We continue our study of the doctrine of assurance as it is presented in the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter 18. The first paragraph reads:
Temporary believers and other unregenerate men may deceive themselves in vain with false hopes and fleshly presumptions that they have God’s favor and salvation, but their hope will perish. Yet those who truly believe in the Lord Jesus and love him sincerely, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him, may be certainly assured in this life that they are in a state of grace. They may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, and this hope will never make them ashamed.
This first paragraph presents us with a very careful balance. It begins with a concession, followed by a positive assertion. The concession is that there are temporary believers and other unregenerate people who may presume to have assurance when they should not. But that warning to false believers is balanced by encouragement and comfort to sincere believers.
It is important that we do not neglect either side of this or get them too far out of balance. If for no other reason, the Bible teaches both. But even from a practical standpoint, there are people who need to be warned and others who need to be reassured. In both cases, the Confession approaches this subject in a very loving, pastoral way. It says to one group, “Do not presume,” and to the other group, “Do not despair.”
We have looked at the first group. Now let’s look at the second.
Assurance Is Possible
This is how the Confession identifies the person who can be assured:
Those who truly believe in the Lord Jesus and love him sincerely, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him, may be certainly assured in this life that they are in a state of grace.
The first thing to notice is that the Confession states plainly that assurance is possible. I like the way Jeffery Smith breaks this down in A New Exposition of the London Baptist Confession. He explains how the Confession first speaks of the proper subjects of assurance, then of the present and eternal scope of this assurance.
In other words, the Confession first gives us the marks of those to whom assurance belongs. Who should have assurance in this life? Then it clarifies that this assurance relates to two things. First, it reveals to us that we are currently in a state of grace. Second, it gives us confidence that we can never fall out of that state of grace. Assurance helps us to know that we are saved and will always be saved.
Before we consider who can and should have this assurance, we need to establish from the Bible that such assurance is possible. After all, that is the primary claim of this chapter, and it was one of the great theological controversies when the Confession was written.
Rome said any claim to assurance of salvation was anathema. If a believer said, “I know I am saved, and I know I will be in heaven one day,” Rome said, “Let that man be cursed.” They claimed it was self-righteous arrogance to presume that you had God’s favor.
But the Reformers said, “Wait, just a minute. Scripture is our authority here. What does the Bible say?”
Biblical Examples of Assurance
We can begin with Job. In Job 19, he says, “Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book!” (Job 19:23). What exactly does he want written with such permanence?
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (Job 19:25-27)
Even after everything Job has been through, he remains confident that his Redeemer lives and that he will personally see him in the flesh, even after his death and his body has returned to the dust. In other words, Job is confident that the Redeemer will redeem him at the end. His body will be raised, restored, and he will see the Lord face to face.
Keep in mind that Job retains this confidence despite his friends all telling him he is essentially a hypocrite. He must be harboring some secret sin, or else the Lord would not have brought this calamity upon him. And Job says, “No, I will see my Redeemer. Despite everything that has happened, I will be saved in the end.”
That is assurance.
How about David? He was far from a perfect man. And yet in Psalm 32:5 he writes, “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity.” Then he says, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and “you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” In verse 1, he says, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered” (Psalm 32:1).
That reads as though David believes we can know our sins are forgiven. He does not say, “I confessed, and maybe one day I’ll know I was forgiven.” No, he says, “I confessed, and the Lord forgave. I know he did. Blessed is anyone who knows their sins are forgiven.”
Or consider the Apostle Paul. Did he have personal assurance? Listen to what he wrote to Timothy as he neared the end of his life:
For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:6-8)
Do you hear any trace of doubt in Paul’s words? None at all. He says very plainly, “There is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.” And this was not some special revelation given to Paul just because he was an apostle. He says this is true for “all who have loved his appearing.” Every believer can share in this confidence.
In the first chapter, he says, “I know whom I have believed” and that he is “convinced” Christ is able to guard what has been entrusted to him until that day (2 Timothy 1:12). He tells the Philippians, “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion” (Philippians 1:6).
Who would like to be the one to tell Paul that he has committed a deadly sin by presuming to be assured of his salvation, not to mention the salvation of all sincere believers?
Rome said, “If anyone saith, that every true and justified Christian ought to believe for certain, that he is assuredly in the number of the predestinate; let him be anathema.” Clearly, that view stands in direct opposition to the Apostle Paul, not to mention the whole of the Bible. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. The doctrine of assurance is everywhere.
Let me give you just one more example.
In 1 John 5, the Apostle John writes, “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). John repeats this idea throughout the epistle. This is the primary reason he is writing the letter. He wants true believers to know that they do, in fact, have eternal life. More to the point, they can know.
As the Confession goes on to say, “They may attain this assurance using ordinary means appropriately without any extraordinary revelation.” Assurance is not some special gift given only to the most elite Christians. Assurance is possible for every one of us. More than that, John says, “I want you to have it.” Every true Christian should have assurance. In fact, we need it.
John writes his first epistle with the express purpose of showing these believers the ordinary means by which they can gain confidence in their salvation. Consider a handful of these verses:
“And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3)
“We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers” (1 John 3:14).
“We know that we are from God” (1 John 5:19).
If we take the letter as a whole, John essentially gives us three tests for self-examination:
Do you love the Lord Jesus Christ?
Do you love his people, the church?
Do you love his Word? Do you love his commandments?
If you can answer yes to these questions, then John says you can know that you have God’s favor now and will be saved in the end. You can have assurance.
We Are Commanded to Seek Assurance
Not only do we have passages indicating that assurance is possible, but we also have explicit commands to obtain this assurance. Hebrews 6 says,
We desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. (Hebrews 6:11–12)
Or, in J.B. Phillips’s paraphrase of the fuller passage:
Although we give these words of warning we feel sure that you, whom we love, are capable of better things and will enjoy the full experience of salvation. God is not unfair: he will not lose sight of all that you have done nor of the loving labour which you have shown for his sake in looking after fellow-Christians (as you are still doing). It is our earnest wish that every one of you should show a similar keenness in fully grasping the hope that is within you. We do not want any of you to grow slack, but to follow the example of those who through sheer patient faith came to possess the promises.(Hebrews 6:9–12)
Peter tells us the same thing:
Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:10–11)
What are both the author of Hebrews and Peter telling us? They are telling us that not only is assurance possible, but we should strive for it. Assurance is on the opposite end of the spectrum from sinful presumption, assuming we are talking about sincere Christians. God’s Word presents assurance as good, necessary, and something we should strive for.
Who Can Rightfully Have Assurance?
The Confession clarifies who can rightfully have this assurance. It is not temporary believers or other unregenerate people. So who is it?
Again, the Confession says, “Those who truly believe in the Lord Jesus and love him sincerely, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him.”
There are three marks or qualifications. But please note that these three things are not unrelated. They are united in God’s pattern of saving grace.
Faith receives Christ. Love clings to Christ. Obedience follows Christ.
Assurance belongs to those who “truly believe in the Lord Jesus,” “love him sincerely,” and “endeavor to walk in all good conscience before him.”
Faith, love, and obedience. We will consider these one at a time.
Faith Comes First
Faith comes first.
When I have spoken with people who struggle with assurance, they will often ask themselves questions like, “Have I repented enough? Have I loved enough? Have I changed enough?”
Those questions are not irrelevant, but they are not the first things we should be asking. For starters, they tend to be very self-focused. More than that, we want to gain assurance of our salvation. How is it that a sinner is saved in the first place? How are we joined to Christ and reconciled to God?
By faith.
So faith comes first.
You may remember this from our overview of the chapter, but it is very helpful to remember that the Confession builds upon itself. Yes, you can read and study one chapter at a time, but every chapter ties in with the others. You can hardly have a doctrine of assurance without a doctrine of perseverance. You can hardly have a doctrine of perseverance without the doctrines of God’s decree, providence, Christ the Mediator, and so on.
So let’s briefly go back and see what the Confession says about saving faith. This is the second paragraph of chapter 14:
By this faith, Christians believe to be true everything revealed in the Word, recognizing it as the authority of God Himself. They also perceive that the Word is more excellent than every other writing and everything else in the world, because it displays the glory of God in his attributes, the excellence of Christ in His nature and offices, and the power and fullness of the Holy Spirit in His activities and operations. So they are enabled to entrust their souls to the truth believed. They respond differently according to the content of each particular passage—obeying the commands, trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for this life and the one to come. But the principal acts of saving faith focus directly on Christ—accepting, receiving, and resting upon him alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace.
Saving faith is not merely verbal or mental assent. It is not merely reciting a prayer or making a public profession. It is not merely affirming orthodoxy or knowing the Bible. It is certainly not trusting in yourself for salvation—your morality, your righteousness compared to others, your cultural identity, or even your religious activities.
Saving faith simply accepts, receives, and rests upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life.
Let me clarify this further with six points and six verses.
Faith Looks to Christ as Lord
Romans 10:9 says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Saving faith has a concrete object, and that object is Jesus Christ our Lord, the One whom God raised from the dead. Saving faith does not divide the Savior from the One with all authority and power. It does not say, “I want Christ’s pardon, but I do not want him to rule over me.”
True saving faith has an object, and that object is none other than the Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Faith Looks to Christ as Savior
Matthew 1:21 says, “He will save his people from their sins.”
We do not want to make the mistake of trusting in our faith for salvation, as if faith itself were a savior. No, we trust in Christ, who saves his people from their sins.
This matters because if we become so inwardly focused, constantly trying to evaluate the strength of our faith, assurance becomes very unstable, if not impossible. We have to keep going back to the cross and reminding ourselves that it is Jesus who saves.
Faith Looks to Christ as Mediator
First Timothy 2:5 says, “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
There is no other way to God except through Jesus Christ. He is our Prophet, Priest, and King. As Prophet, he reveals the Father and shows the way of salvation. As Priest, he offers himself and intercedes for his people. As King, he rules, protects, subdues, and preserves them.
Our assurance relies on knowing that we do not stand before God alone. We stand before God in Christ.
Faith Looks to Christ as Righteousness
In Philippians 3, Paul says:
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. (Philippians 3:8–9)
Chapter 11 of the Confession says, “Faith that receives and rests on Christ and His righteousness is the only instrument of justification.”
Our ongoing sanctification and good works provide evidence of God’s grace, but we are not accepted by God on the grounds of our obedience. The only righteousness that can justify us is the righteousness of Christ.
Faith Looks to Christ as Life
In John 11, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Then he says that whoever believes in him will live, even though he dies (John 11:25–26).
In other words, we trust in him not only to pardon the past, but to give life now and life forevermore.
Faith Looks to Christ as Hope
Colossians 1:27 says, “Christ in you” is “the hope of glory.”
Notice again how concrete and objective this is. It is not vain optimism or wishful thinking. It is recognizing, by faith, that Christ is in us. And if Christ is in us, we can certainly trust that he will bring us home to glory. No one will perish. Not one will be lost.
That is faith. That is the first mark of someone to whom assurance belongs: “those who truly believe in the Lord Jesus.”
Sincere Love for Jesus
The second mark is sincere love for Jesus.
In Galatians 5, Paul addresses the value of circumcision. Some argued that in order to be a Christian, you must first become a Jew. There must be a measure of lawkeeping in order to be saved.
Paul argues no, that is not the case, because justification comes only through faith. But notice how he expresses this: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6).
Paul could have left it at faith and not mentioned love at all. But faith in Christ without affection for Christ is hardly biblical faith. When Paul writes to the Corinthians, he says, “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed” (1 Corinthians 16:22). Let him be anathema.
Why? Because true faith is never without love.
Going back to John’s first epistle and his three-fold test, John does point to faith as evidence of salvation, but he speaks far more about love: love for Christ, love for God’s people, and love for God’s commandments. In fact, at the start of chapter 5, he rolls these together:
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this, we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. (1 John 5:1-3)
There you see all three, or four if you include faith: faith in Christ, love for God, love for God’s people, and love for his commandments.
Of course, John’s emphasis on love is something he learned directly from Jesus. Read John’s Gospel and their last evening together before Jesus was arrested and crucified. Jesus repeatedly emphasized love.
This emphasis on love is necessary because we can love many aspects of Christianity without loving Christ himself, or his people, or his Word. Many people love the idea of heaven, but they do not love Christ. Many people love the benefits of Christian identity, or even association with the church, but they do not love Christ himself.
The Confession speaks of “those who truly believe in the Lord Jesus and love him sincerely.”
What does it mean to love him sincerely? Obviously, this excludes hypocrisy. It excludes pretending to love Christ for personal gain or some other selfish reason. But it may include various degrees of love. Sometimes our love may grow weak or cold, yet it remains sincere.
Much like faith, let me clarify this love further with four points and four verses.
Sincere Love Loves Christ’s Person
What did Jesus ask Peter after his resurrection?
“Simon, son of John, do you love me?” (John 21:16).
Sincere Love Loves Christ’s Word
Jesus said it plainly enough in John 14:23: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.”
No, he will not keep it perfectly. But he will know the voice of his Shepherd, and he will follow his Shepherd.
You have to understand that the unregenerate heart could very well desire a Christ who removes the consequences of sin while simultaneously leaving that sin undisturbed in this life. But a genuine believer cannot be content with such an imagined Christ. He loves the Holy One.
He may still feel the pull of sin, but he cannot ultimately make peace with it. He wants to be conformed to the Lord he loves by obeying the Lord he loves.
Sincere Love Loves Christ’s People
First John 3:14 says, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.”
Not only will sincere Christians love Jesus and his Word, but they will also come to love what Jesus himself loves. And whom does Jesus love more than the very people he died for?
Think about this in contrast to so many people in our world who claim to be Christians but want nothing to do with the church. Or think about those who want a seat in the church on Sunday morning but have little interest in the people who make up the church. If we do not have love for God’s people, that is cause for serious self-examination.
Sincere Love Loves Christ’s Glory
That covers John’s three-fold test for assurance, but let me add one more. Sincere love loves Christ’s glory.
It is one thing to pursue Christ, keep his commandments, and maybe even invest in the church because we want to make it into heaven. We want to be saved. But if we really want to test our sincerity, we should ask whether we want Christ to be honored, his name treasured, his gospel believed by others, and his kingdom advanced.
In other words, is our primary concern his glory?
Consider what Paul says in Philippians 1:20: “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.”
Paul essentially says, “I do not care what happens to me, as long as Christ is glorified through what I have done, or even through what has been done to me.”
That is sincere love for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Endeavoring to Walk in Good Conscience
The third mark is described in the Confession as “endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him.”
I really appreciate that word, endeavoring. The authors of the Confession are not suggesting that we must be perfectly obedient. There is a big difference between sincerity and sinlessness. The Confession says that those to whom assurance belongs are those who strive or endeavor to obey the Lord, not those who do it perfectly.
But at the same time, they are endeavoring. This is not someone who says, “Yes, I believe in Jesus,” but shows no fruit of that in the way they live.
Chapter 15, paragraph 3 of the Confession says,
This saving repentance is a gospel grace in which those who are made aware by the Holy Spirit of the many evils of their sin, by faith in Christ, humble themselves for it with godly sorrow, hatred of it, and self-loathing. They pray for pardon and strength of grace and determine and endeavor by provisions from the Spirit to live before God in a well-pleasing way in everything.
Before a person is born again and saved, he could very well go through many motions of Christianity, but the conscience will not be engaged like it is after conversion. Read Romans 7. Look at the way Paul wrestles with his sinful nature. That is a struggle only the believer truly knows.
Paul confesses, “I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,” but he also sees another law in his members “waging war against the law of my mind” (Romans 7:22–23).
Paul later tells Timothy, “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5). That is not a perfect heart or a perfectly clean conscience, but it is pure, good, and sincere. Out of that true faith and sincere love, the believer strives to obey God and “walk in all good conscience before him.”
Faith, Love, and Obedience as Guardrails
When you bring these three marks together—faith, love, and obedience—we essentially see two guardrails put in place.
The first guards against legalism by showing that faith comes first and that Christ remains the foundation.
The second guards against antinomianism because the faith that receives Christ is never alone. It is accompanied by love and good works.
As the Confession says, “those who truly believe in the Lord Jesus and love him sincerely, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him, may be certainly assured in this life that they are in a state of grace.”
In other words, assurance is possible.
However, let me point out a couple of words in that last sentence. The authors of the Confession were very intentional in how they framed this. A believer may be certainly assured, which is to say a believer can have assurance, but it is not guaranteed. A sincere believer can lack assurance at times.
Even so, a believer may be certainly assured, which is to say that, while assurance is not guaranteed, we can have real confidence that we are saved and in a state of grace. Furthermore, this confidence comes in this life. We can know even now that we will be with the Lord in heaven one day.
We will cover all of this in more detail as we continue in this chapter of the Confession.
The Hope That Will Not Put Us to Shame
Lastly, this paragraph says, “They may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, and this hope will never make them ashamed.”
The Confession here cites Romans 5, where Paul writes:
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)
Assurance includes not only past forgiveness and our present standing before God, but also hope for future glory. In fact, this is what Paul says carries us through life’s difficulties and sufferings. We can not only survive them, but rejoice in them because of the hope we have and because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
Clearly, Paul is not referring to mere wishful thinking here. This is sheer confidence. This is assurance.
Thanks be to God, we can have this kind of assurance.
