During the darkest moments of our lives, when it feels we’re taking more delight in sin instead of Christ, where should we turn for the assurance of our salvation? All believers struggle with this at times.
It is often in the midnight of the soul—when guilt presses hardest and prayers feel like whispers into the void—that the question rises with haunting force: Am I truly saved?
Even John Calvin confessed that he could not “imagine any certainty that is not tinged with doubt, or any assurance that is not assailed by some anxiety.”[1]
Peter once pleaded, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). But how can we know we’re truly believers and not self-deluded hypocrites? Some say, “just look to your baptism,” while others insist, “look to your fruit.”
The Problem with Looking to Baptism Alone
The problem with looking only to baptism is that we all know of those who were baptized yet later fell away. Judas was numbered among the disciples, yet betrayed the Lord. Baptism is a holy sign and seal of God’s promises (Belgic Confession, Art. 34), but apart from true faith it cannot provide lasting assurance. That’s why Calvin said, “The sacraments, separated from Christ, are nothing but empty masks.”[2]
The Problem with Looking to Fruit Alone
The problem with looking only to our fruit is that we are most likely to wrestle with assurance in seasons when we feel spiritually cold. During such times, it can seem we have no legitimate good works to point to. We also recognize that even unbelievers can excel in outward virtue.
When both the waters of baptism and the fruits of life seem to dry up, where shall a thirsty soul drink assurance?
What Is True Faith?
If neither baptism in isolation nor fruit in isolation can provide infallible assurance, then where do we turn? The question presses us toward the very heart of Reformed theology: What is true faith?
The Heidelberg Catechism describes it as:
“Not only a certain knowledge, whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in His Word, but also an assured confidence, which the Holy Spirit works by the gospel in my heart; that not only to others, but to me also, remission of sin, everlasting righteousness and salvation, are freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits.” (Q&A 21)
Notice how the Catechism gives us both knowledge and confidence. This harmonizes beautifully with Louis Berkhof’s summary of saving faith, which has three essential elements:
- Notitia: Intellectual element: Knowledge about Jesus Christ.
- Assensus: Emotional element: We know that the gospel is true and that we need it.
- Fiducia: Volitional element: Faith is not merely a matter of the intellect, it’s also a matter of the will.
Berkof goes on to say that the volitional element is the crowning element of faith. Without it Christ remains outside of a person. He writes:
This third element consists in a personal trust in Christ as Savior and Lord, including a surrender of the soul as guilty and defiled to Christ, and a reception and appropriation of Christ as the source of pardon and of spiritual life.[3]
All three of these elements must be present to constitute saving faith. The Heidelberg Catechism’s “knowledge” aligns with notitia and assensus, while its “assured confidence” aligns with fiducia. Doctrine and devotion converge here in perfect unity.
Faith and Assurance
Understanding true faith naturally leads us to ask about assurance. Does saving faith automatically bring unshakable assurance, or can believers still wrestle with doubt?
The Westminster Confession tells us that “infallible assurance does not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties, before he be a partaker of it” (WCF 18.3).
In other words, it is possible to possess true saving faith without experiencing constant assurance. Assurance is not identical with faith itself, but the fruit of faith.
The Westminster Confession says that a believer’s assurance is: founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made, the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God. (WCS 18.2)
While our feelings of confidence may ebb and flow, true assurance rests on God’s unchanging promises, the inward witness of the Spirit, and the observable fruits of grace. Truth is not cancelled by the weakness of our emotions. A child may, on a bad day, feel estranged from his parents, yet the bond of love and belonging remains.
Assurance Grounded in Christ and Secured by Election
But when assurance wavers, we must return to the foundation of our salvation itself—Jesus Christ. He is the rock beneath our feet. The Reformed tradition makes clear that our assurance rests not in ourselves, but in Christ alone.
John Calvin puts it with striking clarity: “His righteousness overwhelms your sins; his salvation wipes out your condemnation; with his worthiness he intercedes that your unworthiness may not come before God’s sight.”[4]
This is the heart of Christian assurance—Christ himself is our righteousness, salvation, and worthiness before God.
Yet Scripture also teaches that we are in Christ by God’s eternal election. As Paul writes, God “chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Eph. 1:4).
Our election is not an abstract decree floating above us; it is God’s eternal purpose to place us in union with Christ, ensuring that his benefits truly belong to us.
Fruits of Election
The Canons of Dort provide a beautiful balance here, showing that assurance flows not from prying into God’s hidden will but from trusting Christ and seeing his work bear fruit in us:
Assurance of their eternal and unchangeable election to salvation is given to the chosen in due time, though by various stages and in differing measure. Such assurance comes not by inquisitive searching into the hidden and deep things of God, but by noticing within themselves, with spiritual joy and holy delight, the unmistakable fruits of election pointed out in God’s Word—such as a true faith in Christ, a childlike fear of God, a godly sorrow for their sins, a hunger and thirst for righteousness, and so on.
—Canons of Dort, I.12
In other words, faith in Christ is the foundation, and the fruits of faith strengthen our assurance. Without faith, good works cannot please God (Heb. 11:6). But when we believe, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13). From this faith flows repentance and good works (John 15:5).
As Louis Berkhof noted, “A slothful Christian cannot expect to enjoy the blessed assurance of salvation. The more our faith grows, the greater will be our assurance.”[5]
Staying Connected to the Body of Christ
Assurance of salvation is not a private pursuit. God has given us His church as the place where faith is nourished, and assurance deepened through the ordinary means of grace.
Infrequent church attendance, which is God’s appointed means of growing faith and assurance, will only serve to hurt a person’s faith and assurance. Just as a person can’t expect to be healthy without proper nutrition and sleep, so also a Christian can’t expect to have strong faith and assurance without regular church attendance and partaking of the means of grace: the preached word and the sacraments.
The church is “the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (WCF 25.2).
Just as an ember separated from the fire grows cold, so believers grow cold when disconnected from Christ’s body.
Still, we must remember this sobering truth: belonging outwardly to the church does not in itself guarantee genuine faith. Hypocrisy is a real danger.
True Faith vs. Hypocrisy
The Westminster Confession warns that hypocrites “vainly deceive themselves with false hopes and carnal presumptions of being in the favor of God” (WCF 18.1). Outward conformity may mimic true religion, but it cannot last.
Like chameleons, hypocrites may blend in for a season, but they lack sincerity of heart.
By contrast, true believers—though stumbling often—love the Lord in sincerity and strive to live lives pleasing to Him (1 Thess. 4:1). When they fall, they rise again, for the Spirit lifts them up.
As Jesus said, “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:20). Good works do not create assurance, but they testify to a living faith.
Luther, refuting antinomians of his day, declared:
Without repentance theirs is an imagined faith. True faith brings comfort and joy in God, and we do not feel such comfort [assurance] and joy where there is no repentance.[6]
Luther is saying that a Christian who deliberately and continually yields to sin will find their assurance grow faint. Though the root of true faith remains, unrepentant sin darkens our joy until repentance restores us.
The Westminster Confession adds that while faith is the sole instrument of justification, it is never alone:
Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love. (WCF 11.2).
Concluding Thoughts
Assurance is not a one-size-fits-all experience. Some saints taste it richly while others wrestle with it deeply.
As Calvin reminds us, “believers are in perpetual conflict with their own unbelief.”[7]
Our tendency is to look inward at the weakness of our faith, but the gospel calls us to look outward to Christ Himself. Faith is not a virtue we present to God, but an empty vessel into which Christ pours His riches.
“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28).
You are held in the grip of His grace.
[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.2.17
[2] Consensus Tigurinis, Chapter 27
[3] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 505
[4] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.2.24
[5] Louis Berkhof, The Assurance of Faith, 78
[6] Martin Luther, Instructions for the Visitors of Parish Pastors in Electoral Saxony: Luther’s Works, Vol. 40, 276
[7] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.2.17
