Eternally Secure

These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.
–1 John 5:13

How can you know you are saved? People say, “I hope I’m saved, but nobody knows for sure.” The Bible doesn’t want us to have that kind of doubt. Hebrews 10:22 says, “Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.” And 2 Peter 1:10 says, “Be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you.” God wants you to be eternally secure.

Not everyone who thinks he or she is saved is truly saved. People wonder: How do professing Christians end up falling into sin and even abandoning their beliefs? Did they lose their salvation? If you know somebody like that, let me remind you that the final chapter in their story has not yet been revealed. But if they die having rejected their faith, they didn’t lose their salvation; they never had it to begin with. John said in 1 John 2:19, “If they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.”

So how can you know whether you’re a genuine believer? In 1 John 5:13, John said, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” In his book “Absolutely Sure,” Steve Lawson examined five words in this verse that are key to assurance of salvation.

The first word is “know.” In our culture, it’s not popular to say you know anything for sure. Yet John said, “I want you to know that you have eternal life.” Why do some people not know if they are saved? There are four sources of doubt about salvation. The first source is conviction by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit may be telling you that all is not right between you and God. In John 16:8, Jesus said, “He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” A second source of doubt is a contradiction in your lifestyle. When a professing Christian is living in a way that is inconsistent with Jesus’s commands, it causes him to doubt his salvation. A third source of doubt is confusion about salvation. If you believe your salvation depends on you, then you’ll doubt your salvation at some point. Salvation is not what we do for God; it’s what God has done for us. In John 10:28, Jesus said, “I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish.” The fourth source of doubt is the condemnation of Satan. Satan loves to bombard you with doubts about your salvation to try to break your intimacy with God.

Over and over again, 1 John talks about the importance of our knowing we are saved: “These things I’ve written to you . . . that you may know” (5:13). “By this we know that we are in Him” (2:5). “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us” (4:13). God doesn’t want your eternal destination to be a question mark. He wants you to know for sure.

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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “Eternally Secure” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2014.

Steve Lawson, “Absolutely Sure” (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2006).

Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.