Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4186. The ministry of the Spirit in doubt is something I wish more Christians understood, because doubt frightens believers far more than it needs to. A question rises that you cannot answer. A wave of unbelief washes over you in the night. You wonder whether any of it is true, or whether you were…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04046. When Paul calls the Spirit’s guarantee a deposit on our inheritance, he reaches for a word straight out of the ancient marketplace, and once you see what it meant, something genuinely wonderful opens up. He uses it three times. In 2 Corinthians 1:22 God has put His Spirit in our hearts as a…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 04041. Few questions unsettle a tender conscience like falling away, and few passages of Scripture stir more argument than Hebrews 6:4-6. There the writer describes people who were once enlightened, who tasted the heavenly gift, who shared in the Holy Spirit, and who tasted the goodness of the word of God, and yet fell…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04027 The assurance of salvation is one of the sweetest gifts the Holy Spirit gives, and one of the most attacked. I have lost count of the believers who love the Lord yet lie awake wondering whether they are truly His. They are not careless people. They are tender consciences who long to know…
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhat is eternal security? Can we lose our salvation? No! is the emphatic answer.
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07001 Few questions trouble sincere believers more than the question of assurance. How can I know I am truly saved? What if I am deceived about my own spiritual condition? Is it even possible to have certainty about something as weighty as eternal life? These questions, painful as they sometimes are, usually reflect a…
Reading Time: 8 minutesQuestion 7003 This might seem a strange question at first. How could someone possess eternal life and be unaware of it? Yet pastoral experience and Scripture both suggest this is not only possible but relatively common. Many sincere believers struggle with assurance, wondering whether their conversion was genuine, whether they truly belong to God. The…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 7004 Few experiences are more distressing for Christians than the absence of spiritual feeling. You’ve trusted Jesus, you believe the Gospel, you’re trying to follow Him—yet something is missing. There’s no warmth, no joy, no sense of God’s presence. You go through the motions but feel nothing. You wonder if you’re even saved at…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 7008 Few passages in Scripture have generated more debate than Hebrews 6:4-6. The writer declares: “For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 07019 Few theological questions carry more pastoral weight than this one. For many believers, the fear that salvation might somehow be lost produces an exhausting, joyless religious life in which assurance is always conditional on recent performance. Scripture, read carefully, addresses this fear with remarkable directness, and the answer it gives is not a…