The Reality of Assurance
What is assurance of salvation? Many Christians have believed that we cannot have it in this lifetime. The official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church is that it is anathema—that is, a false doctrine worthy of damnation! Others assume that it can only be a presumption. While a Christian can go his or her whole life being fully and irreversibly saved, the same can lack assurance. Therefore, our assurance of salvation and the reality of salvation are not to be confused.
The Westminster Confession of Faith devotes an entire section (Chapter XVIII) to the Assurance of Grace and Salvation. We may divide its four articles into (1) the reality of assurance, (2) the nature of assurance, (3) the attainment of assurance, and (4) the challenges to assurance. I will take this first writing to examine the first article.
Assurance is God’s Initiative
As XVIII.1 reads, “Although hypocrites and other unregenerate men may vainly deceive themselves with false hopes and carnal presumptions of being in the favour of God and estate of salvation, which hope of theirs shall perish: yet such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him, may in this life be certainly assured that they are in a state of grace, and may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, which hope shall never make them ashamed.”
Notice first how the Westminster divines begin their statement with a distinction, a contrast, an anticipation of the suspicion. They accepted the burden to make plain what this assurance was not. This assumes up front that there is a counterfeit. There is a phony in every area of life. Why should we expect anything different when it comes to the most excellent and important things? In other words, this contrast is between true assurance and false assurance.
Interestingly, that Roman Catholic statement against assurance, at the Council of Trent, did not wholly deny that there was such a thing at all. There was a qualification—only that someone has “learned this by a special revelation.”1 Do we have good news for Rome! It is precisely in a special revelation that we read,
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace withGod through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God … and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Rom. 5:1-2, 5).
In two places, the Apostle Paul teaches that one of the main ways that this gift of the Spirit ministers assurance to our hearts is through that very longing to know. It is described as a “cry” toward one who is called “Abba! Father!” (Rom. 8:16; Gal. 4:6) In other words, you would not cry out to a Father you did not have. Strangers would feel no such constant and desperate urge. The constant refrain of John’s epistle is “we know” (1 Jn. 2:3, 3:14, 18, 19, 24, 5:13), and also “we have confidence” (3:21). Now the context of John is the familial love of God to adopted children and how that ought to affect us in various ways. John speaks to his readers as ones that he knows have been struggling with this very thing. So he says, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (3:1).
One very crucial passage comes from John’s Gospel. It is the passage that John Bunyan uses to launch what became—in my opinion—the clearest exposition on true assurance one can read. Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ (1681) is based on the words of John 6:37, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”
Now there are many objections that the devil, his servants, and even our own noisy conscience, can bring against a personal application of these words. Bunyan spends his entire book knocking down each of them. I will mention only one set of opening thoughts. As he reflected on the words about the Father “giving” such ones as us to Christ, four lessons must be taken:
First, “That he is able to answer this design of God, namely, to save them to the uttermost sin, the uttermost temptation, etc. (Heb. 7:25).
Second, “that he is and will be faithful in his office of Mediator, and that therefore they shall be secured from the fruit and wages of their sins, which is eternal damnation, by his faithful execution of it.
Third, “that he is, and will be, gentle and patient towards them, under all their provocations and miscarriages.”
Fourth, “that he has sufficient wisdom to contend with all those difficulties that would attend him in his bringing of his sons and daughters to glory.”2
That the Father initiates assurance for His children goes hand in hand with the Father initiating redemption in His chosen Redeemer. In meeting us where we most need His help, He gives us His very best. In fact, He gives us to the Son. Nothing could be more secure than that which God possesses, and in which His own glory is at stake.
There is a False Assurance
There is a false assurance carried around by those who think nothing of God, or next to nothing. Of these it says, “Such are the paths of all who forget God; the hope of the godless shall perish” (Job 8:13). Many have been led to believe that “being a Christian” is a result of a one-time decision or a cultural identity. In our own time and place, this presumption has been exacerbated by what we call “easy-believism” and what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace,” which, if we can treat those distinctly, combine to persuade us that God’s “love” for us amounts to His provision of Jesus as a suburban life coach.
Ask such a professing believer to examine the state of their soul and you will quickly hear all of the scruples of their scruple-free religion. They will discover a Puritanical passion for the things of themselves that they refuse to have for spiritual matters; and in their animated defense, you will discover their creed, the exact mantra of their catechism, and ultimately their hope. In that one carnal religious passion is the choking out of those scriptural admonitions to “Examine yourself, to see whether you are in the faith” (2 Cor. 13:5). It is not only to take offense where none is given, but it is to miss out on that most familial activity of watching out for each other. Nothing could be so false in love as to ensure that no eternal weight enters our conversations.
There is a Certain Difference
While we will get into the nature of assurance in the next section, we should take note that the point of our distinction (and that made by the Westminster divines) is not to leave us in limbo. It is not simply that there is a difference. The point is that we can discern it. God has made it crystal clear. I will frequently say that the gospel is not a mirror, but a window. You will note that even in this first article of WCF XVIII, the use of the word “hope.” Is it being used in its objective or subjective sense? In other words, is it using the word hope as the substance of what one’s hope is in, or is it the sense or the feeling that one has in expectation of that future good? It may be difficult to tell at first.
Of the false assurance we are told of “false hopes … which hopes of theirs shall perish.” About the genuine article it says that these “may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, which hope shall never make them ashamed.” Both are actually in play. One cannot call a hope “true” or “false” without indicating that the connection between the personal expectation and the happy ending is either a reality or an illusion. That is the first crucial thing to catch about assurance. It is the same crucial thing about the gospel. When God assures us of His love, He does not give us a mirror. He gives us a bigger, clearer window. He shows us Christ, and is good to us for His sake above all.
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1. The Council of Trent, Canon 16 on Justification.
2. John Bunyan, Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2011), 18, 19, 20, 22.
