六个错误的得救确据，你有给你的会众吗？

作为牧师，我接触过许多人，他们挣扎着要获得归信确据的信心。对他们来说，罪与失败总是如影随形。而往往，我发现他们是忠心的弟兄姊妹，他们需要的是关心和安慰。

但是，在我们的教会中还有另外一类人是更令人担忧的：他们坚定但却毫无根据地认为自己完全归信了。你也许知道他们是哪类人——他们知道正确的话语；他们没有犯下公开而羞耻的罪；他们是一群道德高尚的人。然而他们没有真实的果子，没有证据表明神使人归信的灵运行在他们里面。并且在许多时候，他们心里的幽暗角落时常有隐秘的罪。

这类人的心很难被打动——好像他们已经对福音免疫了一样。他们认为他们已经获得了最需要的东西，以至于他们不再追寻更多的东西！然后，如果有一个角落里藏着他们隐而未现的罪，他们会长久地与罪和平共处。

悲哀的是，这样的人出现在我们中间，教会难辞其咎。请容我介绍六种错误的得救确据，是我们的牧师不经意间在这群人中间助长起来的。

我们很容易假设，在我们的教会中聚集的这一群人都是了解并相信福音的。毕竟他们在主日的早晨出现在这里。但事实上，许多教会想当然地认为他们的会众已经完全了解了福音。结果导致，我们的教会充满了一些可能只是了解福音副产品的人（比如，如何做一个更好的丈夫；怎么管理你的怒气）,他们不用花时间在福音上就可以过道德的生活。

这种对福音的态度，让人的灵命状况十分危险。因为虽然道德的生活可能是人在福音中信心的证据，但是它们也有可能是人的自义和法利赛主义的彰显。当然可以强调我们不仅因着信而称义，因为好的行为常常伴随着真实的信心。但是我们应该首先强调，我们单单是因信而得称为义，并且反复强调这一点，要不然你所看到的行为就不是出于得救的信心。如果福音没有被传讲清楚，如果牧师没有指出通往天堂和地狱的道路，那么会众就会以为他们的道德以及他们的按时出席教会就是他们得救的确据。

简而言之，不要宣讲道德主义。永远不要。每周都宣讲福音，清清楚楚地传达福音是什么之后，再告诉会众该做什么。

圣经告诉我们：罪不只是我们所犯的罪行，而是堕落后的本性。圣经指出我们是灵里死亡（以弗所书2:1-2），罪的奴仆（约翰福音8:34），因干犯神的律法而有罪（雅各书2:10），神的义怒显明在他们身上（罗马书1:18）。我们是彻头彻尾的罪人。

那些持有毫无根据信仰确据的人经常对罪有错误的理解。如果罪仅仅是关乎外在的可见行为的话，那么通过一些努力和律法就能解决他们自身的问题。但是，如果我们迫使他们与圣经当中所教导的罪争战的话，那么他们就不得不正视自己对新生命的需要，以及他们的不能自救。

地方会众中的成员资格是为了给信徒救恩的确据。它让一个宣称自己是基督徒的人能得到集体的确认。当会众观察一个人的信仰告白以及信仰生活之后，教会要给那个人施洗并且让他领受主餐。这表明教会是在说，“就我们所观察，并靠着主耶稣所赐的智慧和力量，我们可以宣告你是我们的一份子。”从另一方面来看，当教会把某人逐出时，他们是收回了对那个人救恩的确认。会众是在告诉那个人他破坏了自己的信仰告白以及得救根基。

但是当一间教会在他们的成员制上混乱，当它允许那些无法正常参加教会生活的人继续保持他们的成员身份时，教会就是在助长那些错误的确信。教会懒于监管他们的成员并给他们错误的信心，有多少人会因此而走进地狱？

正如我们谈到过的，福音需要我们做出回应。教会和福音机构不难发现，给人们提供一些“新式委身”的方法是很有果效的。比如有的会给人们机会去做“决志祷告”。另外一些则让人们在主日的时候走向讲台或者填写回应卡片。当然这些外在的行为可能是圣灵使人归信的真实回应。

但是它们也可能是欺骗性的。也许你依然一边沉浸于罪中，一边做着祷告、走上讲台、填写卡片。所以，如果我们鼓励人们把确信建立在一些完全不用靠着新生命就能表演出来的外在行为上，那么我们就是把这些人的灵魂放在了危险的坟墓中。有多少失丧的人，他们确信自己能上天堂仅仅是因为自己曾在年幼的时候做了一个祷告？

有时牧者为了强调神白白的恩典，会单单传讲唯独靠着基督因信称义这个真理，所以不会把全部的点都讲清楚。但是圣经的教导是，在信徒的生命中结出公义的果子是基督工作的彰显。正如我之前所说的（举一个例子，请查看罗马书6:1-14的逻辑）。

把称义和成圣分开，对信徒来说是很危险的教导。这破坏了他们对个人圣洁的认识，也破坏了他们用顺服之心来爱神的动机。对那些有虚假确信的人来说，这是双重的危机，因为这鼓励他们认为公开违抗上帝仍有可能在神眼中被看为义。

圣经充满了对那些想拥抱罪和离开信仰之人的严重警告（例如马太福音5:27-30，希伯来书6:1-6）。当我们竭力教导神对祂子民主权的护理时，有时会让人误以为他们可以免于这种警告，以致警告变得无力。

但是经上的警告是有目的的，是真实的，是神为了叫祂的百姓不偏离正路的方法。一个智慧的牧者一定会坚守传讲罪和背道的严重性，叫所有的听众能够在信心中忍耐等候。

As a pastor, I interact with a lot of people who struggle to have confidence in the authenticity of their conversion. To their mind, their sin clings closely and their failings are always at hand. Most of the time, I find that these are faithful brothers and sisters who need comfort and reassurance.

But there’s another group of people in many of our churches that are much more worrisome: those with a firm but unfounded belief that they are genuinely converted. Perhaps you know they type. They know the right words. They stay free from scandalous public sin. And they are moral people. But they have no true fruit, no evidence that God’s converting Spirit is at work within them. And oftentimes there is an untreated area of secret sin.

These people are hard to reach—it’s like they’ve been inoculated to the gospel. They think they already have what they most need, and so they aren’t looking for anything more! And if there is an area of hidden sin, they’ve long made peace with it.

Sadly, our churches are at least partly to blame for their presence in our midst. Allow me to suggest six ways that we pastors may inadvertently help to foster false assurance in people like this.

It’s easy to assume that the people in our churches understand and believe the gospel. After all, they are in church on a Sunday morning. But the fact is, many of our churches have taken the message and the congregation’s understanding of it for granted. As a result, our churches are full of people who may understand some of the implications of the gospel (e.g., how to be a better husband; how to manage your anger) and live moral lives without appropriating the gospel for themselves.

This is spiritually deadly because moral lives might be the evidence of someone’s faith in the gospel, but they also might be the evidence of self-righteousness and Phariseeism. It’s surely right to emphasize that the faith which justifies is never alone, that works always accompany true faith. But we must first emphasize that we are justified by faith alone, and emphasize this over and over again, else the works which you see will not be the works of a saving justification. When the gospel is not made clear, when the Way to heaven and the highway to hell are not clearly pointed out by the preacher, then people will assume that their morality or their church attendance gives them grounds for assurance.

In short, don’t preach moralism. Ever. Preach the gospel every week. And then, with the indicatives of the gospel firmly in place, preach the imperatives that necessarily follow.

The Bible teaches us that sin is not just something that we do, it’s who we are in our fallen state. The Scriptures teach us that we are all spiritually dead (Eph. 2:1-2), slaves to sin (John 8:34), guilty of breaking the entirety of the law of God (Jas. 2:10), and condemned to experience God’s righteous wrath (Rom. 1:18). We are sinners through and through.

People with unfounded assurance often misunderstand sin. If sin is merely a matter of external and observable behaviors, then with some effort and discipline they can solve their own problems. But if we can compel them to wrestle regularly with the biblical teaching about their sin, then they will be forced to see their need for the new birth and a salvation that comes from outside of their own person.

Membership in a local congregation is meant to give believers assurance of their salvation. It’s a corporate seal of approval on someone’s claim to be a Christian. When a congregation examines someone’s profession of faith and way of living and then baptizes that person and admits them to the Lord’s Table, the church is saying, “As far as we can tell, and with the power and wisdom given to us by Christ, you are one of us.” On the flip side of the coin, when a church excommunicates someone, they are taking away that seal of approval. The congregation is telling the individual that his or her actions have undermined the credibility of their profession of faith and the basis of their assurance.

But when a church is promiscuous with its membership, when it allows people who do not attend the church to maintain their membership, it fosters false assurance. How many people are going to hell because their lazily-overseen church membership gave them false confidence?

As we’ve already noted, the gospel demands a response from us. And churches and evangelistic programs have sometimes found it helpful to present some method for people to express their newfound commitment to Christ. Some offer people with the chance to say a “Sinner’s Prayer.” Others offer them with the chance to walk the aisle on Sunday or fill out a response card. And those external actions may indeed be a genuine response to the converting work of the Spirit.

But they can also be deceptive. It is possible to pray a prayer, walk an aisle, and sign a card and still be completely lost in your sins. So if we encourage people to have assurance based on some sort of external activity that can be performed quite apart from the new birth, we put them in grave spiritual danger. How many people are walking around completely lost, but sure they are going to heaven because they prayed a prayer once as a child?

In a well-motivated effort to magnify the free grace of God, it is possible to teach the truth of justification by faith alone through Christ alone without connecting all of the dots for our hearers. But the teaching of Scripture is that the justifying work of Christ will always produce the fruit of righteousness in the lives of believers, as I said earlier (for just one example, see the logic of Romans 6:1-14).

A disconnect between justification and sanctification is very dangerous for believers. It undermines their understanding of the need for personal holiness and their motivation for loving God with their obedience. But it is doubly dangerous for those who have false assurance, because it encourages them to think that it is possible to live in open rebellion against God and still be righteous in his sight.

The Scriptures are full of dire warnings to those who would embrace sin and/or leave the faith (e.g., Matt. 5:27-30, Heb. 6:1-6). In our efforts to clearly teach God’s sovereign care for his people, it is possible to undermine the force of these warnings by giving the impression that they don’t apply to believers.

But those warnings are in the Scriptures for a purpose. They are true and they are one of God’s ways of keeping his people from wandering away. A wise pastor will press home the gravity of sin and apostasy and call all of his hearers to endure in the faith.