Toward Assurance of Salvation: The Whole Christ with Sinclair Ferguson

0:00 Now, last time we began to discuss the assurance of salvation. We were talking about how issues of the offer of the gospel and legalism and antinomianism can play out in our Christian lives in different ways and how relevant some of those discussions of the early 18th century are to thinking about the assurance of salvation. In some ways, we could say that assurance of salvation is a bit like being married. Once you're married, you're married. It's yours. You can be sure about it. But you can still struggle with the question, does she still really love me? Does she love me more now? Am I growing in my sense of her love towards me? You know, if you wear a wedding band, that may be the time you finger the wedding band to give yourself a kind of reassurance.

0:58 It's really true. She gave me this ring. She gave me this pledge. So often in the story of the Christian church, theologians have said, in some ways, baptism and the Lord's Supper are like that wedding band. They're gifts that Christ has given to us, visible, in a way, tangible gifts that when When we think about them, then we have this reassurance. Yes, He not only told me that He loved me, that He died for me, but He's given me a physical expression of that, a gift that I can have for the rest of my life. I can come to the Lord's table and know that He is there with me and He loves me and He receives me. So yes, faith brings assurance. like marriage, that assurance can grow. And also like marriage, despite the books that some of the marriage gurus have written, just as everybody's marriage is different, so everybody's individual experience of assurance is likely to be different. Just as you should always avoid the marriage guru who tells you the way he has conducted his marriage is the way everybody should experience it.

2:17 And it is absolutely fantastic. So in the same way, you need to understand that assurance, in a sense, is shaped individually to us. Because at the end of the day, your assurance of Jesus Christ and His salvation is yours. It's not mine. I can't borrow your assurance. I need an assurance that Jesus Christ saves Sinclair Ferguson. No, no, no, it's fine that Jesus Christ saves John Smith or John Doe or Jane Doe, but that's not my assurance. And so, it's possible for us to grow in assurance and perhaps to have bumpy patches on the way before, as the Westminster Confession of Faith says, we come to the full assurance of faith. Or let me put it this way, those of us who may have married young couples, we have the best seat in the house, don't we?

3:17 We're just a few feet from them. And sometimes I look at the faces of young men and I know what they're thinking. They're thinking, no man ever loved woman the way I love this woman. And I'm mentally thinking, I hope you come back for a five-year checkup and tell me, You know, when I was standing in front of you, I thought, no man has ever loved women the way I have loved this woman. And I was only beginning to love this woman. I scarcely knew this woman. It only took me two weeks to realize I didn't really know this woman at all. And so there is an absoluteness about the relationship, and there is a progress in it. that progress is a very individual experienced reality. And it's that that I want us to think about together in this study. How do we grow in the assurance of salvation? How does God lead us on from that initial assurance that we have because we are resting on Jesus Christ to the assurance of salvation. I remember many years ago reading a quite striking statement by the late Professor John Murray. He puts it like this. He says, the germ of assurance is surely implicit in the salvation which the believer comes to possess by faith. It is implicit in the change that has been wrought in his state and condition. And then he goes on to say this, however weak may be the faith of a true believer, however severe may be his temptations, however perturbed his heart may be respecting his own condition, he is never as regards consciousness in the condition that preceded the exercise of faith. The consciousness of the believer differs by a whole diameter from that of the unbeliever. At the lowest ebb of faith and hope

5:24 and love, the believer's consciousness never drops to the level of the unbeliever at its highest pitch of confidence and assurance. That's a pretty bold statement, isn't it? He is saying right from From the get-go, the believer's consciousness of the Father's love is always going to be on a higher plane than the highest plane of the unbeliever. So there is an assurance that becomes ours right from the very beginning of the Christian life. So, how does it work out? Well, let me give you a couple of principles. first is this. Assurance is ours because we are trusting in the sufficiency of Jesus Christ to pardon us and to save us. And we need to understand several things there. For example, we need to understand that we are justified by faith, but the faith by which we are justified contributes nothing to the justification it receives. Do I need to say that again?

6:33 we are justified by faith, but the faith by which we are justified contributes nothing to the justification which we receive. Faith is simply the mouth by which we feed on Jesus Christ. It doesn't contribute to the food. And when we don't get that clear, our assurance is going to dissipate. So long as we think our faith has contributed to our justification, then when our faith grows weak, instead of weak faith getting a strong Christ, all weak faith sees is weak faith and loss of assurance. So, few things could be more important to us than having a right understanding of how our justification is by faith. There's another element to that that, in a way, we discussed much earlier on. It is how important it is to understand that in the justification of God through faith, the Father loves us as much as the Son does.

7:46 You remember what we talked about earlier, how sometimes Christians feel that they know Christ loves us, but they feel that somehow or another Jesus had to die to persuade the Father to love us. I don't know if we notice then what we must notice now, that if we think in that way, it will not be long before we are doubting whether the Father really loves us or not. We are sure of Jesus, but we're not sure of the Trinity. And because we're not sure of the Father, we're not sure of the Holy Spirit, and we find ourselves confused. We begin to lack assurance. Here's another point that's important in connection with justification. We need to learn to understand that justification is, as the theologiancy, an eschatological reality.

8:43 It is the judgment of the last day brought forwards, as it were, into the present day. It's final, it's complete, and it's irreversible. As I was thinking about that, I remembered one of those occasions when I was a theology student when I had to preach in the preaching practicum. And I think as a youngster, I was preaching on the end of Romans 8, and I happened to say what I've just said, that the justification that takes place at the beginning of the Christian life is the justification of the last day experienced today. It can never be reversed, and it can never be diminished, and that's where our assurance lies. I remember among the critical comments at the end, one of the men said, you know, if you would just let go, Sinclair, you might become a decent preacher.

9:42 And the other was, but had a problem with what you said about justification. And I remember thinking, I'm not sure you really understand the gospel. You think justification is progressive and will be complete on the last day? So long as you think that, you will never have the full assurance of salvation. So this is one of the ways in which rightly understanding the gospel enables us to trust in the absolute sufficiency of Jesus Christ to save us eternally because He has already justified us now. Sometimes therefore, when people are struggling with the problem of assurance, you should never talk to them about assurance because their problem is not really assurance. Their problem and confusion is actually about justification.

10:39 And so as we minister to one another and encourage one another, we need to become like physicians, don't we? If your physician is anything like me and you go to him because there's a pain somewhere, especially if you're a man, you say, it's about here, doctor, and he may start three feet away. Does it hurt there? And then he'll move nearer and, oh, you know, you think, oh, maybe it's not so bad. And he goes, whoa. And he knows exactly where the pain is, you see. He's testing to see whether there's referred pain, whether the pain you feel in one place has been referred, and actually its root is another place. And problems with assurance are just like that. They are often referred problems. problem is lack of assurance. No, your problem is probably lack of understanding justification by God's free grace. So, this is one way in which we grow into the assurance that God gives us in the gospel. We grow into it by a deeper appreciation of the reality of what has been given to us in our justification. There's a second way in which assurance grows.

11:55 This is something that the apostle John was particularly interested in, isn't it? Do you remember how he says towards the end of the gospel, I've written these things to you so that you may believe in the Son of God? In that sense, it's an evangelistic gospel, and it's a gospel to point Christians to the centrality of Christ. But when he writes his first letter, he says he's written it for a different reason. I've written this to those who do believe in the name of the Son of God so that they may have an assurance of their salvation. And this is why John's first letter is punctuated by, we know that we belong to him if. Now, sometimes Christians read 1 John as though he were speaking about qualifications for being a Christian.

12:51 And he's not speaking about qualifications for being a Christian. He is saying, let me walk you round the Christian. And he does that, doesn't he? That's his style. He kind of goes around the houses, and then he goes around the houses again, and he keeps coming back to the same themes. And what he's really doing is saying to us, now, I want to walk round you. And as I walk around you, I'm just going to point out some things to you that will encourage you to understand that you really are Christ's. And so, I think it's true that there are people who perfectly understand justification by faith, perfectly understand the doctrine of Christian assurance, but it's themselves they're wondering about.

13:47 And there's no point saying to them, tell me whether you're a Christian or not. If you're a Christian, you've got assurance. Next, please. Now, what you've got to do is to walk them around themselves. I'm not sure whether I'm a Christian. Well, says John, let me just walk around you and we'll see together. And so he has these little sayings. If this is true, then you can be sure. If you're born again, then this will be true of you. And there are particular things that he points out. For example, he says, those who are born of God, those who are in the family and who may enjoy the family assurance, well, they keep the commandments of God. Well, let's try that one. How are you doing? Oh, I love to be obedient. I love to try and please the Lord. I'm not sure whether I'm a Christian. Ah, my friend, only Christians love to please the Lord. And, oh, you see, and that's medicine that begins to deal with the uncertainty. And sometimes the uncertainty is, I don't mean to diminish the spiritual, but sometimes it is, it's in the psyche. It's in the way the person thinks about himself or herself. And then he gives us another tour. He says, well, those who are born of God live righteously. So, let me walk around your life a little. What have you been doing in the last week? Oh, you spent time with her. She's, as we would call in Scotland, a poor old soul, but you spent time with her.

15:37 That's wonderful. You know, that's a fruit of the Spirit, that living righteously. Well, you might say, well, you know, I really messed up on Tuesday. I lost it with my wife, but you know, she was so gracious to me when I apologized, and I said, I'm so sorry that I have offended the Lord, and I've offended you. Let's pray together. That's living righteously. That's not living pharisaically. That's living in a way that's aligned with the gospel. And only those who are aligned with the gospel live lives aligned with the gospel. And then there's another one which makes you swallow hard. He says, well, I'd like to talk to you about sin. He says, incidentally, you know what I'm going to say, don't you? It's a wee bit covered over in our modern translations. But what he says is, if you're born again, you don't sin. Most of the modern translations translate that like, if you're born again, you don't go on sinning. And certainly that's true. It's not precisely what John said. He's really a wee bit more direct than that. If you're born again, you don't sin.

16:58 Well, who can be born again? John, what do you mean by that? And I think what he means by that is that there has been a, what Professor Murray called, a radical breach with sin in my life. It doesn't mean that I never commit sin. It means that my relationship with sin has been radically transformed. Remember how Paul puts it in Romans chapter 6? He says, you know if you've been baptized into Christ Jesus, you've been baptized into His death, you share in His resurrection. Those who are Christ's have died to sin, died to it, and are now living, as it were, in a different country, like having a different nationality. You don't belong to that world any longer. You don't live as though you belonged to that world.

17:56 It would be a bit like this if I had become an American citizen. And you said to me, are you an American? I said, yes, I'm an American. And you said to me, oh, so you're not a Scotsman any longer. Well, I might sometimes slip into the vernacular, but I wouldn't be a Scotsman any longer, would I? I might still have those old Scottish tendencies, like never putting sugar on my porridge. I might speak funny. It might be a long time before I would have an American accent and hang around Americans long enough to sound like an American, but I wouldn't be a Scotsman anymore." And that's what he's saying now. This is a wee bit more difficult for us to work through together, dear friend, but is sin and its dominion a thing of the past?

18:54 Is sin and its dominion a thing of the past? Now, why does he want to explore that? He wants to explore that because if I'm living as though sin reigned in my life, I'm actually living as though I'm not a Christian. And if I'm living as though I'm not a Christian, it's not very likely I'm going to be sure that I'm a Christian. I mean, that's not rocket science, is it? If there's no evidence in my life that the change has really taken place, why would I believe that the change has taken place? Of course, that's a mistake some people make, isn't it? You know, like the man I was referring to earlier on. He signed on the dotted line. no reason to believe that you've really trusted in Christ if you sign on any dotted line, and there is no transformation in your life. Because everyone Jesus Christ saves, He transforms.

19:53 And so as John walks around us and he picks up, well, look, he said, tell me what it was like 10 years ago for you. And you say, well, I was into this and I was into that and I was constantly giving it. Are you still doing that? Well, no, I haven't done that for you. It's not been my pattern for years. That's the kind of thing He's saying.

20:14 And so, you know, you're being caught up with how I feel about myself. And He's saying, let's just take a walk around you, and we'll see who you really are. And what we're beginning to see is that you really are somebody who is in Christ. And then He's got another walk around, and he's walking around us and asking the question, how does this person relate to other Christians? What do you think about your church? There are a bunch of old sinners, but I love them to death. There are difficulties in our church, but I love the church. It has meant worlds to me to have brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and cousins who are in the church, and I love them. So what did you do to love them?

21:11 I actually didn't do anything to love them. I just loved them as though they were my family. And I didn't sit down and think, what am I going to do here? I need to try and love these people. I just seem to love them. Ah, but that would be the work of the Holy Spirit, wouldn't it? That you'd been brought into the family. So, on the one hand, we understand our justification by grace through faith. On the other hand, we walk in the way of faith. And then the Apostle Paul adds a third element. He says, as Christians, we enjoy the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Remember how he puts it in Romans 8? He says, the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God when we cry, Abba, Father, Abba, Father. Now, the non-Christian never cries Abba, Father.

22:13 You ever been with a non-Christian in a time of crisis, a religious, devoted non-Christian in a time of crisis? The highest they will cry is, O God. They do not instinctively cry, Father. Do you know the really interesting thing about Paul's language there in Romans 8? The verb he uses, even if you didn't know any Greek, you would be able to tell what this verb means. It's the verb kradzine, and it's onomatopoeic. It sounds like what it means. It's a sharp cry. It's the cry of Jesus on the cross. That's the verb that's used, a loud cry in weakness and frailty. What's the point of saying that? It's saying that this assurance we are God's children does not belong to us only when we're at our highest and our best and everything going swimmingly. It belongs to us when we're in need and we're bruised and we're broken and we just cry out, Abba, Father.

23:17 Nothing could make it clearer that we really belong to Him than that in need we say, O Father, come and help me. And even when we don't notice it, that's one of the clearest expressions we could ever give, that we really do know we belong to the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit. So what a thing it is in need to be able to cry.