How to Know If I Am Saved

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| Resolved series |

• Resolutions That Matter
• God and Reason
• How to Know If I Am Saved
• Is an Embryo a Baby? | Scientifically
• Is an Embryo a Baby? | Biblically

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There probably isn’t a more important question that we could answer: Am I Saved? How do we know if we’re saved? What does it mean to be a Christian? Let’s resolve what we must do to be saved. Let’s resolve once and for all if we are saved.

If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved

Romans 10:9

Paul gives two aspects that work together to produce salvation: confession and belief. Let’s not settle for what’s at the surface though; there’s a depth to each of these and how they produce salvation.

The Heart

When Paul says we must believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, there is no more succinct summary of our faith. Believing God raised Jesus from the dead demonstrates that Jesus lived, died, and was raised. Further, the fact that He was raised from the dead served as the Father’s confirmation that everything He said was true including that He was the Son of God.

When Paul says we must believe in our heart, he explains that “with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness” (Romans 10:10). This describes then a belief that isn’t rooted in our mind but rooted in our heart. So, for example, if we somehow convince ourselves in our mind to “believe” in God (e.g. from what we talked about last time), that kind of “belief” is not what’s described here and it does not lead to righteousness, does not justify us before God.

As an example of this kind of “belief” where the heart is missing, consider what Jesus said in Matthew 15 when he quoted Isaiah:

This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men.

Matthew 15:8-9

Jesus uses the same imagery of the heart and the mouth (lips) but describes what happens when the heart is absent. When the heart is absent, we worship God in vain and even our works aren’t pleasing to Him because they are not borne out of a desire to please Him but a desire to establish our own righteousness. This is exactly what Paul explains about the Jews in this same passage in Romans:

For being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.

Romans 10:3

Evidence of the Heart

It’s obvious then that we cannot truly believe like this verse tells us to unless we believe in our heart. That should be easy to know right? After all, it’s our heart. Consider what Jeremiah says:

The heart is deceitful above all things.

Jeremiah 17:9

In the context of our salvation, consider the person that Jesus described in Matthew 7:

On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

Matthew 7:22-23

This paints a sobering picture that many who think they are saved are in fact not. In saying “I never knew you”, Jesus is describing someone whose “heart is far from [Him]”. By contrast then, our heart is near Him when He knows us, when we have an intimate relationship with Him. The word for heart in this passage is described as the “‘desire-producer that makes us tick’ … i.e. our ‘desire-decisions’ that establish who we really are.”

In other words, while we might say (i.e. with our mouth) that we believe Jesus is alive, the evidence that we believe it in our heart is a genuine relationship with Him. The first evidence then for our salvation is this active relationship with Jesus. Like the heart, this evidence is internal; it isn’t directly visible to others. As I’ve written about elsewhere, this relationship with Him is based on the same thing all relationships are based: an ongoing, two-way conversation with Him. If we think we’re saved but don’t have an active dialogue with Him, then our hearts deceive us.

Evidence of Confession

In order to be saved, Paul provides that we not only believe in our heart but also that we confess with our mouth. Specifically, we are to confess Jesus as Lord. Let me draw emphasis to this word ‘confess’. As an example, I can only confess to a crime if I’m guilty of that crime. If I were innocent, then any confession wouldn’t be a confession but a lie. Similarly, a confession made in secret is no confession at all.

The word for Lord, ‘kurios’, is an acknowledgment that we are His, having been bought with a price, and that He has control, that He “has the power of deciding” for us. So then, if we don’t submit to Him to the point that we allow Him to decide what we’re going to do, to decide what’s right and wrong, then we cannot confess Him as Lord. He must first be our Lord for us to confess Him as such.

If He is our Lord, then this passage compels us to confess this with our mouths (i.e. out loud). Similar to the warning Jesus gave about those who did not know Him in Matthew 7, Jesus gives this warning to those who refuse to confess Him before men (using that same Greek word for confess):

Everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.

Matthew 10:32-33

Unlike belief in our heart, this confession is external evidence that we make visible to others. What we believe is true is based on the Word, based on Jesus. What we do is based on what Jesus tells us. If we don’t surrender our definition of right and wrong to the Bible, don’t openly confess that Jesus decides what we think, what we believe, and what we do, then we have denied Him and we will not be saved.

Resolve This Today

I realize that I’ve been fairly direct here. Let me explain why: Let’s say I am the person described in Matthew 7 or Matthew 10. I thought I was saved but had no real relationship with Him. I thought I was saved even though I wouldn’t confess Him as my Lord openly. I’d much rather someone told me this now than being surprised after death.

I do hope that I haven’t offended you. My hope is that I have either comforted you that you are saved or challenged you to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). My hope is that I have motivated you to resolve this question once and for all: Am I Saved?