Page 21 - Pastoral Epistles student textbook

The only evidence that salvation has taken place in someone’s life is that their life has
changed.

2 Corinthians 5:17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old
has gone, the new is here!
1 John 2:3-6. We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands.
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4 Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the
truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made
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complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him
must live as Jesus did.
If there is no change in anyone’s life – how do we know salvation has taken place? It is the
changed life that gives us the evidence of salvation.
We follow Jesus.

John 10:27. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
We love other Christians.
1 John 3:14. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each
other.

We have a new sense of peace in our life.
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Romans 5:1-2. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace
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with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by
faith into this grace in which we now stand.
We enjoy doing good things for the Kingdom.
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Ephesians 2:8-10. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is
not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.
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10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God
prepared in advance for us to do.

1 John 2:19. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had
belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none
of them belonged to us.

No one will ever live a sin-free life - but the pattern of our life should be decreasing sin
and increasing righteousness.

In their zeal to eliminate good works as a requirement for salvation,
some people have gone to the extreme of arguing that good works

are not even a valid evidence of salvation. They teach that a person

may be genuinely saved - yet never manifest a changed life.
Some have even taken the absurd position that a born-again person

may ultimately turn away from Christ into unbelief, deny God, and

become an atheist - yet still possess eternal life.

The Bible is clear that a saved person can never be lost but it is

equally clear that a true Christian will never fall back into total
unbelief.
Pastor John MacArthur
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