Relocating To Elfland

A vital question, at the core of Christian faith, is the question, “What is my relationship to God?” This is intimately connected to other questions: e.g., what is my standing before God (addressed by the doctrine of justification), what is my identity before God (addressed by the doctrine of adoption), and what is to be my response to God (addressed by the doctrine of sanctification).

As a pastor in the modern theological climate, I am amazed how difficult it is to persuade God’s people that a sure answer to this central, vital question may be found only in the objective Word of God, the Word of God that comes to us from without. The reason for this difficulty of persuasion in Calvinistic circles, I believe, is that we hold passionately to the biblical truth that faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit. We believe that without the internal (subjective) working of the Spirit, the external (objective) Word of God will simply not save.

This is an enormously important biblical truth. The problem lies in what we do with it. When we want to answer the question, “What is my relationship to God?” we turn, not to the objective Word of God (which comes to us in scripture, preaching, and the sacraments) but to the further question of whether we have experienced the subjective working of the Spirit. Notice what has happened here: the means by which we are brought to certainty has been confused with the ground on which that certainty is (indeed, must be) based. There is a world of difference between saying that one comes to know one’s relationship to God (that we arrive at the certainty of faith) through the work of the Holy Spirit, and saying that one attains to such knowledge and certainty on the basis of the work of the Spirit. Put another way, the objective rock on which faith is built cannot be the subjective work by which one is enabled to perceive and rest upon that rock. In seeking to determine what is our relationship to God, we have turned away from the object (what He says He has done for us) to the subject (what He has done or not done in us). No wonder we have problems with assurance.

Someone will surely counter, “But Paul says the Spirit bears witness in our hearts that we are the children of God.” Right, but the Spirit doesn’t point to this internal witness-bearing as the basis for our faith. Our rebirth and conversion (or lack thereof) is not what the Spirit witnesses to us; He tells us we are children of God by illuminating the revelation of Jesus Christ through Word and sacrament.

So stop trying to find evidence of an internal work of the Spirit, troubled Christian. If you begin here, your search will never yield an answer to your vital question. You are to look to Christ as He is set forth in Word and sacrament; and if your eyes are fixed restingly here, you may be sure it is only because of the illuminating, enlivening work of the Spirit. The Spirit works through Word and sacrament to show you Christ; you are closest to the work of the Spirit when you are closest to Word and sacrament, and you evidence the work of the Spirit most when you are rest in the Christ who comes to you by these means. And if you rest, this too will give assurance of salvation (WCF 18.2), but your resting (or anything else in you) can never be your starting point.