Third, a changed life. This is the testimony of anyone who knows Jesus: "When I gave my life to Jesus, He saved me from. . . ." "I could not overcome this problem until I took it to Jesus and He showed me what to do to over come the problem and it worked."

I once worked with a man for two years. He said all the right things. He did all the right things. What didn’t he do? He never showed any evidence of change or growth in his relationship with God. As time went on I came to realize that in two years of working with him, he never once ever stated that Jesus ever shared anything with him. I would talk to him about what he learned from the Word and why there was no change in his life in relation to it. He would always give me the answer that he intended to do something about it, but then never did. After a while I would say to him that I was sure all the people in hell intended to accept Christ, but intending and doing are not the same things. All there good intentions did not keep them from going to hell when they died. He would just laugh and nothing would change. He was very religious and did religious works, but there was no evidence of a changed life. He was also involved in many moral issues. At first it appeared that he was a very dedicated Christian, but because I worked with him for two years, I came to realize that his moral involvements were not out of his relationship with God or love, but for the purpose of trying to prove to everybody else that he was better than them. He was very moral, but had no compassion or love. Jesus and the book of Hebrews put it this way,

"Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’" (Matthew 7:21-23)

"For ground that drinks the rain which often falls upon it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled, receives a blessing from God. But if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed, and it ends up being burned." (Hebrews 6:7-8)

Fourth, there is evidence of an ongoing growing relationship with God. The writer of Hebrews and Paul writes,

"Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness.’"

"But just as it is written, ‘Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him.’ For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God." (1 Cor 2:9-10)

Christianity is relationship with Jesus. The whole purpose of Jesus’ salvation for us was to bring our spirits back to life and back into relationship with Him so we could talk to him and receive from Him through our spirits and again have a relationship with Him. God’s plan for man was for him to be lead by the Holy Spirit through his human spirit. When Adam and Eve sinned, their spirit died. As a result, their ability to be led by God by the Holy Spirit through their human spirit became impossible. It was for this reason that God through the prophets revealed Himself to us through the written word so that we would know something about God and about His moral character. Without a relationship with God, the only means of moral rightness or wrongness that we have in life is through what is revealed in the Bible.

But the relationship of the Christian who is born from above changes all that because when he is born from above through the Holy Spirit, his spirit comes back to life and he enters back into relationship with God so that the Apostle Paul explains,

"But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter." (Rom 7:6)

"Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit creates-life." (2 Cor 3:5-6)

The letter represents the Law: God’s Word, whereas the Spirit represents our relationship with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. It also represents not being changed in our lives through the Law but through our on-going relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

As I was grieved and pondering over this man and his life one day, the Lord showed me that he was not saved and that he did not know him. It was not too long after this that a mutual friend of his and mine came by to visit. During our visit he brought up this man and expressed a concern about him. I shared with him my concern about him also and what I had believed the Lord shared with me about him. I explained to this friend I will call Steve,

"Steve, you have a lot of problems in your life that some of us would consider very big problems, but whenever we get together and share, you will say over and over to me, ‘This morning in my quiet time the Lord showed this to me about my life and gave me an answer to this. . .’ which shows me that you are saved because every time I see you, you share with me Your relationship with Jesus. In two years of working with this man he never once shared with me anything about his relationship with God or anything whenever I would ask him to seek the Lord about something in my life I needed wisdom on. It was not until the Lord showed me that this was because he did not know Him, he did not have a relationship with God. The reason why I know you have a relationship with God is because whenever I see you, you talk with me about your relationship with God, what He is ministering to you. This man never has."

He astoundingly came to agree with my evaluation.

The fifth evidence of a person knowing Jesus is his obedience to Christ. The Apostle John wrote:

"By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." (1 John 2:3-4)

John tells us clearly in this passage that if a person has truly come to know Jesus, he or she will obey His commands to them in His Word and to them personally. Later John also tells us that our obedience to Jesus is also evidence of our love for God’s children. He writes:

"The one who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. . . . Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God; and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and do His commandments." (1 John 5:1-2)

We have already established in this Chapter that Water Baptism does not save us, but if someone says he knows Jesus, but is resistant to obey Him in Water Baptism, the Bible teaches we have a right to question the legitimacy of his or her salvation. A person who is saved loves Jesus and wants to please and obey him. A person who is saved is not looking for reasons to disobey Jesus. Jesus said in Matthew 7:20-21,

"So then, you will know them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven."

This is what James the brother of Jesus was talking about in James 2:14-18 when he said,

"What use is it, my brethren, if a man says he has faith, but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. But someone may well say, ‘You have faith, and I have works: show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.’"

Somebody at this point will jump in and say, "See! You are saved by works!" First, The Book of James is not the Bible, but is one book of many books in the Bible and therefore must be taken in the context of everything else that the Bible teaches. Second, we need to understand that James was not talking to the unsaved, but to believers. Third, we need to understand the motivation behind what James wrote here, and that is that Jerusalem was undergoing a famine. The Christians who had were not taking care of their brethren who did not have, they were hording and taking care of themselves. This goes first of all back to the evidence of a true Christian which is his love for the children of God. James’ point here is exactly what we are talking about. They were saying they had faith, but their faith wasn’t being evidenced by their works, by their love for the children of God. Their selfishness and self-centeredness was demonstrating just the opposite. Therefore James’ rebuke of the lack of the evidence of their faith was justified. But this passage is also talking about that if a person truly knows Jesus, then it will be evidenced through his obedience to Christ and through his works which brings us to our next evidence.

The sixth evidence is a hunger and a thirst for righteousness. When a person comes to know Jesus and the depth of Jesus’ love for him through his salvation, that person loves Jesus and wants to serve him. That person has a hunger and a thirst for righteousness, for the truth. Jesus said it this way in John 3:19-21,

"And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God."

A person who knows Jesus and loves Jesus does not run from Him. A person who knows Jesus cannot get enough of Him. He wants Him all the more, so he draws near to Christ all the more because he wants his will and purpose for his life. This is the purpose of a daily Quiet Time with Jesus and His Word: it is a time to seek Jesus about what in your life is of Him and what is not and what works He wants you to do and what works He wants you to cease so you know that your works are the result of God’s initiative, not your own and are wrought in God.

Jesus put it this way in John 5:44,

"How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another, and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?"

You are a mature Christian when what You do is out of your love relationship with Jesus, not because it will gain you the approval of men. Jesus said,

"Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give to you, for on Him God the Father has set His seal." (John 6:27)

If a person claims to know Jesus, but shows no evidence of a hunger and a thirst for righteousness, no change of life-style, the Bible teaches that that person is a liar.

The most important thing on Jesus’ heart is our bringing others to a saving knowledge of who He is, yet most Christians I talk to about how important this issue is have a million excuses of why they cannot get involved. Only God knows those who are his, but based on what Jesus said, I have a right to question the legitimacy of their faith. They are too busy chasing after the world to care about those who do not yet know Jesus. They are storing up treasures on earth rather than in heaven. Paul put it this way in Philippians 3:18-20

"For many walk of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ."

Finally, the seventh evidence is a hatred toward sin. The Apostle John wrote in 1 John 5:18, "We know that no one who is born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him and the evil one does not touch him." In 1 John 1:8, John is very plain in saying that if we say we have no sin, we are liars; so John is not saying here that if you know Jesus that you will not sin in your walk with Jesus. On this side of heaven we have the presence of a fallen soul and flesh that is yet to be redeemed and under the power of sin. It is only because of the Grace of Jesus that we have any restraint over sin in our lives at all (Rom 1:28-32). So John is not talking about sin out of weakness here. He is talking about willful deliberate sin. He is telling us that a person who is born of God through the Holy Spirit does not practice deliberate willful sin. A child of God may not be able to keep from sinning on a continuous basis, but he hates sin and is very grieved when he does sin. He cries out to Jesus for His deliverance and for his power to overcome the sin in his life.

A person, however, who does not know Jesus, doesn’t care about his sin. This is because he does not have the indwelling Holy Spirit to convict him of his sin. John is talking about a person who claims to know Jesus, but lives in deliberate habitual sin on a daily basis. The apostle Paul put it this way in Ephesians 5:5-6:

"For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience."

Also in Galatians 6:7 Paul wrote, "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap." If a person truly knows Jesus, he is not going to be able to live in willful sin for very long. This is because he will be so miserable that he will not have peace until he repents of his sin. But a person who claims to know Jesus and yet lives in willful sin but shoes no remorse or intent to repent of his sin, John says that, that person is a liar. He does not know God.

I have presented many evidences of how we can know whether a person truly knows Jesus or not in this chapter. There are certainly many other evidences that the Bible mentions. I recommend reading through the First Epistle of John. This book focuses on what is a true believer and what is not.

In review, we are not saved by repenting of our sins, or by receiving the Holy Spirit, or by speaking in tongues, or through receiving Water Baptism. When we repent of our sins, we are saved, not by any works of ours, but through receiving by faith God’s forgiveness for those sins through Jesus’ death and shed blood on the cross alone. We personalize this by receiving Jesus into our hearts as Savior from from our sins and as Lord of our lives. When we have saving faith in the Gospel, God automatically gives us His Holy Spirit as a result. Having the Holy Spirit and Water Baptism are not the means of our salvation but evidence of the salvation that we already have.

If a person has truly come to Jesus and received Him as Savior from their sins and as Lord of their life, it will be evidenced by

1. Their unashamed public confession of Jesus as Savior and Lord
2. By their love for the children of God.
3. By their changed life.
4. By their ongoing growing relationship with God.
5. By their obedience to Jesus’ commands.
6. By their hunger and a thirst for righteousness.
7. And finally, by their hatred toward sin.