The Advantages of Assurance

by Thomas Brooks

1. It will bring down heaven into your bosoms; it will give you a possession of heaven, on this side heaven, Heb. 11: 1. An assured soul lives in paradise, and walks in paradise, and works in paradise; and rests in paradise; he hath heaven within him, and heaven about him, and heaven over him; all his language is Heaven, heaven! Glory, glory!

2. Assurance will exceedingly sweeten all the changes of this life. This life is full of changes. Assurance will sweeten sickness and health, weakness and strength, wants and abundance, disgrace and honour, 2 Cor. 4: 16-18. While a man lives in the sense of unchangeable love, no outward changes can make any considerable change in his spirit. Let times change, let men change, let powers change, let nations change, yet a man under the power of assurance will not change his countenance, nor change his master, nor change his work, nor change his hope. Though others under changes turn, like the chameleon, into all colours to save their little all, yet the assured soul under all changes is semper idem, always the same. Antistines, a philosopher, to make his life happy, desired only that he might have the spirit of Socrates, who was always in a quiet temper of spirit, whatever wrongs, injuries, crosses, losses etc, befell him. Let the trials be what they would that did attend him, yet he continued one and the same. Ah, Christians! the want of assurance hath made many changelings in these days; but if ever you would be like Socrates, if ever you would be like the philosopher’s good man, that is, Tetragonos, four square, that cast him where you will, like a dice, he falls always sure and square, then get assurance of everlasting happiness. Assurance will make your souls like the laws of the Medes and Persians, that alter not; it will sweeten the darkest day, and the longest night; under variety of changes, it will make a man sit down with Habakkuk, and rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of his salvation, Hab. 3: 17-19.

3. Assurance will keep the heart from an inordinate running out after the world, and the glory thereof. Moses having an assurance of the recompense of reward, and of the love and favour of him that is invisible, could not be drawn by all the honours, pleasures, and treasures of Egypt. He slights all, and tramples upon all the glory of the world, as men trample upon things of no worth, Heb. 11: 24-27. So after Paul had been in the third heaven, and had assurance that nothing should separate him from the love of God in Christ, he looks upon the world as a crucified thing: “The world is crucified to me,” saith he, 2 Cor. 12: 1-3, and Rom. 8: 38; “and I am crucified unto the world,” Gal. 6: 14. The world is dead to me, and I am dead to it: the world and I are well agreed; the world cares not a pin for me, and I care not a pin for the world. The lodestone cannot draw the iron when the diamond is present: no more can the vanities of this world draw the soul after them, when assurance, that choice pearl of price, is present. I have read of Lazarus, that after he was raised from the grave, he was never seen to smile. The assurance that he had of more glorious things, deadened his heart to the things of this world; he saw nothing in them worthy of a smile. Ah! were there more assurance among Christians, there would not be such tugging for the world, and such greedy hunting and pursuing after it, as is in these days, to the dishonour of God, the reproach of Christ, and the shame of the gospel. Get but more assurance, and less money will serve your turns; get but more assurance, and less places of honour and profit will serve your turns; get but assurance, and then you will neither transgress for a morsel of bread, nor yet violently pursue after the golden wedge, etc.

4. Assurance will exceedingly heighten you in your communion with God, and it will exceedingly sweeten your communion with God. Assurance that a man is even now a son of God raises him high in his fellowship with God, 1 John 3: 2. There are none that have such choice and sweet communion with God as those that have the clearest assurance of their interest in God, as may be seen throughout the whole book of Solomon’s Song. “My beloved is mine, and I am his,” saith the spouse, chap 2: 16. I am assured of my interest in him, says she, and therefore he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts; and upon this account it is that she holds king Jesus in the galleries, that she is sick of love, that she is raised and ravished with his kisses and embraces: “His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me,” chaps. 1: 13; 7: 5; 2: 6. None had more assurance of her interest in Christ than she, and none was higher and closer in communion with Christ than she. The wife’s assurance of her interest in her husband sweetens and heightens her communion with her husband. The child’s assurance of his interest in his father sweetens his dealings and fellowship with his father. So the believer’s assurance of his interest in God will exceedingly heighten and sweeten his communion and fellowship with God. Assurance of a man’s interest in God sweetens every thought of God, every sight of God, every taste of God, and every good word of God. God is as sweet to the assured soul when he hath a sword in his hand as when he hath a sceptre; when he hath the rod of indignation as when he hath the cup of consolation; when his garments are rolled and dyed in blood as when he appears in his wedding robes; when he acts the part of a judge as when he acts the part of a father.

5. Assurance will be a choice preservative to keep you from backsliding from God and his ways. Ah! assurance will glue the soul to God and his ways, as Ruth was glued to her mother Naomi. It will make a man “stand fast in the faith, and quit himself like a good soldier of Christ,” Gal. 5: 1; 2 Tim. 2: 3; 2 Pet 1: 10,11, “Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall.’’ Stumble ye may, but assurance will keep a man from falling foully and from falling utterly. Verily, the reason why there are so many apostates in these days is, because there are so few that have a well-ground assurance. Pliny speaks of some fishes that swim backward. Ah! many professors in these days swim backward; they swim from God, and Christ, and conscience; yea, they swim from the very principles of morality and common honesty. Believe it, friends! it is not high notions in the brain, but sound assurance in the heart, that will keep a man close to Christ when others backslide from Christ. An assured Christian will not exchange his gold for copper; he knows that one old piece of gold is worth a thousand new counters; one old truth of Christ is worth a thousand new errors, though clothed with glistening robes; and therefore he will prize the truth, and own the truth, and keep close to the truth, when others that lack a sound assurance make merchandise of Christ, of precious truths, and of their own and others’ immortal souls. Get assurance, and thou wilt stand when seeming cedars fall; lack assurance and thou canst not but fall, to the breaking of thy bones, if not to the utter loss of thy precious soul, 2 Peter 2: 3.

6. Assurance will very much embolden the soul with God. It will make a man divinely familiar with God; it will make a man knock boldly at the door of free grace; it will make a man come boldly before the mercy-seat; it will make a man enter boldly within the holy of holies. Heb. 10: 22, ‘‘Let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.’’ Assurance makes the soul converse with God as a favourite with his prince, as a bride with her bridegroom, as a Joseph with a Jacob. Luther, under the power of assurance, lets fall this transcendent rapture of a daring faith, ‘‘Fiat mea voluntas, let my will be done’’; and then falls off sweetly, ‘‘Mea voluntas, Domine, quia tua, my will, Lord, because thy will.’’ It is the want of assurance that makes the countenance sad, the hands hang down, the knees feeble, and the heart full of fears and tremblings, Heb. 12: 13. Oh therefore get assurance, and that will scatter your fears, and raise your hopes, and cheer your spirits, and give wings to faith, and make you humbly bold with God. You will not then stand at the door of mercy with a may I knock? with a may I go in? with a may I find audience and acceptance? but you will, with Esther, boldly adventure yourselves upon the mercy and goodness of God. ‘‘Now verily, I think,’’ saith one, speaking of Christ, ‘‘he cannot despise me, who is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; for if he neglect me as a brother, yet he will love me as a husband: that is my comfort.’’ Assurance will remove all strangeness from between Christ and the soul; of two, it will make Christ and the soul one.

7. Assurance will sweeten the thoughts of death, and all the aches, pains, weaknesses, sicknesses, and diseases, that are the fore-runners of it; yea, it will make a man look and long for that day. It will make a man sick of his absence from Christ. It makes a man smile upon the king of terrors; it makes a man laugh at the shaking of the spear, at the noise of the battle, at the garments of the warriors rolled in blood. It made the martyrs to brave it out with lions, to dare and tire their persecutors, to kiss the stake, to sing and clap their hands in the flames, to tread upon hot burning coals as upon beds of roses.
   The assured soul knows that death shall be the funeral of all his sins and sorrows, of all afflictions and temptations, of all desertions and oppositions. He knows that death shall be the resurrection of his joys; he knows that death is both an outlet and an inlet; an outlet to sin, and an inlet to the soul’s clear, full and constant enjoyment of God; and this makes the assured soul to sing it out sweetly, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” “I desire to be dissolved.” “Make haste, my beloved.” “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.” 1 Cor. 15: 55-57; Philip. 1: 23; Song of Solomon 8: 14; Rev. 22: 20. Now death is more desirable than life. Now says the soul, Ejus est timere mortem, qui ad Christum nolit ire, let him fear death that is loath to go to Christ. So that I may be with Christ, though I go in a cloud, though I go in a fiery chariot, I care not, says the assured soul.

The Persians had a certain day in the year, in which they used to kill all serpents and venomous creatures. The assured Christian knows, that the day of death will be such a day to him, and that makes death lovely and desirable. He knows that sin was the midwife that brought death into the world, and that death shall be the grave to bury sin; and therefore death is not a terror, but a delight unto him. He fears it not as an enemy, but welcomes it as a friend; as crooked-back Richard the Third in his distress cried, “A kingdom for a horse, a kingdom for a horse!” So souls that want assurance, when they come to die, will cry out, “A kingdom for assurance, a kingdom for assurance!” and as the martyr Severus said, “If I had a thousand worlds, I would now give them all for Christ.” so a soul that wants assurance, when he comes to enter upon a state of eternity, will cry out, “Oh, had I now a thousand worlds, I would give them all for assurance, whereas the assured soul would not for a thousand worlds but die. When his glass is out, and his sun is set, he cries not out, as that lady did, “A world, a world for an inch of time!” but rather, “Why is it, why is it, Lord, that thy chariots be so long a-coming?”

(To be continued)

“If I had not sailed this sea-way to heaven, but had taken the land-way, as many do, I should not have known Christ’s sweetness in such a measure.” — Rutherford.