The issue of assurance of salvation is a great one for many believers. Lack of assurance is often a problem that plagues us, hinders us, and stunts our spiritual growth and witness to the gospel. Assurance is something we should seek. But we must be careful not to seek it in the wrong way. A wrong-heading seeking for assurance can not only lead to false assurance on the one hand, and destroyed assurance on the other, it can also lead to a heretical confusing of the persons of the Godhead. This is how Octavius Winslow puts it:
It is the work of Jesus alone, his perfect obedience to the broken law of God, and his sacrificial death as a satisfaction of Divine justice, that form the ground of a sinner’s acceptance with God, – the source of his pardon, justification, and peace. The work of the Spirit is, not to atone, but to reveal the atonement; not to obey, but to make known the obedience; not to pardon and justify, but to bring the convinced, awakened, penitent soul to receive the pardon and embrace the justification already provided in the work of Jesus. Now, if there is any substitution of the Spirit’s work for Christ’s work, – any undue, unauthorized leaning upon the work within, instead of the work without, the believer, there is a dishonour done to Christ, and a consequent grieving of the Holy Spirit of God (Personal Declension and the Revival of Religion in the Soul, pp. 136-137).
He continues,
If I look to convictions of sin within me, to any motion of the indwelling Spirit, to any part of his work, as the legitimate source of healing, of comfort, or of evidence, I turn my back upon Christ, I remove my eye from the cross, and slight his great atoning work; I make a Christ of the Spirit! (Ibid, p. 137).
Does this mean that we are not to be diligent to make our calling and election sure? (2 Peter 1:10). By no means. But it means that we must, as Robert Murray M’Cheyne put it, look to Christ more often than we look to ourselves: ‘For every look at self, take ten looks at Christ.‘ A continual looking to the self, and to the Spirit’s work within us, is a looking away from Christ. The Spirit’s work is to glorify Christ, to reveal Christ, to point to Christ. How then can the Spirit do his work within us if we refuse to look away from his work within us and fix our eyes on Christ. As Dorothy Sayers put it,
We cannot really look at the movement of the Spirit, just because It is the Power by which we do the looking (The Mind of the Maker, p. 115).
Our ‘hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ the solid rock I stand! All other ground is sinking sand.’ Build your assurance on self and become a miserable failure. Build your assurance upon the Spirit and you confuse the persons of the Godhead. Build your assurance upon Christ and find a bold stability.
