Assurance of salvation

Can I know?

Soon after coming to faith, many people begin to wonder whether they are really saved. One day God seems near; the next you feel nothing but your own failures. Salvation means being rescued from sin and death and brought into life with God for ever.

Churches everywhere, the gatherings of people who belong to Jesus, answer together: salvation rests not on our feelings but on what Christ has done by his cross and resurrection, and God's promise is sure. The apostle John, one of the witnesses Jesus sent out, says why he wrote his first letter:

And this is that testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. … I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.

1 John 5:11-13

Eternal life does not begin only after death: it is life with God in his Son, already begun in all who trust him. John does not ask you to guess; he writes so that you may know.

Jesus said of his sheep, "No one can snatch them out of My hand" (John 10:28). Augustine, a North African church leader around the year 400, comments: "Christ is confident of their safety" Augustine. Paul is sure that nothing in all creation can separate us from God's love in Christ (Romans 8:38-39), and that God will complete the good work he has begun in us (Philippians 1:6).

What assurance rests on

The Reformed churches grew from the sixteenth-century Reformation, a movement to renew the church by Scripture, in the line of teachers such as John Calvin. Presbyterians are the best known; the Reformed churches of continental Europe are another branch, and among Baptists the Reformed Baptists confess the same faith. Their confessions, the written statements of what a church believes, take up this question. The Westminster Confession (1646) calls assurance no mere guess, but an assurance of faith

founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made, the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God

Westminster Confession 18.2

First comes the promise: "Whoever has the Son has life" (1 John 5:12). The Second London Baptist Confession (1689), the Reformed Baptists' confession, names Christ himself here: assurance is ‘founded on the Blood and Righteousness of Christ revealed in the Gospel’ 18.2.

Next comes the witness of the Holy Spirit, who is God, one with the Father and the Son:

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery that returns you to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption to sonship, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Romans 8:15-16

Adoption is taking another's child as your own: for Christ's sake God has taken us as his children, and ‘Abba’ is the Aramaic word for father that Jesus used when he prayed. The Spirit bears his witness by turning our fear into trust, so that we call God Father. The Canons of Dort (1619) add that this assurance springs not from a private revelation apart from the Word but from faith in God's promises, the Spirit's testimony, and a holy desire to keep a good conscience Canons of Dort V.10.

Then come ‘those graces’, the new life the Spirit grows in us. "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers" (1 John 3:14), and keeping God's commandments is another sign (1 John 2:3). So Scripture says, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith" (2 Corinthians 13:5), and "strive to make your calling and election sure" (2 Peter 1:10). Calling and election mean God calling and choosing us to be his own; this is not a call to grade yourself, but to look for the marks of God at work in you.

The order matters. Assurance rests first on Christ and his promise, then on the Spirit's witness and the fruit, never on our feelings or our performance. The Heidelberg Catechism (1563), a catechism that teaches by questions and answers, first confesses that I belong to my faithful Saviour, and only then goes on: ‘Wherefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life’ Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 1.

When assurance is shaken

Doubt does not mean that faith has gone. The Westminster Confession says that assurance does not belong to the essence of faith: ‘a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties’ before he has it 18.3. Assurance once given may be shaken by sin or temptation, yet true believers never lose the life of faith, and by the Spirit's work assurance ‘may in due time be revived’ 18.4.

The psalmist tells his own downcast soul, "Put your hope in God" (Psalm 42:5), and you may pray with the father in Mark's Gospel, "I do believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24).

In John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), the pilgrim Christian's burden falls from his back at the cross and is seen no more The Pilgrim's Progress. Yet later Giant Despair locks him in Doubting Castle, until after a night of prayer he cries out (his ‘bosom’ is the fold of his coat): "I have a Key in my bosom called Promise, that will, I am persuaded, open any Lock in Doubting Castle" The Pilgrim's Progress. The key had been with him all along: in doubt we hold on not to a new feeling but to the promise already given.

How the churches speak of it

The Catholic Church teaches that no one should doubt God's mercy, what Christ has won for us, or the power of the sacraments, the holy rites Christ gave his church; yet no one can know with the certainty of faith that he has received grace, God's kindness to those who have not deserved it, nor, without a special revelation, that he is among God's chosen. All should put the firmest hope in God's help Council of Trent, session 6, chapters 9, 12 and 13.

The Wesleyan tradition, including the Methodist and Holiness churches, teaches warmly that the Spirit gives believers a present assurance. John Wesley, the eighteenth-century English preacher, wrote that the Spirit bears witness "with the spirit of every true believer, by a testimony distinct from that of his own spirit, or the testimony of a good conscience" Wesley. Lutherans, who follow Martin Luther, look away in doubt from their own hearts to God's promise in Word and sacraments: Luther's Small Catechism teaches that baptism, the washing with water that marks a person as Christ's, ‘gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare’ Small Catechism.

Churches differ on whether a true believer can finally fall away. Wesleyans, Lutherans, Catholics and the Orthodox churches of the East teach that one who turns from Christ can fall from grace, and return by repentance, turning back from sin to God. The Reformed confess the perseverance of the saints: God keeps to the end those he has called, and true believers ‘may and ought to obtain assurance according to the measure of their faith’ that they ‘will at last inherit eternal life’ Canons of Dort V.9. The doctrine and Reformed courses (Holiness and perseverance, Effectual calling and perseverance) and Can salvation be lost? set these views out; see also Is it okay to doubt?

This week

Read 1 John at one sitting. It is a short letter. Mark each place where John says ‘we know’ or ‘so that you may know’, and note how he says we know it.

Write down one promise. Copy John 10:28 or 1 John 5:13 onto a card and read it aloud when doubt comes.

Do not carry doubt alone. Tell your pastor, or a Christian you trust, the questions this lesson has raised. The next lesson asks what to do when you sin after coming to faith.

Practice