Is Salvation a Mystery to the Person Saved?

 

Does being “born again” as scripture so plainly teaches mean that salvation is really some type of hidden mystery of spiritual evolution that a person has no idea of it happening?  Sadly, this has been the testimony recently heard by some religious and hard-working church-goers. It goes like this: “I am not sure when it happened but I could have been between the ages of 4 and 10 years-of-age.  I just felt that I got saved around then, I mean, I know people were praying for me so something must have happened, right”?

 

A few salvation stories from scripture clearly show that the sinner was saved and they knew it.  It was never depicted as a wandering around for years and then coming to some conclusion that they must be saved because someone prayed for them.  Now, this is not to take away the seriousness and sincerity of prayer. But the point is that a person should know when God saved them. This does not mean that they should necessarily know the exact hour and day it happened but they should know the moment it happened.

 

When our Lord was on the cross, through the work of the Holy Spirit, did the one malefactor recognize and acknowledge who Jesus Christ was and is?  And our Lord replied to him with “today thou shalt be with Me.” That one malefactor knew of his salvation and did not have to wonder (Luke 23:40-43).  The Ethiopian eunuch had no doubt that God saved him (Acts 8:29-39). Saul who became Paul certainly had no doubt as to when God saved him (Acts 9). Lydia had no doubt that God saved her (Acts 16:14).  A kind of aimless wandering and wondering is not found in the scriptures as it pertains to one’s salvation.

 

For someone to know when they went to school and when they graduated or started a new job or when their children were born but NOT KNOW when God saved them makes no biblical sense.  In fact, it may be an insult to the Holy Spirit who regenerated the sinner unto salvation.

 

In John chapter three the Lord Jesus Christ tells the very well-educated and highly positioned Nicodemus that to enter heaven one must be born again.  And He tells him that not less than five times. He is not telling him to go out and get born again but that being born again is a spiritual prerequisite to entering heaven.

 

Scripture plainly teaches that to be saved one must be “born again.”  And, if one is born again they will know it. God is not keeping a secret from them.   Why would our Sovereign God save someone and not want them to know when it happened or have them have doubts about it?