by Benjamin G. Campbell
The assurance of salvation that believers possess comes about only through a gospel-centered, Christ-focused, Spirit-empowered theology of salvation. In his work, All of Grace,Charles Haddon Spurgeon correctly remarks, “If we are found faithful, it will be because God is faithful. On the faithfulness of our covenant [with] God the whole burden of our salvation must rest.”[1]Insofar as many people battle with doubts in their lives, assurance of salvation is a doctrine that every Christian should embrace with joy because assurance of salvation rests on the faithful God of the Bible. However, when different theological systems fight to the front of the line for the doctrine’s authenticity and truthfulness, it can often cause confusion and lead people astray.
The Golden Chain Phenomenon
Reformed Arminianism is often caricatured as “Pelagianism” or “Semi-Pelagianism,” which is an untrue description of the system of thought. In an article titled How Romans 8 Made Me A Calvinist, Justin Dillehay exemplifies this position, stating that Reformed Arminianism cannot guarantee salvation because of the belief in the possibility of apostasy. The author suggests, “If people can fall out of the chain at any point, then we can never know that all things will work together for the good of the called.”[2] Insofar as the author states, he clearly believes that the only guarantee for salvation is through divine determinism or double predestination. Essentially, if one believes in the possibility of apostasy, he can have no authentic guarantee for assurance and security in salvation.
Often, non-Arminians will portray Arminianism as a synergistic form of salvation that lessens the sovereignty of God and heightens the responsibility of man. “The issues at the heart of the Calvinist-Arminian controversy are intimately related to the Gospel. The controversy deals with the nature of God’s sovereignty and human free will, the impact of sin upon human beings, the meaning of the atonement, the definition and power of God’s grace, the possibility of assurance, and much more.”[3] According to Calvinist theologians and thinkers, Arminianism is a gospel issue—which is simply not the case, especially in dealing with Reformed Arminianism.[4]
Assurance Defined
Since confusion ensues among theological systems, a definition of assurance from the Reformed Arminian perspective is necessary. If non-Arminian proponents have issues regulating the process between regeneration, assurance, and security, then there might be a more logically consistent perspective from which one will see assurance. I believe biblical assurance is the confidence and hope in the atoning work of Jesus Christ for those who believe in Him for salvation.
Confidence and Hope
Since faith is the appropriating element of salvation, the manner in which faith appropriates salvation is through a trust and confidence in the person and work of Jesus Christ.[5] The faith of a human being is not conjured up within him by his own volition and willful intention but is graciously given by God to those offered the gospel by grace before regeneration (Eph. 2:8–10).
Even non-Arminians believe in the idea of pre-regenerating grace. Millard Erickson states, “No one is able to will to be saved, to come to God, to believe, without special enablements. . . . all of us are so settled in our sins that we will not respond unless assisted to do so.”[6] Erickson’s comments are meant to criticize the Arminian understanding of salvation, yet they essentially prove what Reformed Arminians propose: God’s workings with man before regeneration are none other than that of His prevenient grace. As Leroy Forlines notes, “We are saved by faith and kept by faith.”[7]
Faith is the condition for how one comes into a state of grace. Therefore, faith is the required condition of the believer’s union with Jesus because it is “a condition required in the object to be saved, and it is in fact a condition before it is the means for obtaining salvation.”[8] This saving faith gives us confidence and hope that we are saved in the here and now and are being saved for the life to come. Only faith can produce confidence and hope for the believer in Jesus Christ because faith is the confidence and hope in the object of salvation, Jesus Christ. Thus the only appropriating element for salvation is saving faith. While faith is the appropriator of salvation, it is not the ground—the ground of our salvation is Jesus Christ and His finished work.[9]
Atoning Work of Christ
The ground and foundation of all that believers experience in salvation is found only in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The only possible way for salvation to occur for humanity is by the God of Heaven willingly giving Himself to save humankind. Salvation is nonexistent without the atoning death of Jesus Christ in the place of wretched sinners. The redemptive purposes of God culminate in this event in time when God the Son left His domain of heaven to become human, live the life humanity could not live, and die for them in their place to pay their sin debt. Therefore, no assurance of salvation can occur unless it is grounded in and founded on Jesus Christ by faith in His atoning death on the cross and resurrection for humanity.
Believing in Him
While assurance is grounded in the atoning death and resurrection of Christ, the element of belief in His atoning work is necessary for a continual assurance throughout one’s life. Belief in Jesus has nothing to do with a predestinarian element to salvation but the willful confidence and hope from a person responding to the drawing call of God (John 6:44). Jesus tells those following Him around throughout His ministry that “everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life” (John 6:40).
In John 6:40, two words truly present the idea that salvation is conditioned on the faith and belief of the individual drawn by God to Christ. The word behold (θεωρών) implies a theoretical analysis or contemplation of Jesus. To behold Jesus is to consider carefully who He is and His claims to be God in the flesh.[10] Directly related to beholding Christ is the element of belief in Jesus Christ. We know this connection because of John’s use of the word believe, which is πιστεύων and contains the same root for faith in the New Testament (πιστεύω).[11] Both beholding and believing in the person of Jesus Christ is the way one comes to be regenerated by Christ’s atoning work on the cross.
We behold Christ by affirming that He is who He said He is, and we believe that His life, death, and resurrection are the only means through which we can become righteous before a holy and just God. Any other “belief” nullifies the atoning death and resurrection of Christ and makes it worthless. John’s purpose in writing his Gospel account, and Jesus’s purpose in John 6, is to persuade those following Him to see Him for who He truly is and believe on His name for salvation.
Salvation
Salvation of the one who beholds and believes in Jesus Christ is both a present and future reality. While the gospel of Jesus Christ is not merely transactional, it does hold an element of instantaneous redemption. The justification that a believer experiences through faith (beholding and believing) in Jesus Christ is immediate. Yet salvation is also a continual persevering work throughout the believer’s life in Jesus Christ. Faith is a continual condition for salvation and a necessary continual element of assurance. Jesus will keep those who the Father gives Him. He will not cast them out, nor will He drive them away. He cannot do otherwise; human beings, however, can do otherwise.
Thus the “keeping” (or assuring) element of salvation is beholding and believing in Jesus—it is saving faith in His atoning, sacrificial death, and His resurrection. The way believers can have assurance of salvation is by their persistent and close union and intimacy with Jesus Christ, the all-sovereign keeping Savior. The way that this assurance is made tangible is through outward actions because of one’s faith in Christ.[12] Sam Storms notes, “Although we can have full assurance of eternal life the moment we trust in Christ (John 3:16), our confidence grows and intensifies in direct proportion to our cognitive grasp of the broad expanse of what God has revealed.”[13]
Conclusion
When doubts and fear enter in, the possibility of unbelief could become a reality and could even cause men to walk away from the Lord completely. For this reason, Jesus implores us to believe in Him because He will keep us as we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. The God-ordained role of human beings in salvation is to do just this: Work out your own salvation. Thomas Helwys declares, “This then is the decree of God (as he has declared in his word to Adam); obey and live, disobey and die.”[14] Man has nothing to contribute to his regeneration, for he comes into it by faith in the Son of God. Man has no role to play in his saving, other than faith in the Son of God.
Therefore, we must rejoice in the gracious kindness of Almighty God who has promised in His Word that, as we respond to His drawing us to Jesus Christ through faith, He will keep us as we hold on tightly to His Son, the Chief Justice of our souls. Nothing in this earthly life will be as assuring to mankind as the eternally good, eternally sovereign, all-sufficient person and work of Jesus Christ for the salvation of God’s elect.
Assurance will be real to the believer only when it is rooted and grounded in Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, who left His heavenly principality to live, die, and rise again in the place of sinful humanity for their redemption and reconciliation to God. Spurgeon probes his audience so clearly, “To put together all I have said, you must quit every other hope; you must take Jesus to be your sole confidence, and then you must be obedient to his command, and take him to be your Master and Lord.”[15] Biblical assurance is grounded in this verity that all other ground is sinking sand, and Christ is truly your only solid rock on which you can stand.
About the Author:Benjamin G. Campbell serves as the pastor of Arbor Grove Free Will Baptist Church in Hoxie, AR, since September 2018. He is the author of Expository Preparation: Preparing Your Soul to Preach (Resource Publications, 2021). He will complete his Master of Divinity from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in May 2022. When he is not pastoring, he enjoys golfing, writing, and spending time with his family.
[1] C. H. Spurgeon, All of Grace (Nashville: B&H, 2017), 161.
[2] Justin Dillehay, “How Romans 8 Made Me a Calvinist,” The Gospel Coalition, accessed August 4, 2021, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/romans-8-made-calvinist/.
[3] Keith Mathison, “Why I Am Not an Arminian,” Ligonier, accessed August 4, 2021, https://www.ligonier.org/posts/why-i-am-not-arminian.
[4] While I claim that this specific issue is not a gospel issue, other beliefs within different sects of Arminianism could be characterized as a “gospel issue.” However, these issues differ even from Reformed Arminian doctrine and practice.
[5] D. A. Carson, “The SBJT Forum: What Does the Gospel of John Tell Us about the Doctrine of Assurance?” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 2, no. 1 (1998): 67.
[6] Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 939.
[7] F. Leroy Forlines, Classical Arminianism: A Theology of Salvation, ed. J. Matthew Pinson (Nashville: Randall House, 2011), 351.
[8] Jacob Arminius, “On Faith,” The Works of Arminius, trans. James Nichols (Nashville: Randall House, 2007), 723–24.
[9] F. Leroy Forlines, The Quest for Truth: Theology for Postmodern Times (Nashville: Randall House, 2001), 258.
[10] H. G. Liddell, A Lexicon: Abridged from Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1996), 364.
[11] Ibid., 641.
[12] Derek Thomas, “Evidences of Assurance,” Ligonier Ministries, accessed August 18, 2021, https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/evidences-assurance.
[13] Sam Storms, Kept for Jesus: What the New Testament Really Teaches about Assurance of Salvation and Eternal Security (Wheaton: Crossway, 2015), 72.
[14] Thomas Helwys, “A short and plaine proof by the word and works of God that God’s decree is not the cause of any of man’s sins or condemnation,” in The Life and Writings of Thomas Helwys, ed. Joe Early, Jr. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009), 91.
[15] Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “All Comers to Christ Welcomed,” The Spurgeon Center for Biblical Preaching, accessed September 3, 2021, https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/all-comers-to-christ-welcomed/#flipbook/.
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