The Dead and the Deceived: The Dangers of False Assurance
In my last post, I defined assurance as knowing you know and believe the gospel, as confidence in the reality of your salvation. That means, when it comes to assurance, there are only four kinds of people:
The Dead: unbelievers who do not believe and who know they do not believe.
The Deceived: professing believers who do not believe and yet have assurance that they believe.
The Doubting: professing believers who truly believe and yet lack assurance that they truly believe.
The Delighted: professing believers who truly believe and have consistent assurance that they do truly believe.
In this post, I’ll discuss the Dead and the Deceived.
I. The Dead
The dead are unbelievers who do not believe and who know they do not believe. Self-aware unbelievers need to hear one thing: you need to know Jesus Christ—that He lived, and He died, and He rose to save sinners. This the gospel message:
God: He is Creator: holy, just, wise, Almighty, Sovereign. He rules and He reigns and deserves all your love and obedience.
Man: You are a sinner, accountable to Him and yet a rebel deserving His wrath. It is not simply that you have broken a few commands but you have utterly rejected Him as the Lord of glory. For such offenses, you deserve death.
Christ: But God sent Christ, truly God and truly Man, to accomplish salvation. He lived a perfect life and died a perfect death as the substitutionary sacrifice for your sin, taking the punishment your sin deserves. He resurrected on the third day as conqueror over sin, death, and the grave.
Response: And now, seeing the helplessness of your own state, the irresistible delightfulness and beauty of this Savior, you turn from your sin (that’s called repentance) cast yourself on His mercy (that’s called faith) to save your soul. Salvation is by grace alone (a free gift) alone, achieved by Christ alone (His finished work), received by faith alone (not your good works).
You must believe/trust/depend in this Savior. Knowing stories about Jesus is not enough. Living according to Christian morals is not enough. Being friends with Christians is not enough. Going to church will not save you. Jesus, the Savior, must save you. Jesus says to you:
Luke 11:9–13 (NASB95)
9 “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 “For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened. 11 “Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? 12 “Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? 13 “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”
I beg you; be reconciled to God through the death of His Son. You can be forgiven not by becoming a better person, but by making your good outweigh your bad but simply by trusting/believing/having faith that Jesus death is enough. Christ came for sinners. That’s what every dead sinner must hear and must believe to be saved!
II. The Deceived
The deceived are also unbelievers, but unlike the dead, they are convinced that they are true Christians. They are usually in the church and might even display some signs of spiritual life. However, they are in fact just as dead as the first category—but they don’t know it. They have a false assurance because their faith is false.
Often times this happens because instead of having both subjective experience and objective knowledge of the faith, they only have one.
Experience Alone
Jesus said:
Matthew 7:20–23 (NASB95)
20 “So then, you will know them by their fruits. 21 Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. 22 Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’”
Professing Christ with your lips doesn’t necessarily mean you actually believe Him in your heart. Doing spiritual things—even, in the case of Matthew 7, even miraculous things—does not mean your soul has actually been saved. To translate that to our times, just because you read the Bible, serve the church, lead worship, obey some commands and generally like Christian things does not mean you actually love Jesus.
Jesus says to those who are only superficially associated with Him, “I never knew you. Depart from me.” There is no living relationship with the Savior, only something powerless and profitless.
When I was 18, I met my best friend. I got to know him so well I could predict what he was thinking before he said it. He was bold with his faith even with strangers on campus, read the entire Bible in 3 weeks, and served God’s people well.
But by the end of sophomore year, he had left the church, left the faith, and left our friendship. Even though he had gone to small group with me, prayed with me, sung praises to God with me, dreamed about missions with me—even though he seemed to be a Christian—it wasn’t real.
True assurance—you know that you believe—is not built upon spiritual experiences alone. Just because you had a spiritual high during a retreat, or you cried during a praise song, or you really liked a specific sermon, or you stopped cursing, or you like going to church, or you prayed a special prayer does not automatically mean your faith is real. Just because you read the whole Bible, or had deep relationships with Christians, or stopped sinning in a specific way does not mean you are necessarily saved. If you appeal to something you experienced as the foundation of your assurance, be warned: are you simply deceived?
Those who are self-deceived are dangerous to themselves and to others, because they claim they walk the path to heaven, when in reality they are walking the road to hell. If they continue in their self-deception, their false faith will be unmasked when it’s too late. In Matthew 7:23, Jesus will declare to those who reportedly did miracles, who had spiritual experience without real knowledge of God, “I never knew you. Get out, you workers of wickedness!”
You cannot build your true assurance upon your experiences alone. It has to be more.
Knowledge Alone
But on the flip side, biblical knowledge alone is also not enough to make assurance true.
When I was growing up, I was that kid who always knew the answer in Sunday school, you know, the annoying one who was always raising his hand to answer the teachers questions. I knew the Bible stories, the right things to say to make the teacher beam.
But memorizing Bible verses, agreeing with biblical doctrine and morality, knowing how to talk the Christian talk—all that is not enough to build true assurance upon. I had true knowledge, I knew the answers in my head, but my life looked just like the world. I cursed like the world, dated like the world, idolized school like the world, lusted like the world—all while putting on a Christian mask. I had truth from God, but no personal experience of God.
James mocks the one who has correct theology by no experiential faith:
James 2:15–17 (NASB95)
15 If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? 17 Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.
James is criticizing a faith that knows and says the right thing but fails to yield any practical love. What this cold, hungry, poor brother or sister needs is not words of blessing (i.e., the right theological answers!) but real, practical, experiential love. If this so-called faith yields no good works, it is not real faith; it’s dead.
In James 2:19, James mocks this so-called Christian, this self-deceived person: “You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder.” In other words, “Whoopdeedoo you have good theology! You know who else has good theology? The demons. But they actually do better than you, because they know the truth about God and tremble but you know the truth of God and do nothing!“ Here’s the verdict: “...For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead” (James 1:26, NASB).
Those who are self-deceived have a dead faith, a false faith. They are like trees that grow but only produce bitter, rotten fruit. Their works—hypocrisy, pride, jealous, selfishness—reveal their true nature, a dead faith, a false faith, a powerless faith. They might have true knowledge, but they have no personal experience of Jesus Christ.
Assessing the Fruit
So, personal experience alone is not enough to give you true assurance. Biblical knowledge alone is not enough to give true assurance. The only way you will have true assurance is by listening to Christ’s warning: “You will know them by their fruits (Matthew 7:16). You will know what kind of tree it is by its fruits.
Scripture demands you examine your life honestly (2 Cor 13:5). If all the details of your life were put in the balance: your purchases, your thoughts, your words, your time, your desires, your dreams, your prayers, your books, your loves, your hates, your conversations, your convictions, your character—would it paint the picture of someone who truly knows and loves the Lord Jesus Christ?
Bad fruit reveals a false faith. A false faith cannot save. And therefore, any so-called assurance built upon a false faith cannot be genuine. Do not be deceived: those who are deceived are not believers, because they do not believe in Christ.
But, how do we know if assurance is true? I’ll discuss that in the next post. But for now, know this: God’s Word wounds that we would be healed; it chops down that we might be born again. False faith must be exposed for what it is—useless. But as the doctor cuts that he might heal, so too does God expose falsehood that we become real. If anyone would come into the kingdom of God, he must come not proud of his deeds, not boastful of his accomplishments, but humbled and humiliated—that Christ would be his all.
Reflection Questions
Why is being self-deceived so dangerous? What’s the solution?
Which category would you put yourself in: the dead, the deceived, the doubtful, or the delighted? Why?
Read 1 John 1:6-10, especially vv8-9. Spend some time praying, that God would make your faith assured.