Romans 8:28-39 reveals clearly that there is nothing in the universe that can separate the elect from the love of God. The One who chose to save you “is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy” (Jude 24).

According to Scripture, people who profess to know Christ at one time but later deny Him were never really saved to begin with. First John 2:19 says, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, in order that it might be shown that they all are not of us.”

A true believer will never depart from the faith (Philippians 1:6), so those who do so are revealing that they were never truly saved (John 8:31; Hebrews 3:14).

Even true Christians can sin, however, and because of that may lack assurance of salvation (Psalm 51:12). A failure to grow spiritually can also rob us of the confidence that we are God’s children (2 Peter 1:9). But anyone indwelt by the Holy Spirit is secure eternally, because He is the “deposit guaranteeing our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:14).

Faith comes to the believer as a gift from God. It is not something that individuals are capable of mustering up on their own. Were faith a work of man’s own doing, man would be in a position to take partial credit for his redemption. But such a concept is foreign to the writers of Scripture. Paul anticipated that men would tend to boast of their part in salvation when he wrote that faith (one of many components of salvation) “is the gift of God…that no one should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). As Charles Haddon Spurgeon was fond of saying, salvation is “all of grace.”

Faith comes as a result of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit-He quickens our hearts to believe. Apart from the new birth, there can be no true faith. Therefore, faith, though it manifests itself in action, comes as a result of God’s work in us. God grants us faith and that faith is evidenced by our walking in the good works that “God [has] prepared beforehand” for us to walk in (Ephesians 2:10).

The Bible says that if we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved. However, the Bible does not present faith as simply “mental assent to the facts of the gospel.” True saving faith involves repentance from one’s sin and a complete trust in the work of Christ to save from sin and make one righteous. The Reformers spoke of three aspects of faith: recognition of the truth claims of the gospel, acknowledgment of their truthfulness and exact correspondence to man’s spiritual need, and a personal commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ who, by virtue of His death, provides the only sufficient sacrifice for one’s personal sin. Any one of these three aspects of faith, taken by themselves, is insufficient to meet the biblical definition of saving faith. However, the presence of all three components together results in saving faith. In other words, saving faith consists of mental, emotional, and volitional elements. Saving faith involves both the mind and the will.

In addition to calling us to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the New Testament uses several figures of speech to describe the nature of saving faith. Perhaps the most vivid of those figurative references is found in Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6). In that passage, Jesus likens true faith to hungering and thirsting. The unbeliever, by virtue of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, recognizes his or her dire need of nourishment and refreshment and comes to Jesus begging that He fill the need. That is a beautiful picture of faith. First, there is recognition of Jesus’ claim to be the “bread of life” (John 6:35) and the possessor of “living water” (John 4:10). Next, the unbeliever is convinced that Jesus’ promise is really true and that it corresponds exactly with his profound hunger and thirst. Finally, the unbeliever acts-he begs Jesus to satisfy his hunger and quench his thirst. True faith hears, believes, and actively responds.

In contrast, fruit-bearing plants thrive in the good soil that pictures a redeemed heart. Jesus said, “But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty” (Matthew 13:23). All believers are fruitful, even though not equally fruitful.

The Bible also describes what good fruit looks like. The following chart lists the characteristics of genuine saving faith. In essence, it serves as a guide for spiritual fruit inspection (2 Corinthians 13:5). If you are unsure about the reality of your faith, please take the time to study this chart, taking care to read each of the accompanying Scripture passages.

I. Evidences That Neither Prove Nor Disprove One’s Faith

• Visible Morality: Matthew 19:16-21; 23:27. 
• Intellectual Knowledge: Romans 1:21; 2:17ff. 
• Religious Involvement: Matthew 25:1-10 
• Active Ministry: Matthew 7:21-24 
• Conviction of Sin: Acts 24:25 
• Assurance: Matthew 23 
• Time of Decision: Luke 8:13, 14

II. The Fruit/Proofs of Authentic/True Christianity:

• Love for God: Psalm 42:1ff; 73:25; Luke 10:27; Romans 8:7 
• Repentance from Sin: Psalm 32:5; Proverbs 28:13; Romans 7:14ff; 2 Corinthians 7:10; 1 John 1:8-10 
• Genuine Humility: Psalm 51:17; Matthew 5:1-12; James 4:6, 9ff. 
• Devotion to God’s Glory: Psalm 105:3; 115:1; Isaiah 43:7, 48:10ff.; Jeremiah 9:23, 24; 1 Corinthians 10:31 
• Continual Prayer: Luke 18:1; Ephesians 6:18ff.; Philippians 4:6ff.; 1 Timothy 2:1-4; James 5:16-18 
• Selfless Love: 1 John 2:9ff, 3:14; 4:7ff. 
• Separation from the World: 1 Corinthians 2:12; James 4:4ff.; 1 John 2:15-17, 5:5 
• Spiritual Growth: Luke 8:15; John 15:1-6; Ephesians 4:12-16 
• Obedient Living: Matthew 7:21; John 15:14ff.; Romans 16:26; 1 Peter 1:2, 22; 1 John 2:3-5

If List I is true of a person and List II is false, there is cause to question the validity of one’s profession of faith. Yet if List II is true, then the top list will be also.

III. The Conduct of the Gospel:

• Proclaim it: Matthew 4:23 
• Defend it: Jude 3 
• Demonstrate it: Philippians 1:27 
• Share it: Philippians 1:5 
• Suffer for it: 2 Timothy 1:8 
• Don’t hinder it: 1 Corinthians 9:16 
• Be not ashamed: Romans 1:16 
• Preach it: 1 Corinthians 9:16 
• Be empowered: 1 Thessalonians 1:5 
• Guard it: Galatians 1:6-8

All of us struggle continually with sinful thoughts, sinful attitudes, sinful habits, and sinful desires. It is those who don’t struggle—those who deliberately and eagerly revel in their sin—who need to have their sense of security shaken. So don’t give up in defeat if you find yourself struggling with sin or even if you fall into it. Stay in the battle.

Fight sin by considering deeply what makes you more vulnerable to it, and then establish godly practices in its place. You may find you need to have accountability with a godly person you trust, or spend more time in prayer, or stay away from things that tempt you.

Do whatever it takes to discipline yourself and stop any pattern of sin before it gets started again. That is the key to staying away from sin—the constant, daily practice of thinking on the right things and not making provision for the flesh and its desires (Romans 13:14).

The Bible says prior to salvation, all people are dead in sin—spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1-3). In this state of death, the sinner is utterly unable to respond to any spiritual stimulus and therefore unable to love God, obey Him, or please Him in any way. Scripture says the mind of every unbeliever “is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:7-8, emphasis added). That describes a state of total hopelessness: spiritual death.

The effect of all this is that no sinner can ever make the first move in the salvation process. This is what Jesus meant in John 6:44, when He said, “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him.”

This is also why the Bible repeatedly stresses that salvation is wholly God’s work. Consider these passages: 

• In Acts 13:48 we read, “And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.” 

• Acts 16:14 tells us that Lydia was saved when, “… the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul.” 

• Romans 8:29-30 states, “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” 

• Ephesians 1:4-5,11 reads, “Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will … also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will.” 

• Ephesians 2:8 says even our faith is a gift from God. 

• In 2 Thessalonians 2:13, the apostle Paul tells his readers, “God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation.” 

• Second Timothy 1:9 informs us that God “has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.”

Occasionally someone will suggest that God’s election is based on His foreknowledge of certain events. This argument suggests that God simply looks into the future to see who will believe, and He chooses those whom He sees choosing Him. Notice that 1 Peter 1:2 says the elect are chosen “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,” and Romans 8:29 says, “whom He foreknew, He also predestined.” And if divine foreknowledge simply means God’s knowledge of what will happen in advance, then these arguments may appear to have some weight behind them.

But that is not the biblical meaning of “foreknowledge.” When the Bible speaks of God’s foreknowledge, it refers to God’s establishment of a love relationship with that person. The word know, in both the Old and New Testament, refers to much more than mere cognitive knowledge of a person. Such passages as Hosea 13:4-5; Amos 3:2 (KJV); and Romans 11:2 clearly indicate this. For example, 1 Peter 1:20 says Christ was “foreknown before the foundation of the world.” Surely this means more than that God the Father looked into the future to behold Christ! It means He had an eternal, loving relationship with Him. The same is true of the elect, whom we are told God “foreknew” (Romans 8:29). That means He knew them—he loved them—before the foundation of the world.

If God’s choice of the elect is unconditional, does this rule out human responsibility? Paul asks and answers that very question in Romans 9:19-20. He says God’s choice of the elect is an act of mercy. Left to themselves, even the elect would persist in sin and be lost, because they are taken from the same fallen lump of clay as the rest of humanity. God alone is responsible for their salvation, but that does not eradicate the responsibility of those who persist in sin and are lost—because they do it willfully, and not under compulsion. They are responsible for their sin, not God.

The Bible affirms human responsibility right alongside the doctrine of divine sovereignty. Moreover, the offer of mercy in the gospel is extended to all alike. Isaiah 55:1 and Revelation 22:17 call “whosoever will” to be saved. Isaiah 45:22 and Acts 17:30 command all men to turn to God, repent and be saved. First Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9 tell us that God is not willing that any should perish, but desires that all should be saved. Finally, the Lord Jesus said that, “the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37).

In summary, we can say that God has had a special love relationship with the elect from all eternity, and on the basis of that love relationship chosen them for salvation. The ultimate question of why God chose some for salvation and left others in their sinful state is one that we, with our finite knowledge, cannot answer. We do know that God’s attributes always are in perfect harmony with each other, so that God’s sovereignty will always operate in perfect harmony with His goodness, love, wisdom, and justice.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think it is fair to raise the question of whether someone who regularly robs banks to pay for illicit sex is truly saved! That man’s sin was secretly his lifestyle. There is every reason to believe that he would still be committing his crimes today if he had not been caught. Can we concede that this “so-called brother” is a genuine Christian, just because he was once an evangelical pastor?

True, we cannot judge the man’s heart, but we must judge his behavior (1 Cor. 5:12). “Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9-11). In those verses the apostle Paul was describing sins of chronic behavior, sins that color one’s whole character. A predilection for such sins reflects an unregenerate heart. Paul reminded the Corinthians, “Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God” (v. 12, emphasis added).

But wait. Doesn’t Scripture include examples of believers who committed gross sin? Didn’t David commit murder and adultery and allow his sin to go unconfessed for at least a year? Wasn’t Lot characterized by worldly compromise in the midst of heinous sin? Yes, those examples prove that genuine believers are capable of the worst imaginable sins. But David and Lot cannot be made to serve as examples of “carnal” believers, whose whole lifestyle and appetites are no different from unregenerate people.

David, for example, did repent thoroughly of his sin when Nathan confronted him, and he willingly accepted the Lord’s discipline (2 Sam. 12:1-23). Psalm 51 is an expression of David’s deep repentance at the end of this sordid episode in his life. The point, after all, is that this was merely one episode in David’s life. He was certainly not predisposed to that kind of sin. In fact, 1 Kings 15:5 says, “David did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and had not turned aside from anything that He commanded him all the days of his life, except in the case of Uriah the Hittite” (emphasis added).

Lot is a different case. Not much is known about him from the Old Testament account, but what is recorded about him is disappointing. He was a pathetic example of compromise and disobedience. On the eve of Sodom’s destruction, when he should have fled the city, “he hesitated” (Gen. 19:16). The angelic messengers had to seize his hand and put him outside the city. Near the end of his life, his two daughters got him drunk and committed incest with him (Gen. 19:30-38). Lot certainly did seem to have a proclivity for sins of compromise and worldliness.

Yet the inspired New Testament writer tells us Lot was “oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day with their lawless deeds)” (2 Pet. 2:8). He hated sin and desired righteousness. He had respect for holy angels-evidence of his fear of God (Gen. 19:1-14). He obeyed God by not looking back at Sodom when God’s judgment rained down (cf. v. 26).

Lot was certainly not “carnal” in the sense that he lacked spiritual desires. Though he lived in a wicked place, he was not wicked himself. His soul was “tormented,” vexed, grieved, tortured with severe pain at the sight of the evil all around him. Evidently his conscience did not become seared; he “felt his righteous soul tormented day after day” with the evil deeds of those around him. Though he lived in Sodom, he never became a Sodomite. Those who use him as an illustration of someone who is saved but utterly carnal miss the point of 2 Peter 2:8.

What is the lesson of Lot’s life as Peter saw it? Verse 9 sums it up: “The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment.”

In Lot’s case, one means the Lord used to rescue him from temptation was severe chastisement. Lot lost his home; his wife was killed by divine judgment; and his own daughters disgraced and debased him. He paid a terrible price for his sin, being “tormented day after day.” If Lot proves anything, it is that true believers cannot sin with impunity.

God always chastens and disciplines His children who sin. If they do not experience chastening, they are not truly His children, but spiritual bastards. Hebrews 12:7-8 explicitly states this: “What son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.” The specific purpose for which He disciplines us is “for our good, that we may share His holiness” (Heb. 12:10).

All of that flies in the face of the notion that millions of Christians live in a state of unbroken carnality. If these people are true children of God, why are they not constantly under His discipline?

Excerpted from John MacArthur, Faith Works: The Gospel According to the Apostles, (Dallas: Word Publishing) 1997, pp. 127-129.

But no, if you are thinking of backsliding as a perpetual state of willful rebellion or ungodly indifference on the part of one who professes faith in Christ. That situation is a sign of false profession (Matthew 7:21-23; 1 John 3:4-10).

The word backsliding is used two ways in Scripture. It is found only in Old Testament references to the nation of Israel (Jeremiah 3:22; 31:22; 49:4; Hosea 4:16; 11:7; 14:4, KJV).

• Sometimes it speaks of backsliding as the action of unregenerate people who turn stubbornly away from God (cf. Jeremiah 8:5). In that sense the Word cannot be used to describe true Christians.

• Other times true believers are said to backslide (Jeremiah 14:7). All believers go through times when they do not grow or are set back in their growth by sin—they seem to be sliding backwards like a calf on a muddy slope (cf. Hosea 4:16, KJV). In that sense the word could apply to true believers.

There is first of all an objective test, which asks, “Do I believe?” Ask yourself if you affirm the Scripture’s record of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Do you believe that He is God manifest in the flesh? Do you believe that God saves sinners solely through the merits of Jesus Christ’s obedient life and substitutionary death on the cross?

Second is the subjective or experiential test of assurance in which you ask yourself, “Is my faith real?” The apostle John’s purpose in writing the epistle of 1 John was to give true believers assurance of their salvation (1 John 5:13). In that small epistle John gives several marks to distinguish a true believer.

    •     True believers walk in the light (1 John 1:6-7). The light here means both intellectual and moral truth. Ask, “Do I affirm the truths of Scripture, and desire to obey them?”

    •     True believers confess their sin (1:8-2:1) Confess here doesn’t mean to recite every wrong that we have ever done. Rather, it means to agree with God about our sin. That means that true believers hate their sin; they don’t love it. They acknowledge they are sinful, and yet they know they are forgiven.

    •     True believers keep His commandments (2:3-4; 5:2-3). The term here refers to a watchful, observant obedience. Here the believer desires to obey truths he deems precious. It involves a proactive approach to obedience-the Christian studies Scripture in order to understand and obey it.

    •     True believers love the brethren (2:9-11; 3:10, 14-15; 5:2). Ask yourself the question, “Do I love God’s people and desire to be around them?”

   •     True believers affirm sound doctrine (2:20-23; 4:2,6). John here teaches that no true believer will fall into any serious, Christ-denying error or heresy.

   •     True believers follow after holiness (2:29; 3:3-4, 6-9). These verses certainly aren’t talking about sinless perfection, or even the frequency or duration of sin. The term sin in these verses describes one who lives an immoral, ungodly, unrighteous life as a matter of continual practice, and carries the attitude of hardened hate for God’s righteousness.

    •     True believers have the Holy Spirit (4:13; 5:10-11). This is an over-arching test summing up all the others. Is there evidence that the fruit of the Spirit is present in your life (Galatians 5:22-23)?

In summary, one’s assurance of salvation does not need to be based on a past decision or an experience. It should rest first of all on one’s faith in the objective truth of God’s Word, Jesus Christ, and the gospel. Secondly, it should rest on the reality of a changed life marked by obedience, a love for Christ and His righteousness, and a hatred for sin. Take heart if these things are true in your life, and trust God to continue to work out His salvation in your life.