“For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law; for [it is] not the hearers of the Law [who] are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.” (Romans 2:12, 13)
The third evidence of salvation, in my list, is the confidence derived from being saved apart from the law. People say all the time, in response to the question, “Why should God allow you into His heaven,” “I never killed anyone.” By this statement they mean, they keep the law. Only a person who believes God’s standards of holiness to be like that of men would think such a thing.
God is not like men. The writer to the Hebrews, who understood the love of God very well, wrote the following. “See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. …Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our, God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:25, 28 & 29)
In the last one hundred years, men have increasingly proclaimed the love of God to the removal of His holy, righteous, anger over sinful men. God never lowered His standards of morality. Neither has He removed the penality of hating Him, and insubordination to Him. Jesus’s death on the cross proved the hatred all men have for God.
Only at the cross do men decide to submit the total of their life to God
Jesus’s death on the cross proved the hatred all men have for God. Jew and Gentile were present, ordinary people and rulers, religious and God-haters. God could not have been more clear and graphic than nailing God in human form to a piece of wood, after teaching like no other, and healing a nation. Such a death is precisely what Jesus Christ experienced. First of all, it is this hatred for God and His rule of men that causes their hatred. This hatred of God is the primary sin for man’s condemnation before Him.
Of men who were just as guilty of hating God as every other Paul wrote these words, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38, 39)
When a person acknowledges Jesus Christ as Lord, His will then takes precedence in the heart of the new believer. The believer then makes the confession whereby the true Christian denies the approval of others in the world and prefers the acceptance of God in Christ. To move from death to life, false religion to right, a fake and non-existent relation to God to a real and thriving one, only such submission conveys evidence of salvation. It is true of such people that they receive assurance of salvation because they believe in Jesus and the promises that accompany such faith.