How a Man Is Saved
"These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life."
1 John 5:13
Ask a hundred church-going people whether they are certain of heaven and most will give you some version of the same answer: I hope so. Say it aloud and notice how modest it sounds — humble, unpresuming, the reply of a person who would not dream of claiming too much.
But consider what it actually means. It means that a man may attend for forty years, give faithfully, raise his children in the faith, and go to his grave not knowing where he is going. And it means that the most important question a human being can face is the one he has decided to leave open.
Scripture does not treat that as humility. It treats it as a problem, and it was written in part to fix it.
There is a verse near the end of the New Testament that states its own purpose, and the purpose is exactly this subject.
"These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life." (1 John 5:13)
Take that verse apart, because it settles the question before the argument begins. These things have I written — it is a written thing, not a felt thing. Unto you that believe — it is addressed to believers, not to the uncertain. And the purpose is stated: that ye may know.
Not that ye may hope. Not that ye may wonder. Not that ye may do your best and find out at the end. That ye may know. If assurance were unavailable, that verse could not have been written.
"For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." (2 Timothy 1:12)
The apostle Paul wrote that from a prison, at the end of a life of shipwreck, beatings and stoning. Not I hope. Not I am working toward it. I know. I am persuaded. He is able.
"These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God." (1 John 5:13)
Weigh the verb. Not that ye may hope. Not that ye may feel more positive about it. Not that ye may find out at the end. That ye may know.
Notice also who it is written to: you that believe on the name of the Son of God. The letter is not addressed to the whole world indiscriminately. It is written to believers, about a certainty God intends believers to possess in this life.
So assurance is not an unusual attainment reserved for a spiritual elite. It is the ordinary birthright of a Christian, and God went to the trouble of writing a letter so that His children would stop wondering.
The instinctive objection must be met at once, because it stops many sincere people: who am I to say I am certain? Isn't that arrogant?
The objection must be met at once, because it is the reason many godly people refuse assurance: does it not lead to pride, or to carelessness?
It cannot, if it is grounded where Scripture grounds it. Presumption rests on the man — on his sincerity, his record, his religious performance. Assurance rests on Christ, and there is nothing in it for a man to boast of. A beggar handed a fortune may be certain he has it without being proud of having earned it.
And notice what the same apostle who wrote of knowing also wrote about its effect:
"And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." (1 John 3:3)
The hope purifies. Doubt has never made a man holy. It has made many men anxious, and anxiety is not the same thing.
It would be arrogant if assurance rested on our own performance. A man claiming to be sure of heaven because his life has been good enough would indeed be presuming, and dangerously.
But that is not the ground at all. Assurance rests on what God has promised and on what Christ has finished. To be certain on that basis is not pride; it is taking God at His word. And there is a discourtesy in the opposite direction that we rarely notice: when God says plainly that whoever believes has everlasting life, and we answer well, I hope so, we are not being humble. We are quietly declining to believe Him.
Think of it this way. If a man of unquestioned integrity promised you something in writing and signed it, saying I hope he meant it would not be modest. It would be an insult.
Assurance has to rest on something outside yourself, or it will rise and fall with your mood. Here is the foundation, in one sentence from the Lord Jesus Christ:
The first ground of assurance is not inside you at all. It is outside you, in writing, and it does not move when you do.
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." (John 5:24)
Three statements, all in the wrong tense for a man who is hoping. Hath everlasting life — present. Shall not come into condemnation — settled. Is passed from death unto life — past. The transfer has already occurred.
"All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." (John 6:37)
"And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand." (John 10:28-29)
Two hands, and the second closed over the first. That is not a promise a man can improve on by feeling better about himself.
"God that cannot lie, promised before the world began." (Titus 1:2)
If God cannot lie, then doubting the promise is not humility. It is calling His word into question and mistaking that for modesty.
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." (John 5:24)
Take it apart, because nearly everything a doubting believer needs is in this one verse.
Verily, verily — the double affirmation He used when a matter was beyond dispute.
He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me — the terms are stated, and they are not demanding. Hearing and believing. No probation period, no list of achievements.
Hath everlasting life — present tense. Not shall have, not may have if he perseveres. Hath. A present possession, held now.
And shall not come into condemnation — a flat future negative. The judgment that decides eternal destiny is not ahead of him; the matter is settled.
But is passed from death unto life — a completed action. He has crossed over. The crossing is behind him, not in front of him.
Present possession, guaranteed future, completed transfer. If you believe on Him, that verse is a statement about you, and it was made by One who cannot lie.
The promise rests in turn on something already accomplished. This matters, because a promise is only as good as the resources behind it.
"When he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." (Hebrews 1:3)
He sat down. The priests of the old covenant never sat; there was always another sacrifice to offer. A seated priest is a finished work.
"But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God... For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." (Hebrews 10:12,14)
One offering. For ever. Perfected. If your sins were dealt with at Calvary, then your assurance does not depend on today’s performance, because today’s performance was not what dealt with them.
"It is finished." (John 19:30)
A man may doubt whether he has believed enough. He cannot reasonably doubt whether that was enough.
On the cross the Lord Jesus Christ said It is finished — the ordinary commercial term written across a bill when the last payment had been received: nothing further owed. And God raised Him, which is the receipt proving the payment was accepted.
Now follow the reasoning. If your sins were paid for at Calvary, they cannot be charged to you again. No honest court collects a debt twice. Assurance is therefore not the confidence that you will manage to hold on; it is the confidence that the work was done properly by Someone else.
And Scripture ties the certainty directly to possession of a Person rather than to a standard of behaviour:
"And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." (1 John 5:11-12)
Notice how simple the test is made. Not he that has attained a certain level. Not he that has never doubted. He that hath the Son. The life is in Him, so the question is only whether you have Him.
Most people who lack assurance are looking for it in the wrong places. Four in particular.
Much of the trouble comes from resting assurance on the wrong things, and it is worth naming them, because each feels spiritual.
Not on feelings. Feelings rise and fall with sleep, health, weather and news. A salvation that fluctuated with them would not be worth having.
Not on the memory of an experience. Some rest on a date, a meeting, a moment at an altar. But the question is not whether you remember coming; it is whether you are trusting Him now.
Not on the absence of sin. If assurance required sinlessness, no one would have it, and the apostle John would not have written the next verse to believers:
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:8-9)
And not on your grip on Him. This is the commonest error of all. The believer’s security does not rest on how tightly he is holding, but on whose hand he is in.
Not on feelings. Emotions follow sleep, health, weather, and circumstance. A believer may weep on Sunday and feel nothing at all on Wednesday, and be equally saved on both days. If your certainty rises and falls with your mood, you have built it on sand — not because feelings are bad, but because they were never designed to bear weight.
Not on performance. If assurance depended on how the week went, no honest person could ever have it, since every honest person knows how the week went. And it would mean salvation was by works after all, entered by grace but maintained by effort.
Not on the memory of a date. Some people are troubled because they cannot recall exactly when they were converted. But the question is not whether you remember being born; it is whether you are alive now. A man who cannot produce the date of his birth is not thereby unborn.
Not on comparison. Measuring yourself against other Christians produces either pride or despair, and both are useless. There is always someone who seems to pray more and someone who seems to pray less, and neither tells you anything about your standing before God.
Alongside the outward testimony of Scripture there is an inward one. The Spirit of God bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and it is He who teaches a believer to call God Father — not as a formula learned by rote, but as something that rises naturally from within.
"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God." (Romans 8:14-16)
Read what is not promised there. Not a voice, not a vision, not a sensation. A witness — an inward testimony agreeing with the written word, so that a man finds himself calling God Father and meaning it.
"In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise." (Ephesians 1:13)
A seal is not something a man renews. It was applied once, at the moment of believing, by Someone else.
This must be handled carefully, because it is often confused with emotion. The Spirit's witness is not a rush of feeling or a voice in the head. It is more usually a quiet, settled persuasion, deepening over time, that God is genuinely one's Father and that His Word is genuinely addressed to oneself.
And notice how it works: the Spirit bears witness with our spirit. He does not testify instead of Scripture. He takes what God has written and presses it home until the reader stops reading it as general truth and begins reading it as personal fact.
The letter that tells believers they may know also supplies marks by which a professed faith may be examined. They are worth naming, provided we are careful about how they are used.
Scripture does give marks of a genuine work, and they are worth knowing — provided they are understood as evidences rather than grounds. A thermometer tells you the room is warm; it does not heat the room.
"We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." (1 John 3:14)
"And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments." (1 John 2:3)
"Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him." (1 John 3:9)
That last one has troubled many, and it is a matter of habit rather than of perfection. The new nature does not make sin its practice. A sheep may fall in the mud; a pig lives there.
And there is a further evidence that is rarely mentioned: the very fact that you care. The unconverted do not lie awake worried about whether they are converted.
A believer will find, over time, that there is a new attitude toward sin — not sinlessness, but a genuine grief over it, and a discomfort where there used to be ease. There is a love for other believers, sometimes for people he would never have chosen as friends. There is a desire for God's Word and for prayer, however feeble. And there is a general direction of life that, over years rather than days, tends toward obedience.
Now the caution, and it is essential. These are evidences, not grounds. They confirm life; they do not create it or sustain it. A physician checks a pulse to confirm that a man is alive — but the pulse is not what keeps him alive, and a weak pulse does not mean death.
So if you examine yourself and find these things faint, the answer is not to conclude you were never saved. The answer is to return to the promise, which never grows faint.
If assurance is a believer's birthright, it is worth knowing what commonly steals it.
Assurance has real enemies, and it helps to know which one is speaking.
Unconfessed sin. It does not undo salvation, but it will silence the sense of it, as a quarrel silences a home without dissolving the family. The remedy is not despair but confession.
Neglect of the Word. Assurance is fed by what God said. A man who has not read it for a month should not be surprised that he cannot remember what it said.
The accuser. Scripture names him, and names his trade:
"And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world... the accuser of our brethren." (Revelation 12:9-10)
He accuses. That is his employment. And a great many Christians have credited his testimony above God’s.
And bad teaching. Where salvation is taught as something maintained by performance, assurance becomes impossible by design — because no one can ever know whether he has done enough.
Unconfessed sin. This is the most frequent cause. Sin does not sever the relationship of a child to his father, but it certainly disturbs the fellowship, and a guilty conscience makes assurance impossible. The remedy is not despair but confession:
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9)
False teaching. Any doctrine that makes salvation partly dependent on our own faithfulness will destroy assurance, and it will do so logically rather than accidentally. If keeping salvation depends on me, then I can never be sure, because I can never be sure of myself.
Neglect of Scripture. Assurance is fed by the promises, and a believer who does not read them will find his certainty starving quietly.
And accusation. Scripture calls the adversary the accuser of the brethren, and one of his chief occupations is persuading forgiven people that they are not forgiven. Note the difference between his work and the Spirit's: conviction from God is specific and leads you toward Him; accusation is vague, crushing, and drives you away.
Practical counsel for anyone reading this who wants assurance and has none.
Suppose you have read all of this and still cannot find it. What then?
Do not manufacture it. A feeling worked up by effort is not assurance and will not survive Tuesday.
Go back to the promise, not to the memory. The question is not did I feel something years ago but am I resting on Him now. If you are, the verse applies to you whether or not you can feel that it does.
Settle it plainly, today. If you are genuinely unsure whether you ever came, then come now, and stop trying to date it. Nobody is turned away for coming twice.
"Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." (John 6:37)
And tell somebody. Doubt grows in silence. It rarely survives being said aloud to a believer who knows his Bible.
First, settle the matter itself. Rather than trying to remember whether you once believed, believe now. Come to Christ today, as you are, and rest on Him. A man unsure whether he ever signed the document may simply sign it.
Second, rest on the promise rather than on your grip. Do not ask how firmly am I holding Him? Ask how firmly is He holding me? A child crossing a road is not kept safe by the strength of his own small fingers.
Third, deal with known sin. If something specific is troubling your conscience, confess it and, where another person was wronged, put it right. A great deal of what people call lost assurance is simply an unaddressed matter.
Fourth, read the promises aloud and put your own name in them. Not as a technique, but because the whole difficulty is usually a failure to apply generally believed truth to oneself in particular.
And fifth, do not settle it in the dark. Feelings at three in the morning are unreliable witnesses. Take the question into the daylight, into Scripture, and if possible to a mature believer who can hear you out.
It may be that reading this has made something plain — that you have no assurance because there is nothing yet to be assured of. If so, that discovery is a mercy, and it can be settled where you are sitting.
"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)
"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23)
"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)
"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." (John 1:12)
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." (Acts 16:31)
God could have left this uncertain. He did not. He put the terms in writing, in words a child can follow, and then stated outright that He wrote them so that His people would know.
Your assurance does not depend on the strength of your feelings today, on the quality of the week behind you, or on your memory of a particular evening years ago. It depends on a promise made by One who does not lie, resting on a work already finished, guaranteed by an empty tomb.
If you have the Son, you have the life. He said so, and He has never once had to revise a promise.
"He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life."1 John 5:12
These two are constantly confused, and the confusion causes real distress.
Eternal security is a fact about God — that He keeps those who are His. It does not vary. It is as true of a believer in the darkest week of his life as on the day he was converted.
Assurance is a believer's awareness of that fact. And that does vary, because it is affected by sleep, sin, teaching, health and circumstance.
A child asleep in a moving car is exactly as safe as a child awake in it. His safety does not depend on his consciousness of it. What is lost when assurance goes is not salvation but rest — and rest is worth recovering.
"Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his." (2 Timothy 2:19)
The Lord knoweth. His knowledge of you is the foundation, and it is not shaken by your uncertainty about yourself.
Scripture does not deal in theory here. It shows us men who fell hard.
Peter denied his Lord three times, with oaths, in public, after being warned. If anyone ever had grounds to conclude he was finished, it was that man in that courtyard.
And before it happened, the Lord Jesus Christ had already told him what would carry him through it:
"But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." (Luke 22:32)
Read the tense. When thou art converted — not if. The restoration was settled before the fall occurred, and it rested on the Lord's prayer, not on Peter's resolve. Peter's resolve was precisely what failed.
David committed adultery and arranged a murder, and then lived for months with the matter buried. Read what he asked for when it broke:
"Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit." (Psalm 51:12)
Mark carefully what he does not ask for. He does not ask for salvation. He asks for the joy of it. The salvation had not gone; the joy had. That is the exact distinction of the previous section, written by a man in the worst week of his life.
It is worth asking why God bothered. He could have left His people uncertain, and many teachers have thought it safer if He had.
It frees a man to serve without calculating. A servant who is unsure of his standing works to secure it. A son works because he belongs. The same labour, from an entirely different engine.
It makes him useful to others. Nobody can steady a doubting believer while drowning in the same doubt. Peter was told to strengthen his brethren after he was restored, not before.
It lets him face death. Whatever else assurance is for, it is for the last hour, and a man who has never had it will meet that hour with the wrong question on his mind.
"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life... shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39)
And it gives God the honour of being believed. That is the part most often missed. When a believer rests on the promise, he is not being presumptuous; he is treating God as truthful. Refusing to rest is not reverence.
"He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true." (John 3:33)
Our gracious heavenly Father, we come before Your throne of grace through the precious name and perfect merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has opened the way into Your presence.
We thank You for Your beloved Son, and for giving unto us eternal life in Your Son, and for writing it down that we might know it. We praise You for Your preserved Word, which declares "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life" (1 John 5:13), and which cannot be broken.
We confess before You that we have so often looked within for a certainty You have placed without, in Your finished work and Your written promise. Forgive us, we pray, and cleanse us, for You are faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
We beseech You for every soul reading these words who is yet without Christ. Send forth Your Holy Ghost to convince them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; open their understanding; and draw them to Your Son before this day is done.
Strengthen Your people who read it. Comfort the discouraged, establish the wavering, and let none go away empty. And use this message to steady every trembling believer who has doubted what You have plainly declared, for Your glory and not for ours.
We pray all of this to You, O God, our Holy and Heavenly Father, in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Before you close this page, one question matters more than everything you have just read: if you died tonight, do you know where you would be?
You cannot be saved by joining a church, by being baptized, by giving money, or by living a decent life. Salvation is not a wage that is earned; it is a gift that is received. Every one of us has sinned, the wages of sin is death, and there is a real hell prepared for sin — but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross in the sinner's place, was buried, and rose again the third day.
If you know yourself to be a sinner, and you are willing to turn from your sin and trust Him alone, then speak to God now. There are no magic words — but if these words are the cry of your heart, pray them and mean them:
Dear Holy and Almighty God, I come to You just as I am. I confess that I am a sinner. I have broken Your law, I have gone my own way, and I deserve the judgment and the everlasting fire that my sin has earned. I cannot save myself, and I bring You nothing.
I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is Your Son; that He loved me and died on the cross in my place, shedding His precious blood for my sins; that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day.
Here and now I turn from my sin, and I trust Him alone — not my works, not my religion, not my goodness — to save me. Lord Jesus, come into my heart, forgive my sin, and be my Saviour from this moment and for ever.
In the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.
1. Tell somebody today. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).
2. Begin reading the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans. Read a little every day. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).
3. Talk to your Father every day. You may now come boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No appointment is needed and no man's permission.
4. Find a Bible-believing church and be baptized. Not to be saved — you already are — but in obedience, and as the public confession of what has happened to you.
5. Rest in this, and do not be shaken by your feelings. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). You will still sin; when you do, confess it and go on — "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).