There is a witness of the Spirit, with some sinners, that they are _not_ children of God, and this witness is through the truth, though the sinner does not know that it is the Spirit who reveals it to him. We call this work of the Spirit conviction of sin. The witness of the Spirit that we are children of God, and the assurance of faith of which Scripture speaks, are one and the same thing, the former designation only emphasizing the source from which the assurance springs. False assurance is destitute of humility, but true assurance is so absorbed in Christ that self is forgotten. Self-consciousness, and desire to display one's faith, are not marks of true assurance. When we say: "That man has a great deal of assurance," we have in mind the false and self- centered assurance of the hypocrite or the self-deceiver.
Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 231--"It has been said that any one who can read Edwards's Religious Affections, and still believe in his own conversion, may well have the highest assurance of its reality. But how few there were in Edwards's time who gained the assurance, may be inferred from the circumstance that Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Emmons, disciples of Edwards and religious leaders in New England, remained to the last uncertain of their conversion." He can attribute this only to the semi-deistic spirit of the time, with its distant God and imperfect apprehension of the omnipresence and omnipotence of Christ. Nothing so clearly marks the practical progress of Christianity as the growing faith in Jesus, the only Revealer of God in nature and history as well as in the heart of the believer. As never before, faith comes directly to Christ, abides in him, and finds his promise true: "_Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world_" (_Mat. 28:20_). "Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void and find The Rock beneath."
(_d_) That faith necessarily leads to good works, since it embraces the whole truth of God so far as made known, and appropriates Christ, not only as an external Savior, but as an internal sanctifying power (Heb. 7:15, 16; Gal. 5:6).
Good works are the proper evidence of faith. The faith which does not lead men to act upon the commands and promises of Christ, or, in other words, does not lead to obedience, is called in Scripture a "dead," that is, an unreal, faith. Such faith is not saving, since it lacks the voluntary element--actual appropriation of Christ (James 2:14-26).