I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard the deposit I have entrusted to him. Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 

2 Timothy 1:12–13

One thing we often crave in life is certainty. We want to be sure of things. We want to know “for sure” that our investments are secure . . . or even if it will rain tomorrow! Certainty is important.

So also in faith. Christian faith brings our conviction that God has acted in Jesus Christ to forgive our sin and give us eternal life. This is a certainty at the very core of our beings as Christian people. Bavinck said this faith is “a restoration of the right relationship between God and man, the return of the trust” a child places in its parent. “Certainty is included by its very nature” in human expressions of faith—even more so in faith that believes in Jesus Christ as God’s Son, our Savior. In faith, we believe the gospel promises of who Jesus is and what he has done to bring salvation. Faith also brings the certainty that by God’s grace, “we too share in these promises.”

This means, wrote Bavinck, that faith “does not attain certainty regarding itself through logical reasoning nor through constantly examining itself and reflecting on its own nature. . . . But certainty flows to us immediately and directly out of faith itself. Certainty is an essential characteristic of faith; it is inseparable from it and belongs to its nature.”

What a blessed joy! Our certainty in faith is not generated by us—by our thinking or our efforts. Instead, faith flows from “the promises of God, the gospel, which poses no conditions but only proclaims that everything has been accomplished. . . . All we have to do,” continued Bavinck, is “enter into that accomplished work and rest in it for eternity.” We can affirm the Christian’s confession: “I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard the deposit I have entrusted to him” (2 Tim. 1:12). In faith, we have the certainty that God’s promises in Jesus Christ are for us, now and forever.

—Donald McKim, author, Daily Devotions with Herman Bavinck