“Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands …” Isaiah 49:16
Many, and perhaps most, believers struggle at times with the assurance of their salvation. The tendency is to look within and find there a thousand reasons why God would not save the likes of me! It may be our sloppy devotional life, or our lack of faith, or our hesitancy to witness for the Lord. We know the darkness that still seems to pervade the depths of our own heart, and we wonder if God could love us! The other people around us seem to have it all together – but we know that we don’t – and we wonder if God could love me?
But the Lord comes to us through the prophet Isaiah and says, "Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands." Salvation is of the Lord! From start to finish!!!! His eye is on you! He has saved you and He will not let you go!! If you have trusted Christ for salvation, then you are His child, and He has already forsaken His Son in order that you will never be forsaken! It is impossible that the perfectly just God of heaven and earth will exact the price of your redemption from His own Son, and then refuse to save you who have trusted in Him. There may be a thousand reasons in each one of us why we should not be saved, but because of Jesus Christ, we are saved! Our names are engraved on the Palms of God’s Hands!
We also have an enemy, the “Accuser of the Brethren”. It is his desire that you doubt your salvation, and that you doubt the ability and faithfulness of God to save. In order to mitigate these self-doubts and these accusations from the enemy, we need to be much in the Word of God, and have our sights lifted from the remaining sin in our own hearts and lives, to our enthroned, spotless Saviour who shed His blood to save us!! Scripture is not a list of rules that respectable people must adhere to in order to gain salvation. Scripture is the good news that Jesus Christ came to save unworthy sinners! In such a gospel, in such a Saviour – we may, and even must, have a certain hope and a solid assurance of our salvation!