We are saved by grace through faith Eph. 2:8

We are forever pardoned. Why is this so hard to accept? As Christians we live life by faith. We do not, or should not anyway, live life trying to acquire enough faith to finally come to the conclusion that we, through Christ, are forever pardoned.

Many still struggle, and, in that struggling labor to add greater righteousness to some perceived “spiritual account” through works. We are instructed to “live life by faith in “the Son of God who loved mankind and gave himself for mankind” Gal 2:20.

Why do we sometimes think that we can create righteousness with our own program?

Seven Steps to Greater Righteousness
1. Work Harder
2. Work Harder
3. Work Harder
4. Work Harder
5. Work Harder
6. Work Harder
7. Work Harder

This doesn’t work because it doesn’t do anything.

Faith is the only key that unlocks the assurance of believing from a natural standpoint the impossible reality that God has forgiven us because of what Jesus Christ accomplished for us. But for many that just seems to easy. 2Cor. 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] The old has gone, the new is here!” NIV

2Cor. 5:21 “For He hath made Him (Jesus) to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him (Jesus).”

“Well then where or how can I find the faith I need to know this assurance?”
That answer is simple...you can't find it because you've always possessed it. We were all born with it. Just as sure as you have DNA you were born with the measure of faith.

Assurance happens when the God-given, Spirit-wrought gift of faith enables each of us to believe that we are forever pardoned, that Christ’s righteousness is counted as our own, that in Christ God does not “count our sins against us.” 2Cor. 5:19

God planned this from the beginning, the proof is revealed in Romans 13:3 "For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith."

When we examine this scripture we see that our measured faith isn't any different than any other "measured faith" within others. We all have the same measure. Therefore we all possess the faith required to accept that our sins are forgiven. It’s why we sought out Jesus and our new creation birth. God’s demand for moral perfection has been satisfied by Christ for us (Matthew 5:17). Therefore, assurance can never be found by my looking inwardly. It can only happen by faith-believing in Him, who was “delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” Romans 4:25

Martyn Lloyd-Jones is helpful here: “We can put it this way: the man who has faith is the man who is no longer looking at himself and no longer looking to himself. He no longer looks at anything he once was. He does not look at what he is now. He does not even look at what he hopes to be as the result of his own efforts. He looks entirely to the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work, and rests on that alone. He has ceased to say, “Ah yes, I used to commit terrible sins but I have done this and that.” He stops saying that. If he goes on saying that, he has not got faith. Faith speaks in an entirely different manner and makes a man say, “Yes I have sinned grievously, I have lived a life of sin, yet I know that I am a child of God because I am not resting on any righteousness of my own; my righteousness is in Jesus Christ and God has put that to my account.”

True assurance, in other words, is grounded not on some word or work from inside us, but on the word of the gospel which comes from outside us and convinces us of what Jesus has done. Our assurance is anchored in the love and grace of God expressed in the glorious exchange: our sin for his righteousness. John Calvin wrote, “Faith is ultimately a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit.” And since our faith is always weak and wavering, we need to be reminded of this good news all the time as it is communicated through the preaching and teaching of God’s Word. There must be a clear, continuous, and unqualified pronouncement of the assurance of salvation on the basis of the fullness of the atonement of Christ.