Costi Hinn forwards a listener's inquiry on distinguishing intellectual gospel knowledge from the personal trust required for election, emphasizing Galatians 2:20 and the Holy Spirit's witness of adoption. The speaker argues that assurance fuels sanctification in a reciprocal cycle, noting that while Scripture doesn't name the elect, internal conviction confirms their status. This theological exploration, referencing his book Am I Truly Saved?, concludes by promoting the May 5th–7th Theonomy and Postmillennialism Conference featuring Dr. James White and others, linking personal faith assurance to broader ecclesiastical growth. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Knowledge Without Assent00:03:38
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All right, this is from Ben Q. How can I know God's promises are true for me?
Emphasis on for me, not one.
But two asterisks.
I appreciate that.
I write like that sometimes.
How can I stop believing like a demon, but know the gospel is for me?
Well put, Ben, right?
Because I have no doubt you're referencing the book of James.
It says, You believe that God is one, good, but even demons believe that and shudder.
All right, so you're completely on it.
And I'm going to get to that, but let me set the framework real quick, Ben.
Okay, so Reformed theology and really just Christian tradition has always held that there are three primary components of faith genuine, true, saving, Faith.
Number one is knowledge.
Number two is assent.
And number three is trust personal and implicit trust.
Now, that third piece is what you're asking about, Ben.
The personal aspect how can I believe that the gospel is not just a real, objective, historical fact, but that Jesus died for me?
So, saving faith, true faith, three primary components knowledge, assent, and trust.
Knowledge is Is well, that one hopefully we don't have to spend a lot of time on, but that's just you know, you have intellectual awareness that something in fact happened.
The only reason I mention knowledge is because it almost seems like there would be two components, right?
Knowledge and trust.
And so I think sometimes people get confused on that second piece, assent, which is to agree, it's agreement.
And the reason why assent and knowledge both need to be mentioned that it's not just redundant knowledge and knowledge, assent is distinct from knowledge in the sense that you can have knowledge of something that you don't.
Agree with.
So I have knowledge of the prosperity gospel, but I have not given the prosperity gospel my assent.
I have knowledge of Molinism, but I have not given Molinism my assent.
I have knowledge of all kinds of different heresies, Arianism and Docetism, and all these different things, the Eutychian heresy and the Nestorian heresy, but I have not given them my assent.
Meaning you can know something.
That you actually believe is false, that you do not assent to.
Okay?
But then beyond that, right, you can also know something and agree that it's true.
You have knowledge of something and have given your agreement, your assent, that this thing of which you know is also a true thing, and yet still reserve personal trust.
Right?
So you can have knowledge of an event and assent, agree that that event is not just mythology.
Not just legend, but it's historic and true and real, but still not trust in the implications of that event and bet your life on that.
And that's that third piece that you're asking about, Ben, right?
The implicit and personal trust.
Assurance Through Sanctification00:12:10
I always think of Galatians, I believe it's chapter two.
If not, it's chapter three, but I'm almost positive it's chapter two, where Paul says of Jesus, you know what?
Let me just go ahead and look it up so that I'm not just paraphrasing here.
This is Galatians.
Chapter two, let's start there.
See if that's right.
Galatians chapter 2.
Yep, here it is.
Chapter 2, verse.
Let's start with verse 20 through.
Yeah, just 20.
Galatians 2, verse 20.
I have been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Meaning that, Ben, you're not alone.
I personally have been where you are, and I know countless others who have both knowledge and assent.
They believe that Jesus really did live, die, and was raised again on the third day and ascended to the right hand of the Father, and that he did all this not just as a moral example of sacrificial love for others, but he did it as a substitute penal substitutionary atonement, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.
Jesus lived and died and was raised again to absolve.
Sinners of their moral guilt before God, to reconcile sinners with a holy God, and to impute to them by faith his own righteousness.
There are a lot of people who believe that, that Jesus did that, that Jesus loved someone, someone, somewhere, but not them.
There's a lot of people in the church, even.
They're in the church because they adhere to Christian doctrine, but they wrestle on a frequent, even daily basis.
Personalizing the faith, right?
They're like, I know that Jesus is real.
I know he came to earth.
I know that that's not just myth or legend.
This is a historical fact.
And Jesus lived and died and was raised again for someone somewhere out there.
But how do I know he did it for me?
And the reason why a lot of people fall into this category, right?
They're struggling with the personal trust aspect, that third component of faith, is because there's not a verse in the Bible that says, you know, John 3 16, and then right next to it, you know, there's, you know, John.
3 17, John 3 18, that says, You know, for God so loved Joel Webbin that he gave his own.
Like, it doesn't say that.
My name is not in the Bible.
It's not explicit in Scripture that I emphatically and definitively am included in the elect.
And so that is something that only the Holy Spirit can do.
But that is one of the chief roles of the Holy Spirit.
That's one of his chief ministries.
It's the Holy Spirit who bears witness.
Within us, that we are in fact the children of God, that we are adopted.
He reminds us of the spirit of adoption crying out within us, Abba, Father.
Abba, Father.
It's the spirit who convicts us of sin, conviction being one of the evidences and one of the signs of being born again.
It's the spirit of God that gives new hearts, regeneration, that removes the heart of stone and gives us a new heart that has affection for God, that's malleable.
And softened and receptive to God's word.
And so it's the ministry, the personal indwelling ministry of the Holy Spirit, reminding us of our adoption, convicting us of sin, softening our hearts, first and foremost by giving us new hearts that are actually receptive to God, where we previously would have hated God.
We now have a love and zeal and affection for God.
And in all these ways, we are able to say with faith that Christ did not just simply die for someone.
Somewhere out there, but that Jesus, in fact, died for me personally because he granted to me personally the gift of his Holy Spirit.
That's an inward work.
That's something that simply has to be confirmed by the personal indwelling ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have received from God.
You were bought with a price, therefore, honor God with your body.
The problem is.
With assurance, because that's what we're talking about assurance of salvation.
The problem with the connection or the relationship between sanctification and assurance is that you're really going to be bottlenecked and almost really castrated in your sanctification if you don't have at least a baseline of confidence, assurance that you've been saved in the first place.
Think of what Paul says this is 1 Corinthians 6.
Just in regards to putting to death the sin of sexual immorality.
I've already quoted it, but to quote it again You are not your own.
You were bought with a price.
Therefore, honor God with your body.
So, the commandment, the imperative, is honor God with your body.
The indicative, the incentive, the motive for obeying that command to honor God with your body, not joining your body with a prostitute, but rather honoring God with your body and sexual purity.
What's the motive for obeying that?
You.
Not someone else out there, but you were bought with a price.
Another way we could say that is God loves you personally.
Jesus died for you.
You're among the elect.
You're a Christian.
You're saved.
Right?
So the motive for sexual purity, according to 1 Corinthians 6, is the assurance of personal salvation.
Personal assurance of salvation is the fuel for sexual purity.
And that's just one example, but we could do this all over the scripture.
And so, the irony in terms of the relationship between assurance and sanctification is that sanctification, because multiple other scriptures speak to this principle, is one of the leading signs that we actually have been saved.
When you look at someone's sanctification, the way that they're growing in holiness, the way that they are growing in Christ likeness, that's one of the clearest signs that you can point to to say that because this person is visibly being sanctified, We have a great degree of assurance to say that they have been justified.
So, sanctification is one of the clear signs of justification, and yet, an assurance in regards to our justification, aka assurance of salvation, is the fuel for sanctification.
I'll say it again assurance of salvation fuels sanctification, but sanctification works as the lead evidence of justification.
So, by looking at sanctification, we grow in assurance of salvation.
And as we have more assurance of salvation, we have more of the indicative, more of the incentive for being sanctified.
What we would call this, in common terms, is a catch 22.
A catch 22.
Or a vicious cycle.
But because the Lord is not cruel, I believe that it's the Lord's intention in this relationship that I'm describing that it not be a vicious cycle, but be a self perpetuating, beautiful, victorious cycle.
Cycle, not a vicious cycle, but a victorious cycle.
But the question is where do you start?
Right?
Because if you have no assurance, then you have nothing driving you in sanctification, which means a lot of sanctification won't happen.
And if sanctification doesn't happen, you don't have much evidence to be assured of justification.
However, if you have not perfect assurance, but just some assurance that Jesus didn't just die for someone somewhere out there, but that Jesus died for you, that he died for you and loved you, as the Apostle Paul says in Galatians 2, verse 20, if you have some assurance of that, then you're going to have some fuel in the tank for being sanctified.
And as you're being sanctified, You'll have even more evidence to be more assured.
And then the more assurance will be more fuel in the tank to be further sanctified, which gives you further evidence and further signs to believe that you've been assured.
And so it's compounding, right?
Don't view it as a vicious cycle, like the two in this relationship are emptying one another.
No, they're filling one another.
But the way that they fill one another, the only hope that you have is you have to at least start with one tiny little ounce.
Of gas in one of these tanks, the assurance tank or the sanctification.
And my argument is the tank that you need at least something in in order for this relationship to kickstart and these two pedals on the bicycle, I'm changing the analogy now, but these two pedals to start working is what you want to start with first is assurance.
You don't start with sanctification first, you start with some measure of assurance first that leads towards some sanctification, which brings about further assurance that leads towards more sanctification.
And I wrote a whole book on this.
It's my book called Am I Truly Saved?
It's a study on 1 John.
And one of the big focuses of the book is the relationship between assurance of salvation and sanctification and why assurance comes first.
If we were to ask the question, you know, the proverbial question, what comes first, the chicken or the egg?
Well, in this case, if assurance is the chicken and sanctification is the egg, then I would say the chicken comes first.
Assurance comes first.
Not perfect assurance, but at least some measure, even a small measure of assurance that leads to a small measure of sanctification.
But that increases your measure of assurance, which increases sanctification.
So, am I truly saved?
A study on the assurance of salvation.
There it is.
Thank you, Nathan.
It's forwarded by Costi Hen, which is funny.
Costi Hen came out against Doug Wilson recently, and you guys heard me last week address that, but Costi Hen's still a good dude.
But yeah, the Am I Truly Saved, a study through 1 John, it's all about the assurance of salvation and included as a major concept in the book is that relationship between sanctification and assurance.
The problem is when somebody gets.
Well, just when they get hamstrung because they don't have anything in the tank of assurance and they also don't have any visible signs of sanctification.
And they just feel like both tanks are empty and they just feel pigeonholed and stuck.
And there they are on Sunday morning, still with a knowledge and a sense of faith, but with a complete lack of the personal, implicit trust piece, right?
They really believe Jesus is a real person.
He's the real God man.
He came to earth, he lived, he died, he rose again.
They believe all these things.
And they believe that Jesus did all those things in love for someone.
Somewhere out there, but it doesn't include them.
That's a difficult spot to be, but have hope.
John Bunyan was there for seven years, and God granted him assurance, brought him out of it.
And he used this relationship of assurance and sanctification.
I've been there, God has brought me out of that.
And if you want to hear more thoughts on that, check out the book, Am I Truly Saved?
A study through 1 John.
Bonus Guest Dale Partridge00:01:06
You can get it at rightresponseministries.com.
Rightresponseministries.com.
Oh, hi, I didn't see you there.
Thanks for sticking around.
I've got an important announcement to make.
That's the Theonomy and Postmillennialism Conference 2023, May 5th, 6th, and 7th, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Theonomy and Postmillennialism.
We've got the speakers that we've already had lined up.
That's Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Dr. Gary DeMar, non doctor Pastor Joel Webbin.
But we also have a bonus speaker, and that is Dale Partridge from Real Christianity.
Perhaps you've heard of him.
If not, you should start listening to his podcast.
It's fantastic.
Dale Partridge is going to be joining our team.
We're going to have live panels on Friday night and Saturday night, where you'll be able to write in questions and get them answered.
We're also going to have a catered barbecue, Texas style barbecue meal on Friday that's a part of your registration fee.
All that is covered.
So you need to get that.
This is how you do it go and register right now at rightresponseconference.com.