24. Perfection and Assurance

In a world wracked by fear and anxiety — in which security is an illusion — people long for assurance. Life hangs on a thread, exposed to every danger and mishap, from burglary to bankrupt­cy, from cancer to car accidents. Every year more people die on the roads and highways of North America than American soldiers had fallen on the battlefields and jungles of Vietnam. Many more, thou­sands upon thousands more, whether they be drivers, passengers or pedes­trians, are maimed or crippled in car accidents. The statistics of these unsung victims of the roads would be even more appalling if we included those killed and crippled worldwide.

Man’s sense of insecurity is heightened by the element of the un­expected. Accidents are called accidents because they are unex­pected. Yet the unexpected may be more horrific than a car accident.

Just to name one incident out of many, we were shocked not long ago by the news of the San Diego massacre. One fine day in San Diego, people were enjoying their Big Macs and sundaes at a McDonald’s restaurant when a man stormed in and shot as many as he could. The final death toll was 22 or 23, with children accounting for half that number. Armed with three automatic wea­pons, the killer calmly walked up and down between the tables, and shot people in sight.

This savagery has no known motive other than misan­thropy, the general hatred of mankind. Some people are so full of hatred that they kill for no sane reason. It is amazing that so many murders and atrocities are committed without any clear motives.

The San Diego police, too, had no clues as to the killer’s motives. They surmised that the gunman, filled with rage and hatred, and fuming over a job loss, had decided to vent his anger by taking it out on innocent peo­ple at McDon­ald’s, gunning down adults and children who had done him no harm.

Finally a SWAT team stormed the restaurant and shot him dead. But it was too late for his victims, who ranged from a 70-year-old to an infant less than nine months old.

Imagine yourself sitting in a restaurant when a madman storms in and shoots you dead for no known reason. As the first per­son in sight, you have only enough time to see him pull the trigger. Life is unsettling when this sort of thing hap­pens; and it is not as uncom­mon as we wish. Time and again there would be a report of a gunman who shoots down people at random.

Sin has driven many people to an irrational hatred of mankind. No explanation for the hatred is given, and none will be of any use so far as the victims are concerned. Some of the killers are deemed insane but few are truly insane. The violence is often triggered by nothing other than an intense hatred of people. Life gets insecure when normal-looking people can explode into a murderous rage.

Who killed the babies at a Toronto hospital by lethal inject­ion, exterminating newborns who hadn’t said a bad word to anyone? Again the motive was probably the hatred of fellow human beings.

Not long ago a man drove his car into a lake with his three children trapped inside the car. The father was facing divorce, so he decided to kill himself and take his children along with him. One daughter, aged 12 or 13, managed to escape through a window. As the sole survivor, she has to begin life anew without her father and siblings, forever haunted by the memory of this dreadful event.

This kind of thing happens every day. Life is all too often tragic and insecure. If you think that only a madman would shoot you, then you have not accounted for every possibility. Last month a man was sleeping peacefully in his motel room when, in a case of mistaken identity, two police officers opened fire through the door and win­dows. Reacting to the noise, the man sat up on his bed and was hit by a hail of bullets. It turned out that he was not the dangerous escaped convict they thought he was, but a carpet salesman.

Life gets insecure when you don’t know who might shoot you. You may look like a most-wanted criminal only to be shot dead before you can identify yourself. Police officers are only human, and they get jittery when they con­front someone who might be a dan­gerous killer. A man was shot when he reached into his pocket for his ID card. They found out afterwards that he was unarmed.

How do we survive in the jungle that is called the world? My friend’s mother was taking a nice stroll one day when, suddenly, a car ran onto the sidewalk and killed her. The driver had lost control of his vehicle. How can you feel secure if you can’t even take a walk without looking in every direction? You had better look up too, because some have been killed by falling flower pots!

Man’s sense of insecurity is the main factor that fuels the multibill­ion-dollar insurance industry in North America. Now we have all kinds of insurance, from life insurance to fire insurance, from health insurance to malpractice insurance. It is not only medi­cal doctors but also pastors who buy malpractice insurance. Recently an American pastor was sued for having taken disciplinary action against a member of his church who had committed a serious sin.

People dare not go anywhere or do any­thing without getting in­surance. When you fly, you might want to get insurance to cover baggage loss or flight cancellations, on top of medical insur­ance and life insurance.

Health insurance companies rake in billions annually because the threat of a fatal or crippling disease is very real. Surgery is very costly, and even a bottle of medicine can be expen­sive. Life insurance is in great demand even though the benefits do not go to the policy­holder when he dies, but to his beneficiaries.

The world longs for insurance and assurance. These two words mean the same. Oxford Dictionary says that they are derived from the same root. That is why some companies are called life assurance companies and others are called life insurance com­panies.

Churches do not use the word “insurance” because it sounds too com­mercial, but many talk of “assurance,” which means the same.

Millions have turned to religion, the most successful insurance (assurance) provider in the world. Among the purveyors of assurance are preachers “whose god is their belly” (Phil.3:19), and who cash in on man’s sense of insec­urity. People are so insecure that they fall victim to unscru­pulous predators who peddle religious assurance.

The prudent man would never trust an insur­ance policy that claims to cover you for every­thing from hay fever to death, from unemploy­ment to bankruptcy, at a low premium. If $5 a year could buy you assurance which covers every imaginable contingency, there must be something dubious about it.

But some churches offer an insurance policy that outper­forms anything offered by insurance companies, because it offers you eternal assur­ance for nothing on your part, not even a hint of commit­ment — all you need to do is believe it. This, we are told, is the essence of grace even though it bears no resem­blance to the biblical definition of grace. There are others who offer even more than that: riches and prosperity. They promise that God will bless you with these things if you follow their teaching and donate to their organization.

In some churches, people who apply for church membership encounter a tiny clause about giving ten percent of their income to the church. This, we are told, is not the purchase price for assur­ance but an act of thanksgiving for God’s free grace which, as it turns out, is less than free because ten percent of your income can be quite substantial. It is indeed important to offer a tithe to God, but it is a differ­ent matter to make it a condition of church membership that the tithe must be given to a particu­lar church. The quest for assur­ance draws multitudes into religion, raking in vast amounts of money.

Where can you find an insurance company that will keep you safe from hell and eternal destruction? Can any insurance company insure you from all these? But religion will make you such an offer.

If the assurance which is offered is genuine and substantive, and meets the spiritual needs of people, then a val­uable service is indeed rendered. Assurance is certainly of value in the kind of world in which we live. We do not reject assurance. But we must reject false assurance that preys on people’s needs.

We do well to be cautious if something is said to be free and uncon­ditional. Many preachers have seized the opport­unity to exploit man’s universal sense of insecurity, making an offer too good to refuse: uncon­ditional assurance. That is truly remarkable be­cause insurance policies are never unconditional. Yet there is no shortage of preachers and teachers who proclaim unconditional assurance, a teaching with great appeal for gullible people. Many are so desperate for security that they will clutch at any straw. And when unconditional assurance is dignified with the words “God’s free grace,” it sounds most convincing and even irresist­ible.

On the authority of Scripture, let it be declared that no one has the right to exploit human insecurity by offering uncon­dit­ional assurance. This is crass deception even if it is taught in ignor­ance, and is a falsehood with no basis in Scripture.

In God’s word we see something remarka­ble. Pick up a concord­ance, look up “assurance” or a sim­ilar word, and count the number of occurrences. You will be sur­prised at its rarity.

In the 39 books of the Old Testament, the word “assurance” occurs only twice in the King James Version and once in RSV. From the rarity of “assurance” in the Bible, it would be instructive to assess the Biblical basis of any teaching of assurance such as “uncon­ditional assurance”.

The first occurrence of “assurance” is in Deuteronomy 28:66. A few verses earlier, we see the conditional “if ”:

There are dire consequences for failing to fulfill the conditions which God stipulates:

Verse 66 is where the word “assurance” comes in:

To our astonishment, the first instance of “assur­ance” in the Bible is found in the words, “you shall have no assurance of your life”. Just as surprising, God says He will revoke (take back) all the promises He has made to His people Israel because of their disobedience. God will re­voke His promises if the conditions for receiving them are not fulfilled. This is affirmed in verse 68:

To be a slave is bad enough, but to be a slave that nobody wants to buy is the ultimate humi­liation. Yahweh God will cancel the promise He has made to Israel, namely, the promise that He will never send them back to Egypt, that is, into bondage.

So much for unconditional assurance! There is no assurance of life for those who disobey God. The Bible never teaches unconditional assur­ance because true assur­ance is given only to those who obey God from the heart.

The only other occurrence of “assurance” in the Old Testament of KJV is found in Isaiah 32:17, which is rendered in NIV as: “The fruit of righteous­ness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quiet­ness and confidence forever”. This verse speaks of confidence forever, which KJV renders as “assur­ance for ever” — that is, eternal assurance, which is conditional on righteous­ness.

It is clear that the teaching of unconditional assur­ance is foreign to the Old Testament, and is nullified by the two occurrences of “assurance” in the Old Testament.

If we search for another word that has the basic meaning of assurance, we might find it in the term “assured peace” (shalom emet, שׁלום אמת) in Jeremiah 14:13-14 (KJV, NKJV, ESV). But when you turn to this passage, you will discover that “assured peace” is some­thing that is taught by the false prophets! Here Jeremiah says to God:

Just when we find “assured peace” in the Bible, it turns out to be the teaching of false prophets!

We need to be discerning, not gullible. In a world desper­ate for secur­ity, refrain from clutching at every straw. Doctrines do not save us. We must cling to the living God, for it is He who saves us, or we are not saved at all. Check every doctrine in the light of God’s word. If this simple safe­guard is not something that you take seriously, then your situation is truly precar­ious, for the world is teeming with false prophets who preach peace and security when in truth there is no peace and security for those who ignore God’s kingship.

The same truth is seen also in the New Testament:

Again the familiar chant of false prophets, “Peace and safety!” Despite the clear message of this pas­sage, many Christians will tell you, “There’s nothing to worry about. Our church will offer you every­thing, including peace and eternal security, and all you have to do is accept them.” The truth is that on the day of the Lord, destruction will come upon the multitudes who are unpre­pared to meet Jesus at his coming.

As for “unconditional assurance,” let us recall the most basic facts about salvation in the New Testament. God’s grace is free; but it is not unconditional. “Free” and “uncon­ditional” are not one and the same thing as some preachers confusedly imagine.

Much wrong teaching on assurance stems from a confusing of these two completely distinct matters: “free” and “unconditional”. A look at any dictionary will make it clear. We are saved “by grace, through faith” (Eph.2:8; Rom.5:2). Grace is His free gift to us in Christ, faith is the condition through which He grants us His gift. There is no salvation without faith.

God has freely given us “great and precious promises” (2Pet.1:4), but none of these would be available to us without faith (v.5).

A beautiful verse which, regrettably, is misused by the preachers to sell “free and unconditional assur­ance,” is Isaiah 55:1:

The water and the bread of life, the wine and the milk, are given freely and abundantly, but that is far from saying that they are obtained without fulfilling conditions. What condit­ions? The word “come” appears three times in this verse, reminding us of Jesus’ invitation, “Come to me” (Mt.11:28).

What does it involve? Verse 3 says, “Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live”. The purpose of coming to God is to listen, so that you “may live”. The coming and the listening are the conditions for receiving life. And whom do we listen to? Verse 6 says, “Seek Yahweh while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near.” Joel 2:32 says, “Whoever will call on the name of Yahweh will be saved” (cf. Rom.10:13; Ps.116:13).

In order that “you may live” (Isa.55:3) and be saved, there are a series of conditions to be met: come, listen, seek, and call. Free indeed, but not unconditional.

In the New Testament, “assurance” generally translates plērophoria,[1] a Greek word that occurs four times (Col.2:2; 1Thess.1:5; Heb.6:11; 10:22). Let us look at this word to see whether it supports the teaching of uncondit­ional security which is so popular today.

The word first occurs in Colossians 2:2:

Here the “assurance of understanding” is condit­ional on spiritual understanding, namely, the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ. We enjoy full assurance provided that we have spiritual “under­standing, resulting in a true knowledge of … Christ”.

What does “under­standing” mean in Script­ure? The Greek word sunesis in this verse has the basic meaning of intelligence. One is said to be intelligent if he or she understands things quickly, but is less intell­igent if he or she is slow to understand things.

Matthew 11:25 says that God hides spiritual things from the “wise and understanding” but reveals them to “babes”. Here “understand­ing” translates synetos (“intelli­gent, possessing under­standing”), and refers to the intelligent people of the world.

But it is not to them that God reveals spiritual things, for He gives spiritual under­standing to “babes”. One may be intelligent, yet dull in spir­itual things. Another may be unintelligent by the stand­ards of the world, yet spiritually perceptive. And there are people who have both intelligence and spiritual insight.

Plērophoria (assurance) occurs also in Hebrews 6:11,12:

Those who “inherit the promises” are those who have “faith and patience” (endurance) and “hope”. God’s promises are condi­tional on a faith that endures to the end (cf., Mt.24:13; Mk.13:13).

Plērophoria (assurance) occurs next in Hebrews 10:22,23:

Again the link between assurance and hope. The link is specifically between “full assurance of faith” and “the confession of our hope without wavering”. To have assurance, we must hold fast to our hope without waver­ing. Of the many exhort­ations in Hebrews, one of the most prominent is the exhortation to hold fast and not let go.

“Assurance of faith” indicates an assurance that is conditional on a faith rooted in a pure and unwavering heart, sprinkled clean from an evil conscience. Faith is the foundation and prerequisite of assurance. That is why true faith is marked by assurance. Faith does not doubt or waver. Faith in its nature possesses certainty, confidence and assurance. Conversely, a lack of assurance reveals a lack of faith in the living God.

Our final reference is 1 Thessalonians 1:5:

“Full conviction” translates plērophoria, a word that is usually rendered “assurance”. The assurance is that of Paul and his co-workers who brought the gospel to the Thessalonians. It is the assurance of preach­ing “in power and in the Holy Spirit … with full conviction”.

In summary, we have looked at the four occur­rences of plērophoria (assurance) in the New Testament, and also the two occurrences of “assur­ance” in the Old Testament (KJV). The unmis­takable conclusion is that Scripture has only a few refer­ences to assurance, and none to unconditional assurance. The Bible, however, has a lot more to say about faith, from which true assurance stems.

Note: The word “unconditional” appears nowhere in the Bible. Neither does Scripture promulgate the idea that our relationship with God or with one another is not governed by any principles (laws), requirements, or conditions.

Since the idea of assurance receives little mention in the Scriptures, are we to conclude there is no assurance to speak of both in Scripture and in the Christian life? Certainly not. We have strong assurance. But how can we have such assurance when the Scriptures rarely mention it? The answer to this question is simple: Assurance is a byproduct of the fundamental elements in our new life in Christ, things such as faith, hope, and love. Where these elements are present there will inevitably be firm, confident assur­ance. But where these are lacking, assurance will correspondingly be lacking.

It is now clear why assurance is conditional. Its existence depends on the presence of those other spiritual elements. That is why it can be described as a byproduct. When the Holy Spirit strengthens our faith, encourages our hope, and causes our love to grow, our assur­ance increases proportionate­ly, even if we are not conscious of it.

As to be expected, it is those who lack assurance who clamor for it. They are the easy victims of false teachers who offer their own brands of “free and unconditional assurance”. But Christ alone is the found­ation of true assurance. Rooted in him by faith, there will be no lack of stability and assurance. Security is ours, not by clinging to doctrines that turn out to be false upon inspection, but by trusting in the living Christ who is the truth. Focus on a living relation­ship with him, and you won’t need to concern yourself with assurance, for where faith is, there assurance is too.

Faith, hope, love, and purity are the constituent elements of per­fection. Since assurance is rooted in these elements, assurance is rooted in perfection.

As we have seen, the stress in Scripture is not on sinless­ness but on a heart that is perfect before God. It is heart-perfection that Yahweh God looks for. “Perfect heart” is a term familiar to anyone who is acquainted with the Old Test­ament historical books, in which the term occurs 12 or 13 times (e.g., 1Kings 8:61; 11:4; 15:3,14).

A perfect heart — a heart perfect in obedience to God — is seen in a perfect attitude. This does not mean that everything we do is perfect in every detail. Biblical perfection has to do with the intentions of the heart. By contrast, it takes time and effort to achieve excellence, not to mention perfect­ion, in the practical outworking of things. Paul exhorts us to “work out” our salvation (Phil.2:12); God’s work in our hearts has to be lived out in our daily conduct.

You might practice at the piano daily, playing the same piece of music over and over again, yet still make mistakes. This does not nec­essarily mean there is something wrong with your attitude. You might be striving for excellence with a perfect attitude, relying on God. That is the attitude of my wife Helen. In the past few days I have heard the same piano pieces a few hundred times. With a perfect heart she strives for perfection even though the actual outworking may be less than perfect. What counts is that you have tried your best, having a deter­mination that befits your perfect attitude.

Perfection is a heart that is wholly committed to God and quick to obey Him. It doesn’t rule out the possibility of error. We may have spoken a rash word, so we apologize quickly. We didn’t mean to be rash, yet we did speak an unkind word that hurt some­one, and we thus sinned unwitting­ly. Perfection in the Bible is not absolute perfection or the total eradication of sin, but a perfect heart attitude towards God.

Jesus calls us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, but this does not mean that we attain to God’s absolute perfection, holiness, or love in this present age. We cannot attain to absolute perfection in this life. Perhaps for all eternity we will be striving to be like Him, on the level of the absolute. But in the intentions of our heart, we can make it our single-minded aspiration to be like Him, as expressed in the words of the hymn: Oh, to be like Thee, blessed Redeemer, pure as Thou art! Come in Thy sweetness, come in Thy fullness; Stamp Thine own image deep on my heart.

If our hearts are genuine, free of deceit or hypocrisy, and wholly committed to doing God’s will, we are right now perfect in the Biblical sense of the word. God does not expect absolute perfect­ion of us at the present time when we are still living in a body where sin dwells in the flesh. But in our hearts we aim to be like Him. We remain totally yielded to Him, to let Him fashion us ever more fully into His image. That is what the Bible means by a “perfect heart”.

Assurance is linked to perfection in Colossians 4:12:

Full assurance is linked to being perfect, for it flows from perfection and is rooted in it.

Assurance is given to the perfect of heart. I challenge you to find anyone who walks with God with a perfect heart, yet lacks assurance. Such a person does not exist because anyone who is led by the Spirit (Rom.8:14), and thus walks with God with a perfect heart, will inevit­ably have full assurance from God. It is a deep assurance that comes from the indwelling Holy Spirit, who witnesses with this person’s spirit that he or she is a child of God (8:16).

This is not a matter of theory but of exper­ience. If your heart is right before God, you will experience assurance from Him. You will no longer be terrified by the Judgment. The slavish fear of condemn­ation will make way for a holy fear of, or a reverence for God.

Assurance is linked to perfect love in 1 John 4:17‑18:

In these two verses, “perfect” and “love” are mentioned together three times. Not only is “perfect love” possible, it is necessary if we are not to live in the shadows of fear and be paralyzed by it. If we are not perfected in love, it means that our con­science is not right before God; hence we wait for the coming judgment with fear and appre­hension. The fear that arise from a nagging conscience can so weaken us as to render us spiritually non-functional.

Perfect love for God and His people, on the other hand, casts out fear. It doesn’t mean that the outward expression of our love is perfect in every aspect; it is often inadequate, leaving much room for improve­ment. There are occasional mistakes, but when that happens we grieve over them and repent of them. What the Bible requires is a love that is perfect in its intention, and resolves to love God and His people. This love dissipates fear just as sun­light drives darkness away. We need not tremble in the fear of judgment, for God has granted us deep assurance in Christ.

Perfect love, as we saw in an earlier chapter, is a Christ-like love that keeps on giving without seeking reward or gratitude. Let me illustrate this with two incidents which, though they may seem insignificant, are striking examples of a perfect love that seeks nothing in return.

In my student days in London, I learned much from the life of a certain fellow student called Peter. He was not an eloquent preacher or Bible teacher but his life spoke to me time and again. He once heard that I was going to preach in Nottingham, a city north of London, at the church where Philip Doddridge, a famous hymn writer, had been pastor in the 18^th century. He insisted on driving me there. His usual mode of transportation was cycling, but he also had a vintage car dating from perhaps the forties, a veritable museum piece.

Peter lovingly insisted on driving me to Nottingham and back, to save me time and spare me the inconvenience of changing trains. He also wanted to have a share in the preaching of the gospel, even if only by driving me there and back. He was a medical intern, and had been on night duty, working hard through the night. In this situation most Christians would say, “I am too tired. Take the train or get somebody else to drive you there.” Not so with Peter. When I expressed concern over the fact that he had not slept all night, he still insisted on driving me there, assuring me that he was used to this sort of thing.

After finishing his overnight shift, he rushed over and drove me to Nottingham, some 110 miles (180 kms) from London “as the crow flies”. The highway had not yet been built at that time, so the drive took about three hours in each direction. I preached in the morning and again in the evening, after which he drove me back to London, arriving late at night.

By now he was so ex­hausted that he became the only person I have ever seen sleeping while standing up! This happened when we got back to the apartment in London. Roommates and friends gathered around, asking how things had gone in Nottingham. We were standing in a circle. And as I was sharing about the events, I saw Peter standing with his eyes closed. He was swaying back and forth, and it seemed that he might fall any moment.

This spoke to my heart. Here is a perfect self-giving love that is unconcerned for one’s own needs. I said to Peter, “You’re awfully tired, aren’t you?” He opened his eyes and smiled with a sweet smile of devotion to God that spoke to me more powerfully than a hundred eloquent sermons. There was not a word of complaint or self-pity.

The second incident has to do with my hay fever. I sympathize with those who suffer from hay fever because back in England I used to suffer badly from it. Whenever I wrote my three-hour exams, my nose would be dripping away, and I had to keep the exam paper dry. I could never figure out the reason for placing the exam period in the worst time of the year, right in hay fever season when thousands of students are suffering from itchy eyes and runny noses.

Peter took notice of my condition — red eyes and runny nose — but he also knew that giving me antihistamines could make me drowsy. He told me that a new drug had come out that does not cause drowsiness. In fact it keeps you awake. He asked if he could get some for me. I told him that if he thought it could be useful, I would be grateful if he did.

A few days later when he gave me a bottle of antihistamine, I noticed dark circles around his eyes. I asked him if he had been on night duty again, seeing that he looked as though he had not slept. He said he hadn’t been on night duty, and admitted that he hadn’t had any sleep. He explained said that this was because he wanted to test the drug on himself first (he did not suffer from hay fever) to make sure that it would not cause drowsi­ness. To be certain, he took a double dose. The result? He stayed awake all night!

I was deeply touched. He was willing to test the drug on himself though he knew that it would keep him awake all night. It was a price which in his love he gladly paid; it was a sacrifice which, following in the Lord’s footsteps, he gladly made.

This is Christ-likeness indeed! And the glory goes to the Lord who puts such love in men’s hearts and makes us like himself, beautifying us with his own perfect beauty.