Meeting People Head On with Ray Schmautz 6: Eternal Assurance

Last time, I shared what the Bible says about how to become a Christian. But, how
can we be assured that if we put our faith in Jesus Christ to be the Savior of the world,
that He personally came and died for you to pay your penalty of death for your sin, so
that you could have His righteousness – the Bible clearly says that you could be
assured that if you were to die today, you would have eternal life and be with God
forever.
And that’s an assurance that’s worth more than all the money in the world!
In Revelation 3:20, Jesus says:

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.

So, if you open the door of your heart and life to Him, He will come and fellowship with
you, and ultimately, this is what the Bible describes as being “Born Again” through
invitation and faith in who Jesus is. So today, we’re going to talk about the assurance
that this offers you.
First off, let’s look at 1 John 5:11-13

And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His
Son.  He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God 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 may know that you have eternal life.

These verses put it clearly and plainly: If a person accepts Christ for who He is, invites
Him into their lives and places their faith in Him, that person has eternal life. However,
if someone refuses to make that choice, they do not have eternal life.
As we look closer at these verses, we see that God speaks through His Son, Jesus,
that only through Jesus can we have eternal life. Then He goes on to say that
whoever has made the choice to follow Jesus has eternal life. Along with this comes
freedom from doubt, fear, worry, and assurance for your eternity after life here on
earth.
So the person who has come to a place in their life where they’ve heard the claims of
Jesus Christ – He claimed to be of God, from God, and in the beginning God Himself.
He came to earth in a flesh body, born as a baby, lived a sinless life here on earth, and
then He died on the cross – a death that paid the wages of mankind’s sin, not His own
sin because He never sinned. But His sacrifice was credited to anyone who come to faith in Him.

But, as we said before, it’s not enough just to know this. There must be a personal faith of your own, trusting Christ to be your personal Savior, and a day-to-day, minute-to-minute, constant relationship between you and Christ resulting from your invitation for Him to enter into your life.

Whoever makes this choice, has eternal life!

And so the reality is that you must put your faith in Christ and live with Him living within your heart. Without this choice, you simply do not have the assurance of eternal life. Instead, you’ll be eternally separated from God, paying your own cost of sin.
Going back to the verse in Revelation, we see that He wrote these things so that we may KNOW that we have eternal life! This is referring to an “Experiential Knowledge”, not just “Head Knowledge”.

You see, God wants you to know for certain that you can have eternal life with Him by simply putting your faith in Jesus Christ, His Son.

So, ask yourself: How long is eternal?

Yeah… it’s FOREVER.

So, if you have eternal life because you have the Son, can it be taken away from you? No, it cannot. Because if it could be taken away, it never was eternal.

This is one of the greatest truths that anyone could ever come to know while here on planet earth.

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