I am grateful to have the opportu­nity to address you tonight on the cardinal subject of personal assurance of faith, that is to say, personal assur­ance of one's own salvation in Jesus Christ. This subject has particular bear­ing upon us since so many believers in our circles struggle with whether or not they possess saving faith. Often true children of God among us are prone to think that assurance is something you either have in full or don't have at all, not realizing that there are various kinds and degrees of assurance that God's people experience throughout their spiritual pilgrimage.

My goals for this evening are straightforward. First, I shall under­score by way of introduction the cen­trality of faith and the importance of growing in assurance. Second, I wish to set before you our contemporary need for considering the subject of assurance of faith. Third, I will briefly expound some major Puritan teach­ings about assurance which were es­tablished by the 1640s when the classic Puritan symbol, the Westminster Con­fession of Faith (hereafter: WCF or the Confession), was composed. Fourth, I hope to make use of the Confession, chapter 18, section 2 (WCF 18.2) as a focal point for discussing the Puritan view of three grounds of assurance of faith: God's promises in Christ, inward evidences of grace, and the witness of the Holy Spirit. The Confession's entire eighteenth chapter, and particularly its second paragraph, is the greatest con­fessional statement ever composed on assurance from the Reformed perspec­tive. Finally, I will seek to draw several conclusions which have direct bearing upon present scholarship and our per­sonal lives.

The Centrality of Saving Faith⤒🔗

In addressing assurance of faith, we must understand in the very first place that its importance is obviously great since it relates intimately to the central­ity of saving faith. The doctrine of sav­ing faith is of central importance to the Christian faith for numerous reasons. I will only mention three of these.

First, faith lies at the heart of the believer's relationship to God and to life itself. Its comprehensive nature is summarized by Paul when he speaks of "bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (2 Cor. 10:5). Paul affirms that the man of faith wrestles to bring his entire be­ing under the lordship of Christ in order to live wholly to God.

Second, saving faith is essential to the true study of Christian theology. Theology properly undertaken is never divorcable from faith. Faith must not only enter into the presuppositional area of theology; it must also permeate hermeneutics (i.e. the interpretation of Scripture) and filter through the con­tent of every theological field.

Third and most important for our consideration in this address, saving faith is the seedbed of every kind and degree of personal assurance of salvation. Assurance that flows from each exer­cise of faith, applied promises, inward evidences of grace, and the witness of the Spirit enables the believer to live in comfort and peace. Our personal need is to live by assuring faith, as the Re­formers were fond of saying, in coram Deo (in the face of God), i.e. to live with a daily consciousness of God that es­teems, in the words of John Brown, "the smiles and frowns of God to be of greater value than the smiles and frowns of men." To live victoriously through the power of assuring faith which overcomes the world, we need to trust God and His promises more than ourselves and our vows. And is not that what assurance is all about — to be so assured of the love of God towards us in Christ that we trust the Lord more than ourselves? Assured faith believes with the psalmist, "The darkness and the light are both alike to Thee" (Ps. 139:12b).

Assured faith trusts God in times of intense trials, in times of bearing seemingly unbearable afflictions, in times when our lives seem to make no sense, when everything seems to be a gnarled mess. Especially then assured faith leans hard on God. It trusts Him as Persian workmen trust a Persian rugmaker who ascends scaf­folding to weave his rugs, calling down to the workmen below for a variety of colors of yarn — including dark and black strings which symbol­ize affliction. In unconditional obedi­ence the workmen hand the rugmaker whatever color yarn he commands. From underneath they only see a gnarled mess which makes no sense. Nevertheless, they continue to believe that the rugmaker knows what he is doing and will utilize all the dark and black strings to form a balanced and beautiful rug. They believe that each string of yam has its place and that one day the rugmaker will invite them to ascend the scaffolding to gaze in awe upon the final product. Similarly, as­sured faith trusts God as divine rug-maker who patterns the life of the believer in such a way that all things — dark and black providences inclu­sive — shall work together for good to them that love Him (Rom. 8:28). As­sured faith testifies, "What God is do­ing now, I do not know. All appears to be a gnarled mess. But I shall know hereafter. The eternal day is coming when God as rugmaker shall call me to see the finished product of my life. Then I shall confess that He has not used one too many or one too few black strings" (cf. Jn. 13:7).

Assured faith learns to hand God black strings without complaint. As­sured faith believes that God makes no mistakes. Assured faith says: "Here am I, do with me what seems good in Thy sight."

Our Reformation and post-Refor­mation forebears were intimately ac­quainted with this richness of assuring faith. Particularly John Calvin, the great sixteenth-century Reformer, and his successors, the Calvinists, were acutely aware of the weight their theology placed on the concept of saving faith. No wonder the questions surfaced: Is saving faith sufficient to the task? If the wide calling of faith is rooted in our per­sonal relationship with God, from which we gain strength to implement various aspects of faith's broad man­date for the whole of life, how may we be certain of the solidity of faith? How is faith related to personal assurance of salvation? Is there assurance in faith itself? More practically, is it possible to have faith without assurance? If so, does not faith lose its vitality and assurance its normativity?

In dealing with these faith/assur­ance questions, the Reformation and post-Reformation theologians strug­gled against Roman Catholicism's as­sertion that no forms of assurance were normative. But they so strug­gled largely because their supreme goal was allegiance to Scripture and its authority. At root, they were wres­tling with biblical data, exegesis, and hermeneutics, for Scripture displays a formidable tension: vital faith and some kind of normative assurance, conjoined with the possibility of lacking assurance.

On the one hand, Scripture de­scribes faith as "the substance [or as­surance] of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1), thereby confirming assurance as belonging to faith. Moreover, the experience of scores of Bible saints (such as David in Psalm 23 or Paul in 2 Timothy 1:12) and biblical exe­gesis underscore that faith includes an element of assurance.¹

Nevertheless, certain portions of Scripture, and especially the Psalms, indicate that believers occasionally may experience an unrelieved absence of the consciousness of divine favor. Scripture portrays an assurance-lacking believer in David in Psalm 38, in Asaph in Psalm 73, in Heman in Psalm 88. Indeed, Psalm 88 expresses a petition for deliv­erance from death in which the perva­sive theme is one of bleak despondency and painful lack of awareness of God's grace. Moreover, by repeated admoni­tions to aspire after assurance, the New Testament also recognizes the possible lack of assurance in the Christian's life. Peter urges: "Give diligence to make your calling and election sure" (2 Pet. 1:10). And Paul exhorts saints to press on for development of assurance in Philippians 1:6.