Looking For The Greener Grass: SAJIYH

SAJIYH Part 8 - How Can I Be Sure?

Perhaps after all of these posts you’re wondering if anyone can be assured of salvation. After my post ‘So You Think You’re a Christian’, perhaps it has stirred up some things in your mind and you have these questions:

-What if a person prayed a prayer once asking Jesus into their heart, are they a Christian? Even if they have no evidence of fruit or repentance?

-Is the phrase, “Once saved always saved” accurate?

-Can a person lose their salvation?

-How do I explain fruitlessness?

-How do I explain a person who seemed to be following Jesus for several years but has since seemed to walk away from their faith? Are they still a Christian? Were they a Christian to begin with?

-What if someone counted the cost initially but has since decided Jesus wasn’t worth continued sacrifices?

-Where do I fit in to these questions? Am I a Christian? How can I be sure?

God wants us to have certainty. “I write these thing to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). According to J.D. Greear, “He changes, encourages, and motivates us not by the uncertainty of fear, but by the security of love.” Greear gave an example of his first repelling trip where he did not want to put his full weight on the ropes and harness until he knew it would hold him. Similarly, our faith will never really take off until we know that our resurrection is secure. We will never put our full weight on Jesus until we know that we are eternally secure.*

How does a person gain assurance of salvation? Again, Greear is helpful here. He gives two ways we can be sure we are saved. The first way is to look outside of self to what Christ has done. Our hope and assurance rest entirely on Jesus. “This is the gospel: when we trust in his name, we cease striving to earn heaven by drawing upon our own moral bank account; instead, we withdraw on his righteous account in our place.” If we are looking to our own works, righteousness, goodness, or a time we prayed a prayer, we are looking in the wrong place and will be unsure. John says, “I write these things to you who prayed the sinner’s prayer believe.” The point is not the prayer you prayed, but the present posture you are in.”

The second way to know we are saved is that believers have a new nature. As 1 Corinthians 5:17 says, we have become “new creations.” Matt Chandler says, “Without a heart transformed by the grace of Christ, we just continue to manage external and internal darkness.”*** John also says that those who have been born of God do not “keep on sinning.” We gain new desires and no longer want to follow the path of sin that leads to destruction. Greear gives this example: “you might imagine some vomit on the ground. None of us would require a list of rules keeping us from eating it. Why? Because we find it disgusting. Now, a dog has a totally different nature, with different desires. A dog would find that vomit as appetizing as we find it disgusting.” This does not mean that we never sin or become instantly perfect. It does mean that we view sin as something that is rebellion against the God who rescued us from it and as something that eventually destroys us anyway. Greear continues that we can’t love God and the things that grieve Him at the same time. When, as believers, we do start to go back to sin, the Holy Spirit gives us warnings to flee from it. And when we fail and fall, Jesus is there calling us back to repentance and back to resting on Him for our righteousness.**

The Bible exhorts us to examine and test and work out our salvation to make sure we are in the faith and Christ is in us.**** Here are some additional questions to help “test” yourself for salvation or someone else who is struggling with assurance:

1. Am I currently resting on Jesus as the payment for my sin?

2. Is there evidence of a regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in my heart? (The Holy Spirit only dwells inside of believers so this is a great indicator. See Romans 8:9-17)

3. Do I see a long-term pattern of growth in my Christian life?*****

4. Do I desire to and work at submitting to Christ’s Lordship and putting sin to death or am I simply ok with indwelling sin and continuing to be the “god” in my own life?

I want to end by quickly addressing the questions listed at the beginning of this post. Please feel free to leave comments or send emails for further clarifications on these issues.

-What if a person prayed a prayer once asking Jesus into their heart, are they a Christian? Even if they have no evidence of fruit or repentance?

You can look for evidence of the Spirit working in a person’s life but ultimately it is not up to us to judge whether or not another person is a Christian. That is something between that person and God. Based on this post and the ‘So You Think You’re a Christian’ post, I would wager that the person is not a Christian. Perhaps the person is merely in a season of extended disobedience and we simply can’t see the Spirit at work within our friends’ heart. As Greear says, we won’t be able to fully know if another is truly a believer until eternity. And we should not give up on someone because the only time we know God is no longer working in them is after their death.****** Either way, this person needs you to continuously point them back to the gospel and back to what Jesus has done. He is the only way to repentance and believer and unbeliever alike need to hear the gospel.

-Is the phrase, “Once saved always saved” accurate? Can a person lose their salvation?

Greear offers a better phrase, “Once saved, forever following.” He continues, “Salvation is a posture of repentance and faith toward Christ that you adopt at your conversion and maintain for a lifetime.”*******

To answer the second part, a person cannot “lose” their salvation. Our salvation is based entirely on Christ’s finished work. The work is finished. Our security is based on His performance, not on how well we can adhere to a bunch of rules. Furthermore, believers have been adopted as sons of God. Even in human adoptions, an adopted parent cannot choose to disown or disinherit their adopted child. There are many verses used by others to explain that others can lose their salvation but I am convinced that these verses refer rather to those who were never genuine believers. Instead the verses speak of those who either wanted to benefit from Jesus but not submit to Him or who saw the beauty of the gospel but rejected it anyway. They may even have played the part for a while but in the end were not new creations. If you would like to read more on this topic, here is a blog post that does a great job covering this point of view.

-How do I explain fruitlessness?

Based on my study of Scripture, fruitlessness is either the result of someone playing the part of Christian but not submitting to Him and thus a non-Christian or characteristic of a Christian who is immature or walking through a season of disobedience.

-How do I explain a person who seemed to be following Jesus for several years but has since seemed to walk away from their faith? Are they still a Christian? Were they a Christian to begin with?

See my response to the first question.

-What if someone counted the cost initially but has since decided Jesus wasn’t worth continued sacrifices?

See my response to the first question.

-Where do I fit in to these questions? Am I a Christian? How can I be sure?

If you’re wrestling with your own doubt, only you can determine if the Spirit is at work inside of you and if he is convicting you of sin. Don’t despair but instead, wrestle around until you gain assurance. I wrestled around with these ideas for a while trying to determine if I genuinely became a Christian at 8 or later at 20. I finally came to the conclusion that I truly chose to follow Jesus at age 8 evidenced by the Holy Spirit working in my heart. I also realized that we can have new revelations of God’s glory and new resolutions to lay our lives down for him that make past decisions/experiences appear dim in light of this newness.******** Greear likewise explains that salvation is like choosing to hop up into the lap of God, submitting to go wherever He chooses, and trusting that He will take us to Heaven. If at some point we begin to doubt, rather than looking back to the point where we hopped up into His lap, we should look instead at where we currently rest. “If you are right now resting in His arms, knowing when you began to rest is less important than that you are doing it now.” Likewise the book of John always uses belief in the present tense because belief is a continual thing rather than something we did once in the past.*********

I leave you with today's song which has helped solidify assurance of salvation in my own life. Enjoy 'Before the Throne.'

As usual, if at any point in the series you have questions or comments you can either comment below or email me at lookingforgreenergrasses@gmail.com Please correspond with me also if you have gospel related topics you would like me to address or if you have additional questions concerning assurance.

Table of Contents for Series

Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart

Gospel What?

In the Beginning God

All Hell Broke Loose

Beautiful Scandalous Love

So You Think You're a Christian

And They Loved Happily Ever After

How Can I Be Sure?

I Stopped Asking Jesus Into My Heart

Tips & Resources

Sources