Can a True Christian Lack Assurance of Salvation?

We return to our study of the doctrine of assurance as it is presented in the eighteenth chapter of the 1689 Baptist Confession. We come now to the third paragraph of the chapter.So far, we have seen the dangers of false assurance. Then we turned to the positive teaching that true believers may certainly have assurance in this life that they are saved—that they are in a state of grace. And then we looked at the three grounds of assurance:The blood and righteousness of Christ.The inward evidence of the graces of the Spirit.The testimony of the Spirit of adoption.We have spent most of our time considering how a believer can have assurance and why it is not biblical to deny the doctrine of assurance. As we come to the third paragraph, the Confession guards us from the opposite extreme. There are those who deny that a believer can have assurance, but there are also those who teach that if you do not have full assurance of salvation, that proves you are not a believer at all. And even when…