How Do You Know You Are Saved?

There was a preacher who, once started, a very big serious conference many years ago, opening it up with his first talk, and he began addressing the audience with these words. Dear friends, I want you to know that at the very beginning of my ministry with you this week, that I am not dogmatic about the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. I am not dogmatic about the bodily resurrection of Christ, nor am I at all dogmatic about the substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. At this point, there was a disbelieving gasp in the audience, but then marshalling all of his forces with great intensity, he says, no, I am not dogmatic at all. I am bulldogmatic about them.

In a society where we're faced with a spotlight on certain beliefs that we may hold to or do hold to unswervingly, it may be tempting to wonder if parts of the Christian faith are worth defending. Fifty years ago, the words dogmatic or fundamentalist were not swear words. To be fundamentalist meant you held tightly to beliefs that you saw as fundamentals of the faith, non-negotiables. To be dogmatic meant that you studied and you knew the dogmas or the doctrines or the teachings of the church. You knew it.

So if I was to ask you this morning, what are the things about Christianity that you believe are fundamental to it, what would you say? What are the fundamental beliefs that make you a Christian? To press at home even further this morning, let me ask you this, how do you know you are saved this morning? We're going to look at 1 John again this morning at a passage that has some very big words, very big themes associated with it. And John mentions it, and he says it in such a way that we understand that these are fundamentals.

These are dogmas of the church, and they answer the question, how do you know, friend, that you are saved? If someone held a gun to your head and asked you what your faith is regarding your salvation, here are five things John says that point to, that affirm, that teach about your salvation. Let's read 1 John 5:1-12. 1 John 5:1, everyone, anyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves His child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God, by loving God and carrying out His commands.

This is love for God, to obey His commands. And His commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ.

He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water, and the blood. And the three are in agreement. We accept man's testimony, but God's testimony is greater, because it is the testimony of God which He has given about His Son. Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made Him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about His Son.

And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life. Five themes, five dogmas or teachings about life in Christianity, life in the Son of God.

The first is new birth. New birth, to be born again. And again, this may conjure up all sorts of ideas of American Christianity being born again, but it's not associated with a particular Christian expression. It is not associated with a particular political movement. To be born again is a Bible phrase. It is biblical.

It is found, we know, in 1 John and in John 3. But we need to be sure in our own minds what this means. We need to understand what the significance of this concept is. It is what theologians call regeneration. And you must know as a Christian that this is the first thing that happens in your life when you are a Christian, when you become a Christian. It is a new birth that happens in your life, a new life that has been planted inside of you.

So what does it mean to be born again? Chapter 3 of John's gospel, not 1 John, which is one of the letters he writes, his gospel account, John 3, talks about an incident between Jesus and a man by the name of Nicodemus. Now Nicodemus is a Pharisee. Nicodemus is a great Bible teacher, and Jesus is having a conversation with this great Bible teacher of the day about Christianity 101. What does it take to enter the kingdom of God?

What does it take to see and to understand it? Because as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, the natural man, the natural person, the person we are apart from God, does not perceive and cannot understand spiritual things. A man without the Spirit of God, he says, does not understand the things of God. So Jesus, speaking to Nicodemus, says, how do you enter the kingdom of God? How do you see and understand it?

He says, truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Two verses later he says, truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of the water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Now Jesus does not say this to Nicodemus because he's a Pharisee. Jesus does not say this to him because he is a man. Jesus says this to him because he is a sinner, and so it has universal application for everyone who knows they are a sinner.

Unless God graciously works in our understanding, unless God works in our wills, in our minds, in our affections, a supernatural work that brings darkness into light, we cannot see. We cannot understand. We cannot appreciate the kingdom of God.

Paul is so blunt about it. He uses the words life and death. In Ephesians 2, it talks about the fact that you are a corpse. And as a corpse cannot desire life because he is dead, that is our situation before God, before being born again.

We are corpses in need of resuscitation, and I wonder this morning, do you understand what John is talking about here? Have you been born again? If you reflect on your own heart, do you know and understand the need and the desire to be part of God's kingdom? Have you understood and experienced the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that brings you out of your natural condition and into a condition whereby the Spirit of God dwells in you and you are adopted and welcomed into the family of God? Or are you saying this morning with Nicodemus, I do not understand.

I just, I do not desire it. I, I cannot accept it. I, I see that other people appreciate it, but I just do not. Then friend, listen to Jesus, because He is saying, if you do not understand these things, it is indicative that right now, at least not yet, you are not part of the kingdom of God. If you do not understand or desire the kingdom of God, let me plead with you to go home this morning and to pray and to pray and to pray that God will open your mind and open your heart to realise, to feel, and to see the need of God and His truth.

To understand the message of Jesus. So to be born again at a very basic level is to understand a need. The second thing that John talks about here is belief. It is belief. Now verse 1 says, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.

So here is the born again theme. But we see that belief is essential to that. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. If the first term or phrase is new birth, the second is belief. And belief is a consequence of new birth.

Now some people might wonder why belief is second and not first in the order here, because it is mentioned first. But John is indicating here that anyone who believes in Jesus indicates that they have been born again. Everyone who believes in Jesus has already experienced a born again event. The person who is born again is a person who has experienced Divine new birth, and it is manifested by believing that Jesus is the Christ, that Jesus is the Messiah, the promised one, that Jesus is my Saviour, that He is my Lord. A person who is born again believes the full testimony to the person of Jesus Christ, every single bit. You are bulldogmatic about the virgin birth.

You are bulldogmatic about the resurrection. You believe that He alone is without sin, that Jesus Christ alone lived a perfect life, that Jesus Christ died on the cross of Calvary in my place as my substitution for my sin, bearing my guilt, suffering the wrath that I deserved. As a turning point of Jesus' ministry on earth, just before He sets His face towards Jerusalem, it is the turning point in every gospel account. It is almost, it is halfway through everyone.

So Mark, the gospel of Mark, has 16 chapters. This question is asked at Mark 8. Halfway, the turning point. Jesus asked this question, who do you say I am, to His disciples? You have seen all these things. You have seen exorcisms.

You have seen healings. You have heard teachings. But who do you say that I am? And friend, this is a question that every believer must answer. You cannot go through life as a Christian without knowing the answer to this. What do you believe about Jesus?

Now the answer may surprise you, and you may ask people this question and they will say and they will explain to you that they know lots about Jesus. They know lots about His story, but they do not believe it. Or there may be people who believe lots of wrong things about Jesus, and they are not willing to believe the things that are told to us and taught to us about Jesus. Who do you say I am? Doctor Barbara Thiering, who is a scholar in the University of Sydney, a New Testament scholar specialising in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

She says, and I quote, Jesus was a part of a sect who lived in the Qumran District near the Dead Sea. He was a man who married and had three children. He then divorced and he remarried. He certainly did not die on the cross. New Testament scholar.

That is what she thinks. But who do you say Jesus is? Bishop John Shelby Spong from the American Anglican Church in New Jersey thinks that Jesus was not born of a virgin because Mary was raped. Jesus Himself got married, and it probably happened in Cana of Galilee, the event where Jesus turned water into wine, supposedly in his thinking. That is what he thinks.

A bishop in the church, what do you think this morning about Jesus? A. N. Wilson once wrote that Jesus was a good Jewish lad with a brilliant flair for shrewd moral teaching, and he would have been horrified at the thought of people starting a church and worshipping Him. Jesus certainly did not rise from the dead. He was a mere man, and I quoted that.

That is what A. N. Wilson thought. But what do you think? Quickly, just as a note, I researched A. N. Wilson, and he is a very, was a very, and is a very opinionated journalist and writer on all sorts of things. But he is a Christian now.

And what he wrote then is denied and repented of. So I praise God for that. But that is what he thought at some time. Friends, what do you think?

Who do you say Jesus is? John says, the one who is born again, the one who has entered the kingdom of God, sees and appreciates spiritual things. And all of this is centred on the life and the work of Jesus, that He is the unique saving Son of God. So the second point is belief, belief in Jesus. The third point that John makes is the word or the theme of love.

Now we know that in John's time and in our time, there are people who do not have a connectedness with brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. By their lifestyle, John says, they are declaring themselves not to be saved. This is a very hard teaching in our day and age. John says, everyone who loves the Father loves His children. Everyone who loves the Father loves His children.

And so it is in the very nature of a child of God to love other children of God. And we have been here before. We have been many times here before in 1 John. So why is John so fixated on loving church members, loving the church? Because of this reason.

He heard firsthand three times in the night before Jesus went to His death, when the chips were down and He was saying His farewell in that upper room. Remember that? Three times He tells the disciples the most precious things to Him in that moment, and three times He says things like this: a new command I give you, John 13:34, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are to love one another. This is my command, He says, that you love one another as I have loved you.

Third time He says, these things I command you, that you will love one another. What was important to Jesus is that His followers, His disciples, love each other. This is the mark, John says. This is the sign that you are born again, that you have true faith in Jesus Christ, that you believe He is the Messiah worth listening to, the Son of the living God, and that you love your fellow brothers and sisters, that you love the people that love God, that you love the people that God loves. That is the third point.

That is the third mark of salvation and saving faith. The fourth is obedience. The next effect of this new birth is willing obedience. John says in verse 3, this is love for God, to obey His commands. And His commands are not burdensome. Notice that the word here is commands, plural.

It is not command. It is commands. And when the Bible refers to commands in the plural, it is referring to usually the Ten Commandments, the moral code. In other words, Christians who are born again love God's law. They love God's law. My friends, do we love, do we love the Sabbath day? And do we desire to keep it holy?

Do we desire to love and respect our father and our mother or those placed in authority over us? Do you happily and wholeheartedly desire to keep adultery away from your heart and mind? One of the marks of a true Christian, John says, is that the law is now written on their hearts. And in that way, when we become a Christian, it is not burdensome. It is not something on you.

It is not something in your head that must be brought down into us, into our wills. It is on our hearts. When we break it, we break. When we break it, we are sad. When we become Christians, you know, theologians call it, use a Latin term for it, non posse non peccare.

It is not possible not to sin. Before we are Christians, all we ever did was sin. So the double negative, before we became Christians, all we ever did was sin. But the one who has become a child of God has now been brought into a new relationship, and we are not perfect yet, and John certainly makes that clear.

He says that we have one that stands and defends for us, on our behalf. We are not perfect. We sin every day in thought and word and deed. But there is a desire in our hearts now to keep God's law, to desire it, to want it, to meditate on it. And it is not a burden. It is not a weight. It is now not a lifestyle choice that threatens our lifestyle.

It is not a way that condemns us. It is a word that invigorates. It is a law that challenges. It is a law that motivates. So the fourth mark of whether you are saved is obedience.

And then lastly, victory. Look at how John puts it in verse 4 and 5. For everyone born of God overcomes. Everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.

Now that phrase, when I first read it, I did not understand. Even our faith sounds weird. But the word even, and I wish the NIV had translated differently, can also have an explanatory purpose. So it is worth reading it in this way. This is the victory that has overcome the world. That is our faith. It is simply faith that causes us to overcome.

Overcome. It is not some magical, mystical thing that you must work yourself up to reach a certain level of faith, to be so full filled with this feeling or this emotion or this mindset that you are so filled that you have victory. A faith that some people might tell you, your faith is not strong enough, brother. Your faith is not strong enough, sister. This faith is not intellectual prowess.

It is not a theological degree. It is not membership to the eldership here. It is trust. It is empty hands stretched out reaching towards the cross. It is empty hands that will receive.

That is what faith is. And then John says, this faith brings victory. This faith overcomes the world. Are you struggling this morning? Have you come to church with the smell of battle on you?

Are you struggling with yourself? Are you struggling with sin? Are you struggling with temptation? Is that where you are, friend? Look to Jesus, and you will find victory.

Go to Him, and you will overcome. You will find a victory that overcomes sin, that overcomes temptation, that overcomes failures, that overcomes pain, that even overcomes the hostility of Satan against you. It is our faith in Jesus Christ. Faith is the victory because the victory was won by Jesus, and our faith has Jesus as our object. He is the one we put our trust in.

So you see what John is saying, do you? Do you want this victory? Then do not look at yourself. Do not find or try to find it in yourself. You are not the solution. Your lack of faith or your expertise in faith is not the solution.

Your knowledge is not the solution. Your membership to a particular church or theological tradition is not the solution. Look to Jesus. Look to Jesus. If you take your eyes off Jesus, you will fail.

But if you keep them on Him, you will overcome. That is why that beautiful hymn encourages us, turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full into His wonderful face. And the things of the earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and His grace. So friends, these are the marks of being born again. These are the marks of being saved. Now, finally, finally, the application. How will your heart and your mind be convinced?

How will it understand and believe that all these things are true in your life? How can you trust anything that I am saying is really true? So true that it is worth forsaking everything that is contrary to God, throwing it on the fire to be burnt. How are you willing to cast aside everything to put your eyes on Christ? John says that there are witnesses, testimony bearers to this truth, things that will make you trust.

Verse 7, there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water, and the blood. And the three are in agreement. Three witnesses, and that is what John spends six verses on, from verses 6 to 12. Three witnesses. Two of them we see are external, blood and water. And in John's understanding, they are also historical.

They are external and historical. And then one of them is internal and personal. But all three are intricately related together. They work and they weave a fabric of trust in us. Here are three testimonies, mighty, powerful words of truth to the fundamental facts upon which Christianity rests, upon which your faith may rest. The water and the blood are testimony to Jesus' baptism and His death.

The baptism of Jesus was the start of His ministry. Remember that event where Jesus came, and He was, in solidarity, part of people that were renewing their vows to God. And in that moment when John the Baptist baptised Jesus, hundreds of people saw something like a dove descending on Jesus, explained by the gospel writers as the Holy Spirit. And a voice out of nowhere came and said, this is my Son, with whom I am well pleased. That marked the beginning of Jesus' ministry.

That marked, at age 30, the life and the teaching that He was going to have, that would revolutionise human history. Jesus was commissioned. God the Father said, go now. Historical, witnessed, stamped by authority. The same is true with His death and resurrection, and we know about this.

A temple curtain torn asunder from top to bottom, an earth that shook, a midday that turned dark for three hours. A Roman centurion that said, after he had put this man to death, surely this was the Son of God. 500 men and women who saw Jesus Christ resurrected. These are accounts all in Scripture that refer to you to read and reread with unwavering faith as evidences of the truth. But lastly, the third witness is the Holy Spirit, who will take what you read, take what you investigate, take what you may tentatively hold onto with shaking hands, and He will fill it with bold confidence.

He will fill you and your heart with confidence like water seeping into dry soil, filling all the cracks, all the air pockets that still need to be overcome, that still need to be filled. This is the work and the testimony of God Himself in your life. How will you know that you are saved? You will instantly understand God as though you have received new life. You will know that Jesus is God's unique and saving Son. You will just trust that.

You will love other Christians and people that you would not normally love. You will find victory that overcomes. You will find joy in the most horrendous circumstances. You may lose everything in this world, and you still know that you have won because you have Jesus. And this is all, friends, a past event. History locked down forever.

Seen by people, attested to by hundreds and even thousands. This is all real because God, through His Spirit, is warming your heart even now as we speak. He is affirming these words even now as you listen to them. May God bless you. May He encourage you this morning.

May He fill you with confidence that you are His and that He is ours. Let us pray. Father, this morning I quoted a man who denied You to Your face, quoted a man who was happy to see You as a good teacher, who did not believe in the resurrection, did not think that it was possible or true. And yet, Lord, You read Your word. You read these accounts.

And You would not let him go. And as he struggled and struggled, at one point he was born again, and he understood. Father, I pray that we may be encouraged this morning, that we will test our hearts, that we will evaluate where we stand, what we think about You and Your Son, that we will look at the love we say we profess and weigh that up. But Father, give us the confidence and the deep soul understanding and peace that we are Your children. And Lord, if there are any here that are not, do not let them go.

Make them see, Lord, that there is nothing if not You. Lord, let them cast aside the world. Let them cast aside the lures of it. Let them cast aside what may drag and hinder, what may be compromises and rationalisations and justifications, Lord, that lead to death and destruction. Lord, and give them the grace and the power and the motivation to change.

Father, we thank You for Your grace, so unmerited and so vast. We thank You, Lord, for it. We accept it as a free offering, a free gift to us this morning again. Hallelujah, God. Continue Your work in us, we pray. Amen.