This past Sunday we started a six week series on the parables of Jesus, and we started the series off by studying the Parable of the Sower. In this story, a man sows seed that falls on four types of soil: hard, rocky, thorny, and good. Now as we pointed out on Sunday, Jesus’ main point in telling this story was to help his disciples understand that even though many people look the part of a Christian, many people who claim to be a Christian and are even enthusiastic about the faith are not Christian at all. These people were represented by the rocky soil and the thorny soil. The rocky soil represents the one who enjoys the idea of Christianity as long as it is easy, shallow, and without difficulty. The thorny soil represents the one who enjoys the idea of Christianity, but this person enjoys the idea of sin a lot more. Neither of these two are Christian at all, but are fooling themselves into thinking that becoming a Christian is something you do on your own terms and for your own benefit.
Obviously, one of the applications to a text like this one from Matthew 13:1-9 is to challenge professing Christians to “work out their own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12) Christians should heed the command in 2 Corinthians 13:5 to “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.” Because the sobering reality is that Jesus warned there would be people who thought they were Christian and were not. (Matthew 7:21-23)
There is, however, one thing that always concerns me as a pastor when I preach on a passage like the one we studied this past Sunday. And that is that those who truly are in Christ may begin to question their salvation. While I do believe that it is always healthy to evaluate our standing with God (see Philippians 2:12 above), it would be sin for the Christian to become consistently anxious about whether or not they are truly saved. For this person, I’d like to offer some comfort this morning.
Comfort 1: There is no sin you can commit that hasn’t been paid for. Colossians 2:13-14 tells us that even though we were spiritually dead in our sin, through faith in Christ our entire record of debt against God (our sin against him) was cancelled. If your hope of salvation is in Christ’s righteous life, death and resurrection alone and you repented of your selfish sinful life, you can stand confident knowing that your salvation is secure. When God saved you through Christ he knew all of the sin you would ever commit (yes, even THAT one) and he chose to save you anyway.
Comfort 2: The security of your salvation is not based upon how bad you are not, but about how good Christ IS. If our salvation was contingent upon any good in us, then we would have no hope whatsoever. But God knew that we were unable to save ourselves so he sent Christ who was and is able. We could never be good enough to save ourselves, but Jesus was and is good enough. J.I. Packer writes “[God] reckons righteousness to them, not because he accounts them to have kept his law personally (which would be a false judgment), but because he accounts them to be united to one who kept it representatively (and that is a true judgment)”. Galatians 2:16 still stands! It is not about what we can do, but what Christ has done.
Comfort 3: God understood that as long as we struggle with these sinful bodies in which we live that we would struggle with doubts of our salvation. And God in his grace addresses this very issue in the Scriptures. For the Christian struggling with anxiety over their standing with God 2 Peter 1:3-11 is an extremely helpful passage. In this passage, Peter tells the anxious Christian to “make their calling and election sure” by working on their growth in Christ. If you would notice, the things Peter tells the anxious Christian to work on are very similar in scope to the fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5. In other words, when doubts arise, there is a great assurance that comes from obedience to God’s Spirit. And why would this be? Because the Spirit and the flesh are in conflict with each other (Galatians 5:17), so if we find the true desire and pursuit of our hearts is to live in pleasing obedience to God’s Spirit, we can have confidence that we are not living in the flesh. (Romans 8:8)
May we remember that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self control. (2 Timothy 1:7)
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