Today on renewing your mind, how can you know for certain that you're going to heaven?

When I talk to people who are bothered by that question and who are struggling with the whole concept of election,

I say to them, I can't think of any more important question for you to get resolved in your Christian life than that question.

Am I numbered among the elect?

The Apostle Peter urges his readers to make their calling and election sure.

For in this way, he writes,

there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Today in all this week here on renewing your mind, RC scroll tackles the doctrine of assurance and helps us understand what it means to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

We're going to continue now with our study of the question of the assurance of salvation.

In our first session, we looked at the frightening warnings that come to the church from Jesus saying that on the day of judgment, at the last day, there will be many coming to him saying, Lord, Lord.

That is professing to have a personal relationship to him and he will reject saying, please leave. I never knew you.

Because they were workers of aiquity or of wallessness.

Now, when we look at this question of how can I know whether I'm numbered among those who have made a false confession of faith and who think I'm in a state of grace with Christ?

How can I make the distinction between that and somebody who really is in a state of grace, as opposed to a spurious profession?

And we may even broaden the question. The question we have to look at first is, is assurance of salvation even possible?

And if possible, is it desirable?

Now, those questions may seem as elementary questions and basic to our New Testament faith.

However, we have to understand that in church history, there's been tremendous controversy about those questions.

Roman Catholic Church, for example, in the 16th century at the Council of Trent and the Sixth Session clearly denied the normal or ordinary possibility for someone to achieve assurance of their salvation.

Except in rare circumstances, and what Rome goes on to teach according to the Jesuits is that the only people who can ever rise to assurance of their salvation in this life are the special saints to whom God gives a special revelation of their status before Him.

But apart from those rare incidences, the average normal member of the church cannot have assurance of salvation.

Because the Roman Catholic Church says such assurances in the final analysis are based upon human conjecture, human opinion.

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