God Himself is the Source of Certainty of Salvation

God Himself is the Source of Certainty of Salvation

Adapted in part from The Theology of P. T. Forsyth, by John H. Rodgers

By Jay Wegter

The cross of Christ is a revelation of God which reaches into the conscience of man.

What is certainty? Certainty is the miraculous reception of God’s self-disclosure at the cross of Christ unto the liberation of the conscience (P. T. Forsyth) (p. 4). The conscience being the place of witness of forgiveness by God. Thus, the conscience is the seat of the gospel’s saving experience. The cross reveals what God has done for believers to the deadly serious and damnable obstacle lying between God and man, namely separation from God by legal guilt, craven fear, the bonds of Satan, and a perverted heart filled with enmity (p. 29) (Eph 2:4-10).

The cross is light producing life—“the life was the light of men” (Jn 1:4). The cross is an act of revelation; God’s redeeming self-communication to sinful man. For the creature to be holy, he must be for a holy God. To be for a holy God is to be in complete accord with God’s will and rule (1 Pet 1:13-19). Only a thorough consciousness of forgiveness can produce this mindset of being for God (pp. 32-33, 38) “But there is forgiveness with Thee that Thou mayest be feared” (Ps 130:4).

A holy God is inseparable from God’s fidelity to His own holiness. He is faithful to Himself, to His own ‘conscience’, to His transcendent holiness. “He cannot deny Himself” (2 Tim 2:13). The creature’s holiness in the face of personal sin calls for a confession of God’s holiness by the penitent. That is a positive appreciation of God’s own nature, an abiding reverence for that nature amidst the penalty for, the burden of, and the ill desert, of sin. A response to God of obedience to faith is the positive response to His absolute moral claim over all creation (pp. 34-35).

The cross is God’s purpose to bring men into communion with Himself.

The salvation of man is unto living communion with God Himself. Do we really grasp this divine intent of communion with God when we preach the gospel? The whole human race stands either in communion with God or in conflict with Him, either in fellowship with God or in controversy with Him. The word of the cross is an exposition of a redeeming God—the cross being God’s act of self-opening, His self-manifestation in purposeful history. The cross is a statement of grace that creates saving faith resulting in communion (Rom 1:16-17) (pp. 64, 84, 87-89, 97).

Communion with God is grounded in trust in a saving and forgiving God. An awareness of the self as restored to communion with God is coterminous with an awareness of Christ as Redeemer, and Lord, and ourselves reconciled sinners. The saved man has a new conscience that recognizes Christ as Lord. Certainty does not then ultimately rest on the new condition of the conscience, but upon Christ, who He is, and His work on our behalf by the Father’s donation, and His work in granting a new cleansed conscience. “Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow” (Is 1:18) (pp. 202-203, 207).

Our personal communion with Him, won by the cross, calls for deep volunteerism, and not a shallow moralism. Saving faith exhibits an interpersonal obedience out of one’s whole being. “Present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead” (Rom 6:13). The minister must be able to explain why this is essential in communion with God. For salvation is God’s definitive sanctifying act, consecrating the creature as now devoted to God. Christ is God’s holy, loving movement toward man. But sin in seeking to retain lust and imagined autonomy, rejects this communion with God and is against it. One cannot be neutral about the closeness and mutuality with the person of God, for communion with God is the goal of the gospel. Sin is not sickness but the horror of real alienating legal guilt and moral turpitude. Thus, God’s holiness makes sin damnable (pp. 36, 40) (Rom 2:3-10).

To be released from sin is to be for Him, and for His service, and for our enjoyment of Him. Faith is a new freedom which recovers our purpose of being made for God. In our redemption He reconstitutes us (2 Cor 5:17). Certainty is joined to God knowing a man (Gal 4:9), resulting in man’s knowing of God. Certainty is a form of obedience because truth is not held theoretically (2 Thess 1:8). Certainty cannot be self-based, for certainty is sharing in God’s own self-knowledge as revealed in Christ. Thus, certainty is based on the communicated knowledge which God has of Himself, “In these last days God has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb 1:3). It is infinite grace that God has given us such intimate communication of Himself (pp. 198-199).

How precious is the cross of Christ to our Triune God?

The value of the cross to God is inestimable. The cross is a revelation of holy love active in grace. It is restoring, reconciling grace. God took His own judgement at the cross to win expiation (forgiveness) through propitiation. Thus, the cross is the vindication of God, the exaltation of His righteousness in man’s salvation (Rom 3:24-26). For the cross destroys sin and hallows God’s name at the same time. God’s moral nature requires both hallowing of His name and destruction of sin if communion with Him is to be established. At the heart of Christ’s sacrifice, is approving appreciation of and joyful acceptance of God’s judgment of sin in Himself, “sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom 8:3). The cross confesses God’s holiness. No confession of God’s holiness by bare personal declaration would suffice. We confess by faith what Christ confessed by laying down His life—namely God’s holiness glorified in the Son’s acceptance of the suffering of the cross (Phil 2:6-11) (pp. 41, 46-49).

For, Christ bore the curse as God’s judgment. In so doing He exalted God’s justice. In bearing the curse, He praised its justice, hallowed it, absorbed it and, by resurrection shows He exhausted it, “having been raised because of our justification” (Gal 3:13; Rom 4:25). Christ’s salvific work is holiness answering holiness. Only a sinless Christ could see with perfect clarity the horror of sin’s attack on God. Safe only in Christ’s finished work, man must confess God’s holiness under condition of sin, death, and judgment if he does not (p. 51).

At the cross, God’s act of providing His own atonement is a first.

God’s self-atonement is a totally new thing. The cross is the justification of God by God. This mystery is both bright and deep, the cross making a holy God beautiful to sinners and making sinners beautiful to a holy God. The sinless one bears the judgment of the sinful which puts the holy and the guilty together (1 Pet 2:24). Ministers would do well to understand how the cross opens hearts. At the cross the stroke upon the Son went upward to God’s heart and went downward to ours. Thus, our repentance is latent in the self-disclosure of God’s holiness revealed in Christ. For, Christ in His sacrifice makes men new by creating the new penitent humanity that is for God’s holiness (pp. 52-53, 58).

None but God can reveal or interpret His own revelation. There is the necessity of God bearing witness of the meaning of the cross. The Father and the Son reveal themselves to the certainty of faith (1 Jn 5:11-13). The apostles possessed a miraculous understanding of the cross by means of the Holy Spirit (Gal 1:11-12). This empowered their proclamation in speaking for God. Only through Christ do we have a sure certain knowledge of God in the apostolic word of the cross, “Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you” (1 Cor 15:1) (pp. 104-106).

The church’s entire existence rests upon the word of reconciliation by the cross (2 Cor 5:19-21). The church is to speak of its foundation by confessing Christ. It must tell His story and His significance for all men. The church is to bear witness to the Father’s self-donation of the Son to guilty man in the reconciling work of the cross. “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mk 16:15). By means of the cross, we see the eternal Son and risen Lord who acts to create the church by His eternal Spirit (Acts 2:39; 20:28). “Our Savior Christ Jesus abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim 1:10) (pp.134, 137, 143).

The cross defies empirical descriptions. It does not fit into any natural categories. For the cross is a haunting moral paradox. Its offense, scandal, and blazing indiscretion is audacious. The audacious paradox of the cross has not ceased. It is filled with moral paradox. For, guilty condemned sinners are called to commune with the holy God based on His self-atoning work of judging man’s sin in the Son. “Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith” (Heb 10:19-25). The supreme act of God’s holy love was a real historical act, central in history and critical for eternity (Acts 4:12; 17:30-31). God’s gift of redemption was eternal life entering time to take His beloved people with Him into a timeless eternity (pp. 153, 156).

The cross purchased the gift of regeneration for God’s elect.

Christ creates the capacity for the response of faith—i.e. the power necessary to feel the worth of the death of Christ. That worth consists of comprehending that God is meeting His own holy demands, and in so doing meeting the needs of sinful man. Thus, regeneration carries with it the enablement to justify God in God’s self-justification (Is 53:5-6, 10-12). This is the foundation which enables repentance. It is the Spirit’s empowerment through forgiveness which makes the penitent man sensible of both God’s goodness and severity. “That He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:26). The Spirit quickens the sinner by pressing home the Apostolic word of the cross, namely that judgment falls on our Substitute. Real legal guilt is imputed to Him, divine wrath poured out upon Him (Ps 22:1). The truth of sin’s penalty is administered in the atonement. When that sacrifice is appropriated, there is penitence. Thus, repentance is participation in God’s self-justification at the cross. For divine justice is affirmed in the death of Christ by the believer (pp. 181-183).

Salvation is a relationship; reconciling what was once lost and alienated.

The believing response of man is an entrance into communion with God. The mystery of Christianity and its power is the direct personal communion with God in Christ, based upon forgiveness of sins from Him—communicated to the conscience. By regeneration, new life takes home forgiveness and reconciliation and all they imply for the heart (Titus 3:4-7). As a new creation, the regenerate is God-referential and no longer solely self-referential. Redemption destroys the imagined sovereignty of self; new integration points graciously rule the soul (2 Cor 5:17) (pp. 184-185).

The cross is to be described primarily in terms of God’s will to communion. How does the cross bring communion? a) Man knows the certainty of communion because he is known by God the Knower (1 Cor 8:3; Gal 4:9). b) Authority and certainty are anchored in man’s knowledge of the cross (Col 2:13-15). c) Man’s knowledge is an experimental participation in the cross; he trusts that the propitiation has satisfied the wrath due his sin. d) Man’s Spirit-caused understanding of the cross is perceived as a miracle of grace (1 Cor 2:12). e) The church’s knowledge of the cross prepares her for the task of proclaiming the cross to the world. In summary, man’s knowing with certainty has God’s act in the cross of Christ at its center. To be known by God is Agape reaching down. It is not the self-confidence of Eros reaching up (pp.188, 191-193).

The Spirit actualizes, or makes personal what redeemed man possesses (Rom 8:16ff.). In that actualization, guilt felt precedes guilt absolved which results in doubt removed, which is certainty (Jn 16:8ff.). Grace does not discount but magnifies the guilt in the act of mastering it. God takes doubt away thereby. God’s revelation in Christ and His cross is the basis for our certainty: a) certainty we know God, b) that we know that we are known by God, c) that we know that we are forgiven, and d) that we know that we are known by God for the purpose of communion with Him (pp. 191-193).

In searching for certainty, introspection is a dead end.

No amount of introspection can produce certainty of salvation, or certainty of knowing that we know. The heart of the matter is this, God’s faithfulness alone bears the weight of our self-certainty. “I know whom I have believed” (2 Tim 1:12). The lost sinful self can only be found in God’s knowing us and not by our inward efforts, introspection nor outward efforts, empirical investigation. “The Son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Lu 19:10). ‘Lost’ in this context means not in possession of a relationship with God. The lost self is only found when found by the Savior. ‘Found’ means an inner appropriation unto eternal life which is living communion with our Triune God (p. 194).

Self-understanding is only in the light of Christ’s deed; individualism is an impasse. Spiritual experience is not primarily the experience of self, but the experience of a relationship (1 Jn 1:1-3). For, God’s call is the gift of Himself to sinful man. The gift of Himself establishes communion through the event of the cross (Jn 1:12-13). The gospel gives us God as the greatest gift. To give such an unparallelled gift, God Himself must enter history to atone Himself, to set man free for His Lordship. This is a new thing entirely! God propitiates His own wrath and consequently as Just and Justifier is free to be infinitely propitious to sinners (Rom 3:25-26) (p. 249, 252).

There is matchless graciousness in knowing God through the cross. God’s self-manifestation at Calvary opened our hearts. Divine revelation is powerful because it is anchored in God’s authority. The absolute holy person of God in His divine authority is exerted on the conscience. As soon as the conscience of man realizes the absolute holiness of God and His divine authority, a change takes place—that divine authority is exerted on a man’s conscience revealing its ruin, sinfulness, and lostness. It is life from the dead when the Redeemer makes known His absolute rule. Few realize that the first movements of God’s love are crushing verdicts concerning personal sin. These harrow and perturb the conscience—as a result the convicted man is done with apathy. He who bought us by His blood is active in His supremacy in our conscience, highlighting our moral redemption from dead works (Heb 9:14) (pp.195-197).

Christ reigns as Lord over the new man’s conscience.

In the communication of Himself to the believer, all comes through, and is given to us in the Mediator. The believer is given: a) the Son’s right-relatedness to the Godhead, b) the Son’s favor, and, c) the Son’s access to the Father. To be in the Son is to have what the Son possesses. Faith is the response to God’s self-giving in Christ as the Initiator of grace and reconciliation. Thus, faith is trust in God as the Justifier, the Reconciler, and the Sanctifier of sinners. In other words, in these salvific roles God is not solely the Father over all, but God who has revealed His will to commune with us through the cross. In making Himself known through the cross God deals with man as a moral person in need of forgiveness, justification, and reconciliation (p. 201).

As Lord over the conscience, Christ has imparted a newfound forgiveness, comfort, favor, and power. Christ is received in the conscience by means of the Spirit of the cross. “He shall glorify Me, for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you” (Jn 16:14). “. . . just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18). That man’s soul from then on is a temple of God (1 Cor 3:16). For Christ sits on the throne of conscience (Luther). Christ not only purchased a new heaven and a new earth, but also the throne rights over redeemed men. Faith is Christo-centric, not experiential. Faith birthed by the cross knows to glorify God as being gracious to men and, in being gracious, God is hallowing His Name by the work of His Son (pp. 208, 211).

Christ sits in the court of the soul. The conscience is an extension of God’s courtroom. As such, the conscience is God’s indelible moral mark upon us, the faculty of justice as His moral image and likeness. As Lord of the conscience, Christ ministers to believers the verdict of Calvary won by the guilt exchange, ‘it is finished’ (Jn 19:30). God is the final authority; He settles the man by determining his moral region—He speaks the gospel’s good news to the believer’s conscience and will (Col 3:15). The verdict at the cross cannot fail to accomplish this in the redeemed. For Christ is “our peace” (Eph 2:14). God’s final word is addressed to the guilty—to man’s moral center, the conscience. Therefore, certainty for the redeemed man means that he knows with certitude both his forgiveness and his being possessed by the new Lord (pp. 213-214).

Faith is not mere assent, but the rolling of the entire soul upon Christ.

Saving faith is a whole man act—the appropriation of salvation by the whole personality which yields certainty. Grace must be understood in the context of God’s relation to guilty man. Saving faith joins to its object of trust as its ultimate worth and source. “You turned to God from idols to serve a true and living God” (1 Thess 1:9). This joining issues forth in moral obedience, which is the heart of certainty (Acts 3:19). In saving faith, we commit ourselves to God’s self-committal to us. In so doing we are taking freedom ‘home’—taking blood-bought freedom into the core of our being. This whole-souled commitment is the believing man’s answer to the grace and freedom proclaimed in the gospel. With a free, joyous, and humble heart the penitent responds to God’s infinite cost to bring us into communion with Himself (pp. 222-224, 229).

Certainty therefore rests upon God and His deed in Christ: a) God is the Author of His own presence. In the granting of His presence, ‘He only fills the sacred spaces He creates’ by sovereign regeneration. b) God is His own Guarantor, which means that His presence is self-authenticating. “Since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself” (Heb 6:13). c) He is the source of our certainty and the object of it. “You are fellow citizens with saints and are of God’s household having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone” (Eph 2:19-20).

When the Spirit convicts, the soul is overwhelmed by the greatness of its evil and its judgment. This precedes hearing the invincible word of Christ’s death and resurrection and glory. Then the offense of the cross by means of a free act of grace captures a man, making him ‘a supernatural man’. From cover to cover, the holy Scriptures unfold the theme of grace overcoming guilt. And what is that overcoming? It is God the Father giving Himself as holy love, in and through the atoning cross of Jesus Christ. Thus, justification by faith which produces the relational benefit of reconciliation to God is always the dominant theme, the ultimate concern of the gospel (pp. 230-231, 245).

Man’s fundamental knowledge of God and of himself is directly given and certified in the preaching of the Mediator’s cross. The reception of the good news restores man to his destiny, to his creational calling. Grace is the reality of all that it is. Don’t depart from the center which is grace overcoming guilt. The knowledge of God is apprehended by faith and is addressed to faith. The saved conscience knows and serves the Lord with eyes of faith directed toward Christ (pp. 247-248).

Faith is man’s response to God’s grace communicated in the cross of Christ. God’s grace is the divine personal presence given in sheer mercy. To speak of grace is to speak of holy love meeting sinful men. The cross of Christ is the final central act of God. It calls for a decisive response of the whole self to God—it exerts claims on the total person, claims on the conscience. The redeemed conscience knows itself to be redeemed from sin by God who is ultimate reality. We never outgrow the wonder and paradox of the cross; the Holy One is antithetical to sin, yet the Son of God becomes sin for His people (2 Cor 5:21). The cross is revelation, something done rather than merely something shown. For in the cross God reveals His character and His disposition, as well as the dilemma of the sinner. And in the cross God reveals His marvelous purpose to set sinners free to commune with Himself (pp. 257-259).

Conclusion: In His work of self-atonement, God is vindicating His name and His righteousness publicly (Rom 3:24-26). This self-atonement is the revelation of His glory and righteousness. And it is to be understood in the big theological words of justification, redemption, regeneration, and adoption.

The cross is ever a scandalous paradox to natural reason; for at Calvary the Holy One bears the curse of the unholy rebels. God’s self-revelation in His Son’s cross work is His glory-filled cause. We must let this sink in. What takes place at regeneration in the reception of God’s grace is incumbent for God’s cause to become our cause. Grace brings the justified sinner into full sentiment with God’s cause.

The cross is a revelation about holy love, grace, sin, and righteousness. It is a revelation about the heart of God and His desire for communion with guilty sinners. Few phrases encompass the weight of this revelation as much as this: “In the reception of God’s grace, we are overcoming God in His own things.”

Wonder of wonders, in His Son, God has forever joined His glory to the eternal good of the believing sinner (Eph 2:2-10). And God has done so in such a way that the saving power of His Son’s cross is the ultimate revelation of God. Thus, when we say, “overcoming God,” what we mean is that God is eager to pour out His grace on the undeserving in endless generosity. There is not an iota of reluctance, for in Christ the highest display of divine glory has been conjoined to the highest possible good of the creature.