God's gracious pleasure

I don’t like questions such as ‘have you been born again?’ or ‘when were you saved?’ That’s mostly because those questions take the emphasis off of who saves us. We are not saved by an experience, no matter how profound, of being blown away. We are saved by God’s gracious pleasure. We are saved by the actions of one who is both fully God and fully human. Being saved has very little to do with whether we recognize that we have a personal relationship with Jesus. Being saved has to do with Jesus recognizing us as a brother or sister, with God adopting us as a child, with Jesus going to the cross. Being born again may (or may not) help us recognize what God has already done, but it doesn’t save us. Knowing the date we recognized our salvation may pin point a significant moment, but we were saved by a life and death on a cross and not by a particular time when we recognized God speaking to us.

It is not we who save ourselves and that is the import behind ‘have you been born again?’ or ‘when were you saved?’ Those questions put the focus on the human experiencing salvation and that’s not what saves us. Salvation comes from God alone and not our feelings about it.