How can we know for certain that God truly loves us and really forgives our sins? The correct answer is: Listen to the words of absolution spoken at the beginning of our Lutheran order of worship, remember your baptism, and receive Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. These are the means, or tools, by which God gives us His grace and assures us of His forgiveness.

However, the devil works mightily to cause us to doubt both God’s word or our faith. How could a holy God simply write off your sins? If you must believe on Jesus how can you be certain that your faith is true or that God accepts it? For some people the devil strikes deeper. You don’t deserve God’s love. Look at how much you have offended God! He cannot love you.

Martin Luther suffered similar attacks from Satan. How could he be assured of God’s free forgiveness when everyone else tried to earn it? How could he be so certain that he knew the truth and that the whole Church was wrong? How could he presume to instruct professors, cardinals and popes that they had mis-interpreted the Scriptures? God caused Luther to understand the difference between His law which convicts sinners and His gospel which proclaims forgiveness through faith in all that Jesus did to redeem the world from sin. God enlightened Luther to believe in the free forgiveness that He promised in His word through Christ’s death and resurrection.

Luther had confidence in God’s mercy because God had revealed a pattern of salvation in another man named Paul who lived 1500 years before Luther.

If anyone was a candidate for God’s judgment, it was a man named Saul. No, Saul was not a tyrant such as Saddam Husein or Pol Pot of Cambodia. He did not have millions of people put to death as Stalin and Mao did. But Saul first hated Jesus and did everything he could to put Christians in prison for trial and execution. Even though Saul did not throw a stone at Stephen, he fully supported the brutal death of this “heretic.” Saul rejected the message that Stephen spoke in the Sanhedrin that Jesus was the Messiah and that he saw Jesus in heaven. Surely Saul deserved God’s righteous wrath.

Many other people in Jerusalem at that time rejected Jesus as their Messiah. Saul sided with the majority! Nevertheless, God had mercy upon Saul. Instead of leaving him in unbelief Jesus appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus and later called Saul to be one of His apostles.

At first the Jewish Christians could not trust Paul. He had persecuted them with great zeal. How could God forgive Saul’s sins and, on top of that, call him to preach the gospel to the Gentiles!? Saul/Paul often praised God for His mercy. He freely admitted that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:15). Paul declared why he was the chief sinner: “For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Corinthians 15:9). Paul later explained why God was merciful to him: “for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life” (1 Timothy 1:16).

The pattern of longsuffering, mercy, creating faith, and salvation demonstrates God’s lovingkindness to sinners and teaches us about the source of faith. As intelligent as Saul was, he did not believe on Jesus until Christ spoke to him and he was baptized. About this, Paul wrote, “It pleased God, who…called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles” (Galatians 1:13). God has revealed His grace to us through Word and Sacraments so that we also believe that Jesus is the Son of God who became our Brother in order that God might lay on Him the iniquity of us all and nail Him to a cross to be “bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5).

Just as God showed His great mercy and love to Paul, forgiving all his sins and calling him to be an apostle; so He has had mercy on us, “who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy” (1 Peter 2:10). We should thank God for His goodness in calling us to be His children by faith in Jesus and making us heirs of eternal life.