For many years I have stuggled, never feeling like I was a saved person.
What do you expect a saved person to feel like, exactly? Do certain feelings make you saved?
If someone asked me if I believed in God and believed in Jesus and that he died and rose again, I would say ‘yes’. But do I really believe it? On an intellectual level, I think I do - I believe the Bible and believe I would not deny my faith for anything. But I watched a video about Jordan Peterson and he said “[belief] doesn’t mean to state it. It means to act it out. And unless you act it out, you should be very careful about claiming it… If you were capable of believing [Christianity], it would be a transfiguring event.”
There is definitely a relationship between faith and corresponding action. The apostle James really pressed hard on the relationship between them, asserting that a genuine, heart faith - a saving faith - is one that anticipates living out what has been believed. "Faith without works is dead, being alone," James wrote. In contrast, mere intellectual faith has no expectation of acting out what is believed; it is agreeing that a thing is true without having any intention of letting that thing alter one's living, except, perhaps in the most superficial, convenient way.
But be careful: Doing does not always reflect being. Where does doing the will of the Father begin? With loving Him. (
Matthew 22:36-38) Obedience to God starts with an attitude of mind and heart, not action. And the apostle Paul put a really fine point on this by writing,
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
As the Pharisees demonstrated, one can honor God with their lips but have a heart that is far from Him. (
Matthew 15:1-9) The Pharisees were professionally obedient to God, to His law (and a big bunch of their own religious traditions and rules), but they were evil hypocrites, white-washed tombs full of dead men's bones, sons of hell, even.
The important question to ask yourself isn't "Am I living like I believe?" or "Do I feel like I'm saved?" but "Do I love God?" This love isn't, at bottom, a sentimental, semi-romantic feeling, an emotion, but a
desire, strongly wanting God, a thirst and/or hunger for Him, a yearning for Him.
Psalm 42:1-2
1 As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God?
Psalm 63:1
1 O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water.
Psalm 143:5-6
5 I remember the days of old; I meditate on all Your doings; I muse on the work of Your hands.
6 I stretch out my hands to You; My soul longs for You, as a parched land. Selah.
We can have such desire - and very powerfully - without it ever being particularly romantic or emotional. Such a desire
may lead to potent emotions but these would be
the by-product of love, not love - strong desire - itself. I mention this because many times Christians mistake emotion, a sentimental affection for God, as love for Him. And when they don't have such feelings for God, they start wondering if they love Him. Love for God - a powerful desire for Him - can exist without any feeling of affection, however, though such desire may, in time,
produce strong feelings of affection.
I realise my heart is not loving and it is very wicked and sinful.
This is to acknowledge no more than what God has said in His word is true of us all. Welcome to the club. (
Jeremiah 17:9; Romans 3:10; Romans 3:23; Ephesians 2:1-3; Titus 3:3, etc.)
Some may say this is conviction but where is my sorrow? Jordan Peterson has broken down and cried thinking about Christianity. Yet, look at me.
Jordan Peterson's tears are not the standard for genuine love of God. Many are the tears people have shed in religious moments who knew God not at all and whose tears did nothing to change this fact. What is proof-positive of salvation is a changed life, a life in which the Holy Spirit is clearly at work.
Am I Really Born Again?
Someone who would have the audacity to call themselves a Christian and yet does not feel great shame before God for my sin, who does not feel grateful for Jesus’ sacrifice, who does not have love and goodness in their heart. I have never been an emotional person and I know one can be saved without crying but I don’t feel like I’m saved - verging on I know I’m not.
Well, the answer is not to follow Jordan Peterson's example. For all of his emotion, he is not yet a child of God, a disciple of Jesus Christ, a Christian.
Sin has consequences. It leaves one's conscience blunted and twisted; it deafens one to the conviction of the Spirit; it hardens one's heart to the wickedness of one's sin and to God. It is no wonder, then, that willful sinners feel little (or nothing) about their sin or God. But, this can change. Over time. By God's power. Feeling such conviction and sorrow over one's sin may happen only after one is saved and indwelt by the Spirit, however. To be saved, though, one need only acknowledge one's sin for what it is (
1 John 1:9) and determine to forsake it by God's enabling grace (repentance).
Do I believe? I do think I do. But where is my Godly sorrow and what do I do with this belief? Nothing but identify myself as a Christian. I feel like a faker and a hypocrite who maybe believes and says thanks to Jesus for dying for me, but there is no sincere gratitude (I don’t feel grateful for anything in the world). For me, getting saved just feels like myself playing a selfish game to go to heaven and not to hell. I think Jesus may say to me “I never knew you”.
Well, if this is the case, it doesn't have to remain so. Sorrow often comes
after God softens a person's heart and this happens often only after a person is saved and the Holy Spirit goes to work on the person, changing their heart, cleansing them from sin, and teaching them the truth.