It is good to be with you. I thank you again to Grace Baptist Chapel and Reformation Church for your kind welcome and Pastor Ryan Davidson for your warm and gracious hospitality of all of you. It's great to get to know you a little bit more and hopefully a little bit more again today. This morning we're going to step into looking at assurance but also repentance and faith. We're going to look at it in the order of repentance, faith and assurance in Christ. And then that's in our first session together. And then our second session together this morning, we really want to focus on what does it mean to live life in Christ? And of course, all of what we're looking at today, realizing that we're talking about relationship with the triune God, relationship with the person, Jesus Christ. who is our risen and ascended savior. What does it mean to be united to him, to be communing with him? And the beauty of that and the way when we meditate on that, how that strengthens us in our walk here and enables us to grow. Well, as we begin, I'd like to read a few verses from Colossians chapter one, beginning at verse nine and reading through verse 13. For this reason, we also, since the day we heard of it, do not cease to pray for you and ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might according to his glorious power, for all patience and long-suffering with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. So that's the knowledge that I pray will grow in this morning as well. Well, last night we really looked at historical angles on things, beginning with the book, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, its initial context, and then looking at Thomas Boston and his own life and transformation, his growth and grace, and preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. This morning I wanna focus with you on really a core triad of really essential aspects of life in Christ, repentance, faith, and assurance. We're gonna look at those in the context of the Scottish marrow controversy, both looking at how these were gotten wrong and how they were gotten right. And I think this will be helpful for us as we think about our own understanding scripturally of these things. How can we get them right? And maybe what are some of the ways we may have gotten them wrong in the past or in the present? Well, stepping into repentance, the gospel applied, repentance. I want to talk about, first of all, what we'd call preparationism versus preparatory grace. And I alluded to this a bit last night for those of you who were here. But stepping back into the 1720s, there was this man, James Haddo. He was the principal of the College of St. Andrews. And when the Marrow of Modern Divinity was republished by James Hogg with its fiery preface, very critical of the way things were in the Church of Scotland, warning that the gospel was being obscured, James Haddow really took the charge against this good book. And he was publicly teaching, as David Lachman, who wrote a book on this controversy, says, that forgiveness is conditional on repentance. That repentance is the condition of justification. I want you to put your thinking caps on here. We're gonna walk through this carefully theologically. Because in some ways, when James Haddo was preaching and teaching, his deviation from a sound gospel theology was subtle. Haddo viewed repentance unto salvation as a fruit of God's gracious work. Which is right, it is. But the way he formulated his approach to understanding and describing the place of conviction of sin and repentance in the outworking of conversion was similar to what we saw earlier in some of the Puritans who had a similar weakness. Thomas Hooker would be an example of this. even though Edward Fisher appreciated Thomas Hooker's ministry. He had the same kind of language of conditions for justification. There was actually another later Puritan, Richard Baxter, who spoke in much the same way, what we'd call neo-Nomianism. I'll give you a quote here that illustrates what Haddo was doing from Haddo's own writing. He said this, the truth which I am trying to prove against the marrow is that the evangelical grace and duty of repentance goes before pardon of sin in God's method of bestowing them. Remission of sin is a consequent blessing. And therefore ministers in preaching the gospel may and ought to call sinners to repent and forsake their sins in order unto their obtaining the pardon of them. And then as well to believe in Christ for their justification. And again, what Haddo is laying out in terms of an order of the way things happen, is correct, but there's an aspect of the way he formulates it that's weak. He says later on that God commands men to repent of their sins in order to obtain the pardon of them. And so the warnings of wrath against the impenitence And the call to repent becomes a fence set by God around the offer of his mercy and grace in the gospel. And so Haddo, the way he describes conviction of sin and repentance, they're a necessary precondition to the faith that takes hold of the promises of the covenant of grace in Jesus Christ. James Haddo was afraid of and concerned about what we might call easy believism, shallow Christianity, where people would too easily come to Christ and too easily believe that they were Christians. And Haddo was concerned that this kind of easy believing would feed into an antinomianism. A lawlessness. And Haddo rightly did see and had concerns about nominalism in some of the Scottish churches, that people simply thought they were Christians because they went to church or they made some sort of profession, but there was really no sorrow over sin in their lives. They were just kind of coasting along. And he felt that this was the right answer to it. Thomas Blackwell, another man who opposed the marrow of modern divinity, said this, Christ graciously directs men to acknowledge their inability to lift up their voices, to cry out for almighty power. And so men are to continue waiting in the use of appointed means till it pleases the Holy Spirit to give them spiritual life. Blackwell would go on to state, conviction of sin, contrition for sin, and humiliation for sin are necessary in order to make way for the soul's cordial esteeming and embracing of Christ. And he described these as conditions or prerequisites, qualifications for us to meet in order to come to Christ. And so how did this play out in terms of pulpit ministry? In practice, this meant what were called warning sermons were preached to the congregations with the aim of really having people feel the condemning weight of God's holy law against their sin, causing them to feel the burden of conviction of sin, but without including and freely proclaiming Christ's immediate sufficiency for the entirety of the gathered congregation. And so connected with this as well, this implied need through this emphasis could come about that you need a kind of a depth of conviction of sin and sorrow before you can come to Christ. And so how did this theology, this preaching in the pulpits in Scotland, impact ordinary believers, people in the pews, men, women, and children? Well, number one, it tended, by its emphasis, to distance Christ from hearers and place these other things in between. pushed in many people's hearts and minds, it pushed Christ almost out of reach. Like you're trying to grasp for Christ, but you can't quite get to him. You had to pass through genuine convection of sin, genuine sorrow for sin first. And of course, the question that will come up naturally in our hearts, and in some ways it is a good question. that we need to think about. Are we sorry for our sin? Do we have a depth of sorrow? Are we growing in sorrow for our sin? Those are good questions. But the question here was, I need this genuine sorrow in order to come to Christ. And how genuine is genuine enough? How deep is deep enough? How sorry is sorry enough? And if you know your own heart, Honestly, you'll realize that your repentance is never really fully what it should be. By the grace of God, by the Spirit's work in us, yes, we as believers are brought to conviction of sin and sorrow for sin, but is it ever fully, as deeply as it should be? It's never really what it should be, in order to come to Christ. And so this repeated emphasis that you need to be prepared, you need to experience a depth of sorrow in order to come to Christ and put Christ at a distance. Secondly, this preaching in Scotland combined with this a strong emphasis on God's sovereignty in salvation and in election. And so Haddo, for instance, would preach that Christ is the surety, he is the guarantee, for the promises of saving grace are made in him. But these are restricted to a particular number of people who have been appointed to eternal life. So he would declare that Christ is the savior. But then as he's proclaiming Christ, say, but he's only a savior for some of you. And he would narrow that in a particular way. And again, when you combine that with the previous, you start to see a picture here of Christ at a distance. The result. Well, churchgoers who are focused on their inner experiential piety, who are concerned for their own heart condition before the Lord. They're focused on their own hearts, they're striving to grow in conviction of sin, in sorrow over sin. But hesitant to come to Christ, sometimes fleeing to him, crying out to him, Lord, please save me. Help me, but having uncertainty and an inability to rest in Christ. And that kind of preaching created, yes, churchgoers who are concerned about piety, who are, I think in many cases, sincere and conscientious. But at the same time, who were fearful and lacked assurance of salvation. Undoubtedly, from the records, there were some who thrilled to this kind of a piety and embraced it. They felt this was a richness of piety, almost viewing it as sort of the deep ways of God with the soul. I think similar in some ways to medieval Roman Catholic mysticism that loved acts of penance and contrition, but never really came to embrace Christ. The Marrow supporters, Thomas Boston and his friends, Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, William Wilson, other pastors who were evangelical, expressed their concerns with these formulations and practices in print. Among their number was a young man, a young pastor named Robert Rickleton. He criticized what Haddo's preaching was stating, saying this, the principle, Haddo, rejects so many Reformation principles. He's maintaining unscriptural ones in their place, such as the necessity of preaching repentance without mentioning either faith or Christ, or the promise of pardon attached to it. Instead, he makes repentance the condition of believing. Well, Thomas Boston, who, as we saw in our last session, personally struggled through these issues, wrote extensively to seek to distinguish between what he called, what he viewed as a preparationism versus preparatory grace. In a work called The View of the Covenant of Grace from the Sacred Scriptures, Thomas Boston examined God's way of bringing sinners personally and savingly into the covenant of grace. Now listen to the way Thomas Boston talks about repentance. I think he gets it right biblically here. He says that faithful preaching which includes making the hearer aware of the holiness of God, aware of God's law and call and claim upon them, aware of their sin, will, in non-Christians, at times develop what he called a legal faith, which could lead to a legal repentance, a condition where the sinner feels broken and bruised with fear and a right terror of the wrath of God. In which they begin to grieve and sorrow for their sin. They start to see it's ruining, destructive evil. And they really want to be free of their sin. They start despairing of salvation by themselves and looking for relief in some way. Thomas Boston said, the right preaching of the law of God can and often does function in this way. The law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. In fact, Thomas Boston said, nobody will come to Christ without this in greater or lesser measure. And so we do need conviction of sin. Yes, and God graciously does work that. And sometimes in the process of conversion, We may come to a conviction of sin and feel the weight of that sometime before we come to really grasp Christ, to know Him and to love Him and to trust Him. Thomas Boston says, the divine use of the law in this way, it's God's gracious work, the beginning of regeneration, but only where it's mixed with faith in Christ. So it's conviction of sin that isn't mixed with faith in Christ is simply a legal repentance. It only becomes a real faith and repentance when it's combined with faith in Christ. Boston said this, a legal repentance is not the condition of our welcome to Christ, Our access to Christ and the covenant is proclaimed as free without any conditions or qualifications required in us to warrant us as sinners to believe on Jesus Christ. So in distinct contrast to the preaching of men like Haddo, Boston was adamant that the gospel offer was not to be restricted to thirsting sinners or heavy laden sinners, which Haddo said it was. Boston says this, the words laboring, and heavy laden don't restrict the gospel invitation to those who are in this way sensible of their sins and longing to be rid of them. Though indeed, nobody but such people will readily accept him. But they denote the restlessness of the sinful soul of man. So he says this laboring and heavy laden is a reality of every sinner. Everybody is living under a burden apart from Christ. Says there's a restlessness in the sinful soul of man. And this qualification, if it is so called, is found in all who are out of Christ, whether or not they have any notable law work on their consciences. I say notable to distinguish it from that which is common to all men, even to heathens. It says Romans 11, 15. It said the conscience is still heavy laden with guilt, whether or not it has a lively feeling of that or not. The heart is still under a load of unsatisfied desires. So neither the one, that's the one who's aware of the actual law of God, the holiness of God, who's hearing that and is aware of that, nor the other can find rest indeed. This is the natural case of all men. And to souls thus laboring and laden or burdened, Jesus Christ here calls that they may come to him, and he will give them rest. Rest for their consciences under the cover of his blood. Rest for their hearts in the enjoyment of God through him. Well, because of the influence of these errors in the Church of Scotland, Boston's ministry really included a lot of shepherding of people who believed they needed to meet some sort of qualifications before coming to Jesus. And one parishioner asked this question. When I view my own condition, I very much fear that I haven't yet reached the point of thirsting after Christ and that willingness to take him that these texts speak of. And so I can't be accounted as somebody who's truly laboring and heavy laden. And so how can I know that Christ actually offers himself to me? Boston answered this, whatever qualifications you have or do not have, You are a sinner of Adam's race. I hope you don't doubt that. And so Christ is offered to you, together with his righteousness and all of his salvation. Now looking at his contemporary Scotland, Boston, like Haddo, with whom he disagreed, did believe that there were many people who were nominal. There were many people who didn't really have a saving faith personally, trusting in Christ. There were many strangers to grace. But, he said, and this is really where he gets to it again, but we are allowed to offer Christ to strangers to grace. We are allowed to invite and to call those who are outside the covenant to come into it. We are called to encourage them, to call them, to compel them to come. And so where some of this experiential, what I'd call preparationism, obscured Christ, Edward Fisher in the Marrow, Thomas Boston, the Erskines, and others said, no, God does work, often a work of preparatory grace. He uses his providences to help us to see our sin and preaching of his word to convict us. Yes, all of those things in the process of coming to Christ take place. But in the proclamation of the gospel and as Christ proclaims himself, he proclaims himself as a savior to every sinner, to all mankind, the call goes out to come. And Christ freely welcomes all to come, to come as they are. And to also come confessing that they are not convicted of their sin as they should be, to the extent that they ought to be. And so when we look at our own hearts, what do we do? We come to Christ with our sin, confessing our sin, and saying as well, Lord, you know my heart. I have some sorrow for my sin, I have some conviction, but I'm not as sorry for my sin as I should be, and that's part of my sin. That's part of my need. But you are a perfect savior. You are a complete Savior for a sinner like me, who in my sin also doesn't feel sorry enough for my sin, as I should. And that's what Boston pressed down. Come to Jesus. Come to Jesus with all that you are and find in Him a complete and sufficient Savior. Well, so then, what's the relationship between saving faith and repentance? Well, the differences in understanding on repentance, especially on conviction of sin, turning from it, coming to Christ, was intimately really tied to how we understand the relationship of faith to repentance. The writings of Mero supporters were unanimous in emphasizing the necessity of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit to bring us to turn to Christ, to repent and to trust in him. But a considerable area of difference between the Mero supporters and opponents of the Mero was in the way that they described saving faith. Haddo and what I would call the preparationist actually described faith as a condition to the covenant of grace. And again, it depends how you use this word. But again, this could be a problematic aspect of this. Whereas Haddo argued that the gospel of grace provides a conditional promise. Repentance is a necessary precondition, and faith is a condition to coming to Christ. And the way Haddo formulated that language was somewhat like Richard Baxter's formulation. It could almost give the indication or the kind of language or hint that you need to do a work of repentance, you need to do a work of faith, And then you can come to Christ. These were qualifications. What was happening here? Well, what's being blurred here together? The way that people come to Jesus was being confused with the warrant for coming to Jesus. So the way people come to Jesus was being blurred and confused with the warrant for coming to Jesus, the grounds on which you can come to Jesus. So for instance, Thomas Blackwell, on the preparationist side, emphasized faith as an act of obedience to the gospel command, and indeed it is. But what did the Merrill supporters say? How did they describe faith and repentance? By contrast, they stressed that faith and repentance are gifts of God's grace. So instead of using the language of conditions, and again, they noted that there's a sense that, you know, in terms of order, that these are part of the order of the way things happen. They are, they're essential. We don't come to Christ without repentance and faith. But their emphasis was, A, Christ is fully sufficient. Come to Him for all that you need, including increased faith, increased repentance. But they also said that these are gifts of God's grace. They're created and nurtured in you by the Holy Spirit. And so you can pray, Lord, give me faith. Lord, give me repentance. Provide all for me that I need. The marrow supporters stressed justification by faith alone. A justified person has in Christ at once all things necessary to salvation, though of himself he has nothing. So we come with empty hands. We come with nothing. Amaro's supporters explicitly denied the necessity of either repentance or personal holiness to salvation was to be understood in terms of causality. They said we can't look on personal holiness or good works as properly conditional means of obtaining salvation, though we agree they are necessary. And they are what God gives. So where the Merrill brethren, as we call them, the Merrill supporters, stated that in Christ a justified person has at once everything necessary to salvation, though they have nothing in themselves. How then do they actually define the relationship of faith and repentance? How do these two things relate? What are they? How are they connected? Thomas Boston agreed with what Edward Fisher had written in the Marrow of Modern Divinity. He said, evangelical repentance is a consequence of faith. Evangelical repentance is a consequence of faith. So in some ways, the wording, they have it turned in a different way than the Neonomians who said repentance is a prerequisite to faith and to coming to Christ. Boston says this, true repentance is what? Repentance is turning. It's a turning to God. It's coming back to him again. A returning unto the Lord. But no man can turn, can come unto God but by Christ. Hebrews 7.25. We must take Christ in our way to the Father. It's impossible that we guilty creatures can come in any other way. And John 6.35 says, no man can come to Christ but by believing in him. Therefore, it's impossible that a man can truly repent before he believes in Christ. Him has God exalted with his right hand to be a prince and a savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins, Acts 5.31. One would think this is a sufficient intimation that sinners not only may, but ought to go to Christ for true repentance. And not stand far off from him until they get it themselves to bring along with them. Especially since repentance as well as forgiveness of sin is all part of that salvation, which the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior is exalted to give. And consequently, which sinners are to receive and rest on Christ for. Boston defended this argument, and further in his notes on the marrow, he cited Calvin, who stated that it ought to be out of the question that repentance doesn't only immediately follow after faith, but also spring from it, or out of it. He noted the Westminster Shorter Catechisms, a commentary on repentance unto life. Also cited Samuel Rutherford's critique of Richard Baxter. We need to beware of Mr. Baxter's order of setting repentance and works of new obedience before justification, which is making a new covenant of works. And so Thomas Boston and the Merrill brothers, as they recovered understanding of who Christ is, In a sense that knowing who Jesus is gave them understanding of the place of repentance and faith. And the understanding that saving faith is the, as they said, the first and mother grace of all the others. Faith and repentance are inseparable. They go hand in hand together. We will not repent unless we actually believe what God's word says. what God's Word says about our sin, and what God's Word says about who Christ is. It's all a package that can't be pulled apart. And it all comes to us and calls us to him. Well, the nature and necessity of saving faith were a theme in Thomas Boston's sermons and other writings. If we look back in his life in 1699 in his journal, he wrote this, and he struggled with these things himself. This was a personal wrestling match for him. He said in 1699, December 24, I don't have assurance of God's love. I thought I had the testimony of conscience, but I can never get the testimony of the spirit to put me out of my doubts. I've pleaded the promise. He that loves me, I will manifest myself to him, but I fear that my love is not of the right sort." You could just hear his conscience and his struggling. Boston desired to know the love of God. He wanted to find the certainty of the love of God early in his ministry and in his life. In his unpublished notes on a prayer meeting, I mentioned this discussion with his father and some of the other men. What are the marks of a true saving faith? The answers recorded in this discussion included seeing kindness on Christ's face, love to Christ, not only for his benefits, but for himself. And Boston wrestled with this. And the marrow of modern divinity helped him to understand this. And as he would expound this later on, He came to realize that in order for man to enter the state of grace, God has to act in sovereign love and mercy. We're born spiritually blind. We can't be restored without a miracle of grace. We need the power of the spirit to bring us from under Satan's reign unto God. We're not able to recover ourselves. And so, because of our inability, saving faith is a direct fruit of the work of the Holy Spirit. Saving faith is the special gift of God, worked in us by His Spirit, believing, repenting. These are products of the new nature. So how does saving faith come about? Said the mind being savingly enlightened, the will renewed by the work of the Holy Spirit, the sinner becomes both determined and able to answer the gospel call. His first vital or living act, we may be conceived to be receiving Jesus Christ, discerned in his excellencies, believing on him, coming to him. as he's offered and exhibited in the glorious gospel. And the effect of this coming to him, the immediate effect of it, is union with him. Christ has taken the heart by storm. He's entered into it by his spirit in regeneration. And the soul by faith yields itself to Christ. And so this glorious king who came into the heart by his spirit dwells in it by faith. Saving faith is the first vital act. It's the first sign of life. This active receiving of Jesus, of coming to him, of crying out to him. And Boston described this union of Christ relationship we're going to look at in our next talk in much greater detail. But the moment the soul actually believes is also the moment of justification. Boston said this, justification is an act done and passed in an instant in the court of heaven. as soon as the believer believes on Christ. Simultaneously, with the act of faith, in its initial moment, both pardoning of sin and accepting the sinner's person as righteous in the Lord Jesus Christ occur. It's a marvelous reality. And that first stirring moment of faith, looking to Christ, and we might not even be able to know what moment that was in our lives, but that first moment, there the act of justification has taken place. Sin is pardoned. The sinner's person is accepted before God in Christ. And that's taken place by Christ, by the triune God, reaching out to us by the Spirit and taking hold of us. He takes hold of us before we take hold of him. And so Boston goes on to explain, by faith only, Christ's righteousness becomes ours. Faith unites us to Christ in the way of the spiritual marriage covenant, Ephesians 2.17. Being united to him, we have communion with him in all the benefits of his purchase, in his righteousness, which is the chief of him. Christ's perfect holiness, his perfect righteousness, is yours. Isn't that just absolutely incredible? We're a group of sinners. We're a group of wicked people who have done evil. Our hearts have turned aside from Him. There's no one righteous here. No, not one in ourselves. But through that gracious work of the Spirit and simply through coming with empty hands in faith to Jesus, we have His, the righteousness of the Son of God, is yours and mine. It's incredible. It's beautiful. We're connected to Him, He Himself. Not just his attributes in some sort of isolated way, sort of an abstract concept of righteousness sort of gets transferred over to you. No, he himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is fully God, fully man, the eternal God, the Son become flesh, he himself is yours by faith. And so, brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ this morning, in Him you are justified by faith alone, by this empty instrument coming to Him who is completely sufficient. Our faith is not our righteousness. No. And our repentance is not our righteousness. And that's where Haddo and these other men, even as I think they were well-intentioned, they were trying to guard against weaknesses and nominalism they saw. But the language that they used and the way they lined things up, really at the end of the day, left people thinking that somehow my faith is my righteousness. Somehow my repentance is my righteousness. It's somehow those things qualify me to come to Jesus and then receive his righteousness. But that's all backwards. And it is actually the innate tendency of our human hearts to try to somehow clean ourselves up in order to come to Jesus. That's why Roman Catholicism, that's why legalism has such a pull on the human heart. We're a mixture always innately in our fallen nature of antinomianism and legalism. On the one hand, we love sin and we're attracted to it and we want to sin in our sin, in our evil. On the other hand, we try to clean ourselves up. Our conscience is either excusing us or accusing us, as it says in Romans, and we try to make ourselves righteous. But what's the answer? The answer is right here in this gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our righteousness. Your faith is not your righteousness, but you get righteousness by faith. You get it freely for nothing. Freely, but at infinite expense. Incredible expense. Vast expense and cost. But that cost, that expense, has entirely been paid by the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't add anything to it. So he says, Philippians 3.9, we're justified by faith instrumentally. As we might say, one is enriched by marriage, when by it he gets what makes him rich. So faith is that whereby the soul is married to Christ, and being married to him has communion with the Lord Jesus Christ in his righteousness, which justifies us before God." God's imputation in which he reckons Christ's righteousness to be the believers according to the law. This is just. It's holy in our trying God's wisdom. The law is fully satisfied in all its claims, in perfect holiness. This transaction, this imputation takes place, this union. And it's according to the truth of the thing. Christ's righteousness is now really the believer's righteousness by faith. And so, when we look at the call to faith, we see it in the marrow in Boston, a call there. It says, be persuaded in your heart that Christ calls unto you, that he proclaims welcome to you, that you shall have life and salvation by him, that Jesus Christ is yours. Well, how does this then connect with assurance? There's this faith, this instrument, this empty hand that comes to Christ, that looks to him, that trusts in him, that hears the word and responds by the regenerating work of the spirit. Well, the opponents of the marrow theology, the preparationists, drew a very sharp line and distinction between faith and assurance. They tended to separate the two. make them quite distanced from each other. The Merriman said that faith necessarily includes in it some element of a kind of assurance. And what is this kind of assurance? Well, within faith there must be a A degree, there has to be an element, not only of what's called notitia, so faith includes knowledge, the content of faith. Things that we believe about the Lord Jesus Christ we know, so there has to be that content awareness, the contours at least in a basic form of sin, salvation in Christ. There's an ascent conviction that the faith is true, that these things are true, but we need more than just an ascent that this is true, because the demons know that this is true, and demons even tremble. What do we need more? Well, so it's the knowledge, it's the ascent, but there's also a trust, a fiducia, fiducia, An appropriating persuasion, the Merriman called it. A knowing and believing, but also mingled with that knowing and believing, there's an element of personal trust in Christ. Boston went on to talk about the Westminster Catechism and Confession of Faith. He said it's true, faith differs in its degrees. We may have weak faith in some seasons and times and strong faith at others. It's different in degrees. Faith grows in many to the attainment of a full assurance. But Boston went on to argue, if faith can grow to a full assurance, there must be some assurance in the nature of it. So Boston says this, and he sought to carefully explain this. That there can be no saving faith, no acceptance with God where there is any doubting, is what can hardly enter the head of any sober Christian. He's very pastoral here. He understands the context of his ministry. He knows, as believers, our faith can be weak. We doubt, we fear at times. We wrestle and struggle. And so he says, yes, there'll be doubts mixed in with faith. However, those doubts mixed in with faith are our sin. They do dishonor God and we should be humbled over our doubts and ashamed for our doubts. Seeking to grow to rest more in Christ and grow more in assurance of his salvation is what Christ calls us into and desires for us. So the Papists, Roman Catholics, contend very earnestly for doubting. They think that doubting is a good thing and a positive thing. Why did they do so? Well, if doubting was removed and assurance of faith in the promise of the gospel was brought into its place, they'd lose their whole market for indulgences, masses, pilgrimages, works of contrition, works of penance, In fact, the very fires of purgatory would be extinguished if there was assurance of salvation in Christ. As Protestant divines prove against the Roman Catholics, the Holy Scriptures condemn doubt. Matthew 14, 31, O you of little faith, why did you doubt? Luke 12, 29. And neither you be of doubtful minds. Think of Christ speaking to the disciples, lovingly rebuking them for their doubts, calling them to see him as he is. Our doubts are our weakness, they are our sin. And we can come to Christ with them, right? Cast all your cares on him, for he cares for you. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and supplication, make your requests known to God. Oh, our Lord knows that we are weak. He knows that we're frail. He knows the sin mixed in us and the doubts and fears mixed in us. But He calls us to and desires us to grow in resting in Him, grow into a more full faith, a deeper assurance. Resting and delighting in Him, seeing His strength and His power, His majesty, His goodness. And letting our doubts and fears be drowned in that. letting our doubts and fears and anxieties shrink into proportion compared to who God is and all his glory and goodness displayed to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so Boston encouraged that pastorally it wasn't healthy to separate faith and assurance in a wrong way. but that rather there should be an encouragement that faith and assurance should go hand in hand. There should be growing faith and growing assurance with the reality and the awareness that there will be seasons that we do struggle. Sometimes it could be because of fears and doubts that come upon us. Sometimes our assurance and our faith may be weak because we're actually in love with particular sin. Is there a pattern in our life even as believers of rebellion? We're toying with some sin. Well, yes, there will be a distance in our hearts from Christ. There will be a dullness, a diminishment of the sweetness of assurance because of what we're doing. But when we become aware of that, we should run to Jesus right away with it all. So citing the Westminster Catechism, what is justifying faith? Justifying faith is a saving grace, worked in the heart of the sinner by the spirit and word of God, whereby being convinced of his sin and misery, the disability in himself and in all other creatures to recover him out of his lost condition. He not only assents to the truth and promise of the gospel, but receives and rests upon Christ and his righteousness. Are all true believers at all times assured of their being in the estate of grace and that they shall be saved? Assurance of grace and salvation are not of the essence of faith. True believers may wait long before they obtain and enjoy it, may have it weakened at times through distemper, sins, and temptations, and desertions. Yet they are never left without such a presence and support of the Spirit of God as keeps them from sinking into utter despair. So we see just the richness and the beauty of what's declared there. Thomas Boston preaches a sermon on the benefits flowing from justification, adoption, and sanctification. You can find this one online. There's a website called the Digital Puritan. If you just Google search for Thomas Boston Digital Puritan, it has all these works of Thomas Boston online. You can click on them. But this one, the benefits flowing from justification, adoption, and sanctification. It's a sermon on this verse from Romans 5, 1 and 2. Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It goes on to speak about rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God. And he talks about the benefits that we receive in coming to Christ, that he's made us to be at peace with God in and through himself. And that in Christ, as we come to him and we receive these benefits, we can receive the gift of assurance of eternal happiness, of spiritual joy. And he talks about all the richness of that. We don't have time to get into it. right now, but I encourage you to take a look at that sermon. Well, I think we're getting on in our time here. It's nearing 9 to 10. Yes, it's roughly where we are. So what I'll do here is just, I'd like to sum up with a quote from Sinclair Ferguson's The Whole Christ. You know, these Merrill brother and these evangelicals, as they grappled with these issues, as Thomas Boston did, they came to see that the foundation, the ground, the source, the strength of faith, of repentance and assurance are all in Christ. Ferguson says this in his book, which I would also commend that you get and read. God's grace to us is Christ. Christ himself, clothed as he is in his gospel work, is the atonement. As Paul says, I suffer the loss of all things and count them rubbish. in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God. It's misleading to say that God accepts us the way we are. Rather, he accepts us despite the way we are. He receives us in Christ, and only for Christ's sake. He does, in great delight in his Son, in great love to us. The Father welcomes us, as the Father welcomed the prodigal son to come. And so, next session together, we'll look at life in Christ. We'll look about living in Christ, sanctification in Christ, what does that look like? Well, let's close in prayer together now. O Lord, our God, we thank you so much for the incredible vast riches of your grace, for your complete and total provision for us as sinners. O Lord, we confess we need faith that is greater and deeper and more true. O Lord, we confess we need repentance that's more full, we need to and want to grow in hating sin and forsaking it because it's displeasing to you. Lord, we confess all of our sin, all of our legalisms and all of our lawlessness. Lord, all of our brokenness and mess. How we thank you that you, Lord Jesus, You who are seated on the throne of glory and who hear us and see us are a perfect high priest for us, the one who's made the once for all sacrifice. We thank you so much that by your spirit you take hold of us and cause us to turn to you and cry out to you with empty hands. And we thank you that you give us all, all of yourself. O Lord, help us to love you far more than we do. O Lord, we do love you, and we pray that you would increase that love and that joy, increase our assurance of you. Lord, forgive us for our weak assurance. Forgive us for all our doubts. Lord, help us to see more and more clearly with the eyes of faith. and how we long for the day, oh, our triune God, when our faith will be made sight. And we will see you as you are. And what we have seen by faith and by the hearing of your word and tasted and experienced in the sacraments that you have given, we will see in the smile of your holy face. We will see in your welcoming arms. We will see as we join in that great multitude that is in heavenly glory right now and with the angels around your throne. How we thank you that as a savior, you are sufficient not only for those in heaven, but that you are sufficient for us on earth and that you are the king of all the earth. We thank you, our Savior and King. Bless us, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.