For You

Where is forgiveness handed to you, and how would you know you received it?

For You begins with the confession that salvation is extra nos — outside us — and follows that confession all the way to an address. God does not hide his promise in the one place you cannot search reliably: your shifting feelings, your memory of a decision, or your judgment of your own sincerity. He puts the gift outside you, where it can be spoken, heard, touched, received, and trusted on the worst day as surely as on the best.

Through the preached Word, Baptism, Absolution, the Lord’s Supper, and the mutual consolation of Christians, the book distinguishes signs that merely point from instruments that deliver. It asks what God is handing over in each place and teaches the reader to listen for the words that make the Gospel personal: not forgiveness in general, but forgiveness for you.

Written as a companion to The Altar Call, the Anxious Bench, and the Empty Pew, this book takes the next step. After assurance has been moved out of the Christian’s decision and back into Christ, For You shows where Christ has promised to meet the sinner with a gift that does not change when feelings do.