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Christ said that unless we become like the child he held we could not see the Kingdom.

This brings up the question what is it about young children?

I will submit to you that the feature is that they trust their parents.

If you go back to the fall itself many have asked what was it that our parents could have had to resist the temptation ... but what about trust? They’d known the Lord their whole lives and the temptation in its very essence was to trust the serpent rather than trust the Father.

Where am I taking this?

Well, I’m not taking it in the easy peasy direction that trusting in your works is not trusting in the promise given but rather towards your query: how can I know I’m saved.

Many aspects of the doctrine of grace and substitutionary atonement can seem dodgy to folks, which is one reason why things like doctrines of salvation by works have found purchase time and again. It isn’t a dodge to say the Gospel can be a stumbling block because Scripture itself says it is an offense.

TrustIng like a child seems to be a key.

On one level the Lord has put the proverbial cookies on a low shelf so that those of limited ability can grasp them (that too is something offensive to the great and the good as the world counts such things ... or as I sometimes say if the Lord had waned to save thre great and the good all He would have had to do was give them a different gospel, one that only the great and the good could understand, and then they’d have flooded into the kingdom whilst patting themselves on the back because they are so clever); yet, there are certainly deep, hard things wrapped up in it.

Do I here say His ways are not ours?

No. because that too is not the answer I’m after.

To all the ways men might say that they don’t understand, that it doesn’t add up, the Lord can respond that His Son has dealt with it and we have His word on it ... essentially “do you trust me?” He can always ask.

His children will trust Him.

The tares sown in the world just will not.

The accomplishment of the former is being born, not something any newborn has right to crow about and that does not change.

Again, I wrote the saved can have works resulting in reward because they are saved. The unsaved have no works no matter how hard they work, period.

How do I know I’m saved?

I cannot tell you about my experiences because unlike the Scriptures those are not independently inspectable by you (that is the fundamental flaw in any appeal to personal experiences).

Can I give you a sign? Over the Internet? Please....

But I can say I’m saved because of His promise offered on His terms. I didn’t do it. He does it. He keeps me as Scripture says. And I trust Him to keep His word.

My works, such as they are, are even things He gives me to do.

If I’ve come up short in this post in your eyes that’s okay, because as the old joke points out there is a difference between being sent and just being went.

How on earth do you know that YOU are saved? Salvation is God's bailiwick, not yours. Or does your branch of faith tell you that you are saved? Honest question.

How on earth do you know that YOU are saved? Because Scripture says so, that of God promising salvation to those of effectual faith in the Lord Jesus, faith in whom is counted for righteousness and effects obedience (as my above post documents), and thus both inner and outer testimony attests to that faith.

He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you [in the previous 4 chapters describing true faith] that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. (1 John 5:12-13)

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. (Romans 8:14-17)

Thus the exhortation:

Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? (2 Corinthians 13:5)