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Certitude
“Help my unbelief!” the father of a
tortured boy once pleaded with Jesus
(Mark 9:24), and in so doing voiced the
heart cry of so many.
An old cynicism reminds us that we
can truly be certain of only two things in
this life—death and taxes—and loss is
the common denominator of both. We
lose health and vigor to age or illness;
we lose those we love to cancer,
heart attack, or stroke; we lose savings
to once-wise investments now
gone south; we watch paychecks
shrink to fund an ever-growing government.
We can be certain, we say,
only of the negatives—that we can
never win, that we can never gain, that
we can never get ahead.
The pace at which we usually live our
lives also seems perversely calculated to
keep us doubtful and uncertain. We race
through relationships, trying to extract
what joy we can, and wondering why
they offer us no deep, abiding sense of
well-being and groundedness. We flit
through our devotional time—all wings
and color—and wonder why we get so
little from it. Even the Sabbath, God’s
weekly symbol of deep rest and sweet
assurance, becomes for some a lengthy
irritant. “When will the Sabbath be over,
so we can buy and sell?” we ask repeatedly
of the clock (see Amos 8:5).
But Jesus came to free us from the tyranny
of things we can’t be sure of. “And
you shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free” (John 8:32), He
said, underlining the essential connection
between His Word and the sense of
deep security He intends His followers
to know. Certitude is the fortunate experience
of being sure of the most essential
truths—truths that change and
shape our everyday experiences.
In place of our
question marks,
Jesus offers His
declarations.
So much of what we have come to
think of as “normal” in the Christian
journey—periodic anxiety, at least occasional
doubt, and restlessness—was
never in His plan for His disciples, then
or now. He intended that His Word convey
to us the blessed certainties of existence—that
God is love (1 John 4:8); that
we are loved (1 John 4:16); that we can
learn to love as God does (1 John 4:21).
In place of our question marks, Jesus
offers His declarations: “My peace I give
to you,” He assured His closest friends,
“not as the world gives do I give to you”
(John 14:27). “I have come that they may
have life, and that they may have it more
abundantly” (John 10:10), He promises.
Choicest among the good things He
offers us is the gift of discovering that
we are deeply loved—before we are ever
sorry for our sins; before we ever repent
and reform; before we ever become useful
to His kingdom (Rom. 5:8). It is only
His estimate of our worth that makes
us begin to believe that we are truly
valuable, and that our lives have meaning
beyond what we can get or achieve.
When we learn that His love for us is
so deep and vast and different that He
laid down His life for those He prophesies
will be His “friends” (John 15:15),
we discover a new certainty we have
never previously known. Nothing we
have ever experienced in this life and
nothing we can imagine in death can
ever separate us from a love so broad
and vast and deep (Rom. 8:38, 39). Even
death, the greatest threat to human certitude,
gives up its prizes on that day
when it “is swallowed up in victory”
(1 Cor. 15:54).
Certitude, then, is more than simple
optimism or righteous wishful thinking.
Certitude is the habit of the heart in
which we trust that what God says
about us is always more true than anything
we can say about ourselves. When
His Word tells us that we are great sinners,
we accept His Word by faith,
even when we don’t feel ourselves to
be so very sinful (see Ps. 139:23, 24).
And when, having confessed and
forsaken our sins according to His
Word (1 John 1:9), we still feel condemned
and guilt-ridden, we place
our weight upon the righteousness that
His Word says has actually been
imputed to us: “And by this we know
that we are of the truth, and shall assure
our hearts before Him. For if our heart
condemns us, God is greater than our
heart, and knows all things” (1 John
3:19, 20).
Ellen White echoes this great truth in
words we ought to frame for every wall:
“We need a more firm reliance upon a
‘Thus saith the Lord.’ If we have this, we
shall not trust to feeling, and be ruled
by feeling. God asks us to rest in His
love. It is our privilege to know the
22 (838) | www.AdventistReview.org | September 19, 2013