Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Romans 8:15-16 | Date: October 9, 2022 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

The Ground of Our Assurance

Romans chapter five, and I’ll begin reading with verse one:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that the suffering produces endurance and that endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would even dare to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

We saw last time the ground of our assurance. The ground of our assurance is simply Christ and God’s promise of acceptance in him. And I’m going to be drawing some distinctions, and I’ll come back to this toward the end of the message. And I think this is very important for us to keep in mind. Throughout the history of the church, there have been various approaches to the doctrine of assurance, which are all helpful. But I think it’s very important for us to keep them all in right perspective of one another.

So last week we saw that our assurance is grounded in Christ and God’s promise of acceptance in him. That’s the ground of our assurance. It’s simply gospel-grounded. I tried to drive that last time. There are other dimensions of assurance as well. Today we will look at assurance as confirmed for us by the Holy Spirit. It is grounded in Christ, confirmed for us by the work of the Spirit inwardly. And then we’ll see another dimension of it next time.

The Witness of the Spirit as Confirmation

Today, then, the witness of the Spirit is confirmation of our standing in Christ. We are asking the question here, how can we know that we are saved? We’ve said that throughout the series we are saved by Christ. Our hope then is grounded in Him, and that’s the ground of our assurance. And now we come to see how that reality is confirmed in our hearts by the work of the Spirit.

We find that initially here in Romans chapter 5, verses 1 to 11. Here, Paul is expounding the doctrine of justification still, and he is particularly now dealing with reconciliation as a consequence of justification. We’ve been justified through Christ’s blood, through his imputed righteousness—our sin imputed to him, his righteousness come to us—and we have been declared righteous before God. And more than that now, through that we have become at peace with God and we are reconciled to him.

In verse one, he gives us the first expression of that: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Look at the thinking here. Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God. On one level, we could look at that, and you may remember that we dealt with this some weeks ago when we were in Romans 5 earlier. On one level, we could look at this and say, well, in an objective way, we’ve been reconciled to God. His wrath toward us has been set aside because his wrath has been appeased in Christ and his work for us. And so objectively, we are reconciled to God. There’s no more enmity between us, but a friendship has been established.

And that certainly is what Paul has in mind here, but he has more in mind than just that. He has in mind here a more experiential dimension of reconciliation. And when he speaks here of peace, it’s the experienced peace that he has in mind. When Benjamin Warfield came to this passage, I think it was a wonderful insight. He was analyzing the argument of the book of Romans and he came to Romans chapter five and he called this Paul’s argument from experience. Paul’s argument from experience.

So he’s already argued for justification by faith on the grounds of Old Testament scriptures. He cited the account of Abraham in Genesis 15. He has cited David in Romans chapter four. He looked back to Psalm 32. He has reasoned for us that the only hope we have is an imputed righteousness. If we’re going to be justified by God, it must be by faith alone, by grace alone, through faith alone is the only possible way for it to happen. And yet God does that on the ground of the satisfaction of justice in Christ.

And now he comes to another dimension of his argument. All that works and all of that is ironclad. But let’s add one more argument. He’s saying, “Therefore, since you have been justified by faith, we have peace with God.” That is to say you’ve experienced this yourself. This is something that we don’t need to argue. It’s the common experience of every believer that coming to God by way of Jesus Christ in faith alone, you’ve experienced yourself a new peace with God, that the enmity is gone. And now before him, you feel that you, and you sense even that you’ve been accepted and loved. The hostility is gone. Peace has been established. And it’s not only been established in a judicial way, it’s been established in an experiential way. And we sense that acceptance that we have before God.

And that is one aspect of our assurance. It’s somewhat subjective. It can be confused with a false assurance, but nonetheless, it’s the common experience of all believers that having come to God through Jesus Christ and faith in him, we’ve experienced peace with God. Now there’s more indications of that in this passage as well. I’ll just review them quickly before we move to Romans 8. But in verses two through five, he speaks of it as well. Notice the experiential dimension of this. A faith by which we’re justified entails here an anticipation of glory even through suffering.

Verse two: “Through him we have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” And this hope now that he’s mentioned twice in these verses, he tells us in verse 5 is actually a hope that’s been fostered in our hearts by the Spirit of God. Verse 5: “And hope does not put us to shame.” It’s a well-grounded hope. Hope does not put us to shame. Why? “Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

It’s just marvelous terminology. It’s vivid. God’s heart has been, or God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Spirit. It’s vivid terminology. It’s as though there’s this great reservoir of God’s love. Think in terms of the eternal Trinity and the love of the Father for the Son and the Spirit, and the love of the Son for the Father and the Spirit, and the love of the Spirit for the Father and the Son, and the perfect enjoyment of Trinitarian love forever. And now God has in a sense opened himself up and poured out that same love into our own hearts by means of his Spirit so that we are brought in, as it were, to experience the eternal love of God in Jesus Christ by means of the Holy Spirit.

This is the subjective experience of God’s saving love. It’s more than just black ink on a white page telling us that Christ died for us and in him we’ve been made sons of God. This is the experiential dimension of that, that the Spirit has come and among his primary ministries is just to pervade our hearts with this sense that God now loves us. He loves us as his children.

In verses six through 10, then, as we have seen, this sense of assurance is informed by the gospel. It’s not just a vague mystical experience that is ungrounded, but it’s a sense of assurance that’s informed by the gospel. And Paul here reasons, as we’ve read already this morning, from justification and reconciliation to preservation and security and assurance. If when we were enemies, Christ died for us and made us his friends and reconciled us, well then, if peace has been established at such a point, how could we ever be lost? And his whole point here is that this gospel is one of gospel-informed assurance that is ministered to us by the Spirit of God through the gospel.

The Spirit of Adoption

Now that in a sense is what I have to say this morning, but I want you to see it in Romans chapter eight, because here the Apostle Paul deals with it more explicitly. And it’s in some related terms that I think are just wonderful. Romans chapter eight, you’re familiar with the passage. We’ve been here many times through the series. Let’s just focus on verses 15 and 16.

You might back up and look through verses one and following. Christ has accomplished in us what the law never could. He’s fulfilling this righteous requirements of the law in us because now we are led by the Spirit. Having the Spirit of God is the mark of every child of God. And now he is fulfilling in us what he requires of us. We have the Spirit. That’s the definition of what it is to be a son of God. Through the Spirit of God, we are united to Christ the Son. We become sons in him by the work of the Spirit in us.

And now verses 15 and 16: “You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” Now we’re going to spend some time here, so let’s look at it again. Verse 15: “You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you’ve received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.”

All right, as we’ve seen here when we looked at the doctrine of adoption, he is emphasizing here that Christ, the Son of God, is the Son of God, and we, united to him by the Spirit, become sons in the Son. We’re adopted by God by the Spirit bringing us into Christ. And so this sonship is conferred upon us by the Spirit who unites us to Jesus.

Now here, though, the focus is not simply on that in an objective way, but again, Paul is emphasizing the experiential aspect of that. The focus is not just on the fact of our sonship; the focus here is on our sense of sonship. The sense that we have that we belong to God. It is one of the leading responsibilities of a father to not only bring up his children safely and provide for them and all that, but to make your son feel and sense that he is your son. My kids were growing up young and they probably heard me tell them I love them, oh, something like 100 times a day. But it’s not just telling them. It’s working with them. It’s playing with them. It’s cuddling. And it’s snuggling. And as they get older, it’s playing other games and taking interest in their interests.

That is the kind of atmosphere we have here in Romans 8, verses 15 and 16. Notice the contrast that Paul is drawing. Verse 15: “He did not give us the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.” That’s the way it was before. God was the judge, and he’s still a judge. But man, it’s different. In those days, God was the object of fear and dread. Paul says, you’ve been given the Spirit—not the spirit of slavery, we’re talking fear—but you’ve been given the spirit of adoption. There’s the title that’s given to the Holy Spirit: the spirit of adoption as sons. This is the spirit by whom we are joined to Christ and made sons in Christ.

And in fact, he says, “By him we cry, Abba, Father.” So now the spirit has come in such a way so as not only do we see God as the judge of the universe, but the fear aspect of that is gone. And now instead we see this great judge of the universe as our father. And we sense that, and it is the work of the spirit, his role to make us sense that in our own hearts. And so that when we come to God now, the instinctive language is, Father—the very language Jesus used when he prayed, when he was here on earth.

And even the word here in verse 15, “cry,” by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The word “cry” connotes stress, danger, pain, something like that. And he’s saying here in the context of suffering and difficulty, stress of whatever kind, now our instinct by the work of the Spirit in us—our instinct is no longer, “Why did you do this to me?” Our instinct now is, “Father.” And this is the work of the spirit. It’s the experiential dimension of assurance. This heart sense of God’s fatherly love for us that is fostered by the spirit of God in us.

Again, keep your hand here, but look over at Galatians chapter four. Galatians chapter four, and you see where Paul writes to the church at Galatia, he makes a very similar statement with one minor difference, which is very interesting in itself. Galatians chapter four, beginning with verse four:

When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

Again, we have the experiential dimension of the Spirit’s work in us. He fosters in us this sense of God’s fatherly love and our belonging to him as his children. And the Spirit of God cries in our hearts, “Abba, Father.” Now the difference between these two passages is interesting in itself. Notice in verse six, it is the spirit who cries, “Abba, Father.” But if you look back at Romans 8 verse 15, it’s we who cry, “Abba, Father,” by the Spirit. Now I’m not sure all of the difference in that, but the point of it even combined is to show that the Spirit of God fosters in our hearts this sense that we belong to God so that he is crying and we are crying, “Father.” We belong to him.

Again, this is the experiential dimension of our salvation. And this is the active role of the spirit that we see in Romans 8 verse 16: “The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” He confirms to us that we belong to him so that now instinctively we see God as our father. I’ll say it again, this is the experiential dimension of our salvation and this is the common experience of every believer. It has been customary to say among theologians for centuries that assurance of salvation is the birthright of every Christian. This isn’t something that belongs to super-saints only. This isn’t something that belongs to preachers only, or deacons only, or anything like that. This is the common experience of every believer. It can be interrupted by sin. There can be varying degrees of it, which we’d have to discuss another time. But this is the common experience of every believer. This is one of the leading purposes why the Spirit of God has been sent to us: to make us sense our sonship to God.

How the Spirit Ministers Assurance

Now, another clarification I want to make, and this is just extremely important, and that is to ask the question: how is it that the Spirit of God ministers this sense of assurance to us? How is it he bears witness with our spirit? Is this just a private revelation? Is this a thunderbolt from the sky? Is it pure mysticism, inexplicable any other way? Is it a second work of grace, some spectacular experience, a second experience that you have after conversion or something like that?

How is it the Spirit of God ministers this to us? And I think we could say there are two ways, and the second one, I’m sorry, we’ll deal with next time, not today. The first one is that he ministers this sense of love to us. I’ll put it this way, and then I’m going to expound it a little bit further: He persuades us of the truthfulness of God’s promise. He persuades us of the truthfulness of God’s promise and—this is very important—and that that promise is ours. He persuades us of the truthfulness of God’s promise in Christ, and he persuades our hearts that it belongs to us.

Now that’s what we’ve seen in Romans chapter five. We have peace with God and it’s fostered by the spirit of God. God’s love through the spirit has been poured out into our hearts and just shed abroad so that we sense the love of God for us by the work of the spirit. We saw in verses six and following of Romans chapter five, that this is fostered by the spirit by a gospel-informed thinking, reasoning from justification to reconciliation, to preservation and security forever. But the spirit of God ministers it to us by the gospel.

And here’s a point that needs to be emphasized over and again—it’s been emphasized ever since the Reformation. It is never the spirit of God working in isolation. But the spirit of God works through the word. It is the spirit and the word, the spirit and the word, the spirit and the gospel, the spirit working through the word. Never in isolation; it’s never pure mysticism, but it’s the spirit working by the word.

Now let’s back up at this point, and let’s see this in larger theological perspective, and I think it’ll become even more clear. Let’s take, for example, what we’ve seen about our experience of conversion in this series. We have seen that there also the spirit of God is active, but it’s not in isolation. It’s the spirit of God working through the word. And so the gospel comes to us and we hear it. In my case, I heard it for years and I heard it for years and I heard it and it made no difference until that day I heard it like the first time. And the Spirit of God comes and accompanies the gospel in its preaching. And he opens our hearts to see it.

Remember how we saw this in 2 Corinthians 4. Paul says this gospel is the gospel of the glory of God in Christ. And the gospel proclaims in the face of Jesus the glory of God. And it’s exactly that, that the blinded hearts cannot see. Hearts blinded by sin, they look at Jesus and they just don’t see it. Remember how Paul says that? The God who made the light to shine out of darkness has shined in our hearts to make us see the glory of God in Jesus Christ. So the gospel comes by the work of the spirit and he opens our hearts to see and we believe.

We sang that this morning. I was thinking of that as we sang. I was blinded by my sin, had no ears to hear thy voice, but your spirit gave me life, opened up your word to me through the gospel of your son, gave me endless hope and peace. That’s exactly our doctrine of conversion. Remember we’ve talked even about the big words like the noetic effects of sin and how sin has blinded the minds and we’re not able to understand it until the spirit, in a way, repairs the mind and opens it up so that we see what was there all along: the glory of God in the face of Jesus. And so we come in faith. We see that in many examples through the New Testament with Lydia, whose heart the Lord opened so that she attended the word of the apostles and so on.

So there’s the doctrine of conversion. Let’s take another one. And let’s talk about our belief in the divinity of scripture. And what I mean by that, of course, is our conviction that the Bible is the word of God. Grab your bulletin. We’ve been citing this part from our confession of faith in the last couple of weeks. And it deals with this in a great way. It says it very well. This is the London Baptist Confession of Faith, 1689. Its section on the holy scriptures, section four:

The authority of holy scriptures obligates belief in them.

Now notice that statement. The very fact that the Bible comes from God obligates us to believe it.

This authority does not depend on the testimony of any person or church.

That’s reflective of the historical context coming out of the Reformation, where the Roman Catholic Church asserts a certain authority over the scriptures, that it has given us the scriptures, and so on. Reformers denied that.

Authority does not depend on the testimony of any person or church, but on God the author alone, who is truth itself. Therefore, the scriptures are to be received, why? Well, because they’re the Word of God.

That’s why. It’s the nature of the case. If God speaks, you’re obligated to believe it. Section 5:

The testimony of the Church of God may stir and persuade us to adopt a high and reverent respect for the Holy Scriptures. Moreover, the heavenliness of the contents, the power of the system of truth, the majesty of the style, the harmony of all the parts, the central focus on giving all glory to God and the full revelation of the only way of salvation and many other incomparable qualities and complete perfections, all provide abundant evidence that the scriptures are the word of God.

So the scriptures come to us; it’s the word of God. And accompanying that are all the evidences that it is the word of God. Even so—notice it—even so our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority of scriptures comes from the internal work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts.

Now notice here it is both the spirit and the word. Our persuasion of all of this comes by means of the spirit, but it is not the spirit working in isolation; it is the spirit working by the word. So the word of God comes and it comes with the authority of God himself. And with sin-darkened minds, we don’t see it. And then with it comes all of these evidences that show it to be the word of God: the grandeur of its revelation, its infinite perfections, its cohesiveness, its unity of theme throughout over the many hundreds of years that it was written, its emphasis on the glory of God. And all of these things come together to give evidence that it really is the word of God. And the sin-darkened mind still doesn’t see it. But it says the full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority of the scriptures comes from the internal work of the spirit. He comes, opens the mind, and we see it. And we read the Bible like we’ve never read it before.

Again, there’s the spirit working by the word. Theologians have long had a doctrine related to the doctrine of scriptures called the self-witness of the scriptures. The scriptures themselves tell you it’s the word of God, and not only in plain language that it’s the word of God, but they themselves bear witness of it. It comes with divine authority. Anybody with a right mind can see it. And you pile up the evidences and anybody with a right mind can see it. But a sin-darkened mind can’t. The spirit comes and he opens the mind and he opens the heart and suddenly we see it.

My wife is a very patient woman. She has to be. And I’ve told you before that one of the delights of our relationship is she has a genuine interest in biblical studies and theology, and she’s always happy to hear me talk about it. I’ll come out of my study for supper, and I’ll sit down, and it’s on my mind, so out it comes, and she’s always at least pretending that she’s interested. She seems to be. Once in a while, she gets a little more than she’s interested in.

The other day, we were driving in a car, and it was a longer drive, and it had been quiet for a while, and out of nowhere I said, “Kim, are you familiar with the Testimonium Spiritus Sancti Internum?”

“No.”

“You’re not? Kim, I’m shocked. How could you not be acquainted with and familiar with the testimonium spiritus sancti internum?”

“What is it?”

“It’s easy, Latin. Testimonium.”

She said, “Testimony?”

“Bingo. Spiritus.”

“Spirit?”

“Sanctum.”

“Sanctified? No, well, let’s go with holy, okay? Holy. Testimony of the Holy Spirit internal.”

“Internal, that’s it!” The internal witness of the Spirit.

I thought, she said, “Oh, why didn’t you say that in the first place?” But it really is kind of a big deal if you’re a theology nerd like I am and you read it. It goes back to the days when theologians wrote in Latin and this kind of hung on as a phrase that was important. And these days now, it’s become so common that theologians just refer to it offhand as the testimonium. The testimonium. The inward witness of the spirit. And by the way, she said that she was familiar with that.

So the question then: why do we believe the Bible is the word of God? Why do you believe that? Well, there are several reasons. One, because it claims to be and proves itself to be a self-witness of the word. Another reason I believe the Bible is the word of God is because the evidence is borne out. That’s one reason I believe. But at the end of the day, the reason I believe that the scriptures are the word of God is that the spirit has worked on the inside and opened my mind and made me see what was there all along. He doesn’t do that apart from the word. He does it by the word, but it is the work of the spirit nonetheless. He doesn’t add any evidence that wasn’t there. He opens the mind to see it. He doesn’t reveal anything new. He just simply confirms the self-witness to the truth and opens our hearts to see it. In that sense, we might borrow from Paul’s language in Romans 8:16 and say the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that the scriptures are the word of God.

All of that, I think, provides something of a background where we can understand how the Spirit of God ministers assurance as well. The Spirit ministers the sense of assurance to us, but He does not do it with thunderbolts from the sky. He doesn’t do it in isolation from the Word. He doesn’t do it by ecstatic experience, but the Spirit of God ministers assurance by the Word of God, and He enables us to see and to hear and to believe the promises of God. And so we read the scriptures, we hear the scriptures, he opens our heart to receive it, to believe it, and to embrace it.

And again, this is the common experience of every believer. This is not just theoretical theology; this is what every one of us in Christ have experienced. We hear, we read the gospel, and inwardly, it resonates. Isn’t that the case with you? God makes a promise. Yeah, that’s for me. We’ll read in John 10, for example: “You don’t believe me,” Jesus says, “you don’t believe me because you’re not my sheep, but my sheep hear my voice and they follow me.” Yeah, I’ve heard that. Oh, I’ve heard that voice. Not audibly, but I just as certainly have heard that voice. It resonates, doesn’t it?

Or we read in Romans chapter five, the spirit of God has come and poured out the love of God in our hearts. Yeah, I know that. I may not have known testimonium, but I know that. God has worked in me to make me see it. Read passages that he’s begun a good work in us that he’ll complete it. Yeah, I know that work; I’ve sensed it. And it resonates. And he ministers assurance by the word.

Now those who are on the outside, all of this is just words. They read those same words and it just doesn’t resonate. The Spirit of God works in us through the word to assure us of the truthfulness of it and to assure us that this promise is ours.

Now then, in these two ways, then, we’ve seen we gain assurance of salvation. Again, I want to make the distinction: the one is objective, the one is more subjective. The gospel promise of acceptance in Christ—there’s an objective promise that’s been given to us, and we believe. That’s the ground of our assurance. Spirit of God comes now in a more subjective way, confirms in our hearts that that promise is true and that it is ours.

Now we wouldn’t want to ground our assurance in what we feel or what we experience. I want something more sure than that. I want to know objectively that God has made this promise and the Spirit of God has opened my mind to see the truthfulness of the scriptures and I see it and I believe it. And then he comes and he confirms that this is for me and that I belong to God and that God loves me. And he gives me assurance.

So the distinction is important. Both are important, but the distinction is important as well. One is the ground of assurance. One is the confirmation of assurance. God sent his son. He gave himself for sinners. God promises to accept all who come to him by faith in Christ. We come, we respond in faith, we hear his voice, and we come in faith, and the Spirit of God confirms to us that this is for us, and he sheds abroad in our hearts a sense of the love of God for us, and our assurance is bolstered.

So the doctrine of assurance then is multi-layered and we’ll see more of it next time. We come resting in Christ alone; the spirit of God joins us to Christ, gives us a sense of his love and confirms in our hearts that we belong to him, assuring us that we are his children. In a moment we’ll be singing a song that I’m sure you all know, “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine.” Think through it when you sing and you’ll see how many of these notes that we’ve been going through repeat in that song. Let’s bow together for prayer.