Dazed and Confused: Hebrews 12:1-14 and Holiness | Theocast

Hebrews 12:14 in Context and the Confusion Around Holiness

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, we're doing another Dazed and Confused, where we look at a verse of the Bible that often causes confusion. Today is Hebrews chapter 12, verse 14. At the end of the verse, it says, without holiness, you will not see God.

There has been a lot of confusion and explanation around that verse, and so Justin and I are going to work through it, through the confessions, through a lot of what's been written and said, and then really do an exposition of the passage and show that it should actually lead you to rest in Christ and not doubt your assurance.

And in the members podcast, well, let's just say Justin gets a little excited. We'll see you in there. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed perspective.

Our hosts today are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and myself, John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Our brother Jimmy is still not able to join us.

He will be with us next week. We'll be tuning back into our series on Calvinism. So we welcome Jimmy back. He is still feverishly working on starting his church. By this point, it'd be up and running, so Lord willing.

And so be in prayer for Jimmy and all church planters around the world who are trying to bring the gospel to their cities. It is a very difficult work to do, as Justin and I can attest to. Justin Perdue.

That is true. Amen. Amen, somebody. John Moffitt. Anybody that comes to me and wants to talk about church planning, which I do have quite a few, and I'm sure Justin does too, there are times where I ask them, how good is your marriage?

Justin Perdue. Yeah, I often put it in these terms. John Moffitt. It's very true. Justin Perdue. I often put it in these terms. We've been in Asheville for five years. Our church is four years old. And it's like, man, there's been a lot of good that's happened in the last five years, and there's no way in the world for any sum of money that I would want to live those five years again.

And it's like, that's not to discourage anybody from ever doing church planning. It's just like, yeah, you might want to know what you're signing up for. And it's definitely worthwhile. And it's not for the faint of heart.

You know, I mean, God bless Jimmy and pray for brothers like him.

Yeah, and I would say that you and I were a little bit of the, you know, we went out and kind of just busted it and made a lot of mistakes. And in many ways, we were kind of on our own and how to handle it.

Like, you know, it's just different. And I wish, you know, if I could do it over again, I would definitely do it the way Jimmy's doing it. And so anyways, I'm looking forward to doing future church plans because you and I are going to help guys not make the same mistakes we made.

We got started. So it's not as hard. It's still hard, but it doesn't, I don't think it needs to be as hard as sometimes you and I made it as we talk.

Like, yeah, I probably could have done a little different. But yeah, I mean, and I had a good, I had a good support system from a distance, you know, I had, you know, friendship and mentorship from a distance, but not so much with respect to church planting in particular, you know, so was going in and doing the church planting piece kind of like, okay, let's exercise some common sense and just try not to be a moron, you know, in the way that we go about this.

So, yeah. Yeah. Church planning, it seems simple and it actually is, but it can be complicated.

Yeah, well, there's just so many like logistical practical decisions that you have to make that you're not prepared to make. You're like, oh my gosh, like I'm spending so much time agonizing over all of these like X's and O's and nuts and bolts decisions.

Because you don't have a building and everything's from scratch. And it's just like, man, you know, I just want to do the simple work that's deep, of course, of just preaching Christ and loving the saints.

And that is the most important stuff you do.

But there's a lot more entailed. Could you imagine, and maybe one day, you know, they'll be able to start this ministry, but could you imagine a guy going into a city and there's a ministry that takes care of all of the administrative work for him?

So, website, bulletins, location.

The answer to that question, can I imagine it? No. Because that would have been a huge help to us for sure.

Right. And we say to you, Justin, the only thing we want you to do is study God's word. Love the saints. Preach Christ and find people to bring to your church. Like just start as many Bible studies and meet as many people as you can.

That's the only thing we want you to worry about. We're going to take care of everything else. Then you're, I would say, and I'm not exaggerating. I would say 85 to 90 of your stress would have been relieved.

Yeah. I mean, a good portion of it, for sure. Just because in the beginning, it's where are we going to meet and how are we going to get the money and where are we going to get the chairs and who's going to print the bulletins?

Right. What's our logo going to be?

What's this? What's that? Exactly. Yeah. Like how, where are we going to get signage from and how much is that going to cost?

So if you're a millionaire and you want to donate to a ministry, call me and we'll start a church planting organization so we can help guys start planting churches a little bit easier.

So I think we can probably consider that, the little church planting piece that was.

Free for the listeners.

We could consider that our cultural update maybe. I mean, other than to say that a week from today, we're going to be like wheels up headed to Cali. Yeah. I can't wait, man. So by the time people hear this, we'll obviously be back from California, but still.

JP, you and I are landing in LAX around 10 and by the time we get the car. That's West Coast time. Yeah. West Coast time. And by the time we hit the car, it'll be lunchtime for us. And bro, we will be hitting In-N-Out right next to the airport.

Come on. I haven't had In-N-Out in a few years. We're going to start the caloric intake immediately. Yeah.

So I've been to California a number of times, but it's been a few years since I've been out there. So I haven't had In-N-Out since probably 2014, 15.

So they have it in Texas now. So I was able to have it last year in Waco. Yeah, yeah. So, but anyway, and then from there, that's where we're hitting. That's right. When we get down to San Diego, though, for dinner, we are definitely already got some.

There's a couple of pastor friends down there who, yeah, who's got us lined up for some beers and tacos. So we're ready to go. God be praised. That's right. Well, Justin, I can't think of a transition for us other than once you tell us what we're talking about today.

Hebrews 12:1-14 and the Call to Run with Endurance

That was well done, John. Thank you for that. We are talking today about another text that is often confused or misunderstood, misapplied. And today it's from the book of Hebrews, one of the great books of scripture.

We're going to be looking at Hebrews chapter 12, in particular, verses 1 through 14, and even sort of narrowing the focus a little bit more. We're going to be talking a lot about an understanding or misunderstanding of Hebrews 12, 14, which reads, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

And so what we're going to do first is we're going to go to the text. I'm going to read Hebrews 12, 1 through 14 for us just so that we can hear that together. Then you and I are going to talk a little bit about the confusion that exists out there in terms of how this is often preached and applied and understood.

And then we're going to come back to the passage after we talk about some of the confusion and hopefully clarify just from a biblical, reformed, Christocentric, redemptive historical perspective, how we believe that Hebrews 12, 1 through 14, in particular, Hebrews 12, 14 should be preached and understood.

Before we go further, I'm going to read Hebrews 12, 1 through 14 for us. So if you are in your car, I am not the ESV Bible app guy, though I do have a cold, and so I am sounding especially masculine today.

You can sit back and get a little bit of free Bible app. Can you do a British accent? Well, not consistently. So it wouldn't be a good call for me to do that. So yeah, I mean, we can't give the people everything they want, Jon.

Just some. Jon Moffitt. We're going to save that for the members. Justin Perdue. Maybe so. We'll see. Yet to be determined. All right, here we go. Hebrews 12, beginning in verse 1. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives.

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness.

For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

Strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.". To which we would say, amen. Thanks be to God for his word. So, John, why don't you start us off, brother, in thinking about assessing some of the confusion that exists around this text?

Yeah, Justin and I started last month a series that once a month we thought we'd call Dazed and Confused, where we take passages that people read and they walk away absolutely befuddled on, I'm not sure how to interpret this.

And it's because they've been handed a hermeneutic that tends to be fear-based, that tends to be pietistic, centered on the Christian instead of Christ. And this is definitely one of those passages that over the recent years, even from reform guys who have brought some confusion.

So, this morning, we've got a couple of quotes and a couple of men that we're going to look at, I think, that have caused this confusion and how someone can read this. Or have at least contributed to it.

Yeah, contributed to it. Absolutely. Absolutely. And if you're not new to Theocast, this won't be new to you, but the concepts of it are hopefully going to be helpful. So, when you are specifically hearing these admonitions from the writer of Hebrews, and it says, strive for peace with everyone and for holiness, without which no one will see the Lord, that can seem very intimidating.

And you walk away from that. And the question you have to ask yourself is, okay, how much holiness? And where in this particular passage, and if we were to continue reading and just in verse 15, the verse after it, see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble and may be defiled.

And then it goes on verse 16, that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright. So, it keeps going down, these different ideas. But the question is, is there a 60 -40, 70 -30, 100?

And we know it's not 100%. So, this is where there becomes confusion, because there becomes an emphasis on this idea of holiness. And the confusion that I think Justin and I want to bring out is when you cannot hold in tension what's going on here in Hebrews, you begin to emphasize a side of theology that is fear-based, meaning that it constantly makes the believer afraid of losing this glorious assurance that they should have.

And so, they live every single day wondering, is this the day that I lose my salvation? Because I don't have the holiness that is required. Then you have different denominations and you have different public speakers who put different emphasis on how much and what.

They give you the list of holiness. And there are some that I've been a part of that it's so ridiculous that if women wear pants, then they're not holy enough. It can create all kinds of craziness. So, we're going to kind of look at where this comes from, those who have contributed to it, and I've got a couple of quotes I was going to read, Justin, unless you have something to add right now.

Justin Perdue. I think that what we want to point out is just the inconsistency that is introduced by many using a text like Hebrews 12. They introduce a mystery into the Scripture and into the plan of salvation that the Bible does not contain.

And we're going to point out more particularly what that mystery is and that confusion. This text is not held in appropriate tension, as you already alluded to, with other texts in the Scripture and the clear teaching of the gospel by faith.

We're saved by Christ through faith alone, grounded in the grace of God. But then even in the context of the book of Hebrews, this text is just kind of ripped out and it's interpreted in a vacuum with a hermeneutic of fear and a hermeneutic of, okay, we need, the Christian needs to take holiness seriously, and so let me use this text to motivate the Christian.

Let me make this text about the Christian, not about Christ and identity in Christ and the loving discipline of the Heavenly Father, but let me make this about the Christian and his or her pursuit of holiness, motivated and driven by fear of judgment.

And that's what we're going to be talking about more. So yeah, go ahead and read some quotes, man.

Justin Perdue. Yeah, and before I do, throughout the years of Theocast, people are very quick to call the prior cast antinomian. And we've tried our best to help explain that we are not antinomian. This is totally off topic, Justin, but I wanted to bring it in because I think it'll apply.

The moment someone throws at me antinomian and then I have them explain it to me, I immediately want to throw the label back at them and say, if you aren't crushed by the law, you're actually antinomian because those who really understand the law will never try to attain it.

You have to run to Christ. So when someone says, well, you guys just don't believe in obedience, that's not true. We absolutely do. We just don't believe our obedience attains anything for us.

Justin Perdue. Right, right. I had two comments on that, and then we'll jump back into Hebrews 12. One, we're not antinomian because we uphold the third use of the law. So the law is guide for the believer.

Now, we preach the first use of the law all the time as well, which you already alluded to. It's that mirror. You know, it shows us our sin and drives us to Christ. And then underneath that, in Jesus, we use the law as the guide for our lives.

But then the other thing that I would say is that we're not antinomian in that we absolutely uphold and believe in biblical piety, and by that we mean we believe and understand biblically that there will be transformation of life by the Holy Spirit of God in the life of the Christian.

Like, full stop. It will happen. Now, how that happens, why that happens, how God makes that happen, those are the things we're going to be touching on today. And then what that means for us as Christians and as pastors in the way we communicate and teach and preach and understand the Bible.

Jon Moffitt. That's right. So in these quotes that I'm about to read, one is from John Piper, and then I've got another one from Mark Jones. And I think that what ends up happening—these are men who I believe love Christ.

I am not calling either of them heretics. Their life and ministry is one that we can say has evidenced up to this point, has evidence that they do understand the gospel, but have brought some confusing statements where they're trying to bring clarity to the Christian life.

I do not believe these men have bad intentions. They're not trying to make money. They're not trying—I don't think they're trying—they're not wolves. So please hear us when we are pointing this out. Yeah, we're just saying in their attempts to bring clarity, I think they've caused confusion.

And this is where when you try and settle the matter where there is tension and no mystery in Scripture—in other words, there's a tension, but not a mysterious tension, it's there—and you try and solve that, you end up creating errors in your theology.

And so this is like the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. They both exist, and if you try and overdo one on the other side, you end up creating heresies that are in there, or error. Heresies is such a hard word, but an error in your theology.

So in a book—this is about four years old, back in 2015—Thomas Schreiner wrote a book called Faith Alone. It's a new book back then on justification. And in the foreword of this, Piper is trying to explain the essence of the book, of what's going on.

And so the question is, how is someone justified? And Piper writes, the stunning question answer is, sola fide, faith alone. But be sure, he continues, but be sure you hear this carefully and precisely.

He says, write with God by faith alone, not attain heaven by faith alone. There are other conditions for attaining heaven, but no others for entering a right relationship to God. In fact, one must already be in right relationship with God by faith alone in order to meet the other conditions, which I don't want to take John Piper out of context.

I'm going to continue to read to the next paragraph, because he does clarify what he means by enter or attain heaven. We are justified by faith alone, but not by faith that is alone. Faith is alone, is not faith in union with Christ.

Union with Christ makes his perfection and power ours through faith. And in union with Christ, faith is living and active with Christ's power. So at this point, I completely agree, and so would Justin.

But here is where things get a little watery. Such faith always works by love and produces the obedience of faith. And that obedience, imperfect as it is still to the day we die, is not the basis of our justification, but a necessary evidence of a fruit of justification.

In this sense, love and obedience, inherently righteousness, is required of believers, not for justification. That is required for heaven, not for entering a right standing with God. So he is saying that we are justified by faith.

In other words, our relationship to God is by faith alone. But our works, he will admit that they come through the power of the Spirit. But in order for you to attain heaven, you have to have these good works.

And somehow we have created a two-step level of eternality, where for the first time in history that I am aware of, we have this tension of you can actually be in a right relationship with God, but actually never make it home with Him, which is fascinating to me.

So a couple of thoughts from me before you give us the quote from Mark Jones. To pick up on what you just said, John, it seems that we are introducing, and by we I mean that's kind of a proverbial we, you know, like listening to what Piper wrote.

We're introducing this hypothetical category where we could, in theory, be justified by Jesus and then fail in good works, fail in our obedience or our holiness, and thereby be condemned on the last day.

So in that sense, it's like our good works and our holiness and our obedience matters for something. For instance, it matters for salvation that is not yet finished, right? So it's like redemption is not yet complete.

Salvation is not yet complete in terms of the work of Christ, but now our holiness and our obedience is something that we're going to do, yes, in the power of the Spirit, as Piper would acknowledge and others, but it's something that we're going to do that's going to actually complete the job of salvation.

So that's one concern. Another concern is this. I'm just going to frame it this way. If what we're talking about is our good works being evidence of the work of God which saved us, then that's fine. We would agree with that.

If you're saying good works are evidence of the work of God that saved us, we would say, amen, we agree. But then my question is, why don't you just say it that way? That's right. Because by not saying it that way, with that kind of precision, you introduce all kinds of confusion, which is why we're even having this conversation today.

That's right. Those are my two thoughts initially. So maybe, unless you got something else, you want to read the Mark Jones quote?

Yeah, I would say people are telling us, John, you're splitting hairs. John J .P., you're splitting hairs here. And I would say, well, not necessarily. The precision here is important because you are, and I know you're going to read a quote from Trent here, but you are bringing back in a theology that the Reformation fought against.

I mean, you are messing with people's assurance. And it's hard because the moment you emphasize the holiness of a believer as the way in which they find assurance. Now, listen, I will say, and I'm going to clarify this, I will say that our obedience can and should bring assurance to the believer because this is what the Confessions say.

I would say that it bolsters our assurance. That's true. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. But it is not the ground of your salvation. It is not the ground of your salvation. Exactly right.

And that distinction matters. Our good works and obedience bolsters our assurance. It's an encouragement to us, but it is not the ground of our confidence.

No. And as a matter of fact, if you do not have the ground of your salvation, of your assurance, sola fide, then your good works will only condemn you because they're never enough.

That's right. And by saying the good works being the ground of our confidence, I mean in any measure. I don't mean like, oh, the ground of our assurance is Jesus plus my works. That's right. The ground of our assurance is the finished work of Christ alone.

That's right. And then good works produced, you know, as we are in Christ Jesus, we've been united to him by faith in the Holy Spirit of God and dwells us and conforms us to the image of Christ and we walk in the good works ordained for us.

Okay. Yes, that encourages us in the faith and bolsters our assurance. That's right.

So John Piper, non-confessional Reformed Confession Baptist. And then I'm going to read to us a confessional Presbyterian who has tried to speak into, and again, I think Mark Jones has good intentions.

He's trying to speak into the classic sanctification debate confusion. And he speaks to it in this way. It says, this is from his book Antinomianism on page 64. He says, if faith is an antecedent condition required of sinners in order to receive pardon of sins, that is justification and faith are not synonymous, then as Reformed theologians insisted, good works prepared in advance by God, Ephesians 2 .10, and done in the power of the Spirit, Romans 8, are consequent conditions for salvation.

Right there. That's what we're speaking of is that confusion. In other words, he continues to insist that believers perform good works only as their thankful response to the triune God for all that He has done for them may give the impression that they are not actually necessary for salvation.

But as a consequent condition following from receiving Christ, believers are required to do good works. That is where we're speaking of is the emphasis confusion where he just took the ground and he flipped it and basically said the ground of your assurance is your good works.

We're excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called Faith vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. And we, the hosts, put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

And you can get this at theocast .org slash primer. And if you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us. You can do that by joining our Total Access membership.

That's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years or simply by donating to our ministry. You can do that by going to our website, theocast .org.

We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

So again, a couple of thoughts from me, right? So the first thing is that Mark Jones basically just said that if we preach obedience from a perspective of delight, then we are doing something that could confuse people.

So in other words, he is putting himself at odds with the paradigm that we'll often talk about. Obedience is driven by delight and not dread. He is placing himself against that in some way. Maybe not completely, of course, but at least in some measure, as though to preach obedience driven by delight and love and gratitude is somehow inadequate.

So that's one observation. Two, and this one is maybe more important. This is a demonstration, I think, of a human level philosophical conclusion, making one that the Bible does not make. And so this is kind of how the reasoning goes, okay?

So we have to hold these things in tension biblically, but when you don't, problems arise. So here's the biblical truth. As believers, we will do good works, one. Two, those works are not for merit. And then three, those good works are evidence of the fact that God has done a work in us.

Those are biblical truths. Now, where this goes at the human level is this. We'll say, okay, well, if there aren't evidences, then God did not do that work in you, meaning if there aren't evidences, you were not justified.

Therefore, in order to know that you've been justified, you need to do good works. And therefore, works are a part of our final salvation, right? That's kind of how the reasoning meanders around. And then we finally land in this place like, okay, if the evidence isn't there, you were not justified, right?

So in order to know you've been justified, you need to do good works. Therefore, in order to be finally saved, works must be there. And so you need to do good works so that you'll be saved. That's how it ends up being presented.

And that's what's wrong with this, is it doesn't work that way. You're trying to reverse engineer something that you can't reverse engineer. You're kind of inverting the entire relationship between justification and sanctification, not meaning to, but you have done that.

And in doing that, you have basically killed the order salutis. In terms of how we actually come to be finally saved and in heaven with God forever. And that's a huge problem. I mean, to understate it, that's a huge problem.

Kevin DeYoung, in his book, The Hole in Our Holiness, which was published, I think, in 2012, it was a response to the sanctification debate that was going on. And again, I think Kevin DeYoung has been very helpful in a number of ways.

He is an ordained Reformed pastor in the PCA at this point and is a brother in Christ without doubt and has good motivations. John and I don't question that for a second. But I think we would both say humbly that that book was an overreaction to what was going on in that sanctification debate.

And he makes the statement in that book that he would stake his ministry on the fact that the writer to the Hebrews in verse 14 of chapter 12 is not talking about positional holiness, to which John and I would say we completely agree.

And we'll get to that more in a moment. But then this quote from the book is something that's concerning. DeYoung writes, on the last day, God will not acquit us because our good works were good enough, but he will look for evidence that our good confession was not phony.

It's in this sense that we must be holy. To which I would just say, what about justification by faith? What about unconditional election? What about union with Christ? It's like we've abandoned grace altogether and we're back under a covenant of works.

Do this and live. This sounds like, at best, Arminian, and maybe Roman Catholic, which we're going to get to in just a moment. It's a remarkable statement that he's making. Let me just read from the Council of Trent really quickly, John, if you'll let me do this, because I think that this illustrates really well some of the concerns that you and I have when it comes to this issue.

The Council of Trent, many will understand, was a Roman Catholic. It was the Church of Rome. It was an ecumenical council that took place from 1545 to 1563, and what it essentially was was a response to Reformation doctrine.

So the Church of Rome was clarifying itself. Anti-Reformation. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. They were clarifying themselves over and against the Protestant Reformation. So session six, which took place on January the 13th, 1547, out of each session meeting that they would have, canons, doctrines were produced, right?

So session six, canon 24 on justification reads this way. If anyone saith that the justice, and by justice they mean justification. If anyone saith that the justice received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works, but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof, let him be anathema.

So the thing that I would want to highlight from that, I don't think any evangelical is saying that our good works increase our justification. I don't think that's an issue at all. But there are many, including some of the men that we've referenced already in this podcast who, because of a lack of clarity and some of the confusion that they're demonstrating, they are sounding a lot like Rome in saying like, you're justified by faith in Christ, but in order to go on being justified, you must do good works.

And so that is the language of Trent, that our justification is preserved by our good works. And so it's like, holy smokes, guys, can we like pump the brakes for a moment? Because what you're saying sounds Roman.

And that's a huge concern.

Confessions, Good Works, and Assurance

So brother, take us to the Westminster. Yeah. And I don't believe these guys are trying to bring in another gospel. I do not believe they're heretical. No, no, no, no. So please don't hear us trying to pit us against them.

This is purely a call. This is a hand across the shoulder saying, maybe we need to rethink how we worded this. Maybe we need to rethink what we're emphasizing. This is kind of the reason why we wrote Faith versus Faithfulness, a primer on Rush, because it points out the pietistic tendencies we have, where we will look at a passage that has this tension in it, which we're going to look at here in a minute, and yet we become confused.

The moment you are so concerned with the performance of a Christian that you put their eternity at stake based upon their performance, that is to deny the very work that Christ did on the cross.

That's right. It's to point the believer to himself and not Jesus. Right.

Let me read to you real quick the confession. So this would be the same confession that Jones and DeYoung would read. And they, I think even in both of their books, have used this section, which is of Good Works chapter 16 .2.

It says, these good works done in obedience to God's commands are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith. And I would say, amen, James chapter 2. Completely agree. And by them, believers manifest their thankfulness, strengthen their assurance.

Again, it says strengthen, not establish. That is such a key word when referencing assurance. Edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the gospel, stop the mouths of adversaries, glorify God, whose workmanship they are.