Theopedia

Assurance of salvation

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 John 5:13)

Assurance of salvation is the settled confidence, wrought by the Holy Spirit, that a believer is presently in a state of grace and will be kept in it to the end. It rests on the inward evidence of the graces of the Spirit in the believer’s life together with the Spirit’s own testimony to the believer’s spirit that he is a child of God (Rom. 8:16).1 Assurance is not the same thing as saving faith itself, and it is distinct from eternal security: faith lays hold of Christ for salvation, while assurance is the further, ordinarily attainable confidence that one has in fact done so.2

Confessional Definition

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith devotes its eighteenth chapter, “Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation,” to the doctrine. It first distinguishes a true believer’s assurance from the false hopes of “temporary believers, and other unregenerate men,” who “may vainly deceive themselves with false hopes and carnal presumptions of being in the favour of God.” Those who “truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity… may in this life be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace.”3

This certainty is not mere optimism. The confession is explicit that it “is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope, but an infallible assurance of faith,” and it names three grounds for it together: “the blood and righteousness of Christ revealed in the Gospel,” “the inward evidence of those graces of the Spirit unto which promises are made,” and “the testimony of the Spirit of adoption, witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God.”4 Christ’s finished work is the objective ground; a life bearing the marks Scripture attaches to grace is the inward evidence; the Spirit’s own witness is added to both.

The confession then draws two further distinctions. First, assurance is not part of the essence of faith itself, so that a person may be a true believer “long, and conflict with many difficulties” before attaining full assurance, yet it is ordinarily attainable “in the right use of means,” and every believer has a duty to pursue it, since it strengthens rather than loosens obedience (“so far is it from inclining men to looseness”).5 Second, once possessed, assurance is not invulnerable. It may be “shaken, diminished, and intermitted” by negligence, by a particular sin that wounds the conscience, by sudden temptation, or by God’s own withdrawal of “the light of his countenance.” Even so, the confession holds that a true believer is never left destitute of “the seed of God and life of faith,” so that assurance may in time be revived and the believer is preserved in the meantime “from utter despair.”6

Biblical Basis

John writes his first epistle so “that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13), treating assurance as a normal, attainable outcome of genuine faith rather than presumption. The same epistle offers tests by which a believer may examine himself: love of the brethren, obedience, and a heart not condemning him before God (1 John 2:3; 3:14, 18-21). Paul also commands believers to “give diligence to make your calling and election sure” (2 Pet. 1:10), implying both that assurance can be sought and that it is not automatic.

Paul grounds assurance directly in the Spirit’s own testimony: “The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Rom. 8:16). Hodge reads this witness as internal to the believer’s own consciousness rather than some separate audible communication: the Spirit produces in the believer both the graces that are the marks of sonship and the settled conviction that they are his.1 Bavinck likewise ties assurance to the whole complex of the Spirit’s work in the believer, from adoption to sanctification: union with Christ carries with it “the assurance of sonship by the witness of the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 8:15-16; Gal. 4:6; 2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:13, 4:30).7

Historical Development

Rome teaches that ordinarily no one can be certain of his own final salvation without a special revelation, since justification is treated as a process of infused righteousness that admits of increase or loss, and good works are meritorious rather than simply evidential.8 Bavinck traces this to Rome’s doctrine of grace as “a quality or supernatural power infused in human beings,” enabling them to merit “heavenly blessedness by the merit of condignity.” In that framework, assurance would mean presuming to know that one’s own accumulated merit is sufficient, which the Council of Trent itself declined to guarantee.9

The Reformers and their confessional heirs rejected this uncertainty as foreign to the gospel, but Reformed divines still distinguished the possession of faith from the further, ordinarily-attainable gift of full assurance. Watson’s exposition of the doctrine, later summarized in the confession’s own paragraphs, treats assurance as “the Flower which grows out of” the “Seed” of sanctification: really possessed by every true believer in some degree, yet not necessarily present “in the first moment” of a person’s conversion, and capable of being “shaken” without the believer’s underlying union with Christ ever being lost.2 Watson also distinguishes true assurance from presumption: true assurance “flows from Humiliation for Sin,” is “built upon a Scripture-basis,” and “always keeps the Heart in a lowly posture,” where presumption arises without any such humbling and breeds pride rather than holiness.10

Objections and Responses

If assurance can be lost, was it ever real? The confession answers that a believer’s assurance, not his standing in grace, is what fluctuates: even when assurance is “shaken, diminished, and intermitted,” the believer is never left “destitute of the seed of God and life of faith.”6 Watson makes the same point by likening the shaken believer to “a Ship [that] lies safe at Anchor, yet may be a little shaken by the Wind.”2

Does teaching assurance encourage careless living? The confession denies this directly, holding that assurance produces “peace and joy in the Holy Spirit… and cheerfulness in the duties of obedience,” and is “so far… from inclining men to looseness.”5 Watson makes the same point from the opposite direction: since real assurance keeps the heart humble and grateful, a bold indifference to sin is itself evidence of presumption rather than assurance.10

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), chap. 16, “Faith.” ↩ ↩2

  2. Thomas Watson, A Body of Practical Divinity: Consisting of Above One Hundred and Seventy-Six Sermons on the Lesser Catechism (London: Thomas Parkhurst, 1692), 201-202, “Of Assurance.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 18, “Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation,” para. 1. ↩

  4. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 18, para. 2. ↩

  5. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 18, para. 3. ↩ ↩2

  6. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 18, para. 4. ↩ ↩2

  7. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 18, “Calling and Regeneration.” ↩

  8. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 20, “Justification, Sanctification, and Perseverance.” ↩

  9. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 17, “Order of Salvation.” ↩

  10. Watson, Body of Practical Divinity, 202. ↩ ↩2