We're having an interesting discussion on assurance at the Puritanboard .

Joel asks, "Is it possible for a person to want/desire to know Christ as his/her Savior and not be among the elect?"

Here, spliced together and lightly revised, are my responses to the discussion and some questions:

21. What is true faith?

True faith is not only a certain knowledge whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in His Word; ¹ but also a hearty trust, ² which the Holy Spirit ³ works in me by the Gospel, ⁴ that not only to others, but to me also, forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness and salvation are freely given by God, ⁵ merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ's merits. ⁶

¹ James 1:6. ² Rom 4:16-18. ³ 2 Cor 4:13. Phil 1:19, 20. ⁴ Rom 1:16. Rom 10:17. ⁵ Heb 11:1, 2. Rom 1:17. ⁶ Eph 2:7-9. Rom 3:24, 25. Gal 2:16. ^* Acts 10:43.

Yes, you and all Christians can and should have assurance. How? Trust the gospel promises of Christ! "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

Do you trust in Christ as your righteousness alone? I didn't ask if you trust enough but only if you trust him. When it comes to assurance, faith is a binary operation. It either exists or it doesn't. Full stop. There's no degree or faith, when it comes to justification and assurance.

Does faith grow? Yes, it does, day by day, but that is the fruit of justification not the ground of assurance. Yes, there is a secondary place for reflecting upon fruit. HC 86 does this:

86. Since then we are redeemed from our misery by grace through Christ, without any merit of ours, why should we do good works?

Because Christ, having redeemed us by His blood, also renews us by His Holy Spirit after His own image, that with our whole life we show ourselves thankful to God for His blessing, ¹ and also that He be glorified through us; ² then also, that we ourselves may be assured of our faith by the fruits thereof; ³ and by our godly walk win also others to Christ. ⁴

¹ Rom 6:13. Rom 12:1, 2. 1 Pet 2:5,9,10. 1 Cor 6:20. ² Matt 5:16. 1 Pet 2:12. ³ Matt 7:17,18. Gal 5:6, 22, 23. ⁴ Rom 14:19. 1 Pet 3:1, 2. ^* 2 Pet 1:10

The fruit of faith strengthens our assurance but it is not the basis of it. The sole basis/ground of assurance is Christ's righteousness for us and his unshakeable promises to us.

To refuse to have assurance on the ground that one is not sufficiently sanctified is a form of unbelief. Stop it. Repent of it. Of course you are not sanctified enough! You're a wretch. Jesus didn't obey and die for nice, sanctified people. He obeyed and died for you and me.

Will your assurance always be perfect and equally strong? No. The Westminster Confession ch 14 (as quoted above) deals with that question brilliantly. Our assurance ebbs and flows. We learn more and more to stop looking at ourselves -- just as we learn to stop looking at garbage heaps -- and we learn more and more to look at Christ and his promises.

***

One writer encouraged us to

Look to the Spirit for guidance and comfort, Romans 8:26-27 . Honestly and earnestly search your heart for the true fruits of the Spirit. And ask yourself, "Do I truly love Jesus?", for He said "Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me." - John 8.42.

To which I respond:

If I may take issue with some of the advice here. The question: "Do I truly love Jesus?"

That's not the gospel. That's law. The law and our obedience to it is no basis for assurance. Should we love Jesus? Yes. Must we love Jesus? Yes! Will we, by the grace of God, come to love Jesus more truly and fully than we do now? Yes. Do we now love Jesus as we ought? No. Substitute: "Do I love the Lord with all my faculties?" (Matt 22:37-40) The honest answer is no! We're sinners. We don't any of us love God as we ought. Thus, to ask, "do I love Jesus?" as part of the ground of justification or assurance is the path to doubt and despair. Our obedience will always ebb and flow. When our obedience is, or at least seems to us, to be at high tide, we will be confident, but as soon as we see ourselves, in the mirror of God's law, for what we really are, then our assurance will be decimated -- as it must be on such a basis.

To find genuine assurance, we start with the objective work of Christ. Secondarily, we may ask if we have any fruit. Yes, we look to the Spirit and we ask him to operate, as he has promised to do, through the preaching of the gospel. We should be careful about an overly subjective approach to this question.

***

The objective work of Christ is the oasis in the desert. But since faith is the means by which Christ's objective work is appropriated, how can one escape the subjectivity of it?

Your definition of faith is too subjective.

It's not my believing that makes faith efficacious. What makes faith, in the act of justification and relative to assurance, efficacious is the object of faith. Christ and his righteousness makes faith what it is: the sole instrument of justification and the sole means of resting in and receiving Christ and his finished work. Thus, there is nothing, relative to justification or assurance, inherent to faith itself that makes it one thing or another. It either exists or it doesn't.

For example, Christ's work is only appropriated to some and in Reformed circles we say those "some" are the elect.

Some believe and some do not. Both of those are in the visible church and most all of those outside the visible church do not believe (there may be some extraordinary case where one is outside the visible church and yet believes).

We don't decide for whom Christ died or who is elect a priori. We do it after the fact (a posteriori. We never ask, "Am I elect?" or "Did Christ die for me?" We only ask, "Do I believe?" If I believe, it is because I am elect and Christ died for me etc. Never, ever try to guess the secret will and providence and decree of God. It is forbidden in Deut 29:29.

In the works of the Puritans and others, there is a seemingly constant introspection about whether or not one is truly resting in Christ or is it Christ + something else and that the latter are damned because they are not trusting Christ alone.

Yes, but not in the better Reformed writers (whether they were English speaking or not). There were subjectivists on the continent too. So what? What do we confess as churches?

Just because we sin doesn't mean we're not justified. We are simultaneously sinners and justified. We're not Papists. We don't confess that only the sanctified can be justified. Am I a sinner? Yes! Do I, sola gratia, trust that Christ is my righteousness? Yes.

When it comes to assurance, the equation stops with Christ. Did he finish the work? Is he enough? You will NEVER (yes, I'm yelling) achieve the sanctity you want without first trusting in the sufficiency of the finished work of Christ. Must we die to self? Yes. We must die daily. Does my lack of mortification mean I am not justified? No. It means I'm not yet glorified.

***

I, too, have never understood how one can be completely objective. I can look at Christ and his work for sinners and believe that he truly died for the elect and yet doubt that I am one of them. How do you get from looking at Christ to knowing that you are in Christ? It seems like it has to be subjective to some extent.

Faith isn't completely objective. The ground/basis of our justification and of our assurance is completely objective. Faith apprehends that ground: Christ and his righteousness for me. Is faith perfect? No, but it is sufficient. That's why it's the sole instrument. It looks away from self and to Christ.

Faith doesn't do it. Christ does it and we receive his benefits through faith, as defined in HC 21 and WCF 11 and 14.

Comments are on.

John writes to ask,

In Genesis 17:14 the Lord warns Abraham that any "male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” What does it mean to be cut off and to break the covenant? If justification doesn't come through circumcision/baptism then why does condemnation? Lastly, how does this warning in Genesis 17 relate to baptism of infants in the NT? If they are not baptized, are they "cut off" forever as well?"

Hi John,

The background for this passage is, of course, in the Ancient Near Eastern treaty making ritual in which animals were slain. We see examples of this ritual in Gen 15 and in Jer 34:18:

And the men who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me, I will make them like the calf that they cut in two and passed between its parts— the officials of Judah, the officials of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the parts of the calf.

In ANE practice, treaties and certain types of covenants were made this way. The participants would walk between the between the pieces of a slain animal and say, in effect, "may it be to me if I break this covenant." Covenants and treaties involved the swearing of oaths before the gods against one's own life.

It is against this background that the typical OT language about covenant making must be read. In the Hebrew Scriptures, covenants are not just made but "cut." They are "cut" because covenants are made in blood. The covenant made with Abraham in Gen 15 was "cut" in the blood of the animals through the pieces of which Yahweh went implicitly swearing an oath against his own life.

In Gen 17 the covenant of grace is cut in Abraham's flesh. It is bloody and painful (see the photo above -- that's the sort of tool likely used!). Remember that the Apostle Paul explains (Rom 4) that Abraham believed and was justified before he was circumcised, when he was yet a Gentile. He believed after he was circumcised and that act served as a sign and seal of his faith.

If anything is clear in Paul it is that Abraham was justified by faith alone, and not by circumcision. Rom 3:20-30:

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for fall have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one. He will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. (ESV).

Rom 4:11

He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was dto make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well

If Abraham was justified before he was circumcised, sola fide, sola gratia, then, clearly, it is not circumcision that puts one in possession of righteousness nor does one lose righteousness by not being circumcised.

That fact, however, does not mean that the administration of the sign and seal of righteousness is not important. What the warning of Gen 17:14 means is that both the substance of the covenant of grace and its administration are both important. We can see the importance of the administration of the covenant of grace in the case of Moses and Zipporah (Exod 4:24-26). This is why Yahweh sought out Moses because he had implicitly "cut" a covenant with his wife's family rather than "cutting" a covenant with Yahweh. His refusal to circumcise his (second) son was evidence of his divided loyalties. [This reading is contrary to that of the rabbis who refused to see any sin whatever on Moses' part -- the narrative makes no sense whatever if we seek to excuse Moses] This is why Zipporah performs an emergency circumcision. She realized what was afoot and remonstrates with Moses for nearly getting them killed.

The administration of the covenant of grace, which our theologians describe as the "external" aspect of the covenant of grace, is so important that Calvin (in his commentary on Rom 9) says that to downplay the importance of the administration of the covenant of grace is nearly blasphemy. On this see the first sermon in the Fifth Decade of Bullinger's Decades. This sermon is a very solid, careful, and thoughtful exposition of what became the traditional Protestant distinction between the internal and external aspects of the covenant of grace. See also this booklet and this essay on this topic.

The real sin here, as I suggested, is unbelief which manifests itself in refusal to admit one's children to the visible covenant of grace. To refuse to obey the Lord's explicit command regarding the administration of the covenant of grace is sin. It is covenant breaking. With the internal/external distinction before us we can speak about covenant breaking. If we make the mistake of failing or refusing to make the distinction (as in the case of the Federal Vision) then any talk of "covenant breaking" takes us toward Arminianism and a denial of the Fifth Head of Doctrine of the Synod of Dort. If, however, we properly weight the outward administration of the covenant of grace we can speak of covenant breaking without jeopardizing the doctrines of election and perseverance.

Yes, in my view, it does relate to the baptism of infants. This is a good and necessary inference from Paul's declaration that Abraham is the "father of all who believe." Here, of course, is where Reformed folk disagree with our Baptist friends. Some of them may say that Abraham is the father of believers, but mostly they emphasize the discontinuity between Abraham and NT believers. That's why they speak of the New Covenant as if it has no external aspect and thus they frequently say that the New Covenant cannot be broken.

That's not true. The New Covenant has an administration just as the covenant of grace under the typological administrations had an administration. If it was possible to "break" the covenant under Abraham, who is the father of NT believers, then ipso facto it is possible to "break" the New Covenant.

Ironically, those who say that the New Covenant cannot be broken, because, in their view the New Covenant is so spiritual that only the elect have any part of it, end up, in the Reformed view, breaking the New Covenant by refusing to administer the sign and seal of the covenant of grace and of the New Covenant to their covenant children.

Of course there may be instances in which it is not possible to administer the sign and seal of the (new) Covenant of Grace. For that reason we usually distinguish between ordinary and extraordinary circumstances. Because one is prevented by circumstances from receiving Christian baptism or because one is born to parents who have Baptist convictions or the like doesn't by that fact necessarily exclude one from the covenant of grace.

Here is a serious word to covenant parents, however. If you have covenant children and refuse to apply the sign/seal to them, then you ought to be subject to discipline. You must reckon with Word of the Lord to Abraham and to Moses. Do we have a different Lord from the Lord who spoke to Abraham? Is there a different Lord than he who sought to kill Moses? Obviously, the answer is no. To say yes plunges one into the Marcionite heresy.

Yes, the administration of the covenant of grace has changed in its circumstances. Under the typological administrations we used bloody signs and seals (circumcision and feasts) and now, in the period of fulfillment we have unbloody signs and seals (baptism and the Lord's Supper).

There is nothing about the superiority and spirituality of the New Covenant, neither of which can be denied (2 Cor 3; Heb 7-10), that requires us to exclude our covenant children from the sign and seal of initiation into the covenant community. The Abrahamic covenant was spiritual (Heb 11; John 8:56). Abraham was looking for the heavenly city. He put his trust in Christ. In those respects, we and Abraham belong to the same covenant of grace.

If the administration of the covenant of grace was serious business under Abraham how much more serious is it under the New Covenant? If you're not sure how serious the New Covenant can be think about those folk who abused the sign and seal of covenant renewal (1 Cor 11) and about Ananaias and Sapphira (Acts 5).

I have some posts in response to the post earlier today on worship. Jamie asks,

...Do you believe in any kind of responsive reading of creeds or confessions? I was in a Free Church of Scotland all last year, and I know that their answer would be no. I suppose in some churches members may have to sign off on the confessions (this is not the case in the Free Church), but there may also be believers from other denominations present.

Hi Jamie,

Good to hear from you. Welcome back to the States.

This is a good and difficult question. The answer is yes and no. In our congregation we do use uninspired responsive readings and I don't participate in those. Over the years I have come to the conviction that God's people are to respond to his Word only with his Word. Thus, I don't oppose responsive readings per se but I do oppose uninspired responsive readings or the congregational use of uninspired liturgical material. My explanation for this stems from the nature of the RPW and from the dialogical principle of Reformed worship. God speaks and the people respond. How are we to respond? Evidently, judging by Scripture and the practice of the earliest post-apostolic Christians, with God's own Word. I discuss this at some length in the forthcoming volume, Recovering the Reformed Confession due out September, 2008.

In URC congregations there is general agreement that laity and officers both have to agree to the Reformed confessions, but even in American Presbyterian churches where such is not the case, elders still have to plan services according to the confession and WCF 21 is very clear about the RPW. The original understanding of the RPW is enshrined in the Directory for Public Worship which has us singing only God's Word. The original Reformed were quite united on this point. The only real diversity was the occasional singing of the creed (Geneva) and the Synod of Dort which allowed, temporarily, one hymn that they almost certainly intended to omit. They had no idea that Synod would not meet again for so long!

So, the congregation may use biblical confessional materials and biblical songs so long as they are the Word of God and not paraphrases (which many of our "psalms" in our Psalter-Hymnal and in the Trinity Hymnal are).

Ministers, who are leading services, may use uninspired materials to exposit Scripture just as they give uninspired sermons, but the whole congregation does not have the office of minister (or teaching elder) and is not called to exposit Scripture in the stated service.

Jeff asks,

...Is there anything in particular regarding a conservative (i.e. LCMS) Lutheran liturgy to which you would object? Is it just the hymnody, or are there actual elements you feel are inappropriate? I am diametrically opposed to so-called contemporary services (for reasons both theological and aesthetic), but I also wonder how you would respond to the “psalms, hymns, spiritual songs” argument for hymnody.

Hi Jeff,

These are good questions. Yes, there is much in the Lutheran liturgy which I could not "do" as a worshiper. First, in my experience, the LCMS has a broad range of practices running from Anglo-Catholic veneration of the Bible to broad evangelical revivalism. Both extremes create grave difficulties for Reformed folk (and for confessional Lutheran people too!). We worship in a Wisconsin Synod congregation from time to time. We enjoy the preaching of the law and gospel and the great clarity on justification. I don't sing the hymns and the like and, of course, we're not permitted at the table.

The Lutherans and Anglicans operate on a rather different principle than we confess. They confess that they may do in worship whatever is not forbidden. Therefore they feel the liberty to ask worshipers to sing uninspired hymns and recite uninspired creeds. 

As I understand Reformed worship there are three elements: Word, prayer, and sacrament. The minister administers Word and sacrament and prays for us, but we are also called to pray in response in word and song. Those responses should be canonical and not just pious. In other words, to use uninspired songs and responses is, in my view, to corrupt one of the elements of worship. 

As to "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs" I address this at length in the forthcoming volume. Let me answer by asking you what you assume when you ask the question? Do you assume that these are necessarily uninspired and if so, why do you assume that? Are such assumptions valid? There are good reasons for thinking otherwise. 

Finally, you raise the question of preference. If we're going to bring about a Reformation of Reformed worship we have to recover our principle of worship and its application. We have to operate on principle and not on preference. Thus, I have no problem with contemporary tunes for the Psalms or for the Song of Mary or the other biblical songs. The principle is that the songs we sing ought to canonical. Tunes, of course, ought to be approrpiate to congregational worship and ought to be as inclusive as possible since the congregation is neither 80 and white or 15 and African. We are white and black, young and old and thus we need tunes that are useful to all the congregation. 

Thanks for the questions! 

Student Brian writes,

Would you remind me of something...you said in CH602? I think you were arguing that the way the worship service is practiced ends up dictating the shape of Christian piety, even more so than the official doctrine on the books in official confessions. I think you had mentioned a Latin name for that. Could you remind me what exactly you called that?

 
I might have been talking about the medieval axiom: "lex orandi, lex credendi" i.e., the law of praying is the law of believing. This axiom reflects the truth that what we do in worship services shapes what worshippers come to believe. There is a reciprocal relation, of course, between the two (belief and worship) and which comes first is a chicken and egg problem to some degree.

My point is what the church has always recognized that what we do in worship is not innocent theologically. It isn't as if we can hermetically seal worship from theology, as if we can have one "theology" or "confession" over here and our worship "over there." It is not as if we can worship (usually awkwardly) like Presby-costals and hang on to Reformed theology. If we worship like Presbycostals, members and especially children and young people will become Presbycostals. If we're willing to act like Pentecostals before the face of God then why shouldn't we hold their theology of continuing revelation?

Our theology, what we confess about God, man, Christ, salvation etc. is shaped by what we do in worship. If we change worship to make God seem user friendly, then people will come to think of God as "user  friendly" and not the holy God of Scripture.

Because the Reformers understood the principle of lex orandi they reformed worship on the basis of the  Regulative Principle of Worship, that we do only in worship what is required by Scripture. We only ask, "What must we do?" The Lutherans and Anglicans asked, "What may we do?" Their principle is that we may do whatever is not forbidden by Scripture. The Reformed understood (or used to understand) that there is a theology embedded in what we do and say during a worship service. There is a theology embedded in what we ask the people to do. Remember, worship services are not optional for Christians. They are obligated to be present. When a session or consistory calls a service on the Sabbath. God's people are obligated to be present. When the elders put "Shine Jesus, Shine" in the service, they are requiring God's people to sing it. They are saying, "This is what God's Word teaches us about God, this is how we must say in response to God's grace and salvation in Christ." Can they are you really say that we must sing "Shine Jesus, Shine" or "In the Garden" or even "A Mighty Fortress," especially when everything you think you're trying to say in these uninspired songs is said better in God's Word, in the Psalms. It's easy to pick "Shine Jesus, Shine" and "In the Garden," but traditionalists are just as culpable as the "contemporary" or "progressive" worship folks. I love "A Mighty Fortress" but why is a paraphrase of Ps 46 better than Ps 46? Indeed, every time I'm in a congregation singing a hymn I can find a Psalm saying what wants to be said and saying it better. Could it be that the reason we turn to hymns and contemporary songs is because we don't know the Psalter any more? Okay, we need new and better and more singable tunes for the Psalter, but on what basis do consistories and sessions require God's people to sing or recite uninspired words before the face of God in a stated service?

The truth is that most modern worship (since 1720) is focused on me but disguised to look as it is interested in God. Biblical worship, however, is honest. There's no "bait and switch" in Scripture. The Psalms are brutally honest about me, about this world, about the people around us and about our covenant God. Most of the time the Psalms focus on the objective history of creation and redemption. In the Psalms, we find ourselves in that history, rather than re-contextualizing the faith so that suddenly we become the center of the story.

Anyway, the Reformed understood that we do what we do and say what we say in worship because God is who he is and has done for us what he has done and has said what he said. They understood that what we say in worship shapes what Christians come to believe about God. They knew that if they wanted the next generation of Christians to be Reformed they had to worship consistently with their confession. Why do we so often think that we can worship by Presbycostals or Presbylutherans or Presbyclans without it having any effect on theology, piety, and practice. 

I've gotten several posts asking about the CrossTalk podcast. It's on hiatus. It took much more time than I expected to produce a 5 min broadcast. I'm re-thinking the format. When I get it figured out you'll be the first to know.

Some have written to say that they can only see three of the five podcasts on the site. I can't help with that. I don't know why that is. I use Firefox and Safari and the CrossTalk page looks fine to me. This site does not show up well in Internet Explorer. Imagine that, a Microsoft product that doesn't work! Who knew?  Dear Mr. Gates, that was a joke. If you're going to retaliate, I live in Moscow, ID and my real name is Doug Wilson.