How do you know that you are saved? The ques­tion comes up in many ways and in many settings. As you study theology, you wonder if you are really among God's elect. When suffering comes, you won­der if God is really your loving Father. When prayer is a struggle and Bible reading a chore, you wonder whether your faith is genuine. And when you hear God's law, when you think about your sin, when you fall time and again into the same sin, you wonder: "Does God love me? Are my sins forgiven? How can I know for sure?"

Where can we look for the assurance of salvation?

Good Works?⤒🔗

Perhaps because of the dan­gers of presumption and "easy believism," people tend to emphasize the importance of good works for assurance. And good works certainly play a role in assuring us that God is at work in us (HC, Q&A 86; CD V.10).

But good works alone are not sufficient. Who is holy enough to ground his assur­ance on his works? After all, God demands perfect obedi­ence and "even the holiest men ... have only a small beginning of this obedience" (HC, Q&A 114),

What about the person who struggles with habitual sin, who feels entangled in power­ful sins, who cannot seem to break free? What about the person who battles homosex­uality or drunkenness or gos­sip, who falls so often with barely a fight? Can he have assurance now or must he wait till he sees more sanctifi­cation, more good works? How can he press on toward holiness without the comfort of knowing that God loves him and is his Father, that Christ washes away his sins, that the Spirit will sanctify and glorify him?

Faith in God's Promises←⤒🔗

Good works alone cannot be the ground of our assurance. They play a role, but they are not primary. The Canons of Dort speak of three things on which our assurance can rest. The pursuit of good works is third. The testimony of the Spirit is second. What comes first is "faith in the promises of God which he has very plentifully revealed in his Word for our comfort" (V.10).

Assurance rests, first of all, on faith in God's promises. And that is where baptism comes in.

Baptismal Presumption←⤒🔗

Today, it is common to hear that you shouldn't trust your baptism for assurance. Baptism, says Donald Whitney, is a "common source of false assurance."¹ People assume that baptism guarantees their salvation, despite their ungodly and faith-less lives.

This warning is well taken. We must guard against treat­ing baptism as a magical act, as if the act itself guaranteed salvation. We dare not trust the sacrament instead of the Savior.

Sacramental Assurance←⤒🔗

The danger of presumption should not make us ignore our baptism, however. Baptism is not a magical rite, that's true. But it is a sacra­ment, and the sacraments were given for our assurance. The sacraments were designed to strengthen our faith (BC 33), to confirm it (HC, Q&A 65), to "declare and seal to us the promise of the gospel" (HC, Q&A 66), to preserve, continue, and complete God's work of grace in us (CD, V.14), and to point us to Christ (HC, Q&A 67). Baptism is a sacrament, and it ... God assures us of our salvation (HC, Q&A 73).

The Comfort of Circumcision² ←⤒🔗

When God established His covenant with Abram in Genesis 17, He did not mere­ly Speak. He added to His speech a sign and a seal to confirm His Word: circumci­sion. The sign was not for Abram alone; his children were also to receive it because they too were includ­ed in God's covenant. In fact, if one of these children was not circumcised, he would be cut off from the rest of the people as a covenant breaker (Gen. 17:10-14).

Circumcision thus pro­claimed two great and closely related truths. It proclaimed that the person who was cir­cumcised was a member of a special people, the people of the Lord, the covenant peo­ple. And it proclaimed that God's promises were faithful, that God had made "an ever­lasting covenant" with His people (Gen. 17:7, 13). The heart of that covenant was a promise which would be repeated throughout Israel's history: "I will take you as My people, and I will be your God" (Ex. 6:7; Gen. 17:7,8; 2 Sam. 7:24).

The people of Israel were special, set apart from the rest of the world, and the sign and seal of that special-ness was their circumcision. They were God's people! That's what their circumcision told them. They belonged to Him, as His special treasure, the object of His love (Deut. 7:6ff.).

They did not belong to Him merely as slaves belong to a master, though. They were sons. Many years later, Paul lamented over Israel's aposta­sy. What made Israel's sin so grievous were the privileges they possessed. To these Israelites, he said, belonged "the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises" (Rom. 9:4). The Israelites — each one of them, head for head — were adopted as God's sons! They actually possessed God's promises, God's covenant!

And how did the Israelites know that all of this was true of them? They were circum­cised. They had the sign and seal of God's covenant in their own flesh.

Baptismal Identity←⤒🔗

Baptism has now replaced cir­cumcision as the New Covenant sign and seal (Col.2:11, 12). The sacrament has changed, but its essence is still the same. Baptism declares that everyone who is baptized is now a member of the new community of God's people, the Church. Through bap­tism, Paul says, we all become "one body" (1 Cor. 12:13); as a result of being "baptized into Christ," "you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:27­28). And baptism also declares that God's promises are faithful, that God does indeed establish a relation­ship with those who are bap­tized. Of the New Covenant people as well as of the Old, God declares, "I will be their God, and they shall be My people" (Jer. 31:33).

As we read the Old Testament, therefore, we may apply to ourselves all the beautiful things God said about His people. We are His special treasure, the objects of His love. We have been adopted as His sons. To us belong the covenants and the promises. Everything the New Testament says about the Church, too, we can apply to ourselves for our comfort. How do we know? Baptism testifies to us that God has made a covenant with us and we are members of His people.

The New Testament speaks of baptism in an interesting way. People are "baptized into" someone or someone's name. Paul says that all Israel was "baptized into Moses" (1 Cor. 10:2). The Church, he says, was not baptized into Paul's own name (1 Cor. 1:15), but into Christ (Rom. 6:3; Gal. 3:27). Christ tells us that disciples are to be bap­tized into "the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19).³

To be "baptized into" some­one is to have a close relationship with him, a relation­ship which Paul identifies as union. Those who have been "baptized into Christ," he says, "have been united together" with Him (Rom. 6:3-5). Our baptism declares that we are united to Christ ­and, indeed, to the Triune God!

Baptism and Salvation←⤒🔗

Union with Christ is more than just a comforting rela­tionship. It is the source of our whole salvation. We are united with Christ in His death and burial (Rom. 6:4-5; Col. 2:11-12). His death for our sins becomes our death, so that we are free from the condemnation our sins deserve. The floodwaters of God's wrath fell upon Jesus in His great baptism on the cross (Luke 12:50). Because we are united to Him, God's wrath does not fall upon us. Death is no longer a threat, no longer our certain wage for our sins. We are free!

How do we know? Paul says, "as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death" and "we were buried with Him through baptism into death" (Rom. 6:3,4). That's why baptism is closely linked to the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38; 22:16).

It is also linked to our deliv­erance from the power of sin. Baptism into Christ's death means that we are free from sin, dead to sin, so that sin no longer is our master (Rom. 6). And if we have been "buried with Him in baptism," we have also been "raised with Him" in baptism (Col. 2:12). We are united to Him in His death, burial, and resurrec­tion.

Baptism, like circumcision, is connected with purification, with "putting off the body of the sins of the flesh" (Col. 2:11). It is thus linked with regeneration (Titus 3:5). As those who have been raised with Christ, we now are called to live new lives as servants of righteousness and of God (Rom. 6). And ultimately, our union with Christ guar­antees our own glorious res­urrection (Rom. 6:5).

Does baptism itself give us forgiveness of sins, regenera­tion, a new life of sanctifica­tion? No. These things are all gifts of God's grace given to us in Christ. But baptism is God's testimony that His promises to us are real, that He has made a covenant with us, that He does indeed unite us to His Son, from whom all salvation flows. As circumci­sion could be called God's covenant because it pointed to and confirmed that covenant (Gen. 17:10), so baptism can be said to save (1 Pet. 3:21), because it points to and confirms God's promises, which are all "yes" in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 1:20).⁴

Baptismal Assurance←⤒🔗

God has given us every rea­son for confidence and assur­ance. When we struggle with doubts, when we battle sins, when we wonder whether God loves us and whether we are His children, we can look to our baptism. Baptism assures us of our identity. It declares that God has made a covenant with us, that He has adopted us as His children, and that He has united us to Himself — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Forgiveness, regeneration, sanctification, glorification — the whole of our salvation — is found in union with Christ, the union which baptism sig­nifies and seals. In baptism, God declares His promise to us by name.

Baptism is the wedding ring which confirms the vows of our Husband.⁵

When our faith is weak and we struggle, the Lord calls us to recall our baptism and to remember that He means what He says, that all we need is found in Christ — and to respond with a faith which trusts and obeys.

There is no room for pre­sumption as we look at our baptism: baptism calls us to a new life! But there is every reason for hope — even for those who are entangled in sins and have no strength in themselves to keep fighting. "And if we sometimes through weakness fall into sins, we must not therefore despair of God's mercy, nor continue in sin, since baptism is a seal and indubitable testi­mony that we have an eternal covenant with God."⁶