While the
entire Bible stresses certainty and assurance, there’s one section of Scripture
that stakes out this theme as its central focus — the letter of 1
John.
As we carefully read through 1 John, we notice a five-fold argument
for the assurance of salvation — five of the birthmarks of the Christian.
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which
we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched —
this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it
and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the
Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard,
so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the
Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.”
1 John 1:1-4.
The first is the birthmark of
confession, described in 1 John 5:1: “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ
is born of God.” Before you can have assurance of salvation, you have to believe
and be saved. You have to confess Jesus Christ as Lord. Some people assume they
are saved because they grew up in a Christian culture, or they have gone to
church all their lives, or they have been baptized, or they have tried to live a
good life. Yet they’ve never distinctly and personally confessed Jesus Christ as
their Savior and Lord.
The Bible teaches that we are sinners, separated
from God by a sinful nature. We can never earn, buy, or climb our way into
heaven. By our own efforts or goodness, we can never be saved. That’s why God
became a man who lived a wholly righteous life, died on the cross, shed His
blood for us, and rose from the dead. He paid our penalty, took our judgment
upon Himself, and He offers us the opportunity to be born again.
If the first birthmark is our
confession of Christ as our Savior and Lord, the second is a changed life, as we
see in 1 John 2:29: “Everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him.” When
Jesus truly saves us, it makes a difference in how we think, act, speak, and
conduct ourselves. The Bible says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new
creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2
Corinthians 5:17).
As we begin learning to practice righteousness, our
habits change. We will not be sinlessly perfect while we’re on this planet; but
if we’re Christians, we need to behave like Christians. If we say we’re saved
but nothing has changed about us, something is wrong. We are not saved by good
works, but we are saved for good works, and the Gospel is a transforming agent
in our lives.
Those who are truly saved also
bear the birthmark of compassion. How can you know that you are a Christian? By
what you believe, by how you live, and by whom you love. Love is a recurring
theme in 1 John, and the apostle leaves no doubt about how it permeates the
lives of true Christians. “Beloved,” he wrote, “let us love one another, for
love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God… We know
that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren” (1 John
4:7; 3:14).
Do you love your brothers and sisters in the family of God?
Those who are truly saved are those who enjoy and bless the household of faith,
the family of God.
A fourth sign of being truly saved
is conflict. According to 1 John 5:4, “Whatever is born of God overcomes the
world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith.” The
word overcome implies a struggle. We’re faced with an adversary whom we must
overcome. Our adversary is identified in 1 John 2:14 as the wicked one: “I have
written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in
you, and you have overcome the wicked one.” John went on in the next verses to
say: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. . . . For all that is in
the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life —
is not of the Father but is of the world” (1 John 2:15-17).
When you’re
genuinely born of God, you’ll be growing to be an overcomer as you deal with the
temptations around you — the world, the flesh, and the devil. You may not be
victorious over every temptation every time, but you’ll make progress in gaining
more victories and losing less battles as you grow stronger in Christ and in the
power of the abiding Word of God.
That leads to the final point I want
to make: We can see evidence for the validity of salvation in our desire to
conduct ourselves in a way that pleases God. According to 1 John 3:9, “Whoever
has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot
sin, because he has been born of God.”
If we’re not careful, we might
interpret this verse to teach that anyone who is born of God never sins. That
would conflict with other passages in the Bible that describe us as fallible and
often failing.
In 1 John 3:9, the word for sin is a present active
infinitive and it describes a continuous action. John is not saying that whoever
sins once is not born of God. That would disqualify all of us. It would
certainly disqualify me. But John is saying, in effect, “Whoever keeps on
willfully sinning, violating God’s law with stubborn disregard and ongoing
wickedness, cannot have assurance of salvation.”
If we are truly saved,
we will grieve over our sins, confess them, and seek God’s grace to do
better.
[written by Dr. David Jeremiah]
