Christian Assurance

Again some more wonderful notes on Christian Assurance taken from Dr. David McWilliams. These truths are essential for a balanced understanding of election and predestination and the ground of assurance for a Christian. Election is not meant to cause pastoral problems. Election is given to strenghten the believers security in Christ and assurance of faith.

Calvin is the primary example of Christocentric approach to divine election. It is not raised as a speculative question in ways calculated to produce pastoral problems. Calvin following Paul, that election is the necessary prerequisite of the believer’s assurance. Election is not preached to cause problems in assurance, but the grant assurance. Not to gaze into his decree. "Looking Directly Into the Decree" in "Instruction in Faith" in 1537 pg. 37. "Looking directly into the decree in order to affirm the certainty of our salvation can only worry us with a miserable distress and perturbation. The believer must look to Christ in whom he has been chosen, not to the decree."

"Accordingly, those whom God has appointed as his sons, are said to have been chosen not in themselves, but in Christ (Eph 1:4), for unless he could love them in him, he could not honor them with his inheritance, with the inheritance of his kingdom, if they have not previously become partakers of him. But if we have been chosen in him, 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. For since it is into his body the Father has destined those to be engrafted whom he has willed from eternity to be his own, that he may hold as sons all whom he acknowledges to be among his members, we have a sufficiently clear and firm testimony that we have been enscribed in the book of life (Rev 21:27) if we are in communion with Christ. " Calvin, Institutes III: xxiv: 5, p. 970.

You can find this in his sermons on Ephesians in harmonious form. This kind of stuff is replete in Calvin.

CALVIN AND ASSURANCE OF FAITH
There is significance of this in the Lord’s supper in assurance. In Calvin, God’s assurance takes palpable form. It is a sensible sign and seal. It appeals to the senses. You can see, hear, touch, taste, smell. It is a strong emphasis in Calvin in assurance.

We can never mount up to the blinding eye of God’s decree and peer into his counsel. It is going to perturb our minds. People are going to be agitated if they are elect or not. People lose themselves in morbid introspection. They are constantly concerned with the marks of a Christian. We have very little energy to be Christians. It consumes a person, every waking moment they are worrying "Am I elect or not. If I am elect, then I am going to have the marks." Then they start looking for the marks. But then they do not find the marks to be indelible or deep enough or they find one day to have the mark and the next day they do not.

Calvin helps us understand especially with the emphasis of the preaching of the gospel, word and sacrament. That the gospel is outside of us. And that does not mean that it does not transform us. Another place in book III he says that if the gospel remains outside of us then we are not saved. He means to emphasize that the gospel is for me. It is objective. There is the objective nature of the gospel where we turn people. The gospel does not change, but I change. I am fickle, fail, there is not a day where I do not come short of God’s majesty. Calvin says "Who looking within himself does not find reason for damnation?" Do you? But Christ is the mirror in whom we find our election. We do not find it within. We find it in Him.

Example. Look there is decree in eternity past. And there is this great wall that has been built here. There is no way we can see over the wall in the divine decree. But if we look to Christ, we look to him in faith, we trust him, we receive word and sacrament, we receive God’s promise to us. You see the whole emphasis is on the promise. We receive the promise by faith. It is as if Christ is the mirror, and we can see what is back here behind the wall. Christ is himself in fact the beloved of the Father. And that we have always been loved by the Father. We can only know this, says Calvin, by faith in Christ, we can never, ever get there by trying to peer into the secret counsel of God.

So when you do take a book by Loraine Boettner "Reformed Doctrine of Predestination" which is filled with some good stuff, yet there is no emphasis of union with Christ in the whole book. Do you wonder why pastorally people are going to be confused? There focus is following the peer into the decree. Even in terms of their personal piety, it is going to be determined by putting the decree at the center of their lives. We are never called to do that. We are called to put Christ at the center of our lives.

How do you make your calling and election sure? It is interesting to read Calvin on those passages that call you to examine yourself. You do not do it by looking for the marks of a Christian. You do it by renewing your faith in Christ. Granted the Holy Spirit changes me. But if I try to find the assurance in the change. The change is never perfect, never deep enough, there is never enough. Not for the mentality that develop. That mentality wants assurance, but that assurance is not going to be found in my fickleness. Even in the work of Christ in me, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, sometimes more apparent, sometimes less apparent. Yes we make our calling and election sure, but we do it by faith in Christ. Our Christian life flows out of faith in Christ. The marks will be there, but my focus will not be on the marks, but on Christ from whom the marks flow.

The marks of a Christian, Calvin would say are a buttress of assurance, but not the grounds of assurance. They cannot be the ground of assurance. I can now see I am not where I was when I first came to faith in Christ. There is a difference of saying that and making it the ground of your assurance. The ground of your assurance can be no other than the ground of your salvation. The ground is Christ alone.

This growth in piety can be what hinders me the most in seeing my assurance. I am lost once again in my self. I am curved in on myself (curreta se). If I am curved in on myself, I see myself growing in grace, but oh man, maybe I am not assured because I am so self focused. Am I proud? Am I trusting in myself? You see it is a never ending cycle.

Now Calvin does have a place for the presumptuous and he deals with that extensively. But it is different. We are talking about a different pastoral problem. A person who is presumptuous is a person who is not looking to Christ. He is a person who is curved in upon himself as well.
You see if you preach through election and your people grab onto it, and it is not centered in Christ and the gospel, election becomes a threat. Anything is a threat if it is severed from Christ.
What can happen in pietism is different than that. It is a concept of my personal growth in grace and my personal life in the Lord that is so focused upon qualities. The word and sacrament that comes from the Lord will produces these things in my life, and I am thankful to see them, but constantly looking at my life for these qualities and the depths of these qualities in such a way that your focus is not on Christ any longer but on yourself. Read Calvin on these passages.
What I am telling you is a genuine problem, and if you know anything about pietism in the history of the church you know that it is a problem. And if you pastor people, you know it is a problem where people can lose themselves in this.

The problem for pastors is they tend to look at other people and not see growth. Our concern is that they are not believers. One thing we need to always keep in mind when we pastor people is that their growth in grace could be imperceptible to us, but a quantum leap in God’s eyes.
What Calvin is saying is it allows you to examine your life appropriately .What is the Lord’s Supper? It is the Reformed altar call. What happens in churches is Sunday by Sunday people keep coming forward for the altar call. What is the true altar call? It is the Lord’s Supper. That is where we prepare our hearts to frequently come and receive the promise of grace. What happens when I prepare my heart for the Lord’s Supper that is going to come weekly or regularly. I examine my life, but in the context of grace, who Christ is, and what the promise of the gospel is.

The question is, is Christ the one whom I am relying. Yeah, the grace I have in my life is not perfect, but I am in union with Christ and there is his merit. Let’s face it, every Christian virtue can be counterfeited by the devil, except for perseverance. This cannot be a GROUND of my assurance, only Christ can.

Problems of assurance of faith, in real believers, generally stem from a faulty theology.
Someone can could play fast and loose with kingdom ethics and still come to the table. Or someone can have a hypocritical heart and still come to the table. It is important that we examine our heart. We should be concerned with our own personal piety. The operative word is GROUND.