How important is it to know the date you were saved?

In traveling as an evangelist for the more than 50 years, I have been asked what is sometimes referred to as a “boatload” of questions. Many of those have surrounded one’s assurance of salvation. One of those questions has been, “How important is it to know the date you were saved?”

When the Scripture gives assurance of salvation, it always goes back to a fact, not to a date. Who are you trusting in right now as your only way to heaven? Acts 4:12 tells us, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name given among men by which we must be saved.” If one is trusting Christ alone to save him or her, they are saved, regardless of when they “crossed the line” from darkness into light.

It is true that there is an exact second that one crosses from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. When we stand before the Lord, He will be able to tell us when that moment was. But whether one knows when and where that occurred is not the issue, as long as one knows it has occurred and knows how.

Some people know the date because their conversion was so dramatic in the way God caught their attention and brought them to Himself, that they remember the exact moment it happened. Paul the apostle was one of those. Read the account of his conversion in Acts 9. God caught his attention in a single moment when He said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” The next verse tells us, “And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” Then the Lord said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.” That moment was one he never forgot.

So, yes, God brings some people to Himself in such a dramatic way that they can recall the moment it happened. 

Then there are others, like me, who may have been raised in a God-fearing atmosphere, came to understand through a variety of means that one is saved by grace – underserved favor – not by good living or selfless deeds. The time period during which I came to understand that eternal life was a free gift received by faith was one of the most comforting times of my life. I no longer had to worry about where I was going when I died, because I knew exactly why I was going to heaven.

Although I tell of the night I knelt by my bed as a teenager and told God that I was trusting Christ alone to save me, I will never be sure until I see Him face to face of the exact moment I “crossed the line.”  It may have been days earlier or later when I more fully understood what I had done. 

Our assurance of salvation, though, is not based on when or where our actual conversion occurred. It is based on who we are trusting in as our only way to heaven. When we are trusting Christ alone to save us, we are forever His regardless of the time and place the divine transaction from darkness to light took place.

Some know the date; others don’t know the date. I am equally convinced that many are wrong on the date. The moment they placed their trust in Christ alone to save them may have been sooner or later than they thought. But they are forever His because, through simple faith in Christ, they accepted His sin payment for their sin problem. 

That is one reason that I tell people in giving their testimony that they should always emphasize how they were saved – by trusting Christ alone to save them. It is fine to mention when and where you feel your conversion took place. But I, as someone listening to you, cannot come to Christ when you did. That moment is in the past. But I have to come to Christ the same way you did, by trusting Christ alone to save me.

Once more, our eternal salvation is based on who we are trusting in to get us to heaven not when or where we came to Him. As 1 John 5:12 so simply declares, “He who has the Son has life.”