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Originally Posted by armourbearer  Quote:
Originally Posted by Guido's Brother So, if the promises of God are signed and sealed in baptism (HC QA 66), can we not speak of baptism as being part of our assurance? Not that baptism is our salvation, but that baptism is the sign and seal of God's promises, which, when met with faith, are our salvation. As a pastor, I have encouraged my people to consider the promises of God signed and sealed in baptism and, believing those promises, to have assurance and confidence.
What do you think? | Very well observed. Traditionally Word and Sacraments as means of grace were regarded as the objective marks of assurance, and the inward grace wrought by the Spirit as manifesting itself in subjective marks. The problem with the FV is its encouragement to look to baptism as efficacious in and of itself without pressing the need to observe whether the grace signified does in fact reveal itself in those evidences of a distinguishing work of God's Spirit. |
Ding! Ding!
You'll hear an FV proponent trumpet the idea that if someone asks them if they're elect they can say, unreservedly, "Yes, you were baptized."
To be baptized into the visible Church is to become elect (in a sense) because the person is now in the Covenant and to be in the Covenant is to be in Christ and united to Christ (in a sense). What maintains that union with Christ? Continued faithfulness.
This turns everything completely on its head.
While the Sacrament does, in fact, confer membership in the visible New Covenant, there is nothing that the Church does to unite a person to Christ. The instrument that procures that blessing is faith alone. Only those that have Evangelical faith, born from above, receive the actual grace signified by baptism.
How then the comfort to the believer in the Reformed schema?
Because the baptism does not point to the recipient in baptism (something the FV and Baptists have in common from different angles). Baptism is not saying that all who are baptized receive all the graces signified by baptism or that what is signified must be true of those baptized. What it does is
Promise those graces to those that have faith.
By looking at my baptism in the Reformed manner, I'm able to remember the Promise of God and then examine whether I have, indeed, believed the Gospel as the Scriptures reveal Christ. My assurance is then grounded by the evidences of Evangelical faith and the Promise of God announced in my baptism assures me with the ground of God's Immutability.
In contrast, by looking at my baptism in the FV manner, I merely know that every Tom, Dick, and Harry that's baptized into the Church is elect (for now) just like me. I can look to
my faithfulness now that says that I'm still faithful and haven't left the Covenant and so I'm certain to be saved in the future provided I never leave the Covenant. The introspection in this scheme is not to see a definitive evangelical work that is clinging to Christ in His finished work but an introspection that clings to progress in sanctification. I know I'm still in the Covenant today so I'm saved. I know I'm faithful to the Covenant today so the graces that signify baptism are true of me today.
In the Reformed view, assurance is grounded on the basis of the evidence of simple trust and an immutable Promise. The FV view grounds assurance in my faithfulness today that may or may not be vindicated in the future. I'll find out I'm elect at the Judgement throne.