Home

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind... Romans 12:2

Assurance

by Rev. John Barach

When I was in seminary, I wrote a paper dealing with assurance of salvation. In my previous year I had written a paper about counseling a Christian who is struggling with the temptations and failings of homosexuality. As I thought about assurance, that situation was in the back of my mind.

When you read some books—even some Reformed books—about assurance, they will say something like this: "Anyone can have assurance provided he continues in godliness for a certain space of time." But how long? Is five minutes good? Or should it be ten? Does it have to be a year or two of godliness before you can have any assurance?

I began to wonder: What do you do with somebody who struggles against sin but falls into terrible sins—one who wants to flee from them but finds himself terribly attracted to them? Can a person like that have assurance of salvation or does that assurance have to wait until much later on, after he has already conquered the terrible sins that he is struggling against?

But how do you conquer sin when you have no assurance? How do you battle against sin when you're not sure that God loves you, when you're not really sure that Christ died for you, when you're not really sure that you are one of His people? What power would you have to fight with if you're not really sure that God has given you His Holy Spirit?

As we counsel people who struggle with sin, it's appropriate to remind them of who they are objectively as God's covenant people. Paul does something like that in Romans 6. Paul is responding there to people who say, "Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?" But we can also apply that response to people who are in a difficult struggle with sin.

As Paul responds to that question, he says, "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6:3-4). And he goes on to speak about us being dead. The old man, that old self, is dead, he says, and we have been raised with Christ.

That is something we can say to the man who comes into our office and confesses that he is struggling with terrible sins. We are sometimes tempted to look at somebody like that and wonder if he's really a Christian after all. But we ought to say, "This man is a Christian. He has been baptized into Jesus Christ. He is a member of God's covenant people, as someone who has been baptized into Christ, as someone who shares in Christ's death and in Christ's resurrection, as someone who has been raised to live a new life, having already died to sin with Christ."

We can tell this struggling brother that he's not in this battle alone. We can remind him of what God has done for him in Christ, of how his sins have been forgiven, of how he has been liberated from the slavery of sin. He is no longer a slave but has been raised to new life with Christ. And now, he is to live that new life.

It's not as if he first has to attain a certain level of personal holiness to be assured that he has Christ. Rather, knowing by God's promise that he has Christ, he can begin to fight with confidence and with hope as he battles against sin. And though he falls, he need not be totally discouraged. Every week he comes to church to hear God say to him, "Your sins are forgiven, though you've fallen again and again." He can be encouraged week after week with that assurance as he looks at his relationship to Christ, at the objective things that God has given to him, at his baptism into Christ.

There are times when that kind of counseling and all of our work must lead to discipline. There are times when people do not turn from their sin but harden themselves in it. But discipline doesn't start with some kind of mental excommunication. There's really no such thing as mental excommunication, but we try to practice it sometimes. We say to ourselves, "That guy is just not regenerate." Or, "I bet he never really was a Christian after all." And then we follow that up with scolding and eventual neglect because he was never really among us anyway. He was here, but he wasn't a Christian.

Discipline, which is closely related to the word "discipling," involves teaching and encouraging people—not people whom we simply regard as our brothers and sisters, but people who are covenantally our brothers and sisters. It involves teaching them to observe all that God has commanded in view of the hope that is laid up for those who love Christ. We teach them to respond to God's Word in faith. We teach them to do what the Lord tells them to do. And we warn them with the covenant warnings, lest they fall away.

But then, if the person persists in sin we don't ignore him. We don't then say, "Well, sure he's wandered away from the church and he's living a wicked lifestyle, but we don't need to worry about that." We need to go after him; we don't simply let him go. As he persists in sin he needs to be removed, publicly and authoritatively. He should be removed from the covenant community by public excommunication. At that point we regard him as an unbeliever. At that point we regard him officially as somebody who does not belong to Christ, who is not a Christian. Until then, in the New Testament sense of the term, he is a Christian.

Return to Volume 10, Number 1.