“The Assurance of Salvation” -- Article Nine, The Fifth Point of Doctrine, Canons of Dort

Article 9: The Assurance of This Preservation

Concerning this preservation of those chosen to salvation and concerning the perseverance of true believers in faith, believers themselves can and do become assured in accordance with the measure of their faith, by which they firmly believe that they are and always will remain true and living members of the church, and that they have the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

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Articles 4–8 of the Canons, which deal with perseverance and preservation, address the very real problem of indwelling sin and the temptation that all believers inevitably face. In Articles 9–13, the focus shifts to the believer’s confidence regarding the assurance (or certainty) of salvation. Yes, Christians need to be wary of a “fifth column” deep within: indwelling sin. We also must be careful to faithfully partake of the means of grace (the preaching of the Word and regular participation in the sacraments), since these are the basis of our spiritual strength and sustenance. As the Canons have emphasized, Christians are to flee from those things which we know can draw us away from Christ.

Despite the very real inner war against the flesh and the reality of our sinful nature, we need not live in fear that God will give up on us and cast us aside when we fall into sin or if we despair of our final salvation. True believers in Jesus Christ will persevere to the end of their lives in faith, because Christ preserves us in faith through his present intercessory work on behalf of all those chosen by the Father (the elect). This point is plain from 1 John 2:1–2, where Jesus is said to intercede on behalf of those for whom he has died: “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” The source of our assurance, then, is Christ’s present work on our behalf in his offices of prophet, priest, and king. His intercession for us will cannot fail.

The Roman Catholic Church holds that the Reformed doctrine of assurance leads to the sin of “presumption”—i.e., the false sense that once justified, a believer can never fall away. This, it is claimed, inevitably leads to indifference toward our sin (The Council of Trent, Sixth Session, Article 9). Arminians, as we have seen, hold a similar view.

Based upon the numerous biblical passages previously considered, the Canons correctly affirm that “believers themselves can and do become assured in accordance with the measure of their faith, by which they firmly believe that they are and always will remain true and living members of the church, and that they have the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.” This assurance is grounded in the present work of Christ (as indicated above), and not upon the strength of one’s faith—since even weak faith justifies (e.g., Matthew 17:20; Mark 9:24).

The Reformed would later debate among themselves whether such assurance is of the “essence of faith” (meaning someone who exercises faith in Christ does so with the confidence that they are saved), or if assurance is a Christian virtue to be cultivated, recognizing that elect believers often can and do doubt their salvation even though assurance remains possible. The Canons, written in 1618–1619, do not address that specific question, as the debate arose later (cf. The Westminster Confession of Faith, 18:3). Rather, the Canons speak only of a measure of faith (weak or strong) and maintain that assurance is—or should be—the possession of all believers.

Paul speaks to the matter of such assurance at length in the so-called “prison epistles,” written while he was imprisoned in Rome: Philippians 3:8–21; Colossians 2:1–3; and Ephesians 1:13–23.