AFFIRMATION & GRATITUDE the Twin Duties of Assurance
by Peter MastersFROM SWORD & TROWEL 2003 No 1
A companion article to ‘Gaining and Keeping Assurance’ This brief article will expand a little on the three grounds of assurance
identified in the confessions. These are, first, faith in the Gospel promises; second,
reflection on the inward evidences of graces; and third, the witness of the Spirit.
1 Affirmation
Concerning the first of these, we must maintain our assurance by actively
affirming the central doctrines of the faith in prayer, praise and reflection. Someone may
protest saying, ‘I was converted years ago, and the doctrines of grace are etched indelibly in
my mind.’ But this will not necessarily maintain certainty. We must regularly review those
great truths of redemption, always retaining a space in our personal prayer to
wholeheartedly thank God for them.
If we believingly and feelingfully rehearse before God our dependence upon
the Person and work of Christ, our hearts will remain assured, and the Spirit will enlarge
and establish our appreciation of them, deepening our convictions. Our soul ‘witnesses’ and
the Holy Spirit endorses that witness wonderfully.
This leads us to refer again to the great helpfulness of hymns. If hymns are
carefully selected in worship, then worshippers affirm the promises of Scripture, and give
sincere thanks to God for them. The work of Christ on Calvary, His great love, His amazing
grace and His powerful work in salvation, will be explicitly affirmed in praise, and certainty
will abound.
Hymns of worship based upon New Testament light give glory to God and at
the same time strengthen assurance, in accordance with the first scriptural basis of
assurance listed in the confessions. In hymns we articulate regularly our solid dependence
upon redemption foundations, and our faith is exercised. If we do not sing with sincerity
and love about our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, singing explicitly about New Testament
doctrines and promises, we lose a large and precious department of ‘affirmation’.
We expressed our reliance upon the blood and righteousness of Christ
revealed in the Gospel at our conversion, and we must go on affirming that reliance in
prayer and worship until the great day comes when we shall see Him.
It is a sad, sad situation when a believer under pressure and trial, or
distracted by earthly cares, prays and worships without consciously deriving comfort from
these truths of salvation, for this practice is the first and chief source of certainty.
Of course, the faith-strengthening, assurance-deepening nature of affirmation
extends beyond the Gospel promises to other doctrines such as God’s attributes, His plans
and purposes, and the divine wonder and depth of Scripture itself. We must affirm all
precious aspects of Truth, and as we rejoice in them and restate our belief in them, our love
of them, and our dependence upon them, assurance will be consolidated.
When we find foundational truths during our personal reading of the Word,
we should sometimes pause, and reflect, and thank God for them.
The first piece of advice we give to the believer who has an assurance
problem, is to bring to a halt the endless question: ‘Am I saved, or am I not?’ Our
assignment is to exercise faith by committing ourselves to the things we have been shown,
and to give thanks for them, love them, and draw comfort from them. As we set aside the
question of our standing, and apply ourselves to our first and highest duty - that of
affirming and giving thanks - we will rediscover certainty.
But is this not just a form of brainwashing - repeating things to produce
programmed certainty? Of course not, because it is not vain, mindless repetition of ideas
imposed upon us. It is an intelligent, appreciative activity which lays hold on truths which
we have most certainly proved and valued for ourselves.
2 Evidence
The second scriptural category of assurance described in the confessions
involves the recognition of inward graces. This is certainly a secondary source of assurance,
but nevertheless a most important one, not least because we owe God gratitude for all that
He has done for us. When we encourage young converts to see God’s blessing
in their lives we present only the basic signs of conversion, six of which are conveniently to
be seen in Acts 2. These are set out in the writer’s booklet - Seven
Certain Signs - and summarised in ‘Assurance and New Believers’ on page 29.
More seasoned believers have other indications of grace in their lives,
perhaps stretching back over many years.
We may comfort our hearts with evidences such as the clear lordship of
Christ in our lives, and an earnest concern for sanctification. We may see ourselves as
disobedient to God in many ways, but if we have an active conscience and a strong desire to
obey, we conclude that these would not be in us but for the Spirit of God working in our
hearts.
If the Word of God exercises a powerful authority in our lives, and we desire
to obey Christ, first and foremost, this observation should move us to gratitude. Despite our
unworthiness it is a sure sign of grace. We dare not look for great success, but for struggle
and desire. These are true signs of life.
We observe, also, that we are people of prayer, feeling impoverished, empty
and unclean when we fail to pray. The true convert is given a concern for prayer, and sees it
as a necessity. This is all by grace.
Love to Christ is truly an evidence of grace, as the apostle Paul shows
in 1 Corinthians 13. It is a greater sign in value than either faith or anticipation,
although these are very strong also.
Returning to the process of sanctification, we observe in ourselves an instinctive
opposition to personal sin, for however much we succeed or fail in holiness, we hate sin
more than we love it, and we are ashamed of it. There are many practices that we abstain
from and avoid for Christ’s sake, and this distinguishes those who are converted from the
unconverted.
Prayer is a great evidence of grace in the life, and answers to prayer are
notable strengtheners of certainty. The longer we live the greater is our memory-bank of
divine provision, deliverance, overruling and intervention in our affairs, in answer to prayer.
Connected with this is service for the Lord. As we serve Him in ministry or
Sunday School teaching or visitation, or any hard undertaking, we pray for help and
strength, and we definitely receive the blessing of God. This in turn increases our assurance,
giving us much gladness.
There are times when we simply cannot meet all the obligations of secular
life and of the service of Christ, but the Lord enables us. As we seek to have
zeal in the Lord’s work, assurance is given ‘fuel’ to flourish.
Intercessory prayer is a particularly precious source of assurance, because the
Lord from time to time turns round a backslider, or opens the heart of a lost and seemingly
obdurate rebel. If we keep a list of people or situations over which we intercede, we see,
over time, remarkable answers to prayer, and our own conviction and certainty is
consolidated. These answers, whether personal deliverances and provisions, or blessings
upon others, are evidences of God’s power and of the acceptability of our prayers as people
of Christ.
Is it wholesome to be taking satisfaction from inward graces? Will this not
induce pride and self-satisfaction? Can we expect the Holy Spirit to illuminate and witness
to our inward graces in the same way that He illuminates the Word in our minds?
The answer to the first two questions is that observation of inward grace will
never provoke pride, because we also see so much which is depressing and harrowing. For
this reason, when we recognise graces, we can only praise God for putting them in place
and keeping them alive.
In answer to the third question, the Spirit does not magnify our view of these
graces, but He fans them to a greater flame, causing them to operate more keenly. Then,
despite our natural self-pity and impatience, we bear our trials better, pray for help more,
love Christ more, feel more for others, seek guidance more, find greater heart-concern and
boldness in witness, and, of course, struggle harder against sin. If these things be in you,
Peter would say, and abound, then you make your calling and election sure (2 Peter
1.8-10).
3 Witness of the Spirit
At the risk of repeating matter covered under the selected texts, we
add these comments about avoiding a mystical view of the Spirit’s witness in assurance.
The idea that special, direct, mystical effusions of the Spirit will lift people up in soaring,
ecstatic and sensational experiences of ‘pure glory’ is not in the Bible, nor is it supported in
the confessions of Puritan times. Were they cold, heartless theologians, frightened of
elevated spiritual experience? On the contrary they - in line with Scripture - spoke often of
the powerful blessing of the Spirit in giving assurance, joy and courage to believers. They
spoke also of gaining on occasions a sublime sense of God’s power and majesty and
holiness, and also of Christ’s incomparable love. For them, the blessing of the witness of
the Spirit was sometimes as overwhelming and uplifting as the human frame could receive,
and yet, usually, it was to seal and glorify things revealed in the Gospel, and embraced by
faith. Such elevated moments of assurance may not be the normal and everyday experience
of believers, but they are the same in essence, only greater in intensity. Such times of
heightened assurance are for the sovereign Spirit to impart. The important point for us is
that we should not think in terms of directly imparted mystical ‘charismatic’ sensations, but
in terms of the Spirit witnessing with our own souls when these are engaged in such
spiritual activities as biblical reflection, affirmation, praise and prayer. Assurance, by the
Spirit, which comes by this route is always full of joy and peace, and
sometimes even more glorious.
In the light of the texts set out in the companion article ‘Gaining and
Keeping Assurance’, can we know with confidence that we are justified, born again, and
adopted into the family of God’s people? The answer is a categorical, ‘Yes! We are
supposed to have certainty.’ There are exceptions as we have observed, but they are limited.
Will this confidence extend to a certain sense of God’s love?
Not if this means a physical sensation, or some kind of felt, mystical link with Deity. But
there will be a relationship by faith, attended by strong certainty.
Will this include a sense of God’s love? Yes, if this means a joyful realisation of His great love towards us. This will extend to great confidence in prayer, which will become a privileged and precious exercise. It may always be hard to get down to pray, but once praying, it is another matter.
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