There are many reasons people go to church; some for a sense of community, some for guidance and direction in their lives. Others go out of a desire to seek the truth, to find a pattern or standard by which they can measure their life. Yet, the main reason people go to church, the thing they are hoping to find when they get up on a Sunday morning, put on some nice clothes, and head out to worship, is to find the assurance of salvation. They do not just want to know about the works of Christ. They do not just want to hear about the promise of eternal life. They want to be forgiven, forgiven here and now. They want to know that the gates of eternal life are not closed to them, but, rather, that there is a seat at the table with their name on it. This is at the heart of our gathering today. This is why we are here.

And the question of your salvation, or the assurance of your salvation, is a big deal. It is one of those things we may think we have a handle on, we are sure about, but then something in life comes up which causes us to question our certainty. You can be going through life as a regular church attender, a baptized and catechized Christian who has never doubted your faith, but then something changes. Perhaps, you lose someone close to you even though you prayed diligently for their healing, and now you are lost without their presence. Or it could be that you fall into some terrible sin, and its guilt is eating you away, causing you to lose sleep at night. And through these trials, you begin to second-guess the status of your salvation. You begin to think that, perhaps, you should not be as confident as you were about the state of your soul. The doubts become palpable.

This is where our hearts turn us inward. We begin the long search within for some solution to our trouble. Maybe you need to get back to reading your Bible with a little more regularity, start setting aside more time for prayer, or try to maintain a disciplined practice to help you stay on the right path. Or perhaps, you decide to do some works of service for others, something that will give your repentance focus. You begin to look for assurance in the things you do, in your thoughts, your words, and your deeds. Here, the Law of God looms large as a guide and a corrective to your life. It exposes your failures and, without hesitation, shows the path you ought to be on. But keeping on that path, doing the works of the Law, always proves far more difficult than we first imagined.

So, it happens that as we turn inward, as we attend to our own work, to what we can do ourselves, we find the assurance of salvation that we so desperately long for slips further away. It is not a problem with the guide. It is not the fault of the Law, but our own sinful nature which makes this quest impossible. There will always remain more to do, things we have not considered, more we need to confess and repent of. Saint Paul reminds us: The Law brings wrath, but righteousness before God comes by faith. In fact, he says it all depends on faith.

He demonstrates this reality for us in the story of Abraham. It is a powerful account of God’s promises triumphing over what seems impossible. Paul highlights this by saying Abraham believed in a God “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” What an incredible confession about the Lord. Our God gives life to the dead and calls things into existence that do not exist. Abraham and his wife were about a hundred years old. The days of having children were long behind them. They were wanderers in a foreign land without children, without a future. He laments to God, saying, “What will You give me, for I continue childless?” And God takes him outside, in the cool of the evening, the clear night sky stretched out before him, and says, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them. So shall your offspring be.”

It is a crazy promise to an elderly couple. A man lamenting to God that his lineage is about to end is told that, in fact, it is just beginning. His offspring will, in reality, be beyond his ability to count. Here, we see how faith and the promise go together. The audacious promise of God is made and, by faith, Abraham holds on to that promise. Faith itself is a gift from God. It is the awakening of a soul that takes hold of the promise and trusts The Lord will do what He has said. Paul reminds us that Abraham was “fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised.” Scripture says he believed the Lord, and He counted it to him as righteousness.

To be counted as righteousness is to be declared righteous before God by God Himself. This is the assurance of salvation. This is the confidence that eternal life is yours. Salvation is completely the work of God. To be declared righteous puts it totally outside of your work, outside of your attempts to fix it yourself, to overcome by your achievements. The gift of faith turns you from that inward quest to the outward promises of God. So, Paul says, “The words ‘it was counted to him’ were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”

Abraham serves as a witness to the faith you have been given. Your salvation is sure, not because of your works, not because you have checked all the boxes that make you a good and proper Christian, but because you believe in the promises of God. You believe Christ came, not to show you the way, not to point you towards the truth, and not to direct you to the gift of eternal life. No, He came to be the way, the truth, and the life. He alone does the totality of the work for your salvation, and by faith in Him, He graciously and freely gives it all to you. There is no remainder left over for you to take care of on your own, no piece of the puzzle you must work out on your own.

So, you come here. You come to church. You come broken and failing. You come dragging in behind you all your scattered works, and you present them to the Lord. And the Law says it is not enough. It is imperfect and shallow; dig deeper, try harder. But Christ says, “No, believe in me. Believe in what I have done, and it is all yours.” It all depends on faith in God’s promise. And by faith alone it is declared to you as righteousness. This is assurance. This is hope. This is the grace of your God for you.