Dennis Tuuri

I had originally planned to begin several sermons on the atonement, so-called limited atonement or particular redemption today, but I decided that it would be good to get to some of the material I didn’t get to last week in my sermon on assurance. I want to speak specifically today about infallible assurance. This is a kind of strange term that comes to us from the Westminster Confession of Faith, but the appropriateness of the songs chosen remain in place.

The song we just sang focuses on the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was intended to go with that sermon. But I’m going to make the case today again as I did last week that really assurance comes not from an inward glancing. We see nothing there but sin and undeserving, but from an outward focus upon the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. This until recent years has been the United Reformed Confession—that this is the source of assurance: not looking internally but rather looking externally at Jesus and that produces of course an internal joy and delight. And so it’s appropriate that we’re focusing on the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ even as we speak about infallible assurance.

The text today is from 2 Peter 1, verses 1-11, and what I want to focus on of course is the command here to be diligent to make your calling and election sure. But the greater context is important for us as well, and it tells us explicitly some ways in which we’re supposed to fulfill that command.

So please stand and we’ll read 2 Peter 1, verses 1 to 11.

“Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

As his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge.

To knowledge self-control, to self-control, perseverance, to perseverance, godliness, to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love. For if these things are yours, and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted even to blindness and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your calling and election sure.

For if you do these things, you will never stumble. For so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your wonderful, incredibly marvelous word and its tremendous gospel promises that it shouts out to us. We pray now, Lord God, that you would assure our hearts before us of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on our behalf, not just as a church, not as a class of people, but for each of us individually, Lord God, make us bring us to a fuller assurance, to an infallible assurance as the confession says of our salvation.

And so make us fruitful for the purposes of your kingdom here on earth and prepare us for heaven as well. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

I spoke last week primarily about assurance and the importance of this doctrine of assurance on our active Christian life here and now. And it is important as we said and we’ll mention again later in the sermon. Assurance is absolutely linked in Romans 8 to the rolling back of the effects of the fallen curse, to the new creation becoming evident as the sons of God are revealed, uncovered, made manifest in the context of the world.

And for that to happen, to be men of courage and strength and bravado—yes, that’s a good word, I think—to be able to enter into the fray of battle, to extend the visible work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the visible manifestations of his already invisible reign. To do these things, to have power for life, we must have assurance of our salvation, a settledness of our calling and election. As 2 Peter says, the text says this is inevitably linked together.

When we doubt our salvation, this is what us—that’s a big word, just meaning makes us very weak. You know, some of us have medical conditions and at times I feel very weak for a few minutes, and that very weakness, that condition of enervation, is what results from doubt. But assurance of salvation, of course—as the text moves through, being what we just read, being fruitful as a result of assurance—and then it ends in the idea that we can then have sure hope of what happens to us as we lay on our deathbeds.

So everlasting life is also the subject of the infallible assurance that the Westminster standards talk about.

I have two illustrations of different men on their deathbeds. The first is Mark Twain. He became morose or weary of life toward the end of his life. Shortly before his death, this is what he wrote:

“A myriad of men are born. They labor and sweat and struggle. They squabble and scold and fight. They scramble for little mean advantages over each other. Age creeps upon them. Infirmities follow. Those they love are taken from them and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. It the release from this comes at last. The only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence. A world which will lament them a day and forget them forever.”

Well, not very cheerful thought in one’s death, but I suppose it shouldn’t be for the unbeliever. He should have that day. But actually, of course, it’s even worse for men like Mark Twain who don’t come to repentance. He wishes he would vanish. But that is not the case. I don’t know Mark Twain’s eternal state. But that’s one way to approach our death.

Here’s another way. This is an excerpt from the words of Edward Payson, one of the great theologians of the 19th century. He said this on his deathbed, his dying words:

“The celestial city is full in my view. Its glories beam upon me. Its breezes fan me. Its odors are wafted to me. Its sounds strike upon my ear. And its spirit is breathed into my heart. Nothing separates me from it but the river of death which now appears but as an insignificant little brook that may be crossed over at a single step whenever God shall give permission. The sun of righteousness has been gradually drawing nearer and nearer, appearing larger and brighter as he approaches. And now he fills the whole hemisphere, pouring forth a flood of glory in which I seem to float like an insect in the beams of the sun, exalting yet almost trembling, while I gaze on this excessive brightness, and wondering with unutterable wonder why God should deign thus to shine upon a sinful worm.”

Wonderful words. Wonderful sentiment. May the Lord God grant that we have assurance, infallible assurance, so that at our deathbeds we have a like state as Edward Payson and not be like Mark Twain.

These things don’t just fall out, you know, happen by chance. As our text tells us today, we are to be diligent to make this calling and election sure. We will get to that place on our deathbeds, which we all desire. Yes, brothers and sisters. Absolutely, we all desire that. That’s what we want our last thoughts to be. Our own sinfulness and yet the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ made sure to us in our entrance into the celestial city undoubted on the deathbed of Mr. Payson. And that’s what we want.

But to get there, you see, the scriptures say we’re supposed to have some diligence. We’re supposed to do some things now. The Lord God wants us to mature in assurance. The Westminster Confession says that, you know, it’s not of the essence of saving faith—infallible assurance—but it is something we’re to attain to in life. So like many things in our Christian life, our growth in sanctification is also a growth in a full assurance. We could say a full or sure assurance, an infallible assurance that we are Christ’s, and you know that is a settled issue.

So we’re to grow in that and we’re to work toward that particular end. We’re to drive out by doing this doubt. You know, really faith is assurance, right? If you have faith or trust in Christ, loyalty to him, this is assurance. And the opposite of faith is doubt. And doubt enervates us. It makes us weak.

There’s an interesting fact that if you take a cup of water, less than a glass full of water, and make under the right meteorological conditions fog out of it, that fog can cover a seven city block area 100 feet deep. All right? It can bring a city to a standstill. And yet this dense fog that can bring a downtown area to a complete stop with no visibility is composed of less than a glass of water divided into 60,000 million drops. It can cripple an entire city.

Doubt is the same way. A little bit of doubt that we allow to sit in the bosoms of our hearts can make us enervated. It can bring that fog. It can cause depression. It can cause a lack of fruitfulness. That’s what the text of Peter says. A lack of fruitfulness for the purposes of the kingdom. We want to kill off that doubt. We want to come to an infallible assurance and we want to exercise ourselves diligently to that particular end.

George Mueller once said that the beginning of worry is the end of faith and the beginning of true faith is the end of worry. Someone else said worry is fear’s extravagance. It extracts interest on trouble before it comes due. It constantly drains the energy God gives us to face daily problems and to fulfill our many responsibilities. It is therefore a sinful waste.

And you remember when George [name unclear] was here six months, nine months ago, it’s the most frequently allowed for and winked at sin of Christendom: to worry, to have anxiety, to have doubt.

Well, Calvinism creates strong, powerful men that shook the world in the time of the Protestant Reformation directly linked to this doctrine of assurance. This is, one could say, the touch point where the sovereign God that they taught reaches in the context of our daily lives—this touch point of assurance: that God is both sovereign and he’s loving to those of us who have been called to faith in Jesus Christ and been given that grace of faith. And as a result of that, doubt and worry about the future is driven out from us.

We must repent of those things because they enervate us.

On the other hand, if we’re firm believers in the sovereignty of God and of his love for a class of people, the church, and very specifically if we come to fuller assurance of his love, his forgiveness is mine in Christ—well, then I can do all kinds of things in the context of the world. That drives out worry. It drives out, you know, kind of a limp-wristed—I wouldn’t say feminist because the Bible, true biblical feminism, is strong and sturdy—but it drives out the sort of limp-wristed feministic way we think about these things.

And unfortunately, all too much of the church has become feminized in an improper sense. Not as strong Gibbore hail warrior women of Proverbs 31, but rather like effeminate men who can’t get anything done. We shrink back from difficult conversations. We were at the pub last night after the fundraiser for King’s Academy. We had a difficult conversation—well, it wasn’t difficult, but it’s a big conversation about how are we going to prepare King’s Academy kids or our homeschool children to do something about the world in which we live.

You listen to the news and we are in bad shape. They’re about ready. They passed in the Senate. They’re about ready to pass a bill that says you have to not discriminate against homosexuals in virtually every area of our lives. There’s an aggressive agenda. That bill, by the way, contains lots of things, but one thing it contains is affirmative action for the hiring of homosexuals, transgender, and transsexuals. A positive affirmative action will be required on the part of state bureaucracies.

Now, we live in a time of absolute lunacy. Absolute lunacy. Where Christians are put down. Where a state senator such as Vicky Walker could say in the hearing two weeks ago, “Well, why do we need a religious exemption at all? They have to be just like everybody else in this matter.” You see, that’s what’s going on. Christians are put down.

And when those who are in active rebellion to God have been turned over to various sins by him for judgment, they’re being told by the civil state, not only you’re not under judgment, we’re going to positively hire you. Things are bad. Things are horrible. And were it not for the absolute assurance of God’s salvation, his sovereignty, and his love, these would be times of desperation for Christians. I don’t want to hear about it. Just let me go to my gardens. Let me go to my little private area. I don’t want to hear about the world right now, you know, and there are times for that. My wife reminded me the Lord’s Day is probably not the day to listen to the news this morning about what’s going on with Senate Bill 2. She’s probably right. She is much more trained in the Christian faith than I. There is a time for all of that.

But we’re not to shrink back from the battles that are in front of us. And we won’t if we have the courage, the bravery that comes from this infallible assurance that the Reformers had and stressed.

So this is very important.

Infallible is a weird word. I know it is applied to assurance. I’m not sure I like the fact that they use that word, but they did. It simply means sure—a sure assurance, a full assurance. It means more assurance than you had when you began your Christian faith. And it means so much assurance that we can call it infallible. There’s no doubt left in it. The little bit of glass of water that can come up to be all kinds of doubt in our lives in a fog—even that glass of water has been emptied out. And so we can, even on our deathbed with a recognition of our worm-like state that Edward Payson spoke of, we can still have absolute assurance that we’re going to glory. We’re going to see Jesus.

Praise God. So that’s what this word means: infallible. Sure, or full assurance. A strong, heartfelt, nearly infallible assurance.

Now, I said that this is the touch point between heaven and earth. We could say the sovereignty of God and its application to our lives, this doctrine of assurance. And it was from one perspective the doctrine of the Reformation. You’ve heard me say that sovereignty was the doctrine. I’m not moving off of that. But the application of the sovereignty of God in the Reformation to assurance of salvation—this was what distinguished the Reformers from the Roman Catholic Church.

The Roman Catholic Church taught explicitly that you cannot know if you’re saved or not. And actually, it’s wrong to try to find out if you are saved without it to assure yourself before them. Now, I think there was a little bit of political motivation going on here. If I can convince you all to be very worried about things and then to come to me for assurances on a regular basis—because it can’t last forever—of salvation, that gives me a great deal of power. And that’s the state the church was in prior to the Protestant Reformation.

The teachings in the writings of Cardinal Bellarmine—he said of the Reformation that its foremost error was the error of assurance, that the Reformers said that we can know whether we are saved. So this is what separated the Protestant Reformation off from the Catholic heterodoxy of its time. It’s a touchstone doctrine, and that’s why I wanted to return to it today.

Calvin was important for this. This is what he wrote about assurance and specifically in relationship to the sacraments. I mentioned last week that the Heidelberg Catechism says that the sacraments are a sign of assurance. We’ll talk a little bit about that. Calvin says—he says this: “While I so often inculcate that grace is offered by the sacraments, do I not invite them there to seek the seal of their salvation?” So Calvin said, “Assurance is important and it’s actually tied to the administration of the sacraments.”

Calvin also wrote this: “As often as we fall away, we ought to recall the memory of our baptism and fortify our mind with it that we may always be sure and confident of the forgiveness of sins.” So basic Reformed doctrine: that assurance is important and one of the ways to obtain that assurance is to remind ourselves of our baptism.

Now understand, you know, what’s going on in our day and age is that Reformers—modern-day Reformers like Doug Wilson, Rich Lusk, Steven Wilkins—who assert this same truth that Calvin taught, that the sacraments are one of the means that God has given to us for assurance, they’re being attacked as if they were saying that somehow magically when I have a baby up here and baptize them, it’s the fact that Dennis baptized me that’s going to be the source of my assurance.

Well, that’s ridiculous. That’s not what Calvin taught. It’s not what these men such as Doug Wilson and others teach. What they teach is that baptism is this touch point of all the promises of God to you in Christ. And it is that visible manifestation of those promises to you in baptism that you are to grab hold of. It’s not a simple act. It’s the act, the seal of what it represents to us. And in this they absolutely agreed with Calvin.

Herman Ridderbos died just a couple of weeks ago. A modern-day very orthodox—nobody doubted his orthodoxy views on such things. And he said this. He says that because baptism is incorporation into Christ, God’s promises that are yes in Christ are likewise yes in baptism. God establishes us in Christ by baptism and in baptism, and that it makes us participate in the sealing with the Spirit itself, has sealing power.

So assurance is an absolutely vital Reformed doctrine to separate us off from Roman Catholics. As well, we make the point that this is in the context as well of our use of external means: looking outside of ourselves, not at an inward point of which we decide something, but rather an external action where God’s promises to Christ are sovereignly applied to us, to look outside of ourselves for that assurance.

Now I want to read a few catechism questions from the Heidelberg Catechism. And the very first question—I know that many of you have memorized this. If you haven’t, I think you should. And you’ll see as we read it, you know, the Heidelberg Catechism was written to give pastoral consolation to the people in the district in which it was written. In other words, it’s a pastoral document. And it’s a pastoral document in response to the horrible doctrines of a lack of assurance that Rome had produced and still produces.

Here’s what the first question and answer is:

“What is thy only comfort in life and in death? That I both in body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, 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 heartily willing, henceforth, and ready to live unto him.”

You see, they had it right. And that’s why it’s at the beginning question of the Heidelberg Catechism. It was an essential point doctrine of the Reformation.

This full assurance that then prepares them—what did they say? Makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live for him. Not just an assurance that’s going to give me peace on my deathbed. Yes, that’s important. But an assurance that makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live unto him. That’s the assurance the Heidelberg Catechism spoke of.

Question 21 is a summary statement of the entire catechism. Other questions would apply as well.

“What is true faith? True faith is not only a certain knowledge whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in his word, but also an assured confidence which the Holy Ghost works by the gospel in my heart. You hear that? By the gospel in my heart. It’s mediated. The work of the assurance the Holy Spirit gives us is mediated by the gospel and produces an internal assurance. But it doesn’t result from an internal introspection. It results from the gospel. The Spirit uses the word. The word is the gospel outside of us. We look to that gospel and the Spirit’s authenticity makes it authentic to us, and that produces then this heartfelt assurance. So it says, “But also an assured confidence which the Holy Spirit works by the gospel in my heart and not only to others but to me also remission of sin.”

So I said this last week. I said it again already today. But many verses we read are assurances of a class of people—those who believe. But the Protestant Reformation said beyond that we can also be sure ourselves. Rome said, “Well, there were some people that were assured: Peter and Paul, because of special divine revelation to them. Because you can’t ignore the testimony of the Bible that Paul had no doubt as to what was going to happen when he died. He was going to be with Jesus. He had full infallible assurance as did Peter. But Rome gets around that by saying, ‘Well, it was special revelation to them, you see, and it’s not for us.’”

Well, it is for us, and not just for us generally. It’s for you individually. This assurance of forgiveness. And if you don’t have it for you individually, you will not be strong and courageous for Jesus Christ and living for him, and you’ll have doubts on your deathbeds and you’ll have to go through a purgatory-like experience there. Perhaps the Lord God is more faithful than you. He will bring you through. You’ll get to the other side. But it’s a lot nicer if you enjoy the view on the trip such as Payson did. Well, that comes from taking this assurance of faith and making it personal to us.

And the assurance is that the remission of sin, everlasting righteousness and salvation are freely given by God merely of grace only for the sake of Christ’s merits.

Question 44: “Why is there added ‘he descended into Hell’? We have this strange—you know, not strange but a disputed portion of the Apostles’ Creed which we recite regularly in this church. We say ‘descended into’—which I think is a better translation of the word that was used in the Apostles’ Creed. But the question is: why do we have that on there?”

And the answer in the catechism is:

“That in my greatest temptations I may be assured and wholly comfort myself in this that my Lord Jesus Christ by his inexpressible anguish, pains, terrors and hellish agonies in which he was plunged during all his sufferings but especially on the cross has delivered me from the anguish and torments of hell.”

They said the whole purpose of the last phrase—or that phrase rather—that Christ descended into Hades or Hell is to give us assurance in the midst of temptations and a full assurance. It said full hope that the Lord Jesus Christ has suffered all these things for me. That’s why the atonement is absolutely the source of our assurance: to look to the atonement outside of ourselves. Historical fact 2,000 years ago—this is the basis of our assurance.

Question 67:

“Are both word and sacrament then ordained and appointed for this end that they may direct our faith to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as the only ground of our salvation?”

And they’re saying just what Calvin said: the sacraments are part of this method of assurance, but they’re only part of that method by directing our faith to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. You see, so we don’t want to fall off either edge of that. We don’t want to say, “Well, it’s all about Jesus on the cross, and the sacraments don’t mean anything.” No, the sacraments are given as seals of this to us. And we don’t want to become so enamored of the sacrament that somehow we make it separate from what it points us to: the work of Jesus Christ. You see, we want to avoid both errors.

And so the question was this and then the answer is:

“Yes indeed. For the Holy Ghost teaches us in the gospel and assures us by the sacraments that the whole of our salvation depends upon that one sacrifice of Christ which he offered for us on the cross.”

I could go on. But see here it is again. The Holy Spirit causes our hearts to cry “Abba Father.” How? Through the word of God, the gospel, and through the administration of the sacraments. Amen. The Holy Spirit is moving through these things to give us this kind of full assurance. So we’re assured by these things.

Now, I could go on. Other catechism questions say the same thing, but the point is the Reformation was about this doctrine—very importantly. And we don’t want to move away from it. We want to affirm it.

The Heidelberg Catechism, the Westminster Catechism—the Larger Catechism, Question 167:

“How is our baptism to be improved by us? The needful but much neglected duty of improving our baptism is to be performed by us all our lifelong, especially in the time of temptation and when we are present at the administration of it to others, by serious and thankful consideration of the nature of it and of the ends for which Christ instituted it, the privileges and benefits conferred and sealed thereby, and our solemn vow made therein.”

You hear that? The Westminster Catechism. If we’re going to talk about what’s Reformed theology, we’re going to look at the secondary standards. We’re going to look at the writings of the Protestant Reformation. And we’re going to see words like this all over the place. And here in this catechism, we are explicitly told that these sacraments that Christ instituted should remind us of the privileges and benefits. These privileges and benefits were conferred and sealed thereby. It is not an empty sign and seal. That’s what you know the falling away of the Reformation in Baptistic circles says—just a sign and a seal. It’s not a seal. Rather, it’s just a sign. It’s an empty sign. There’s nothing really that’s going to happen if you take it.

Not true. The scriptures say that these benefits are conferred by the administration of these sacraments and they are sealed to us and promised to us. But you see, you don’t want to fall off either end here. That unfortunately is what we’ve got going on right now in America in Protestant Reformed circles. And we’ve got a group of men like Wilson and Lusk and Wilkins who are trying to restore the balance from a Presbyterian church that has become more Baptist than not in its view of the sacraments, who see them as empty signs and seals, who see no relationship between the sacraments and assurance.

And there’s trying to be a recovery of the Reformed doctrine. And you see, it’s not some theological argument going on that has no relevance for you. It has great relevance for you because if you’re in a church that moves away from that kind of assurance externally mediated through the Holy Spirit by means of his word and sacrament, then your assurance suffers. Your assurance suffers, and Romans 8 and all kinds of other texts tells us that when your assurance suffers, your life for Christ suffers, as the catechism points out. And the world still groans waiting for you to reveal who you are. That’s what we read here in the text of scripture.

So it’s an important doctrine.

Continuing on in this Westminster Catechism, Question 167, it goes on to say:

“These benefits are conferred and sealed, and our solemn vow made therein, by being humbled for our sinful defilement, our falling short and walking contrary to the grace of baptism and of our engagements, by growing up to assurance of pardon of sin, and of all other blessings sealed to us in that sacrament.”

Again, the consistent view of the Protestant Reformers, and specifically as we move to the Westminster standards, is that it is really important that Christians grow up in assurance, that they mature in it and come to this so-called infallible or full assurance of faith.

You know, the Arminians—the early Arminians in Holland—absolutely denied assurance. They were just with the Catholics. They were a resurgence of the Arminianism and the lack of assurance of the Roman Catholic Church. That’s what Arminianism was. It was Catholicism come back under a different label in terms of its rejection of the sovereignty of God and its rejection of the idea that we could have infallible assurance or know that we’re going to be saved or not. They said no.

Now, later Arminianism tried to tack on assurance, but in its original form that’s what Arminianism is. That’s what was rejected by the Canons of Dordt. You know, we read these, we sing these wonderful songs by Wesley. But Wesleyanism as well holds to an immediate assurance of salvation. To them they don’t deny assurance. But they say the way it comes is through an immediate act of the Holy Spirit in the context of our hearts, not mediated through word or sacrament, through the voice of other Christians to us, etc. Immediate. You know, mediate means something between two things. And immediate says there’s nothing between us, that there’s this immediate work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts apart from the word of God.

This is not a Reformed teaching. It’s what Wesleyanism teaches. And that’s why some of their hymns are so great, I think, because that’s what they’re trying to get you to do: to come to a full assurance with an immediate sense of an emotional appeal. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I love their hymns. I love the Wesley hymns. But understand that’s probably why they wrote them so good: because they were really becoming heterodox away from what the Reformers taught in terms of full assurance. And in its most radical forms, Wesleyanism posited a direct revelation of the Holy Spirit in those sorts of words to believers.

The Savoy Declaration. Now, here were a group of Baptists who took much of the Reformed teachings of the Westminster standards, but put them in a congregationalist perspective. And the Savoy Declaration calls for an immediate witness of the Spirit. So as well, they also rejected the idea of the mediation of the Spirit’s witness.

So where are we at today? Where we’re at is we’ve got a Presbyterian church and Reformed churches that have drunk deep of Wesleyanism, Arminianism—even though they don’t know it—and Savoy Declaration Congregationalism and Baptist theology. They don’t deny assurance, but they say it’s got to come through this kind of direct revelation of the Holy Spirit. And this is explicitly what the Westminster Confession said is not true. It doesn’t come through direct revelation. It comes through the normal use of secondary means.

Now, for most of you, that’s good news, isn’t it? Because most of you haven’t had a vision. Most of you are not going to be sure if you do have a vision. I’m not. My surety is not tied to the emotional state that’s going on in my heart and from some supposed direct revelation. I can look to the scriptures and I can say, “Here’s the faithful God. The Father is always faithful who promises these things to me.” I can look to Jesus Christ outside of my internal experience and say, “He died for my sins. This is what he did. These are the promises based on the work of Christ.” And I can say the Holy Spirit works through this word of God to assure me.

I don’t have to rely on some special revelation that’s going to fade in time with memory. This word doesn’t fade. It’s with me all of my life. This is the source of our assurance, and this word directs us to the proper administration of the sacraments as a summation of all that entire word of God. That’s what’s going on when people are baptized and brought into the new creation.

So, you know, we want to—I don’t like to get into some of these controversies, you know, but this is one I think we want to put down a flag on. We want to say that when people like Wilson and Lusk and Wilkins and others say that the Holy Spirit uses secondary means to give us infallible full assurance, we say amen.

You know, our whole worship service begins with trying to bring you to full assurance. You come feeling guilty and you should. You’ve sinned. We all should. And then you hear the minister give you words of assurance. Now, we mean those words. And we mean you to listen to them and to rest in something outside of yourselves, not the internal voice that always, you know, witnesses against you. You know, Satan would accuse us. That’s his job—the accuser. But the end result of that is so that we don’t rely upon the internal voice of ourselves.

We hear the voice of the minister. We hear the word of God. We know we believe in Christ. We’re doubting our own commitment maybe, but we know we believe that. And we want to hear that external word mediated through the pastor speaking the word of God to you to bring you to assurance. That’s what we believe.

We believe that when people sin in this church, we don’t say, “Well, you know, you’re not really living like a Christian, so maybe you’re not.” No, we say you’re not living like who you are. You’re a Christian. You’ve been baptized. You remember what those promises were attached to your baptism. Remember what you read about them in scripture. You know about the new creation. You know about all the works of Jesus Christ outside of yourself and suffering for your sins, etc., right? That’s who you are, Christian. Now, live like it. Don’t live the stupid way you’ve been doing when you sin in ridiculous ways that make you weak and powerless.

But I’m not going to pile on to the weak and powerless one who begins to tremble over his lack of assurance by telling him, “Yeah, that’s right. You’re probably not saved.” No, I’m going to preach the promises to him. Now, if he’s a soul that’s not very concerned about his sin, threats are certainly there. The warnings are there.

So, but we say that the external means that the Holy Spirit uses are words of assurance and comfort, and that’s what our worship service is all about.

So, you know, this is what we believe. This is what the Reformed churches have always believed. This is what distinguished the Protestant Reformation from Roman Catholicism. This is the touch point of the sovereignty of God combined with his love to you to give you full assurance of your salvation.

When we read things from men, let me just say that there are quotes from these men. I had several lined up, but I don’t want to take the time to read them now. I want to get on to Peter. But there are quotes by people like Lusk and Wilson that do talk about the importance of the mediated work of the Holy Spirit through means. And that’s what we want to do today: we want to talk now about how we want the Spirit to speak to us through his word of how we are specifically to move forward into a fuller and fuller assurance and come to what those Westminster standards called a full assurance, an infallible assurance of our salvation.

So we’ll talk now about the marks, and just by way of reminder—we said last week that we can have assurance if we love the brothers. This is 1 John 3, right? “We know we have passed from death to life infallibly. We could say surely—because we love the brothers.” We also know this because we keep his commandments. 1 John 3 went on to say these are the witness of the Spirit to us, and then it talks about the witness of the Spirit, but the context is loving the brothers and keeping the word.

Now, so let’s move down to point number four: the obligation of seeking full assurance.

And this text before us is one text, but there are others as well. 2 Timothy 1:12: “Which is why I suffer as I do but I am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed. I am convinced that he is able to guard me until that day which has been entrusted to me.” So Paul says he has infallible assurance.

One of the reasons that we can see the obligation to us to move toward full assurance is because we can see the example of it in the scriptures. You know, so if the people were to imitate Paul—said imitate me—and the person we’re supposed to be imitating has full assurance and we don’t, then we can make the indirect case that we are to progress in our assurance of salvation. Our assurance.

So we can say it through indirect mechanism. But of course the text we talked about today is explicitly given to us to urge us toward this kind of assurance. Hebrews 6:11 says this: “We desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end.” So the writer of Hebrews, while it’s not explicitly stated as a command, said that his desire for you as you receive the epistle of Hebrews is that you would indeed have earnestness and achieve then the full assurance of hope until the end.

So by way of implication we can say that there is a command given to us there: that we should grow in this assurance. But of course the text today is an explicit one. In verse 10 of 2 Peter:

“Therefore brethren be even more diligent to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you won’t stumble and entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

So he says here explicitly: this is a command. It’s a command to you. It’s a command to us. We are to be diligent to make our calling and election sure.

Well, what is the means of this command? Well, if we just take a verse out of its context, we won’t understand the full way that Peter has given us to do this. But we have within this text an explicit mechanism by which we are to move to attain full assurance.

We read in 2 Peter 1:5: “For this reason. What reason? Well, you know he begins by saying that God has done these wonderful things to us. He has given us great and gracious, precious promises. Verse 4: ‘That through these things may be partakers of the divine nature.’”

Okay, a verse that’s subject to a lot of discussion, but as we’ll see, the divine nature is catalogued for us in these virtues that are added to faith. And I think that’s what’s going on. These catalog of virtues culminates in love. And this is to be a partaker of the divine nature. It doesn’t mean to be deity. It means the communicable attributes—we say the things that God has that are ours in Christ that we would partake of this divine nature.

So that’s what the context is. We’ve escaped the lust that’s in the corruption of the world through lust. And then he says, “Then for this very reason, that we might be partakers of the divine nature and that we might after this have this full assurance of faith. For this very reason give all diligence.” That same word, right? We just read that we’re to “give diligence to make your calling and election sure” in verse 10. And that is set up for us in this verse where we’re to be diligent in verse 5. Same word is used.

So he’s saying do these things with all diligence. And by implication then, this is how you will manifest diligence to attain infallible assurance. Understand the connection. He’s going to give us some things to do here. And then he’s going to give us the charge that we make our calling and election sure. And clearly what he’s telling us is: I just told you how to do it. You don’t have to guess. I just gave you instructions as to how to make your calling and election sure.

So we have to look at the verses that precede this. And the verses that precede us then is: give all diligence to what? To add to your faith virtue.

Now we had this beautiful choir singing this morning. And you know what Brad does as the orchestrator of the choir? He has different people sing different parts, different melodies, different words, whatever it is. And so we have this great choir and a choir is orchestrated. Different elements are brought together to produce the beauty of it. Same thing in an orchestra. You know, the orchestra leader has different instruments and they all come together to form a particular unified theme. Well, that’s the word here. The Greek word “to add” is the same word from which our “orchestra,” “orchestrator,” or “conductor” is taken.

And this is what it means. And so what it tells us to begin with is that these virtues—these eight virtues—while individual and can be talked about individually form a beautiful chorus that shows us to be partakers of this divine nature. The divine nature is segmented out into these virtues for us. And so he says, well, add the trombones, add the drums, add the saxophones, and you’ll have this wonderful music.

Now, sometimes you can literally do that, right? You can take an orchestra and have pieces come in one by one. And that’s an interesting effect. I don’t think we have to see this that way. I think we should see this rather as there is an idea of progression, but it is as if the orchestra is playing all at once. However, having said that, he does begin the list with what? First is faith. And did you notice how he ends the list? You add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.

So we certainly have a progression from faith to love, right? And we can infer that some of these intermediate virtues might have something to do with hope, because faith, hope, and love are the three cardinal virtues. So there is a progression. You begin with faith—not of yourselves. It’s the gift of God. That’s how you start in your Christian walk. As you move toward full assurance, it begins by that faith. And we could say that faith really results in all the rest of these virtues. That trust—that’s what faith means—trust, loyalty to God, believing and acting on the basis of his promise. That faith really is active through all these other things.

You don’t leave faith behind. You do add to it. It’s like the scaffolding we’re building here to display the Christian life, and it’ll give us a full assurance of salvation. So it moves beginning with faith and then the culminating virtue is love. Now we have some love for God at the beginning of everything, but there’s no doubt that our Christian life does move to an increasing expression of love. It’s the highest virtue. “Greatest of these is love.” And so there is this movement through these particular set of virtues.

Now this kind of movement or chain is seen in various other writings. There are some things we should notice here that make this a little bit different—this particular means of seeking assurance—from some common sorts of lists in Greek culture. Some of these terms are terms that are taken from Greek philosophy. Okay, same words.

For instance, knowledge in a Greek list of virtues or chains—they would have the same kind of chains and some of these same virtues—but they would begin it with knowledge, not faith. Well, that tells us something, doesn’t it? It tells us first of all that the Greek mind believes in kind of a neutrality, and then we approach things through knowledge, intellectual attainment, and everything else is built upon that. Man is man as he thinks, as he reasons.

But in the biblical list, knowledge is third in here. It comes down later. And by saying it that way, it means knowledge is something different than just an intellectual assessment of truth. It means knowledge is sort of acting and working on the basis of how God has revealed himself. I believe that knowledge here is equated to knowing the word of God. That’s where our knowledge comes. How do we know things? We don’t know them abstractly or intellectually or in a neutral sense. We know them because the word of God reveals him to us. That’s where we have the anointing of the Holy Spirit. All knowledge is ours, and the Holy Spirit speaks to us through that word.

The point is this: this is a list that, while using certain terms from Greek philosophy, puts a whole different perspective on them by the particular use of them. And there are these other lists that are given in different writings of these virtues that are sort of chained together in this same kind of way.

Let me read a positive example. For instance, in the Jewish book, the wisdom book—the Intertestamental book—we read this:

“The beginning of wisdom is the most sincere desire for instruction. The concern for instruction is love of her. And love of her is the keeping of her laws. And giving heed to her laws is assurance of immortality. And immortality brings one near to God.”

So the desire for wisdom leads to the kingdom. So you see this chaining up of steps in a logical order that leads to an eschatological conclusion of the kingdom. And in a way these chain of virtues that we see in 2 Peter do the same thing. They lead to love. But then this becomes the mechanism whereby we’re ushered into, as the last verse said, the eternal kingdom of God.

So these chains were fairly common in the writings not leading up to the last couple of centuries leading up to the Christian church’s beginnings and it’s recorded in the scriptures. The Wisdom literature says this: “Zeal leads to cleanliness leads to purity leads to self-restraint. Self-restraint leads to sanctity leads to humility leads to the fear of sin. The fear of sin leads to piety leads to the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit leads to the resurrection of the dead.”

This isn’t—I said the Wisdom literature it wasn’t. This is actually a later Christian writing of, I think, the first or second century AD. Okay. So it does the same thing as Peter does where it chains these things together and then the end result of this is the Holy Spirit leading to the resurrection of the dead. In 2 Peter, you know, it’s kind of a preparation for entrance into the eternal kingdom.

In a negative way, this was from a Greek writer. He said this: “From foolishness is engendered or birth bitterness. From bitterness wrath. From wrath anger. And from anger spite. And then spite being composed of all these evil elements becomes a great sin and incurable.”

Now that’s an interesting set of quotes, and there’s probably a lot of truth in that. But why I reason I wanted to bring it up is here. The last thing that they talk about—this incurable sinfulness of spite—is composed of all these evil elements. So when we get—and I think in like manner the list from 2 Peter that begins in faith and ends in love establishes God’s sovereign call and election of us at the beginning, and that our apprehension of things is not based on intellectual attainment. And then it concludes with love. And really, love is the bringing together of all of those aspects.

Okay? So love isn’t like the last thing. You’re growing in your Christian life and by the time you’ve been a Christian 40 years, you finally start to like other people and be kind to them and then you finally love God at the end. No, these things kind of permeate us, and yet there is this order. There is a progression. So we don’t want to deny the progression and we do want to assert that there is this movement generally in a Christian’s life from faith at the beginning to a full orbed love of God.

It’s related then to this diligent seeking for full assurance of our calling and election.

All right, let’s talk then briefly about these seven virtues. This is another one of those texts that I don’t know if it’s on the list of texts to memorize yet for our target list here at RCC for families. But if it isn’t, it should be. This is one that I think several families here have taught their children to memorize, and it’s a great one to do that.

It begins, as I said, with faith, which as I said is trust or reliance upon God. And so you know we don’t end with faith. It’s the beginning point of an accumulation of other virtues.

Now the second word given to us here is: add to your faith virtue. Now here again we have a term that’s not common to us perhaps, but virtue here, and later in the writings of other Christians commenting on this text, was seen as conformity. Or a synonym for it is righteousness. Righteousness. So virtue is right actions in the context of community. It’s righteousness. So once we become a Christian, once we have that faith given to us, we begin then to walk in obedience to the commandments of God as they relate to community, and we have a virtuousness to our lives that is the same as righteousness. And again, righteousness means justice. So we’re to walk in the path of justice. An obvious submission to the word of God and its requirements.

Now, to this virtue, we add knowledge. And I believe that what this is saying is that as we begin as Christians, we know we’re not supposed to kill anybody or, you know, steal from people, but there’s much more to the Christian life than those simple statements. There’s lots of other truths of our life. For instance, this need to move toward full assurance. How do we find this knowledge? We find it in the scriptures.

So to our faith, we add on virtue or righteousness. And to virtue or righteousness, we then apply ourselves to instruction in the word of God. And now the Holy Spirit is going to use this to bring us to full assurance. He’s going to use the word of righteousness, the knowledge of God’s word to increase our assurance of right standing with him. The Spirit speaks through the word.

So I think that what it means is you begin with trust. You do simple acts of obedience. And then in your Christian faith, you grow in your knowledge of the word of God and what the Christian life is all about, what God is all about, what the world is all about. You add that knowledge to you.

Now, in the Bible, knowledge is linked to prayer, because the way we attain to knowledge is not just intellectually reading the Bible. That isn’t it at all. We pray in the liturgy of the church for the Holy Spirit to illuminate the text of understanding before we begin to work with it. That’s a prayer. And our personal reading of the scriptures must always be accompanied by prayer. Or should always be accompanied by prayer. So knowledge is obtained through our submission through the Holy Spirit to the word that he’s going to mediate to us and bring to us, and he’s then going to take that word and transform our lives by it.

So growth in knowledge is really exercise of the basic Christian disciplines: reading the Bible and praying gets down to that. And as you read the Bible and pray, you know, you grow up and think about things. You don’t just read it and close your mind off to it. But this is the basis for an increase of knowledge.

You know, people come up and they say, “Well, I don’t know if I’m really a Christian. I don’t know. I feel very worried and anxious about things.” Well, do you read your Bible? Do you pray? No. Well, how are you going to, you know, grow? Have you been diligent to make your calling and election sure? By adding to your faith and your basic obedience of virtue—yeah, virtue—have you been diligent to add to that the Bible and understanding of the Bible and prayer? And if not, well, I’m sorry. You know, you’re not going to come to the full assurance of faith if you don’t read your Bibles and pray. And if you don’t expose yourself to teaching in the Bible and have an attitude of submissiveness to the Holy Spirit, asking him to rewrite that word upon your heart.

Now, I’m supposed to make this announcement today and this is as good a time as any. The prayer cards—we’re doing something different today. And this is a good place to put it in. Prayer is essential in the life of the church. If you’ve got a prayer request today, take the card out of the pew holder. Don, you won’t be able to. It’s—you don’t have one in front of you, but the rest of you have pew holders in the pew in front of you. And there’s little prayer cards.

You, if you have a specific prayer request and you can write legibly—because Pastor S. is going to have to pick these up and read what you write. So please do it legibly. Please make it fairly short and succinct. Or if you have an unspoken request, just say, “Please pray for us in an unspoken way.” If you want Pastor S. today in the pastoral prayer to pray for specific things, we’re going to ask you to write those out. And as you come forward, put those cards on that table after the offering. And Pastor S. will pick those up just before the long prayer.

We’re making this liturgical change today to focus upon what we think is very important: that we continue to develop as a community of prayer and we give you mechanisms to bring those prayers to the pastoral prayer time as well. So please make use of that. So if you got a request—short, succinct, legibly written on a card—and bring them up here and place them on that table that the offering box is on, and Pastor S. will do his best to pray through those today.

All right. So we’re increasing in knowledge. Then we add to knowledge self-control. Now this is a good Greek virtue, supposedly. The idea of controlling oneself in terms of one’s appetites, one’s appetite, sexuality, etc. And it is a virtue that the scriptures absolutely also teach that we should have self-control. And there should be this. As we grow in knowledge of God’s word, it should result in an increasing ability to control our passions.

I know that some of you began several weeks ago to give up certain things for Lent. And I know at least one or two of you who have not followed through. And I would encourage you today—well, tomorrow since we don’t give up anything for the Lord’s Day. That’s a day of rejoicing and feasting. I would encourage you tomorrow to get back on track because Lent can be a very useful exercise in self-control. You give it up, you know, whatever it is: candy or fish if you like fish. Doesn’t have to be beef if you don’t like fish. Whatever it is—a way to discipline yourself to bring self-control. You know, if you don’t exercise control over your physical—I’ve said this so many times—over your physical appetites, you probably will not have self-control over your sexual appetites. You’ll get in trouble. And Lord knows we have enough trouble in that area as it is.

But you know, this is a useful thing to remember. The Westminster Confession says that as we sin, we lose assurance. Duh. And so, you know, we sin through lack of control. And so being part of being diligent to make your calling and election sure is positively applying yourself to self-control.

Add to self-control, perseverance. Perseverance means staying under trials and tribulations. We want to run away when they happen. God says, “Don’t do that. Persevere in doing what’s right.” And perseverance for the Christian means repenting when you don’t persevere and then persevering some more. If you fell off the horse of the commitment you made to God several weeks ago, repent of that and get back on the horse tomorrow and stop eating whatever it is you should eat or drink or whatever it is. Okay? Do that.

Self-control tagged together with perseverance. We could make the case that this is sort of at the center of these eight virtues—these numbers four and five. And in a way, they’re kind of the heart of the thing. If you really want to exercise dominion in this world, self-control and perseverance in doing what’s right is absolutely critical. And these texts tell us you have a command before God to be diligent to make your calling and election sure. So you’ll be victorious for Christ in this culture. So you’ll be revealed to the created order. And the way you do that is to add on these particular chain of virtues including at the heart of it self-control and perseverance.

To perseverance, godliness. Odd word. The church historian was named after this virtue. Uia is the virtue. And it meant having a view of piety toward the gods in Greek philosophy. So a virtuous—you know, a godly man. Virtuousness is righteousness. This is godliness. Reverence toward the gods. You wouldn’t take their name in vain. You wouldn’t make fun of them. You have piety in terms of the gods. Okay? Not in terms of your external actions, but in terms of your attitude of godliness.

Well, and in the Christian faith, of course, that’s also true. You know, we have the one true God. And in the Bible, this word then is picked up and put in the context of a Christian calling to God. Godliness. And we can relate it back to that being partakers of the divine nature. We’re supposed to have a reverence—a positive reverence for God—that’s layered on top of all these things we sort of do externally. Now we’ve got this attitude of reverence to God and a practical piety that is demonstrable in the context of our lives. A godliness showing forth of this nature.

To godliness, we add brotherly kindness. The word is Philadelphia—originally used of other family members, but the Christian church said that we’re all brothers and sisters in Christ, in the extended family of Christ. And we’re to have that brotherly kindness to one another. What is brotherly kindness? It’s actions, its deeds, its patience. It’s being kind toward other people, positively looking to do them good. And it’s not taking offense when they screw up and when they hurt you. And when you have an offense, you don’t make a list of offenses. 1 Corinthians 13 catalogues love by giving us examples of kindness to other people and examples of overlooking other people’s faults, persevering.

So the idea of perseverance is part of brotherly kindness: putting up with each other’s foibles and frailties, being kind and patient with one another—this is brotherly kindness.

And then finally, on top of that attitude toward each other, we have this overarching gift or attribute of love. And that really is the summation of all the rest.

Now I believe that while this is an orchestra that plays—when our children start out in life they have one instrument. They’ve got simple faith, and you know maybe they’re doing other things but maybe they’re not doing them for the right reason. But as our children mature, as they grow up, as they become four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and into their teenage years, all these instruments are supposed to be playing.

Now some play at a little louder volume because faith undergirds the whole thing and the climax is love, but all of these things should be playing. So there is a progressive aspect to it but there’s also an aspect in which these things are all to be there.

We have a positive obligation from God to make our calling and election sure. We have the commandment given. And in the context of this commandment we have assurances that we have a particular method. Not the only one. 1 John 3, as I said before—love for brothers, knowledge of the word, the Spirit mediating the word to us—is the basis for assurance. But here in this particular part of God’s word we’re given a list of specific virtues to add to that initial faith that was not yours. That was the gift of God.

The Bible says that as we live according to this book, as we diligently struggle and endeavor to work hard at these particular list of virtues, we can at the end of that time make our calling and election sure. We can have that infallible assurance. Now, that infallible assurance ushers forth in the last verse, in verse 11, to the eternal kingdom. It’s an assurance that makes us like Payson on our deathbeds instead of Twain.

But it’s also a calling. Remember what the calling was from the golden chain? Those who foreknew, he predestinated. Those he predestinated to be conformed to the image of Christ. He also called. Our calling is to do things here and now for the kingdom and then to rest on our deathbeds. And so the full assurance that 2 Peter commands of us and then tells us what to do to attain it is seen as profitable at the end of the text for living out our callings and our election.

We’re voted on to do something by God. And then to rest on our deathbeds, knowing that this very assurance will provide us that great transition, that wonderful view from our deathbeds as we travel to eternity.

May the Lord God grant that infallible assurance is the goal for everyone in this church. Some have attained to it. Others are moving there. Some of you never even knew you were supposed to do it and didn’t know the importance of it. But may now the Lord God by the Holy Spirit empower us as a congregation to move to see it as our obligation to move toward infallible assurance—the ways the scriptures tells us to do it, through the mediation of the Spirit and his word and other people. And in doing that, be better equipped to serve the King of Kings.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for that marvelous truth: that you can give us, your intention is indeed that we might indeed attain to full assurance of our forgiveness through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And having that full assurance, be brave, courageous men willing to mix it up with each other and with the world for the cause of Jesus Christ. Not being afraid, Lord God, that we make errors because we know that your sovereignty is overarching this whole thing. We thank you for the freedom to act that your sovereignty, your love, and the full assurance of faith gives us.

May you, Lord God, empower us now as we come forward to you and offer ourselves to you as servants of Christ. In his name we ask it. Amen. Amen. Amen.