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Transcript 288A
Can We Know the Date of Our Salvation?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes. Can every believer remember a specific date that he was regenerated? I can recall such a date on which I would like to think that I was saved, but the thing is, between that date and just a very few months ago, looking between those two points in time, I see some things that should not be in a Christian's life, various sins. I realize that a person who had been saved, his body still has not been saved. You still have that lust after sin in the old nature. But the thing I'm concerned about now is that among these things there is a recurrent problem, and I'm beginning to have serious doubt whether between that time and just a few months ago, as I've been listening to your program and reading the Word of God, whether I was really regenerated. Could you speak to this?
HC: Our caller has raised some very practical questions. The first question is, Can every believer know a specific point in time when he became born again? Do we know the date of our salvation?
Well, there are some folk who are quite convinced that they know the particular date upon which they were saved. And this may be possible. Occasionally, God will save someone in a fairly dramatic fashion. That is, one day there is a tremendous lusting after sin, and that night they hear a Gospel message, and it really strikes home, and the next day they are quite sure that they are right with God.
Many times, however, these dates that we have are not necessarily the dates when we became born again. How many are there, as is suggested by our caller's question, who remember the day when the evangelist was in town, and they were convinced they gave their heart to the Lord, they went down to the front with tears pouring from their eyes, and they said, "I accept Jesus as my Savior."
And then, maybe after a couple of years, they forgot all about that particular confession, and for the next five years or ten years they lived in the world, with hardly any regard at all for Christ as Savior. And yet if you asked them, "Do you know when you were saved?" they say, "Of course, I know precisely the day I was saved." And they can go into great detail concerning that day.
Well, the evidence of their lives would be that they were not saved at that point, because had they been saved at that point, then there would have been an ongoing desire to live for Christ. And they never could have lived again like the world on a sustained basis.
Now that doesn't mean, of course, that they couldn't be saved later on, or that they aren't saved today. But I think that we make all to much of this idea that I know the date when I became born again. We must remember that the work of being born again is God's work, and it's a very mysterious thing that goes on in our hearts.
I would say that more usually it goes this way. Either we are saved probably as a youngster, as you've heard me say before, I'm sure, most of the people listening to this program, who are born again believers, have parents, one or both of whom, or grandparents, who are also born again believers. You grew up in a Christian home. And many many people who have had Christian parents were saved as infants, because God promises it this way, "I will be a God to you and your children."
This happens to be the case in my life. I never knew a day when I was not saved. And I don't think this is uncommon at all. I think that lots of people can testify to this, even as John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb, indicating that he was saved from the time he was an infant.
Now if we are saved as an infant, as we grow older we become increasingly aware of the fact that we are saved, that we belong to Christ. We become aware, as we identify with the things of the Bible, as we find that we don't want to sin, and as we go to God for forgiveness for our sins when we do. And we find that we feel most comfortable when we are doing it God's way.
On the other hand, a very typical situation is where someone has not been saved as an infant at all. Perhaps their parents weren't saved. They come out of a totally unsaved family relationship. Or maybe they did grow up in a family relationship where there was salvation, but in their life there was clear evidence that there was no born again relationship. And so as a young person, out of high school or college, they sowed their wild oats and lived in the world as wickedly as anyone else.
But then, in middle age, or at some point in their life, they began to become very uneasy somehow. And they began to look for answers. And they began to look in this direction, at this particular gospel or that cult, or the other religion, trying to find some answers.
And finally they came in contact with the true Gospel. And maybe they had grown up in Sunday School. They had contact with the true Gospel many many years of their life. But it had never registered really. But now they find that it's beginning to register. They find that there's a real interest in their life for it. And it's beginning to become meaningful.
And so finally they realize that they have become born again. Now this transition may have encompassed a period of several months, or even a couple of years, becoming more and more interested. And they can never really pinpoint the precise day when they became born again, because they don't know. All they know is that at some point they became aware of the fact that they had really come to believe that Jesus Christ was their Savior and Lord, that they were sinners under the wrath of God and now they had placed their trust altogether in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so this, I think, is a far more usual situation. I think that many people who can pinpoint a day (and some of them indeed might be able to pinpoint an exact day) are really pinpointing the day when they became aware of the fact that they had become saved. Or they pinpointed a day when they first became intensely interested in Christ. But true salvation may not have come for several days or weeks or months or years later.
Let me cite one illustration from the Bible. The apostle Paul was a very wicked man, although a vary religious man. And he was persecuting the church. And on the road to Damascus God arrested him, and blinded him, and struck him down, so that he was led blind into Damascus. And God spoke to him on that road to Damascus and said, "Saul, Saul, why persecutes thou Me? It is hard for you to kick against the pricks." And Saul cried out in his terror and in his fear, "Who art Thou, Lord?" And the answer came back, "This is .Jesus, whom thou persecutest."
Well now, we could easily then say that Paul was saved on the road to Damascus, when he heard that voice from Heaven. No one has had any more dramatic salvation than Paul has. But the truth is, when we study his life really carefully, we find that that was not the moment he became born again.
Three days later, after he had been praying for three days and three nights, and the preacher Ananias came from Damascus to talk to Paul, that was really the date of his salvation, because in Acts 22 we read where Ananias said to him, "Paul, rise up and be baptized, and wash away your sins," the implication being, therefore, that up until that moment he was still an unsaved man. And even then we don't know that it was that same day that he became saved. It may have been the next day, or whatever. It's very hard to pinpoint the exact point, the exact time.
But now having said all this, really, what's so important about knowing the date when I was saved? Let's think about that a minute. What really is important about that? Is it important to know that I have been saved for ten years and nine months, or whether I have been saved for forty years, or for two years? It doesn't really mean anything, does it? The big question is, "Am I saved? Am I born again?" That's the big question. And whether I was saved when I thought I was, when I went down to the front because an evangelist was in town and I was so emotionally stirred, or whether it was actually twenty years later, when I became more and more aware of my sinful condition and my need of repentance, whether the latter date was the date or the earlier date was the date is really unimportant. The important question is, "Am I saved today?"
Now lots of people, unfortunately, place a lot of credence in the doctrine that once we are saved we are always saved. And incidentally, that's a very true Biblical doctrine. But they misuse that doctrine. They say, "Well now, I remember, when I was a youngster (or an older person, whatever the time was), when I was saved, when I accepted Christ. I went down to the front," and so on and so on. "And because I know I was saved then, and because I know the Bible teaches that once saved, always saved, therefore I know I'm saved today."
Now that is not trustworthy reasoning, because you don't know for sure whether you were saves then. You may have thought you were saved. But you see, the proof of salvation is that we have an ongoing, earnest desire to live by God's commandments. And if that has not been constant in our life since the day we thought we were saved, the probability is that that was not a salvation experience. That was simply an emotional experience, where we emotionally or intellectually got on the bandwagon for Christ, but we actually didn't know what salvation was at the time. Nor were we saved at the time.
But the important question is, not what happened then, but "Am I born again today?" And I can know whether I am born again today. I can know whether my will has been surrendered to Christ. So can you.
Now the question has to be answered very honestly. We can kid ourselves. Oh, how we kid ourselves. So many people walk around with rose-colored glasses, trying to make their situation or the world much more appealing than it really is. And that's one way to walk, I suppose, in order to face life.
But when we come to the question of salvation, my eternal relationship with Christ, this is the moment of truth. This is the moment when we've got to take off the rose-colored glasses. We've got to quit kidding ourselves, we've got to quit deceiving ourselves, and we've got to look at ourselves bluntly and honestly, "What is my relationship to Christ? Where is my will? When the chips are down, and I'm faced with the decision, which way do I go? Do I serve myself first and then Christ? Or am I ordinarily ready to serve Christ first? When I really look at myself honestly, can I really know that my will has been given over to Christ? I want Christ to be Number One in my life, and I know that I want Christ to be Number One. Even though sometimes I'm troubled in making Him Number One, nevertheless that is my heartfelt, earnest desire."
And if I can say that honestly, that I've placed my trust in Christ as my Savior, and I want to serve Him as my Lord, and when I look at my life, it is a life where I am beginning to live more and more in His way, then I can know that I am saved, that I am born again. And if I can't see these factors in my life, then the sad fact is, I'm not born again, even though I like to believe I was.
Now of course, if I discover tonight that I'm not born again, that isn't fatal. That doesn't mean that now I am lost, that now all hope is gone, because, praise God, I discovered it while I am still alive, and I can still do something about it. I can cry out to God for mercy, and I can quit kidding myself and I can admit to myself and to God that I'm a sinner, and that I'm under the wrath of God, and that I'm headed for hell, and that I can't do anything about it in myself at all. And I can begin to cry out for His mercy. I can begin to cry out for a hatred for my sins, and I can take action to begin to repent, to turn away from my sins. And I can begin to rest in the Lord Jesus as my Savior and my Lord.
That's the question that we have to face, not when I was saved, that's not the question. The question is, am I saved today? Am I now a saved, a born again individual? Can I say that with certainty? Not because of something that happened twenty years ago in my life, but can I know that because of the way that I relate to God's Word tonight?