These past few years have caused me at times to question when salvation occurred in my life. I have come to understand so many things, so many things a 5 year old is incapable of knowing. I do believe that a 5 year old can be filled with the Holy Spirit, can understand his need, can understand the gift that God gives. Even Jesus himself says it's "childlike" faith that is required. But for someone like me, who loves the question "why" I've struggled with this thought. I know I didn't have the affections for Christ that I do know. I know I didn't understand the fullness of the gospel like I do know. Maybe these questions are signs of God's grace in my life, maybe they are a sign of sanctification. I know that I'm in good company...
"Thus far I was answered, that before we arrived in Ireland, I had a satisfactory evidence in my own mind of the truth of the Gospel, as considered in itself, and of its exact suitableness to answer all my needs. . . . I stood in need of an Almighty Savior; and such a one I found described in the New Testament. Thus far the Lord had wrought a marvelous thing: I was no longer an infidel: I heartily renounced my former profaneness, and had taken up some right notions; was seriously disposed, and sincerely touched with a sense of the undeserved mercy I had received, in being brought safe through so many dangers. I was sorry for my past misspent life, and purposed an immediate reformation. I was quite freed from the habit of swearing, which seemed to have been as deeply rooted in me as a second nature. Thus, to all appearance, I was a new man.[18]
I was greatly deficient in many respects. I was in some degree affected with a sense of my enormous sins, but I was little aware of the innate evils of my heart. I had no apprehension of . . . the hidden life of a Christian, as it consists in communion with God by Jesus Christ: a continual dependence on him. . . . I acknowledged the Lord's mercy in pardoning what was past, but depended chiefly upon my own resolution to do better for the time to come. . . . I cannot consider myself to have been a believer (in the full sense of the word) till a considerable time afterwards."[19]
I was greatly deficient in many respects. I was in some degree affected with a sense of my enormous sins, but I was little aware of the innate evils of my heart. I had no apprehension of . . . the hidden life of a Christian, as it consists in communion with God by Jesus Christ: a continual dependence on him. . . . I acknowledged the Lord's mercy in pardoning what was past, but depended chiefly upon my own resolution to do better for the time to come. . . . I cannot consider myself to have been a believer (in the full sense of the word) till a considerable time afterwards."[19]
Thank you John Newton for your honesty. Thank you Jesus for revealing more of yourself the older I get. Please don't stop!
