How do you know that you are saved? How can you counsel someone who is having doubts?
Doug McHone relates how a religious call-in show handled this and he wasn’t very impressed.
I grew up in typical small Baptist churches. We’d have a regularly scheduled revival every year or so, with an evangelist coming in from out of town to conduct it. One recurring theme was that you needed to be really really _really_ sure you were saved. After all, you might not have _really_ meant it all the previous times you prayed the Sinner’s Prayer. This led to lots of folks discovering they weren’t truly saved.
I’ve also had more than one conversation with people who doubted their salvation. I’ve never really dealt with those situations in a very satisfying way. At one church near here, when a youth comes to faith, he nails some kind of tag with his name and date to a big wooden cross on the church property. That gives him something concrete and tangible to remind him.
I don’t want to denigrate anything that helps people remember that they are children of God. But I think the real assurance we have is much different.
As far as I know, there is no Biblical counsel to remember when you prayed the Sinner’s Prayer. This may be due in no small part to the fact that the Sinner’s Prayer is not found in the Bible. Just guessing. Instead, I know of two complementary Biblical assurances of salvation. And they don’t depend on you remembering when you walked down an aisle or being sure you _really_ meant anything.
What would you do if I asked you to prove that you were alive? How would you prove that? There are lots of good ways. Maybe you would let me feel your pulse. Maybe you could demonstrate that you were breathing. Just waving your arms around would prove it.
But is there anyone on the face of the earth who would go scrambling for his birth certificate?
Of course not, that would be silly. Not everyone has a birth certificate. It’s just a piece of paper anyway, of little interest to anyone other than a government bureaucrat. You have much more convincing evidence that you are alive – just by doing things that a living person can do.
There are many texts I could use to demonstrate this, but 1 John lays it out pretty clearly. “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.”
What things does John give us as assurances?
* 1 John 1:6-7 tells us that if we walk in the light, we can know we are saved. But if we walk in the darkness, we have no such assurance.
* 1 John 1:8-10 says that acknowledging and confessing our sins is a litmus test.
* 1 John 2:3-6 explains that obeying Christ’s commands is proof that we are saved.
* 1 John 2:9-10 makes loving our brother a test.
* 1 John 3:6-10 makes it clear that a life of love and righteousness is evidence that we are children of God, and the lack of love and righteousness is evidence that we are children of Satan.
* 1 John 3:24 mentions that we can know we abide in Christ “by the Spirit which he hath given us”. This is repeated in 4:13.
* 1 John 4:15 and 5:1 give belief in Jesus as our assurance. Do you believe Jesus is the Christ? Do you confess Him as the Son of God? You’re saved.
* 1 John 5:10 tells us that we will have the witness in ourself if we believe.
Notice that these are all present tense. John does not tell us to take confidence that once upon a time we prayed a prayer and really meant it. He tells us to examine our behavior and belief. Are you walking as Christ walked? Do you believe Christ is the Son of God? Do you have the Holy Spirit testifying in you? This is a Biblical assurance.
But there is a second, even better assurance. It provides comfort for us when it comes to our own salvation, and when it comes to the salvation of our children.
Several of my friends with young children have mentioned being worried about how to lead their children to Christ. My kids (4 and 2) would repeat just about anything I told them to say; certainly they would say a sinner’s prayer. My oldest is adamant that he loves Jesus. My friend’s daughter has “asked Jesus into her heart” – but she’s only 5, so was it real? Another friend’s child with one breath says he wants to ask Jesus into his heart, but with the next breath asks if he can have a cookie. What’s a parent to do?
There is Biblical assurance here. It is called, in a word, _Calvinism_.
That’s right, Calvinism. The terrible doctrine that causes so many people to stumble and allegedly chills evangelism and turns us into fatalistic robots with no free will.
In truth, Calvinism is the greatest comfort to my heart when it comes to things eternal. God is not a bureaucrat. Neither my children nor I will be denied Heaven because we didn’t repeat the right prayer with the right level of intent and emotions. Nobody slips through the cracks. You won’t be damned due to a technical mistake.
I do not need to worry about walking the fine line between “pushing” my kids to repeat a potentially meaningless prayer, and neglecting to encourage them to repent. God is in control. If Joshua burns in Hell for eternity, it won’t be because I accidentally pressured him into a false profession of faith and he consequently never really repented. God will convert him, or not, as He chooses. God is sovereign and even my blundering won’t mess up His plans. If Joshua’s name is written in the Book of Life, then God will regenerate him and bring him to repentance despite my bumbling and foolishness.
Likewise with me. I was about eight when I was converted. Well, I think that’s when I was converted. I barely comprehend the gospel _now_, let alone when I was eight. But God is sovereign and omnipotent, and will not let me screw up His plans.
So there are the two Biblical assurances that I know of. First, look at your life. Does it bear evidence that you belong to Christ? Are you obeying Christ? Do you love your brother? Does the Spirit testify to you that you are a child of God? Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? And second, remember the character of God. He is sovereign and omnipotent enough to save you even from yourself. You don’t have to stay up late sweating over whether you really truly meant that prayer with all your heart enough that it would work. God is in control. He will bring you to faith and repentance despite your own missteps. There’s so much more there to cling to than a brief note written in the flyleaf of your Bible.
Good stuff, and it somewhat parallels stuff I’ve been thinking about lately (kids, covenant, when salvation “begins,” etc).
Now if you’re like me the next mental step is to start having these really bothersome and uncomfortable (for a “good” Baptist like me) thoughts about infant baptism. ;-)
Do your thoughts go something like this….
Yes, God calls you holy since you are the child of a believer.
Yes, God always makes covenants with men and their descendants and not with individuals (e.g., Adam, Noah, Abraham, David)
Yes, in the OT you would be part of the community of faith.
Yes, I teach you to praise God, tell you Bible stories, teach you to pray, catechize you, etc.
Yes, you sit next to me in corporate worship.
Yes, God will regenerate you when He pleases and I might not even know about it.
No, you can’t be baptized or take communion yet, because you haven’t prayed the Sinner’s Prayer ™.
No, that’s not in the Bible.
Yeah, I’ve had those thoughts… Pretty much the only thing holding me back right now is that there are no conservative reformed / Presbyterian churches in my area, as far as I know.
Yeah, that’s basically it. It’s mostly just my mind wandering logically from my relatively new Reformed suppositions. I’ll think, “Well, I think my kids are part of the covenant community by virtue of the fact that they’re our kids. Also, I don’t think a sinner’s prayer saves anyone, but that Christ’s sacrifice does.”
Then I start trying to figure out how the baptisms John the Baptist was doing jibe with “believer’s baptism” and my brain says Does Not Compute.
Then I start thinking about how the early church regarded baptism as the “new circumcision.”
Then I start thinking, well if I don’t think baptism is salvific anyway but that it is a mark of being in the covenant community and I regard my kids as being inside that community and I don’t have any real objections to paedo-communion, what am I REALLY gonna think now about paedo-baptism?
Then I start feeling very guilty and confused and turn on “The Simpsons” or something. ;-)
I’m not sure I could ever join a Presby church, but I have to confess I have felt very Presby in the last couple of months or so. It doesn’t help that we are looking into different churches right now.
(Did I just say that? That’s the first time I’ve mentioned that to anyone publically other than Bill and my Houston pastor Mike. Yikes.)
Oh, I left out…
Yes, Jesus said to allow the children to come to Him and not to forbid them.
Yes, Jesus said that “of such is the kingdom of heaven”.
I can really feel myself becoming Presbyterian. First it was Calvinism. Then it was the conviction that my children should be in corporate worship with me. Right now it’s postmillenialism. Next it will be paedobaptism. I can feel it. Heh.
One very compelling argument is the uttery simplicity of the theology. Once I accepted Calvinism, these other bits just start to fall in line. They all just fit together very well.
Thanks for the shout-out! Hey Robert, there’s a thread over at ChristianForums.com that has quite a few Calvinists echoing your statement about things just beginning to make sense when God’s part in salvation is returned to its proper place in our hearts. It’s fairly universal. The Bible becomes a joy that makes sense, peace in our hearts becomes something we experience and not just hear others talk about and more. I guess its not just me that noticed these things, huh?
A truly fine post, and I have to fess up that it also echoes some of what I (once a good Arminian) have been grappling with over the last year. When I allowed myself to be shaken free of the belief that my salvation and my Christian life were ultimately about what *I do* (repent, pray the Sinner’s Prayer, seek out baptism and the Lord’s Supper, stop sinning, etc.), I suddenly found it hard to be so critical of traditions like infant baptism.
There is a “blessed assurance” that comes with a truly biblical faith, but I disagree that it’s called “Calvinism.” What you describe here is grace — God’s grace to call us his own when we least deserve it.
I disagree that it?s called ?Calvinism.?
I don’t know if there’s really any disagreement here. I think it is a truly biblical view of grace. A better term for Calvinism might be “doctrines of grace”, but “Calvinism” is a lot clearer in people’s minds (i.e., they know what Calvinism is) so that’s why I use it. Plus it’s shorter to type. :-)
Having been an Arminian myself, the Arminian view of grace goes something like this:
1. God graciously provided for my salvation by sending Jesus to die.
2. God graciously arranged it for me to hear the gospel.
3. God graciously convicted me. I mean, patiently stood at the door and knocked. :-)
4. I responded in faith and repentance.
5. God graciously saved me.
The problem is #4 – God only saves me provided I respond correctly. I mean, who knows if you really really meant it, or was it just a false profession to please others, or was it just an emotional response.
Calvinism is truly gracious. God graciously did everything and nothing is contingent on me. He’ll graciously see to it that I don’t screw it up. This is the biblical view of grace, and it’s a shame we have to put the “Calvinist” label on it.
I’m glad that God loves me enough to ingore my free will and protect me from my own self.
Agreed, agreed. That’s a good summation of the Arminian “Romans Road.”
I’m ruffling my feathers at the term “Calvinism” because I think it’s too specific, being one particular (if not the most prominent and obvious) classification of the broader Reformed tradition. I consider myself Reformed, but not Calvinist, and the theological distinctions are no doubt too subtle to dredge up every time someone uses “Calvinist” in a general way. And I don’t fully understand them myself yet.
Maybe one day I’ll shut up and let people call me “Calvinist” and smile and nod … like saying I live “in Chicago” when in fact I lived in a suburb 20 miles due west. 8)
Or me saying I live “in Nashville” when I live nearly 30 miles west.
Except for bits and pieces of an abridged edition of The Institutes and snatches in a couple of commentaries, I’ve never really read any Calvin. But I don’t mind calling myself a Calvinist because it is pretty much universally understood to refer to TULIP.
As for true and full “Calvinist theology,” I’m pretty much ignorant.
Same here. I use “Calvinism” just as a shortcut to mean “I believe in predestination”. I don’t know much about Calvin’s actual theology, but I’ve been meaning to read Institutes.
I may do an adult Sunday School class over “Intro to Calvinism” and there’s a bit of a debate over what to call it. Really I’m just trying to get folks educated about election, but “Calvinism” is a better (if less accurate) title because it will communicate the topic better to more people.
Re: changing churches, I could blog a lot about that. I probably will, soon. It’s just a bit vague right now.
This is a great entry.
Before any of you jump over to paedobaptism, be sure to read “A String of Pearls Unstrung”, by Fred Malone. He tells of his theological journey from paedobaptism to credobaptism, a journey that required him to leave ministry in the PCA. Malone is covenantal and Reformed in his theology. In fact, http://www.founders.org is all about Southern Baptists who hold to the Reformed principles held by the founders of the SBC. There are Baptists who don’t buy into a magical view of the sinners’ prayer or the age of accountability.
About God making covenants with men and their descendants: Read Galatians closely. The covenant is with Abraham and his seed (not seeds), Jesus Christ. We become true children of Abraham and partakers in the covenant of grace through union with Christ, not through who our physical daddy is.
We become true children of Abraham and partakers in the covenant of grace through union with Christ, not through who our physical daddy is.
I don’t think anyone, paedobaptist or not, would argue with that. Not all Israel is Israel. We become partakers of God’s covenant with Abraham through faith and union with Christ, certainly not by physical lineage. That’s not the issue.
But God does make covenants with men and their descendants. God promised the land of Palestine to Abraham and his physical descendants. Certainly there were some who rejected the covenant (in a variety of ways) and were then excluded, but the default was that Abraham’s physical descendants == Abraham’s spiritual descendants. Jewish children were not “halfway in” until they were old enough to prove they were Abraham’s spiritual descendants. They were born into the covenant (from a human perspective, anyway).
Now in the New Testament, we know it is not about the physical land of Palestine, but a better, heavenly country. God has included me in this covenant. Like Israel, the default assumption is that my children are included in the covenant. It’s possible that they will reject it and be excluded, but the default assumption is that God will regenerate them.
Put another way, it’s like the difference between the visible and the invisible church. The visible church is the group of people that meets together. The invisible church is the truly regenerate subset of the visible church. We can’t know the difference except in very extreme cases. If they guy on the next pew says he’s saved and he comes to church, I pretty much take his word for it and treat him as though it were true. Why wouldn’t I give the same benefit of the doubt to my own children?
I may never know clearly when God regenerates my children. I am not entirely sure when _I_ was regenerated. I know when I “walked the aisle” but I do not actually know if that was an emotional thing or a spiritual thing. But I do know that I _am_ saved, even if I don’t know exactly when I _got_ saved. (In some senses, I was saved 2000 years ago, but that’s another story.)
I could sit down with my 4 year old son and lead him through the “sinner’s prayer” and then even credobaptists would agree that there’s no reason he shouldn’t be baptized. But, why would we give any significant credibility to a 4 year old’s profession of faith? Why would we give that more validity than the reasonable assumption that my children will grow up to be children of God, whether or not I know precisely when they were regenerated?
I don’t have time for a complete and orderly response to everything, but I do want to respond to a few points:
(1) Actually, paedobaptists would argue with me on the basis of inclusion in the covenant of grace. They would argue that the children of believers are already in the covenant of grace by virtue of their parents’ faith. That is why it is appropriate, in their view, to apply the sign of the covenant to the children of believers.
(2) On what scriptural basis do you say that the default assumption is that the children of believers will be believers? You can make an empirical case for that assumption, but I don’t think you can make a biblical case.
(3) Regarding the credibility of a profession of faith, paedobaptists who don’t practice paedocommunion have the same problem as credobaptists. In the PCA, anyone seeking admission to the Lord’s table must first give a credible profession of faith to the elders. For children, that is usually deferred until the early teens, although there’s no fixed age. Adults seeking church membership must also give a credible profession to the elders. Although we can’t know with any certainty who is regenerate, even paedobaptists recognize the need to make an attempt at discernment when it comes to communion and church membership.
(4) I have been a member of a PCA congregation for 14 years, under three different pastors, and while we love our church, explanations of the significance of baptism and the covenant promises have always come across as a sort of proof by hand-waving. Ask a PCA pastor what God promises me as a believing parent regarding the salvation of my children, and you’ll get a lot of mumbling that features the frequent interjection of the word “covenant.” At times we’ve had teenagers before the church for baptism, clearly able to speak to their own faith in Christ, and yet they are baptized as if they were infants, with the teenagers remaining silent and the parents taking the baptismal vows. I’ve heard a PCA pastor say that baptism means two different things, depending on whether the subject is an adult believer or an infant. I detect the incoherence that comes from trying to defend the indefensible.
(5) The heart of the problem is this: Infant baptism can’t be justified by scripture, but Reformed doctrine doesn’t accept the authority of tradition, so a scriptural justification had to be developed. From my reading in church history, I believe that infant baptism was retained by the magisterial reformers (those who had the support of civil authority) for political reasons (to avoid losing support of civil authority), with the rationale developed after the fact. I believe that the need to justify infant baptism has distorted an understanding of the covenants, particularly blurring the distinction between the covenant with Abraham and his physical descendants and the New Covenant. If you aren’t trying to justify paedobaptism, Galatians is crystal clear on the matter.