The Attainment of Assurance

Our third part to this study begins with that next section of the Westminster Confession, in Chapter XVIII, Section 3.

“This infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties before he be partaker of it: yet, being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may, without extraordinary revelation, in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto. And therefore it is the duty of everyone to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure; that thereby his heart may be enlarged in peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, in love and thankfulness to God, and in strength and cheerfulness in the duties of obedience, the proper fruits of this assurance: so far is it from inclining men to looseness.”

This goes further in answering a question that we left off with: Why is there more assurance in one believer than in another? Or, why do some not have assurance at all? Why do we not receive the fullness of it when we first come to Christ? One short answer will be similar to our answer about reconciling unconditional election to this or that condition, whether it be prayer or faith or evangelism or good works. The Reformed have often boiled it down to a maxim: The same God who ordains the ends ordains the means.

God could go straight to the ends. He could decree any number of things with no intermediate steps. As Charnock of God’s dominion, “When he uses creatures, it is not out of want of their help but for the manifestation of his wisdom and power. What he does by his subjects, he can do by himself.”1 So it is with those secondary causes in assurance.

We call those means “ordinary” that God has ordained for His church to be regularly engaged in, and we say that these are “of grace” because in them God communicates spiritual nourishment. These are the ways that we grow. We may grow through other experiences, like suffering or resisting temptation, and these can even be called ordinary in terms of their frequency. However, Christ has ordered His local church to be, in one sense, a spiritual gymnasium, with its chief training regime centered around the word, sacraments, and prayer. 

The Means are Not Extraordinary

Here is the relevant expression: “without extraordinary revelation,” but by “the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto.” How could such ordinary means possibly beat extraordinary means in something like assuring us that we belong to God? This seems counterintuitive to many. Would not a voice or a vision do better? While we are at it, why not demand a direct transport into heaven upon regeneration! But if we can see some of the reasons that God leaves us in the world, with respect to sanctification and witness, we have our first clue as to why He would not make things so simple when it comes to assurance either.

So it is with things like training in physical health. There comes a time when we realize that regular healthy eating and simple exercises work and that faddish diets and grueling regiments do not. Analogies could be made to what tends to work in just about every sport as well. Does flash and individual stardom win games? No. Fundamentals and teamwork do it every time. If we take the time to think about it, just about everything in life works like this.

The burden of proof is really on the person claiming some form of “super-spiritualism.” If we are not careful, we will begin to approach God for assurance with the same attitude and words the Pharisees took to Jesus: “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?” (Jn. 6:30)

That the word is designed as an assuring means of grace is plain: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 Jn. 5:13). Apart from the word, the experience, however sensational, is left to the interpreter. Why should a smaller explosion—large in comparison to your own eyes—be any more a sign of God’s love for you than the many geological and astronomical wonders that have been going on from the beginning of time? The problem circles back to the more general necessity of Scripture.

The Means are Our Duty 

“And therefore it is the duty of everyone to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure.” The end here is verbatim 2 Peter 1:10: “Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.” There can be no doubt that the Scriptures put self-examination in the imperative: “Examine yourselves” (2 Cor. 13:5). For some, the objection is purely distaste. The very idea can only be morbid, self-congratulatory, or else self-punishing, depending on the person. But always, it is viewed in the negative.

J. C. Ryle wrote,

“Everybody can say, ‘I hope’ … Let us see to it that our hope is ‘good,’ and ‘lively,’ and one ‘that maketh not ashamed’ (2 Thess. 2:16; 1 Pet. 1:3; Rom. 5:5). Let us consider our ways. Let us not shrink from honest, searching inquiry into the condition of our souls. If our hope is good, examination will do it no harm. If our hope is bad, it is high time to know it, and to seek a better.”2

It is quite true that the Scriptures are often directed against presumption, yet wherever God sees His people in Scripture in doubt, He is quick to cast a merciful light and often as a duty: “Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God” (Isa. 50:10). The very language is another assuring grace.

If any of us had a loved one trapped in a pit or locked in the dark, we might direct to an opening or lower a rope, but included would be an imperative, a duty. “I’ve got you” would be joined to “Grab hold!” or “Right there!” This is fundamentally what is meant by the means of grace being a duty—Grab hold and right there. Where else would you look if you knew that God Himself has said He would meet you especially here and not there. If we are serious about assurance, then we would pay serious attention to God’s way of giving it. 

In addition to meeting our own self-interest, finding assurance is also a duty because of how it enables other duties. Think about it. How well does someone get on with their many daily tasks if they are suffering under extreme anxiety or depression? There is a parallel in our spiritual tasks, except that here one has a greater sense of exposure. We can fake it at work. We can push off addressing relational tensions by sheer will power or by external criteria. But when the relationship in question is between God and our souls, we reach the heights of fraud in attempting to do His will through the most menacing hostilities. But are we at war anymore? That is the question. 

In his own sermon on assurance, Charles Spurgeon put it in this way.

“Men will do little for what they doubt, and much for what they believe. If you have lost your title deeds, and you do not know whether your house is your own or not, you are not going to spend much in repairs and enlargements. When you know that heaven is yours, you are anxious to get ready for it. Full assurance finds fuel for zeal to feed upon.”3

Paul prays that the Ephesians believers would be “rooted and grounded in love” (Eph. 3:17). The love of God for the believer is something to be rooted and grounded in. As much as being loved by God is an end, our own sense of it is also a means. Without it, we would either give up or else work by pride. The author of Hebrews makes this very connection: “And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish” (Heb. 6:11-12). Attaining assurance is a duty that enables all our other duties. 

The Means “Enlarge” the Fruit of the Spirit in Us

The Westminster Divines use a great word here—enlarge. While there is nothing deficient in God’s work in us, there remains something deficient about us. I say this because of a misgiving that many have about an ongoing work of the Spirit. One of the results of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements of the past century, both the excesses and the basic way of thinking, is that it has created a reactionary class of Christians who wind up throwing away the whole spiritual baby with the experiential bathwater.  To say that those fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, etc.—“grow” in us is not to speak of a growth of the Spirit. He is in need of no growth. But it, first of all, assumes greater and lesser degrees of maturity in us.

Others shy away not because of experientialism, but by a mistaken false dilemma about certainty. Either one has it or else not. To this R. L. Dabney replied:

“Any valid portion of such evidence is proper ground of certain conviction. Does this imply that the evidence cannot be increased, so that the certainty shall have a wider basis? By no means. So, although it was certainty before, it now becomes a more satisfactory certainty.”4

If we view the substance of hope as something like a drink, and the corporate means of grace as the glass through which this is not only seen but tasted, then it will make sense why the way the Bible describes the substance would come by means that it also describes.

To take one framework, Ryle offers five marks of a good hope. A good hope is, first, “a hope that a man can explain”; second, “a hope that is drawn from Scripture”; third, “a hope that rests entirely on Jesus Christ”; fourth, “a hope that is felt inwardly in the heart”; and fifth, “a hope that is manifested outwardly in the life.”5

Now, I can imagine all sorts of people claiming that they can have one or a few of these off on their own. No doubt God often does grant us these in our private lives, but to take all of them together, and to see them feeding off of each other, and open to the feedback of brothers and sisters, and opportunity to be exercised in service toward one another, well, that makes the whole point. 

When we have learned from the means of grace in the assembly, we are prepared to rightly exercise the corresponding spiritual exercise in private. When we have prayed together, we cultivate the expectation that the relationship implied is more real than any other. The Psalmist says, “I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me” (Ps. 77:1). When our ministers faithfully exposit the Scriptures, we more profitably mine those same pages for truth. As we do, the Spirit who assures us in every other respect has been leading us into all truth according to the promise to real Christians (cf. Jn. 6:45; 14:26; 15:26; 16:13-15; 1 Jn. 2:20, 27).

In closing, we can bring these points together in the words of the Psalmist: “I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart!” (Ps. 119:32) Where God’s love has driven out fear, there is no internal obstacle from obedience. There may be many obstacles beyond us, but the sense of dread that we are not right with God—those are really the only chains of the devil that have any lasting weight.

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1. Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, II:1408-09.

2. J. C. Ryle, Old Paths (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1985), 2013.

3. Charles Spurgeon, “The Blessing of Full Assurance,” Sermon on 1 John 5:13, May 13th, 1888

4. R. L. Dabney, Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1985), 700.

5. Ryle, Old Paths, 90-100.