This post does not need to be an extended response to Green Baggins. He largely agreed with the chapter in RINE on assurance of salvation, and had just a couple questions or concerns.
The first was his response to my statement that we should not try to “peer into the secret counsels of God, or into the murky recesses of our own hearts” in order to gain assurance. Lane asks if I am talking about “trying to see into the Book of Life to see if one’s name is written there,” in which case he agrees with me. But if I mean that we should not draw assurance from the fact of decretal election, then he differs. Well, fortunately, we do not differ. The fact of decretal election is not conclusive in questions of assurance, but it is genuinely helpful. In order to be conclusive, I would have to see my name written in indelible ink on the decretal parchment, and no creature can have that. But the fact of God’s sovereignty is reassuring in powerful ways. He is a constant God. And when I look to this constant God, I am strengthened in my faith, and faith is the instrument of my assurance.
The second point may be a real difference, but I don’t think it is a major one. Lane quotes me, saying, “And so a Christian searching for biblical assurance should take these passages of Scripture, see how they are all fulfilled in the font and Table, and then rest in his salvation.” He then responds with this: “Surely we do not want to say that all the promises that Wilson listed in Scripture passages quoted are fulfilled only in the font and Table. Of course, they are primarily fulfilled in Jesus Christ, in Whom all promises are yes and amen.”
Well, of course. When I say that all these Scriptures are fulfilled in the font and Table, I do not mean to say that they are fulfilled there independent of Jesus Christ. Everything converges in Christ — Word and sacrament, and everything else. I do not think of the means of grace as so many garden hoses, through which the grace of God flows, and the rest of the world stays dry. No, everything is grace, all the time, and the sacraments, and the Word, are glorious concentrations of that grace. When I speak of the font and Table as though they encompass everything, all God’s benefits, I am speaking in Westminsterian ways. I am not trying to isolate the water, bread and wine in any way that separates them from Christ, or hides them from faith.
“Sacraments are holy signs and seals of the covenant of grace, immediately instituted by God, to represent Christ and His benefits“ (27.1)
“. . . but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in the newness of life” (28.1).
“Our Lord Jesus, in the night wherein He was betrayed, instituted the sacrament of His body and blood, called the Lord’s Supper, to be observed in His Church, unto the end of the world, for the perpetual remembrance of the sacrifice of Himself in His death; the sealing all benefits thereof unto true believers” (29.1).
The font and Table represent Christ and His benefits, so I talk about them as though they do represent that. Baptism is a sign and seal of ingrafting into Christ, so we should speak that way also. And the Lord’s Supper seals all the benefits of Christ to true believers, and so long as I speaking of genuine believers (and I am), it is not at all inappropriate to speak of all that God has given us under these signs. These signs were given to us in order to signify. I think we should just relax and let them do that.