False Assurance: When Confidence in Salvation Becomes Self-Deception

Chapter 18 of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith concerns the doctrine of assurance. It asks whether Christians may know, in this life, that they are in a state of grace. The first paragraph begins with a careful distinction:Temporary believers and other unregenerate men may deceive themselves in vain with false hopes and fleshly presumptions that they have God’s favor and salvation, but their hope will perish. Yet those who truly believe in the Lord Jesus and love him sincerely, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him, may be certainly assured in this life that they are in a state of grace. They may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, and this hope will never make them ashamed.The paragraph is doing two things at once. First, it warns that false assurance exists. Some people believe they possess God’s favor and salvation when they do not. Their hope is vain, fleshly, and perishing. At the same time, the Confession insists that true assurance is possible. Those…