There is a second truth which we may also use to reassure our hearts. The first by its very nature was related to ourselves specifically; it had to do with God’s specific work in our own individual life. The second is more general in that it refers in equal measure to all who are God’s children. It is simply that whatever our hearts may say, God knows us better than even we ourselves do and nevertheless has acquitted us. Therefore, we should reassure ourselves by His judgment, which alone is trustworthy, and refuse to trust our own.
It is necessary to note here that a very weighty tradition of interpretation going back to some of the Greek fathers and echoed by the Reformers takes the judgment of God, not as being more merciful than that of our hearts, but as being more rigorous. That is, the verse is to be taken as a warning against presumption rather than as a cause for reassurance. Calvin expresses this view by saying, “From the contrary he proves that those who have not the testimony of a good conscience bear the name and appearance of Christians in vain. For if anyone is conscious of guilt and is condemned by the feeling of his own mind, far less can he escape God’s judgment. Therefore it follows that faith is overturned by the disquiet of an evil conscience.”1 This, of course, is perfectly true in one sense. Indeed, John gives warnings against presumption elsewhere. The difficulty is that it does not seem to be the intention of this passage to awaken a sense of sin which would amount almost to self-despair. It is to reassure his readers. For this reason, then, we must take the verse as presenting an additional truth by which the questioning heart may be comforted; namely, that God who knows all has nevertheless acquitted us before the bar of His justice on the basis of the sacrifice of Christ.
Paul’s expressions of confidence in Romans 8 are, therefore, a perfect commentary on John’s arguments. “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? Shall God that justifieth? Who is he that condemneth? Shall Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us?” (Rom. 8:31-34).
It would be possible for someone who does not have much understanding in spiritual matters to argue that all that has been said about doubt and the condemning heart is of little importance. “For what does it matter if some doubt in spiritual matters?” he might argue. “Let them doubt. It will not hurt them; it might even make them more humble or easier to live with.” This would be false reasoning, however, as John now shows. For whether one has confidence before God or lacks confidence before God necessarily affects one’s relationship to God. Indeed, the one who stands condemned by his heart can have no confidence to stand before God at all, and he can have no confidence that his prayers will be either heard or answered. John treats the whole matter from the positive perspective, however, showing what blessings the Christian can expect if his heart does not condemn him.
1John Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John 11-21 and The First Epistle of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1961), 278.