As I have been doing my series on Hebrews 6 and the assurance of salvation I have been seeking to do justice to the text itself while addressing issues of eternal security and the assurance of salvation. I think it is obvious that these weren't the concerns of the writer of Hebrews, but they become our concerns when we read this text. Thus, a straight exegesis of the text has to blend in with modern questions and concerns when you preach and teach on it.
So, there is a sense in which, when you bring concerns about eternal security and assurance of salvation to Hebrews 6 you are bringing a square peg to a round hole. This doesn't mean we should ignore these concerns. Using the analogy of faith, i.e. the principle that Scripture interprets Scripture, means that we need to interpret Hebrews 6 in light of the rest of Scripture and this means that if indeed, the rest of Scripture tells us that we can have eternal security and the assurance of our salvation, then we need to bring these factors to bear on our exegesis of this particular text.
But getting back to square pegs and round holes, one of my concerns in the Hebrews 6 series is that modern evangelicals tend to be so wrapped up in issues of assurance and security that, when they come to Hebrews 6, they are more concerned about identifying what the passage doesn't say than what it does say. With assurance and security being our primary concerns, Hebrews 6 becomes a hurdle to clear rather than a pool to swim in or a chair to recline in. In other words, our goal in approaching Hebrews 6 is to clear it with our sense of assurance and eternal security in tact. As I have said in other places, many of us read, teach or hear Hebrews 6 in such a way that we come away from it wiping our brow and saying "whew, glad that doesn't apply to me." My concern has been to show that it does apply to us.
But in doing that, I haven't been making any kind of positive case for eternal security or the assurance of salvation. For my purposes now, I will skip the former and concentrate on the latter - assurance of salvation.
Although it may not seem like it from what I am writing on Hebrews 6, I do believe you can have the assurance of your salvation. I was happy and intrigued to see that one of my posts in the Hebrews 6 series was linked by Dervish, who identifies herself as a Muslim feminist. It appears that my post has given her some apologetics ammunition in that I have apparently shown that Christians can't have assurance of their salvation. She says that this is a tactic that Christians sometimes use against Muslims - we assert that the superiority of Christianity over Islam because we say that Christians can have the assurance of salvation whereas Muslims can't. In her mind, my post has shown that the Christian can't really have the assurance of salvation, and thus in this respect the playing field is leveled for Christians and Muslims.
I can see how anyone reading my post would think that, and in that regard I can only plead the Burger King principle of my dear old prof Richard Pratt. The Burger King principle is that whenever you say anything, you can't say everything - if you try to say everything every time you say something, you will always end up saying nothing. In other words, any statement can be almost infinitely qualified and if we spend our lives qualifying and "yeah-butting" ourselves to death we'll end up with a bunch of incoherent gobbledygook that says nothing.
So, in this post I'll issue some of the qualifiers I didn't put in that post and start moving toward a more positive view of assurance.
I have not been attacking the biblical doctrine of the assurance of salvation, rather the unbiblical modern explanation of the biblical doctrine of assurance. The unbiblical modern explanation of assurance is linked to the modernistic minimalizing tendencies of evangelicals to reduce the faith to a very small and neat and tidy formulas.
Over the past century or so we have reduced the gospel to an A-B-C formula, or to three steps, four laws, or five whatevers. Similarly we have reduced the assurance of salvation to a very simple formula. The formula is "prayer the prayer (or walk the aisle or sign the card) and voila, you now have the assurance of salvation." It is as if praying the prayer is the toll we pay to get on the highway to heaven and once we pay the toll we get our assurance ticket which we are told to wave at any passing motorists or cops who wonder what we're doing on this here road.
This reminds me of Bonhoefer's notion of cheap grace. Just as evangelicals adopted a cheap grace approach to the gospel in the last century or so, we adopted a "cheap assurance" approach as well. The locus classicus (sorry, I just had to throw in a bit of Latin to make you think I'm smart) for the biblical doctrine of assurance is I John 5:13:
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 . Zondervan: Grand Rapids
What we have done is focused on the "you who believe" and "know that you have eternal life" to the exclusion of "these things." What I mean is that we have given an incomplete exegesis of this text.
It is true that those who can know they have eternal life are those who have believed in the name of the Son of God. But the real question is "how do we know who has truly believed in the name of the Son of God?" We have come to think that we know who has truly believed by whether or not they have prayed the prayer, signed the card, or walked the aisle. But in the context of I John 5:13 it is the "these things" that shows who has truly believed. But what are the "these things" of which John speaks? it is all the things he has written in the book of I John.
One of the main purposes of the book of I John is to distinguish true believers from false. There was a group who had gone out from them, but who were not really of them (I John 2:19), but who still claimed to be the true believers of the group. So, John writes to help identify who is a true believer and who is not.
What is instructive for us is that the true believers are not identified by the performance of some past act (i.e. praying/walking/signing), but by present day characteristics. I won't go into all of these characteristics at this time, but a cursory reading will show things like:
- True believers walk in the light.
- True believers don't claim to be without sin.
- True believers obey the commands of Jesus.
- True believers overcome sin.
- True believers don't love the world.
- True believers love their brothers in Christ.
There are some other nuances which wouldn't be hard to pick out with a more careful reading of I John, but I think you get the gist. The book of I John is not the last word on assurance, but it sets us on the proper trajectory for gaining a biblical doctrine of assurance. Assurance of salvation is based on so much more than some past decision.
So, turning from the unbliblical modern evangelical understanding of assurance we come to a biblical understanding of assurance. The Westminster Confession, chapter 18, paragraph 2 says it this way:
This certainly is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion, grounded upon a fallible hope; but an infallible assurance of faith, founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made, the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God: which Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption.
Hodge, A., Hodge, C., & Hodge, A. 1996. The confession of faith : With questions for theological students and Bible classes. With an appendix on Presbyterianism by Charles Hodge. Index created by Christian Classics Foundation. (electronic ed. based on the 1992 Banner of Truth reprint.). Christian Classics Foundation: Simpsonville SC
In another post I'll take up some of the things which the confession lists as the grounds of assurance, but for now I will simply say that the confession is in line with I John 5:13's statement that we can know we have eternal life when it says:
This certainty is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion, grounded upon a fallible hope; but an infallible assurance of faith.
Assurance is a real thing, not a mere probability for the Christian. The biblical doctrine of assurance may make it seem like assurance is harder to come by than in the modern evangelical explanation of assurance. After all, having a time, a place and a date to which you can point back to assure yourself of your salvation is a lot easier than examining your heart for inward graces and the like. But, its the biblical way.
The problem with the modern version of assurance is that there are many who have a false assurance, and that is a very, very bad thing. At the same time, the modern method of finding assurance isn't as foolproof as we may think. On more than one occasion I have talked with people who struggled with assurance even though they could point to a time in the past when they prayed the prayer. They may have even had some written record of the time and date and place. But what I have seen them struggle with is whether or not they "really meant it," or were really sincere at the time.
Of course that is a struggle for everyone and I don't want to be too harsh. If my understanding of the biblical doctrine of assurance is correct, then it poses similar problems. Those I just criticized may struggle with whether or not they really meant it, but those who take my approach may struggle with whether or not they really are walking in the light, loving their brothers, obeying the commands of Christ, etc..
For those who disagree with me, this is a valid criticism of my position - it sounds like I am advocating a performance based assurance. I seem to be saying "salvation by grace but assurance by performance." I can't escape the biblical notion that we will know them by their fruits, and therefore that the existence of fruit has to have some bearing on our assurance. But there is a weightier matter in this regard that is the confession talks about in these words . . .
founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation
Although the confession didn't explicitly say it, in developing a doctrine of assurance, we have to give the greatest weight to the promises of salvation. This is very different than founding our assurance on some prayer we've prayed or aisle we've walked, because that still focuses on something we have done. Our assurance is based on what God has done for us, not on what we have done for Him.
Thus, our assurance isn't only based upon the existence of certain characteristics, or inward graces, as the confession states. Our assurance is based on a kind of reciprocal pattern where we rely on the divine promises of salvation for our assurance, and this produces inward graces, which strengthen our reliance on the divine promises which further the inward graces, etc., and as this is happening the spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are the children of God.
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