By Zane C. Hodges*
A lovely song that has left its words indelibly impressed on the soul of the church is Blessed Assurance by Fanny Crosby (text) and Mrs. J. F. Knapp (tune). The first verse is especially wonderful:
Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God, Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.
The women who gave us this hymn had obviously grasped the very core of the Biblical gospel. Their words and music are an undying tribute to the essence of the message of grace. Simply put, that message brings with it the assurance of salvation. But how, indeed, is this assurance conveyed? The answer by now should be obvious. The same miracle-working Word that regenerates also imparts assurance to the heart that believes. Indeed, the two things are both simultaneous and inseparable.
Or to put it another way, when a person believes, that person has assurance of life eternal. How could it be otherwise? Think, for example, of the words of Jesus:
“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life” (John 5:24).
This is extremely clear. The believer, says our Lord, has eternal life. Moreover, he will not come into judgment. In fact, he has already passed out of death into life. And to believe His Word is to believe these things too.
Thus, it is utterly impossible for us to give credence to the gospel message without knowing that we are saved. For that message carries its own guarantee along with it. Therefore, to doubt the guarantee of eternal life is to doubt the message itself.
In short, if I do not believe that I am saved, I do not believe the offer that God has made to me.i
That brings us back to Martha. When Martha declared that she believed Jesus to be “the Christ, the son of God” (John 11:27), she was responding to the words, “Do you believe this?”
But behind the word this lay an important claim that Jesus had made. In fact, in two ways He told her that He guaranteed the eternal destiny of every believer. First, He said: “He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live” (John 11:25).
And second, He said, “And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die” (John 11:26).
Both great declarations are included in the word this when Jesus says, “Do you believe this?” It follows that if Martha believed this, she believed this about herself too.
Indeed, to deny this for herself would have been to deny that “whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.” But Martha believed and, in so doing, she knew that she, too, would never die spiritually. In a word, like all believers, at the moment of saving faith, Martha knew that she had eternal life.
This is not to say, however, that later Martha could not have doubted this truth. Even John the Baptist doubted (Luke 7:18-20). But it is to say this: a person who has never been sure of eternal life has never believed the saving message of God.
In fact, when the matter is carefully considered, this truth stands on the very face of the repeated statements of the Gospel of John. It is even obvious in the greatest salvation verse of all. For in words most believers know by heart, the Apostle quotes our Lord as saying: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
But here too we meet the very claim that Jesus made to Martha. The Son whom God has given is the One through whom eternal life is found by faith. The believer, therefore, possesses that life and consequently does not perish.
The message of John 3:16, John 5:24, and John 11:25-27 is precisely the same.
What really happens when a person believes the saving word of the gospel? The person at that moment knows that he or she has this life.ii
Our need [in evangelism] is to get out of God’s way. We must stop trying to do His work for Him. No amount of stringent Lordship teaching will ever accomplish the miracle of new birth. Such teaching, in fact, is an impediment placed in that miracle’s path.
What is needed is the simple gospel presented for what it really is—absolutely free! It is this alone that constitutes God’s saving Word to the human race. And it is this alone that accomplishes the miracle of regeneration.
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Zane Hodges taught New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary for 27 years, authored over a dozen books, and was passionate about the grace of God.
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* This article is drawn from Chapter 4 (pp. 43-46) of the book Absolutely Free. It has been slightly edited.
i It is precisely for this reason that John Calvin, for example, held that assurance was of the essence of saving faith. Calvin is emphatic on this point: “In short, no man is truly a believer, unless he be firmly persuaded, that God is a propitious and benevolent Father to him…unless he depends on the promises of the Divine benevolence to him, and feels an undoubted expectation of salvation” (Institutes III.II.16). For additional discussion see Bell, Calvin, 22-24 (see chap. 2, fn. 8). Note also Dabney’s emphatic argument that Calvin held this view, even though Dabney did not: Dabney, 215-18 (see chap. 2, fn.9 9).
ii Calvin’s splendid definition of saving faith (Institutes III.II.7) is worth quoting: “Now, we shall have a complete definition of faith, if we say, that it is a steady and certain knowledge of the Divine benevolence towards us, which, being founded on the truth of the gratuitous promise in Christ, is both revealed to our minds, and confirmed to our hearts, by the Holy Spirit.” This is light years away from the definition of faith held in Lordship Salvation.
