Introduction
Often in this life a child of God struggles to know that salvation is truly his. A child of God can struggle with assurance. To doubt is sin, and sin is in our natures. Most of his life the child of God does not live in the full assurance of his faith. He keeps his eyes on earthly things, not on heavenly things. Very rarely does he live hating sin. There is barely the desire to go to heaven. He seems to love the things of this world. But we must not conflate our doubt or our assurance with feelings. Men’s feelings change from day to day. Even small inconveniences can sour our moods. This does not mean that God’s attitude toward us has changed. Assurance and doubt are strictly spiritual matters.
The believer knows the truth and understands that God is sovereign in all things; the believer knows that God alone chose those who are saved. The believer can do nothing to change God’s sovereign plan. What if he were chosen for damnation? He cannot do anything to change that. Could he be the hypocrite? Will God pluck him from the fold of the church?
Where will the believer find his comfort over against these thoughts? Can he take comfort in his spouse or church family; in his love for the church or schools; or in his own good works, walk of obedience, repentance, or turning from sin? To understand the struggles of the elect child of God, we must first examine the condition of the world in which we live, a world fundamentally devoid of the true peace that only God can provide.
Man’s Nature: Uncomforted
The world is uncomforted. Day by day, sin develops and multiplies. Man knows that there is a God; creation is his proof (Rom. 1:20). Yet in man’s hatred for God, man rebels and denies God. Man has no comfort regarding his eternal destination. The sinful world relies on man’s inventions and logic to give itself some semblance of comfort. Men use pills, drugs, and alcohol to cope with and disillusion themselves about their sinful flesh and hatred against their creator. They go to therapists who, using man’s logic, explain away their misery and blame their deep-seated discomfort on circumstances and events in their lives. Men attempt to drown this misery in distractions and the battle for earthly possessions. As much as men try to convince themselves that God is not real, there is no comfort for them. For the reprobate world the end is eternal damnation.
The world is not the only group that lies to itself for comfort. The false church world also must justify its lack of comfort. God does not give to the false church comfort or assurance. Members of false churches also lie to themselves and fabricate for themselves peace with God. I say that they lie to themselves because the members thereof seem to be very sure of their salvation. From the Roman Catholic Church to the many offshoots of so-called Christian religion, the members believe they are saved. This assurance certainly is not one worked by God, but it is one worked by some other force. By their own pride and sin, men deceive themselves that their comfortable place in this world is right with God. The devil keeps the false church a thriving institution for his approaching antichristian kingdom.
Although she says that she preaches Christ, the false church has something necessary for man to do in salvation. This preaching will create two types of people in the pews: those who think they are able to fulfill their part and those who know they cannot. There are the Pharisees, who think, “We might not have kept the law perfectly, but we are doing pretty good—or at least better than that person over there.” They become drowned in their pride and ignore God’s demand in the law for perfection. They are the proud workers of Matthew 7:22–23. There are also the burdened, those who are honest with themselves. They know that they did not do the law and have not kept God’s commandments, and they will wilt under the preaching. They are uncomforted by the intermingling of law and gospel that is all too present today.
The elect, too, can struggle with assurance. In this life we do battle with our threefold enemy. The first of this threefold enemy is the devil, who uses every tool he can to turn our eyes from Christ. The devil accuses us that the promise is for others, others who are better: better Christians, better parents, better people. The promise is not for us. We are too sinful, and we cannot keep God’s law. The devil loves to use the law of God. It is one of his best tools to try to take salvation from Christ and put it in the hands of man. Anyone can think to himself that he is obeying the law. The devil uses this to give false assurance to those who are relying on their rotting works for comfort. He even helps them to convince themselves that those works are truly wonderful and acceptable, even if they are imperfect.
The second of our threefold enemy is the world. The world, with all its distractions and sinful pleasures, chants the love of tolerance and conformity. The world, in the form of the false church, brings misery to the child of God. Family and friends whom God did not bring into the true church, whom we watch God harden with each conversation, accuse us of being hateful, intolerant, and cultish. They live with the mask of bliss with their large church buildings, endless funds, and unity with all so-called Reformed churches. They are the “full” of Luke 6:25 and the seemingly blessed of Psalm 73.
Finally, the third enemy is our own sinful flesh. We hate God by nature. We know that we are nothing, yea, worse than nothing. We have heard God’s word and still blaspheme his name with our thoughts and actions. An honest look at ourselves and the testimony of God’s law leaves us as damned. We think, “Although I know Christ died for his people, who is to say that I am numbered with them? Why would God save me?” These doubts and discomfort are our sins. “Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? Selah. And I said, This is my infirmity” (Ps. 77:9–10).
The Protestant Reformed Comfort
It is not only the secular world or the Roman Catholic Church that manufactures peace where there is none. This same error, putting focus on man instead of God, has found its way into the pulpits of the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC). The PRC has many uncomforted sheep in her flock, and for good reason. The denomination has lost the gospel. The lost sheep in the PRC will go to their ministers for comfort. Surely the sheep will follow the directions given to them by the ministers and professors in the PRC. You have no comfort? Look at your works. You are a good husband or wife. You are a good member of a church. You are repentant. See that? You work; thus you are saved.
The following quotations are a few examples of the Protestant Reformed teaching that man and his activities are the way to assurance. Along with the references I also note articles from this magazine that have dealt with and refuted these teachings.
What he [the apostle] is describing is a life lived in obedience to God’s ten commandments. God uses that in order to confirm in us the assurance of our election and salvation.1
Although God works the assurance of faith under the preaching of his word, we are active in this whole matter of the assurance of faith. God does not drop assurance out of the sky on us and now we have it forever and it can never be taken away from us and we have nothing to worry about as regards this matter of the assurance of our faith; but God’s people are active, busy in this whole matter of the assurance of their faith.2
Only in the way of holiness do we enjoy the assurance, the assurance in ourselves that one day we will come to the perfection that is proposed to us.3
In fact, the more faithful the saints are to God’s law in the grace of Jesus Christ, the more they prosper in the great blessings of the covenant. They prosper in their marriages, in their family life, and in their church life. Above all, they prosper in the enjoyment of God’s covenant fellowship.4
But John also understood that the experience of that covenant fellowship with God and the joy of his fellowship, which is by faith, comes also only in a particular way of life.5
The Spirit, you see, leads him in the divinely determined right way of repentance and sorrow for sin and in true believing, whereby we receive forgiveness, pardon, justification, and peace with God.6
Hence, I conclude, that sanctification and its effects are by no means to be slighted, when we treat of assuring the soul as to its justification.7
McGeown makes the same claim:
On the other hand, walking after the Spirit is a life in harmony with and pleasing to the Holy Spirit. If we walk after the Spirit we live in the light, we love God and the neighbor, and we keep God’s commandments: “with love and delight [we live] according to the will of God in all good works” (Heidelberg Catechism, LD 33, A 90). As we live in that way, pleasing God, which is the fruit of faith, which is the fruit of being “in Christ Jesus,” we are assured—we may be, and we must be, assured—that there is no condemnation, but only justification, for us. About those who walk after the Spirit, God says, “No condemnation!”
That, too, is Herman Hoeksema’s explanation of the text. “The assurance of our being in Christ is in the way of sanctification. The way of our being blessed is that we walk in sanctification. And the fruit of this walk in sanctification is that we say, ‘There is no condemnation for me.’”
Let us walk in the way of sanctification, to God’s glory, and to our own comfort. In that way, only in that way, we enjoy the conscious assurance of our justification. God’s marvelous work of sanctification will, God willing, be the topic of the next article in this series.8
In that way—the way of your good works—and only in that way can you enjoy the assurance that your sins are forgiven. McGeown mentions faith, but we know already that for McGeown faith is man’s act of believing.9 By grace, of course, man does faith and obedience; that is how he is assured of his salvation.
The members of the PRC will do their works and live perfect lives in the eyes of those around them. Preach Christ, but keep a balance! Man needs to do good works and keep his faith. Preach practical applications with an emphasis on obedience to the law because “it has ever been the teaching of the Reformed that the law serves as an instrument of grace.”10 Protestant Reformed ministers will preach Christ and man’s works for salvation. Protestant Reformed members will find comfort and rest in those works. They will go to the judgment with those works and say, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?”
Then Christ will reply, “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matt 7:22–23).
For those in the PRC, Christ is no true Christ but an idol manufactured by their own minds.
Our Only Comfort in Life and in Death
If not in the way of our holy living, where do we find our comfort and assurance? Doctrinally, the source of our comfort is in God’s eternal plan. He chose his people before time (2 Tim. 1:9), and in time he draws them to himself into the church (John 6:44; Acts 2:47; Belgic Confession 27–28). God gives to his people all of salvation, assurance included, freely in Christ (Rom. 8:32), through faith, and by the means of grace (Belgic Confession 33; Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 65). Our comfort is God-worked from beginning to middle to end.
The application of this doctrine to our hearts is brought by the means of grace, primarily the preaching of the gospel and secondarily the sacraments, which flow from the preaching. God gives two testimonies in the preaching to his children: the testimony of the law and the testimony of the gospel. When the law comes to their hearts, God testifies that they are sinners who daily blaspheme Christ. They are condemned, for “cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Gal. 3:10). If at any point there is an aspect of salvation that we must fulfill, we already have failed and can never accomplish it. That is what the law testifies to us. It makes us nothing.
The gospel testifies to us that Christ fulfilled every promise, lived the law to perfection, and performed every activity of repentance and faith that is necessary for salvation. He shouldered the sins of his church—past, present, and future—and paid for them in full. He took on the testimony of the law and set us free from condemnation (Rom. 8:1–2). He defeated the testimony of the devil and our flesh. Christ is the head of the covenant. He alone is the basis of, maintains, and perfects that covenant. He brings us into the covenant and makes it known to us. He is the head of the church. We who are engrafted into Christ by faith have every blessing that the Father has given to Christ for his gracious work. Every blessing of salvation, from regeneration to forgiveness to assurance to glorification, is ours presently.
And Christ pours out the Spirit in the church. The Spirit testifies to us that we are the sons and daughters of God (Rom. 8:16). The Spirit works in us to form us to be children of God, giving life to the spiritually dead people that we were. The Spirit also assures us that Christ’s work is true. God sends his Spirit, through Christ, into the church to assure his children that they are his. Assurance is caused by election.
The great Comforter abides in the hearts of those who have been raised from spiritual death. God is with us and will never forsake us. In time we have a taste of the glorious eternity of friendship and fellowship with the living God. Christ fulfilled all our salvation. The Father gives it. The Spirit works it in us. That is what the gospel testifies to us. Our salvation is in God alone. These testimonies come with the preaching each Sunday: We are nothing, and God is everything.
Regarding assurance, the greatest point of the battle of faith is the understanding that it is you who is saved. Our doubts, worked by our threefold enemy, often can tell us that the word we just heard does not apply to us. At times we might feel that we are not that sinful and that we do not have a great need for Christ. At other times we might despair that we are too sinful and surely Christ did not save us. But faith rejects all that is not Christ. Faith points us to him and to what he speaks directly to us. Faith rejects the doubts. Faith tells us that we are dead to the law and alive in Christ. By faith we are assured that despite our sins, God has fulfilled all his promises.
This battle of assurance is a struggle that believers go through throughout their lives. Our hope is in the promise of God that he will take his church to heaven, where he will kill our old man of sin and glorify us, thus ending this earthly turmoil and bringing us into perfect peace.
In whatever place or position they occupy in this world, God loves his people. Whether they are living out of the small beginning of new obedience or struggling with sin, God is sovereign. He gives to each of his people the measure of comfort that he pleases. The almighty God, in his absolute sovereignty, bestows comfort upon whom he pleases. This certainty does not rest upon, nor is it obtained through, the penitence or the holy conduct of the creature. Solely by God’s independent hand does he draw the sinner out of the darkness of his sinful flesh and into God’s marvelous, gracious light. So when we think to ourselves, “I had better read my Bible more or have more devotions, so that I might feel closer to God!” we must reject our flesh, which looks to ourselves for our comfort, and rest in the work of Christ alone, who works all things for our good.
Good Works
What of good works then—repentance, holy living, and obedience? When the preaching comes, it points us to Christ. It also tells us that God has made us new creatures. All our works are as filthy rags (Isa. 64:6), yet we do good works; it is impossible for a child of God not to do good works. The book of James and Belgic Confession article 24 are clear. When called to examine ourselves before the Lord’s supper, with our eyes still set on Christ, we see a perfect heart flowing with works. When our eyes stray back to ourselves, we see the sin that corrupts all that we do. This is the struggle of Paul in Romans 7:19. By faith we know that we do good works, even if our consciences might say otherwise.
God be glorified for the works that he ordained and performs in us (Phil. 2:13; Eph. 2:10). Yet according to God’s justice, not one of those works is worthy of salvation. Do not look to yourself. Man is not assured by his works or by his activities. Man cannot say “I am nothing” and look to that confession for assurance. Our eyes must be kept on Christ and his work.
Conclusion
The life of the believer is not always one where he lives out of the full assurance of his salvation. At times believers have to drag themselves to church on Sunday. That is because in this life everything testifies against them. But believers are drawn to hear the voice of Christ, and when the word of the gospel comes, it brings to the child of God great comfort and peace.
God promises to gather his people into the church. In the church he comforts them, tells them that they are his, works that comfort in their hearts by the Spirit, and makes them to know that his promise is yes and amen. Although our lives on this earth are difficult, with the devil, the world, and our flesh testifying against us, we have rest and know that we are pilgrims and strangers on this earth. God will not take us from his flock. He promises to preserve us to the end, no matter our sins. And when we die, we will be brought into eternal friendship and fellowship with the triune God, finally free from sin.
As we go through the tribulations of this life, our flesh often fails. But in Christ “we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Rom. 5:3–5). Rest in that hope, a gift of the Spirit.
“My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever” (Ps. 73:26).
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