Sometimes people have the idea that before they can be saved they must feel something. They hope to get some special revelation; they expect that something remarkable will take place inwardly and that after they have experienced wonderful feelings and emotions they are then (but not until then) entitled to believe that they are saved.
Well, nobody was ever saved in that way! We are saved by the work of Christ on the cross. That work was done outside of us, so if we are to be saved by it, we must look outside of ourselves.
“Look unto Me,” Christ says. He never says, “Look unto your own heart.”
No one ever got peace by looking there. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9). How could we expect to get peace by looking there?
Christ made peace by the blood of His cross (Colossians 1:20). He says, “By Him all that believe are justified from all things” (Acts 13:39). That is, by believing on Christ, all your sins are forgiven in a moment, and you stand justified before God.
There is nothing here about feeling an inward transformation. We cannot feel that our sins are pardoned; that’s impossible. We can only know that they are pardoned by believing the Word of God.
When you believe on the Lord Jesus, He tells you that you are pardoned—that you have everlasting life. You didn’t have it before you believed, but you have it when you believe on Him who did it all and paid it all, and you know it simply because He says so.