How To Know You Are Saved

How to Know you are Saved

1 John 5:1-12

Online Sermon: http://www.mckeesfamily.com/?page_id=3567

“AT SOUTHWESTERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, we have an evangelistic program called “Taking the Hill.” Students and faculty periodically team up in groups of two or three to do door-to-door evangelism. On one occasion a lovely young lady from China and a young Hispanic man were on my team. One of the people we talked to was an elderly gentleman of ninety-two who lived alone and who said he was a Christian. His wife of sixty-seven years had recently passed away, and his son had died of kidney failure. We spent some time encouraging him. One of the comments he made to us was, “You have to do the best you can in life, because even though you are a Christian, you just don’t know for sure you are saved until you get to Heaven and find out.” The three of us tried in the best way we knew how to say to him that you don’t have to wait until you get there to know. You can know now that you have eternal life. We talked to him about the assurance we can have from what John says about this in the letter of 1 John. Can you really know that you are a Christian and going to Heaven when you die? John says absolutely you can know!”

How to Become Saved

John’s first letter begins with a litmus test on how one can tell if one is saved or not. In a world that is interconnected to billions of people both on TV and on the internet, we are constantly being bombarded with many points of view. Debates rage, especially when it comes to the existence or the identity of God! Since the message of the cross is foolishness to those perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18) and no one can become righteous by their own effort (Ephesians 2:8-9), salvation only occurs by the initiative of God Himself! Our first birth of flesh and blood is perishable, corrupted, and therefore cannot enter the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 15:50), so we need to be born again. The second birth is spiritual, God initiates it through His Spirit, it comes from the living and enduring word of God (1 Peter 1:23) and belief atoning sacrifice of God’s one and only Son Jesus! John 3:16 says that “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” For John the first litmus test of salvation is faith in Christ because belief in the way, truth, and life (John 14:6) can only be obtained and sustained by being a child of God! When John says “faith” he is not talking about a mental decision and temporary fad of saying one loves Jesus but a “full surrender to Jesus Christ as one’s Lord, Savior, and King! It is by faith in Christ and through the Holy Spirit that a person experiences the spiritual birth and becomes born of God (John 1:12-13)!

Reflection. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is “the one who came in the flesh (John 1:14), is fully human, and divine Son of God (John 20:31), the one who came from heaven (John 13:3; 16:28) as Revealer (John 1:18) and Redeemer (John 3:16–17)? It is by your belief in Christ that you become and know that you are truly saved!

How to Know You are Saved – “Three Tests”

John gives three litmus tests that one is saved. First, becoming a new creation only comes from having been given the Spirit of God through faith in His Son Jesus (Romans 8:14-15). To be born of God means loving not only Him but also those who have been adopted into His family. At the end of chapter four John states, “whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (4:20). Not keeping records of wrongs (1 Corinthians 13) but instead with “actions and in truth (3:18)” putting the interest of other believers first; is evidence one is saved because one is sharing God’s love with one another! Second, John says and we know we love other believers by keeping God’s commands. “Love divorced from obedience to the commands of God is not love.” Those whom His commands have been written on their hearts (Deuteronomy 30:11-14) do not find obedience a burden but an easy yoke (Matthew 11:30). “The commands of God become burdensome only when we desire to do something else.” Blessed is the person who does not follow the ways of the wicked (Psalms 1:1-2) but instead is so in love with their Creator and Father that their only desire is to do His will (Psalms 40:8), for His honor and glory (Matthew 5:14-16). And the third litmus test of salvation is victory over this world through faith in Christ. A person is truly born again rejoices that in God’s strength the shackles of the lust of the eyes, flesh, and pride of life have been broken; freeing the believer to see obedience as another chance to show his/her love to God! “Jesus won the victory over the world (John 16:33) and God in us (1 John 4:4) gives us too the victory.” This does not mean we as believers no longer sin but that we are now through the power of the Holy Spirit able to say no to evil for the “sinful desires and attractions are no longer beautiful; God and His will are!”