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DOUBTS ABOUT FAITH: Am I really saved?Am I really saved? Perhaps you’ve asked yourself that question hundreds of times already. You believe in Jesus. You want to follow Him. But then you look at your life and think: How can I know that my faith is genuine? Why do I still sin? Why do I doubt so often? What if I’m just fooling myself?
And the more you think about it, the more uncertain you become. You look at your life and wonder: Do I truly belong to Christ?
I’ve struggled with this too, and I want to show you what I’ve discovered. After all, the Bible doesn’t teach us that a Christian must remain in uncertainty their whole life. In fact, the apostle John writes in
1 John 5:13
‘I have written these things to you who believe in the Name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life, and so that you may believe in the Name of the Son of God.’
Note that word: know. Not: ‘perhaps hope’. Not: ‘suspect’. Not: ‘if you just try hard enough’. John writes that a believer can know that they have eternal life.
And later in this video, I’m going to show you what you can look for if you want to know whether your faith is genuine. Because certainty isn’t the same as simply reassuring yourself. But first, let’s look at how you can know whether you have eternal life.
Your salvation does not depend on your own efforts
Let’s start with the basics. How is a person saved? Not because you live a good enough life. Not because you pray enough. Not because you read the Bible enough. Not because you never sin again. And not even because your faith is particularly strong. We are saved by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ.
Paul writes in
Ephesians 2:8–9
For by grace you have been saved, through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, so that no one may boast.
This is incredibly important when you’re struggling with assurance of salvation. Because if your salvation ultimately depended on your own achievements, you’d never be able to have any assurance. After all, when have you done enough? When have you prayed enough? When have you repented enough? When is your faith strong enough? When have you lived a holy life for long enough?
You would have to constantly look at yourself. And that is often where it goes wrong. For the longer you look at yourself, the more flaws you will discover.
But the Gospel says: do not look to yourself as if you were to be your own Saviour. Look to Christ.
What did He do? He lived in perfect obedience. He suffered. He died for sinners. He rose from the dead. And everyone who comes to Him in faith receives forgiveness and eternal life.
Jesus cried out on the cross: ‘It is finished!’ That is written in John 19:30. Finished. Not: ‘Most of it is finished; now you must do the rest.’ It is finished. Our justification before God does not rest on the perfection of our own achievements, but on the perfect obedience and the finished work of Jesus Christ.
But why, then, do so many Christians doubt?
If this is so clear, why do so many Christians still struggle with doubt? There may be various reasons for this. Sometimes doubt stems from our own sin. Sometimes it is because we constantly compare ourselves with other Christians. Sometimes it is because we misunderstand certain Bible passages. Sometimes it is because we confuse our feelings with the truth.
And sometimes a person can become trapped in a pattern of constant self-scrutiny: Do I really have faith? Was my conversion genuine? Am I truly repentant enough? Was that prayer sincere? Did I really mean it?
And before you know it, you’re no longer focused on Christ, but constantly analysing yourself.
But there is another reality. The Bible warns that there is a spiritual enemy who is out to destroy.
Peter writes in 1 Peter 5:8
Be sober and vigilant; for your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
Satan cannot snatch God’s children from Christ’s hand, but he is only too eager to undermine your joy, freedom and security.
After all, Jesus says in John 10:28
‘And I give them eternal life; they shall never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.’
Satan loves to see a Christian who constantly thinks: ‘Perhaps I am not saved at all.’ That thought can ultimately have a paralysing effect.
But take note: that does not mean that every doubt comes from Satan. Sometimes we do indeed need to examine ourselves.
The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 13:5
Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.
So the solution is not: ‘Never doubt. You’re saved anyway.’ Nor is it: ‘If you doubt, there must be something wrong with your faith.’ We must look at what the Bible actually says.
In the Bible, self-examination is never intended to keep your eyes fixed on yourself endlessly, but ultimately to bring you back to Christ.
“But I still sin!”
One of the biggest causes of doubt in faith is this: “If I’m really saved, why do I still sin?”
And perhaps you’ve read a passage that made you terribly afraid of that.
For example, 1 John 3:6
Whoever abides in Him does not sin; whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him.
And then you think: But I still sin! So perhaps I’m not saved at all.
But you need to look closely at what John is saying. He is not describing someone who has fallen into sin and is grieved by it. John is not speaking here of an occasional lapse into sin, but of a life in which sin is not the exception, but a persistent pattern from which a person does not turn away.
That is something quite different.
There is a huge difference between: ‘I sin and I don’t care’ and ‘I sin, I hate my sin, I am grieved by it and I long to be set free from it.’
A Christian is not someone who never sins again. A Christian is someone who, by God’s grace, can no longer be at peace with their sin.
Paul himself describes this struggle in Romans 7:18. He says:
For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but I cannot carry it out.
And a little later, in verse 24, he cries out:
‘What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?’
And then, in verse 25, comes the answer:
I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Do you see what is happening there? Paul does not deny his struggle. He does not deny his sin. But neither does he stop at himself. He ends with Christ.
A transformed heart
But here we must be careful not to make another mistake. We must not say: ‘You’re still sinning, so it doesn’t matter at all.’ For the new birth truly changes a person.
When God gives someone new life, He does not merely change their destiny. He also changes their heart and their desires. That does not mean you are immediately perfect. It does mean, however, that a new direction emerges.
You may still fall. You may still stumble. You may even fall very deeply. But something emerges that wasn’t there before: a longing for God. A longing for Christ. A longing to be free from sin. A sorrow when you disobey God. A longing to grow in holiness.
Not because these things earn your salvation, but because they are the fruit of what God has done within you.
Paul writes in Philippians 2:13
‘for it is God who works in you both to will and to act, according to His good pleasure.’
That is a wonderful passage for anyone struggling with assurance of faith. For perhaps you think: ‘My longing for God isn’t strong enough.’ But ask yourself: Where does that longing actually come from?
Where does your longing to know Christ come from? Where does the sorrow come from when you sin? Where does the longing to understand God’s Word come from? Where does the longing to obey Him come from?
These things are not the basis on which you justify yourself before God. But they can be the fruit of God’s work within you.
A dead heart does not long for life. A heart that has been made alive by God develops a longing for God.
And later on, I’d also like to tell you what this looked like in my own life. Because I’ve experienced for myself that you can be intellectually convinced of the truth of the Christian faith, whilst your heart still has no desire for Christ at all.
I discussed the idea of a ‘dead’ heart in an earlier article. In it, I show how you can recognise that someone has never been born again: ‘The one sign that shows someone has never been born again.’ If you haven’t read that article yet, be sure to do so after this article. Because that’s exactly what it’s about: how can you recognise the work of the new birth in your life?
But what if my faith is too weak?
Perhaps you’re thinking: “But my faith doesn’t feel strong at all.”
Then I’d like to ask you something. Is it the strength of your faith that saves you? Or is it the One in whom your faith is placed?
Suppose someone is drowning and they grab hold of a lifebuoy. Are they saved because they’re holding on to the lifebuoy with all their might? No. They’re saved because the lifebuoy keeps them afloat.
Your faith doesn’t have to be impressive. It just needs to be focused on an impressive Saviour.
Jesus says in John 6:37
‘Everyone whom the Father gives Me will come to Me; and whoever comes to Me, I will certainly not cast out.’
That is a promise. Not: whoever comes to Me with enough strength. Not: whoever has enough faith. Not: whoever never doubts again. BUT: whoever comes to Me.
And at the end of this video, I’d like to share three things with you that you should bear in mind when you’re struggling with the question: ‘Am I really saved?’
Perhaps this is precisely your problem
And now we come to something very important. Perhaps your biggest problem isn’t that you look at yourself too little, but rather that you look at yourself too much.
You look at your sins. At your feelings. At your achievements. At your doubts. At your prayers. At your faith. At your past. And you try to determine from all those things whether you’re saved.
But Christianity does not begin with: ‘Look at yourself and find out if you’re good enough.’ It begins with: ‘Look to Christ.’
What did He do? He lived a life of perfect obedience. He suffered. He died for sinners. He rose from the dead. And everyone who comes to Him in faith receives forgiveness and eternal life. And even the faith with which you accept Christ is not an achievement by which you earn your salvation. Rather, you come to Christ empty-handed and receive, by grace, what He has accomplished.
That is the foundation.
But how do I know, then, whether my faith is genuine?
As I promised earlier, I now want to show you what you can look for instead. For how do you know if your faith is genuine?
Now we come to an important nuance. You cannot simply resolve this by saying: ‘If you’re afraid you’re not saved, you’re probably saved.’ That’s too simplistic.
Even someone who is deceiving themselves can be afraid. That is why we must not look solely at our fear. We must look to Christ and to the fruit of faith.
Faith is not merely an intellectual assent. James makes it clear that faith without works is dead. And Jesus says that a good tree is recognised by its fruit.
So the question is not: “Am I perfect?” The question is: “Has Christ truly become the centre of my life?”
Is there repentance? Is there faith? Is there a new direction? Is there love for Christ? Is there a struggle against sin? Is there a longing for holiness? Is there a desire to obey God?
Not perfect. But genuine.
And I do know that you cannot add anything at all to your own salvation; that is not what I am saying. Nor is that what James is saying. For being born again does not mean that you will never sin again. It means that you are no longer the same person you used to be.
And there lies an important distinction. You may be convinced that Jesus really existed. You may even believe that He died and rose again. But that does not automatically mean that, by placing your trust in Him, you have taken refuge in Him. Even the demons believe that God is one, says James. Saving faith is more than acknowledging that certain things are true. It is trusting in Christ and coming to Him.
I remember very well that at one point I, too, was convinced that the Bible spoke the truth. After many discussions, I realised it was untenable to deny that Jesus had died and risen. Yet at first I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with Him!
So I could believe that Jesus had existed. I could no longer honestly deny that He had died and risen. But I still didn’t want Him. I wanted to live my own life. It was only when I stopped seeing myself as my own saviour and turned to Jesus that this changed. I asked Him to save me.
If you’re curious about the whole story, you can read my testimony: Why I am a Christian and a Missionary (Jurgen Hofmann, Conversion Story of a Hard-Core Sceptic)
And perhaps you’re afraid of the unforgivable sin
There is another form of doubt in faith that many Christians struggle with. Perhaps you’ve said something against God. Perhaps you’ve had a terrible thought. Perhaps you’ve sinned and you’re thinking: “Have I now committed the unforgivable sin?”
To keep this article from going on too long, I won’t go into that now. Besides, I’ve already made an article on the subject: “THE UNFORGIVABLE SIN: Why many Christians are needlessly afraid.”
And the same applies here: don’t let fear draw you away from Christ. Instead, turn to Christ.
For anyone who truly longs for forgiveness and flees to Christ should not think: “Perhaps Jesus no longer wants me.”
Jesus says: “Whoever comes to Me, I will certainly not cast out.”
Where, then, should you find your assurance?
So if you’re struggling today with the question: “Am I really saved?”, I’d like to ask you to remember three things.
Firstly: your salvation rests on Christ. Not on your achievements. Not on the strength of your emotions. Not on the number of times you pray. Not on how well you have lived this week. Christ is your hope.
Secondly: examine the fruit of God’s work in your life. Not to save yourself, but to see whether faith is truly alive. Is there repentance? Is there love for Christ? Is there a struggle against sin? Is there a longing for God? Is there a new direction? None of this needs to be perfect. Nor does it have to be equally strong at all times. But some sign of life must be visible.
And thirdly: when you fall, flee to Christ. Do not run away from Him.
That is perhaps the most important thing.
When you sin, your flesh says: Hide yourself. Stay away. You are not worthy. God no longer wants you.
But the Gospel says: Go to Christ.
Confess your sin. Repent. Trust in His grace once more. For John writes in 1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins: He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Look up
Perhaps you have spent years trying to find assurance by looking within yourself over and over again.
Do I feel enough? Do I believe enough? Am I sufficiently repentant? Have I really changed? Was my conversion genuine?
But perhaps today you need to do something different.
Look up.
Look to Jesus.
Because ultimately, the question isn’t: “Am I a perfect Christian?” The question is: “Is Christ my Saviour?”
And if you truly come to Him, you don’t have to wait until you feel worthy enough. You come precisely because you are not worthy.
That is grace.
The devil wants you to constantly look at yourself. The Gospel calls you to look to Christ.
And the more you look to Him, the more you will discover:
My hope does not lie in myself.
My hope lies in Him.
My salvation does not lie in my achievements.
My salvation lies in His finished work.
My assurance does not lie in how strong I feel.
My assurance lies in the faithfulness of my Saviour.
So if you’re struggling with doubts about your faith today, I don’t want to simply say to you: “Don’t worry.”
I want to tell you something much better:
Go to Jesus.
Trust in Jesus.
Hold on to Jesus.
And when you fall: run back to Jesus.
For He is not a Saviour who invites people only to then turn away those who truly come to Him.
He says: “Whoever comes to Me, I will certainly not cast out.”
That is not just a feeling.
That is His promise.
And that is why you can take your eyes off yourself…
…and fix them on Christ.
For your assurance does not depend on the strength of your faith.
Your assurance begins with how great your Saviour is.
