I have been through many different factors in the numbered paragraphs above. The list is not exhaustive. There are many other things that you could ask yourself. It may be that God will bring such questions to mind now, especially if you ask Him to.
The key is to go through the above list one by one and to be really frank and truthful with yourself about where you stand. Which direction are your answers mainly pointing in?
Do all or most of them point in the direction of you never having truly repented and handed over your life to Jesus Christ? Do they mostly show that there has been no real change of heart and of behaviour and priorities in your life? Is there little or no sign of fruit growing from your life? If so, then you are probably not really a Christian at all, no matter how many times you have been to church.
If most or all of your answers are option A than that strongly suggests that you are not a real Christian. If you have only or mainly ticked B then that would suggest to me that you are a real Christian, provided you weren’t just fooling yourself, which a lot of people do.
Were you just ticking box B automatically, simply because you “wanted to get the answer right”, even where it was not a true reflection of your life? If so then do the test again more carefully and thoughtfully. However, this test is only a guide. You need to pray and ask for God’s guidance and, ideally, speak to a genuine and mature Christian to seek further advice.
There is another type of person who tends to tick box A too readily. They are overly harsh with themselves, seeing no growth or progress even when it is really there. This is a small minority, especially in the Western churches in this apostate age. However, such people do exist and so I mention this in case you are one.
People in this sub-category suffer from excessive scruples. They are so honest that they are too quick to believe that any passage in the Bible which condemns sin or wrong attitudes is relevant to them and aimed at them. They see themselves as one of the least fruitful, least committed, least godly people in the church. In fact, they are usually the opposite.
Such a person is very prone to hear the accusing whispers of a demon. Therefore they are easily robbed of their assurance of salvation. They will therefore tick box A wrongly, when they ought to tick box B. It is the exact opposite of the self-satisfied, complacent person who casually ticks box B every time when he has no valid basis for doing so.
So, if you feel you may belong to this sub-group and you have ticked box A many times, even though you have a sincere desire to be a disciple of Jesus and to follow Him, then take advice from a mature fellow believer or leader. Consider whether your answers involve too many “false negatives”. That said, such people are rare nowadays.
Perhaps your answers were a mixture? It may be, therefore, that the genuineness of your conversion is in doubt. If that is so, then take the opportunity now to make things certain by truly and deeply repenting and getting right with God. Do that even if you have been going to church for years.
Remember, it is not going to church that will save you, but rather a genuine repentance and a sincere belief in Jesus Christ and your whole hearted acceptance of Him as your own Lord and Saviour. Nothing else can save you. There is no other way to become a Christian.
I am reminded of a work colleague of mine in the past that I had been speaking to about the gospel. I believed that he was not yet a Christian because it seemed to me that he had no real repentance. Plus he had so many doubts about the gospel and the Bible that I felt he didn’t really have saving faith either. Nonetheless, he was told by some other Christians in a church he had started attending that he definitely was a Christian already.
They were kindly people, but misguided, They saw him fretting and agonising about his doubts and about whether he really believed and was really saved. They just wanted to “help” him by enabling him to stop worrying. So they assured him he was already a Christian and that he should be confident of that and stop doubting it. So he took no further steps to become a Christian. He relied on what they told him and assumed that he was already a Christian.
From that point on he continued to go to church. But he was still troubled by the same confusion and unbelief and I felt that there was still no genuine repentance. I could see all that, but he couldn’t, because someone had told him that he was a Christian and that there was no question about that. In fact, he was full of doubts and problems. He hadn’t genuinely repented, believed, been baptised in water or received the Holy Spirit. Therefore his problems just continued and increased.
It all ended in disaster. He knew in himself, and eventually said openly, that being a Christian “wasn’t working“. He had been assured by experienced people that he was a real Christian. He assumed that they must surely know what they were talking about. Oddly, even at the end, he never came to doubt whether he really was a Christian. He concluded instead that he was one, but that “Christianity just doesn’t work“. He reached that conclusion because he was in just as much of a mess as ever. In fact his problems were worse.
In the end, everything fell apart completely and he decided that he no longer even believed that there was a God! It was a tragedy brought about by bad advice given to him by well meaning but very misguided people. These days I never tell anybody that they are a real Christian. All I do now is point them to what the Bible says a person needs to do. Then I urge them to take all four steps, (repeatedly if necessary), until they are given genuine assurance of their own salvation by the Holy Spirit.
Giving that assurance to people is the task of the Holy Spirit. It’s not my place to do it, because I would probably get it wrong. So, if you already know in your heart that you are a genuine Christian and the Holy Spirit has given you that assurance, then that is wonderful.
But, if you are in any doubt at all, then you need to get right with God now. Don’t put it off till later or leave it to chance. Be real with Him. Ask Him to help you now to genuinely repent and to truly become a Christian, with no doubt about it. Also go ahead and get baptised in water. Then pray to receive the Holy Spirit and to speak in tongues and to prophesy and to receive the other gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Why take any chances? Why leave anything in doubt? Why leave anything out? You need to know that you really are a Christian and to put it beyond all doubt.
I recently came across this poem in a book by Chuck Missler (See the secion entitled Approved Ministries for details of his ministry). The poem is carved around the door frame of an old church in Germany. It was written in the sixteenth century, probably during the Reformation. The poem takes the form of a series of (imaginary) statements by Jesus Christ about the inconsistencies in our lives between what we claim to believe, and what we actually do: