Assurance and the Means of Grace: How the Objective Nature of the Means of Grace Is an Antidote to Postmodern Confusion
Many people claim that we live in an age that has rejected objectivity. This has been asserted in many conservative papers, books, and journal articles from the mid-twentieth century up to today. These writings have tried to sound the alarm against the wave of postmodernism and atheism that has swept the Western world away from its theological roots and pushed it towards subjectivism and anarchy.[i] There is much substance to these critiques, but they often overlook an important dimension of how people today think about truth. For I would argue that the contemporary West has not fully rejected objectivity. It has rather conflated subjective experience with objective truth so that the former in many contexts is held to bear the marks and significance of the latter. To see the truth of this statement, one needs only to look at contemporary America, where people demand that their personal preferences and proclivities must be acknowledged and accepted by all, and insist that every attempt to impose norms upon them that they have not chosen is a genuine attack upon their well-being and personal identity. Thus, the West has not rejected objectivity in toto, but these days its people do resist any kind of objectivity that seems to impinge on their freedom or lacks their stamp of approval.[ii] Statements like “my/your truth” and the epidemic of pronoun usage show clearly that our culture wants to have its cake and eat it too—to maintain a semblance of truth and authority while quickly dismissing these things whenever they become inconvenient or “oppressive.”
Of course any attempt to maintain a quasi-objective order of truths and obligations merely through one’s own assertiveness or strength of will is doomed to failure. The consequences of such confused efforts, which we see all around us, are decadence, depression, disorder, and death. One cannot make capricious and pitiful gods out of one’s desires and whims and reasonably demand that they receive everyone’s acceptance and honor. One cannot sacrifice truth, goodness, and beauty to such gods and avoid reaping a painful harvest. The effort to lend objective importance and authority to what is merely subjective has led to an unprecedented cultural imbroglio, and if the West is to regain its footing and avoid plummeting further into the abyss, we must regain our grasp on reality.
But how can this be done? How can we find an assurance, an objectivity, that promises to be reliable even in the midst of such cultural confusion and despite our own failures? No doubt we need to return to common sense in all spheres of life. But the most satisfactory answer to our cultural quandary and the pervasive confusion it engenders is a theological one. The triune God—who sent the Son to earth to bear the penalty of our sins and give us the promise of salvation, and gave the Holy Spirit to bring to us the salvation which the Son earned—this God has not left his people without help or hope. He meets the needs of his people today for truth, assurance, and salvation just as he has met them for millennia.
How does he do this? It is accepted Christian truth that Christ, after his resurrection, ascended into heaven and now sits at the right hand of the Father. Christians of every denominational stripe and creed confess this, as this is essential to the future hope promised to all who cling fast to the name of Jesus. It is also accepted among virtually all churches that one day he will return, renew heaven and earth, and dwell among us forever. But this has not happened yet. How then can the Christian meet Christ on this side of the eternal timeline, and know that what Christ has promised is his?
Christians have answered this question in a myriad of ways, and there seems to be perpetual disagreement between groups of Christians about how we can be sure we have met Christ this side of eternity. Some believe that assurance is the fruit of subjective experiences, that the emotions they feel during worship are evidence of the presence of Christ. Some believe that the evidence they need comes through their religious affections; the things they love show that they have a regenerate heart. Still others have said that assurance comes through our works—those who do what is right are saved and justified.
The problem with all of these answers is that they lead those who affirm them to fall into the same trap as those who give their subjective experiences and feelings objective significance and authority. Christians who affirm them are no different than contemporary people who seek in vain to erect objective truth on the foundation of subjective impressions. If Christians want to discover a cure for the fruitless tendency to lump the subjective with the objective, they cannot hope to find it by seeking assurance of salvation through the methods just discussed. They must be willing to reclaim an understanding of assurance that is not rooted in what we poor sinners think we do or happen to feel, but in what Christ has done and continues to do for us. In short, the problem with all the above answers about how one can be sure that he has met Christ in a saving way is that they all center on the subjective states of needy sinners.
Our own hearts and deeds, however, are like sinking sand—they are marked by corruption and provide no sure basis for any certainty regarding the presence of Christ and his salvation. Therefore any foundation for assurance cannot come from within ourselves; it must come from without, and from God himself. It must be established through what he does for us and makes known to us in a wholly objective manner. Lutherans believe this is accomplished through the Means of Grace with which God has gifted his church. If we neglect these means, and if the assurance of our salvation comes from within ourselves, we will be in a position that is the same as those who attempt to conflate the subjective with the objective, and we will often find ourselves experiencing the same problems: despair, disorder, deterioration, and death. Obviously, much therefore depends on our willingness to acknowledge and partake of the Means of Grace.
What are these means? The Means of Grace are things with a sacramental character. They include the Word of God and the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Each means makes Christ present to us. Each delivers Christ to us. Because they bring Christ, they also bring with them the gifts of faith, forgiveness, assurance, and salvation.
The first place Christ promises to be is in his Word. Therefore, when we read the Scriptures, we can know that Christ is present there and that his Spirit is working within us to teach us those things necessary to know him, to be saved, and to love him deeply. Every time the Word is spoken or received, God is operating through it to slay consciences with the Law, soothe anxiety with the Gospel, and bring God’s people into closer communion with him. The Word is the ultimate authority, the place where faith is built up, where repentance begins, and from which sanctification proceeds. The heart rests in the saving knowledge of Christ present in his Word, a knowledge which faith—given by God through the Word—draws upon throughout the Christian life. The Word is not technically one of the Sacraments, but it has sacramental properties, and it is where God has chosen to reveal his promises to believers of every age. It is an objective location where forgiveness and salvation are bestowed.
The Sacraments, like the Word, are given to the Christian church so that all of God’s people may be strengthened and refreshed by the promised presence of Christ. They are ceremonies commanded by Christ and each involves a tangible sign of spiritual gifts and benefits, such as regeneration, union with Christ, and the forgiveness of sins. The Augsburg Confession, in Article XIII, speaks of Sacraments as things instituted by God “to awaken and confirm faith in those who use them,” informing Christians that “we must use the Sacraments in such a way that faith, which believes the promises offered and set forth through the Sacraments, is increased.”[iii] Therefore, as relates to their divine institution, the Sacraments provide an immediate answer to finding comfort—i.e., to finding Christ—this side of the eternity.
The first Sacrament, properly speaking, is Baptism, which is known as the Sacrament of Initiation because it brings people into the Christian church. Christ promises to be present in Baptism, and Baptism unites us to him and to the members of the universal church. Speaking about Baptism, and specifically about the idea of the baptismal covenant made between God and man in this Sacrament, Luther writes that “this blessed sacrament of Baptism helps you because in it God allies Himself with you and becomes one with you in a gracious covenant of comfort.”[iv] In Baptism, a Christian is united with Jesus in his death. Because of this, Lutherans can say and take comfort in the fact that “Baptism does save, not as a merely physical washing but because it connects us to the resurrection of Christ.”[v] Jesus is there with us because of the promise he makes that he will be. Assurance and salvation are connected to Baptism because God himself is at work in Baptism, and the benefits of Baptism are granted to all who receive or are confirmed in faith through Baptism.
Baptized believers who are able to examine themselves and understand the rudiments of the faith are permitted to partake of the second Sacrament, Holy Communion. Holy Communion has been the climax of Christian worship for centuries. In this sacred ceremony, Christ makes himself truly present in the bread and wine for his people. The Eucharistic controversy took up much of Luther’s time and was a point of contention among Lutherans until the Book of Concord settled the confessional debates in 1580. Luther himself was unwilling to compromise with either Switzerland or Rome on matters pertaining to Holy Communion, for reasons Philip Schaff elucidates well in his History of the Christian Church: “[Luther] regarded the real presence as a fundamental article of faith, inseparably connected with the incarnation, the union of the two natures of Christ, and the mystical union of believers with His divine-human personality.”[vi] Because Christ promises to the present to Christians every time they take the elements in faith, the eating and drinking unite Christ to believers and provide the sustenance of salvation.
When American Lutheranism was on the rise in the nineteenth century, and some sought to revise and alter Lutheran doctrine to be more amenable to Reformed persons, Lutheran theologian Henry I. Schmidt stood against those who would have denied the truth of the Sacrament and thereby would have destroyed the unity with and in Christ that our Savior brings to Christians in Holy Communion. Schmidt, in his Lutheran Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, contends that
It is in the Sacrament itself, in the solemn celebration of this sacred ordinance, that
Christians enjoy the actual presence of the Redeemer, and that the unchanged bread and
wine, received by the communicant, are not only the outward visible signs of an inward
spiritual grace; but, connected with the word and promise of God, the vehicles through
whose instrumentality the divine Savior communicates himself to those who partake of
them.[vii]
Thus the Lutheran tradition has always attested to the fact that the Sacrament of Holy Communion is one of those beautiful places where the Lord Jesus Christ promises to be regardless of anything we might experience or feel.
The objective nature of the Means of Grace give us a peace and assurance that is unrivaled. We can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Christ is present where they are, and that he is present not because of any work we have done but because of his promise to be present. The effective work is done by Christ; all the Christian has left to do is to enjoy the benefits of this participation, and to believe in the words of Christ when they are spoken. In these Means of Grace, then, is something the soul can rest in—in a power beyond itself, and in promises that are never broken since they have been sealed with the eternal Word given once for all. This, of course, is an understanding which can only come if the sacraments are objective—if they are always what they are promised to be, no matter who administers or takes them.
In the Means of Grace, therefore, is the antidote to postmodern confusion. All those who can find no certainty or assurance in themselves and their own subjective experiences or feelings can rest in the places where God himself promises to be. Our souls can rest in him, and the places where he gives himself to us. In and through these places we are united to him and are transformed into his likeness. The doctrine of justification by faith alone is expressed in the fullness of its grandeur in the objectivity of these means, as the Christian understands that the gifts offered in them are always there to be freely taken. Jesus unites himself to these sensible things so we can know that just as he is everywhere spiritually, he is with us specifically, individually, and corporately wherever these things are given to us. Gone forever is the darkness of this postmodern night, and of the corruption of doctrine which would place something other than the promises of Jesus at the heart of our assurance—something subjective which tries to be what it can never be and offer what it can never give. Instead we bask in the real presence of Christ working and saving us through his precious and most objective gifts, the Means of Grace.
[i] For an explanation of how the West was made through the efforts of churchmen, see Harold J. Berman’s Law & Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).
[ii] For more on this, see Carl Trueman’s excellent The Rise & Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020).
[iii] Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, ed. Paul Timothy McCain, Edward Andrew Engelbrecht, Robert Cleveland Baker, & Gene Edward Veith (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2006), 38.
[iv] Martin Luther, “The Holy and Blessed Sacrament of Baptism” in Luther’s Works, Vol. 35: Word and Sacrament I (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960), 33.
[v] Gene Veith, The Spirituality of the Cross: The Way of the First Evangelicals, 3rd ed. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2021) 62-63.
[vi] Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. VII: Modern Christianity – The German Reformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing House, 1995), 663.
[vii] Henry I. Schmidt, The Lutheran Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper: A Study of the Sacrament (Brighton, IA: Just & Sinner Publishing, 2013), 40.
Jonathen Loxley is a senior studying History at Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia. He is a Humanities at Hertog Fellow with the Hertog Foundation, as well as a teacher of Integrated Humanities at Virginia Classical Academy.