One basic thing that every Christian ought to know beyond any

Transcription

1 Study 2 by Brandon Park How Can I Be Sure I m Really Saved? One basic thing that every Christian ought to know beyond any shadow of doubt is that he or she is saved, but how can you be sure? Understanding salvation Being born-again is a definite experience. How dumb would it be if someone asked you, Have you ever been born? It would be even dumber if you responded, Well, I hope so... I m doing the best I can! Many times when you ask someone if they have been born-again their response is Well, I ve always been a Christian. That would be like saying, I ve always been born! Just like birth is a definite experience, so is being born again. Salvation has nothing to do with your self-effort. Suppose a friend decides he wants to give you a Lamborghini Veneno, which is currently the most expensive car in the world, priced at $3.9 million dollars. You tell him that you can t accept such an extravagant gift and that you felt obligated to give him something to help cover the cost of the car. So you offer him a quarter and say Thanks! Then when you come pulling up in your neighbourhood sporting such a nice ride and someone compliments you on your would be car, you say, Thanks, my friend and I bought this car. Not only would that be ridiculous, but also gravely insulting to your friend. We try to do that same thing with God by adding our two bits of self-effort to His amazing grace. When we do that, we take the glory from Almighty God. There s nothing you can do to earn your salvation (Ephesians 2:9). When you get to heaven, all you re going to be able to say is, Jesus paid it all! You can be 100% assured of your salvation. Scripture makes that clear in 1 John 5:13: I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. We don t have a hope-so salvation; we have a know-so salvation. The Apostle John wrote the Gospel of John as well as the epistles of First, Second, and Third John. Evidently, in the early church, some were having some serious questions and doubts about their salvation. In this small epistle of just five chapters, John uses the words know or known 38 times! It s been called The Book of Assurance because it

2 Christianity is not a religion; it s a relationship, and this relationship with God is basic to salvation. was written to give us the assurance that we might know where we stand with God. If you have doubts about your faith, that doesn t mean that you ve never been saved. As a matter of fact, we only tend to doubt that which we believe. However, doubt is to your spirit what pain is to your body. Pain doesn t mean that you re dead. Pain means that there s something wrong something in your body isn t functioning as it ought to. So just as pain is a signal that there s something wrong in your body, doubt is a signal that there s something wrong with your spirit. Why do you think some Christians have doubts about their salvation? Birthmarks of a believer The first mark of a man made new is that he is under new management, and John writes that if someone is a genuine disciple of Jesus Christ, there will be clear evidences of that salvation. Throughout his book, he gives us many birthmarks of a believer. Here are seven of the most dominant ones: 1. Are you enjoying a relationship with Jesus? Christianity is not a religion; it s a relationship, and this relationship with God is basic to salvation. John gives us the first test in 1 John 1:2-3, This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. It s a characteristic of any believer who loves God and Jesus Christ to have fellowship with Him. Salvation isn t just a cold hard fact it s something we experience. We can enjoy knowing God intimately! Jesus said, I came that they may have life and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). We come to know and experience His comfort in hard times, His grace in our failures, His provision in our need, His strength in our weakness, and His joy when we feel like giving up. Our fellowship with Him is the abundant life we experience! A six-yearold girl asked her father about accepting Jesus. Her father led her in a prayer in which she asked Jesus into her heart. About a week later, she came to him and said, Dad, how big was Jesus? He said, I don t know. He was a grown man, but people were shorter back then. I would guess about 5 10? She said, Daddy, how tall am I? About 3 6. Daddy, I m confused. If Jesus was 5 10 and I am 3 6, and Jesus came into my

3 heart, wouldn t He just kind of poke out everywhere? There is a profound truth in what that little girl said. If the Jesus of eternal life has come to dwell in you, the evidence of that eternal life will overshadow you. So let me ask, are you enjoying a relationship with God and Jesus Christ? Do you sense His presence? Do you have a love for Him that draws you into His presence? Do you experience the refreshing, almost overwhelming sense of grace that comes upon you when you discover a new truth in His Word? If so, you re experiencing the fellowship of salvation. 2. Do you see a decreasing pattern of sin in your life? A person who is truly saved has a growing sensitivity to sin in their life. In 1 John 1:5-6 we read,... God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. Therefore if we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. Adrian Rogers used to say, A non-christian leaps into sin and loves it; a Christian lapses into sin and loathes it. So test yourself: Do you now desire deliverance from the sin that used to entangle you? You were once self-confident and trusting in your own goodness. Do you now judge yourself as a sinner before a holy God? Do you yield yourself to Him? John goes on to say, If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. One thing is sure: the person who is truly saved is sensitive to the sinful realities in their own life. It seems like the closer we get to the light of Jesus Christ, the more we begin to see our own imperfections. We are not saved because we keep His commands; we keep His commands because we are saved. John s letter goes on to say, Everyone who sins is breaking God s law, for all sin is contrary to the law of God. And you know that Jesus came to take away our sins, and there is no sin in him. Anyone who continues to live in him will not sin. But anyone who keeps on sinning does not know him or understand who he is... Those who have been born into God s family do not make a practice of sinning, because God s life is in them (1 John 3:4-9). I remember reading that Scripture shortly after I became a Christian, and I was very worried! I thought to myself, I must not be saved because I know that I still have the ability to sin! However, the verbs in this verse are in the present tense, which means the verse speaks of a continual, habitual course of action. This verse speaks of those who make a practice of sinning. John is saying that a person who is born of God does not make sin his practice, his lifestyle, or his habit. Before I was saved, I was running towards sin; now I m running from it! I may slip, I may fall, I may fail, but my heart s desire is to live for God! Sometimes I get s from Christians who doubt their salvation because they can t seem to break a sinful or unwise habit in their life. They fear that because they struggle with a particular sin, it must mean they re lost and don t know God. In I John 3:4 we read that a true believer cannot practice lawlessness. (In the original language of the Bible, that word means living as if there were no law. ) This is a person who doesn t care what God thinks about his habits. A true Christian can still sin, and they may struggle with the same temptation the rest of their lives; however, a Christian who sins but responds with confession

4 If we love Him, and His love is in us, then we re going to love what He loves, which is His family, the Church. and repentance is not the same as a non-christian who shamelessly and unrepentantly practices sin. A true believer can t do that because God s life is in them. 3. Do you strive to obey God s Word? In 1 John 2:3 it couldn t be any clearer: By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. This is how Jesus described a true disciple when He gave the great commission: teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19-20). The word translated commandments refers specifically to the orders of Christ rather than just laws in general. John doesn t beat around the bush here. He says, Don t tell me you are really saved if you are not keeping God s commandments! Now let me be very clear: We are not saved because we keep His commands; we keep His commands because we are saved. If I m being honest, I haven t always kept every single one of God s commandments, but that doesn t mean that I m not saved. The key to understanding the difficult passages in the Bible is to dig a little bit deeper into the original language to extract the full meaning. The word keep in the original Greek is tereo, and it simply means to watch over. It was a word that sailors used back in the day. In the ancient world, they didn t have nifty GPS navigational systems to guide them. They navigated by the stars. They would keep their eye on the heavens, and they called that tereo keeping the stars. Keeping the stars is much like keeping the commandments. Any sailor could occasionally get blown off course, get distracted, or waver around, but at the end of the day, they would look up to the stars and make sure their direction was in alignment with what they saw in the heavens. When we keep God s commandments, we steer by them. None of us is perfect, but from the moment that I gave my life to Jesus Christ, there has been a desire to keep God s Word. Martin Luther said, My conscience is captive to the Word of God. Do you desire to obey God out of gratitude for all that Jesus has done for you? If so, you ve passed an important test that indicates an evidence of salvation. 4. Do you see a decreasing love for the things in this world? In 1 John 2:15 it says, Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. When the Bible talks about the world in this sense, it s the Greek term kosmos, which refers to this world s system. It encompasses things like false religion, worldly theology, crime, immorality, and materialism. When you become a Christian, the same system of this world that used to attract you now begins to repel you. You may be lured into worldly things from time to time, but it isn t what you love; it s what you hate. Jesus said that those who follow Him are not of this world, just as He was not of this world. 5. Do you love the body of Christ? We read in I John 2:9-10, Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.

5 In other words, to say that you are in the light (to call yourself a Christian) should mean that your life shows the patterns of Christ. Loving fellow Christians comes naturally to the believer. Jesus said, By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:35). Love is the nature of God and the characteristic of His children. If we love Him, and His love is in us, then we re going to love what He loves, which is His family, the Church. No single church or individual Christian is perfect, but we still love them regardless. One man said, A church is comprised of people who have finally realized that they are sinners and banded themselves together to do something about it. Someone who is a genuine believer will want to be in church, loving the body of Christ and growing with other believers. 6. Do you experience answered prayer? In 1 John 3:21-22 we read, Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. One way you can know you are a believer is if God answers your prayers. God is more eager to answer the prayers of His children than we are to ask. God may not always answer our prayers the way we want Him to, but He does answer. There are a lot of people who may pray to God occasionally, but they don t even know the God to Whom they re praying. Because a true believer has entered into a relationship with God, they have a confidence that God can and will answer their prayers (1 John 5:14-15). Jesus gave Himself for me so that He might give Himself to me so that He could live His life through me. 7. Are you experiencing criticism or rejection because of your faith? John says, Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you... (1 John 3:13). In the preceding verses, John uses a Bible illustration from the beginning of time to illustrate his point. Cain hated Abel and murdered him. Why did he do that? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother s were righteous (vs. 12). Because of the way you live your life before God and because of your stand for truth, you will face criticism for it. Have you ever experienced animosity, hostility, bitterness, alienation, or downright persecution for representing and advocating what is right? If so, that s a sign that you belong to the One who suffered the same way for the same reason (1 Peter 4:4; Philippians 1:28). When you are suffering because of Whom you belong to, don t ever think, I wonder if God cares. Of course He does, so whenever this world persecutes you because of your faith, just remind yourself, This is good because it s pretty clear Whom I am with! The evidence will be in the heartbeat If you are saved, the evidence will be there. In Matthew 7:16, Jesus spoke of His true followers, You will know them by their fruits. There was a picture on the front page of a local newspaper, and if you had seen it, it would have certainly caught your eye. It was a photograph of a man in a hospital bed in what looked like the intensive care unit. Many tubes and health monitors surrounded his bed. And then the photo depicted a woman standing next to her husband s bed with her ear gently resting on her husband s chest a very peculiar picture to say the least. Here s the back-story. This man was in dire need of a

6 heart transplant. His heart was failing, and if he didn t receive a new heart soon, he would go into cardiac failure. Tragically, a young man was killed in a car accident, and it was his heart that was used in the transplant. But here is where the story gets interesting. The young man who was killed was this man s son, and it was their son s heart that was given to his father. And the picture was depicting this woman with her ear resting on her husband s chest, listening to the heartbeat of her son. When I heard that story, I thought, Lord, when people are around me, I want them to hear the heartbeat of your Son, Jesus Christ, living and abiding inside of me! After all, Jesus gave Himself for me so that He might give Himself to me so that He could live His life through me. And if you are a genuine disciple of Jesus Christ, that will be your heart s desire as well. Suppose someone were to ask you, How do I know if I m really saved? How would you respond? Do you have any questions about what you re learning so far? If not, how can your coach pray for you today?