I wish I had $10 for every time I’ve heard a Christian say that they HOPE they will go to heaven after they take their last breath. When it comes to having assurance about their eternal destiny many Protestant Christians are rather Roman Catholic in their thinking.
For many years I was good friends with a Catholic priest. We spent many hours debating the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. One night we had a long discussion about having certainty about going to heaven. He pointed out that in traditional Roman Catholic thinking we may only ever HOPE that we will go to heaven. To assume that we will go there is being presumptuous. He pointed out that in Catholicism only a few very holy people who have excelled in their spiritual life can have that certainty about going to heaven. Ordinary Catholic pew-sitters must always have some doubt about their eternal destiny. Tied in with this doubt about one’s eternal destiny is the Roman Catholic theory of purgatory—a place where we supposedly go to be purified of any last remaining sins.
In contrast Protestant Christians ought to have total assurance about where they will be the moment after their last breath. We are told that we must take God at His word. He has promised that when we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ we will not perish but have eternal life. That promise should remove our doubt. In fact there are many such promises. Perhaps one of the most significant is in John 3:36: “The one who believes in the Son has eternal life…!” Did you notice that? It’s not that the believer will have eternal life one day. No, he already has it from the moment he believes.
So we have this interesting anomaly. Protestant believers are not supposed to doubt where they will go when they die. But many of them do. So when I ask a dying believer whether they are looing forward to being with the Lord Jesus in glory they will sometimes say something like, “Pastor, I hope that I’ll make it.” On the other hand many Roman Catholic believers do have that certainty despite a system that encourages them to doubt it.
Back in the nineties a young friend of my Catholic Priest friend died of cystic fibrosis. I had met him some years earlier and found him to be a young man who trusted in Jesus for his salvation. At his funeral the officiating priest said, “Laurie has written a note with three requests that he has for this funeral service. The first request is that we are going to sing at this funeral and I want you to join in because I’ll be singing in heaven so I want you to join me in song. The second request is that there will be a bit of a party after the funeral and I want you to tuck in an enjoy yourself because I’ve begun that great party in glory. And my third request is that if you don’t sing, you don’t eat.” Well, there’s some lovely humour there that would brighten up any funeral service. But isn’t it wonderful that those three requests were based on the certainty that faith in Christ gives us eternal life and we can be confident about that.
The great tragedy is that many Protestant Christians—also Reformed and Presbyterian Christians—don’t have that assurance. I have often found this quite remarkable. Here is a man who has been a churchgoer all his life. If you had asked him at any time whether he believed that Jesus died on the cross for him he would have agreed. But this man gets to the end of his life and he balks at assuming that he will be with the Lord in glory for ever. I once spoke with a man who had served as an elder of the church who at the end of his life lacked that assurance.
So why is this such a tragedy? We know that it is not our assurance of salvation that saves us—only faith in Jesus can do that. Well, okay, there are those who argue that true faith has within it an element of assurance. Our Church Confessions would seem to back that up. The Heidelberg Catechism, for example, asks: What is true faith? And then it gives the answer:
“True faith is not only a knowledge and conviction… It is also a deep-rooted assurance created in me by the Holy Spirit through the gospel that, out of sheer grace earned for us by Christ, not only others, but I too have had my sins forgiven, have been made right with God and have been granted salvation.?”
That expression that faith is a deep-rooted assurance makes us aware of that truth that Protestants must not doubt their salvation if they believe in Jesus. And yet the reality is never quite that simple. I can sympathise with the dying woman who has been part of a church fellowship all her life and has raised a godly family together with her believing husband, yet at the end of her life she cries out with that man in the gospels, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.”.
So what’s the tragedy? This, that those without assurance often have a great struggle at the end of their life. The enemy is only too ready to encourage their doubts. In contrast what a blessing when Christians step across the portal into eternity with that absolute assurance that Jesus is waiting for them on the other side.
What about those then who would question whether a faith without the deep-rooted assurance is in fact a true faith? Well, I’ll still maintain that we are not saved by our assurance but only by Jesus. Here the Westminster Confession is rather more helpful. It says that faith is often weak and our faith can often be assailed but that in many it is growing up “to the attainment of full assurance, through Christ who is the author and finisher of our faith.”
How lovely it is when instead of saying, “I hope so!” we can say, “I know so!”
John Westendorp