Assurance: How to Know You're Saved

[Guest shiloh357]

One thing that will paralyze a Christian spiritually is a lack of assurance.   Assurance is vital to the Christian life.  It is not something we can lack and expect to grow as believers in Jesus.  We cannot adequately share our faith with others if we really don’t know if we saved. We cannot talk about Christian hope if we are in doubt, looking over our shoulders, not knowing from one day to the next if we are saved or not.

It is important to point out that the disciples who later became the apostles, had an amazing boldness that was rooted in assurance and that assurance was rooted in a personal encounter with the risen Christ.   Before they saw Jesus raised from the dead, they were cowering and hiding away, afraid to show their faces in public. All of the miracles they saw didn’t’ sustain them.   It was a life changing encounter with the risen Christ that made them into men who were as bold as lions, who preached with power and confidence.  It is only a true encounter of Jesus will change us and that is something that everyone must have.  It is not enough to profess to be a Christ on the basis of anything other than a saving faith in the Person of Jesus Christ.   That is required for us to have assurance.

Assurance is connected our faith and our hope.   Heb. 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”   The word for “substance” in the Greek carries the connotation of assurance or confidence.  Faith is the assurance of what our hope.   And Christian hope is understood as a “confident expectation.   Faith is the assurance, the grounds of what we are expecting, anticipating.   I have a confident expectation that I will spend eternity with Jesus.   Heaven is my hope, and my grounds for that hope is faith.   My hope is not is not grounded in a fairy tale, it is not grounded in my efforts, but it is grounded in faith.   Faith for salvation is grounded on the Word of God, according to Rom. 10:17 which says, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

So, what does the Word of God say about our assurance?   Does God want us to know we are saved?   Of course, He does.  It does not serve the best interests of the Kingdom of God for us walk around in fear and in doubt, never having any confidence that we are saved and going to Heaven.   So let’s look at some passages that tell us, first of all, that we can know today, right this very minute that we are saved and this let’s see what God has provided to remind us daily that we are saved.

[Guest shiloh357]

Scriptures about Assurance

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” (Joh 5:24)

This verse occurs in a context about the authority of the Son of God to impart eternal life and to resurrect the dead.   Jesus, though in this particular verse states that when we put our faith in Jesus today, we are passed from death to life.  Notice the present tense grammatical structure of this verse.  In modern English is says, “He that hears my word, and believes on him that sent me HAS (present tense) everlasting lfe and shall not come into condemnation but IS (present tense) passed from death to life.   This is means, first of all that eternal life starts NOW.  It is something we have now, and we are passed from death to life.  This verse tells me that I can know that I have eternal life right now because of faith in Jesus and in the Father who sent Him.

“And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.”  (1Jn 5:11-13)

This passage is one of the most important passages on assurance.  Here again, we are told that knowing Jesus as our Savior is the basis for knowing we are saved.   This passage says that if we have Jesus, we have (present) eternal life.    He writes this to us that we “may know” (present tense) that we have eternal life.  And this knowing, is rooted in a sincere faith in Jesus Christ. Anyone who says you cannot know for a fact that you are saved and have a genuine hope for eternity with Jesus is not telling you the truth.  

Look at this: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1Pe 1:3-5)

We have born again unto a living hope and the basis of this the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  We have a living hope because we have a living Savior. We are born again to a living hope, a confident expectation to an inheritance that is reserved for us who are kept by HIS power through faith unto salvation.    He has reserved an inheritance for us and is keeping us saved so that we can one day realize the fulness of our inheritance.  It is our living, confident expectation.

Consider II Cor. 5:1: “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” (2Co 5:1)  As believers in Christ, we know that we have a heavenly body prepared for us.  Paul says we can KNOW this.  We can have complete assurance in this.   Again, notice that this is present tense. We currently have a heavenly body waiting for us in Heaven.  We know that when we die we will be clothed in that body.  The ancient Greeks viewed the human spirit to be something like a wisp of smoke.   But here we see that we have a body in Heaven today, right now and we know this today, right now.   Everything about assurance is “right now.”  Eternal life is “right now.” 

 

[Guest shiloh357]

You know, it is easy in the daily grind, the trials and tribulations of life to get discouraged and disheartened.  None of us are perfect and Christians are still human and we fail.  We fail and we break the Lords’ heart in the process.  Life gets hard and we get distracted because of the pressures we face, and many of us have to walk a gauntlet of adversity and hardship and our flesh gets the better of us.   We might as well admit it. It’s the just the plain, cold hard truth. That’s when assurance is vital.  That’s when we need to know more than ever that God still loves us, that He is still with us, that He hasn’t thrown us away.

God’s love isn’t like human love.  Human love is hot today, cold tomorrow, it is fickle and preferential. God is often portrayed as a potter who is molding us and working in our lives.  It is good to know that God doesn’t throw away the clay.   He just keeps molding us and changing us.   God doesn’t change.  He doesn’t love us today and kick us out tomorrow.

God is omniscient.   That means that He knew all of the ways that you would fail Him. He knew the minute that you accepted Jesus as your Savior all of the bad things you would do and He loved you and saved you anyway.  There is nothing you have done that has ever taken Him surprise. There is nothing you have done that will make Him ashamed of you today.   He is not the one who is looking to condemn you, to heap guilt upon you.   He loves you and He is faithful to His promises and His faithfulness doesn’t depend on us getting everything right   He is not faithful today, but not faithful tomorrow. 

We can have assurance of salvation even when we fail, even when it seems that everything is falling down around our ears.  That is why salvation is by GRACE.  Grace isn’t for the people who never mess up, who never fail.   Grace is for the rest of us, who stumble and fall. Grace is for real people.   It’s like car insurance:   What good is car insurance if you’re only covered when you don’t have an accident?  

So in the next post we will cover how God reminds us that He is faithful and that we still belong to Him.  

[Guest shiloh357]

How Does God Show Us that We are Saved?

There are three things that God has provided us to remind us that we can have assurance that we are saved:  The death and resurrection of Jesus, the Abiding presence of the Holy Spirit and the written record of the Word of God.

No historian worth anything denies the historicity of Jesus’ and His death on the cross. I don’t have to spend too much time defending the fact that Jesus was real and that He was crucified.  That is not in dispute among the secular historians.   Jesus’ death was the payment of our sin debt before God   Jesus literally paid our entire sin debt and there is nothing left for us to pay for. Jesus bore the full weight of God’s judgment on our sin so that we don’t have to be judged.   Our sin was imputed to Jesus and when Jesus said, “It is finished” that meant that God’s justice has been satisfied.

The resurrection of Jesus is just as historical and just as factual as His death. The death of Jesus would not mean much if it were not for the fact of the resurrection of Jesus.  Without the resurrection, the death of Jesus would not be any more important than the death of any other famous person.   As I said in a previous post, the resurrection of Jesus made all of the difference for the disciples.   They encountered Jesus alive and become some of the most amazing preachers that ever lived.   Men who were afraid of death, suddenly became men who were willing to stand toe-to-toe with those who had the power to execute them and death was not a deterrent to their preaching.  They were not preaching about something they “believed” in.  They preached about what they knew, what they had seen and experienced.   They knew Jesus was alive and their enemies were helpless to refute their claims. 

God has given us the fact of the resurrection to give us hope.  Our assurance of salvation and a future bodily resurrection is rooted in the fact of Christ’s resurrection: “But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.” (1Co 15:20-23)

Paul could not make that claim if there were no assurance of salvation for the believer.   Notice that Paul doesn’t attach personal performance to this.  Paul doesn’t qualify this promise with “if you have lived right.”   If you could not have rock solid assurance and a confident expectation of resurrection, then this unqualified promise makes no sense, as written. Paul should have added a caveat about this only applying to the folks who lived good enough to deserve it. So, there is a historical basis for our assurance namely historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus. 

Secondly, we have the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit who reminds us that we belong to the Lord:

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.” (Rom 8:14-17)

The Holy Spirit bears witness with our born-again spirits that we belong to Him as His children.   Notice up in v. 14 the phrase “sons of God.”  The word for “sons” is huioi and this refers to as mature young people who had entered into the benefits due them upon attaining their full maturity.  It is connected with the word “adoption” and refers to the Roman custom of adoption where the natural, genetic first born shares the inheritance with an adopted child.  The adopted child becomes a joint heir with the genetic first born.   This is the picture Paul uses to refer to us as joint heirs with Jesus.  The Holy Spirt bears witness within us that we are God’s adopted sons, and joint-heirs with Jesus who is the firstborn the chief, the one who has preeminence over all creation.  That’s pretty amazing!

Eph. 1: 13-14 says, “In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.” (Eph 1:13-14)

The Holy Spirit is the earnest, the down payment on everything that is come.  This makes no sense if we don’t have assurance.   It reinforces Peter’s claim that our inheritance is being reserved for us.  The indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit is the best part of being a Christian and God has given us the best part FIRST.   The rest is icing on the cake.  We have living presence of the Creator of the universe living in us in the Person of the Holy Spirit.   He is the guarantee of what is to follow.   He is the living assurance that gives us the boldness to speak of our hope and confidence of spending eternity with Jesus. 

And finally, we have the written record of Scripture.  Everything we know about salvation, about all of the benefits and we have, about the assurance that God has given to us comes from Scripture.   The Bible is an inerrant, infallible, inspired and immutable revelation from God.  It is God’s own personal disclosure of Himself to us.   He wants us to know Him and to know we are saved and that He is the one who keeps us saved.  Everything I have presented has been rooted the perfectly preserved Word of God and we can trust it because God doesn’t lie or get His facts wrong. 

We can know we are saved and God wants us to know we are saved.  That assurance is vital to our testimony to the faithfulness and keeping power of God.   He sustains us and empowers us and will keep us for all eternity.

[Guest shiloh357]

Bump 

[Retrobyter]

Shalom, shiloh357.

Wrong word. It's NOT "salvation." As long as you keep using "salvation," "save," "saved," and "saving" to describe God's justification of an individual, you will continue to have problems from those who claim that one can "lose" one's "salvation."

[Guest shiloh357]

6 hours ago, Retrobyter said:

Shalom, shiloh357.

Wrong word. It's NOT "salvation." As long as you keep using "salvation," "save," "saved," and "saving" to describe God's justification of an individual, you will continue to have problems from those who claim that one can "lose" one's "salvation."

LOL, no I won't.  They are not a problem for me; my theology is far more problematic for them.   And yes, it is "salvation."   I am not limited to some artificial boundary of correct terminology that you have created. 

[Christine]

On 6/9/2018 at 11:36 AM, shiloh357 said:

Consider II Cor. 5:1: “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” (2Co 5:1)  As believers in Christ, we know that we have a heavenly body prepared for us.  Paul says we can KNOW this.  We can have complete assurance in this.   Again, notice that this is present tense. We currently have a heavenly body waiting for us in Heaven.  We know that when we die we will be clothed in that body.  The ancient Greeks viewed the human spirit to be something like a wisp of smoke.   But here we see that we have a body in Heaven today, right now and we know this today, right now.   Everything about assurance is “right now.”  Eternal life is “right now.” 

 

Hello @shiloh357,

I have enjoyed reading your posts in this thread.  The above quote is the only point so far that I am not in agreement with.  For I believe that the context of 2 Cor. 5 concerns the resurrection of the dead.  

In Christ Jesus
Chris

[Guest shiloh357]

13 minutes ago, Christine said:

Hello @shiloh357,

I have enjoyed reading your posts in this thread.  The above quote is the only point so far that I am not in agreement with.  For I believe that the context of 2 Cor. 5 concerns the resurrection of the dead.  

In Christ Jesus
Chris

Our Heavenly body isn't our resurrection body.   I don't know exactly what will happen to our heavenly bodies at the resurrection, as the Bible doesn't really give us the nuts and bolts about that, but the context of II Cor. 5:1 is telling us that when we put our earthly bodies we have a heavenly body awaiting us. 

For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (2Co 5:1-6)

I don't think  that passage is eschatological, but demonstrates a view of death that was contrary to prevailing Greco-Roman view of the human existence in the after life.  They believed that human spirit is something akin to a wisp of smoke and that we live as disembodied spirits after death.   Paul is saying that when we are no longer in these bodies in this life, there is a heavenly body for us (those who are born again).   

It has the added benefit of debunking the popular "Ghost Hunters"  and "Ghost Adventures"  TV shows (which are likely fraudulent) about people making contact with spirits of the dead.
 

[Christine]

We shall have to remain in disagreement @shiloh357, but I thank you for responding.

In Christ Jesus
Chris