How Do We Know We Are Truly Christ's?

How do we know we are one of God’s saved people? I will let God from His Holy Word answer this question, lest I be accused of being a Pharisee for suggesting the truth that some of us are merely fooling ourselves.

John 14:15
 If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

John 15:14
 You are my friends if you do what I command you.

John 8:31
 So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine;

1 John 2:3-6
 By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.  The one who says, "I have come to know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;  but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him:  the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.

Please look these verses up in their Biblical context and see how they speak to your own personal walk. Read the entire Bible and draw on other sources and teachers to be sure you understand the perils of our own sinful disobedience to God. Yes, we all fall short of the glory of God. But that falling short doesn’t mean we just gloss over our own salvation experience with this lie of the devil that we can simply make some light-hearted confession while going on to live the same way we always have.

You can call me a Pharisee for always preaching these things, but trust me, I know my own heart and the depths of my own sinful nature. I know I’m not doing a very good job at following Christ in the way Jesus tells me to. As the above - mentioned verses speak to. The Pharisees believed themselves righteous. I know I have only one hope and that hope is in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Call me something else because Pharisee isn’t the right term for me.

But even if I am a miserable failure of a Christian, that doesn’t lessen the truth of God’s Word which clearly states that true disciples obey their teacher. I am only trying to stay faithful to sharing the Word of God because that is what it says. I do not want to hear the terrible words that many will hear from Jesus on that day He speaks of in Matthew 7:21-23
 

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  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.’”

Jesus follows that up with this.

Matthew 7:24-27
 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.  And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.  And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.  And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

That scares me. We need to encourage each other but we also must admonish each other with truth. I close with one more scripture, one I post a lot and it is always my response to those who wish to argue or accuse. Don’t listen to me. But listen to God.

Philippians 2:12-13
 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.