Assurance of Salvation
How to Be Saved and Know that You Are
ASSURANCE OF SALVATION
When people are serious about knowing that they are genuinely saved and therefore assured of going to heaven when they die, the question of how to be certain becomes critically important. Thankfully, the Bible has made this very clear and teaches things that will set your mind and heart to rest about assurance.
In order to get to the matter of assurance, we first need to know what the Bible clearly teaches concerning how to be “saved.” Salvation and assurance of salvation are of necessity, closely connected. In order to have assurance of salvation and heaven you must first answer the question of how one is “saved” in the first place.
The answer to that question is among the most important things the Bible teaches:
1. Salvation is a gift from God…not something any person can earn
Romans 3:23 - “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of ourselves; it is the gift of God,
not or works lest anyone should boast.”
2. God loves all people and acted to rescue them from condemnation
John 3:16-18 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God."
Romans 5:8 “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
1 John 4:9 “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (propitiation means that Jesus' sacrificial death satisfied the God's righteous demand for justice) Some may ask why God had to demand a sacrifice for sins and the answer is that God is perfectly holy and righteous and in order to be free to forgive our sins, the price for righteous justice had to be paid.
3. Everyone is a sinner
Romans 3:10-12 ”There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God; they have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good; no, not one.”
Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
So to summarize what we've said so far: salvation is a gift from God that cannot be earned but rather is received by faith; and salvation is essential for all people because everyone is a sinner and therefore all people everywhere stand already condemned.
So, that leads us to this next all-important question: “What is the nature of and object of saving faith?”
4. The Object of Saving Faith
I’m using the word “object” here in the sense of, “In what or in whom is our faith to be placed?” The Bible is very clear about the answer to that important question. Our faith must be in Jesus Christ; not in any church; not in the Mosaic Law; not in any set of rules; not in our parents or any ancestors, not in any religious system (even Christianity does not save a person). Our faith must be a "saving" faith in Jesus Christ and Him alone. I explain what is meant by a "saving faith" a little ways further in this article.
I’ll cite just one verse from the book of Acts to support this assertion.
Acts 4:12 - Salvation is found in no one else, "for there is no other name under heaven given among men (mankind) by which we must be saved.”
These are the words of Peter when he and John stood before the Sanhedrin (the ruling body of the Jews) when questioned about the healing of a man who was crippled from birth. The Jewish leaders were questioning them about how they performed the healing. Their question was, “By what power or by what name have you done this?"
Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replies, “Rulers and elders of the people, if we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed." Then quoting Psalm 118:22 Peter added, "He is 'the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone.”
It was at that point in his defense that he went on to say, "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven, given among men by which we must be saved.”
5. The Nature of Saving Faith
This now becomes the critical thing to understand. Saving faith (belief) is not merely mental assent to he truths of what I discussed above. Someone could believe all of that and still not be saved. In fact, the Bible says that the demons believe that way.In other words, they know that is the truth, but they certainly are not saved.
Knowing and believing all that is true is not equivalent to having saving faith. It's not what the Bible means when it says “by grace are you saved through faith.” Saving faith is more than mental assent to certain truths; it is an act of trust..of believing God's promise available to all who truly believe in Jesus. The only means of salvation is to "entrust" yourself to Him...that is have faith in Him. You actively place your faith in Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross that paid the debt for your sins.
This act of trust by its nature involves a repentance (a word that basically means to turn around and go another way). A person who has been living sinfully becomes aware of the sinfulness of the life he/she has been living and with the help of the Holy Spirit, turns away from that manner of living toward living for God. Jesus himself talked about the need for repentance. Read these words of Jesus as recorded in Luke 13:1-5
"There were present at that season some who told Him (Jesus) about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answered them, 'Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell you , no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all the people who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.'"
So, believing faith includes the act of repentance, according to Jesus' own words. You cannot willfully, deliberately continue to live a life of known sinful behavior and think that you are saved because you agree with the truth of the good news that we are saved by faith. Saving faith includes repentance...turning from sinful behaviors and toward righteousness. That turning is not "salvation by works" which is not the gospel message; it is simply part and parcel of exercising saving faith. Below is a short, but incomplete list of things that do not save anyone.
It absolutely is not trusting that you are a "good person" have done enough good works; It is not trusting your church; it is not trusting a baptism performed when you were a child; it is not trusting Mohammed or any other prophet; it is not trusting any religion or anything else; No, it is trusting only Jesus. He declared this clearly to his disciples as recorded in John14:6,
"I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father, except through me."
So, either Jesus was a liar, an unhinged lunatic....or he was and is exactly who he claimed to be...The Son of God.
In fact, He was and is God made flesh for the very purpose of rescuing us from condemnation. (see John 1:1-14)
An Illustration of Saving Faith - Boarding an Airplane
Saving faith in Jesus is like boarding an airplane. When you get on an airplane, you are quite literally entrusting yourself to that machine and the people who operate it. Once onboard, you have no control of what happens to that plane. You may pray, as I always do, asking the Lord to keep that machine working properly including all the instruments and mechanical element equipment throughout your flight and that the pilots and air traffic controllers will all do their jobs well. But outside of that prayer and your trust in God’s care, you have no control of that plane. Some people are unwilling to fly in an airplane and unless they change their minds (repent of that attitude) they will never experience the convenience of traveling many miles as quickly as one does when flying.
In a similar manner, saving faith is your trusting God’s Word and what it says about what Jesus did for us. He took our sins upon himself, went to the cross and paid the just penalty of death for our sins and rose from the dead thereby proving that God had accepted his sacrifice on our behalf. Before placing one's faith in Jesus they knowingly or perhaps unthinkingly are trusting something or someone else, like their own goodness or their church or their baptism and unless they repent of that belief, they are not trusting in the One and Only Person who can save them.
Here are some of the best verses in the Bible to describe that kind of faith.
Romans 10:9-10 “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."
Romans 10:13 "For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Ephesians 2:8-10 "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boats. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."
Earlier, I quoted only verses 8 & 9 of this passage of scripture; now I have added verse 10 to demonstrate that after one has exercised saving faith, the evidence of that faith is, in part, the good works they then do. Those good works are the demonstration of the repentance that has occurred in the act of faith. The truly saved person believes (trusts) in Jesus because God's grace of giving them the faith to believe and the result of that kind of faith is a change of lifestyle from whatever sins have defined the person before so that the0 person, though not perfected, will show the signs of having repented by the way their behaviors and attitudes change toward godliness.
If that describes how you have believed in Jesus Christ, then on the authority of the Scriptures, I can assure you that you are saved. The Apostle John declares that very thing:
1 John 5:11-13 "And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. {Everyone} who has the Son has life; {everyone} who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may KNOW (my caps) that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.
My friend, if you have believed in Jesus in that manner, you are saved. If not simply repent of your unbelieving attitude and "call upon the name of the Lord." If you believe in your heart (your innermost being) in Jesus and what he accomplished in dying for your sins and confess ("confess" just means to give public testimony by telling others) that you have believed you will be saved. If you've sincerely done that...repented and believed, and confessed that you have, then you are saved. (know this...God looks on the heart and can see what we truly believe)
Having done that, you can have full assurance, based on God's Word and His promises, that you will go to heaven.
That is the starting point of following Jesus, so I encourage you to keep following Him. Here's how to do that:
Read the Bible and do what it says, asking the Holy Spirit who to help you...that's what He does; find a good church that teaches the Bible faithfully and become a regular participant in that church. The church is God's idea and one of its main purposes is to help believers follow Jesus.
May God Richly Bless You!