Ditching the Checklist: Assurance of Salvation for Evangelicals

by Mark C. Mattes

With ample scriptural evidence, Ditching the Checklist challenges those who seek to supplement faith in Christ alone for salvation with exercises in piety or good works. Christian security is to be found in God's promise of salvation freely given in Jesus Christ and not in putting our faith in our faith or our own righteousness. God's word alone is sufficient to save sinners. Nothing other than Jesus is required to secure those consciences anxious about God's judgment.

80 pages, Paperback

Published February 11, 2025

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

With masterful brevity — the book is only 62 pages — Mark Mattes answers the question that hounds many a Christian: How do I know I’m saved?

Is it a decision I made? The holiness of my life? My overcoming of sin? My obedience to God’s Word?

No, Mark explains. Our assurance of salvation is built completely upon the saving work of Christ, done both for us and in us. We are the passive recipients, those born again. To God alone goes all the glory.

He has earned our salvation, called us to faith, given us faith, and sustains us in that faith by the work of his Holy Spirit. Our assurance is not in something that we have done or experienced, but in something done for us by Christ.

I cannot recommend this short book highly enough!

[Chandler Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

“If we are going to be true to Paul, we need to ask, what if the assurance of salvation doesn’t come down to looking for something within ourselves to confirm it? What if assurance of salvation wholly depended on Christ, completely separate from our feelings, decisions, or behaviors? This question isn’t asked to devalue our emotions, decisions, and behavior but instead ground the basis of the assurance of our salvation.”

“The fact that assurance of salvation is grounded in Christ alone, just like salvation itself is grounded in Christ alone, doesn’t mean Christians should slack from doing good. Instead, it allows those works to be truly good since we would no longer be doing them to secure the assurance of our salvation.”

This book is written from a Lutheran theological perspective. Overall, I believe that the author has a commendable and greatly needed purpose of grounding assurance of salvation in Christ rather than in the good works of believers (a notion so popular in contemporary evangelical and other Reformed circles). However, the author is so critical of a “decisionism” approach to faith and renders faith to be such a passive matter, that human agency in belief and faith is completely unclear in the author’s arguments. Interestingly, the author also argues for baptismal regeneration, which seems to me to contradict a Christocentric approach to assurance of salvation, as it casts the believer back on to himself or herself to get baptized in order to be saved.

Ultimately, I don’t think the author accomplishes his purpose well or clearly that he sets out to fulfill, even if I agree with his Christocentric aim.

[Brad Cooke · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I hold to most of the principles in the book I would not give this book to someone struggling with assurance of salvation. I found the arguments in several sections to be lacking depth of explanation. It would have been better to drop the baptism chapters to add more to the other chapters.

[Kyle Tomlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! A helpful resource to give decisionist theologians to show them that this is not what the Bible is saying. God chooses us; we don’t choose Him.