Dr Paul Allen

Would you describe yourself as an assured Christian? Are you sure God loves you, that your sins have been forgiven, and that God will keep you on the narrow road that leads to life? For many Christians, these questions hang awkwardly. Doubt plagues them, making every burden heavier, every shadow darker, and every hardship more significant. Where can they look for certainty? We start by encouraging doubting Christians to look away from themselves to Christ and God's free grace. Many of our doubts find their root in the secret fear that we must do something to prime the pump of grace. The gospel speaks eloquently to such insecurity.  We need no prior qualification or merit besides sin to receive grace. At no point in the golden chain of salvation is God waiting for us to take the first step before He will open the floodgates of grace. Every Godward thought, every desire for Christ, comes down from above and is itself the fruit of grace—grace previously and freely given. In the quest ...

Over my years of pastoral ministry and teaching, I have begun to notice something about people who struggle with assurance of salvation: almost all of them grew up as covenant children.  They made a profession of faith at an early age. They had never gone the way of the Prodigal and come back through a “dramatic conversion.” Outwardly conscientious and faithful, they’d been regarded as the “good boys” and “good girls” in their families and friend circles. Inwardly, though, it seemed to their own eyes a different story—a story of a mind still mired in sin, shameful and unholy feelings, and a will that never seemed to close the gap between what they knew they should do and what they actually did. I enjoy these pastoral conversations because that is my story. A covenant child who made a profession of faith at age six, I never went the way of the Prodigal. But I did ask Jesus into my heart at least a hundred times because “What if . . . ?”  Each time I prayed the sinner’s prayer, ...

For a certain kind of Christian, assurance of salvation can feel as fickle as a winter sun. Here and there, the sky shines blue and bright, filling the soul with light. Far more often, however, the days are mostly cloudy, the sun shadowed with uncertainty. And then sometimes, the sky goes gray for weeks on end, and the heart walks heavily under the darkness of doubt. From the outside, such Christians may seem to bear much spiritual fruit: friends may mark the grace in their lives, accountability partners may encourage them, pastors may find no reason to question their faith. But for those under the clouds, even healthy fruit can look pale and sick. So even as they read their Bible, pray, gather with God’s people, witness, and confess their sins, they usually find some reason to wonder if they really belong to Christ. How does assurance sink into the heart and psyche of those prone to second-guess? The Holy Spirit has many ways of nourishing confidence in his people — not least by teach...

Why is the great “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11 so amazing? Answer: It speaks of faith.  “What is faith?”  It might seem like this little word faith, so familiar to every Christian, would be easy to define. It occurs all over the Bible; various forms of it are used nearly one hundred times in the gospel of John alone.  But what is faith? Often, Hebrews 11:1 is cited as a definition of faith. In the ESV, it reads, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Though this might sound like a definition of faith, New Testament scholar J. Gresham Machen is likely right when he says that Hebrews 11:1 gives us more of a description of faith than a definition of faith.1 In the New Testament, faith is often referred to as the subjective means by which the people of God receive the Word and blessings of God. But it is also used to describe the content of what God has revealed in His Word and in the gospel in particular.  In Jude 3, for in...

Soon after becoming a Christian, I started wondering if I really was a Christian. The first doubt struck unexpectedly, like lightning from a cloudless sky. Am I real? I seemed to love Jesus. I seemed to trust him. I seemed to bear the marks of a changed life. But, the thought crept in, so too did Judas. Though the long night of wrestling slowly passed, I emerged from it like Jacob, limping into the daylight. Assurance has been, perhaps, the main question, the chief struggle of my Christian life over the years, sending me searching for what Paul and the author of Hebrews call “full assurance” (Colossians 2:2; Hebrews 10:22). The topic of assurance is complex, to put it mildly. Genuine Christians doubt their salvation for many different reasons, and God nourishes assurance through several different means. So the needed word for one doubter often differs from the needed word for another. Nevertheless, for those who find themselves floundering, as I did, perhaps unsure what’s even happenin...

When did you become a Christian?”  Generally speaking, there are two categories of conversion experiences recounted today. The first category consists of those who were reared in the Christian religion and confess to having believed so early on that they cannot remember a time when they were not believers.  The second category consists of those who heard the gospel and experienced the effects of regeneration later in life. These two categories—though they are perhaps the most common—do not make up the sum total of the way in which people experience conversion.  Therefore, we must not insist that Christians conform their understanding of conversion neatly into one of these two categories. Rather, we must allow for diversity in the ways that people experience conversion. Let’s consider a conversion that fits neither of the aforementioned categories. Joey was raised by churchgoing parents. Throughout his adolescent and young adult years, he had a number of conversion experie...

Perhaps for you, that question looms like a shadow in the back of the soul, threatening your dearest hopes and peace. Others may struggle to understand why. You bear all the outward marks of a Christian: You read, pray, and gather with your church faithfully. You serve and sacrifice your time. You look for opportunities to share Christ with neighbours. You hide no secret sins. But “the heart knows its own bitterness” (Proverbs 14:10), and so too its own darkness. No matter how much you obey on the outside, when you look within you find a mass of conflicting desires and warring ambitions. Every godly impulse seems mixed with an ungodly one; every holy desire with something shameful. You can’t pray earnestly without feeling proud of yourself afterwards. You can’t serve without some part of you wanting to be praised. You remember Judas and Demas, men whose outward appearance deceived others and deceived themselves. You know that on the last day many will find themselves surprised, knockin...

 They refuse to believe they are not saved. They're offended! “Although hypocrites and other unregenerate people may vainly deceive themselves with false hopes and carnal presumptions of being in the favour of God, and estate of salvation (which hope of theirs shall perish): yet such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity, endeavouring to walk in all good conscience before him, may, in this life, be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace, and may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, which hope shall never make them ashamed.” (Westminster Confession of Faith 18:1) This section teaches that unregenerate people may possess a false sense of assurance but that genuine believers may attain a true sense of assurance. Assurance must be considered for the four kinds of people in the world. 1. The first group of people are not saved and are aware that they are not . They are unregenerate and they know it. They have no interest in becoming Christians...

Assurance of salvation is one of the most precious Christian doctrines, but in some ways also one of the most difficult. Why? Because some outstanding Christians experience it only through the greatest struggles while others never fail to experience it. In this brief excerpt from his book Maturity, Ferguson explains four distinguishing characteristics of truly Christian assurance. Some come to experience assurance only after a long struggle. That has been true of many outstanding Christians. Others have never known what it is to be without it. For some, it comes through sorrows. For others, it emerges through joys. It is true here as in so many other aspects of the Christian life that the same Spirit works in a variety of ways. His activity is as individual as it is sovereign, and necessarily so because he brings us individually, one by one, to say “The Son of God… loved me and gave himself for me‘ (Gal. 2:20)—which is, surely, to express assurance in its simplest but also i...

Another theological issue to consider regarding salvation, and another significant divide between Arminianism and Calvinism, concerns eternal security, sometimes called the perseverance of the saints: Can a true believer lose their salvation? Or is that person eternally secure in salvation? There is such a thing as a “professing Christian”— someone who professes Christianity but does not truly believe in Christ (Matthew 7:22–23; Titus 1:16). There is certainly no security in salvation for that person, since they are not actually saved in the first place. Only God can know with certainty who is a true Christian, but for the sake of our discussion, we will assume that this individual is a true Christian. Generally, one’s answer to the question of whether salvation can be lost will go along with one’s view of election. If the divine election,  is conditional, then there can be no eternal security because a true Christian may cease to believe in the gospel and thus lose the...