True faith
Alister Begg says, “True faith takes its character and its quality from its object … not from itself.” We should never have faith in faith itself! Rather, we should put our faith wholeheartedly in the One who died on the cross for our sins, and Who rose from the grave, in order that we may be forgiven and redeemed.
It’s entirely Biblical to test our faith in Jesus. Here’s what the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 13:2-5, “I have already warned those who have sinned in the past and all the rest as well, and I warn them now even though I am absent as I did when I was with you the second time, that if I come back I will not spare anyone, since you seek proof that Christ is speaking in and through me. He is not weak or ineffective in dealing with you, but powerful within you. For even though He was crucified in weakness [yielding Himself], yet He lives [resurrected] by the power of God [His Father]. For we too are weak in Him [as He was humanly weak], yet we are alive and well with Him because of the power of God directed toward you. Test and evaluate yourselves to see whether you are in the faith and living your lives as [committed] believers. Examine yourselves [not me]! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves [by an ongoing experience] that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test and are rejected as counterfeit?
As our baseline for identifying truth, the Bible clearly instructs us on how to know we are in fact saved, and our eternity with Jesus is secure!
1 John 5:12-13 says, “He who has the Son [by accepting Him as Lord and Savior] has the life [that is eternal]; he who does not have the Son of God [by personal faith] does not have the life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you will know [with settled and absolute knowledge] that you [already] have eternal life.”
If the Bible is true as it relates to teaching that every human being will either live eternally in heaven in a perfect place, or will live eternally in hell in torment … wouldn’t it make sense to know that you know that you know, that you have true saving faith in Jesus?