Assurance: The Most Persistent Question

As Christians get older, not only does the allure of this world’s promises become increasingly hollow, but the imposing fangs of skeptical assaults on the faith even lose their bite. Life is a small and single drop, falling fast into eternity’s ocean. The world, considered in itself, fails to impress. Old fears, like old hopes, fade into the background. But one question will not stop following us around.

Can I be sure that I am saved?

There is no magic bullet to slay the discouraging pursuer. Reformed types will answer with this or that part of the doctrines of grace. Non-Reformed types, at their best, will answer with the various spiritual fruit we are given to examine in Scripture. The more seasoned among the Reformed will know that it is a constant interplay between the two: the subjective fruit and the objective gospel. But before we go on to explain that, we first want to be very clear about our central answer —

Yes. God does grant assurance to his children in this life.

This was a major contention of the Reformation, as the Council of Trent declared that, “If any one saith, that a man, who is born again and justified, is bound of faith to believe that he is assuredly in the number of the predestinate; let him be anathema” (Trent, Session 6. Canon XV). In response, hear the testimony of the Canons of Dort and Westminster Confession on this truth.

Assurance of this their eternal and unchangeable election to salvation is given to the chosen in due time, though by various stages and in differing measure. Such assurance comes not by inquisitive searching into the hidden and deep things of God, but by noticing within themselves, with spiritual joy and holy delight, the unmistakable fruits of election pointed out in God’s Word — such as a true faith in Christ, a childlike fear of God, a godly sorrow for their sins, a hunger and thirst for righteousness, and so on {First Point of Doctrine, Art. 12}

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 {WCF, XVIII.1}.

As we move from the fact of assurance to the means of pursuing it, we want to notice two sides of the coin. There is the objective root and there is subjective fruit. The objective root is the gospel accomplished, while the subjective fruit are those spiritual affections that are birthed in us as gradual blessings of that gospel. While the objective root will be our ultimate answer to the devil and to our noisy conscience, we begin with the fruit. In our spiritual youth it will be what we run into first. And there is never a point when such experiential questions become unimportant. The new birth is a literal new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). And, after all, a new life form must look like something! We would expect it to show up in the real world. Heavenly affections and Christ-honoring actions follow conversion.

THE SUBJECTIVE FRUIT: SPIRITUAL AFFECTIONS

It is a mistake to think that this fruit does not matter, or that examining such fruit amounts to morbid introspection. It may if we are not careful. But it does not follow by the nature of the case, and to fail to examine such signs of life at all is sheer ignorance and disobedience to Scripture. Paul says, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves” (2 Cor. 13:5) and Peter says, “Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall” (2 Pet. 1:10). Some texts speak of fruit as internal affections or dispositions, such as that “fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians 5:22-23. In another famous passage, Jesus speaks of fruit in a person that can be viewed by other persons, from the outside.

“You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit” (Mat. 7:16-18).

Are we to conclude that the Apostles commended to us morbid introspection in ourselves? No more than our Lord, by this metaphor, was commending our navel-gazing of others. Not only is this fruit inspection an imperative. It is given for our own good. It answers to a basic need that we all have: to know in our hearts that we are loved by God.

Now although external fruit (or “good works”) will ultimately operate by the same principle, there are good reasons why the main thing in view by these spiritual fruit for assurance are internal affections. They will of course manifest themselves into action in the visible world. But those can also be faked. There are counterfeit works and, frankly, there are counterfeit internal states as well. Jonathan Edwards knew this very well. He wrote the Religious Affections (1746) in large part to answer critics of the Awakening on the ground that emotive responses are not necessarily saving works of the Spirit. Indeed they are not. And so a profound search for criteria was sketched out by Edwards.

For our purposes, we can say that the Bible speaks of certain dispositions of the heart in a way that can only apply to someone who is born again. Each of these are described in different contexts and words. Consequently we have to make inferences about their relevance to assurance. Let us take but a few.

1. Approval of God's commands to the point of love (and corresponding hatred of sin). “I agree with the law, that it is good” (Rom. 7:16; cf. 8:13).

2. Desires that are in conflict with worldly desires. “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Gal. 5:16-17).

3. A childlike longing to discover (and benefit from) God's fatherly acceptance. “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom. 8:15-16; cf. Gal. 4:6).

4. A love for Christ's salvation. “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Pet. 1:8-9).

5. A love for Christ's person. “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed” (1 Cor. 16:22). This passage implies the blessed state of anyone who does love Jesus. It does so by contrast.

So, whether we are speaking of 1. love of God’s commandments and hatred of one's own sin, 2. that struggle against the flesh by the Spirit, 3. looking to God as one’s own Father, 4. the experience of joy at the thought of salvation being complete, or simply 5. our love for Jesus himself, we should first note two important things.

None of these internal realities are possible of the sinful nature and none of these realities are perfected in this lifetime. Taking these both as true and taking these both together is more than a game-changer. It's a life-changer!

R. C. Sproul is very helpful here in posing to us the question of whether we love Christ perfectly or whether we love him at all. The reason that this is relevant for loving Jesus will hold true in the other affections as well. If we love Christ at all, then the Spirit is at work in us. The world does not know Christ. Therefore the world cannot love him at all. And so on down the line with the other genuine spiritual affections. The least flickering of such spiritual sparks come from our Father who is in heaven (cf. Mat. 16:17). Seeing and understanding and fearing and treasuring and being concerned about such things are the actions of a new heart. Be assured.

THE OBJECTIVE ROOT: GOSPEL ACCOMPLISHMENT

Now very often when we start thinking about these qualities that are real inside of us, especially on a bad day when we have committed more obviously terrible sins, the devil will try to confuse the matter for us. He seizes any opportunity to twist the fruit of the genuine to their rotten side. There is a truth in the accusation, of which we feel the weight. “Did you really honor your parents by taking them that meal? Your blood was boiling the whole time there. ‘You surrender all,’ do you? Why don’t you add to that song the line about all that paycheck you won’t surrender?” And with many other such counter-evidences our conscience testifies against us. What shall we say to these imperfect fruit?

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything (1 Jn. 3:19-20).

For good reason Charles Hodge said, “Many sincere believers are too introspective. They look too exclusively within, so that their hope is graduated by the degree of evidence of regeneration which they find in their own experience. This, except in rare cases, can never lead to the assurance of hope.”1 In fact when Hodge gets to listing what the most sure evidences are for our personal salvation, four of the five mentioned are all objects of God’s gracious character or saving work outside of us, and the fifth, while inside, is still the working of the Spirit of adoption.2

Simply put, the internal evidences of salvation are not what save us. They are signs of the thing, but they are not the thing itself. Our awareness of love for Christ, or hatred of our own sin, or desire to honor God—these will all appear to us to come and go. It is at such dark moments that we have to really know the gospel.

Paul speaks of our “standing” in the gospel. More than that, he speaks about it as if it were a progressive kind of standing: a belief that keeps on believing: “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain” (1 Cor. 15:1-2). Although there is a warning here, there is also an invincible solid ground for those who heed the warning.

This belief in the gospel becomes a main fruit of assurance. Why? In the first place, it is because personally trusting in what Christ did for us is not something that an unregenerate enemy of God does. It is not merely that, “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3), but also that “to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). Faith that is knowledge, assent, and personal trust in the work of Christ is a saving faith. Jesus says about such faith that,

whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life (Jn. 5:24).

Such personal trust in God’s promise is explained in Scripture as a work of the Holy Spirit. If you have that, you just are saved and can never be anything but saved. Think of it this way. All who come to faith are justified, but all who are justified are also glorified (Rom. 8:30). So none can lose justification.

That brings us to the second reason why gospel belief establishes the roots of assurance. As our knowledge of the good news increases, the perfect work of Christ overshadows our many imperfect works. The Scriptures portray the objective work of Christ as a focus of our assurance.

“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (Jn. 6:37-40).

What all of this leads to is the character of God's own word. Should we be assured if God appeared to us right now and told us that we are his children and that he forgives us? If our answer is Yes to that question then our answer ought to also be Yes to 1 John 1:9 and 3:1, for these are also God speaking directly to us!

The Apostle John writes, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1:9), or later on: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 Jn. 3:1). First he says that if we confess our sins, he forgives us. Next he tells us to See, or Look, and calls us his children. Who says so? God says so. These words are his words. Who are you going to believe—God's word or your failures to live up to it?

The purpose of drawing out our assurance with the greatest clarity is not to suggest that it is easy. Assurance must be discovered by effort, and only those who feel the sting of doubt will yearn for it. The quest for assurance of salvation is really a battle for believing God. There can be no doubt from reading the New Testament that God has a care to make his beloved children find such comfort.

Assurance itself bears fruit. Sproul wrote that,

The practical reason for looking for assurance of our salvation is to enhance our sanctification. The Christian who is not sure is more vulnerable to every wind of doctrine. People who are able to stand in times of adversity are those who have things settled.3

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A very helpful teaching series on The Assurance of Faith can be found here by Dr. Joel Beeke.

1. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, III.16.8

2. Hodge, Systematic Theology, III.16.8

3. R. C. Sproul, Truths We Confess, Volume Two (Philipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 2007), 233.