So can you go about your life on this earth with the confidence that you are saved? According to the Bible, you can. The apostle John, who’d known Jesus perhaps better than anyone, instructed the members of the early Christian church about salvation. “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God,” he wrote, “that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).

Please notice John didn’t say that you can hope you have eternal life or wish you might find eternal life, or dream of perhaps inheriting eternal life. He said that you can know that you have eternal life. You can count on it.

That’s not to say that you can’t change your mind. Just because you were once saved doesn’t mean you can’t turn from God later, in the same way that a couple who once loved each other enough to marry later made choices that led to divorce.

Jesus told a parable once in which He compared a man sowing seed to the effect that God’s Word has on our hearts. He said, “The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy.