Clearing Up Conversion Confusion

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, April 8th. When believers question their salvation, they risk stepping into the devil's snare. Learn to recognize the enemy's tactics as a key part of clearing up conversion confusion. Would you turn, please, to 1 John chapter 5. Want us to read verses 10 through 15.

And we're talking about clearing up conversion confusion. A lot of people who get confused about their salvation experience. You've looked at your behavior and you've said there's no way in the world for me to be saved behaving like this.

Or maybe you just think you are and you're not. So he begins in verse 10 by saying, The one who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself. The one who does not believe God has made him a liar. Because he has not believed in the witness that God is born concerning his Son.

And the witness is this. That God has given us eternal life and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has the life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.

The life referring to eternal life. Now watch verse 13. These things have I written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God in order that you may know that you have eternal life.

You don't have to hope you do. He says I'm writing these things that you may know that you have eternal life. Listen to what he says. These things, John says, I've written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God in order that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence which we have in him. That if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us and it is his will to save us. So if we ask him to, he's willing. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the request which we've made of him. Now listen, God doesn't speak in generalities. God doesn't speak in confusion.

He speaks very clearly, very precisely. God never intends to leave us in confusion. But there are a lot of people who are confused about their salvation.

And listen to me very carefully. Here's how Satan operates. Satan would have an unbeliever to believe on false basis that they have been saved because of how good they are, their good works. And so he wants a lost man to believe that he's saved.

That's part of his ploy in deceiving him, a false sense of security. But what about all the believers? Would Satan ever tempt a believer or confuse a believer about their salvation?

And the answer is yes. And I want to show you something here that I think is very significant and very important. When you and I think about the fact that a person who has been saved by the grace of God, whose name has been written in the Lamb's Book of Life, who's been sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise, who's been indwelt by the life of Jesus Christ, how in the world could that person ever doubt their salvation if they've really and truly been saved? One of the primary reasons a believer will doubt his salvation is because of the presence of sin in his life. If Satan can get you to sin against God and then harbor that sin and hold on to it, rationalize it and pet it and keep it and enjoy a little bit, listen, here's what he'll do. He will use that to cause you to doubt your salvation. I'm going to show you in a few moments two primary reasons why he doesn't.

But I want to show you first of all the tools he uses. So first of all, he'll use sin in your life. Do you know one of Satan's primary, most successful tools at getting God's people, God-saved saints to doubting their salvation?

He uses our ignorance. Now listen, if I'm saved by the grace of God and I sort of have a hazy, foggy, cloudy notion as to possibly what happened, Satan will take my hazy, foggy, cloudy notion and he'll twist it just a little bit and he'll get me to doubting my salvation. This is why it is so very, very essential that you and I understand what God says about the plan of salvation, what he says about how to be saved, what really transpires in our heart, what really takes place in the mind of God, and what really transpires within the life of this newborn person. Thirdly, he uses a tool that usually works and that is our feelings. If he can get you to feeling down and out or you get in a situation, you just say, well, look at my life and I just don't feel saved and how could God love me and on and on and on. That's feelings.

That is not what God says about salvation. Emotions have nothing to do with my position in Christ Jesus. Emotions are the most untrustworthy part of us. You cannot depend upon your emotions.

You cannot trust them under any condition. It is the last part of you that you want to put your trust in. But my friend, if you begin to operate on the basis of emotion, you're going to continuously be confused in your spiritual life. And a fourth way Satan causes us to doubt our salvation is just continuous harassment. He harasses us to doubt. He harasses us to doubt the things that God says. He harasses us to doubt the experiences we've had. He harasses us to doubt who God is and what he's doing in our life. So he's always doing his best to cause us to doubt our salvation. Now, what's his motivation? What is it that Satan is motivated by to get us to doubt our salvation?

The two primary motivations. Number one, if Satan can get you to doubting your salvation, and I mean you're really saved now, you know that you're saved, but he can get you to doubting that, here's the first thing he does. What he wants to do is to put you in bondage. It is a two-fold bondage. It is a bondage, first of all, of the fear of God. Oh, my goodness, I've sinned against God.

What's God going to do to me now? And so what happens if he can get you into bondage, he has you exactly where he wants you, fear of what God may do next. The second aspect of that bondage and the opposite of that almost is this, and that is not only fear of God, but feverishly setting out to work for God in order to eliminate the fear or to eliminate this sense of bondage or what you're really doing is trying to get his acceptance. So you see, when a person doubts their salvation, Satan will put them in bondage. Fear of God, oh, what's God going to do?

Secondly, what they will oftentimes do, that is some people, they just feverishly begin to work harder and harder, longer and longer, taking on more activity in order to do what? To lengthen the distance between them and God. It is a satanic trap that you work for God and labor for God to get God's acceptance. And you see, the problem is I've never met anybody in all of my years who was in that trap, whoever said, whoo, hallelujah, I finish. I finally got God's wonderful acceptance in my life. I finally feel safe. Well, what do you feel safe?

Well, I finally finished the work. There is no way. So first of all, he puts us in bondage. Bondage of fear or bondage of feverishly, fervently working for God in order that we might be able to say that we know, as he says here, we have eternal life. The second reason Satan will pull that trick on you is barrenness. Listen, if he can get you doubting your salvation, I'll guarantee you, my friend, that, listen, the feverish works you do won't have much fruit to them. In fact, they won't have any fruit to them because the motivation for the work is wrong.

And so what happens? There is barrenness. If a person feels they're unsaved, if they feel unsaved, they feel unworthy and they feel inadequate and they feel insecure. And so either they're going to go one direction and work, work, work, work, work to get God's approval, or they're going to say, I can't do it. If Satan can get you to doubting your salvation, he has you right where he wants you. He has you straddled over bondage and barrenness.

And if Satan gets you straddled over those two, you are wiped out. He doesn't care what else you do as long as he can get you to doubting your salvation. Now, the reason we doubted, as we said, Satan is trying to render us inoperative or fruitless and nonproductive as the children of God. God doesn't want his people living in doubt. He doesn't want us living in fear. He doesn't want us straddling barrenness over one side and bondage on the other. And here we are impaled upon these two and absolutely have no real lasting eternal value to Almighty God.

All right. There are three things that are absolutely essential. Number one, if you're going to be saved and sure of it, you've got to know something. First of all, you must know what your condition is, not being saved.

What is that condition? The Bible says the unsaved man is dead in trespasses and sins. That is, he is spiritually dead. What in the world can a dead man do?

Dead man can't do anything to save himself. So, first of all, he needs to understand what his position is, what his condition is. His condition is he's spiritually dead.

His position is he's separated from God. I must understand my condition. Secondly, I must understand Christ's provision for my condition. What is Christ's provision for my condition?

The provision is that a loving Heavenly Father, seeing us in our helpless and hopeless condition, sent his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who was virgin born, nailed him to the cross outside of Jerusalem and placed upon him all the sin of mankind. The Bible says without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness, no remission of sin. There can be no forgiveness. There can be no salvation. There can be no assurance. There can be no hope. There can be no eternal life.

There can be no confidence. There can be no forgiveness of sin apart from the payment of Jesus Christ on the cross, which was a substitutionary, all-sufficient, adequate payment for your sin and my sin. When you leave that out, you leave out the heart of salvation.

When you leave that out, you leave out the foundation. You leave out the heart and the core of God's redemptive plan. The provision is the death of the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ. The cross is the heart of the whole Bible from beginning to end. It is the blood of animals in the Old Testament, the blood of the only begotten Son of God in the New Testament. It is blood.

It is the death of Jesus Christ. That is the provision. So first of all, I've got to know something. Secondly, I've got to believe something. A lot of people are deceived when you talk about believing.

So the best word for you to use in your own understanding as well as understanding to your children is the word trust. If I'm going to be saved, first of all, I must understand what my condition is. Secondly, what the provision is, then I must place my trust in Christ Jesus and his death on the cross, the payment for my sin. I'm expressing faith.

What did Paul say? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. We are saved, first of all, by knowing something.

That's the first step. The second step is placing our trust in, placing our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and his death on the cross as sufficient payment for my sin. I'm placing my trust in the person.

I'm not placing my trust in a thing or an activity. The Bible says we to place our trust in what? In the person of Jesus Christ. I must believe something. I must believe what?

The testimony of a person. I must, I must place my trust in Christ that when he died, he took my sin. And what he says is true, that I am forgiven. And what he has said, he promised me that I do receive and that is eternal life. We must understand that. What we do is we leave people in confusion. And not only that, our kids come along and they are ripe victims for the cults, because the cults are always built on human works and never on the grace of a loving God.

It's always built on works. Having understood what your condition is, knowing what that condition is, seeing who you really are and understanding the provision that God has made in Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of your sin, placing your faith in what Jesus said, in what he did, then you can be saved. But there's one more step. He says, But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God. Now, here's the problem oftentimes with people. They see salvation is something that God sends down in response to their prayer.

Oh, no. Salvation for any and every person is the resurrected, living Christ coming to indwell the person through the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Bible says Christ, who is our life. Do you know what happens when you place your trust in Christ Jesus? You receive him as your savior. And the Bible says that Jesus Christ comes what? He you receive him into your life. He comes to indwell what part of your body through the Holy Spirit?

What part? He comes to indwell your spirit so that salvation. Listen, salvation is knowing my condition, knowing the provision, placing my trust in the only provision for my salvation and receiving that Christ as my savior and my life.

Now you say, All right. Now, what about repentance? Why does repentance fit into all this? Did you know that we who are believers will do far more repenting than the lost person? Now, let me explain to you about repentance. There is no way to have repentance, genuine repentance and faith without having both.

Let me show you why. If I place my trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and for my salvation, what does that indicate? It indicates I've had a change of mind. And the word repentance means to change your mind. That's what it means to repent means to change your mind. If I place my trust in Jesus Christ, that means I've changed my mind about the way I've been living, about who God is, about who Christ is.

And I express my trust in him. But how am I going to repent of my sins without first of all, believing and believing that there is a God, there is a Christ, what my condition is? You can't separate the two. You cannot separate repentance and faith in the salvation experience. You cannot do it so that the person who's placing his trust in Jesus Christ is saying, I've changed my mind about the way I'm living. I do understand what God says about my condition.

I don't want to live that kind of life anymore. I'm willing to place my trust. I'm willing to ask God to forgive me of my sins. And my trust is in the atoning death of Jesus Christ.

And I'm accepting Christ into my life. The only way to do that, brother, is to have a change of mind. The only way to have a change of mind is to believe what the Bible says.

You cannot separate the two. It isn't just repentance. It isn't belief without repentance.

It is placing my trust. Listen, with a repentant spirit, I place my trust in the sacrificial, all-sufficient, atoning death of Jesus Christ. And as a result, receiving Christ as my Savior, He becomes my life.

That's why I can't ever be lost again. He says, I receive Christ as my life. He becomes my life. And the Bible says the moment He becomes my life, I am sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise until when? Until the day of redemption, that is, until the day Jesus Christ comes. That's how long I'm sealed.

Let me ask you a question. Who does the sealing? The Holy Spirit. Listen, if I'm sealed by my behavior, then bad behavior breaks the seal. If I am sealed by the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit of the Living God, no behavior that I ever exercise can ever break the seal. I didn't make the seal.

I can't break the seal. He says, sealed unto the day of redemption, period. He didn't say, if you sin or unless you sin or except you sin. Sealed forever and ever and ever, child of God. That's what salvation is all about. Knowing something, believing something, placing my trust in someone, and receiving that person. That is what salvation is all about.

And I want to ask you, my friend, has there ever been a time in your life when you recognizing your condition, when you understanding your condition, helpless that it may have been just in the last ten minutes, you understand your condition. You do not have the life of God. You are living in sin. And I want to tell you the only sin that will send you to hell.

When somebody says you ought not to drink and commit adultery and lie and steal and cheat, listen, those are sins and God hates every one of them. The only sin that will send you to hell is the sin of unbelief in Jesus Christ until you place your faith, your trust in his atoning death. You are hell bound. There's no question about that. The moment you do, you can't go to hell because you're entwelt by the life of Jesus Christ himself.

No way. But if you've not done that, you're lost. And you can do it right now, right where you are. If you're willing, if you're willing to admit what your condition is, recognize it as it is. You're willing to place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, recognizing his forgiveness provided in the cross. And you're willing to surrender your life to him. That is, you're willing to place your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. You're willing to receive his life as your life, which means you're going to have to turn your life over to him. If you're willing to do that, and you're willing to pray that simple prayer, and you're willing to pray it sincerely to Almighty God in your own words telling him, and I've said it about 15 times so that you could not forget it. If you say that in your own words and you tell him that, my friend, he's going to save you and your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life unmistakably forever and ever and ever, you're saved. Thank you for listening to Clearing Up Conversion Confusion. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.