Some people who are truly redeemed may lack assurance of their salvation. Others, who do not belong to Christ, might falsely believe they’re saved. Today, R.C. Sproul considers the challenges we encounter in our pursuit of assurance. Get R.C. Sproul’s book Can I Be Sure I’m Saved?, his teaching series The Assurance of Salvation on DVD, and lifetime digital access to the messages and study guide for your donation of any amount: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/3610/assurance Meet Today’s Teacher: R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was known for his ability to winsomely and clearly communicate deep, practical truths from God’s Word. He was founder of Ligonier Ministries, first minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel, first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine. Meet the Host: Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of ministry engagement for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, host of the Ask Ligonier podcast, and a graduate of Presbyterian Theological College in Melbourne, Australia. Nathan joined Ligonier in 2012 and lives in Central Florida with his wife and four children. Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
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One of the most dangerous things you can do as a Christian is to determine your theology by your experience. We have to determine our theology from the Word of God, not from what we feel. And not only that, we are open to misunderstanding and misinterpreting the meaning and significance of the experiences that we go through.
When it comes to having assurance of our salvation, there are four kinds of people in this world. The most terrifying of the four is the one who believes that they're a Christian, that they're saved, when in fact they're unconverted. Stay tuned to this Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind as R.C. Sproul considers those four kinds of people to help us determine which category we belong in.
Doubting your salvation can be debilitating for the Christian, but it's actually a good thing for the individual who isn't truly saved. In this series, Dr. Sproul does examine both false assurance and how a true believer can have assurance. If you'd like to own the series, both digitally and on DVD, plus receive Dr. Sproul's title, Can I Be Sure I'm Saved?
Give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. We'll get those resources to you as our way of saying thanks for supporting Renewing Your Mind. So who are the four kinds of people in the world when it comes to assurance? Here's Dr. Sproul.
We're going to continue now with our study of the subject of the assurance of salvation. And in our first two messages we saw the controversy that there is in various camps of theology about the very possibility of having assurance of salvation. And then in our second message we looked at the biblical call to seek that assurance of salvation.
And so now I want to look at some of the problems that we encounter when we're diligent in our quest for the assurance of salvation. When I deal with this subject, I frequently mention that there are four kinds of people in the world.
Now, I know that that differentiates us from the standard division of people in the world where normally we say there are two kinds of people in the world, and those two kinds of people in the world are those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't. Or as James Kennedy says, there are three kinds of people in the world. those that can count, and those that can't.
But we're now going to look at the four types of people that we must discriminate in terms of this issue of the assurance of salvation. And let's start with the first type of person, and that is the person who is unsaved and who knows it.
I remember once sharing the gospel to a man in Cincinnati, and I asked him the evangelism explosion diagnostic questions, and I began with the first question, have you come to the place in your spiritual life where you know for sure that when you die, you're going to go to heaven? And this man didn't flinch. He looked me straight in the eye, and he says, oh no. He says, I'm sure I'm not.
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