Blessed assurance – but where?

Many Christians are plagued with a haunted conscience about their ongoing struggles with sin, doubt and spiritual boredom. Many of our most beloved preachers and reformers, Luther and Spurgeon among them, were plagued by bouts of spiritual depression and endured long seasons of wrestling with God. Most of us have experienced a season of spiritual drought and struggle that has no doubt made us wonder, “Am I really born again?” (And if you haven’t, be assured you likely will.) In light of these experiences, how do we come to a state of steadied assurance of our own salvation?

Evangelical revivalists often get teased for asking people to make a decision for Christ. “How many times have those people already been saved?” This criticism is rightly directed especially when Christians, after these decisions, look back to a moment when they raised their hands or walked the aisle as a way of claiming an assurance of their salvation. The Scriptures speak differently about what grants us assurance of salvation (1 John 4:13–21, John 10:28). Equally troublesome, though, are those who point to baptism as the sign and seal of their salvation.

Looking to Baptism

In the north of Europe, baptism is overly connected with spiritual membership in Gods family. While this is broadly affirmed in Scripture, there is a confusing tendency to look back at one’s baptism for assurance of salvation. On the one hand, the national Lutheran churches often teach that infant baptism catalyzes a new birth, thus ensuring salvation to the child. There is often little discipleship or conscience repentance expected from the individual after this rite is completed. Confirmation, the subsequent cultural rite of passage, is seen as another step in the process of belief, but often ends as a doubling down on granting assurance of salvation for uncommitted believers.

On the other hand, some charismatic free churches act in response to the supposedly “dead liturgical church,” by calling for credo baptism, (and in some camps, insisting it must be accompanied by a host of other supernatural signs that attest to a new birth). This in turn ironically locates the moment of salvation at or near baptism, leading to a similar appeal to baptism for assurance of salvation.

Many Lutherans and charismatic extremists alike would agree and regret that gospel Christianity is on the decline in the Nordics, but one must wonder if the system we have, looking to baptism for an assurance it was never meant to provide, has produced the results that we are getting? But if baptism is not meant to give us assurance of salvation, what does? We must look to the Scriptures above for guidance, as they point us to confession of Christ and love for God’s family as signifiers of salvation.

Confession of Christ

It seems that the book of 1 John, especially chapters 4 and 5, were given by God to address the topic of assurance of salvation. In the short passage above from chapter 4 we read,

Here John tells us that we can know that we abide in God, by the power of the Holy Spirit stirring up within us a movement of commitment and profession, naming it “confessing that Jesus is the son of God.” This is more than a simple utterance of words, but an aligning of heart, body, soul, and mind to powerfully proclaim belief in the divinity and saving work of Christ! In the context of the early church, a confession of Christ risked persecution and suffering. Confessing Christ was a digging one’s heels in for defending, defining, and declaring that confession.

Several years ago, a young man at our church in Copenhagen wanted to marry a young woman within the church. He was brought up in a Christian culture but did not believe that Jesus was the Son of God. However, the young woman did. In our view (and our counsel to them was) they should not marry, as he was outside of the family of faith. This same confession of Christ as Son of God on the other hand, gave this young woman assurance that she was a Christian and part of the family of Christ. A difficult, but clear dividing line.

Love for God’s Family 

In addition to an objective confession of Christ as the Son of God, we can be assured of our salvation if we at the same time have a subjective love for Gods family in the form of a local, gospel preaching church. Again in 1 John 4 we read: “We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” The logic is simple, isn’t it? At the moment of our regeneration, that is when we are born again through the overwhelming and transforming love of God, we are simultaneously adopted into a family of redeemed sinners. If we are loved to such a degree, how can we not reciprocate that love to one another? If we do not, John says we are liars and should not have an assurance of salvation.

Love for God’s family includes working through things when they get difficult, covering a multitude of sin. A love that involves our affections, yes, but moves onward into a commitment to sacrifice and serve a local body of believers.

Looking to Christ

Where might we find assurance of salvation, as we struggle with doubt and sin, as we endure conflict and depression? Perhaps, if we would hear John’s words, we need not glance backward within our own history, claiming neither our raised hand in assembly or our dampened heads after baptism, but rather looking again to Christ, who loved us and gave himself up for us. Let us abide in his love and extend it outwards to our brothers and sisters, trusting him as both author and perfector of this faith we claim, confident he will hold us fast (Heb 12:2).