Our Great Assurance

The hymn Blessed Assurance is one of the more well known, one of great rejoicing and hope. Interestingly, it was written by a woman who was blind from infancy. A person many would think too hampered by suffering to have such great hope, she relished the idea of Jesus being the first face she ever saw and was well contented with the life He gave her. This hymn by Fanny Crosby has long been one of my favorites because of the many biblical truths it contains. Today I would like to delve into a few of them.

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! O what a foretaste of glory divine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

The greatest assurance we have is that Jesus is ours! If we believe in Him and submit our lives to Him, He is ours for eternity and we cannot lose Him! That truth in and of itself should give us such a blessed, or joyful, hope that cannot be rivaled. The relationship we have with Jesus here is only a taste of what will be in the next life. In glory, we will have Him completely and purely. As His followers, we are heirs of His through salvation. We become children, and therefore heirs, of God when we give our lives to Christ. We are also bought by God with the blood of Christ. The debt we owe for our sins can only be paid with blood, and Jesus gave that willingly and freely. He bought us from slavery to sin. As a result we are borne of His Spirit, i.e. born again. That is our second birth, as Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3, “unless a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” We must be born both of the flesh (physically) and of the Spirit. Not only does His blood purchase us from sin, but it also cleanses us from our own unrighteousness. At the same instant when we are bought, we are also given His righteousness in exchange for our filthiness. We are made clean by His blood and sacrifice, an achievement we could never accomplish on our own.

Perfect submission, perfect delight, visions of rapture now burst on my sight;

Angels descending bring from above echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

Submission to Christ brings delight, as counterintuitive as that seems. It is only when we are completely and willingly submitted to the will of God that we find our greatest delight and satisfaction in life. Remembering that Fanny was blind, she enjoyed visions of her imagination rather than being weighed down with physical sight. She was free to imagine eternity without the hindrance of what her physical eyes had seen. She could imagine what it looks like for mercy and love to be given to us from God in ways that we would never think of.

Perfect submission, all is at rest, I in my Savior am happy and blest;

Watching and waiting, looking above, filled with His goodness, lost in His love.

With submission to Christ also comes perfect rest and peace like we could never experience otherwise. It is only when we are in a right relationship with Christ, submitted to His will, that we can experience an inner peace which the world could never give. That submission comes from being content in Christ, from being in Christ. That is the greatest source of true happiness and blessing we could ever find. While we are here on earth, waiting for that time when we will finally be with Him, we should keep our minds fixed on Him and His work. It is through that eternal gaze that we remain at peace, content, filled with His goodness and love. It is when we draw our gaze away to look that the world that we lose that hope and assurance.

This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long;

This is what our story is all about. This blessed assurance we have is the story of our lives enveloped in Christ, daily transformed by His mercy and grace, safe in His love. This is what our time here on earth is all about.

Is this your story? How can you tell others about the blessed assurance you have?

Blessed Assurance. Fanny Crosby, 444, The Rejoice Hymnal.