How Can I Know That I’m Saved?

Am I really saved? How can I know that my faith is real? In this episode, we talk about the confidence we can have in our salvation—not because of our performance or how well we follow Jesus, but because of what Jesus has already done for us. God didn’t leave us guessing; He wants us to know that we have eternal life.

Transcript

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So, we have questions. But they're questions that you haven't asked. Because either they're going to be comfortable or complicated or just a little bit risky. Questions that most people don't ask. They just don't want to go there. But in this podcast, we do want to go there. Because we believe that we'll get to the police questions. We believe that is a lot of answers that are going to be questions. Let's look at them together. Let's leave it. Let's go there. What's going on, Ladies Podcasting, and welcome to Let's Go There. I'm your host, Ben Pucas, joined as always with one of my good buddies, Russ the Bus Williams. Something I didn't even get to mention to Russ. I feel very hurt right now in this podcast studio. Russ is like, where are you going with this, Ben? I got a haircut the other day, and Russ didn't walk in and notice my haircut. Russ, have you noticed that I got a haircut now? Still doesn't notice. That's okay, though. I'm only a little very a little offended. Well, hey, welcome to Let's Go There. If this is your first time joining us, you accidentally hit this podcast, which is I feel like how most people come in contact with our podcast. Like, I didn't know what this was about. This is a podcast where we get to answer your questions about faith. And when I say questions, I mean all types of questions. If you've tuned into this point, it doesn't take long for you to realize that we're not afraid to talk about the hard things. Because so often in churches, we don't talk about the hard things because it's complicated or it's messy or we're afraid of hurting someone's feelings, or we don't want to have to deal with conflict. And in this podcast, we run straight into the really hard questions because we believe that our God has a lot of answers that are worth wrestling over. I know a lot of you probably skip past the intro where you hear me say the exact same thing every single time, but we believe that our God wants us to wrestle through really hard questions. I don't believe that God is telling us to avoid them. So therefore, since our God doesn't want them to avoid them, I believe that people that sit in the places that I sit in should also not avoid them either. It may be hard, and there may be a moment that's coming up soon where I have to come onto this podcast and say, hey guys, I said this, but I'd actually want to change my mind and I want to apologize because that's actually not what I believe anymore. But just because we could potentially get it wrong doesn't mean we ever want to avoid it. And today's question is a question that a lot of you have. A lot of these questions so far is we have multiple people asking the same kind of question, and there's different hearts behind it. But the question that we're going to be answering today is how do I know? Like all in capital letters, capital K N O W, how do I know that I'm saved? You know, there's all these different denominations that are around in our city, and there's a lot of people that believe, like, there's this like white knuckling that goes into salvation. There's this subconscious kind of thought that we have with God of the universe that there's something that we have to do not only to maintain our salvation, but something that we must do in the beginning to even earn it in the beginning. And one of the questions that I like to ask, if you've ever been to Fellowship Bible Church, you've even probably heard it on this podcast, if I'm remembering correctly, is I like to ask something called diagnostic questions. I I didn't make this up, I heard this from multiple different people, but I like to ask people these questions that help diagnose where their faith is at. Instead of just saying, Are you a Christian? which can mean a thousand different things, I go to the heart and I ask, okay, can I ask you a question? On a scale from one to 10, one being I have no idea, to 10 being I'm 100% certain. Also, you can use this in restaurants, you can use this with friends in your dorm rooms or walking around a neighborhood, but on a scale from one to 10, one being I don't know, to 10 being I'm 100% certain. If you were to die today, how sure are you that you would die and spend an eternity with Jesus? And I always take a step back and I always wait for them to answer. And a lot of times you can see the dials turning and the gears shifting in their brain. And I'll tell you, most of the time I get answers like a seven, a six, a four. And I'll ask why. And the number doesn't save or not save, but that why gets to show the heart of people. And one of the things that I hear from people all the time is, man, I know Jesus died for my sins. I know that that I'm bought by the blood of Christ, but I hear things like, but nobody, nobody can be 100% certain, right? Truly, only God is the one that can know our salvation, not us. And I just want to say, if that is a theology that you have, if you've ever been asked that question, you've thought that, like, how can I ever be a 10? Because there's no way. Isn't that a little cocky? Isn't that again you're kind of getting ahead of myself a little bit? That's just not true. I believe 100%, especially when you look at God's word, especially when you look at the end of 1 John, which is John's writing that he wrote the gospel. He wrote three letters to the churches, and at the end of 1 John, which is the first letter that he wrote to the church, he says that I write these things, all of the things that I have written. I have done all of these things. I didn't waste my time doing this just so I can tell you a narrative of this person, Jesus. But I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that, watch this, this is so key, that you may know, know that you have eternal life. What John is saying here is like, I want to write these things to you because I don't want you to doubt. I don't want you to wonder. I don't want you to cross your fingers and hope, man, I really hope that when I see God face to face, that he's gonna look at me and say, Well done, my good and faithful servant. He's saying, I'm writing these things to you so that when you die in your, I don't know how the process is gonna work, if there's gonna be a line through the gates of heaven, I don't know what's gonna happen, but so that we may know for a fact that when we see God face to face, that there's no doubt, there's not crossing our fingers, there's a confidence. Like John didn't write so that people would cross their fingers and hope that they make it. They wrote that they said that they can have confidence. Because at the end of the day, what we have to understand about salvation, and I know that we know these things, and so I want you to bear with me for one second. A lot of these things that I'm going to say, it's not gonna be the first time you heard it. This probably isn't going to be a podcast where you're like jotting things down and writing on Instagram and being like, Can you believe that this happened? I think a lot of these things that I'm gonna talk about, we have all heard, but so often, here's the thing: this is what happens with faith. So often those things get trapped inside of our brain and they don't make that 18-inch journey from our brain, from our head to our heart. And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what's in our head. We know a lot of things, it matters what we believe because what we believe dictates our identity, and our identity dictates our thoughts, and our thoughts dictate our actions. And so, what I want us to do in this podcast is we listen to this, like I want us to ask ourselves, do I truly live like this? Because I think if we're honest with ourselves, one of the reasons we ask these questions is because there's that little bit of doubt in our minds of, did I do enough? Did I pray the prayer right? You know, have I messed up too much? What if I believe that I am really saved and at the end of the day I'm gonna get to heaven and Jesus is gonna look at me like he talks about Matthew chapter seven and says, Depart from me, you worker of lawlessness. I never knew you. We have these doubts, we have these insecurities. Because I think what a lot of people do is we do act a lot of times in our hearts, we live as if salvation is earned. Like when we ask that one to ten question so often, like what we see people talking about is like, uh, well, I'm a seven because I believe Jesus died for my sins, but I believe there are things that I've done in my life that aren't good. Like I've done some really bad things, or I haven't done enough good things in my life. I need to be good enough, I need to stop sinning, I need to perform enough. But what that does is that creates fear and that creates performance. The gospel is not Jesus died for you, and now you need to work hard enough to earn it. Like salvation is not earned, it's completely accomplished by the cross. Titus, I don't I don't read verses often, but I just need to read this in Titus chapter 3, verses 4 through 7. It says, But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he being Jesus, he being God the Father saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, not because of what we did, we didn't earn it, but according to his own mercy, by the washing and regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified, being made right, being made righteous in his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Salvation is not based off of church attendance, salvation is not based off of the Bible studies we attend and the verses that we memorize and whether we get through life well or not. The salvation is fully and 100% cemented in the cross. It's based on the finished work of Jesus. And so if salvation in the very beginning is not earned, therefore salvation also isn't maintained by our works. Like, I do believe so many people believe it's the finished work of Jesus that saves us. And now it's up to us to maintain our salvation and to flex our muscles and do all the right things because we're afraid that we're gonna lose the thing. But here's the thing about a gift: if we did nothing to earn the gift, therefore there is now nothing that we can do to lose that gift that we did nothing to earn in the first place. And I think what we have to understand is if we believe there is something that we can do to lose something, we are also assuming there is something that we did to earn it in the first place. Salvation is not based on us. We did nothing to earn it. There's nothing that we can do to continue to maintain it. It's not Jesus saved me, so now I need to hold on to this performance. It's basically when we live this way, when we tiptoe around faith and making sure that we're making all the right decisions and doing all the right things, we're basically saying Jesus started the work and now it's up to me to finish it. Like at the end of the day, people, this is what we need to understand. The Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our salvation, not us. God doesn't save us, and now he's like, You better stink and work hard now. You better, you better not mess this up, bro. No, what he does in his beautiful foreknowledge and his beautiful divine perfection is he saves us, and the first thing he does for people that get saved, he gives us the Holy Spirit. And what the Holy Spirit does is he seals that salvation in us. Like God is the guarantee of our salvation. Like salvation is not a dimmer switch. Like we're not more saved at the end of our life, like it is an on and off switch. Like we're not 40% saved today because we did good and then we did bad the next day, so now we're 10% saved. Like we don't slowly become more saved. It's either you're saved and you are a child of God, or you are not saved and you are a child of Satan. There's not this middle ground. Like, I think that's what Catholicism did because they're trying to wrestle with this worldly idea when we're not supposed to try to put the eternal in the worldly because it's never going to make any sense. The infinite will never make sense for finite human beings. I think that's why Catholicism creates purgatory. Because it's like, okay, surely there's a middle ground. There's always a middle ground where we can be on the fence and things. But in the reality, when you look at scripture, there is no middle ground. It's either we are saved and we are written in the book of life and we are a child of God, or we are still dead in our sins and trespasses, and we are following the prince of the power of the air, and we are by nature children of wrath, and by nature enemies of God, like it says in Romans chapter 5. You're either saved by Christ or you're not. And I just think about the thief on the cross. Like there's some things at play here. So I'm we're talking about the initial salvation, we're talking about earning it, we're talking about maintaining it. And I know the thief on the cross can be taken so out of context, and people are like, Well, it's Jesus that did it, and no, like we need to look at the depth of this. Thief on the cross is on the cross for a reason. He even looks at the other thief. The one thief on this side is mocking Jesus, and no, if you're really the son of God, let yourself down, why don't you save us too? And the thief on the other side looks at Jesus or looks at the other thief, and he's like, Bro, are you dumb? Like, stop mocking him. You and I deserve this. Like, he's basically saying, We are scum of the earth. We deserve to be here on the cross. But this guy right here, can you not tell that he's done nothing wrong? Can you not tell that he's the son of God? And he looks at Jesus and he says, Will you remember me when you enter into your kingdom? He is giving his faith to Jesus. Like, I know that you are the son of God. I don't really know how, but I know that you can save me. Will you remember me? Basically saying, I believe in the resurrection of the dead. I believe that all three of us are not getting off this cross. All three of us are gonna take our last breath today. And he's like, Will you remember me? Think about the faith that that takes. I'm going to die, and I believe that you are going to raise from the dead. Will you remember me when you get into your kingdom? And Jesus looks at this man and he doesn't say, Okay, everyone, hold on. Like, let's take him off. He hasn't done enough yet. He's done some really bad things. He needs to do some things to make up for it. He needs to get baptized, he needs to work in soup kitchens, he needs to help old ladies cross the street. He doesn't, he hasn't memorized anything in a while, so why don't we give him the Torah and see how far he can get in the next few months? He does none of that. He looks at this man and he says, Today, today, in this moment, we're gonna take our last breath, and when we die, you will rise and you will be in with me in paradise. His faith made him well. He did nothing to deserve that. He did nothing to earn that. Jesus saved him. He said, Jesus, my faith is in you, and Jesus said, You will be with me in paradise. But this is also what I want to talk about. Like, how do I know that I'm saved? So can we? The first part of that question is, can we know that we're saved? Is it possible to know for sure? And yes, actually, that's God's hope. God hopes that we can have eternal confidence and security that because of the finished work of the cross, that we will be with Jesus in paradise. There's nothing we can do to earn it, there's nothing we can do to maintain it. Once we are saved, we are written in the book of life, and then the Holy Spirit comes in and seals that salvation inside of us. But now here's the key. Now that thief, yes, did nothing to earn that. He did nothing to maintain it. But let's say for a second that that thief did get off the cross. He didn't, he died in that moment. But there is a characteristic about someone who follows Jesus that we need to pay attention to. Like, how do I know that I'm saved? Like, I've been saved for 11 years of my life. I got saved when I was 19 years old. Well, 31 now, Russ, that's depressing. Twelve years of my life, I've been saved. Uh like how do I know that I'm saved now? Like, is there signs? And the answer to that is yes, there is. Like, we have signs. Like, if that thief would have come off the cross, like I would hope that that thief, because now that he has the Holy Spirit in him, now that he has the power of God in him, yes, he does nothing to maintain, like, evidence of salvation is not perfection, but evidence of salvation is 100% transformation. Like, I think we think to ourselves, okay, I'm saved, now I can go and do whatever I want. But a life that has been changed has some evidences of it. When a really big thing comes into our life, there's an evidence that that really big thing has come into our life. Like, I just want to I've used this example before. I don't know if I've used it on the podcast, but I've definitely used it in sermons. But let's say, and I went on uh I went to Houston to see a friend uh this past weekend, and I was driving Houston, it's crazy, man. Like traffic is nuts. Never want to drive in that traffic again, but I'm visiting them in a couple more weeks. And let's say I I told you guys this story that you know, this past weekend I was driving back from Houston and something fell out of my car on the interstate, and so I pull off on the side of the road and and I get out of my car and I went to go pick it up in the middle of the interstate, and as I'm picking it up, I look up and there's a semi-truck going 70 miles an hour just smoked me, man. I mean, just ran me over. And so uh I was I'm hurting a little bit. I'm a little sore after it right now. Now, if I shared that story with you in this podcast, one, that's a stupid story. Why is it a stupid story? Because you're like, bro, if you got hit by a semi-truck going 70 miles an hour, you're gonna die. But the thing I want to mention in that is if I got hit by a massive Mac truck going 70 miles an hour, whether I'm in a car or not, not only am I going to die, but my appearance is going to be different. My face is going, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be a pancake, bro, because when something massive comes into our life at a fast rate, it causes transformation. It's the same thing with the Holy Spirit. So there is evidence because the Bible says that they will know you by your fruit. You look at the book of James, like you see, Paul destroys that idea all over all over the place in scripture. Like the question isn't, do you sin? We're going to continue to sin, but the question is, are you living a transformed life? Because children of God, this is what children of God have the characteristic of that we're gonna continue to sin, but we sin, we stumble, we grieve, we repent, we run back to the Father, and we say, God, I don't want to keep making that mistake again. And what happens over time, and as you look at a life of a believer, and as you look at a child of God who has been made alive together with Christ, we can now not choose dead things. Will we continue to choose them every once in a while? Absolutely we will, especially in the beginning of our walk. But a child of God, they get hit, they fall, they stumble, but they repent and they run back to the Father and they do, they put things in their life, and the spirit is now in their life to where they don't have to continue to make the same mistake over and over and over again. Like they will be known by their fruits. Good trees produce good fruit, bad trees produce bad fruit. And then when you look at children of Satan, when you look at children of darkness, like what are they defined by? They're defined by death. And and what is death? It's sin, it's darkness, it's destruction. And there are so many people who don't know Jesus that are living in darkness and living in death, and they don't even know it because they're dead themselves. Dead things love being surrounded by death. But when we get made alive together with Christ, when we have the Holy Spirit come into us, and now we have been made alive, now we have light that is radiating inside of us and power radiating inside of us, all of a sudden what starts to happen is we look around at the death around us, the darkness, the destruction, the chaos, and we go, I don't know if I like this anymore. And the beautiful thing about Jesus is he gives us an invitation is for people who have been saved, for people who have been, you know, called out of the grave, like we have, is he now gives us a choice that hey, you don't have to choose that life anymore. And so there is an evidence. It's not perfection, but it's transformation. You know, John MacArthur, who's a baller of a guy, he's an old dude now. Hopefully he doesn't listen to this podcast. Russ, who am I kidding? He's not gonna listen to this podcast. My mom barely listens to this podcast. But John MacArthur talks about uh I heard in a podcast uh a few weeks ago when he was talking about this topic specifically, is he's asked people all the time when they ask him this question, like, how do I know if I'm saved? He asks them, What do you love? Because what we love will dictate the fruit that's inside of us. Like, do you love Jesus more now than you did this time last year? Do you love his word more? Do you love his people more? Do you love holiness more? Do you love repentance repentance more? Because growth is an evidence of life. Loving things of the things of Jesus is an evidence of Jesus inside of us. And so the question that we have to be asking ourselves is are we producing good fruit? Not I need to do good things so that God can save me, but because God has saved me, I now want to do good things. I now want to be surrounded by life. I don't want, we don't want to be surrounded by darkness and chaos anymore. And so when we look at our life, what fruit do we see? Are we producing good fruit? And are we producing more and more good fruit as we go along, or are we continuing to produce bad fruit? Because here's the danger, and this is what the devil is so good at. The devil is so good at making people believe that they are saved because of the things that they do, and really, in reality, they are not saved. Those are the kind of people that are walking the wide road that with the wide gate, that they think they're walking on the narrow road with the narrow gate, but their faith has never been in Jesus. That's why the one to ten question is so important. Like when we put our faith in Jesus and in Jesus alone and say, Jesus, I am a sinner. I can't do this on my own. I know that I'm going to sin. I know that I sinned before. I know that I'm probably sinning right now. I know I'm going to continue to sin, but I believe that all of my sin, every single ounce of it, every single aspect, the smallest sin to the biggest sin, has been put on your shoulders. And my sin, because of my sin, I deserve eternal destruction. I deserve eternal separation away from God because God told Adam and Eve, do not eat of this tree, because in the day that you do, you will surely die. You will be separated away from me forever. You will no longer be in relationship with the God who created you to be his image bearer, to reign and rule with you. Jesus Christ came down and took all of that sin. And when I have my faith, it's not in what I do, but it's in everything that Jesus did. It's in the finished work of the cross. Like when I put my faith in that thing right there, then I am saved. And now, because of that, now I have the Holy Spirit. It's like I don't want to continue to surround myself with dead things. And as I continue to go through life, it's I'm choosing life. Jesus saved me, so now I want to choose life because life and light and goodness are the things He created me to walk in. Not death and destruction. But I I also see it as kind of a maturation process. You see Paul multiple times in scripture comparing the growth of a Christian to that of a human being. He's like, Some of you are saved, but you're still drinking spiritual milk. Move on from the milk and go on to the meat, bro. Like stop living in immaturity because that's not the way you're created. Like we see that with kids. Like I have a bunch of friends who are raising kids who are now in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade, and you start to hear parents saying, Hey, it's time for you to stop acting like a baby because you are not a baby anymore. I now have expectations for you that you are not going to continue to act like your younger brothers and sisters because you are grown growing up and you need to start acting your age. And I think some of us need to start realizing that in our lives that we need to start acting our age. We need to stop drinking spiritual milk. We need to be challenged in our faith because a baby doesn't stay a baby forever. But what we also need to do is give compassion to ourselves because a baby doesn't become an adult overnight. But the question is are we maturing? Are we producing good fruit? And I think unfortunately what happens so many times is we're not producing good fruit, not because we're not maturing, but because our faith isn't in Jesus and our faith isn't who what we've done. Why are you saved? Well, I go to church. Well, I've read my Bible. I've done good things. I go to Bible classes. I'm in a community group. Hey, listen, if any of those things start with I have done blank, then that is not salvation. That is not faith. And you are dead in your sins and trespasses, and you are dying and going to hell. Because confidence of salvation does not come from our deeds, does not come from what we do or what we do not do. The confidence of our salvation, the only place where it comes from is the foot of the cross. It's not I'm a good Christian. It's Jesus is a perfect savior. And listen to me say this, people, and I need people to understand this that are listening to this podcast. I don't believe everyone that listens to this is a believer. I hope they're not actually, so that they can be listening to this podcast and know that they can truly have confidence that they are saved. Because I need you to know, listening to this podcast, that whoever you are, whether you are saved or not, but Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God in human flesh, came to this earth not to be a good moral teacher, not to heal people from their diseases, but he came so that he can, for the joy that was set before him, endure the cross and take on all of your sin, the very thing and only thing that separates you away from the God of the universe. And he, for the joy that was set before him, took that sin on his shoulders as if he was the one that committed it, and he paid the penalty for our sin, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but because of his great love and mercy. He saw you and said, I want to come down to earth. You, this person listening to this podcast, the person that maybe just had a one-night stand, the person that's that's still addicted to drugs, the person that is running away from God as fast as they possibly can, he saw you. And for the joy that was set before him, he said, I want to endure the cross, I want to endure the shame, I want to endure the ridicule, and I want to take on all of your sin because I love you, and I want you to be able to call upon the name of me, to call upon my name, and I want to save you from your sin and I want to make you alive so that you can be in relationship with God. Again, you need to understand that you were his joy. The cross was not Jesus tolerating his people, he wanted you. So here's the close. This is what I want to invite us into. We have to stop trying to earn what Jesus already purchased. The bill has been paid for in full. And it will always be paid for in full. It was paid for in full the day or the morning or the night that we that we called upon the name of the Lord, and 40 years later, no matter where we ran to, no matter the sin that is so easily entangled us, it still and forever and always will be paid in full. You don't obey so that God will save you and that God will continue to save you. You obey because God has already past tense, present tense, future tense, perfect tense will save you and he'll always and forever continue to save you. And so what you need to ask yourself at the end of this podcast is have you placed your faith in Jesus and his finished work? Is there any part of you that is putting what you have done in the blank? And if that's the case, then you're walking on eggshells. Like there's so many people that I've talked to over the last few months that that have told me, man, like when I was a kid or when I was young, I was always tiptoeing, I was making sure I was singing the songs the best and reading the Bible the best and doing the things the best because I wanted like, and that's not that's not the life that God intended us to have. And for those that have put their faith in Jesus and His finished work, has God changed your heart? Are you being transformed by the renewing of your mind? Is your life producing fruit? You don't need to live a perfect life to know that you're saved. Listen to me say this. You need a perfect savior because everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. And John tells us, I'm writing these things to you so that you may know. For those who have put their faith in the Son of God, that you may know for a fact that you have eternal life. So can you know? Absolutely you can. And how do I know? And look at the life that you're living, and are you producing free? And so that's the end of this podcast. And thank you guys for tuning in. If you can hit that subscribe button and share this with your friends, we'd be super grateful for that. We're in a uh summer rhythm, and so we're gonna be coming at you next week. And so until then, we love you guys, but Pucas and Rust the Bus out.