Contents:
- The Assurance of Salvation: The Christian Confidence in God’s Grace
- The Foundations of Christian Assurance
- Augustine: Early Church Foundation
- Thomas Aquinas: Medieval Synthesis
- Martin Luther: Reformation Confidence
- John Calvin: Faith and Assurance
- The Westminster Standards: Systematic Articulation
- The Synod of Dort: Perseverance and Assurance
- The Heidelberg Catechism
- The Puritan Contribution: Practical Divinity
- John Owen: The Puritan Prince
- Jonathan Edwards: Religious Affections
- George Whitefield: Evangelical Preacher
- Charles Hodge: Systematic Theology
- Charles Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers
- B.B. Warfield: Princeton Theology
- J.I. Packer: Contemporary Theological Thought
- R.C. Sproul: God’s Sovereignty and Human Confidence
- The Practical Outworking of Assurance
- Conclusion
The Assurance of Salvation: The Christian Confidence in God’s Grace
The doctrine of assurance—the believer’s confidence in their present salvation and future glorification—stands as one of the most significant teachings in Christian theology. Throughout church history, many faithful pastors and theologians have articulated a robust doctrine of assurance grounded in God’s sovereign grace, the finished work of Christ, and the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. This essay explores how these prominent Christian thinkers understood and defended the believer’s assurance of salvation.
The Foundations of Christian Assurance
Orthodox Christian theology distinguishes itself by grounding assurance not primarily in subjective religious experience or moral achievement, but in the objective reality of God’s electing love, Christ’s accomplished redemption, and the Spirit’s effectual work. This three-fold foundation provides believers with a certainty that transcends the fluctuations of feeling and the inconsistencies of Christian living.
The doctrine rests on several theological pillars: God’s unconditional election of specific individuals to salvation, the definite accomplishment of redemption through Christ’s atoning work, the Spirit’s irresistible grace in regeneration, and the certain perseverance of all true believers to final glory. Together, these doctrines create a framework in which assurance becomes not only possible but the natural outworking of saving faith.
Augustine: Early Church Foundation
Augustine of Hippo, one of the most influential theologians in church history, laid the crucial groundwork for understanding God’s sovereign grace in salvation. Writing in the fourth and fifth centuries, Augustine emphasized that salvation from beginning to end is the work of divine grace.
From On the Predestination of the Saints (Chapter 17), Augustine wrote: “God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, predestinating us to the adoption of children, not because we were going to be of ourselves holy and immaculate, but He chose and predestinated us that we might be so.”
Augustine taught that God predestines the elect according to His own counsel, not based on foreseen human merit or decision. He argued that fallen humanity is incapable of choosing God without the prior regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. This understanding of grace as effectual and irresistible became foundational for later theological developments.
Again, from On the Predestination of the Saints (Chapter 19), Augustine explained: “Between grace and predestination there is only this difference, that predestination is the preparation for grace, while grace is the donation itself. When, therefore, the apostle says, ‘Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works,’ it is grace; but what follows—’which God hath prepared that we should walk in them’—is predestination.”
In his anti-Pelagian writings, Augustine insisted that perseverance itself is a gift of God to the elect. Those whom God has chosen will be preserved by His power and brought to final glory. From On the Gift of Perseverance (Chapter 35), he declared: “Who, therefore, of the redeemed would dare to attribute his redemption at any time to his own merits, and not to the grace of God alone, when that very perseverance in good, which he certainly could not have without God’s help, he yet knows to be wholly a gift of God?”
This provided the theological basis for confidence in salvation resting on God’s unchanging purpose rather than human faithfulness.
Thomas Aquinas: Medieval Synthesis
Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval theologian, while incorporating Aristotelian philosophy into Christian thought, maintained key Augustinian insights about grace and predestination. From Summa Theologica (Part I, Question 23, Article 6), Aquinas taught: “Predestination most certainly and infallibly takes effect; yet it does not impose any necessity, so as to cause what is predestined to happen from necessity.” In other words, God's predestination will definitely succeed, but not by forcing people against their will—He accomplishes it through means that involve genuine human response.
Aquinas distinguished between the certainty of God’s decree and the believer’s subjective knowledge of their election. He taught that while no one can know with absolute certainty that they are among the elect apart from extraordinary revelation, believers can have moral certainty through the theological virtue of hope and by recognizing they possess sanctifying grace.
Martin Luther: Reformation Confidence
Martin Luther, whose reforming insights sparked the Protestant Reformation, emphasized justification by faith alone as the foundation for assurance. Luther taught that believers are declared righteous through faith in Christ’s merits, not through their own works or inherent righteousness.
From The Bondage of the Will, Luther declared: “Free will without God’s grace is not free at all, but is the permanent prisoner and bondslave of evil since it cannot turn itself to good.”
Luther’s doctrine of justification provided a basis for assurance distinct from medieval Catholic teaching. Rather than looking to one’s own spiritual progress or accumulated merit, believers could look to Christ’s finished work and God’s promise. This external, objective ground offered certainty that introspective self-examination could never provide.
Once more, from The Bondage of the Will, Luther expressed his confidence in God’s saving work: “I frankly confess that even if it were possible I should not wish to have free choice given to me, or to have anything left in my own hands by which I might strive for salvation.” He continued: “But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me, not according to my working or running, but according to His own grace and mercy, I have the comfortable certainty that He is faithful and will not lie to me, and that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break Him or pluck me from Him.”
Luther also emphasized the bondage of the human will apart from grace, teaching that salvation is entirely God’s work from election through glorification. This understanding meant that the believer’s confidence rested on God’s power and faithfulness rather than human cooperation with grace.
From Luther’s Commentary on Galatians (on Galatians 2:20), he wrote: “Learn therefore to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing unto him and say: Lord Jesus, thou art my righteousness, I am thy sin; thou hast taken upon thee what was mine and hast given me what was thine; thou becamest what thou wast not that I might become what I was not.”
Luther’s famous statement on facing Satan’s accusations captures his confidence in Christ’s work: “So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: ‘I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!’”
John Calvin: Faith and Assurance
John Calvin, the great Genevan Reformer, provided the theological architecture for understanding assurance. Calvin’s treatment of faith itself included an element of “certainty” that distinguished his view from Roman Catholic theology. Rome taught (and still does) that it was not possible to have absolute certainty of salvation in this life. It was seen as presumptuous and arrogant to make this assumption.
From his Institutes of the Christian Religion (Book III, Chapter 2, Section 7), Calvin wrote: “We shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”
Calvin taught that saving faith necessarily involves confidence in God’s promises. He understood faith as a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ. For Calvin, to have faith at all is to have a measure of assurance, since faith consists in resting upon Christ’s work rather than one’s own merit.
From Institutes (Book III, Chapter 24, Section 5), Calvin explained where believers should look for assurance: “If we have been chosen in Christ, we shall not find assurance of our election in ourselves; and not even in God the Father, if we conceive him as severed from his Son. Christ, then, is the mirror wherein we must, and without self-deception may, contemplate our own election.”
Calvin emphasized that believers must look outside themselves to Christ rather than introspecting endlessly about their own spiritual state. The ground of assurance lies in God’s electing decree and Christ’s finished work, not in the believer’s subjective feelings or moral progress. While Christians may experience doubts and struggles, these do not negate the objective reality of their salvation.
From Institutes (Book III, Chapter 2, Section 16), Calvin wrote: “For faith is not content with a doubtful and changeable opinion, so is it not content with an obscure and confused conception; but requires full and fixed certainty, such as men are wont to have from things experienced and proved.”
He continued in Institutes (Book III, Chapter 2, Section 28): “For if, while God is favorable, no good can be lacking, when he assures us of his love we are abundantly and sufficiently assured of salvation. Faith, therefore, having grasped the love of God, has promises of the present life and of that to come, and firm assurance of all good things.”
Calvin also emphasized the believer’s union with Christ as central to assurance. From Institutes (Book III, Chapter 2, Section 24): “Christ is not outside us but dwells within us. Not only does he cleave to us by an indivisible bond of fellowship, but with a wonderful communion, day by day, he grows more and more into one body with us, until he becomes completely one with us.”
In his treatment of predestination, Calvin encouraged believers to find assurance in their effectual calling. Those whom God has called through the gospel with the Spirit’s power can be confident they are among the elect, since God’s call is an evidence of His eternal choice.
The Westminster Standards: Systematic Articulation
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) provided one of the most systematic articulations of assurance in confessional form. The Confession devotes an entire chapter to the subject, carefully distinguishing the nature, grounds, and variations of assurance.
Chapter 18, Section 1 states: “Although hypocrites and other unregenerate men may vainly deceive themselves with false hopes and carnal presumptions of being in the favour of God, and estate of salvation (which hope of theirs shall perish): yet such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity, endeavouring to walk in all good conscience before him, may, in this life, be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace, and may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, which hope shall never make them ashamed.”
The Westminster divines taught that assurance is not of the essence of saving faith, at least not experientially, yet believers may attain a certainty of their salvation without extraordinary revelation. Chapter 18, Section 2 elaborates: “This certainty is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope; but an infallible 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, which Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption.”
This assurance is built upon three foundations: the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of graces to which these promises are made, and the testimony of the Spirit of adoption bearing witness with our spirits that we are the children of God.
This threefold ground provides both objective and subjective elements. The promises of Scripture offer an external, unchanging foundation. The evidences of grace—the fruit of the Spirit manifested in transformed affections and holy living—provide internal confirmation. The Spirit’s witness adds the supernatural element, as God Himself testifies to the believer’s adoption.
Chapter 18, Section 3 acknowledges: “This infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties, before he be partaker of it: yet, being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may, without extraordinary revelation in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto.”
The Confession also acknowledges that assurance admits of degrees and may be diminished or interrupted through various causes: neglect of its preservation, falling into particular sins, sudden temptations, or God’s withdrawal of the light of His countenance. Yet true believers can never be utterly destitute of assurance, and by the Spirit they may attain full assurance through patient continuance in the use of means.
The Synod of Dort: Perseverance and Assurance
The Canons of Dort (1619), responding to theological challenges regarding the security of salvation, articulated the doctrine of perseverance and its relationship to assurance. The fifth main doctrinal point addresses both the certainty of God’s preservation of the saints and the believer’s confidence in that preservation.
Fifth Head of Doctrine, Article 8 states: “Thus, it is not by their own merits or strength, but by the undeserved mercy of God, that they neither totally fall from faith and grace nor continue and perish in their backsliding. With respect to themselves this not only easily could happen, but also undoubtedly would happen; but with respect to God it cannot possibly happen, since his plan cannot be changed, his promise cannot fail, the calling according to his purpose cannot be revoked, the merit of Christ as well as his interceding and preserving cannot be nullified, and the sealing of the Holy Spirit can neither be invalidated nor wiped out.”
Dort affirmed that God’s elect, once truly regenerated, can neither totally nor finally fall from grace but will certainly persevere to the end. This certainty does not spring from human strength but from God’s unchanging decree, the merit and intercession of Christ, the indwelling Spirit, and the nature of the covenant of grace.
Fifth Head of Doctrine, Article 9 declares: “Concerning this preservation of those chosen to salvation and concerning the perseverance of true believers in faith, believers themselves can and do become assured in accordance with the measure of their faith, by which they firmly believe that they are and always will remain true and living members of the church, and that they have the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.”
The Canons teach that believers may and do obtain assurance of this perseverance through the Spirit’s witness and through observing in themselves the infallible fruits of election—such as a true faith in Christ, a filial fear of God, godly sorrow for sin, and hunger for righteousness.
Fifth Head of Doctrine, Article 10 explains: “Accordingly, this assurance does not derive from some private revelation beyond or outside the Word, but from faith in the promises of God which he has very plentifully revealed in his Word for our comfort, from the testimony of the Holy Spirit testifying with our spirit that we are God’s children and heirs, and finally from a serious and holy pursuit of a clear conscience and of good works.”
This assurance provides not grounds for carelessness but motives for humble gratitude and holy living.
The Heidelberg Catechism
The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) opens with one of the most beautiful expressions of Christian assurance in all of church history. Question and Answer 1 asks and responds:
“What is thy only comfort in life and death? That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with His precious blood, hath fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.”
The Puritan Contribution: Practical Divinity
The English and American Puritans devoted extraordinary attention to the cultivation and maintenance of assurance. They developed what has been called a “practical divinity” that combined rigorous theology with pastoral sensitivity.
The Puritans taught that while salvation is entirely God’s work, believers have a responsibility to make their calling and election sure through diligent use of the means of grace. They emphasized self-examination not as a source of assurance but as a means of recognizing the Spirit’s work already accomplished.
Puritan divinity distinguished carefully between the ground of salvation (God’s decree and Christ’s work) and the evidence of salvation (the Spirit’s fruits in the believer). Christians were encouraged to look primarily to Christ while also observing thankfully the gracious changes God had wrought in their hearts and lives.
The Puritans recognized that assurance might not come immediately with conversion and that believers could experience long periods of darkness and doubt. Yet they maintained that God ordinarily gives His people settled confidence through continued fellowship with Him in the means of grace—Scripture, prayer, sacraments, and Christian community.
John Owen: The Puritan Prince
John Owen (1616-1683), often called “the prince of Puritans,” provided profound theological reflection on assurance and perseverance. From his Exposition of Hebrews, Owen taught: “The principal interest of those who come to God is to have assured evidence of the perfect expiation of sin, and until assurance is given, no sinner can have encouragement to approach God.”
Owen emphasized the centrality of Christ’s mediation: “No man was ever saved except by virtue of the new covenant and the mediation of Christ.”
Owen’s own experience illustrated the difference between intellectual knowledge and experiential assurance. Though he was a convinced Calvinist with extensive doctrinal knowledge, he lacked the sense of reality of his own salvation until God used a simple country preacher to speak to his heart. After this experience, Owen felt himself liberated and adopted as a Son of God, demonstrating that assurance often comes through the means of grace rather than through theological study alone.
Jonathan Edwards: Religious Affections
Jonathan Edwards, the brilliant American theologian and philosopher, made significant contributions to Christian thought on assurance through his analysis of religious experience. His treatise on religious affections explored how believers could distinguish genuine conversion from false or temporary religious feelings.
From his Religious Affections (Part I), Edwards declared: “True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections. The things of religion take hold of men’s souls no further than they affect them.”
Edwards argued that true conversion produces qualitatively different affections from those arising from mere natural conscience or temporary religious enthusiasm. From Religious Affections (Part III, Section 1), he wrote: “Those gracious influences which are the effects of the Spirit of God are altogether of a different nature from anything that men find within themselves by nature, or only in the exercise of natural principles; and are things which no improvement of those qualifications or principles that are natural, no advancing or exalting them to higher degrees, and no kind of composition of them, will ever bring men to.”
Saving grace creates a new spiritual sense that perceives divine beauty and excellence in a way impossible for the unregenerate.
For Edwards, assurance comes through recognizing these gracious affections in oneself—not merely strong feelings, but holy inclinations that flow from a transformed nature. These include love to God for His own sake, delight in holiness, evangelical humility, and Christlike tenderness of spirit. Such affections prove their genuineness by their persistence and their fruit in practical holiness.
From Religious Affections (Part III), Edwards explained his view of how assurance develops: “It is not God’s design that men should obtain assurance in any other way, than by mortifying corruption, and increasing in grace, and obtaining the lively exercises of it. And although self-examination be a duty of great use and importance, and by no means to be neglected; yet it is not the principal means, by which the saints do get satisfaction of their good estate. Assurance is not to be obtained so much by self-examination, as by action.”
Edwards maintained that believers should examine their spiritual state not morbidly but honestly, looking for the marks of grace while ultimately resting in God’s promises and Christ’s righteousness. He taught that assurance grows through continued communion with God and the progressive sanctification that confirms one’s regeneration.
Edwards also wrote: “He who has no religious affection is in a state of spiritual death and is wholly destitute of powerful quickening influences of the Spirit of God upon his heart.” And further: “Grace is the seed of glory, the dawning of glory in the heart, and therefore grace is the earnest of the future inheritance.”
George Whitefield: Evangelical Preacher
George Whitefield (1714-1770), the great evangelical preacher and revivalist, preached extensively on God’s electing grace and its relationship to assurance. From his sermons on Genesis 3:15, Whitefield proclaimed: “God the Father and God the Son had entered into a covenant concerning the salvation of the elect from all eternity, wherein God the Father promised, That, if the Son would offer his soul a sacrifice for sin, he should see his seed.”
Whitefield emphasized God’s progressive revelation of salvation: “It is wonderful to observe how gradually God revealed his Son to mankind. He began with the promise in the text, and this the elect lived upon, till the time of Abraham. To him, God made further discoveries of his eternal council concerning man’s redemption.” He continued: “This so much to the magnifying of Free-grace, and plainly shows us, that salvation cometh only from the Lord.”
In a letter to John Wesley, where the two disagreed on election, Whitefield expressed how the doctrine provided him personal assurance: “As for my own part, this doctrine is my daily support: I should utterly sink under a dread of my impending trials, was I not firmly persuaded that God has chosen me in Christ from before the foundation of the world, and that now being effectually called, he will suffer none to pluck me out of his almighty hand.”
Whitefield also wrote: “The godly consideration of predestination and our election in Christ, is full of sweet pleasures, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing their minds to high and heavenly things; as well because it does greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal salvation, to be enjoyed through Christ; as because it doth firmly kindle their love towards God.”
In prayer, Whitefield would cry out: “Lord Jesus, accomplish the number of thine elect! Lord Jesus, hasten thy kingdom!” And he frequently quoted Christ’s high priestly prayer: “Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.”
Charles Hodge: Systematic Theology
Charles Hodge, the great Princeton theologian of the nineteenth century, provided a comprehensive treatment of assurance within his systematic theology. Hodge defended the biblical position against both Romanist and alternative Protestant views, arguing for the possibility of full assurance grounded in divine sovereignty.
From Systematic Theology, Volume 3, Chapter 17, Hodge wrote: “The perseverance of the saints means that the saints, those whom God has accepted as righteous in Christ and sanctified by his Spirit, will certainly continue in a state of grace and attain eternal life.”
Hodge taught that assurance flows from understanding the plan of salvation as revealed in Scripture. When believers grasp that salvation is entirely of grace—that God chooses unconditionally, Christ saves effectually, and the Spirit preserves infallibly—they possess a theological foundation for confidence that no system of conditional salvation can provide.
From Systematic Theology, Volume 3, Chapter 18, Hodge explained: “The ground of assurance is not to be found in ourselves. It is not founded on our frames, our feelings, or our works. It rests on the testimony of God; on his promises; on what he has revealed.”
Hodge emphasized that assurance does not depend on one’s ability to trace one’s election back into the eternal counsels of God, but rather on present evidence of regeneration and union with Christ. Believers know they are elect because they have been effectually called, and this calling manifests itself in faith, repentance, and progressive sanctification.
Charles Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers
Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), the renowned Baptist preacher, addressed assurance frequently in his sermons with both theological precision and pastoral warmth.
In one of his sermons, Spurgeon declared: “My assurance lies in the fact that ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’ and, that, ‘Whoever believes in Him has everlasting life.’ I believe in Him and, therefore, I know I have eternal life.”
Spurgeon testified to his own continued confidence in Christ: “Personally, I wish to say, — it is some thirty-four years since I first believed in Christ Jesus, and then I came to him as having nothing in myself, and I took him to be my all. At this moment I possess a comforting and clear assurance that I have eternal life; but my basis for confidence today is exactly what it was at the time when I first came to Christ.”
He carefully distinguished between presumption and genuine assurance: “There are those who are ready to be fully assured; there are others to whom it will be death to talk of it. There is a great difference between presumption and full assurance. Full assurance is reasonable: it is based on solid ground. Presumption takes for granted, and with brazen face pronounces that to be its own to which it has no right whatever.”
In addressing how assurance functions practically, Spurgeon taught that believers must look away from self to Christ: “The Holy Spirit turns the eye away from self to Jesus; but Satan turns the eye away from Jesus to self. I have always found that when I rest in the work of Christ I have peace, but when I look within for anything good in self, I meet with darkness and discover nothing but cause for trouble.”
Spurgeon emphasized the exclusive sufficiency of Christ’s work: “It is not your hold on Christ that saves you; it is Christ. It is not your joy in Christ that saves you; it is Christ. It is not even your faith in Christ, though that be the instrument; it is Christ’s blood and righteousness.”
B.B. Warfield: Princeton Theology
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (1851-1921), professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, provided rigorous theological defense of assurance grounded in God’s sovereign grace.
From his Biblical Doctrines, Warfield wrote with precision: “It is never on account of its formal nature as a psychic act that faith is conceived in Scripture to be saving. It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. The saving power resides exclusively, not in the act of faith or the attitude of faith or nature of faith, but in the object of faith.”
Warfield continued: “Our faith itself, though it be the bond of our union with Christ through which we receive all His blessings, is not our saviour. We have but one Saviour; and that one Saviour is Jesus Christ our Lord. Nothing that we are and nothing that we can do enters in the slightest measure into the ground of our acceptance with God. Jesus did it all.”
He emphasized the comprehensive nature of this truth: “There is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God.”
Warfield stressed the permanence of the believer’s need for Christ: “We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This is not true of us only when we believe. It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be. It is always on His ‘blood and righteousness’ alone that we can rest.”
From The Plan of Salvation, Warfield articulated the fundamental divide in soteriological systems: “There are fundamentally only two doctrines of salvation: that salvation is from God, or that salvation is from ourselves. The former is the doctrine of common Christianity; the latter is the doctrine of universal heathenism.”
He clarified what it means to be evangelical: “The issue is whether the Lord God saves us, or whether we have to save ourselves; and no one can be called evangelical who does not hold that God Himself saves us.”
J.I. Packer: Contemporary Theological Thought
In the twentieth century, J.I. Packer renewed interest in Puritan theology and its treatment of assurance. Packer argued that modern evangelicalism had often confused assurance with the essence of faith itself, leading to a presumptuous certainty divorced from holy living.
Packer recovered the Puritan distinction between saving faith and full assurance, teaching that while all believers have some measure of confidence in Christ, full assurance requires time, growth, and the observation of grace at work in one’s life. This prevented both the despair that comes from making assurance impossible and the presumption that comes from making it automatic.
Following the Puritans, Packer emphasized that assurance should drive believers to greater holiness rather than carelessness. The confidence that God will preserve His people to the end motivates gratitude, love, and obedient service rather than complacency.
R.C. Sproul: God’s Sovereignty and Human Confidence
R.C. Sproul, a leading Reformed theologian of recent decades, emphasized how the doctrines of grace provide the foundation for lasting assurance. Sproul argued that when believers understand God’s absolute sovereignty in salvation, they can rest confidently in God’s purposes rather than their own performance.
Sproul taught that the doctrine of perseverance means that those who are truly in Christ will be preserved by God’s power regardless of their subjective sense of security. While feelings of assurance may wax and wane, the objective reality of God’s keeping power remains constant for all who have been united to Christ by faith.
The Practical Outworking of Assurance
Christian theology has always emphasized that right doctrine should lead to transformed living. The doctrine of assurance proves its truth not merely in intellectual satisfaction but in practical Christian experience.
Assurance produces humility because believers recognize that their salvation rests entirely on God’s grace rather than their own merit or effort. It generates gratitude because Christians see themselves as recipients of undeserved mercy. It creates boldness in prayer and service because believers approach God as assured children rather than as uncertain petitioners hoping for acceptance.
The doctrine also guards against two opposite errors: presumption and despair. Against presumption, it insists that true faith produces fruit and that assurance includes the evidence of transformed life. Against despair, it points to God’s promises and Christ’s finished work as grounds for confidence even when subjective experience seems to contradict one’s salvation.
Biblical assurance also shapes how believers face death and judgment. Those who rest in God’s sovereign grace can face the end of life with confidence, knowing that their salvation depends not on their ability to maintain faith until the final moment but on God’s unchanging purpose to preserve His elect.
Whitefield’s confidence exemplifies this truth. In one of his final sermons, he proclaimed that attempting to reach heaven through works would be like climbing to the moon on a rope of sand—utterly impossible. Yet in Christ, he possessed complete confidence and expressed both his willingness to live forever preaching Christ and his longing to die to be with Him.
Conclusion
Throughout church history, Christian theologians have articulated a doctrine of assurance that grounds the believer’s confidence in God’s sovereign grace rather than human achievement. From Augustine’s emphasis on effectual grace, through Luther’s recovery of the biblical doctrine of justification by faith, to Calvin’s emphasis on faith as confident trust, through the Westminster divines’ systematic analysis, to the Puritans’ practical guidance, through the great preachers like Whitefield and Spurgeon, to the systematic theologians like Hodge and Warfield, to contemporary teachers, this tradition has offered Christians a solid foundation for certainty.
This understanding teaches that assurance is possible because salvation is God’s work from beginning to end. Believers can know they are saved because God has chosen them in Christ before the foundation of the world, because Christ has accomplished their redemption at the cross, because the Spirit has regenerated them and united them to Christ, and because God will certainly preserve them to final glory.
As Warfield powerfully stated, there are only two doctrines of salvation: that salvation is from God, or that salvation is from ourselves. The former provides the unshakeable foundation for assurance; the latter leaves believers perpetually uncertain of their standing before God.
This assurance does not depend on the strength of one’s faith or the consistency of one’s obedience, but on the faithfulness of God to His promises. It grows through the means of grace—Scripture, prayer, sacraments, and fellowship—as believers observe the Spirit’s work in their lives and rest increasingly upon Christ’s finished work.
The practical fruit of this doctrine appears in Christians who face trials with confidence, who serve with gratitude rather than anxiety, who battle sin with hope rather than despair, and who approach death with the assurance that nothing can separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus their Lord. This is the legacy of Christian theology’s treatment of assurance: confidence grounded not in self but in the sovereign grace of God, resting entirely on Christ’s blood and righteousness alone.
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About the Author
Roger Ball is a Reformed Christian writer who lives on the Florida Spacecoast. He writes on Christian theology, apologetics, psychology, and culture. Contact: rogerball121@gmail.com
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