Assurance of salvation is one of the most precious Christian doctrines, but in some ways also one of the most difficult. Why? As Sinclair Ferguson so aptly explains, 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 its highest form.
Yet this assurance of salvation, for all it is experienced individually, is typically accompanied by four distinguishing features:
1) Satisfaction with God’s way of salvation
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