Dear Editor, 

Thank you for your response to my letter in the January 15, 2021, Letters Edition of Sword and Shield. I have a few follow-up questions, but for the sake of brevity and clarity, I thought it best to bring them in two separate letters. In the first place, in answer to the question of how assurance can rightly be understood to spring from godliness, I appreciated the following points you made: 

1) That godliness must be viewed through faith as the work of the Holy Spirit in me. And, only when I see God’s work in me (though polluted through and through by my sinful nature, so that I could hardly call them good works) as part of His gift of salvation in Christ, am I assured by it. 

2) That godliness must not be viewed as an activity of man (by God’s grace) which results in a subsequent assurance, because then this assurance would be conditional and would inevitably waver and fail. 

3) That godliness is not motivated by the prospect of receiving assurance when we walk in godliness, but rather godliness is to be understood as a source of assurance in a more organic sense. When godliness is looked at organically from the big picture perspective, it has this in common with the other two elements in Canons 5.10, namely; that God’s gift of faith in His promises (1st element), God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, who bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God (2nd element), and God’s gift of a serious desire to preserve a good conscience and to perform good works (3rd element) are all gifts of salvation which God gives to His people in Christ, so that, as the recipients of those gifts, we can be sure that He who has regenerated, called, justified, and sanctified us will certainly preserve us to the end and glorify us. Using the organic picture of a living tree, we who are engrafted into Christ by faith and therefore bear fruit shall not in the end be hewn down and cast into the everlasting fires of hell, but we shall forever be united to Christ, who is our life, and shall be taken to live with Him where He dwells at the right hand of God in heaven. 

4) All this is what the Word of God reveals to us concerning our salvation: It consists of God taking us to Himself in Christ, revealing Himself to us as our God and Father (which He does by giving us faith in His promises and testifying in our hearts by His Spirit), living within us by His Word and Spirit so that by faith we desire to preserve a good conscience and to perform good works, and, finally, bringing us both in body and soul to be with Him in heavenly glory to all eternity. Again, this is God’s Word and His doing and therefore is absolutely sure to be fulfilled, and we can be certain that it will come to pass. Truly, God alone is true, sure and steadfast so that He alone is the source of all our certainty and assurance. 

However, while I understand that the Canons in Head 5 article 10 present all three elements as sources of assurance, the real question I have is whether they are all sources in the same way. I believe you begin to answer this question when you indicate that there are “great differences in each of the elements in their operations,” but I am wondering if you could expound upon that a little more. How does the way in which godliness operates to assure us differ from the way in which faith in God’s promises and the testimony of His Spirit operate to assure us? I struggle to answer this question because Canons 5.10 doesn’t really seem to indicate any differences between the three elements; yet, in light of the rest of the confessions, it seems like they must operate differently.

Perhaps the following will help you understand my question a little better:

As you state earlier in paragraph 4, “Assurance is the gracious application by the Holy Spirit of the testimony of the gospel to the believer’s heart. This work of the Holy Spirit is the gift of assurance in the consciousness of the believer.” In other words, the first two elements (God’s gift of faith in His promises and God’s gift of the Spirit who bears witness with my spirit that I am a child of God) are essentially the gift of assurance. However, I do not believe the same can be said of the third element. God’s gift of godliness is not the gift of assurance but is really the realization of that of which I am assured. I am assured that I am a child of God, and God’s gift of godliness is His gift of actually making me to be His child who is made more and more conformable to His image. I believe this is Hoeksema’s point in the quotation you provided—those whom the Spirit assures, He also sanctifies. The question then is, “How exactly does God’s gift of godliness assure us, and can it be understood as a source of assurance in the same way that faith in God’s promises and the witness of the Holy Spirit are sources of our assurance?”

I particularly struggled to answer this question when I considered the connection between Canons 5 article 9 and Canons 5 article 10. Since the time I wrote my letter in September, I have had quite a bit of time to study this, and it seems to me that the point of article 10 is that the faith according to which I am assured (in art. 9) is a faith that is not founded in some mystical revelation or in some philosophy of man, but is a faith that is founded in the promises of God Himself, which faith is sealed by the testimony of His own Spirit of promise. This is why my faith is an assured confidence that is absolutely certain of my eternal salvation. It is a faith in the promises of God as revealed in His Word after all! However, it would contradict BC art. 24 to say that my faith is also founded in my desire to preserve a good conscience and to perform good works. This third element must, therefore, function as a source of assurance in a much different way.

Although Canons 5.9 and 5.10 do not clearly spell out this difference, in light of HC QA 86, BC art. 22–24, and Canons 5.RE5, I understand the difference to be that, while God’s promises and the witness of the Holy Spirit with my spirit that I am a child of God are the foundation of my assurance of perseverance, my desire to preserve a good conscience and to perform good works in a confirming way assures me that I will be preserved to the end. His promise and testimony, which is sure and steadfast, is confirmed as it is carried out, or realized. Although I am already certain of His faithfulness, His faithfulness is confirmed as I see His faithfulness in action. This is more or less where I am at in understanding this article, but is this the proper way to understand Canons 5.10, or am I missing the point being made in this particular article? Please don’t hesitate to explain to me if I am wrong or missing some important connection between assurance and godliness.

Perhaps part of my struggle is also understanding why God’s gift of godliness is necessary as a source of assurance when I am already fully assured that I am and forever shall remain a child of God by faith in God’s promises and the testimony of the Holy Spirit in my heart. Perhaps you could clarify this for me as well.

Sincerely in Christ,

Sara Doezema

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REPLY

Dear Sara,

Thank you for your persistence with your questions along this important line of discussion. That you look for a more thorough answer than what I’ve given indicates that there are likely other readers who desire the same.

With all three sources of assurance, their real power is the power of faith. Or, to speak more properly, it is the power of faith according to faith’s only proper object, Jesus Christ. Since Jesus Christ is the only savior, every part and aspect of salvation is in him alone, including every part and aspect of assurance of salvation. Therefore, faith must include the full assurance of perseverance in that salvation.

More to the point of your question, for these three sources to be truly those out of which assurance of perseverance springs, it is necessary to see how these sources are completely related to Jesus Christ, the proper, sole object of faith.

The First and Third Sources of Assurance in Canons 5.10

First, since all the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ Jesus to the glory of God, faith in the promises of God is faith in Christ. This is an integral part of covenant doctrine and one of the chief reasons the covenant must be unconditional: Christ is the glorious head of that covenant. He is the promised seed of Abraham and Isaac. Christ is the true heir of the world, in whom Abraham and Isaac, as well as all their spiritual seed—all the elect—have their blessed, saving fellowship with the living God (Rom. 4:13; Gal. 3:16).

From the standpoint of faith in these promises of God, faith receives the substance of these promises because it receives Christ Jesus, in whom the promises have their ground. He is the one to whom God first made these promises in eternity, foreknowing the elect in Christ, predestinating them in him to be conformed to his image, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren (Rom. 8:29). He is the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament as the servant of Jehovah, who would work the works of Jehovah and whose works would be in behalf of the covenant people to save them out of their misery. He would accomplish those works as their vicarious substitute. “By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities” (Isa. 53:11). Our Lord’s death on the cross as a vicarious, substitutionary atonement is the complete ground of all the promises of the word of God. Those promises include the substance of the promises, in this particular respect assurance. But those promises also include all the administration of the substance of those promises, in this particular respect the giving of this assurance through the work of the Holy Spirit by his eternally appointed, blood-bought gift of faith (Jer. 31:31–34; Ezek. 36:25–28).

The one mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ, is the reason faith in God’s promises is identified in such a comprehensive way as bringing about assurance. It is not merely faith in certain promises of assurance. It is not merely faith in certain promises of the knowledge of assurance. It must be faith in all the promises of God. It must be faith in all the promises of God because they all have the same Lord Jesus Christ as their ground—Christ who is fully the believer’s through faith alone.

From a more practical viewpoint, this is why struggles of faith involve struggles of assurance. This is also why in these struggles, such as those identified in Canons 1.16, struggling saints are directed to the promises of God. To keep us from heresy at this point, it is crucial to emphasize that in the promises themselves is assurance. The source of assurance is not believing, but the source is the promises that are received through faith.

Here it is helpful to bring up the third source of assurance mentioned in Canons 5.10: “a serious and holy desire…to perform good works” (Confessions and Church Order, 175).

The Synod of Dordt described this desire as “serious and holy.” It is “holy” because it is a consecrated, Spirit-worked desire. It is “serious” because it is the fruit of the heart’s regeneration. It is the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart, where he works the desire of the new man in Christ, which new man of the heart is perfectly consecrated to God. Therefore, what proceeds out of this holy desire are the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23), and those fruits over against “the works of the flesh” (v. 19).

There are, then, two different relationships operating between this “sincere and holy desire…to perform good works” and “faith in God’s promises.”

First, we ought to say that in both of these relationships there is a relationship of complete dependency. There can be no such sincere and holy desire to preserve a good conscience and to perform good works without faith in the promises of God’s word. Faith in God’s promises must be first, and then the fruit of that faith is the sincere and holy desire. Put another way, good works can only be the fruit of faith and must be that fruit of faith consciously.

The first point of relationship is the word of Jesus Christ in John 15:5: “Without me ye can do nothing.” There is only one cause for the bearing of all the fruit of good works in the believer’s life, and that is Jesus Christ. Such is the spiritual underpinning of faith, the faith that rests in the promises of God, as those promises are sealed in the blood of the cross of Jesus Christ.

The second point of relationship is both the strength and the essential condition of all good works: gratitude. Such is the point made powerfully and practically in Romans 12:1–2, which calls believers to offer themselves up as living, spiritual sacrifices to God, proving by the mercies of Christ what is that good and acceptable and holy will of God. This is the reason for the glorious banner, “Of Thankfulness,” that heads the third section of the Heidelberg Catechism.

So, to speak very specifically to the question, the third source of the assurance of perseverance is rooted and grounded in the first source. The promises of the word of God, being the source to which faith goes for its blessed assurance, provide also the powerful desire by faith to do good works.

This relationship establishes a proper safeguard against a horrible abuse of this third spring of assurance.

Here a phrase must be addressed that has seen a great deal of abuse over the past few years in the Protestant Reformed Churches: in the way of. As the denominational synod indicated in 2018, there is a heretical use of the phrase in the way of and an orthodox use of the phrase. “Springs from” in Canons 5:10 represents the orthodox use of in the way of. The manner is organic. Another way to speak of “springs from” is spontaneously. Assurance springs up spontaneously out of the “sincere and holy desire to preserve a good conscience and to perform good works.”

The frequent biblical picture of a fruit-bearing tree is most helpful here. Psalm 1 is a powerful example: the inspired celebration of the blessedness of the man who is far from the wicked and who meditates in the law of his God. This man is compared to a fruitful tree planted by the rivers of water. That tree brings forth his fruit in his season.

What makes this man so blessed? Is it what he is doing? Is the cause of his blessedness that he keeps himself from the wicked, that he meditates in the law of his God day and night, delighting in it? Is the cause of his blessedness that he prospers in whatever he does? Not at all! His blessedness is in all those things. His blessedness is in all those things because they are all the works of Jehovah his God. Such is the fundamental truth of verse 6: “The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous.” This knowing is the way of Jehovah’s sovereign grace, the way of God’s knowledge of Abraham (Gen. 18:19) and God’s knowledge of his people saved by his grace alone (Eph. 2:10). For Jehovah knows the way of the righteous.

So it is also helpful to consider the heretical use of the phrase in the way of. This use rejects the “springs from” of Canons 5.10. This use rejects the organic, spontaneous relationship between assurance and good works. This use also divides what belongs together, separating good works from assurance. There are several ways in which this can be done.

Sometimes good works are separated from assurance with respect to time. If you do good works—worship, devotions, loving God and the neighbor, resisting sin and temptation—then you will get assurance or you will obtain more assurance. If you do these things, then you will prosper spiritually. Thus man’s blessedness in good works becomes man’s blessedness after good works. Sometimes this separation is worked backwards. The believer is invited to reflect on what he has done. Looking back on a life of good works, he can be assured that indeed he is a child of God.

Or the separation can be merely abstract or hypothetical. This is teaching concerning reason or motivation. Why does the believer need to do good works? Because he is saved (or experiences assurance) only in the way of good works. Here the question so controls the answer that the question creates the division that spoils assurance. In the believer’s consciousness is put the necessity to bend every effort to do good works in order to obtain assurance by doing them.

The worst form of separation between good works and assurance is the intimation that the believer’s need to do good works stands between him and God’s gift of assurance to him. This separation makes a way to that assurance. Along that way the believer must make progress. When he makes progress along that way by his good works, he receives assurance. The more progress he makes on the way by doing more and more good works, the more assurance he receives. God’s gifts wait upon man’s actions. The grace of assurance by faith alone is destroyed. This is another reason that the phrase in the way of is not helpful at all. The phrase is no measure of orthodoxy by itself.

This is why speaking organically of producing fruit, fruit springing forth, or bearing fruit is the proper teaching. This is why the word spontaneous is helpful. In and with the sincere and holy desire, there is also assurance. Assurance is in and with the good works in the way of doing them. Spontaneous means that there is no movement from the cause of good works to their effect of assurance. Just as much as good works are all wrought by God in his elect, so that they do them, so also is his gift of assurance given to his children.

Another way to see the same distinction between good works and assurance is to look at the definition of good works in Lord’s Day 33 of the Heidelberg Catechism. There are two useful points in that definition. First, the works are good because they “proceed from a true faith.” Second, the works are good because they are done to the glory of God (Confessions and Church Order, 122).

The first point, that these good works “proceed from a true faith,” is in harmony with the relationship between the first and third sources out of which the believer’s assurance of perseverance springs. Faith is first, as the spring is before the water that flows out of it and as the living tree is before the fruit that grows from its branches.

But what needs the emphasis here is that true faith looks to Christ. True faith looks to Christ for all the blessings and benefits of salvation. As faith looks always and only to Christ, it cannot look to self to find any goodness of good works. Faith is no self-reliance, let alone good-works reliance. Faith dwells not on the gifts but always seeks their divine giver.

The same thing is true of the holy direction of good works. Good works are those only that are done to the glory of God. They are not done for self. They are not done for the benefit of self. Good works cannot have competing motives: some benefit for the believer and some benefit for God. As faith receives from God in Christ through the operation of the Holy Spirit, so faith must give all glory to God alone. “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36).

Here is where the point you make about “confirming” assurance is important. Assurance is confirmed with good works because it is spontaneous with them. Here is the sharp difference between the first and the third sources of assurance. The first, the promises of God, are given to look at, to study, to meditate on, and that in the most direct manner. They ought to fill all of the believer’s vision. To do the same with good works, or even with the desire for them as “serious and holy,” would destroy all assurance.

Perhaps the analogy of the sacraments is helpful. Lord’s Day 25 uses similar language to describe the working of the Holy Spirit with respect to the sacraments in distinction from the preaching. While the Spirit “works faith” by the preaching of the gospel, he “confirms it” through the use of the sacraments (Confessions and Church Order, 108). That division can apply in the same respect to the first and the third sources of assurance. With respect to the sacraments, there is a warning given in both forms, a warning that reflects the instruction of Lord’s Days 27 and 29 of the Catechism. The warning with respect to baptism is that it may not be administered out of custom or superstition. The warning with respect to the Lord’s supper is not to eat without discerning the body of Christ. The warning is not to look at the sacrament but to look through it to see the proper object of faith, the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Just as it ruins the sacrament to look on the bread and wine instead of on Christ, so it must ruin the goodness of good works to make them anything more than confirmation.

The Second Source of Assurance in Canons 5.10

In a similar respect does the second source of assurance have its strength: spontaneously.

How precious is the language of scripture that is reflected in this second source! “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Rom. 8:16). How do we enter into these inner recesses of our hearts? What can we say about our own experience of these things? Can we sense in ourselves this operation of the “Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (v. 15)? Can we feel in ourselves our own spirits bearing witness with the strength of the Spirit of adoption? Can we say here or there? At this time or that time? Any affirmative answer to these questions must immediately take us from the solid rock of God’s word and throw us into the quicksand of sickly mysticism.

What is the point of Romans 8:16 and its use by the Canons in 5.10? Taken in the context of Romans 8, the believer’s triumph is to know that as he contemplates all his place as a child of God and all the treasures, riches, and gifts of his Father’s kingdom, the believer’s privilege is to know the blessed source of all that knowledge as the spontaneous production of the Spirit of Christ in him as the Spirit of adoption, bearing witness with his spirit that he is a child of God. It is exactly this blessed assurance because it is of God his Father and not of himself.

As with good works, it is possible to destroy also this second fountain of assurance. That possibility is along the same lines as with good works. To pry apart this witness and testimony of the Spirit with the spirit of the believer must be immediately to destroy this witness. One cannot speak of a before and after or of a here and there.

A powerful reminder of this necessary limit of self-knowledge is expressed in Canons 3–4.13:

The manner of this operation cannot be fully comprehended by believers in this life. Notwithstanding which, they rest satisfied with knowing and experiencing that by this grace of God they are enabled to believe with the heart, and love their Savior. (Confessions and Church Order, 169)

It is instructive that article 14 follows article 13 with a sharp denial of the division made by the Remonstrants, who disregarded this limitation. They did not rest satisfied but insisted on taking apart what God had joined together. They had to give man room in the work of his salvation. They rationalized that they alone could do justice to the rational, moral nature of man, that they alone could rescue man’s integrity from the determinism that would make of man a mere stock and block. Their rescue plan is clearly laid out in article 14. God did need to work his necessary grace. He must give man the offer of faith. Or he must bestow the power or ability to believe. Yes, faith must be by grace. But man must have his part, to be man. So man must have the ability to accept the offer of faith. Or he must have the responsibility to use his free will to bring into actuality the faith that God graciously gave in only power or ability.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a division can be noted among the operations of these three sources of assurance in the places they occupy in the believer’s life. First, faith in God’s promises has the believer before the scriptures as the word of truth. Whether reading the promises directly in God’s word, or meditating on them, or hearing them proclaimed in the preaching of the gospel, attending on them with a true faith brings assurance. In this regard this first source of assurance demonstrates its true power as being first. God’s promises are applied by the Spirit through his gift of faith to the consciousness of the believer.

Second, the witness of the Holy Spirit has a very different place. His operation for this witness is in the secret recesses of the believer’s heart. The result of this operation is only known by the believer in his consciousness and that in a very indirect manner. Though its operation takes place within the believer, the truth of its operation must be told to us in the revelation of scripture, the Spirit’s book. In the child of God, assurance is a glorious conviction he joyfully possesses by faith. From scripture he learns the powerful source of that conviction. 

Third, the sincere and holy desire to preserve a good conscience and to perform good works is integral to the whole life of the believer. It is the desire that flows out of the heart’s believing reception of Christ as the complete savior, blessing the believer with the peace and joy of believing. It is the desire that reflects itself in the course of his life. It is a desire to carry out the precepts of God’s law as the believer meets with the circumstances of his life as God providentially arranges them. This desire, wrought by the Spirit, excites the believer to a performance of all good works. The Spirit so strengthens the believer to fight the battle of faith. He knows the fountain to drink from for his nourishment. He knows that rest he needs in his God to strengthen himself for the daily battle.

These three sources together demonstrate the glorious way we have been created: to be redeemed and to be blessed in the assurance of our redemption running through our whole nature, to the praise of the glory of God’s grace in his beloved Son (Eph. 1:6).