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Justification We Are Saved From The Guilt Of God

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“By justification we are saved from the guilt of sin and restored to the favour of God.” But how can one be assured their faith has been justified? Assurance was a heated debate during the reformation period. It is apparent that Wesley wrestled with how to verbalize this piece of salvation puzzle as his critics found his ideas to be contradictory at times. For sake of clarity, only the explicable attributes for assurance will be brought forth. First and foremost, God is the source of assurance and not the individual. Secondly, the fruits of the Spirit are testimony or evidence of justified faith. “The Spirit of God does give a believer such a testimony of his adoption that while it is present to the soul he can no more doubt the reality of his sonship than he can doubt of the shining of the sun while he stands in the full blaze of his beams.” In other words, a person is assured that their faith has justified them from being a servant of God to being a child of God because of the witnessed fruits or signs of the Holy Spirit working within their heart. A third attribute is that assurance is self-evident. Even though he spoke in absolute tones, Wesley contemplated assurance for many years as he reconciled the experience of others. This eventually led him to acknowledge the idea that assurance could vary for certain people, in extreme circumstance at most. He also conceded from personal experience that the intensity of assurance can change over time. How, then, does

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