In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The topic of this morning’s sermon is going to about conversion and how a person comes to saving faith in Jesus. As I’m sure many of you already know, for some time now the dominate perspective in our religious context here in America has been that conversion is an act of our own free will. Sometimes, this popular perspective has been referred to as “decision theology.” “Decision theology” is the teaching that coming to faith in Jesus is something that a person decides to do for him or herself.  For example, many churches still have a time in their services known as the “altar call,” which is when people in the pews are invited to come forward to the front of the church in order to, as they say, “make a decision for Christ” or “give their heart to Jesus.” Some of you may even remember how Billy Graham, one of the most famous preachers of the 20th century, would have a specific time for altars calls at the end of every one of his services. Many congregations today, including the Baptists as well as several non-denominational churches still do the same thing. Likewise, if you’ve ever flipped through one of those little Bibles that the Gideon’s pass out, or picked up one that was sitting on an end table in a hotel room, you’ve encountered decision theology there too. In the back of almost all of those little Bibles, there is a page that literally reads in bold print, “My decision to receive Christ as my savior.” At the bottom of that page, there is a prayer, as well a as a space for a person to write their name and the date when they supposedly made that decision. 

Once again, all of these examples are representations of “decision theology.” All of them operate under the premise that to some degree or another conversion, or coming to faith in Jesus, is an act of our own free will. To some degree or another, conversion is something that we do. To some degree or another, it is a choice that we have to make.

In response to all of that, I would like for you to consider with me what the Word of God teaches us on this particular topic and especially what we hear about it in our Epistle lesson today from Ephesians chapter 2. In Ephesians chapter 2, the Holy Spirit Himself teaches us about conversion. He teaches us about whose work conversion is, and He also teaches us about why understanding whose work it is, is so important to our faith. So again, those will be our two questions that we’ll work through in this morning’s sermon. First, whose work is conversion? And second, why is understanding whose work it is so important?

Right away, in Ephesians chapter 2, the Holy Spirit teaches us without a doubt that conversion, or coming to saving faith in Jesus, cannot possibly be a work that we do for ourselves. It cannot possible be something that we cause to happen or something that we accomplish as an act of our own free will. Saint Paul begins our text by telling us, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” Here the Bible describes for us the state of our spiritual condition prior to our conversion. It describes what we are like as sinners before we come to saving faith in Jesus. When the Bible describes what we are like before we become Christians, it describes us as being dead. The Bible doesn’t say that we are sick. The Bible does not say that we are wounded or hurt. It says that we are dead. To be “dead in our trespasses and sins” means that on our own we are incapable of doing anything to get ourselves out of them. The only thing that can get us out of our sins so that we don’t have to suffer for them in eternity is, of course, as the Bible says elsewhere, faith in Jesus. So, what the Bible is telling us here, is that we cannot bring ourselves to faith in Jesus by something that we do. Even though we can decide to do many other things in our life for ourselves such as deciding what clothes to wear in the morning, or what food to eat for lunch, when it comes to spiritual matters, such as believing the gospel, we do not have any power in ourselves to make that decision. Just like a person who is physically dead cannot cause himself to get up and walk out of the grave, people who are spiritually dead, cannot cause themselves to get up and leave their darkened state of unbelief.

In fact, not only are we incapable of doing this on our own, but according to what we read in Ephesians chapter 2, and elsewhere in the Bible, we don’t even want to do this. That is what makes our spiritual condition prior to conversion so utterly dead. Saint Paul continues, “we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.” Besides not having any power to convert ourselves or make ourselves believe the Gospel, in Ephesians chapter 2, we also learn that “by nature,” as in, the way that everyone is from the moment of their conception, we are actually hostile to the Gospel. As Paul says, we all carried our own desires, as in, we all did what we wanted do. It’s not as if our will was neutral like some inanimate object. Rather, it’s that our will was turned away from the Gospel. We didn’t want to believe Gospel. We wouldn’t believe the Gospel. Far from being inclined to make a decision for Christ or to accept Him as our personal Lord and Savior, prior to our conversion, our sinful nature actively fought against it.

And again, this is not just something that the Holy Spirit teaches us in here in Ephesians chapter 2, but something that He teaches us about in many other places in the Bible. For example, Saint Paul also tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, “The natural personal does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are folly to him.” Likewise, we read in Galatians 5, “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” And in the book of Acts, Saint Stephen tells us, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.” Finally, the Word of God tells us plainly in Romans 3, “No one is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” According to the Bible, every single person in the whole world, from the smallest baby, to the most mature adult, is in the same spiritual condition prior to their conversion. They are spiritually dead. They have no spiritual power. And that is why conversion, or coming to faith in Jesus, could not possibly be something that we do for ourselves. It could not possibly be a decision that we make for ourselves or something that we accomplish as an act of our own free will. According to the Bible, conversion is not our work.

So, whose work is it then? In Ephesians chapter 2, besides showing us without a shadow of doubt that conversion, or coming to saving faith in Jesus, is not our own work, the Holy Spirit also shows us without a shadow of a doubt whose work it is. It is the work of God Himself. As Saint Paul clearly says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.” The Bible teaches us that God makes us alive. It teaches us that God brings us from spiritual death into new spiritual life. It teaches us that conversion is not an act of our own free will, but an act of God’s gracious will, meaning that it is something that God does apart from us and even in spite of us. Conversion is something that God does for us.

As Saint Paul continues in our text 2, “By grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is a gift of God, not as a result of works.” Every single part of our salvation from start to finish is a gift that comes from God. That includes, of course, Jesus dying on the cross to make atonement for our sins, but that also includes the faith that is necessary to trust in Jesus and receive the forgiveness of our sins that He purchased there. God gives both of those things to us. And He gives both of them to us by grace. In fact, that is exactly what Saint Paul is talking about in Ephesians 2 when he says, “this is not your own doing.” The “this” that Paul is referring to when he says “and this is not your own doing,” grammatically refers back to the word “faith.” Faith is not of your own doing. Faith is the gift of God. Faith is the thing that comes not as a result of our own works but is itself the work of God that He works in our hearts. Our will is not what causes conversion, our will is what is converted by God. He changes our will. He changes our will by giving us a new will.

And again, this is not just something that the Holy Spirit teaches us in Ephesians chapter 2, but something that He teaches us all over the Scriptures. Saint Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12, “No one can say Jesus Christ is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.” In the book of Acts it says, “When they heard these things, they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.” Also, from the book of Acts we hear about Lydia and how, “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.” And Jesus, of course, tells us Himself in John 15, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” Just as God spoke the universe into existence and the whole world was created out of nothing simply by the power of His voice, so also our faith in Jesus is created by Him out of nothing too. As the Scriptures also tell us in Ephesians 4, “For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

The Bible teaches us that conversion, or coming to saving faith in Jesus, is the work of God Himself. It is a work that He does by grace. It is something that He accomplishes for us and gives to us not because of our own merit or worthiness but according to His own mercy and love. God causes us to believe in Jesus. God causes us to have faith when otherwise we would never be able to and we wouldn’t even want to. God makes us alive, even when we were dead.

So, lastly then, why does understanding this teaching matter so much? Why is it so vitally important to our faith that we know and believe that conversion is not our work, but the work of God Himself? There are two main reasons why understanding this is so important to our faith and both of them relate to what Saint Paul says at the end of Ephesians chapter 2. After describing our spiritual condition prior to conversion and teaching us how even though we were dead in our trespasses God Himself makes us alive so that we are saved us by grace and not our works, Saint Paul adds, “so that no one may boast.” The reason why it is so important to our faith that we understand that conversion is God’s work and not our own work, is because it keeps us from boasting. 

On the one hand, it keeps us from boasting in ourselves. It keeps us from relying on ourselves for our own salvation and thinking that we are ultimately responsible for our it. And that, of course, is a good thing, because if even the littlest bit of our salvation relied on something that we do instead of what Jesus has done for us, then we would never be able to have real certainty that we were actually saved. If there was even one thing that we had to do for ourselves and by ourselves to get ourselves into heaven, then we would always doubt whether or not we had really and truly done that thing. And that is exactly what can happen to people who have been taught that in order to be saved you have to make a decision for Christ. They can begin to doubt whether or not they truly and really did make that decision. 

On the other hand, this teaching about conversion gives us the confidence to boast in Christ. Yes, the Bible tells us not to boast in ourselves, but it never forbids us from boasting in Jesus. In fact, as Saint Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” When we know that our conversion is God’s work and not our own, that alone gives us real confidence in our salvation. That alone enables us to have true peace in our hearts knowing that every part of our salvation from beginning to end relies on the Jesus who loves us and not ourselves.

When we Lutherans condemn the teaching of “decision theology,” it is important for us to be clear that we are not saying that everyone who goes to a church that teaches decision theology is automatically going to hell. Merely going to a particular church is neither the direct cause of a person’s salvation nor their damnation. Just like you don’t get into heaven simply by attending services here at St. John, you don’t necessarily dam yourself by attending a different denomination. And yet, at the same time, going to one of those churches that teaches decision theology puts a person soul in danger. That is because they are hearing false doctrine. If a person actually does believe that the reason why they are going to heaven is because they made a decision to be saved, and that their salvation relies on an act of their own will, then they will not be saved, because no one is saved by their own works. Even if many other things that the church teaches are true, just one falsehood can lead a person astray. And that is a big falsehood. It literally relates to how a person is saved.

When we Lutherans condemn decision theology we are doing so because we do not want people to trust in themselves for their salvation. We do not want people to be worried that they haven’t done something that they need to do in order to get into heaven, like make a decision for Christ, even if they already have true faith in Jesus and trust in Him for forgiveness. How can anyone even make a decision for Christ, who doesn’t already believe in Christ before that? That makes no sense. No, we want people to trust in Jesus alone. We do not want people to rely on some decision that they made for Jesus, but on the decision that Jesus made for them. We want people to rely on God’s grace.

Dear Christians, the Bible teaches us that conversion is not our work, but the merciful work of God. And what a wonderful teaching of God’s Word that is! May the Lord Jesus who teaches it to us, cause us to believe it and cherish it always. May He never let us forget and may we never doubt what we learn in the Scriptures and what we memorized from the Small Catechism, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, and sanctified and kept me in the one the true faith.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Of all the Apostles that suffered things for the Gospel, it’s hard to image anything worse than what supposedly happened to Saint Bartholomew. According to Church tradition, Bartholomew, also known as Nathaniel, was that disciple of Jesus Christ who got put to death by being flayed alive. That’s why when you see Saint Bartholomew’s emblem, often times it will have a picture of knife on the front of it to symbolize the way in which he lost his life. Even though the account of Saint Bartholomew’s martyrdom is not found anywhere in the Bible, so we shouldn’t speculate about it too much, there is still a Biblical truth at the center of it which we do well to pay attention to. And that truth is that there is always a cost to being a Christian. So, what I’d like to do in this morning’s sermon as we remember and give thanks to God for the witness of this incredible and faithful man, is talk a little bit more about what that cost is and why it’s worth it.

In the first place, I think it would be worthwhile for us to simply spend some time reflecting on the fact that, no matter what, every one of us should expect to suffer something if we are going to be a Christian. We live in a time where the message of Christianity has often been diluted down to vapid cliches and happy feelings. The most explicit example of this comes from those prosperity Gospel preachers who attract thousands of people to their pulpits by telling them that when they become a real follower of Christ it will automatically result in material blessing. But there are other representations of this error too. What about all of those congregations that have turned their church services into something that looks closer to a rock concert than anything resembling historic worship? How many people complain about being bored in church nowadays as if the goal of going to church is the same thing as going to a football game? Are we here to be entertained, or are we here to have our souls fed with God’s Word and Sacraments? Have you ever noticed how it seems like every new church that pops up these days picks a name as if they are trying to compete with each other for who is going to sound the most upbeat and positive? It’s always something like “Victory Life Church” or “Abundant Praise Church.” But you don’t hear of too many places being named after Saint Bartholomew. Apparently, nobody wants to be associated with the guy who got flayed alive. But that’s a shame.

Because when the impression is given that the Christian life is always easy, all that it does is make people more likely to stop being Christians whenever they encounter something that isn’t. But sometimes being a Christian isn’t easy. Sometimes it’s actually hard. Sometimes following after Christ and being faithful to Him and His Word is difficult and requires sacrifices. In some instances, it can lead to real physical and emotional pain. Just ask Saint Bartholomew. And if you aren’t convinced by his story, then listen to what God Himself says in the Bible.

Consider for example, our Epistle lesson today from 2 Corinthians chapter 4. There Saint Paul talks about how even though we have a great treasure in the promise of the Gospel, for now, we still carry that treasure in jars of clay. What he means is that our lives don’t always look as outwardly impressive as the hope that we have within us. As Saint Paul writes, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; stuck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” That’s the real depiction of the Christian life. That’s the one that you don’t often hear advertised on TV or portrayed in the movies. But that’s the one that in some way or another all Christians should expect to face. Remember what we read in Acts chapter 14. When the Christians of Antioch and Iconium were being persecuted for their faith, Paul strengthened their souls by reminding them that it is through “many tribulations that we must enter the Kingdom of God.”

Being a Christian always costs us something. It always comes with carry a cross. That’s exactly what Jesus tells us in Luke chapter 14. He says “nobody builds a tower without first counting the cost” and “whoever does not bear his own cross and come after Me cannot be my disciple.”

Maybe being a Christian will cost you money. Doesn’t Christ also tell us that a person cannot have two masters and that “you cannot serve God and money.” Is it possible that you might have to quit your job and look for another one if your boss asks you to do things that you know are against God’s Word? Perhaps you won’t even be able to take a certain job to being with because that job doesn’t ever allow you to come to Church or there isn’t even a good Lutheran Church that teaches pure doctrine nearby.  Or here’s a tough one. What if following Jesus costs you strained relationships with your family or the inability to even interact with some of them at all. What does Jesus say to us in Matthew chapter 10? He says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own house.” Sometimes confessing what God says in the Bible makes other people mad at you. Sometimes it makes them not want to talk to you anymore. Sometimes it makes them hate you. In the worst possible cases, it may even make some people want to kill you. But again, what does Jesus say? He says in Matthew chapter 16, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

These are but a few of the things that we might have to deal with if want to live as Christians in a world that is hostile to God’s Word. Only the Lord knows what kinds of trials we might have to face and we can rest assured that He also knows what they are and how long they will last. But there is no getting around the fact that each and every one of us, in some way or another, will have to face something. All of us will have to take up our own on cross and follow Jesus, because being His disciple always comes at a cost.

And yet, even though following Jesus always comes at a cost, what is equally true is that no matter what that cost is, in the end, God promises that it will be worth it. Again, what does Saint Paul say in our Epistle lesson today from 2 Corinthians chapter 4? How does he describe for us the thing that we have, which is the reason why we suffer? He calls it treasure. He says, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay.” The treasure that Saint Paul is referring to in our text is nothing other than the free gift of salvation in Jesus. He is talking about the Gospel.

There is nothing in the whole world that is worth more than the Gospel. There is nothing that is more valuable than message of forgiveness in Christ. What other thing can save us from our sins? What other thing can assure us that we have a place in heaven and that even if we die, we will not stay dead, but we will be raised to new and eternal life? What other thing can give us a clean conscience and take away the fear that regardless of whether or not everyone else stands against us, including our own sinful flesh, God is still by our side? The only thing that can do that is the Gospel. As Saint Paul also tells us in Romans chapter 1, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.”

The reason why we carry in our bodies the death of Jesus, meaning we suffer things for being Christians, is so that the life of Jesus would be manifested in our bodies too. It’s so that other people would come to know the hope that we have in Christ. We don’t endure hardship and persecution in order to earn God’s grace and favor, we do it to show others that in Jesus, we already have God’s grace and favor. We take up our cross, because Christ took up His. And it was on His cross that the real price was paid. It was there that Jesus made atonement not only for our sin but for the sins of the whole world. Every debt that we owe to God, every transgression against His Holy Law that cries out to the heavens for justice, all of our lust, all of our greed, all of our anger, cowardice, and pride, our Lord made up for and suffered for when He willing endured the death of sinner even though He wasn’t one Himself.

Yes, it’s true that being a Christian is not always easy. Sometimes it comes with a cost and sometimes that cost can be very great. It’s hard to image going through something as terrible as what Saint Bartholomew went through. Where does a man get the courage to confess Jesus as his Lord even when other people are holding you down and cutting off your skin? How on earth did he have the strength to do that? There is only one explanation. He didn’t. The power to follow Christ even unto death doesn’t come from us, it comes from God. It comes by a gift of the Holy Spirit who works faith in our hearts through the preaching of the Gospel. Again, what does Saint Paul say in our reading? He writes “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”

Bartholomew was able to endure in the face of immense suffering only because he knew about who suffered in His place. And, not only that, he knew about how his suffering came to an end. Bartholomew knew that besides dying for our sins on the cross, Jesus also rose from the dead three days later never to die again. And as the Bible tells us, “For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like His.” If we have been joined to the death of Christ in our Baptism, and been made members of His body through faith in His blood, then one day we will share in all of His resurrected glory.

The other day I was talking about Saint Bartholomew with my little kids at the dinner table and I asked them what God was going to do for Bartholomew when Jesus came back on the Last Day. Without any hesitation, one of them said, “Jesus is going to put his skin back on his body.” “That’s right,” I said, “Jesus will make things new.” He’ll do it for Bartholomew, and He’ll do it for you too. So don’t give up. Cling to Christ. Forsake the world. Guard the treasure that is yours by faith. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

There is a very common teaching among certain Christians which claims that once a person comes to true saving faith in Jesus it’s impossible for him or her to fall away from it. If you’re familiar with this teaching, you’ve probably heard it expressed before through the popular phrase “once saved, always saved.” Even though there are not that many churches left that formally hold to this particular view of salvation, there is no shortage of individuals who do so on a personal level. For example, how often have we heard someone who grew up in a Lutheran Church argue that they, or someone that they love, is definitely going to heaven just because they were baptized or confirmed however many years ago, despite the fact that they no longer go to church now and they believe very few, if any, of the things that are taught in the Bible? Or what about the person who is living in unrepentant sin, like shacking up with their boyfriend or girlfriend, claiming that it’s no big deal because, after all, aren’t we all sinners anyway, and how is my sin any different from yours? Even though these individuals might not come right out and say that they believe in “once saved always saved,” that’s exactly how they’re acting. They are giving the impression that once you come to faith in Christ, it’s impossible to do anything that would cause you to fall away from it.

But is that actually the way that the Bible tells us to think about our salvation? Well, that’s what I’d like to talk more about in this morning’s sermon. On the basis of our Epistle lesson today from 1 Corinthians chapter 10, where Saint Paul addresses this exact topic, I’m going to speak to the issue of “once saved always saved” and then I’m going explain what the proper attitude towards salvation should be. 

In first place, Saint Paul reminds us in our reading that despite what some churches might teach, and how many people often act, it is not actually true that once you come to saving faith in Jesus it’s impossible to fall away from it. “Once saved, always saved” may sound nice on a bumper sticker, but it doesn’t show up anywhere in the Bible. On the contrary, as we read very clearly in verse 12 of our text, “Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” Why would the Holy Spirit, through whom these words were given, tell us to be on guard against falling away from the faith, if that wasn’t even something that was possible to begin with? That wouldn’t make any sense.

Not only is it possible for a person to fall away from the faith, but there are also many real-life examples of this happening to actual people in the Bible. Just look at what happened to the people of Israel. As Saint Paul tells us right before our reading today, “For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.”

There is no more explicit example of people falling away from the faith and losing their salvation than God’s chosen people in the Old Testament. The Lord had delivered them from slavery. He had fed them with Mana from heaven. He had kept them alive by miraculously giving them water from a rock. Time and time again, God had saved them. And yet, what happened to almost all the people that God once saved? Eventually they were destroyed. Eventually, they turned their backs completely on God’s Word, chose their sin over His grace, and missed out on entering the promised land.

And sadly, that was not an isolated incident. On another occasion, for example, the Bible teaches us about two men named Hymenaeus and Alexander who it says, “made shipwreck of their faith.” That’s from 1 Timothy chapter 1. These men believed in Jesus, but then, due to their persistent sin and unrepentance, they stopped believing. And remember what Jesus Himself tells us in the parable of the sower. There He talks about the seed that fell on the rocky soil and how they are the ones who, “believe for a while and in time of testing fall away.” God’s Word could not be clearer that just because a person has faith at one time in their life, that is no guarantee that they will have faith at the end of their life too.

Now sometimes you will hear it argued that when it looks like people fall away from the faith and lose their salvation that was just evidence that they never really had true faith to being with. But as those passages that we just read show us, that is not what the Bible says. And that assumption can lead to all kinds of other false assumptions too. On the one hand, it can make people who do have faith constantly worried for no reason that they might not, since apparently you can’t really tell if you have faith or not. And on the other hand, it can make people who don’t have faith even more secure in their sins, thinking that since they had faith in the past, they must still have it in the present.

But those who think that way about their salvation should listen again to the words of Saint Paul from our reading. They should think about the example of the Israelites. When the Israelites indulged in sexuality immorality, 23,000 of them fell in a single day. When God’s people in the past put Him to the test by grumbling against Him and disobeying His Word, He sent fiery serpents among them to bite them and kill them. The Bible warns us repeatedly not to take our salvation for granted. It tells us time and time again not to presume upon God’s grace and do things that we know are wrong on purpose. In fact, if we do take our salvation for granted, if we act as if there is nothing that we could possibly do to destroy our faith and miss out on eternal life, then we are already in grave danger of that exact thing happening. If we say that we are so strong of Christians that we don’t need to be in God’s house receiving His gifts every Sunday, and that sometimes we can skip church and do something else instead like go golfing, fishing, or take our kids to play travel sports, we show that we are not strong Christians at all. If we say that our faith is so mature that we can handle getting drunk sometimes or watching things on our TV’s and computers that we wouldn’t even let our own children watch, then we prove just how weak our faith really is. People who are strong in their faith know that they are actually weak in their faith. They know that there is temptation all around them, and it is only by the mercy of God that anyone remains in the faith at all. Strong Christians know that there is no such thing as “once saved, always saved.”

And yet, strong Christians also know that just because it is possible to fall away from the faith and lose your salvation, that doesn’t mean that we should have no confidence in our salvation at all. Yes, it’s wrong to tell people that they will go to heaven no matter what so long as they had faith at one time in their life. But it is just as wrong to tell them that they should go through their entire life constantly doubting whether or not it will end in eternal life, even if they have do have faith now. Does Jesus ever tell us that we can never be sure if we are saved? Does the Bible ever teach us to not have any confidence in our salvation at all? Of course, not. In Mark chapter 16 Jesus literally says, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” In Romans chapter 10, we read, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” When the Philippian jailor asked Paul and Silas in Acts chapter 16, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They didn’t tell him, “Well, nothing, because no one can be sure of their salvation anyway.” They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

We can be sure of our salvation when we are looking to the things that God tells us to look to. God does not tell us to look to ourselves and to our own striving and efforts when it comes to whether or not we will be saved. He does not tell us to rely on made up teachings like “once save, always saved.” He tells us to trust in Christ. He tells us to have confidence in what God has done for us in Jesus and not in what we do for Him. As Saint Paul tells us in our reading today, “God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” Notice that when Saint Paul talks about how a person endures to the end, he doesn’t talk about our faithfulness to God, he talks about His faithfulness to us.

Of course, we should doubt ourselves. Of course, we should not have confidence in our own abilities. Of course, we should not think too highly of ourselves or even of our own faith. But that doesn’t mean that we should doubt God and His promises. We can be sure that God will do what He says. We can be sure that Jesus actually did die for all of our sins on the cross. We can sure that Baptism really does wash those sins away and that the Lord’s Supper truly does forgive them. We can be sure that He who began a good work in us, will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. We can be sure of those things, because that is what God says in His Word.

God has given us all of the tools necessary to remain faithful to Him to the end. He has provided us with everything that we need to not lose our salvation. Through His Word and the Sacraments, He gives us a way to escape temptation and endure it. By the reading the Bible and coming to Church to get Communion, He promises through His Holy Spirit to be active in our hearts to keep us trusting in Jesus for salvation. Through listening to the preaching of the Law and the Gospel, He teaches us about sin and grace that we can learn to repent of our wrongdoing and know where to go to receive forgiveness when we fail. Through these humble means, God strengthens our faith so that we don’t fall away from it. 

God is faithful. That is what we hold onto in the face of our guilt and shame. That is what we cling to when we know that we have failed God’s test and given into temptation. We don’t rely on ourselves. We don’t rely on made up slogans like “once saved, always saved.” We rely on Christ. And when we are relying on Him, then our salvation is secure and nothing can snatch us out of His hand. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.