Thank you for your reply. And your previous ones also. I ought to have said that before.

I'm with you on most of this. Especially works as grounds for salvation (heresy!!!) versus evidence. Also the Arminian/Pelagian tendency to turn faith into a work. I was ostracized from a past church in part because of my efforts to explain that any form of works salvation, including making faith into a work, robs God of His Glory and at best comes close to damning heresy. (Especially, as you note, mixed with "Easy Believism" which gives so much false assurance to people who think they are saved because of a "magic prayer" but no demonstrable repentance or faith.)

I actually do have a great deal of guilt, remorse, and hatred for sin (especially my own), yet, seemingly, not the power to overcome it. Of course in some sense every person does. No temptation exists that God has not made a way out of. But I seem to almost never actually take it. I may regret it later but that doesn't stop me from doing it now. (Like Paul toward the end of Romans 7?)

I do believe that works evidence faith, but it is not so much the degree of works I see in others that convinces me of their salvation (or not), but their growth. Are they becoming visibly more like Christ over time? Or more like the devil?

It's honestly hard to tell whether someone who was outwardly decent and kind and moral before they professed Christ, has grown in his or her walk. In those cases - were it my place to judge this, which of course it isn't - I'd be looking not so much as love for man, but love for God. Does this person now have a love for Him, for His Word, for His infinite perfections and attributes, for His Bride, the Church? These are all things very unlikely to exist apart from salvation - though I could claim to have them to a *very* small degree. They certainly should if a person truly is saved . . he or she should be growing in these graces.

But sometimes a person comes from a really rough background, comes to Christ, and all their old life just melts away. Perhaps immediately or perhaps over time. I've seen both. But before they used to drink and do drugs and hurt people and openly mock and blaspheme God. They might even persecute His people as did Paul. Then God decides to draw that person to Himself, and all that old garbage goes away, and the person insists that he or she didn't make it happen, but, rather, it was all, from eternity past to eternity future, 100% the sovereign and undeserved Grace of God, and gives Him all the glory.

Yeah . . . David and Saul/Paul and Peter and of course no there are no perfect Christians in this life.

But would it ruin some "vast, eternal plan" if somehow it were possible to see even just the tiniest bit of Christ in me? Of His Holy Spirit, without Whom a person cannot be Christ's?

Or, even better, a LOT more of Him, and a LOT less of me?

Perhaps it is assurance I still struggle with and not salvation, but I've been warned by many pastors and friends that to try to speak as a Christian without any disclaimer, if I am truly not, would do exactly the opposite of glorifying God. Also, that without the indwelling Holy Spirit, most or all I think I know about Scripture is likely false, since all such things are spiritually discerned.

I've read bits of Bunyan, Bridge, Pink, and others on this subject, and certainly their thoughts seem more encouraging than my own. (E.g., several of them state that hatred for sin, as opposed for merely its consequences, are evidences of regeneration, and even that the saved person might see himself as becoming less holy over time rather than more, because the more we know God, the more we know of Him, and hence of His perfect holiness and righteousness and justice, against which no person can possibly stand other than by virtue of being covered in the righteousness of Christ.)

Yet I remain pretty convinced that no one who is truly regenerate would have spent close to 4 decades having consistently grown less rather than more like Christ.

He remains my only Hope. To whom else could we go? His are the words of eternal life. And I remain committed to doing my feeble best to learn His Word, to pray to Him (knowing He is in no way obligated to hear), and, insofar as possible without causing needless offense, to fellowship with His people. None of these things begin to atone for my least sin. Not all of the combined works of all of humanity, save for Christ's, possibly could. But they are described by our confession as being among the means of grace, and it might be that He will either save me, or if He already has then to begin the process of sanctifying me, through these means.

Aspiring student of Christ