This could be a very short chapter indeed. It ought to be! What does the New Testament say about assurance? Not much! Surprising as it may seem, the New Testament simply does not have a highly developed doctrine of assurance, certainly nothing to compare with what is set out in the works produced by legal teachers; apparently in those early days there was no call for such detailed instruction. This silence needs to be taken fully into account. Why does the New Testament not have anything along the lines of those books I mentioned at the beginning – books with many closely-argued pages on assurance?1 Why, especially, is there nothing in the sacred pages that comes anywhere near Beeke’s title: The Quest for Full Assurance? Why does the New Testament not tell us of believers who are engaged in a ‘long and arduous search’ for assurance? Since nearly all the New Testament letters were written to combat some sort of misunderstanding or error, some malady, or bondage to some sort of false teaching, I can only deduce that the early believers would be utterly fazed if they came back and could read the literature on the life-long ‘quest’ for assurance; the problem had not figured in their experience.
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