From the conclusion of my personal chapter from my second edited book (with Myk Habets), “Assurance is of the Essence of Saving Faith” Calvin, Barth, Torrance, and the “Faith of Christ”.
CONCLUSION
What we have come to see is that assurance of salvation, dogmatically understood, is fully grounded in Jesus Christ. From Calvin, to Barth, to Torrance, union with Christ and the vicarious humanity of Christ provides the foundation for how to understand assurance of salvation and how it should be framed; that the faith of Christ for us is the only real saving faith, as such elect people can only participate from that faith for them. It is this reality, as we have seen, that allows the seeker (of assurance) to realize that indeed assurance is of the essence of faith; precisely because faith is a reality that comes from God in Christ and not individual human beings. We also came to see, particularly in Barth and Torrance, that election and reprobation should be understood to be fully concentrated in the vicarious humanity of Christ. Again, what this does is to evacuate the question of whether or not Jesus died for me, and instead allows all of humanity to keep their eyes fully on Jesus because Jesus, in this frame, died for all of humanity. As a result, any space that could allow for anxiety has been erased, and Jesus is understood to be the one that stands in the gap between God and all of humanity in his vicarious humanity. We have come to see that from this vantage point assurance is the essence of saving faith because to think salvation is to fully think Jesus and not ourselves. Assurance for the Evangelical Calvinist, then, is of the essence of saving faith because it is not an individual’s faith that saves them, but instead it is the vicarious faith of Jesus Christ. We look to Christ, then, and no one else, not even ourselves; particularly when we think things salvation. Jesus Christ is assurance.