Mark G. Knox Christian Thought

On Assurance of Salvation

There’s a reason we wait until dark to light fireworks. Against the dark skies, the glow of the explosions is brightest. Fireworks during the day, like at a baseball game, are loud but not nearly as interesting to observe.

The same could be said in the realm of ideas; doctrines, principles, and philosophies always have heightened clarity when put in the context of competing concepts.

For example, the good news of the gospel – the perfect life, substitutionary death, and validating resurrection of Christ for sinners – becomes crystal clear against the backdrop of the bad news of our sin and deserved judgment.

This principle has again become pertinent to me recently as I studied theological ideas around the justification of sinners and the assurance of their salvation.

Both the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) and the London Baptist Confession of Faith (1687) have nearly identical sections entitled, Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation. They are both contained in Chapters 18 of their respective documents.

In the first paragraph of these chapters, both Confessions have this identical statement: “Such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him, may, in this life, be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace, and may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, which hope shall never make them ashamed.”

What a powerful statement! True believers “may be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace.”

Now, I have taken hope and comfort from Scripture passages like the entire book of 1 John, which was specifically written to assure believers of their standing in Christ. “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). I have pursued godly dispositions and holy affections as I endeavor to confirm my calling and election (2 Peter 1:10). When doubts assail, I have examined myself to see whether I am in the faith (2 Cor. 13:5).

All of these verses (and many others) support the idea that we can, in this life, know we are saved, in the state of grace, rejoicing in hope (Rom. 5:2).

It is on the basis of Scriptures like these that the Confessions make their affirmations of the reality of assurance for the believer.

While our election, calling, and justification are sure, our feelings and awareness of assurance can wax and wane. This is why we must pursue it.

First, we base our assurance objectively on the promises of God in his Holy Word, which never fail.

Additionally, we base our assurance subjectively on our experience as we see the fruits of justification at work and increasing in our lives.

“For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

2 Peter 1:8-11

The Synod of Dort (1619) had this to say regarding assurance: “The elect in due time, though in various degrees and in different measures, attain the assurance of this their eternal and unchangeable election,…by observing in themselves, with a spiritual joy and holy pleasure, the infallible fruits of election pointed out in the Word of God – such as a true faith in Christ, filial fear, a godly sorrow for sin, a hungering and thirsting after righteousness, etc.” (First Head, Article 12).

So then, we are told Scripturally that we can know that we have eternal life, and we are to pursue this assurance and certainty with all godly vigor. That in itself is a powerful and comforting truth.

Now, for some context…

To give even more clarity to this truth, let’s now consider the historical and theological backdrop.

These Confessional statements were written in the early decades of the Protestant Reformation. They come in stark contrast to Roman Catholic dogma, which was reaffirmed at the Council of Trent (1545-1563).

At the center of the teaching on assurance is the biblical concept that justification is a legal declaration of complete acquittal of sins. Through the finished work of Christ, we are declared and treated as righteous through faith. In Protestant theology, justification is a completed state, by which we are forgiven and accepted by God.

This is the foundation of assurance.

However, in Roman Catholic teaching, even though terms like grace, faith, and justification are used, they do not mean the same thing. In Catholic teaching, justification is not declaring someone righteous, but making someone righteous. “Justification is not only the remission of sins, but sanctification and renovation of the interior man…whereby a man becomes just instead of unjust” (Trent, Chapter 7). Since justification includes sanctification which is not final at any point in life, a consistent Catholic would not say that they are justified, but that at the end of their days, they hope to be.

Consequently, if a person cannot say with certainty that they are now justified, they cannot claim to have assurance of salvation. In fact, it’s not just that assurance is impossible; it is not to be pursued at all! Trent calls assurance as I have described it, “a vain and ungodly confidence.” “If anyone says that he will for certain, with an absolute and infallible certainty, have that great gift of perseverance even to the end, unless he shall have learned this by a special revelation, let him be anathema” (Trent, Canon 16).

So then, those who penned the Reformed Confessions were not simply espousing the biblical truth on assurance as Scripture teaches it; they were doing so against a backdrop of despair and vain hope of the Roman Catholic faith rooted in works righteousness.

Truly, the motto of the Reformation stands, Post Tenebras Lux (After darkness, light)! What a great fireworks display this truth is.

Mark G. Knox Christian Thought

The relationship between calling and regeneration in the ordo salutis

I am in the midst of writing a new book on the “ordo salutis,” or order of salvation. Please enjoy this excerpt as I discuss how calling and regeneration are related.

The order of salvation is a way to discern and teach various aspects of God’s saving work, but it is one work. We enumerate and separate these facets only as a didactic exercise, but all of these aspects equally apply to every elect person. The same individuals who were chosen by God before the foundation of the world are the same people who are ultimately glorified in the end. One work, one people.

But it is helpful (or else, why this book?) to consider each of these concepts separately for the sake of our understanding. And yet, we must recognize that we cannot completely separate one from another like a surgeon might remove an intact organ from the body. There is a symbiotic relationship in these concepts that do not allow such isolation.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the link between calling and regeneration.

In a sense, the relationship of all of these aspects of the ordo salutis is logical rather than temporal. Calling, regeneration, conversion, justification, and adoption happen concurrently in the experience of a believer. But more than simply occurring at the same time, calling and regeneration have a stronger link – namely, the calling creates new life (regeneration).

The best way that I can think to illustrate this is to give you a word picture, one that is supplied for us in John 11 with the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

Lazarus, along with his sisters Mary and Martha, were close friends of Jesus. Eventually Lazarus falls sick, and the sisters send for Jesus. But Jesus bides his time, and Lazarus then succumbs to his illness and dies. When Jesus arrives, Lazarus has been dead for four days. Both Martha and Mary say at different times to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus assures them that he is the resurrection and the life – one of the great deity claims in the Gospels – and asks to be led to the tomb. Moved with great emotion, Jesus asks them to remove the stone. When they protest because of the smell, he says, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” (11:40). After praying to his Father, he calls out to the dead man, “Lazarus, come out.” Lazarus, now returned to life, comes out, and Jesus instructs the people to unbind him from his grave clothes. What a miracle, causing some to believe and others to plot his death.

There is, in this story, both a calling and a regeneration. Jesus calls out to a dead man (this is instructive), “Come out!” Now, a dead person is incapable of not only coming out but of even hearing such a call. Therefore, there must be a regeneration, a new life. When did this happen? It happened when Jesus called, for the call created new life. Jesus’ command, in the words of a prayer by Augustine, granted what he commanded. When Jesus calls a person, his summons creates what it commands.

So then, the concepts of calling and regeneration are inseparably linked. We can only isolate them (partially) in our minds, and even then, we are not able to completely disentangle these two aspects of God’s redeeming work.

Love’s Redeeming Work: Treasuring our Savior and His Great Salvation (The “ordo salutis” for everyone) is currently being researched and written. I am working toward a summer 2022 release. Stay tuned for more excerpts and details…Mark

Mark G. Knox Christian Thought

Love’s Redeeming Work

I’ve hinted that I am working on a new book, and the time has come to reveal a working title, the theme, and little bit of cover art.

Once again, I am compelled to write on theology. My passion is to study God’s Word, to live it out as best I can, and to teach it to others (Ezra 7:10).

In that vein, I have taken to writing a theological treatise on salvation, the so-called ordo salutis in particular. The ordo salutis is the “order of salvation” as described by theologians. How is salvation applied to an individual, and is there an “order” (chronological or logical) by which we may understand the application of redemption? This is the topic covered in the “Applied” half of John Murray’s 1955 work, Redemption Accomplished and Applied.

My working title is Love’s Redeeming Work, and the subtitle is Treasuring Our Savior and His Great Salvation. There’s also a sub-sub-title: The Ordo Salutis for Everyone. My goal is to make the various elements of our salvation understandable to the everyday reader.

The ordo salutis (order of salvation) is a recounting of the steps by which God saves a sinner. In the classic Reformed sense, the order follows this sequence: Election, Calling, Regeneration, Conversion (Faith and Repentance), Justification, Adoption, Sanctification, Perseverance, Glorification. These topics are massive and weighty and worthy of our study.

My purpose is not merely the didactic, the teaching of doctrine. Beyond that, a deeper understanding of the doctrines ought to ignite a fire within us. A fire that causes us to treasure and savor all that God has done to apply redemption to our lives. The deeper we go into these waters, the more precious his grace is to us. My purpose is to be a catalyst for your treasuring of his great gift.

I have been prompted by the warning question of Hebrews 2:3 – “How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” Planned by God the Father, purchased by Jesus Christ, declared to us by holy prophets and apostles, and applied to us by the Holy Spirit, this salvation is of such weight that we dare not miss it. To our peril we neglect it. How might we neglect this great salvation? John Piper has penned these words in answer to this question:

Don’t neglect being loved by God. Don’t neglect being forgiven and accepted and protected and strengthened and guided by Almighty God. Don’t neglect the sacrifice of the Christ’s life on the cross. Don’t neglect the free gift of righteousness imputed by faith. Don’t neglect the removal of God’s wrath and the reconciled smile of God. Don’t neglect the indwelling Holy Spirit and the fellowship and friendship of the living Christ. Don’t neglect the radiance of God’s glory in the face of Jesus. Don’t neglect the free access to the throne of grace. Don’t neglect the inexhaustible treasure of God’s promises.

John Piper

Even those who have been redeemed by God’s great salvation need reminders of the preciousness of what God has done and is doing in our lives. The mundane crowds out the sacred. The sense of wonder is lost, even among those who serve God well. This book is being written to call us to the quiet, to call us to savor, to call us to love.

Would you be in prayer as I complete the composition of this work? I am hoping to be able to publish in the first quarter of 2022. Pray that my research and study will bear fruit. Pray that I don’t get “stuck” in the writing process. Pray as I consider publishing options. Above all, pray that believers are strengthened and God is glorified.

Mark G. Knox Christian Thought

The Reformers and sola gratia

We often think of the Protestant Reformation, begun by Luther in 1517 when he nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church, as being only about justification by faith. Sola fide, faith alone. This principle stood over against the works-righteousness that the Church had slidden into. However, as J.I. Packer and O.R. Johnston argue,

The doctrine of justification by faith was important to them [early Reformers] because it safeguarded the principle of sovereign grace; but it actually expressed for them only one aspect of this principle, and that not its deepest aspect. The sovereignty of grace found expression in their thinking at a profounder level still, in the doctrine of monergistic regeneration….To the Reformers, the crucial question was not simply, whether God justifies believers without works of law. It was the broader question, whether sinners are wholly helpless in their sin, and whether God is to be thought of as saving them by free, unconditional, invincible grace, not only justifying them for Christ’s sake when they come to faith, but also raising them from the death of sin by His quickening Spirit in order to bring them to faith.
J.I. Packer and O.R. Johnston, “Historical and Theological Introduction” in Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, p. 58-59

Indeed, the Reformation was not only about sola fide (faith alone), but more foundationally sola gratia (grace alone).

We often think of grace as a descriptive principle, merely describing salvation as a gracious and free gift that we don’t deserve. But biblically, grace is seen as an operative principle, a word that describes God’s operative work in saving people.

We commonly view the term “grace” in a merely descriptive sense. We often define grace as God’s unmerited favor, and so think of “salvation by grace” as expressing the idea of it being underserved and unmerited. This is certainly true, but it doesn’t go far enough.

When we read in Ephesian 2:8, “by grace you have been saved through faith,” Paul is not simply employing the word “grace” in a descriptive sense. The grammatical structure of this statement points to grace as being the active agent in salvation. “You have been saved” is in the passive sense, turning the focus on the recipient of the action (saving). “Through faith” points us to the means by which salvation is appropriated, but faith is not the basis for salvation. That short phrase “by grace” identifies for us the basis and the active agent in salvation. If we turned the sentence around to an active sense, it would rightly read, “Grace has saved you through faith.”

In this context, Paul’s use of the word “grace” is a kind of short hand for the work of God he describes in 1:3-14, that great doxology of God’s sovereign, saving work. This redeeming work is proclaimed “to the praise of his glorious grace” (v. 6), which he “lavished upon us” (v. 8) in Christ, in whom we have “redemption through his blood” (v. 7). Paul is using the term grace in an operative sense, not just a descriptive sense.

He does this also even more explicitly in Titus 2:11-12: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.” Here we see grace active and personified, “bringing salvation” and “teaching us.”

We speak of grace in this way when we talk of it as an enabling power. We talk of “dying grace,” that enables us to remain faithful and calm when facing imminent death. “He gives more grace” (James 4:6). “He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater,” we sing, echoing this gospel truth. In so doing, we are speaking of grace in its operative sense, the same sense by which grace saves us.

So then, the Reformers sought to return the Church to the biblical teaching of the necessity of God’s sovereign work in salvation. Salvation by grace alone (sola gratia).

The crux of the matter is this: is fallen humanity capable of self-generating a free-will choice of salvation that could be described as an undeserved gift? Or, are we in such dire need of God’s grace operatively working in us, that we are utterly hopeless unless God sovereignly works? As Packer and Johnston ask, “Is our salvation wholly of God, or does it ultimately depend on something that we do for ourselves?”

The problem with Semi-Pelagianism (and therefore Arminianism) is that the onus of a person being saved is on the person himself. In this way, it is easy to see how we might regard faith as meritorious and not much different from the Roman Catholic understanding that the Reformers fought against. They recognized this and lived and taught and suffered that they might convince the Church of these truths.

Mark G. Knox Christian Thought

“I think I’m Reformed”…”Not Reformed enough”™

Note: the following essay is written partly in a serious vein, and partly tongue-in-cheek. I’ll leave it to the reader to discern between the two.

I wrote in my last post a little about the early days of my journey toward affirming the doctrines of sovereign grace, commonly nicknamed Calvinism. I came to a point where I understood that such people are sometimes called Reformed, and so I was able to declare to my roommate one evening, “I think I’m Reformed.”

In the 40+ years since that announcement, I’ve become more and more convinced that the Bible teaches these doctrines, often called the 5 Points of Calvinism, though the naming of these points with the acrostic “TULIP,” is a caricature of the actual teaching of Scripture on these matters.

I also have learned that there are degrees to which people identify as Reformed. And because social media exists, many are not afraid to let people know how their beliefs don’t represent the true Reformed faith. And I guess I’ve come to accept the fact that I may be Reformed…but Not Reformed Enough™.

I attach a “trademark” designation to this, because this group is so vocal and so organized that there must be a union somewhere. Local Reformed Thinkers and Pipe Smokers Union 1646 or something. “You can’t be one of us…not with that credobaptism you got there!” I am convinced they are not trying to simply be divisive. I know they’ve thought through all the implications of their theology so much so that it all hangs together or it will surely fall apart. Maybe I haven’t contemplated all the ramifications. Or maybe I came to different conclusions.

I would surely place myself in the Reformed camp in terms of my belief in the 5 Solas (Scripture alone, faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone, to the glory of God alone) and the 5 Points. I affirm most of what I read in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith (as well as the classic creeds and confessions).

Where I am Not Reformed Enough™ is that I affirm the baptism of believers rather than infants, I generally speak of the ordinances rather than the sacraments, and I play my guitar in church even though guitars are not mentioned in the Bible. I also don’t smoke a pipe, but I’m willing to learn.

For the most part, the discussions the Reformed™ and the Not Reformed Enough™ have are cordial and affirming. We understand that on the critical things – the authority of Scripture and how God saves sinners – we are in agreement.

At the end of the day, labels aren’t essential; doctrines are. And I understand that my “more Reformed than I” friends think their distinctives are important doctrines. But as long as we can boil it down to the pressing teaching of the Bible – God. Saves. Sinners. – we’ll get along just fine.