Lesson 9: Confidence in God’s Salvation (3)
Read Romans 5:1-11 - https://www.bible.com/bible/59/rom.5

We humans are strange beings. We do things backwards. We see things backwards. The shape of a rainbow to us is the shape of a frown, but to God, looking at it from above, its shape is a smile. We want to work for our salvation and then luxuriate in His glory for the rest of our lives; God wants us to rest in His salvation and work for His glory for the rest of our lives. We must learn to see everything about ourselves from God's point of view. It's part of what it means to become like Christ. We must see our salvation, both its beginning, and its end, as God sees it – His work. Our proof of salvation is never a date on the calendar or a signature on a card, it is only the reality, today, of His Spirit and work in our lives.

Our current responsibility is to "become." We are to become like Him, we are to become holy as He is holy, and we are to become sanctified. This is not an instantaneous thing but is a life-long process. It does not end when we retire or we achieve our goals. It ends the moment after we physically die.

Our current responsibility is to have faith in God. In John 17, in Jesus’ prayer before He went to Calvary, He said He had not lost a single person God had given Him. Please note this was said before Peter denied Him and before all of the others left Him. Please also note there was one who perished, the son of perdition, and this also occurred before Judas betrayed Him. Judas was lost because he had never accepted Jesus as his personal Savior.


John also talks about the subject in 1 John 2:19 where he warns the believers that people will leave the body of Christ and apparently be lost and lose their salvation, but this would not be the truth. Those who left would be those who were never saved in the first place. Jesus also talked about this in Matthew 7 where He told His disciples that the only way they could recognize someone who belongs to Him was by looking at their "fruit." This takes us back to where we were in a previous lesson, Galatians 5. We use the list here to recognize ourselves either as being saved or not saved, and as recognizing a fellow human being as being saved or not saved (1 John 3:6). Of course we cannot see into another person's heart. We can never know for sure whether someone is living in a winter-season of their lives or if they are truly not saved. In such a case we must always approach them as if they are not saved because in any case they must come to God in confession of sin and recognition of His claim on their lives. We can also never truly know if someone else is really saved or just pretending to do good works. There are a lot of people around us who are actually living cleaner lives than we do – and yet they are not saved because they are trusting in those good works to get them to Heaven. We can only really recognize this truth in our own heart and life by the Spirit’s confirming peace.

*Memorize: Romans 5:1 - Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.