Can You Really Know You're Saved?

Can you really know that you're saved?  Now, that question is loaded, but it also begs other questions.  If you can indeed know that you're saved, what constitutes "saved" and "not saved"?  If you cannot know that you're saved, what "hints" could God give to assure us that we will be saved or not saved?  Now, Scripture provides some hints hither and yon, and I think it's good to look at them.


John 10: 22-39 tells us a curious incident in Jesus' ministry. It was semi-chilly (by Israeli standards) and Jesus was walking along a portico near the temple.  His opponents sought to trap him verbally by demanding that he be straight: Is he the Messiah or not?  What they need is "Yes, I am the Messiah!" after which they can arrest him and try him for blatant blasphemy.  But Jesus doesn't give them their desired answer.  "I told you already!" he responds in essence, "but you don't believe it!" That, by the way, is the main issue.  Jesus has already performed miracles and great works, but his Jewish opponents still deny his Godly identity!  How, then, can these opponents claim to be allied to God when Jesus performed works that can only be done by God, and yet they still deny him?  Thus, "You do not believe because you are not my sheep.  My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one."


The key is that "I know them, and they follow me."  Indeed, the better question, perhaps, is not whether we can know if we're saved, but whether we can know that God knows us, and whether we can recognize His voice and follow him in response.  Can we know, first of all, that God knows us? Of course, unless we are Deist, we have the Creation narratives to argue that God meaningfully molded and shaped us, and more importantly, is intensely interested in human affairs.  The Biblical narratives do not support a "watchmaker God" who winds the world, lets it run, and then heads off to do laundry.  That is why Deists do not like stories involving miracles in the Scripture.  To them, it not only is irrational, but it contradicts against their Deistic theology.  After all, how can miracles happen with a disinterested God?  Furthermore, Psalm 139's beautiful description of how God "knits us in our mothers' womb" (v. 13) hardly bespeaks of a disinterested God!  Here is a God who cares deeply about humanity! So we not only can claim that God knows us, but we can go a step further and insist that God cares for us.


What, then, can we say about whether we can recognize His voice or follow Him in response?  This is much trickier.  Sheep know instinctively that where the shepherd goes, there is likely to be food.  But human experience suggests that hearing God's voice and following Him is much harder than it seems.  For one, we must realize our intransigence when it comes to following Jesus. Sometimes, we are inclined to follow whom we want to follow, even if it were not Jesus but a Jesus-masquerader.  The story in John 10 continues where Jesus' opponents were pissed and wanted to execute him on the spot, to which Jesus asked for what reason.  After they supplied it, Jesus responded by first pointing out inconsistencies in their argument, but then he says, "Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father.  But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father."  It was not that Jesus' opponents did not believe his works, but they don't want to!  It doesn't square with their version of religion, or - as it is with some of Jesus' opponents - they benefited materially from the religious establishment, and so had no desire to change that religion!

So the problem with whether we can know we're saved is found precisely in the fact that we are so easily led astray to think that salvation consists of something religious.  In other words, salvation concerns doing the right things, going through the right motions, believing nit-pickily about the right doctrines.  Of course, certain doctrines are inalienable to Christianity, but the fact that there are so many Protestant denominations suggests that Christians can't agree on which are inalienable and which are not!  Even at the Christian and Missionary Alliance general convention, a debate ensued about removing the requirement for members to be premillennial in their eschatology.  Is premillennialism a prerequisite for salvation?  Some think so while others don't.  Within Christianity, some believe homosexuality is perfectly fine while others don't.

What, then, can we do?  Can we really know we're saved then if we're so steadfast in our beliefs, some of which may be contradictory to others?  Of course, we can go to the Bible, but different people read the Scripture differently!  As historico-critical evidence surfaces from archaeological discoveries and other means, new shades of interpretation may appear.  Contrary to popular belief, many liberal theologians have Scriptural evidence justifying their positions on homosexuality.  Yes!  And can we forget that pastors at one point in American history have used the Bible to justify slavery?  So how do we adjudicate between one or the other, whether one hermeneutic is more accurate than another?

I think we need to take a page from St. Cyprian, who brilliantly wrote that "outside the Church, there is no salvation." This is not to say that the Church controls interpretation, but to say that we cannot read the Bible as individuals but as a community.  In America, we often talk about private devotionals, about having a personal time with God.  Now, there are reasons for this which are justifiable.  But one of the dangers of this practice is that we often think of faith as just an individualistic exercise, as just about what I do or what God does to or through me.  That, however, is quite contrary to Christian tradition and teaching.  Even in the story of Jesus healing the paralytic, we need to note that it was not the paralytic's faith that prompted Jesus to heal him, but the faith of his friends who went through everything to make sure the paralytic gets that long-desired chance of healing.  Faith, to put it very simply (and perhaps too simply), cannot be lived out except in community.

And when we live out our faith in such a way, the question of "how can I know if I'm saved" is moot.  Allow me to close with an illustration.   I attended my church's retreat this past weekend.  It was restful, spiritually re-energizing, and the best part was just being able to chillax with wonderful brothers and sisters in Christ.  Congress and the White House are a distant whatever-it-is.  Our speaker for the retreat was Aram Bae who was a fellow Princeton alumnae and now is a doctoral student at Union.  In any case, the theme concerned "honoring our parents."  And I praise God that there was no mention of the book Following Jesus Without Dishonoring Your Parents.  Oftentimes, as I've talked about in the past, Asian-Americans are caught in between two peripheral worlds, an "Asian" (in FCPC's case, Chinese) and an "American" one.  Yet, I've wondered what it means to be "Chinese".

To be sure, having read Confucius' Analects,  I'm not sure if the Chinese people on the mainland or Taiwan (can't say anything about Hong Kong since I've never been there) are really Chinese!  This is assuming that the Analects is the philosophical baseline for Chinese people.  A lot of what we recognize as Chinese - the emphasis on duty and rituals - in my opinion is the result of politicizing Confucius.  After all, the government found it very useful in ensuring their continued reign.  But what if, say, a white person comes and does what Confucius said?  Does that make him or her Chinese?  If we resolutely say, "No," we risk veering into racism, are we not?  What does it mean to be Chinese, and how do you know if you're Chinese, assuming skin color is not taken into account.

I think there's no firm answer to that.  You know if you're Chinese, and you know if you're not.  And I think the same is true with Christianity.  How do you know if you're saved?  I don't think there's a firm answer to it.  But you know.  I think Jesus puts it best in his conversation with Nicodemus in John 3:8:


The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.