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"Of course not!" you say. That would be the opinion of most people - you can never really know. But that is only if it depends on you. If it depends on your performance then you can never know. You don't know how you will perform tomorrow. You may fail so badly as to be disqualified.
Of course this is all assuming that you could be good enough in the first place and you can't.
According to the Bible you can know for sure that you can be accepted, that you can have eternal life. Not only can you be sure of eternal life in the future but you can have it now here on earth. Its not just "Pie in the sky when you die." "Its life on earth after birth."
This is a strange thought and impossible to most people but that's because you are thinking about and depending on your own performance. This is where the crunch comes in. The only people who can be sure of life after death and eternal life now are those who are not depending on how they live their lives. Does that sound strange?
The Eternal life that the Bible talks about is not merely life after death but it is knowing the eternal living God personally. Yes, you can know God personally and you can know where you are going to spend forever too. The only way that this can happen is if it doesn't depend on you.
Eternal life is a gift that God gives. Now it is important to understand what a gift is. A gift is something that someone gives because they want to make someone happy. Its not like a wage which is what someone is obliged to give to someone who has worked and earned it.
So if God gives you this gift because he wants to bless you, you don't have to do anything for it, do you? So who does he give the gift of eternal life to? He does not give it to those who work for it. No those people are saying to God that they don't want his gift. Their pride gets in the way and they cannot just accept it as a gift, no they must do something.
God's gift was very expensive. Jesus had to pay for it with his life when he died on the cross nearly 2000 years ago. If you will trust him, believing that he loves you so much that he has paid for all of your wickedness, (no matter how good you think you are) he will give you his gift of eternal life.
You can know that you have it if you depend on him and what he has done and not on what you did, are doing or will do.
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.- 1 John 5:13 (NIV) Notice that John wrote in the present tense here, not in the future tense.
Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness. - Romans 4:4,5
Here you see the point I'm trying to make. Its the person who does not work but who trusts God that is credited with righteousness. That righteousness comes from God not from the person himself - Romans 3:21
So what do you want to do? Do it yourself or accept that you can't and that God has and wants to give you eternal life as a gift?
If you want to know what your biggest problem with all this really is, click here.
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