating; I am being literal). "Lord, please forgive me if I've sinned. Lord, please forgive me if I've sinned. Lord, please forgive me if I've sinned." I usually could not think of any specific sins I had committed--especially since the last plea.

I asked God repeatedly into my heart without any sense of peace or change. The camp meeting song, "It was on a Sunday, somebody touched me" was also torturous, as we were expected to stand when they got to our day and I didn't know when (or if, I suppose) to stand.

Thankfully there was a day when by the mercies of God I felt peace after praying for forgiveness. Now I was able to pinpoint a moment of peace. But what was going on before that moment? Would I have gone to heaven if I had died? Was the problem that my pastors had created a "saving template" that in the end was not absolute? Or was I led to have false expectations of the process? Was the problem in me somehow?

Despite that moment of peace, asking God for forgiveness continued in my life from time to time. Not that I was strongly aware of intentional sins in my life. As far as I knew, I would have done anything for God, no matter what. I consistently tried to do what I knew to be right.

Judy Huffman knew me in these years--I was no rebel. On the contrary, I was one of the most conservate students at Southern Wesleyan. I once felt so guilty for dating a girl who wore earrings and slacks that I believed I had to break up with her--even though I desperately didn't want to.

I was committed not intentionally to violate the known will of God. I'm sure I did sins of omission, maybe even subtlely intentional sins. But I never sinned "with a high hand." I would be hard pressed even today to tell you a single instance where I intentionally did something I believed to be wrong in that period.

But I remember another Sunday at college when I spent the entire lunchtime in the same old pattern, begging God for some sense of his presence, asking for the forgiveness of my sins. On the way home from church I had confessed to a friend that I wasn't sure if I was saved. She was dumbfounded.

About a year prior to this I had claimed entire sanctification. On my way to college for the first time I had stopped overnight at the home of my sister, whose husband is a Wesleyan pastor. I had entered the sanctuary of their church determined that I would not leave until God "blessed me" with entire sanctification. Thankfully, I felt a peace at that time--thankfully because I had no intention of leaving that church until the work was done. I would not continue traveling to college until I was sanctified, even if I missed the semester.

As I look back now, it is hard for me to believe that there isn't something wrong with this picture. There are several suggestions you could make to explain what was going on. You could pinpoint the problem in God, but that doesn't seem very likely. :)

You could pinpoint the problem in me, and I know some would do that. Knowing how willing and desperate I was, I think I would almost have to conclude I was predestined for hell if the problem was in me. Some would question whether I had experienced true faith, but I doubt anyone who knew me in these years would question the authenticity of my complete belief and commitment to Christ. Perhaps I am wrong. But this was what created the doubts of my late seminary years--how can God be anything close to what we believe as Christians and not respond to the shrieking yearning of my heart?

Perhaps I am wrong, but the only answer that makes any sense to me is that my head was wrong, way wrong--that I had inadequate and inaccurate expectations of how God works or at least can work. The peace that I have now comes from a sense of God's grace--and His mysteriousness. I do not insist that God act just one way with all people--not that I'd have a problem if He did. But I'll let Him decide how and when he gets us to heaven.

The most likely answer to my questions seems to me that the preaching of my youth was out of focus--or at least that I understood it out of focus. I did not learn to wait on God's timing and to trust that He was okay with me in the meantime.

Which time that I prayed did God give me His Holy Spirit (this is more the question than when I was "saved" because salvation is much more a question of the judgment than of this present moment)? Perhaps it was the moment of peace. But I wonder if God would have received me all along because I was walking according to the light I had experienced.

Is there something fundamentally wrong, damagingly wrong, almost cause you to lose your faith in God wrong with the "claim it now" approach to salvation and sanctification? I don't feel qualified to answer this question.

But what if it is up to God when you experience His presence and assurance. What if you can't do anything to make this happen now? I now recognize the influence of the nineteenth century Phoebe Palmer on this change in Wesleyan theology. If these things truly happen by God's grace, then we can't make them happen just any old time.

I wonder if our message should more be informative. God wants to save you. He wants to give you His Holy Spirit and make you His child. Wait on this encounter.

But what happens if you die before this event happens? Do you go to hell? The picture of God I absorbed growing up would have said so. But what if this is the true moment of accountability, the moment when you could actually receive His saving grace and find the assurance of salvation? If you are walking in the light you have experienced, would you go to hell if He had not yet enabled you to have saving faith? Would that then indict God for judging us for something we could not possibly have done otherwise? He becomes the Calvinist God.

We do know that there were Christians in the early church who were baptized, yet had not received the Spirit. The apostles had to lay hands on them. These events reinforce Wesley's sense that the means of grace can facilitate the coming of this "moment."

But this one thing I do know: the approach I grew up with pushed me ever more in the direction of viewing God as absent and silent. He became the One who didn't answer when I screamed to Him in prayer. In short, it was not the God of peace that I now rest in!

I don't know it all. Maybe I don't anything, especially when it comes to questions like these. I look forward to the light that others can bring and to the light God will share when we see Him face to face.

This one thing I do know. I feel completely at peace with God, and I do not fear Him. If He gives me the strength, I will do anything He commands.