Is Your Faith Real? Part 2

There is a genuine faith, that is, saving faith that results in eternal life. There is also a false faith, that is, a shallow faith that is not real saving faith. How can you know the difference? This is James' pastoral concern and it's an important concern for any Christian in any age throughout church history. The issue of Christian assurance is an important one for all Christians. Is assurance of salvation possible? If we had lived in Luther's time and we had been new converts in the beginning of the Reformation, it would have been an amazing thing to consider that assurance was possible at all because the Roman Catholic error was that it was impossible to have assurance of salvation; that no one can know, and that most everyone, according to the Catholic doctrine (still taught today), most Christians according to them, will spend an extended period of time in a place called purgatory, burning and being purged of their sin so that they can then be ready to go into heaven. So had we lived in the 16th century and come to faith in Christ and the Gospel now made clear to us that we are able to be saved, to be justified before God by faith alone, in Christ alone, and we can know that we are saved, it would have been an amazing thing to be able to have assurance of salvation.