The Blessing of Unshakable Assurance
The Greatest Chapter Ever Written
Romans Series
PBC 2026
I had three important experiences on our study tour that helped me come to grips with a key dimension of my Christian life – namely my need for unshakable confidence and unwavering assurance that I have in fact been delivered from the penalty of my sin and have received both the present benefit and the future deliverance Christ promises to all who truly belong to him.
- I watched the movie Nuremberg on the flight over to Istanbul.
- I had an eye-opening conversation with a highly educated, spiritually searching, religiously devoted individual in her mid-30s who, since her birth, has been a member of the Greek Orthodox Church.
- I stood before three of four holy doors, and I watched people crawl up 28 holy stairs in Rome.
In every case, I was brought back to the reality that among many of us who were raised with some form of Christianity, there is a deep and growing desire for assurance that we are right with God and that, in fact, we do belong to Him.
As we begin the next chapter in our journey through Romans, I want us to go all the way back to Paul for the answer to the question, “How can I have unshakable confidence and unmovable assurance that I am right with God, that I truly am His child, and that I have His favor in my life, regardless of my ongoing struggle with sin or despite severe suffering I may experience in life?”
And the answer Paul gives and the assurance he offers are in chapter 8!
Chapter 8 is in our bible to give us unshakable confidence and unwavering assurance of two vitally important things:
- There is no _____________ by God to those who are in Christ Jesus who – in their ongoing, daily struggle with sin – walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (8:1-11).
“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus . . . who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (8:1, 4). - There will be no _____________ from God to those who are the sons and daughters of God, no matter how long or how intense their earthly struggle might be or how devastating their earthly losses might initially appear to be from an earthly perspective (8:12-39).
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (8:35:-39).
Which brings us to three important questions this morning:
I. Why do we _____________ this kind of Assurance? (7:21-24)
We need these two assurances because of two realities we did not anticipate would be part of our lives once we became believers.
- Our ongoing struggle with _____________ both in its persistency and in its intensity (7:23-25)
- Our painful experience with prolonged _____________
These hard experiences do not seem to be compatible with the concept that there is no condemnation or separation for a believer – so either I missed something or perhaps I am not really united to God through Christ after all.
And that is why Paul states categorically – “There is therefore (on certain theological grounds) now (in this present moment) no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus!”
II. On what _____________ can Paul give us this assurance? (8:1-2)
Where do we go for the kind of unshakeable assurance our souls desperately need? Either we go to our own self-efforts and to something we can experience subjectively – or we go to God’s Word.
Paul grounds the kind of confident assurance he offers squarely on something that God alone has done for His glory through the distinct work every member of the Godhead accomplished in order to procure our salvation. And the place where Paul lays this out clearly and definitively is in Ephesians 1:3-14 – a letter the Romans would have known and read.
- God the Father Sovereignly _____________ and _____________ Our Salvation (1:3-6)
- God the Son _____________ and _____________ this Salvation (1:7-12)
- God the Spirit Personally Applies, Preserves, and Assures of this Salvation (1:13-14)
III. What is the _____________ of this assurance? (8:1, 4)
Surprisingly, Romans 8 points us to an assurance we experience personally, not just one we receive legally and positionally.
So where do we go for this experience, and who mediates it?
We can go to the church and its religious rites and practices OR we can go to Christ Himself and the Spirit He sent to mediate it to us.
Paul grounds assurance in a work that the Holy Spirit initiates, sustains, and empowers us to do – the hard work of progressive sanctification in which we persevere in saying no to our flesh, in which we put to death the works of the flesh in our lives, and we present our bodies as living sacrifices to God in order to discern and do His will in our daily lives – in our marriages and relationships, in our daily walk, in our vocation, and in every area of our lives. We must constantly do the hard work of mortifying our flesh and yielding our members as instruments of righteousness.
- Justification declares us righteous through the expiation and propitiation gained by Christ – it is a positional standing before God, not one we necessarily feel or experience on a personal level.
- Sanctification allows us to experience this righteousness through emancipation and perseverance – and this is how we know we are justified! This is how we know we are no longer under God’s righteous wrath and just condemnation!
Listen to how Paul grounds this assurance – “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus!” And then he describes those who are “in Christ Jesus” as people who “no longer walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (8:1, 4).
In other words, our justification is based on God’s declaration about us. But our assurance comes through an experience that results in actual emancipation! We are no longer slaves to sin, but are living under the controlling power of the Spirit, who illuminates our understanding, enables our will, and energizes our obedience to the righteous demands of the Law we neither wanted to fulfill nor could obey when we lived under the controlling power of the flesh!
This is hard, exhausting work – but in it we find the assurance our souls seek! And this is why the sensory nature of RCC and Orthodoxy is so attractive – it gives people a sense of assurance that does not require the hard work of sanctification. Sins are forgiven, and their temporal guilt is cleansed by walking through holy doors, participating in rituals, joining in sacred liturgy that focuses on the gospels without the accompanying explanation and application God gave in the Epistles, and in the sense of being part of something ancient, solid, and unmovable.
Conclusion: What are the primary evidences of this assurance?
- God (The Trinity) dwelling in Us
- The Spirit dwells in us (Romans 8:9)
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. - Christ dwells in us (Ephesians 3:17a)
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - God the Father dwells in us (John 17:22-23; John 14:23; 1 John 4:15)
John 17:22–23 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
John 14:23 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
1 John 4:15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God
- The Spirit dwells in us (Romans 8:9)
- The Word of God dwelling in Us (Col 3:16)
Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. - The Love of God being mediated to us (Rom 5:5)
Romans 5:5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
There were people in Paul’s day who were very religious, possessed theological expertise, practiced an ancient religion, and worshipped at a glorious temple for more than 1000 years – and they missed it! They were the Jews, and in Paul’s day there was a strong temptation for early converts to return to Judaism and its ancient rites and traditions – and Paul forbade this in Galatians, as did the writer of Hebrews. Let’s guard our souls against making that same mistake in our own day!