How may I be sure that I have repented enough?
Test yourself in this way. You once lived in sin and loved it. Do you now desire deliverance from it? You were once self-confident and trusting in your own fancied goodness. Do you now judge yourself as a sinner before God? If you can honestly say “Yes” to these questions, your attitude is altogether different to what it once was.
You confess you are a sinner, unable to cleanse your own soul, and you are willing to be saved in God’s way. This is repentance. And remember, it is not the amount of repentance that counts: it is the fact that you turn from self to God that puts you in the place where His grace avails through Jesus Christ.
I do not feel fit for God; I am so unworthy. I fear that He will not take me in.
What a wretched condition would be yours if you imagined you were fit in yourself for heaven, or that you were worthy of such love as God has shown! It is because of your lack of fitness that Christ died to redeem you. It is because you are worthy only of eternal judgment that He “who knew no sin” was made sin for you, that you might become the righteousness of God in Him. If you had any fitness of your own, you would not need a Saviour.
When the centurion sought the healing power of Jesus for his servant, he sent the Jewish elders to the Lord to intercede for him. They said, “He is worthy that thou shouldest do this for him.” But when the centurion faced the Lord, he exclaimed, “I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof.”
So long as a man considers himself worthy there is no salvation for him; but when, in repentance, he acknowledges his unworthiness, there is immediate deliverance for him through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
I am trying to believe, but I have no assurance of salvation.
Trying to believe whom? Would you dare speak of trying to believe that One who cannot lie? Is not this to insult God to His face? You either do believe Him, or you do not. If you do not believe Him you virtually make Him a liar. If you have been doing this, will you not go to Him at once and confess this great wickedness of which you have been guilty, and tell Him you will now rest in simple faith on His Word? It is not a question of feeling or emotion, but of “believing God and asking no questions.”
What troubles me is that I am not sure I have accepted Christ.
The great thing to see is that God has accepted Christ. He took our sins upon Him, died to make propitiation for them. But God has raised Him from the dead and taken Him up to glory. He has accepted Him because of His perfect satisfaction in His work. Believing this, the soul enters into peace.
But must I not keep the law in order to be saved?
Keep the law! Why you have already violated those sacred precepts times without number. Go carefully over the Ten Commandments; which of them have you not broken, either literally or in spirit? Take them one by one, and face them squarely and honestly in the presence of the God who gave them, and who said, “The man that doeth them shall live in them,” but who also declared, “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.”
Possibly you find that you are not guilty on every count. But remember: “Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law” (Jas. 2:10-11). It has often been remarked that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link. Suppose you were suspended over a precipice by a chain of ten links. How many would need to snap before you would drop into the abyss? And so, if you are guilty of the violation of one of the commandments, you are condemned by the law and therefore under its curse. But, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Gal. 3:13). He became man, and was born under the law. He obeyed that law perfectly, and was not subject to its penalty. But He went to the cross and endured its curse for us that we who trust Him might be forever free from its just condemnation. “He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
I believe that Jesus died for me but I am afraid to say I am saved, for I know I do not love God as much as I should.
Does anyone love Him as He ought to be loved? We say sometimes that “love begets love.” This is very true in regard to love for God. As you are occupied with His love, your own heart will respond to it and you will be able to say, “We love Him, because He first loved us.” Looking into your own heart for a ground of confidence is like casting the anchor in the hold of a ship. Cast it outside and let it go down, down, down into the great, tossing ocean of strife and trouble until it grips the Rock itself. Christ alone is the Rock, and He is the manifestation of the infinite love of God for sinners.
There have been times when I had very definite assurance of my salvation, and then I have lost it again. Why do these periods of darkness come?
There may be various reasons for these periods of darkness. They may possibly be accounted for by great mental weariness and physical weakness. The adversary of our souls is always ready to take advantage of such conditions, and ever seeks to make us forget the clear, definite promises of God on which we have rested when well and strong.
But there may be other reasons which account for the loss of that blessed assurance you once enjoyed. The apostle Peter suggests such in his Second Epistle, chapter 1, verse 9. In the previous verses he has been stressing the importance of spiritual growth, and the believer is instructed to be diligent in adding to his faith virtue, and knowledge, self-control and patience, godliness, brotherly kindness and love; then he can be sure that he will not be idle nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But, on the other hand, if the believer neglects these things, he cannot expect the divine blessing to rest on him; and so we are told, “He that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.” There is something very solemn here. Notice, he was purged from his old sins, but through indolence and carelessness he has lost the assurance of this.
Worldliness, carnal indulgence of any kind, unfaithfulness as to your Christian responsibilities, unseemly levity, the harboring of malice or ill-will toward others–all or any of these things are calculated to destroy your sense of assurance. If guilty of any of them, face things honestly in the presence of God, remembering that He has said, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Sometimes I fear that I have sinned away my day of grace. For though I have been seeking the Lord for a long time, I do not seem to find Him.
No one has sinned away his day of grace who has any desire to be saved. That desire is divinely implanted. If you are seeking after God it is because He is seeking after you. But, what, after all, do you really mean when you talk of seeking the Lord and being unable to find Him? He is not hiding Himself. He has come in love to sinners as the Good Shepherd seeking the lost sheep. In Old Testament times God said through the prophet, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near” and there is a sense in which these words are still applicable. But they do not convey the full truth of the Gospel. Jesus said, “The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Lk. 19:10). Are you lost? Then He is looking for you. “Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.” Stop right where you are and lift your heart to Him as a repentant sinner, and you will find He is waiting and ready to receive.