These are all good questions....
How does a Christian know they are saved? Is this a knowledge thing of a faith thing?
We are not 'saved' until it happens. We can work towards it, but so much can happen in a person's life to alter perceptions and change thinking. So we first have to understand what "salvation" is....and what a "salvage" operation means when it pertains to humans? Who is the savior and what are we being saved from?
Why was there a need for salvation in the first place?
This is how I understand it from the Bible....Our first parents introduced "sin" into the world and deliberately separated themselves from their Creator. They disobeyed a direct command for which they had no excuse. Death was the penalty but it was not implemented straight away. God allowed the humans to fulfill the first part of his mandate to them....to "fill the earth" with their 'kind'.
The word "sin" is an archery term which means to "miss the mark"....so when humans sinned, they lost their spiritual and physical perfection and passed that onto their children, who were caught up in this mess through no fault on their part.
A life lesson needed to be impressed on them, so that future abuse of free will would never impact on humankind again, the way it did in Eden. 'Telling' us to obey him was obviously not enough, no matter how severe the punishment....we had to be 'shown' the folly of independence from our Maker and what results from disobedience to his commands.
At the conclusion of this 'lesson', humans would have made up their own minds about the value of sticking with the Creator and obeying his laws...or going the way of independence and ignoring them.
But an accounting was sure to come, because this is not the way that God intended for us to live on this planet.
We have had sufficient time to work things out for ourselves, mostly without any intervention from God.
So we are being "saved" from a coming judgment, where God will demand an accounting of all of his intelligent creation...including the angels. We have to remember that humans were not the first rebels, but were roped into a rebellion by a very powerful spirit creature, who has used his abilities to deceive men into worshipping him.
To be on the winning side Jesus said we need a few things that distinguish us from the rest.....
John 17:3...
"This means everlasting life, their coming to know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ."
We need to
know the God we worship and we need to
know his son, who was sent to be our means of salvation, paying a debt left to us by our first parents. So Jesus paid the price for our release from condemnation to sin and death, thereby protecting us from the coming day of judgment. But our salvation depends on us "doing the will of the Father" as instructed by Jesus Christ.
It is my belief that Christendom fails on all counts....They do not know God at all because they have turned Jesus into God, something he never once claimed.....none are doing what Jesus commanded, instead, they are finding excuses not to, and introducing all manner of of beliefs and practices that were never "Christian" in the first place.
This is why Jesus said...
Matthew 7:21-23...
"Not everyone saying to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of the heavens, but only the one doing the will of my Father who is in the heavens will. 22 Many will say to me in that day: ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and expel demons in your name, and perform many powerful works in your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them: ‘I never knew you! Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness!"
So...calling yourself a Christian, even displaying what some believe is the proof of the holy spirit, means nothing unless you back it up by what you do in harmony with God's will. What you do is motivated by what you believe....so accurate knowledge of the
true God and the role of Jesus Christ in his purpose is vital.
Only those "doing the will of the Father" will be spared. It is up to us to determine what the will of the Father is in this "time of the end" because "few" are on the road to life.
When Jesus said that he "never knew them".....he meant that he has
never recognized those "Christians" as his own.
Should a Christian be certain of their salvation or continue to question it?
Salvation is not guaranteed......there are none of us who do not sin...so what does that mean in reality?
To me it means that we must be vigilant with regard to Jehovah's standards, especially with the world's standards dropping continually. We don't just want to be doing better by comparison, but by sticking to the high standards that God has laid out in his word. This gets more and more difficult as acceptance of immorality increases.
Where going forth into life, in faith lead me was to doubt the church, doubt the leaders, question the validity of the Christian religion itself. No where was one who exemplified the standards put forth by Jesus in my mind.
So I went seeking. What I found was a lot of ignorance, self righteousness and questions that Christianity couldn't answer.
That was my experience too. But even though I lost faith in the church and its pathetic leadership...I never lost faith in God or his word. I just knew that he had to be somewhere I had never looked. Yet he was right there in plain sight all along.
It occurred to me that God's people had never been a majority...they had always been at odds with other more populous nations, especially with regard to their worship. God told them to maintain that separateness.
When Jesus said that those on 'the road to life' would be "few", it was because that road is 'cramped and narrow'. (Matthew 7:13-14) Most would choose the easy way....but it is a dead end.
He stated that his true disciples would be
"no part of this world", meaning that they would not get involved in its politics, It's greed for wealth and power, or its immoral lifestyle....no matter what everyone else was doing.
We only have to look at the situation in Rome when Jesus walked the earth to understand that the political situation was difficult, to say the least. As the son of God, he had the power to fix that, but it wasn't God's time for judgment. The oppressed Jews were planning a revolt....Jesus told his disciples that his Kingdom was nothing to do with any of that. (John 18:36)
I believe that the scriptures have the answer to everything. If you were "seeking" then perhaps you were looking in all the 'obvious' places....but God isn't in the obvious places. His adversary will never allow God and his people to appear to be anything but despised fools in this world. (John 15:19-21)
If you genuinely seek, Jesus said,
"you will find" (Matthew 7:7).....but you have to
"keep knocking....keep seeking...and the door will be opened to you". Then you will understand everything....
That was my experience anyway....