2 Corinthians 13:5 “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?”

Are you really saved?

One of the most important things each Christian must do, and no one is excepted, is examine how our profession of faith lines up against God’s word.

The Bible gives many definitive proofs that we can prove or disprove our salvation by… for our good, so that we can know NOW whether we are saved or not… and so we don’t pop into eternal hell after a life claiming to be a Christian.

It’d be a shame to go to church your whole life, even live a fairly decent moral life, have everyone fooled even yourself, but then die… “And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.”

… We have no time to be fooled on this issue. If you get barebones honest, no more self deception… deep down in your heart, are you truly saved? Is the life of Christ within? Or are you a Christian shell? Are you dead inside? Has there ever been true repentance? Has truth ever arrived about you in your heart and soul?

Will the only time you see the truth about yourself be when it is too late? Will the only time you see how “afar off” you were from the faith of Abraham be when there is no going back?

There is no continuum or spectrum when it comes to salvation… you’re either saved or not. So which is it? You’re all of one or all of the other! There is no inbetween.

In my life, I’ve found so many people are unhappy when their salvation is challenged… when it needs to be! It sure was needful for me. And if we won’t do it ourselves, sometimes God brings someone along our life to do it for us.

When the Samaritan woman believed in Christ, it was because she had been challenged on the bare truth of her life, and then she went into the city to tell others about Jesus, saying “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?”

Those words are what a truth receiving repentant heart sounds like. What happened in this woman’s life is that after a life of dead religion and utter emptiness… she finally met someone who spoke incisively into her own life… the Lord.

… And instead of getting angry at Jesus, proud, self righteous, defensive… she instead owned the truth about herself. Personally I also say, thank you Jesus for telling me all things that ever I did.
The most wonderful thing about God is that he tells us the truth about ourselves. He already knows it, we just need to know it.

In my life, I have needed to be severely challenged on my profession of faith. Because often it hasn’t lined up. I’m horrified by how deceived I was, how deceptive I was, and how deceitful my heart was… and just how sinful I have been.

Growing up in a Christian home I always had an awareness of God, and I’ve always felt God’s hand on my life, and I did trust Jesus to save me from my sins at a young age… but the real change came much later.
I can’t exactly pinpoint when I got “born again”, because I did so much repenting and making sure I was saved! because I just wasn’t… something was horribly wrong inside. And the leprous spiritual state within was breaking out all over my life.

I have questioned my salvation so many times in the light of the brutal honesty of God’s word… and then the change came, like a divine wind of John 3, God made a change that nobody saw and I only grew to realize happened… and now I don’t question anymore… because God showed me the truth about me, he truly saved me from my sins, and I have the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart, God is my father… and I love the Bible and my life is hid in Christ in God entirely.

… It took God a long time to produce that in me. If everyone was to know all my sins, I’d have to go into exile it’s that embarrassing and shameful… but God has been saving me from them ever since, and he’s made so many changes in my life.

There’s still warfare! but he’s made such huge changes to me, and it came from the indwelling of his Spirit. I didn’t change me, his life in me transformed me. There is a past darkness but a light now shines, there was a before but now there is an after, nothing of me, all his grace…

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

I pray that for every professing child of God. I can’t tell you whether you’re saved or not. I could look at your life in light of scripture and raise some red flags, but it’s between you and God. But it is vitally necessary to examine ourselves, because if you aren’t saved… then you need to be… and can be! And if you are… thank God for his grace, mercy and truth ever the more!

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