Assurance (Hebrews 6:10-12)

One of the problems that Christians face, and often do at communion times, is assurance. Various suggestions have been made for this, such as infrequency of occasions, or wrong ideas about the nature of the Supper by regarding it in superstitious ways.

It has been said that there are two types of people who need to be concerned about assurance. One is those who claim to have it, but who should not have it because they don’t live as Christians should. The other type is those who should have it, yet don’t, even although they live as Christians should. But when we think about it, neither of those options really deal with the issue of true assurance, but they do highlight a couple of problems connected to it.

The people addressed in Hebrews had lost their degree of assurance. This was one of the reasons for the book being written because the writer wanted them to change direction and resume the spiritual path on which full assurance is found (Heb. 6:10-12). They had become sluggish spiritually, even although all about them was not bad because they still showed practical brotherly love. But they were not what they should have been. 

As we are having the Lord’s Supper this weekend, it is appropriate to think about assurance of salvation. We can do so under four headings.

Necessity of assurance

When we connect the words necessity and assurance we do not mean that assurance is necessary for getting to heaven. Indeed, many believers have reached there without having much assurance. In Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, he mentions characters like Mr Fearing who reached the Celestial City without much assurance, despite having many good features.

So if it is not necessary to get to heaven, why should we be concerned about assurance? There are at least three reasons for this. The first is that it honours God. When we think about it, what does lack of assurance say about God’s grace and power. Is he unable to provide for some people? Are there individuals whose outlook is too strong for God to deal with? We know that is not the case, yet that is the impression that is given. Lack of assurance can suggest that God is not able to help such people.

The second reason is that it makes our spiritual life more comfortable. There is no valid argument for not wanting to have spiritual comfort in any way that the Bible approves. The Bible repeatedly mentions that God’s people should have such blessing from God even in difficult situations. 

The third reason is that assurance gives credibility to our personal witness. It is difficult for non-Christians to understand the testimony of a person who says that they are not sure if they are converted. While they need divine grace to understand the gospel, they can deduce that there is something unusual when  believers say that they are uncertain about their own state. 

Negation of assurance

What causes lack of assurance in Christians? Various reasons can be given. The obvious one is the presence of sin. This presence shows itself in a range of ways. For example, a believer can choose to sin, and when that happens, he will not have true assurance because he will have grieved the Spirit, and he will not recover assurance until he confesses that sin to God and forsakes it.

Assurance also declines when a believer fails to use the means of grace, whether in private or public. This aspect is obvious. When a person stops reading the Bible devotionally and stops engaging in prayer, the outcome is inevitable. They will lose their assurance. The same will happen if they choose not to attend church services and engage in fellowship with other believers.

Assurance also declines when a believer fails to live by faith. Lack of faith can show itself by not applying to oneself the Bible’s description of blessings Christians should have. It can show itself by listening to the devil’s suggestions about how can we expect to have assurance when we are such sinners. The fact of the matter is that, in this life, only sinners can have assurance of salvation. Believers, when they get careless about worldly things, will lose their assurance. 

Normality of assurance 

What is the Bible’s picture of normal assurance? No doubt there are different ways of describing it. The common way is threefold. They can be described as listening to the Bible, engaging in self-examination, and experiencing the direct comfort of the Holy Spirit.

The first aspect is listening to the Bible, especially its promises. For example, Jesus says that he will not cast out anyone who comes to him for forgiveness. It does not matter how many sins have to be forgiven by that person - the promise applies equally whether he is the biggest sinner in the world or the smallest sinner in the world. It does not matter how old the sinner is, whether he is an adult or a teenager or a child. It does not matter what his intellectual grasp of the Bible’s teaching is. Nor does it matter how much conviction of sin he has undergone, whether it is classified as a great amount or a small amount. What is important is that the sinner comes to Jesus, believes in Jesus and depends upon Jesus.

A person has to think about that promise and apply it to himself. Is he in the category of those invited? He is. Is the invitation genuine? It is. Has Jesus ever turned someone away who came to him for forgiveness? No. Is the method of coming to Jesus suitable for him? It is equally suitable for all who come. There are hundreds of similar promises in the Bible and hundreds of verses that detail how to be saved, and how to live for God. In order to have assurance, we have to listen to what the Bible says about God’s grace as revealed to us as sinners.

The first aspect is not enough by itself since the Bible indicates that faith in Jesus will bring about a changed life because the Holy Spirit engages in sanctifying all who truly believe in Jesus. Therefore in order to have personal assurance we need to know whether a change is taking place in our lives. The term used for this is self-examination and I suspect it is not a priority for people today. Yet Paul reminded readers to examine themselves to see if they were in the faith, and he particularly stated that self-examination must take place before an individual participates in the Lord’s Supper.

One Bible book that focuses on self-examination is 1 John and it contains several references to how a person can know that he is a genuine believer. So we can consider them briefly. The first we can mention is regular confession of sin: ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us’ (1 John 1:9-10). Confession cannot involve every sin we have because we don’t know all our sins. But it does include confessing the sins we know about, and the Spirit often brings them to our attention so that we will confess them to God. Genuine confession takes a bit of time.

A second reference is 1 John 2:3-4: ‘And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.’ A Christian practices obedience to the commandments in the Bible. He obeys them now because they were written on his heart when it was made new. A failure to obey is a very bad sign in a professing person’s life.

A third reference is 1 John 2:15: ‘Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.’ The world in the sense used here is not primarily about the physical world. Instead, it is about the world of ideas, it is about the things that take us away from God and doing what pleases him. A fairly simple rule is that a thing is worldly if it causes a person to break any of the Ten Commandments in their minds as well as in their actions.

A fourth reference is 1 John 3:14: ‘We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.’ That test is elementary.

So there are four things to look for in self-examination: confession, obedience, unworldliness and brotherly love. I suspect the most important one is confession because it realises the seriousness of sin, but the others are very important too.

The third aspect occurs when the Spirit does something of a comforting nature in the hearts of his people. It has been described as special strengthening, increased sense of warmth in our affections, unusual delight in what the Bible says, a greater appreciation for the Saviour, intense gratitude for divine mercy. This kind of experience may not happen often, but when it happens, it is a great stimulus for living the Christian life.

Now

So here we are preparing for participating in the Lord’s Supper. What should we be looking for about ourselves as we prepare to meet the King? No doubt, we can all think of some features. But here are four which I suspect would be useful companions to take with us as we remember the Saviour and all that he did and does for his people.

The first is humility because we know that we are unworthy. High opinions of self are most unbecoming in the presence of the King. The second is honesty because we are confessing that we need a Saviour constantly. The third is happiness because we have been greatly blessed through Christ. And the fourth is hope because we know that the Supper is a sign of a better occasion of fellowship in the world that is to come.

The Lord’s Supper is a means of grace and is therefore a means of increasing our assurance. We have a warm invitation from the host, but he asks us to come conscious that we are dressed in the outfit he has provided (justification) and aware that he has given us the Holy Comforter to enable us to have real communion with him.