I remember passing through a time in my life when I reacted to eager and very new Christians in a less-than-loving manner. These folk would always ask me if I was saved and my response was usually’ “from what for what?” That usually slowed them down, or at least interrupted their prepared get-em-saved spiel. It was fun.

Later I began to reflect on both sides of that response. It was not difficult to answer the question of that from which I had been saved: death, hell, judgment, separation from God, and all the bad stuff. But for what was I saved? That was a different thing altogether, and as the Prophet Isaiah says in 33.22: ‘The Lord is our judge.’ The outcome of my life depends on the word of our God who judges all.

I do not mean to imply that God bases his judgment on each and every dumb thing I do in life—rather the end result has already been determined, and my personal decision will trigger what the Lord has determined as the final result of what God has declared judged. The only answer needed for either result is one of a response to the question about what we think of Jesus?

Isaiah gives us two other attributes of the Lord our judge as he continues: ‘the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king.’ The Lord determines the rules, and he also rules over what he determines. When we respond appropriately to Jesus as Lord of our lives, and live our lives to that end, the Lord our God will do as he has said, as Isaiah concludes: ‘it is he who will save us.’ I have been redeemed from hell and saved for heaven forever. I AM ONE OF THE SAVED! You, too?