7 And so, since we have been justified by his grace, we become heirs with the confident expectation of eternal life.”
1 Peter 1:8-9 (NET Bible)
8 You have not seen him, but you love him. You do not see him now but you believe in him, and so you rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, 9 because you are attaining the goal of your faith—the salvation of your souls.
John 3:16 (McCord Bible)
God so loved the world that he gave his unique Son, so that no one who believes in him will perish, but he will have eternal life.
For faithful Christians, eternal life is not something we cross our fingers and wish for….it is something so certain that we ought to feel like it is happening as we speak. In the Titus verse in the KJV, it is described as “hope”. It is not the way we currently view “hope”, as something we wish and cross your fingers that it comes true. The writing style of the New Testament writers about “hope” was such that if one was living faithfully, that eternal life was a certainty.
In the 1st Peter verse, the faithful are told to start the celebration, as if eternal life is already here!
In John 3:16, preachers often defend the KJV’s use of “should not perish” instead of “will not perish”, to allow those who don’t stay faithful to lose their salvation. But John 3:16 is not talking about the unfaithful who once had a belief, or an one-time belief at all. It is talking about a continual, lifelong belief that “works in love” (Galatians 5:6). Such people “will” by saved, no “should”s about it.
As long as one hears and believes in the gospel, turns away from sin and turns toward God, confess that Jesus is the Son of God and lives by that confession, buries his old life of sin in a body of water and rises from the water clothed in Christ, and lives a faithful life, he or she can be 100% certain of going to Heaven for eternity, and can start a joyous celebration that God will be faithful to His promise.