Is our salvation by faith? Do you say you have faith in your salvation? Can you offer prove of your assertions to the one that might question what you have? What proof would you offer? Can one point simply to Scripture as evidence? What assurance does one have that the Scriptures pointed to is proof of ‘their personal salvation?’ Is it possible to be deceived? How can I be certain that the assurance of Scripture one holds can be applied to the state we are now in, as opposed to mere thinking one is saved while in actuality they are not?
That is quite a list of questions!
How can I be certain that the assurance of Scripture one holds can be applied to the state we are now in, as opposed to mere thinking one is saved while in actuality they are not?
Regeneration is the personal assurance of salvation. Once one becomes born of God by the Holy Spirit they become a new creature spiritually. The spirit is quickened to life and you become one with Christ, one with God. Once this has happened, the testimony of truth is ever present with you and in you.
Rom 8:16The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
Can I explain to a lost person that what I believe in Christ is truth? Can I prove to a lost person that what I believe in Christ is truth? No, I cannot. The Spirit proves it to me, but I cannot prove it to the lost. Only the Spirit can do this.
I can explain what i personally know in Christ to another who has been born of God and they will understand because they have the same Spirit testifying the same truth about Jesus Christ.
But the lost cannot comprehend what is going on in the saved.
Jhn 3:8The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.
The lost can see something peculiar in the saved, but they just don't get it.
So ever since I received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and was quickened by the Holy Spirit being created a child of God, I have the perminent indwelling of the Holy Spirit forever testifying the truth within me. I have been re-created by God, for God. I am forever His, for His purposes and for His Glory. My salvation is held by Jesus Christ, if it were held by me it wouldn't be salvation and it would surely fail at every turn.
When I was born into this world through my parents means, I was my father's child forever. This fact can never change. When I was born of God through God's means, I was my Father God's child forever and this fact cannot change. This is why Jesus used such a perminent situation to describe how people entered into heaven.
Jhn 1:13Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
So salvation is not a "thinking" matter at all. It is a spiritual matter and it is from God working in you. I was saved as a child and I went many years never reading or understanding one passage of the bible. Yet in those years I always heard the Spirit of God working in me guiding me into what was the moraly right things to do and I always heard the Spirit confirming my faith in Jesus Christ daily. I didn't even know there was such a thing as "born again" but I was living it every day. Once I started studying the scriptures I then saw what it was that I had been experiencing all of those years within.
Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. I heard Billy Graham preaching on tv one night when I was about ten. I heard enough to understand that I was a sinner and I needed salvation through calling on Jesus Christ. I did call on Jesus that night and from then on I have never questioned my faith in God and Christ even though I was ignorant of all other scriptures (as far as study goes, I of course heard preachers from time to time preaching the do's and don't's, but i was basically unchurched and undiscipled for twenty years).
I was once told by a brother who wanted to teach that you could lose your salvation somehow that you could just stop believing. This would mean that you had a "thinking" salvation which never saved anyways. True salvation is of God and is a regeneration, a new creature being born. It is "knowing" Jesus Christ because He is part of your very new being. How can one stop believing that which they have experienced is truth? They cannot not, nor would they ever want to.
God Bless!