Trust Alone

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The fear shows in the eyes.

You can see it even in the ones who know the creeds by heart, who can parse doctrines over coffee. It’s the look of a man who has been taught to think of salvation as a private riddle — one that he must solve before death. The puzzle, dear Jesus, is whether or not he is among the elect.

This is not how Israel thought of election.

For them, to be chosen was to be called, and to be called was to belong. It was a public fact, not a private guess. The covenant was a living bond, renewed in the assembly, enacted in the feasts, sung in the psalms. One entered by God’s word, remained by God’s promise, and walked by God’s law.

But somewhere in the long centuries after Pentecost, the Christian mind was bent toward the clouds. The Hebrew frame of covenant was dressed in the robes of Plato’s academy. Election was moved from the campfire to the cosmos, from the body to the abstract soul. “Saved” became a category, and “reprobate” its shadow. If you wished to know which you were, you had to peer into the machinery of eternity — a thing no mortal can read without despair or presumption.

This is why the modern conscience trembles: it has been trained to think of faith as the art of being certain that one is certain.

It is a snake eating its own tail.

The ancient pattern of God’s choosing — concrete, embodied, covenantal — one Cross for all — has been replaced by an introspection too fragile to bear the weight of eternity.

The question, then, is not whether election is real, but why modern idealists resist remembering what election means.

Don’t trade “trust” for “topics.”

Election was never meant to be searched for in the folds of your own emotions. God locates it where He intends you to find it — outside of you, in His own public acts. In the Old Covenant, that location was circumcision into Israel and the covenant meals that followed. In the New Covenant, it is baptism into Christ and the Supper given by His own hand.

Baptismal regeneration is not an exotic theory about uber feels; it is Spiritual acceptance of eternal election made both temporal and tangible:

The Head of the body calls from outside the tomb, and you are washed into being one of His members.

There is no way around Baptism into Christ.

Jesus’ washing is not a symbol. The Christian faith is not sincerity.

We are the Kingdom, a new Man, bought with a price accomplished in you by the Spirit of God. As Christ’s resurrected humanity — His flesh and blood — we belong to God Almighty.

By covenant.

The Supper is the same truth in edible form. The Lord gives you His bread and wine, not as a test of your worthiness, cleverness nor even obedience, but as the pure and immortal seal of His own reliability as the Word made flesh.

“This is my body… this is my blood” is a meal to be eaten, not an argument to be won.

In his meal, at the foretaste feast, we remember Christ precisely because God remembers us by His creation of the act.

It is not your remembering that secures His covenant; it is His remembering that secures you.

This is election:

The external body of Christ embracing you by its Head’s command, the meal of the New Covenant training the body to trust Him alone. Here, “faith” is not the work of believing that you believe. Faith comes ex verba verbum — from the Word about the Word — and like creation itself, it comes ex nihilo, from nothing but God’s speaking.

When this is seen, the Platonic riddles collapse. Salvation is neither a choice you manufacture nor a psychological state you must maintain. It is God’s doing, given into water, bread, and wine, held in the body of Christ where He has placed you.

Stop looking over your shoulder.

The enemy loves that posture. He knows that if he can keep you wondering whether you are “really saved,” you will never run forward in the freedom already given to you. But this question is not yours to answer; it was answered before you could form it.

God did not save you to peer into His secret decrees. He bought you by pouring His Name over you. He did not command you to measure the depth of your faith; He fed the world with the bread of immortality of the cup of blessing. The same Lord who led Israel with manna now invokes and awakens you by His own risen, ascended and glorified Body — even a meal that says more than heart can believe: even so, come, Lord Jesus.

The spirit of cowardice that haunts so many pulpits is born from false categories — the kind that make “faith” into a self-generated mood and “election” into a cosmic lottery.

That is not the gospel, nor the law. This is idolatry.

Faith is not you choosing God; it is God’s Word creating trust in you, in Jesus’ Name.

Election is not rooted in your understanding of Him, but in His grip on you.

So stand.

He has placed you. The Word tells the truth before you feel it. Receive the Supper that keeps the promise before you sense it. Let your assurance be anchored in what He has done, not in how steadily you can see yourself receiving.

When the Head of the body says, “You are mine,” He means it.

You are not saved because you have successfully convinced yourself that you are saved. You are saved because the Savior has claimed you.

Because He does not lie, you are free.