Does faith as the instrument in our justification undermine assurance?

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I am a Primitive Baptist minister.  Unfortunately, one of the things that many of them believe today is that gospel faith has no bearing whatsoever on eternal salvation.  It is unfortunate because this is the repeated and universal witness of this New Testament (see, for example, Mark 16:16; John 3:16, 18, 36; 5:24; 6:47; Acts 10:43; 13:38-39; 16:31; Romans 1:16-18; 3:28; 5:1; Gal. 2:16; Eph. 2:8; 1 John 5:1; 5:11-13). It grieves me that they are adamant in their denial of this foundational Biblical doctrine.  I want to state categorically that I do not share this mistaken belief.  Though I believe that many of these brethren are brethren - they are brothers and sisters in Christ - they are very wrong in holding what I believe to be a dangerous and unscriptural position.

It also grieves me when I hear the silly arguments that they throw up in order to give an appearance of Biblical faithfulness to their position.  

It is interesting to me that some Primitive Baptists will argue against faith as the instrument of our justification before God by arguing that to do so is to undermine all assurance.  It is interesting because I recently heard a Roman Catholic apologist make the same argument against sola fide.  The argument is that if we believe that faith is the instrument of our justification, the necessary condition of eternal salvation, then we will always be in doubt because we will never know if we have truly "believed."  We will always wonder if our faith is good enough, strong enough, pure enough, and so on.  Doubt will ensue, it is claimed, and we will be brought into bondage.

There are of course numerous problems with this line of argument, not least of which that it simply and tragically ignores what the Scripture plainly says about faith and justification.  But the argument as such just doesn't work because it inevitably has to backfire on its adherents.  Unless you are willing to deny that faith is an evidence of salvation, it will and must backfire.  For if faith is an evidence of salvation, then you can still ask, "Have I truly believed?  Is my faith real?"  In other words, the road to doubt can be taken as easily from this position (that faith is only an evidence of salvation) as from the position that faith is the instrument of our justification before God.

In fact, I have known Primitive Baptists who have rejected faith as a means in eternal salvation and yet have spent all their lives wondering if they are truly saved.  I have heard them bewail and say,

Tis a point I long to know;

Oft it causes anxious thought:

Do I love the Lord or no?

Am I his or am I not?

Anyone who asks the question, "How do I know I am saved?" must immediately come to grips with how a person comes into the possession of salvation.  Simply to tell them that they must do nothing to be saved doesn't actually help them at all unless you are a universalist (which, sadly, some Primitive Baptists are).  For if some people will be lost forever, then you need to know that you are not one of them.  How do you determine that?  Do you tell them that faith is an evidence of salvation?  Well then, you are back at the same problem!  For that begs the question: "Did I truly believe or not?"  In other words, they can't escape the very problem they denounce in others.

Unfortunately, many Primitive Baptist ministers, in order to get around this conundrum, will water down what faith is to the point that it is no longer recognizable in terms of the New Testament description of it.  They will reduce faith to a good feeling about God, to wanting to be saved, or to some generic religious attitude that could basically be appealed to by anyone who doesn't want to go to hell.  This is really a form of universalism, at least it practically is.  It is also a form of the heresy of inclusivism, which is a tenet held by virtually every liberal, apostate denomination on the planet, the idea that any religious person is on their way to heaven.

What is missing in the argument against faith as the instrument of our justification, the argument that it undermines assurance, is any mention of Christ.  Christ is the reason why faith as necessary for salvation does not need to lead to a lack of assurance.  For justification by faith is not faith in faith.  The message of the gospel is not to look to your faith to be saved.  It is to look to Christ.  As the apostle Paul puts it to the Galatians, "Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified" (Gal. 2:16).  We believe in Jesus Christ that we might be justified.  If someone were to come to me and tell me, "I'm struggling with assurance because I just don't know if I have believed," my response to them would be, "Stop looking at your faith and look to Christ.  He is your salvation, not your faith.  Trust in him, rely on him.  It is his merit and his righteousness that is our hope and our salvation."

This doesn't mean of course that we shouldn't take heed to all the Scriptural passages that warn us against false professions, of those who call Christ Lord and yet in the end will not be saved (cf. Mt. 7:23-25).  But it does mean that I know that even the good works that are the evidence of true faith are the gift of Christ. We don't continue in sin because we are united to him by faith (Rom. 6).  I look to him to fulfill all the requirements in me.  I trust in him, not in myself.  This is the proper ground of assurance, not telling people that faith is merely an evidence of salvation and not a necessary condition of it.