13 These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. 1 John 5:13 (NASB)
As the scandals within the SBC have gotten worse and worse along with the continual pressures from those who are demanding that we all become “Woke” I have come under conviction that I should point out those corruptions as warnings, but focus primarily to true believers that our real battle as we remain in this hostile environment is against discouragement and to remain focused on personal holiness as we walk by faith.
I have written about assurance before, but I would like to take another run at it from a slightly different perspective. As most of you know, the core message from the book of 1 John is to show us how we can know that we have eternal life and why that is important. Why is it important? The Atonement for all Christian’s sins was taken care of on the cross. At our salvation, God the Father Justifies us. He declares us righteous by imputing Jesus’ Righteousness to us. On the cross, He imputed our Sin, our unrighteousness, to Jesus. If we are in Christ then our sins are forgiven. We are Justified in the eyes of God, however, we are still in a death grip battle against our sin nature which was not killed when we were saved. For the rest of our lives in these bodies, we must work in cooperation with God to mortify the sins that we still must deal with in our flesh.