Assurance, 1

I promised a longer consideration of assurance, so here goes.

For starters - with Darryl’s reiteration of the original question in mind - I’d say that assurance is one of the primary pastoral issues that the FV has been designed to fix. I don’t think I need to detail how assurance has been a problem in the Reformed tradition. And in my opinion that’s directly related to the way election and covenant, visible/invisible church function in the Reformed tradition.

My axiom here is: There is no “back door” entry to assurance. I want to close the back door, because the effort to enter by the back door doesn’t lead to assurance but to the opposite. We gain assurance by entering the “front door.”

What’s that mean? The “front door” is the means of grace. God speaks to us in Word and Sacrament. He speaks graciously. He makes promises. He offers cleansing and fellowship, renewal and resurrection life. Gaining assurance by the front door means trusting that God is addressing me in Word and Sacrament, trusting that He is finishing His good work through those means, and believing that He is perfecting me in faith.

Entering by the “back door” is any effort to find some alternative way to know that God is gracious to me. God says in His Word, “I forgive you.” Trying to get into the back door might take the form of trying to peek over God’s shoulder, check the decree and the book of life, and see if “you” includes “me.” As I said, that’s not a way to assurance because a) we can’t peek over God’s shoulder at the decree and b) the whole effort to do so betrays a lack of trust in God, in what God has already said to me. God says, “I forgive you,” but I’m not sure he really means it, so I have to find some ground of certainty more certain than the promises of God. That is unbelief.

This is getting long. More in another post.