Dennis Tuuri

Please turn in your scriptures to Romans chapter 8. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 10, read through verse 18.

Our subject today is the advent of assurance.

And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you.

Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live after the flesh. For if you live after the flesh, you shall die. But if he through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, “Aba, Father.” The spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.

And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ. If so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your scriptures. We thank you, Lord God, that they are revelation of yourself. They also bring us to an understanding of who we are. And we thank you, Lord God, for this particular portion of scripture with its great statements of assurance to us of our salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray, Father, that your spirit might do his work now, might open our ears to hear things of your word, might quicken this word to our understanding, that might cause our innermost part of our being to rejoice in this word and to walk in obedience to it. In Jesus name we pray and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

In the scriptures, advent—coming or appearance—is a phrase that is used in various ways at various times. There was an advent of the Lord Jesus Christ in his incarnation, which is the preeminent advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a final advent that will occur at the end of time, at the end of this world’s history, when the Lord Jesus shall return. He sits now at the right hand of the Father until his word has gone forth and conquered all enemies through the preaching of the gospel. Then he returns to earth for his final advent.

There are various advents of the Lord Jesus Christ in scriptures as well. However, in AD 70, much of the language of the New Testament that we have sometimes thought of in terms of the final advent of our Savior really is properly understood by proper understanding of these texts to refer to the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ in judgment of Jerusalem in AD 70. And it’s not just an advent of judgment. It’s also an advent of assurance and comfort to believers as the persecuting Jewish church and what had become the persecuting Roman state is dealt with definitively by God in AD 70, which opens up a door of victory for the church.

So the next few weeks, as we consider the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ at this particular time of year in which our culture celebrates this advent, we want to talk about the advent today of assurance and comfort and preparation for battle, as it were. And next week we’ll talk about the advent of judgment. That the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, which we celebrate and then look for his various appearances at our particular time of history as well, really is an advent and incarnation that brings comfort and assurance. It also brings reprobation—the doctrine we’ll be considering next week—and a progression of reprobation upon those who reject the Lord Jesus Christ.

So today we want to consider one aspect of that and that is the advent of assurance. I might of course add that most of you are fully briefed on this, but every Lord’s day is a particular advent of Jesus as well. He says in the book of Revelation that behold, he stands at the door and knocks, and if we open the door, he will come in and eat with us. And so when we have the Lord’s supper, it is an advent of a type as well.

And so there are these various comings. And you know that in your particular life, the Lord Jesus Christ works in particular ways at different times to bring forth his presence to you, which is a judging and also a refreshing and comforting presence as well.

So we want to talk today about another doctrine found in the Canons of Dort—the doctrine of the assurance of believers, of the elect, assurance of salvation. We want to talk about this reference then to the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ that he comes to effect this assurance. That’s why he came 2,000 years ago.

And let’s do a little review. One of the purposes of this is to settle your hearts on these issues and to bring you to an assurance today—for instance, of the great comfort of knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ has provided all things for your salvation. That your salvation doesn’t depend upon yourself or your decision that you made whenever it was you made your decision. Maybe you can’t remember making a decision. It doesn’t depend on your perseverance. It doesn’t depend on your good works. Your assurance depends on the faithfulness of God to his word that has called you.

And so we want to settle your hearts in that great truth. But we also want to equip you—equip ourselves here—to take this message that God has given us under stewardship to the nations, to disciple the nations. And that means one person at a time. It means taking these truths as reflected—these biblical truths as reflected through the Canons of Dort—into the living room, teaching our children, our friends, and encouraging each other in the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ and being able to speak of these things as well with our neighbors who may come from Arminian churches or no church background at all.

So taking it to the living room—by way of review then—we began this series by talking about the golden chain, which we again recited from Romans 8, verses 29 and 30, and then we sang that Geneva psalm about the great psalm of assurance that reflects those truths as Romans 8 goes on to speak about. That golden chain is a chain where all the links are connected and it starts with the foreknowledge—which means forelove—of God for the elect. He doesn’t foreknow particular things. He foreknows particular people, and those are the ones that he sets his love upon from all eternity. And that’s who you are. You have been the recipients of God’s love and affection and call placed upon you before you were even created, long before you were born.

And so that chain begins with the forelove of God and it continues. These links are together—can’t be broken apart. There’s one particular election that’s talked about, and this golden chain is a good picture of that.

Secondly, we said that this is in the context of God’s absolute sovereignty over all things. To talk about God’s sovereignty in election or in salvation is really a subset of his overall, overarching sovereignty over everything. So when I make a mistake in the liturgy as I did a couple of minutes ago, I don’t want to be slothful about that. But on the other hand, I don’t want to be frenzied in thinking that everything I do has to be perfect, because God is sovereign and he brought that to pass and he ordained that it should come to pass. Now that’s not to be an excuse for sluggardness or slothfulness, but it is to be a source of great comfort in knowing that the world is not run by us or by human effort. The world is run according to the providence of God. He has ordained whatsoever comes to pass. And in his providence, he affects his decree that he has decreed from before all time. He brings it to pass in the life of his people. And there’s a tremendous rest that we have in that.

Now we’ll see as we develop this doctrine of assurance that the two poles we want to avoid are slothfulness on one hand or a frenzied position on the other hand. And if you don’t understand the full sovereignty of God and don’t take it into the depth of your being, you can become slothful in your silliness or you can become frenzied on the other side of it. And we’ll see that the assurance of God’s salvation, the doctrine of God’s total sovereignty, is one that energizes us for work when properly understood, but it doesn’t make us frenzied in that work. It’s a work that rests on the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Last week we talked about unconditional election. We said that then the proper kind—the central point of the first head of doctrine of the Canons of Dort and reflected in the five points of Calvinism, the U in TULIP—unconditional election. It means that election is not conditioned upon the work of men. It’s not conditioned upon God’s foreknowledge in terms of an intellectual understanding before him that you would come to faith, that you would exercise faith. Election is not conditioned upon man’s faith. And we saw that from the scriptures. Ephesians 1 is the particular place of scripture you should be able to turn to at any time in your living room as you speak to your children or your friends or others about the doctrines of God’s grace and salvation. And Ephesians 1 posits the unconditional election of God’s people—that it was not conditioned on man’s faith.

That’s getting root and fruit confused. The root is God’s foreknowledge in his election. The fruit of that is the faith that’s exercised. But the faith that’s exercised is not the basis for the other. It’s getting things completely confused.

Unconditional election. That’s really the basic difference between the Arminian perspective. Now, I want to make sure you understand: Armenian and Arminian are two different words. Armenian refers to a person from Armenia, the country of Armenia. It’s got an ‘e’ in there. Arminian refers to the teachings of Jacob Arminius or Hermanus or whatever his name was, but his Latin name is Arminius. So when I talk about Arminianism, I’m talking about people from Arminius, not people from Armenia. RG Rushdoony is an Armenian, but he’s not an Arminian. Careful in your language.

So Arminian—the teaching of Jacobus Arminius—people that, and before that, the church has always had within the context of the Christian faith those who really denied the sovereignty of God and salvation. The essential difference is: the Arminian says that God’s choice of you, his election, is based upon something he knew you were going to do. And the scriptures say: no, you did something because he chose you. Okay, so that’s the basic difference, but that difference gets then articulated in different ways.

Arminianism attempts to deny the fact of God’s sovereign election. See, the natural man hates a discrimination produced by God. He wants a discrimination produced of his own choosing in the world. That’s okay. But when God discriminates between two people equally equal in terms of their rebellion against God and chooses one and doesn’t choose the other, that’s an offense to man. And because man doesn’t want to bow the knee to that offense, he has to construct elaborate defenses to try to say that isn’t the case.

And so Arminianism, as you get to really pushing on it—if you push a person who thinks that it’s on the basis of your choice that God’s election occurs—then he’s got to come up with all kinds of other criteria as well. He says, for instance, that it isn’t just your faith, it’s your perseverance in that faith as well. Okay? So God elects you because he knew you’re going to exercise faith, but then you also have to be able to persevere in that faith. And so the Arminian position leads to it—did in the days of the controversy we referenced here in the 1600s and it does throughout time—it leads to people not having security, having to keep persevering in the faith to maintain that election of God.

But we say the scriptures teach God’s election is unconditional. It’s not conditioned on man’s faith. Nor is it conditioned upon his perseverance nor any other work of man. That is works religion—whether it’s an exercise of faith, whether it’s praying the prayer, whether it’s being steadfast in the Lord Jesus Christ, all those things are works. And if it’s of works, then it wouldn’t be of grace. But God’s election is gracious. It is not conditioned upon any work of man.

Nor is it vague or indeterminate. God elects a particular number of people, those who are ordained to believe. The scriptures say come to believe. Okay, those particular ones—God has set a particular number of people. It’s not a vague election to some sort of general condition of faithfulness. It is a specific election of a specific group of people. It is not vague or indeterminate. It is determinate. It is a specific number of people.

There are not multiple elections. The doctrine of election is one, as this golden chain is one. So the Arminian, and again, to try to combat the truth of God’s sovereign election, tries to make many elections—to faith or to perseverance or to the conditions of faith, etc. But that’s not true. Biblical election is one doctrine.

Biblical election is not election based upon a less than just covenantal satisfaction. In other words, some people say, “Well,” and this is really particularly—we’ll see this particularly, I’ll stress this more when we come to the doctrine of the atonement—but some the Arminian position eventually says, wants to deny that Christ died just for the sins of the elect and wants to make it a general death. Then they say that really, it didn’t affect salvation for anyone. What affects salvation is this condition of faith. Okay.

The only thing that’s going to keep you in covenant faithful, the only requirement of the covenant that God makes—the Arminian says—is faith. But we say no: God’s love requires a fully just action on his part to satisfy his justice. The work of the Lord Jesus Christ is effectual for providing covenantal satisfaction because his life was totally just, total conformity to God’s word, perfect. The condition for salvation is not the exercise of faith, which is less than perfect on our part. The condition for salvation is perfect righteousness and death for sins. And the Lord Jesus Christ provided those things in his advent. That’s why he took on a human body.

He didn’t take on a human body to be a moral example to us—live your lives like I live my life—and a moral picture of God’s wrath against sin on the cross. Now those things are both true. We want to look at Christ and his example. But he came for a specific purpose: to by his act of obedience secure salvation through the imputation of his righteousness or justice to our account by God. See, it’s not a moral example.

Christ came to affect deliverance by giving satisfaction for the terms of the eternal covenant made between the Father and the Son. The terms were perfect righteousness and death for sin. And so the Arminian says, “Well, we don’t want God’s election to be specific and not conditioned. So we’re going to say that his election really is just that he’s decided now. He can decide whatever he wants to decide. What he decides is faith is the condition for the covenant, not the perfect satisfaction of his wrath and not the perfect imputation of a perfect righteousness.” You see, he changes the terms of the covenant.

But God’s election is an election that’s based upon a just covenantal satisfaction accomplished through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ historically 2,000 years ago. Because God’s election takes place in the eternal council of God, there is no changeableness or mutability to God’s election. It is fixed. That’s the basis for this doctrine we’ll talk about today—the assurance of salvation.

And ultimately unconditional election is different from the Armenians because it is not anthropocentric. It’s not man-centered. It is theocentric. It is God-centered. It doesn’t say that man is the source of salvation. It says that God is. And it doesn’t say that the end result of it is for the well-being of man. The end result is the glory of God. It’s according to his sovereign good pleasure, and it’s to the praise of the glory of his grace.

Unconditional election is theocentric both in its source. The good pleasure of God is the source for election, the basis for it. And the purpose is not the well-being of man. The purpose is to the praise of the glory of his grace. And so Arminianism and Calvinism—when it comes to election—are wise in the road where one wise says, “We want to go the way of man being this determiner of things, man being God, man being the one whose pleasure or whose goodness is achieved by all this,” as opposed to the godly side of the fork in the road, the right hand side, which says, “The reason for all this is God’s good pleasure, that he affects salvation and sovereignty apart from much of the Lord Jesus Christ’s historical work, and he does so to the praise of the glory of his grace.” God-centered versus a man-centered religion.

Now, so that’s the way of review, and today we want to talk about the doctrine of assurance, and we want to begin by saying that the scriptures tell us that the elect are assured of salvation. That is a fact. We begin then with the fact of the elect’s assurance, and your outline basically takes as its major points statements directly from the Canons of Dort, and we’ll go through those very briefly and we’ll read some scripture along the path and then we’ll have some concluding remarks by way of application.

And so hopefully you got both an outline and the statement—the one page—of having articles 12, 13, and 14. Only the ones we’ll deal with today are 12 and 13. But we begin first of all with the fact of the election assurance of faith. And article 12 says: the elect, in due time, through knowing various degrees different measures, attain the assurance of their eternal and unchangeable election.

And when we read from Romans 8 a couple of minutes ago, we read a statement to the truth of God’s security of the believer, so to speak, of God’s assurance of our salvation. Verse 14 of Romans 8: “For as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God. You have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, ‘Aba, Father.’ It’s an accomplished fact—the assurance of our salvation. The spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. Established fact—the fact of the assurance of our salvation.”

“If children, then heirs, and if we suffer, we shall be glorified together with him.”

The scriptures are replete with a number of passages that talk about assurance of salvation. They really—this is a very established doctrine throughout scripture. Let me just read a few passages.

Every Lord’s day, we come here in obedience to the book of Hebrews where we read that we are to draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. When we come forward in obedience to the command to come forward and worship God, we do so with full assurance of faith taught by the scriptures.

In 1 John 5, in verse 13 of 1 John 5, we read, “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may believe on the name of the son of God.” Specifically written—this particular text of scripture—that we might know that we have as a present possession eternal life in the Lord Jesus Christ. And if it’s eternal life, Jesus said that neither can any man pluck them out of my hand.

Romans 8, that we just responsively read again on this Lord’s day, we have for several weeks now: “None of these things can separate us from the love of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” The scriptures are written that we might know we have eternal life.

In the gospels, Jesus said that he sends this comforter—the spirit of truth—and the assurance of election. The assurance of our salvation in election is really linked in the scriptures to the gift of the Holy Spirit. The word for assurance really sort of can be translated or interpreted as a down payment or a assurance, a certainty of something written down, of something that’s not yet fully realized. And in scripture, last week we read in Ephesians that is what the Holy Spirit is given to us as—he is that down payment, as it were. He is the evidence that we are fully secured in our salvation through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Acts 5:32 we read that we are witnesses of these things, and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him. So God gives the Holy Spirit to those who have been brought into the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ as evidenced by their obedience.

Galatians 3:2: “This only would I learn of you: receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?” Through the hearing of faith, those that are brought to regeneration sovereignly by God are given the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is the guarantee, so to speak, of the assurance of our salvation.

Acts 15:8: “God which knoweth their hearts bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost even as he did unto us.”

1 John 3:24: “Hereby we know that he abideth in us by the spirit which he gives us.”

So the purpose of the spirit being given to us, as our Savior said, is that he would go and a comforter would come. And 1 John says that we might know that we have eternal life by this spirit that he has given to us. We might know these things. So the Holy Spirit’s role in this is very emphatic and highlighted in the words of scripture.

As I said, from Ephesians 1, last week, verses 13 and 14, says that we were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. So you have a double emphasis there: we were sealed by the Holy Spirit. Our assurance is secured and it is a Holy Spirit of promise—sure, fixed knowledge of God’s salvation. And then verse 14: “which is the earnest of our inheritance unto the redemption of our purchase possession unto the praise of the glory of his grace.” So this is the assurance of our possession of eternal life in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit that’s given to us on the basis of Christ’s work.

Ephesians 4, verses 29 and following, says, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying that may minister grace unto the hearers, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.”

Sealing aspect through the gift of the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is seen here as affecting the assurance of believers.

2 Timothy 1: Paul says in verse 11 and following, “I’m appointed a preacher.” Verse 12: “For which cause I also suffer these things. Nevertheless, I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.”

So from beginning to end of the scriptures, repeatedly through New Testament, the fact of the assurance of the believer is stated over and over and over again. This assurance of the believer is then a biblical doctrine. It is clearly testified to in scripture.

Here’s what the Westminster confession says about this doctrine. In the Confession of Faith, it says that this assurance is “the testimony of the spirit of adoption, witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God.” And then the catechism says this: “Can true believers be infallibly assured that they are in the estate of grace and that they shall persevere therein unto salvation?” And the answer from the catechism is this: “Such as truly believe in Christ and endeavor to walk in all good conscience before him may, without extraordinary revelation—okay, so in other words, by means of normal revelation, the word of God that the spirit writes upon our hearts—without extraordinary revelation, by faith granted upon the truth of God’s promises, those promises recorded in the scriptures, and the spirit enabling them to discern in themselves those graces to which the promises of life are made, and bearing witness with their spirits that they are the children of God.”

You’ll notice the language there from 1 John. The spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. “By them they can then be infallibly assured that they are in the estate of grace and shall persevere therein unto salvation.”

The fact of the assurance of the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, the fact secured by the giving of the Holy Spirit as the down payment, the seal, the guarantee that our salvation has been accomplished once for all, we can rest with a sure knowledge that God will bring that to pass in time.

Then now—so the fact of the elect’s assurance is clearly documented in the scriptures. And in the Canons of Dort they say that this evidence of this assurance of salvation comes about in due time. And in actually the Latin text, it says in God’s time. All due time is God’s time, isn’t it? God’s time. In due time always refers to when God feels it proper and appropriate and in his omniscience to bring things to pass.

And there is a differentiation then of time relative to the assurance of salvation. I mentioned the thief on the cross in your outline. Obviously, he did not receive assurance of salvation until just moments before his death, and others receive it quite early on in life. So God reveals the assurance of our salvation to us in due time.

And so if you have some degree of doubt in your heart, do not feel overwhelmed by that, because God brings about assurance in due time. We’ve said that it is a fact of the believer’s life and his experience. The testimony of spirit testifies to it. But don’t assume by that it is a perpetual state. And don’t assume by that you are going to be given it when you want to have it given to you. But rather, it is the assurance that comes about in due time.

It is, secondly, the Canons of Dort say, to be found in various degrees and various measures. We’ve talked before about Romans 7, the last half of Romans 7, where Paul struggles with the fact of his sin and his failure to keep the law of God, and his failure to control his body, and his failure to fulfill the motivation to honor God in all that he does and says. Well, Romans 7 pictures then that at various times we don’t have the fullness of assurance. We have at it other times. We struggle with our salvation. We struggle with the effects of our sin. And so there are various measures or degrees to which we have this assurance of salvation.

In Colossians 4:12, we see Paul praying for the Colossians. And he says that he prays this: “that you might stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.” The word complete there could be and probably is better translated “fully assured.” Paul prays for the Colossians to the end that they might stand perfect and fully assured of their salvation and relationship to God in all the will of God.

Well, if Paul prays that for believers, then it’s an indication that it is experienced by us or apprehended by us or appropriated by us in various degrees, in various measures. Doubt is a powerful thing and we are not free from doubt. While doubt is sin, nonetheless, we do find ourselves in this life. And so the assurance of salvation may not be yours today. Maybe something’s happened in the last couple of days in your life. Maybe sin has occurred in your life. Maybe you’ve had tested—maybe not through direct sin of your own, but through difficult circumstances. Maybe you wonder, “Does God really love me? Is his hand upon me for good?”

Well, you don’t want to despair at that. You don’t want to despair at that. You want to recognize that we are to seek that assurance of salvation. It will be given in due time and in various degrees and measures.

And I might also say, by way of application, that we are called to minister grace to one another with our tongues. We read about that in the passage recently quoted here in this sermon from Ephesians. We’re to minister grace. And one of the ways we minister grace is by assuring each other of the salvation of God when doubt raises its head.

If our election—the assurance of election—is on God’s evidence of the spirit, we’ll get to in just a moment, and not our decision, then we’re going to react to people’s problem with assurance differently than we would if we were Arminian in our thinking.

In other words, someone at church, some friend of yours, who’s been evidencing the fruit of the spirit in his life, who’s made a profession of faith repeatedly, whose life is based upon obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ, has found himself in difficult circumstances—either of his own making or of God’s sovereign disposing in his life through difficulties, trials, and tribulations or his own sin, whatever it is—and now he’s doubting things.

Well, the Arminian may come to him and say, “Well, you’ve got to believe. You got to pray the prayer right now then, because that’s really the way—you’ve got to secure this thing—is to pray the prayer and receive God’s forgiveness.” But we would want to say, “No, we want to bolster people up. We want to tell them that doubt is sin. You’ve evidenced the good fruit of salvation. You make the profession of the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Now we want you to repent of that sin. We want to tell people that gently. We want to tell them that in a loving way, in an understanding way. We ought to understand the pain and the suffering that doubt brings into the life. But we want to move them away from the doubt. We don’t want to increase their doubt by somehow getting them to think about their own works and whether they prayed the prayer correctly or not or whether they were sincere enough in their belief of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see what I’m saying the difference there?

Well, it comes in various degrees and stages.

Secondly, the Canons of Dort tell us that the experiential source of assurance flows from the evidence of their election. Now, how do we know that we’re—where does this assurance come from? And what the Canons of Dort say is that first of all, the evidence—what we look for then to know if I’m alive or not—are the evidences of life. You know, if you go out to a tree, is the tree dead or alive? Well, you look for green leaves. You look for sap running. You look for if you nick the tree, is there sap coming out of it? There’s and there’s probably a lot more things than that to look for. Takashi could tell us a little better. But there are evidences of life in the tree.

So when we want to look at the assurance of salvation, what brings us this assurance? And the way the Canons of Dort word it is that “the elect in due time, through various degrees and different measures, attain the assurance of their eternal and unchangeable election, not by intrusively prying into the secret and deep things of God, but” and here’s the positive statement: “observing in themselves at the spiritual joy and holy pleasure the infallible fruits of election pointed out in the word of God, such as a true faith in Christ, a filial godly sorrow for sin, a hungering and thirsting after righteousness, etc.”

So when we want assurance of salvation, the scriptures say the way to affect that in our lives and the way to direct your children to it and the way to direct other believers as you minister grace to them is to have them look at the fruits of their election, such as faith in the Lord Jesus Christ itself.

Again, in the scriptures, the scriptures tell us that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, Hebrews 11:1—the existence of things, or the evidence rather of things not seen—of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Is the person you’re talking to dependent upon your works for your right standing with God or do you cling to the Lord Jesus Christ?

Usually in this church, with people who have evidenced the fruit of the spirit and election, the Lord Jesus Christ and been with us for evidence that election, what we’re going to find at a time of doubt is that people are clinging even more to the Lord Jesus Christ. They’re even more aware of their own shortcomings, of their own inabilities, their own sin, their own tendency to wander, and if they are convinced of that, and if their doubt springs from sin in their life, but that sin is driving them to an assurance of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—in other words, that he and he alone, outside of me, is the basis for my right standing with God—then that person, even in their struggles, are evidencing fruits that should be pointed out to them as assurance of their election. You see what I’m saying?

Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. How can we exercise faith apart from the grace of God? It is an evidence of the fruit of the spirit in our lives. It’s an evidence that the spirit is inside of us, so to speak, at the depth of our being, calling us to despair of ourselves all our Romans 7, and to cling to the realization that there’s no condemnation to us because we’re covenantal in the Lord Jesus Christ in Romans 8. There’s this progression, and the progression happens as we evidence—you see, the evidence of the salvation in our lives—true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as evidence of our salvation and as a result is one of the things we look for assurance of salvation.

Secondly, filial fear. The passage from Romans 8 that we read says that as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God. See, again, if you’re led by the spirit of God, the spirit of God comes—Jesus said—to teach you things of him, to point to the Lord Jesus Christ. So if in your life you’re led by the spirit, if you profess faith in Jesus and you cling to the Lord Jesus Christ, then indeed it says, “they are the sons of God.”

You have a reason to know that your salvation is secured eternally in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he goes on to say, “You have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, ‘Aba, Father.’”

A filial fear—by that is meant not a slavish fear. You know, the fear of God is supposed to be a present component of the believer’s life, but it’s not the cringing kind of slavish fear before a master, that there is no relationship relative to love. The kind of fear we have should be the fear of the son who loves the Father and yet is fearful of displeasing him, and also fearful of the Father’s chastisements—the rod—to come down upon him. A filial fear, and we cry out in our spirits, “Aba, Father,” in the midst of difficulties. “Lord God, help me.” And that is an evidence of election. That’s the fruit of the spirit at work in your life. And that is one of the ways God brings you to an assurance of salvation.

Three, or C rather, a godly sorrow for sin. It is a godly sorrow for sin. Esau was sorry for his sin because he saw that when he gave away the inheritance, it hurt him in terms of temporal blessings. There’s a sorrow that’s not true biblical repentance. It’s a sorrow over the effects of sin. Now, that has nothing to do with being the basis for the assurance of our forgiveness. But when we sorrow after sin—the way that Paul recites it in Romans 7—when we have a repentance for sins because we’ve offended the mighty God, the holy God of all creation, and when we are sorry that we can’t do the thing we want to do, our heart motivates us to keep the law of God and to control the members of our body, etc., and when we are sorry we cannot do it because we’ve offended God, that is a true evangelical sorrow. That’s an evangelical repentance, as opposed to a sorrow for the effects of sin.

And that sorrow for sin is an evidence of the spirit’s fruit in your life. So when you’re even under times of sin in your life, you can see then the evidence of God’s election bringing you to an assurance of faith as you observe in yourself this godly sorrow for sin.

Hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. What does this mean? Well, it means that we recognize that we have no righteousness in and of ourselves, no justice in and of who we are. Blessed are the poor in spirit—those who recognize their poverty in spirit. All should be hungry and thirsting after righteousness. But the ethical rebel doesn’t deal with his knowledge that he has no righteousness in himself. He covers it all over.

So if you hunger and thirst over a better walk in your external observance to the dictates of God’s word, then if you hunger and thirst after that justice and righteousness in your own life, or if you hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God manifested in our culture, these are evidences of your election, and they should cause you to rest, knowing that your salvation has been eternally secured through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then they say “etc.” You know, and we would want to—for instance—add in there love of the brethren. In 1 John, the word “know”—the word translated “know” occurs 42 times in that little epistle of 1 John. 1 John over and over and over, this is how you know that you’re in God. And repeatedly what happens in that epistle is the love of the brethren is the indication that the spirit of God is indeed working in the context of our hearts.

We read in chapter 3:14: “We know, we know, we have assurance that we have passed from death into life. How? Because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.”

See, and then again in verse 18: “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before him.” We assure our hearts before God. We know we’re of the truth if we love in word and in deed, not just deed, not just word, in word and deed. Loving our brother.

See, the evidence of assurance of our salvation is this love for the brother that the spirit brings to pass in the context of our lives. Now, this is a little tricky because the flesh—the old man—wants to justify itself too. He wants assurance of his salvation. And he also is going to look for not his relationship to God, but the man who rejects Christ. Rather his relationship to his fellow man. “I’m a good guy. I’m okay. Life will be okay with me because I treat my brother well. I treat people good.” Forget his obedience to God.

The thing that so in other words, God does give us the love of the brethren as an indication of a relationship to him, to God. First tablet, second tablet—how to love God, how to love your neighbor as yourself. But you see, it is a tablet. It is a law. The flesh, the pagan, wants to say, “I love humanity too.” But his love is defined by his own standard. That’s the difference.

So when we say that another indication of our assurance of salvation, of our election that leads to assurance, is the love of the brother, it’s the love of the brother as dictated by God’s law, because John goes on to say in verse 22: “and whatsoever we ask we receive of him, because we keep his commandments. And he goeth in verse 24: “He that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him, and hereby we know that he abideth in us by the spirit which he hath given us.”

The spirit is tied to the word. The word is a grace word to us, but it’s also a command word. And so that, as we love our brother as defined by the commandments, not by our own decision of how we’re going to interact with people, then we have this assurance of salvation working.

Now, a contrary way, 1 John goes on and on—the epistle goes on and on—to say that if we don’t do these things, if we hate our brother, then we have no assurance of our salvation.

So then the Canons of Dort say that there are these evidences. We want to add on to that one of the prime evidences the scriptures give us—from the book of 1 John—to assure our hearts before him is our relationship to one another in the context of the body of Christ. Okay.

Another thing we’d want to add on is the fruits of the spirit. The fruits of the spirit, because that’s really what we’re talking about in all of these. All of these are fruits of the spirit. Our spirit, our fallen spirit, hates our brother. Our fallen spirit has no love “Aba, Father” for God. Our fallen spirit has no faith in Christ. Our fallen spirit has no real biblical sorrow over sin. It’s sorrow over the consequences.

So it is all these things really are the fruit of the spirit. So when we talk about the “etc” here, we want to fill in also the fruit of the spirit in the context of our lives.

So the Canons of Dort rightly point us to an examination of our lives—a observing in our lives the fruit of the spirit—as the basis for our assurance that we are eternally saved.

Now notice that this is a radically different way to achieve assurance than most of us have been presented with. You probably all of these are not based upon remembering the decision we made. There’s nothing here about: “Well, what you want to do if you’re doubting your salvation is go back and remember the day you made a decision for the Lord Jesus Christ. When did you pray the prayer? Did you nail the stake in the backyard? Did you put the date on it? Because that’s the basis of your right standing.”

The Arminian position sees in our decision the energizing of salvation for us. And so when it gets down to assurance, it also looks to our decision made at some point in time in the past as the basis for our assurance.

But the biblical position—the Calvinistic, Augustinian position, the Reformational position—is that we look at the sovereign work of God for our assurance. We don’t look at our own efforts. We look at the observation of God’s fruit in our life. And we recognize that I couldn’t do any of this. This is the work of the spirit. And if I have the spirit, I have the down payment, the earnest, the pledge of my eternal salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So there’s a looking not at our decision. There’s a looking in, not at that criteria, but looking at the criteria of the evidences of life. Does the tree have leaves? Is the bark going? Not: “What day was the tree planted?” See, it’s the evidences of the spirit’s life.

Now, the spirit then assures our hearts in two ways. He assures our heart of salvation by the word of God. And he assures our heart of salvation by these evidences of his work in our lives. And both those things—the word externally to us that we read in the scriptures and the observation of the fruit of the spirit in our life—both of these are made possible through that Holy Spirit. And so when we read that he is the pledge of our assurance, the guarantee of our salvation, it’s because he witnesses to the truth of God’s word that says we’re forgiven in Christ. And he causes to come to pass in our life those green sprouts and twigs and sap running through our veins, so to speak, of a new humanity in Christ.

And so, doing the Holy Spirit brings us to that assurance of our salvation in varying degrees, different times, differing measures. Nonetheless, that assurance comes. Assurance comes.

Okay. The canons go on to speak of the manner of this observation. These things are observed first of all with the spiritual joy. The Apostle Paul in Romans 8, again—boy, he gets through that great statement about “who can separate us from the love of God?” And “what shall we say to these things?” These are wondrous truths. He says, he has a spiritual joy in observing these fruits and of knowing these truths of the word and then the work of the spirit inside his heart. He comes to a wonderful, delightful joy in all these things.

And secondly, this observation is made with holy pleasure. It’s a pleasure because we want to see the manifestation of righteousness in our land and in our hearts. And as we see these evidences of our assurance, we observe them not just coldly—okay, now we’re okay, we’re saved now. We can really be sure we’re saved. No—as a delight in it. And there’s a pleasure in knowing that we’re being transformed from sinful people to people that are righteous now and that the culture, as the gospel is preached out, will also manifest a righteousness and a justice. There’s a holy pleasure in the assurance of our salvation that’s affected.

And then the canons go on to talk about the experiential results of this assurance in the next head of doctrine, which is number 13. And the sense and certainty of this election afford to the children of God additional matter for and here are the results—the experiential results of this assurance, daily humiliation before him, adoring the depths of his mercies, for cleansing themselves and rendering grateful returns of ardent love to him who first manifested so great love toward them.

So positively speaking, the results of this assurance—so we talked about the fact that assurance is given to us securely throughout the scriptures. We’re to come to an assurance of faith. It varies in time and degree, but we’re to come to it. We will come to it. We can be infallibly certain of our election. We can be secure. And in fact, the scriptures are written for this very purpose—that we might know that we have eternal life.

And then we said that the basis of that assurance is not our decision. The basis is the observation of the external signs of the spirit’s work in our life in the context of our profession of faith in Christ, a clinging to him, and manifestation of the fruit of the spirit through the love of the brethren, filial fear that our hearts cry out “Aba, Father.” So we looked at those things.

And if that’s in place, then what is this going to usher forth into? Because see, the Calvinists were despised. They say, “Well, if you really believe that you’re eternally saved, then you’re just going to, you know, hang out and do nothing.” But no, the canons of Dort—very in a very wise use of the apologetic manner—it says, “No, if we really come to an assurance of salvation, the scriptures teach the result of this assurance is first of all a daily humiliation before God.”

Do you see why? Because we haven’t placed our basis for assurance in our decision. We place it in the sovereign work of God, his sovereign assurance in our lives based on his sovereign election and him sovereignly producing these fruits in our lives. So it causes us to be daily humble before God. It’s the reverse of pride. If we thought there was something that we did to affect our salvation, then we have pride before God. But when we come to acknowledge that God is the source of all things, including our assurance of salvation, it brings forth a daily humiliation before him.