Assurance

Why this section exists differently

The eighteen entries in this guide are organized around errors a teacher may say. This section is organized around questions a student will ask — and the two are the same problem arriving from opposite directions.

Nobody in your class will announce that he holds decision theology. He will ask how do I know if I’m really saved. Nobody says he has located his assurance in his own performance. He says what if I didn’t mean it.

Fourteen questions follow, drawn from the author’s own published studies — which is to say, from questions that came up often enough while teaching Genesis, Isaiah, James, Hebrews, 1 Peter, and 1–3 John that they were worth anticipating in print.

One pattern governs all fourteen, and it is worth seeing before you read them. Every one begins with how do I know or can I lose. Every one, therefore, is a question about where a person should look. And in every case the wrong answer is available, sincere, and inward.

The single move that answers all fourteen: change where they are looking. Not by refusing the question — the question is honest — but by declining the premise that the evidence is inside them.

The fourteen

1. “How do I know I’m really saved?”

The root question. Every other item is a variation.

Do not help them assess. Any answer that sends a person to examine the quality of his faith has accepted the premise that his faith is the evidence.

Do say: You’re baptized. God said your name and attached a promise to it, and he has not withdrawn it. That’s not a feeling you have to sustain — it’s a thing that happened to you, on a date, in front of witnesses.

Confessional ground: Small Catechism, Holy Baptism, Second Part; Third Article of the Creed — the Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and keeps.

2. “What if I didn’t mean it when I prayed?”

The specific form assurance-anxiety takes in someone catechized by evangelicalism.

Do not relitigate the prayer. Whether he meant it is unanswerable and the asking is the injury.

Do say: You weren’t saved by meaning something hard enough. That’s the good news in this — if it depended on the quality of a prayer you prayed at fourteen, you’d be right to worry.

Cross-reference: entry 1.

3. “Can a true Christian fall away from faith?”

Hebrews, Session Four

Yes — and say so plainly. Softening it makes the warnings in Hebrews decorative, and the reader will notice.

Then immediately: the warning is real and the keeping is God’s work. Both are taught, and a teacher who states one without the other has handed over half a doctrine.

And add the clarification that does the pastoral work: this is not something that happens by accident, and it does not hover over every anxious Christian. A believer worried about falling away is not falling away. That sentence should be said out loud in the room, because the person who most needs it will not ask for it.

Confessional ground: AC XII condemns the denial that the justified can lose the Holy Spirit. Third Article: he keeps me in the true faith. Cross-reference: entry 6.

4. “Can someone who genuinely believed at one point really fall away?”

1–3 John, Session Three

Same doctrine, sharper edge, and usually asked about a specific person who is not in the room.

Do not adjudicate the absent person, in either direction. Nobody present knows, and the guessing is the actual problem.

Do say: Yes, it’s possible — which is why we don’t build anyone’s assurance on a remembered moment, including our own. And I don’t know about him. What I know is that Christ has never turned away anyone who came back.

5. “If I’m guarded by God’s power, can I lose my salvation?”

1 Peter, Session Two

The mirror of item 3 — asked by someone who has heard the comfort and is testing it against the warnings.

Do say: Both are in the same letter, and Peter didn’t think they were in tension. The guarding is God’s doing, and it’s the reason you can look at the warnings without panic instead of not looking at them at all.

6. “Is the writer saying that if I keep sinning, I lose my salvation?”

Hebrews, Session Eleven

Almost always asked by someone with a particular sin in view.

Do not answer the general question and stop. The general answer is easy and will not reach him.

Do say the general thing — the passage is not a ledger, and a Christian fighting a sin is not the person these warnings describe — and then get him to the pastor. A persistent sin plus a conscience under accusation is beyond a classroom, and this question is often the only signal you will get.

7. “How is this passage compatible with the assurance Lutherans teach?”

Hebrews, Session Six

The most theologically self-aware version, and the easiest to answer well.

Do say: Assurance was never grounded in our confidence about our own perseverance. It is grounded in Christ’s promises attached to the means of grace — baptism, the Word, the Supper. We have assurance because we have the promises.

And then the sentence that answers the anxious reader completely:

The warnings do not undermine the assurance. They protect it. They warn against the one thing that would destroy the means by which assurance comes — turning away from Christ. They are written for the Christian tempted to abandon those means. They are not written for the Christian who is still using them.

Which is to say: if this passage frightens you, notice where you are sitting. You are still here.

8. “How do I know if I have genuine trust rather than mere assent?”

James, Session Five

Do not supply a diagnostic he has to score himself against; it becomes the new thing to fail.

But there is one thing to say, and it settles the question without sending him inward: The demons do not ask whether they trust Christ. They know they do not. The fact that you are asking is itself evidence that the trust is real — a man with no faith does not lie awake worrying about the quality of his.

Then move him outward: faith isn’t a substance you check the purity of. It’s a hand receiving something. Look at what’s being handed to you, not at the hand.

9. “How do I know if I’m one of the chosen? This makes me anxious.”

Genesis, Session Nineteen

Do not teach election as a topic to someone asking it this way. He is not asking a doctrinal question.

Do say: Then stop looking there — that’s not where God told you to look. He told you to look at Christ crucified for sinners, and at the water and the words that were given to you specifically. Election is meant to be a comfort you arrive at, never a question you interrogate.

Supplementary further reading, if he wants it: Formula of Concord XI treats election as comfort rather than speculation — not binding under the AFLC standard, but the right thing to hand this person.

10. “How do I know if I’m complacent or tender? What if I’m both?”

Hebrews, Session Two

Do say: You’re both. Everyone is both, all the time — and noticing it is a sign of life rather than a diagnosis. The old man doesn’t retire until the grave, and the fact that you can see him at work means something in you is objecting.

11. “How do I know if a good thing has become an idol?”

Isaiah, Session Seventeen

Different in kind from the others — a question about sanctification rather than about standing, and worth distinguishing out loud.

Do say: Useful question, and worth asking. But notice it’s a different question from whether you’re saved. Answer it honestly — where would losing this thing feel like losing God? — without letting the answer decide your standing, which was settled elsewhere.

12. “How do I know if something is God’s discipline or just suffering?”

Hebrews, Session Thirteen

Do not speculate about the cause. This is the perhaps discipline: God’s hidden dealings are not open to our reading.

Do say: I don’t know, and neither does anyone else. What I know is that nothing in this can separate you from him, and that he has never used suffering to get even.

If it is a live grief, stop teaching and route it.

13. “How do I know if I’m a living stone in the spiritual house?”

1 Peter, Session Four

Do say: Same answer as the others, and it’s a short one — you were built in, you didn’t climb in. If you’re wondering whether you belong here, notice that the wondering is happening in church.

14. “How do I know I’m in the apostolic fellowship?”

1–3 John, Session One

Do say: John answers that in the letter itself, and the answer is external: what you have heard, what was proclaimed to you. If you’re holding to what the apostles taught and receiving what Christ gives here, you’re in it. It isn’t a feeling of belonging; it’s the thing being handed to you.

The teacher’s own note

Two things to hold while working through these.

Every one of these questions is better than its absence. A person asking how do I know is a person still looking. The dangerous room is the one where nobody asks, and the reason to answer well is that you may get one chance.

And you may be the person asking. If several of the fourteen sound like your own two-in-the-morning questions, that is not a disqualification from teaching. It is the reason you will teach them well — and it is a reason to take item 1’s answer for yourself, in the second person, from someone whose office it is to say it.