- Total
Depravity - Predestination
and Election - Limited
Atonement - Irresistable
Grace - Preservation &
Perseverance
Whom the Spirit Assures
So much is assurance an aspect of salvation itself, that the question really is, “Whom does the Spirit save?”
The Spirit assures all of God’ elect, believing, sanctified people. He is the seal and earnest to all. He bears witness with their spirit to all the saints. All in Ephesus who heard and believed were sealed (Eph. 1:13). All in the congregation at Rome who received the Spirit of adoption by believing the gospel of grace were led by the Spirit and had the Spirit’s witness with their spirit that they were the children of God (Rom. 8:14-16). Every publican who cried out in repentance and faith, “God, be merciful to me the sinner,” went home justified in his (assured) consciousness (Luke 18:14). Christ taught, indeed, commanded, all who pray in faith to address God as “Our Father” (Matt. 6:9).
There may be times of doubt. Some believers struggle with doubt more than do other believers. Some may doubt for some time. One who doubts must not conclude that he or she is an unbeliever, unforgiven, unsaved, or even a reprobate, so long as he is troubled by his doubt, struggles with it, and seeks
deliverance from it in the gospel.
There are spiritual causes of doubt in a believer. He may, for a time, not be hearing the word and believing, because of indifference, or minding earthly things, or bitterness toward God. He may, for a time, not be living a holy life, because of worldliness, or yielding to some temptation to sin, or entrapment by the devil. He may be grieving the Holy Spirit, by hating a brother or sister, or discontentment with God’s ways with him, or fighting the Spirit’s assuring work by a determined doubting of his salvation. He may, for a time, be the especial target of the fieriest dart that Satan throws at the soul of one who believes and confesses the truth.
But this spiritual condition of the believer is unusual, abnormal, a weakness, a disease, and a severe temptation. From the disease, he must seek to be healed; against the temptation he must fight. Where the gospel of grace is purely, soundly, and rightly preached and where Reformed pastors carry out their pastoral work diligently and wisely, using the gospel of grace as the balm in Gilead, there will not be many who doubt their salvation, nor will the doubt of a few last for many years.[63]
It is false and pernicious teaching, that assurance is intended by God only for a favored few of His believing children and that the many ought to accept doubt as their portion for many years, perhaps their lifelong, in the will of God.
O believer, gratefully receive, and enjoy, assurance as the free gift of the Holy Spirit to you with and by His gift to you of faith in Jesus Christ as preached in the gospel.
Do not doubt that you have a right to assurance. God wills it. Christ earned it for you.
Do not quench the Spirit of assurance in you, by giving yourself over to doubt, as though doubt is the expected, even required, and therefore normal condition of believers.
Do not quench the Spirit of assurance either by listening to Puritan preaching that is forever questioning your assurance, forever challenging your right to assurance, forever sending you on a quest for assurance, and forever instilling doubt. The Spirit does not work assurance by means of a gospel of doubt.
Listen to the Spirit’s witness in you by the gospel of grace, and to the witness of your own spirit as the Spirit testifies to your spirit, and be certain — absolutely certain (which is the only certainty there is).
And cry out, with all believers, young and old, aged saints who have been members of the church all their lives and recent converts, godly parents and covenant children, “Abba, Father.”
63 Regarding the possibility of a lack of the experience of “an assured confidence of soul” concerning their own election and salvation in some believers, see the Canons of Dordt, I/16, in Schaff, Creeds, vol. 3, 584, 585. The Canons do not regard this doubt as common among believers, much less as the norm. The usual and normal experience of the saints is certainty of their own election and salvation: “[Certainty of their own election to glory is] the experience of the saints, who by virtue of the consciousness of their election rejoice with the apostle and praise this favor of God (Eph. 1); who according to Christ’s admonition rejoice with His disciples that their names are written in heaven (Luke 10:20); who also place the consciousness of their election over against the fiery darts of the devil, asking: ‘Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect?’ (Rom. 8:33)” (Canons of Dordt, I, Rejection of Errors/7, in The Confessions and the Church Order of the Protestant Reformed Churches, 161, 162). Certainty of their own election and salvation is the usual and normal experience of all saints, of saints as saints, not of a specially favored, or especially industrious, severely limited caste of saints. Certainty of their own salvation is the usual and normal experience of young saints as well as old saints; of new converts as well as church members of long standing; of those who are the least holy as well as the holiest in the congregation. The Canons affirm this “consciousness” and “certainty” of the saints of their own personal election and salvation as the “fruit” of election itself, against the “error” that denies certainty of one’s own election and salvation “in this life,” except for a certainty “which depends on a changeable and uncertain condition.” To deny the certainty of their own election and salvation, “in this life,” of many, if not most, believers as long as they live and to teach that those few believers who do obtain certainty do so only after many years of doubt, and then only on the basis of an ineffable “experience” (a highly “changeable and uncertain condition”), are not only to strip faith of half its essence (“a hearty trust”), despoil Jesus Christ of part of His saving work—the experiential part (“he also assures me of eternal life”), denigrate the work of the Holy Spirit (He is the Comforter, who “comforts me”), and rob believers of peace (“peace I leave with you”), but also to make election itself ineffective and fruitless: the certainty of election and salvation is the “fruit” of election. [Return]
Contents