How Can I Know the Gospel Is True?
00:00:00.000 | [Intro]
00:00:06.000 | Alyssa writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, I grew up in a wonderful Christian home where
00:00:10.040 | the gospel was lived out before me every day and I trusted Christ as my Savior in my youth.
00:00:14.480 | However, around the age of 14, I began to wrestle with many questions about the Christian
00:00:18.640 | faith.
00:00:19.920 | Over the seven years since, I have spent countless hours studying the Christian worldview and
00:00:23.800 | apologetics as well as other worldviews.
00:00:26.440 | I see no lack of evidence for the Christian faith, but my mind always comes up with more
00:00:30.200 | questions that don't seem to have satisfactory answers in order for me to feel honest about
00:00:35.320 | believing the things in God's Word.
00:00:37.760 | At the end of the day, I don't understand how I can ever know any truth for sure since
00:00:41.760 | I will never be able to collect all the facts about anything.
00:00:45.320 | How can we as finite humans be certain that we have found the truth when we are limited
00:00:49.840 | by our own humanity?"
00:00:50.840 | That is so good.
00:00:54.720 | The issues of knowing and certainty and assurance are so, so relevant.
00:01:03.720 | Everybody, everybody deals with these things at some point.
00:01:08.160 | So as I understand it, here's the key, final, decisive question.
00:01:13.280 | How can we as finite humans be certain that we have found the truth when we are limited
00:01:23.040 | in our own humanity?
00:01:25.720 | We're finite, but we want certainty, and they don't seem to go together.
00:01:31.040 | So before I answer the question, which I will, I'll give an answer that I think is biblical.
00:01:36.400 | Let me put some biblical truth in front of us here.
00:01:41.060 | The first is to be sure that we're aware God really does want us to have full assurance
00:01:51.920 | of his reality and the truth of the gospel.
00:01:54.600 | Full assurance, certainty, deep, strong, unshakable conviction.
00:02:01.680 | He did not design a world where that's impossible for fallen, finite people.
00:02:09.480 | First John 5, "I write these things to you who believe in the Son of God, that you may
00:02:15.120 | know that you have eternal life."
00:02:17.880 | John 7, 17, "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is
00:02:24.840 | from God."
00:02:26.000 | Hebrews 6, 11, "We desire each of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance
00:02:32.680 | of hope to the end."
00:02:34.880 | Colossians 2, 2, "I struggle for them that their hearts may be encouraged to reach the
00:02:40.120 | riches of full assurance of understanding."
00:02:44.840 | And Romans 1, 20, "God's invisible attributes have been clearly perceived ever since the
00:02:52.200 | creation of the world in the things that have been made, so they are without excuse, for
00:02:56.920 | although they knew God, they knew God, they did not honor him as God."
00:03:03.060 | So God did not design the world and the way of salvation and the process of revelation
00:03:08.900 | and the nature of the Bible and the work of the Holy Spirit.
00:03:11.480 | He didn't design any of those so that we would only have good probability judgments about
00:03:17.640 | the truth.
00:03:18.640 | He did not intend for us to cross our fingers.
00:03:22.880 | I saw a woman sitting in the final of the World Cup.
00:03:27.560 | They showed, I think, a woman from Argentina, and she just had her fingers crossed in the
00:03:33.120 | last minutes.
00:03:34.120 | I thought, "That's not the way we approach the final judgment.
00:03:38.120 | Our fingers crossed.
00:03:39.120 | Oh, I wonder if I'm going to make it at the last day."
00:03:43.040 | That's a tragedy if Christians have to die with their fingers crossed.
00:03:47.400 | He didn't intend us to leap into the dark either.
00:03:51.740 | So Elissa is right in asking the question, "How?"
00:03:58.640 | That's the right question, "How?"
00:03:59.720 | Not "if," but "How can we as finite humans be certain that we found the truth?"
00:04:07.220 | And the answer, I think, comes at two levels.
00:04:11.640 | Warranted certainty of another person's trustworthiness is more than the sum of the empirical evidences
00:04:23.440 | that he is trustworthy.
00:04:24.440 | I know that's a little bit of a complicated sentence.
00:04:28.280 | I mean, warranted certainty is more than adding up one, two, three, four, five, I've got six
00:04:34.360 | evidences that he's trustworthy, now I can be certain.
00:04:37.440 | That never works.
00:04:38.520 | It never works because you can always ask another question, right?
00:04:42.360 | I trust my wife that she is faithful to me.
00:04:47.800 | I could get evidences from experience, lots of them, but in the end, there would always
00:04:52.640 | be a niggling doubt, wouldn't there, if it were just the list of evidences because she
00:04:59.040 | could be tricking me somehow.
00:05:02.040 | Just like Elissa says about her own knowledge of God, she studies, she asks questions, she
00:05:06.280 | gets answers, and there always seems to be another question because she's finite and
00:05:10.280 | I'm fallible about Noelle.
00:05:13.140 | So in fact, I have zero doubt that Noelle is faithful to me.
00:05:21.160 | She is.
00:05:22.160 | I never lose a moment's sleep over it.
00:05:26.160 | So experientially, I have a working certainty, and it's more than the sum of the parts.
00:05:35.120 | It's a personal assurance that comes from a personal encounter.
00:05:40.240 | Knowing her creates something which is in, yes, the evidences, and then goes subjectively
00:05:47.440 | beyond the evidences.
00:05:49.720 | I think we can have that kind of knowledge, that kind of personal knowledge of Jesus by
00:05:56.800 | our exposure to his self-revelation in the Bible.
00:06:01.080 | The more you get to know him, the more sure you are that he is reliable.
00:06:08.400 | Here's the other level.
00:06:11.400 | God does not give us certainty by whispering in our ear that we are true or he's true,
00:06:20.440 | but he does give us certainty.
00:06:21.920 | It is a gift of God.
00:06:26.320 | He does it by opening our eyes, the eyes of our hearts, to see the real self-evidencing
00:06:35.760 | glory of God in the gospel.
00:06:38.840 | And I get that partly from Ephesians 1, mainly from 2 Corinthians 4, which goes like this.
00:06:46.000 | The God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the
00:06:51.560 | light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
00:06:57.760 | In verse 6, "For God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shown in our hearts
00:07:05.640 | to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ."
00:07:12.920 | So in both cases, light is imparted by God.
00:07:17.920 | It's the light of gospel or the light of knowledge, and more specifically, it is the knowledge
00:07:23.560 | of glory or the gospel of glory.
00:07:26.840 | So there is a revelation of the glory of God, the glory of Christ, in the gospel, in the
00:07:33.320 | knowledge of the historical revelation given in the Bible that is self-authenticating.
00:07:40.720 | There is a divine and supernatural light.
00:07:44.760 | That's the phrase of Jonathan Edwards.
00:07:46.280 | A divine and supernatural light imparted to the soul by the work of God, which is a real
00:07:53.920 | seeing.
00:07:54.920 | It's a real seeing.
00:07:57.000 | That's really crucial.
00:07:58.000 | It's not irrational.
00:07:59.640 | It's a real seeing of what's really there.
00:08:02.800 | It's not a guess or a mere deduction by fallible logic.
00:08:06.680 | It is a gift of God through the ordinary means of knowing the gospel.
00:08:13.360 | And we should pray for this.
00:08:15.080 | So that would be my closing exhortation, is that we would pray, Elissa would pray, "Open
00:08:23.280 | my eyes to see this wonderful, self-authenticating light of glory in your Word."
00:08:30.000 | Yes.
00:08:31.000 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:08:32.000 | Thank you for the question.
00:08:33.880 | On a related note, you may want to check out episode number 226, which is titled, "How
00:08:37.680 | Do You Know Christianity is True?"
00:08:40.840 | And if you want to ask a question, please send it to us via email at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:08:46.840 | Well tomorrow is Friday, and we end the week with a doozy of a question.
00:08:50.880 | If Christ has triumphed over Satan and over every power and principality, why wasn't Satan
00:08:56.200 | just eliminated from existence?
00:08:58.440 | I'll ask Pastor John that tomorrow.
00:08:59.840 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:09:01.360 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast.
00:09:03.600 | [END]
00:09:04.100 | 1.
00:09:05.100 | What is the reason for the death of Jesus Christ?
00:09:06.100 | 2.
00:09:07.100 | What is the reason for the death of the Christ's Son?
00:09:08.100 | 3.
00:09:09.100 | What is the reason for the death of the Christ's Son's resurrection?
00:09:10.100 | 4.
00:09:11.100 | What is the reason for the death of the Christ's Son's resurrection?
00:09:12.100 | 5.