The present ambiguity of the new life in Christ demands the return of Christ to complete the work of redemption already begun. The central theme of Pauline eschatology is the consummation of God's saving purpose. Apart from the return of Christ and the inauguration of the Age to Come, God's saving work remains unfinished. Real salvation is not only justification. It cannot be isolated from regeneration, sanctification and, ultimately, glorification.
Salvation is an ongoing process as much as it is a past event.
Genuine assurance comes from seeing the Holy Spirit s transforming work in one s life, not from clinging to the memory of some experience. Who was announced by the prophet Isaiah. For He was truly the splendour of the light, and the Word of God. This was not for man to say, but for the living God, Who truly vouchsafes life, and gives the Holy Spirit. And if any one believes not that death is abolished, that Hades is trodden under foot, that the chains thereof are broken, that the tyrant is bound, let him look on the martyrs deporting themselves in the presence of death, and taking up the jubilant strain of the victory of Christ.