Q & A: Can I Have Assurance of Salvation?

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R. Scott Clark is professor of Church History and Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary California. For more content from Dr. Clark, please visit The Heidelblog at heidleblog.net.

A man named Joel asked me the following question at The Heidelblog: 

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

In the Heidelberg Catechism, we find a solid definition of true faith:

Q. 21. What is true faith?

A. True faith is a sure knowledge whereby I accept as true all that God has revealed to us in his Word. At the same time it is a firm confidence that not only to others, but also to me, God has granted forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness, and salvation, out of mere grace, only for the sake of Christ's merits. This faith the Holy Spirit works in my heart by the gospel. (Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 21)

Yes, you and all Christians can and should have assurance. How? Trust the gospel promises of Christ! “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).

Faith either exists or it doesn’t.

Do you trust in Christ as your righteousness alone? I did not 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 of 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. Heidelberg Catechism 86 does this:

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

A. Because Christ, having redeemed us by his blood, also renews us by his Holy Spirit to be his image, so that with our whole life we show ourselves thankful to God for his benefits, and may be praised by us. Further, that we ourselves may be assured of our faith by its fruits, and that by our godly walk of life we may win our neighbors for Christ.

The fruit of faith is not the basis of our faith.

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 unshakable 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 of Faith, chapter 14, deals with that question brilliantly:

This faith is different in degrees, weak or strong; may be often and many ways assailed, and weakened, but gets the victory: growing up in many to the attainment of a full assurance, through Christ, who is both the author and finisher of our faith. (WCF 14.3)

“The law and our obedience to it is no basis for assurance.”

We learn more and more to look not at ourselves but rather at Christ and his promises.

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

If I may take issue with some of the advice here, let’s first look at 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. 

To find genuine assurance, we start with the objective work of Christ.

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.

“Jesus didn’t obey and die for nice, sanctified people. He obeyed and died for you and me.”

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?

What makes faith efficacious is the object of faith.

The above 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 make 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 cases where one is outside the visible church and yet believes).

Just because we sin doesn’t mean we’re not justified.

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 Deuteronomy 29:29.

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

Because we are not yet glorified, we must die daily to self and sin.

When it comes to assurance, the equation stops with Christ. Did he finish the work? Is he enough? You will NEVER (yes, I’m raising my voice a bit) 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 to sin daily. Does my lack of mortification mean I am not justified? No. It means I’m not yet glorified.

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 the work of salvation. Christ does it, and we receive his benefits through faith, as defined in HC 21 and WCF 11 and 14.

Below are some of my favorite resources on the subject of assurance of salvation:

• The Pearl of Christian Comfort by Petrus Dathenus

• The Assurance of Faith by Louis Berkhof

• The Marrow of Modern Divinity by Edward Fisher

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R. Scott Clark is professor of Church History and Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California) and the author of Recovering the Reformed Confession (P&R, 2008). For more content from Dr. Clark, please visit heidelblog.net and rscottclark.org.

This article is adapted from the audio “Can I Have Assurance?” at heidelblog.net.

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Recommended Book:

The Assurance of Faith by Louis Berkhof

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