“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:8-10 (This is part of the study from last night on Salvation taken out of Rom. 1-5 & others) God calls us, God gives us the faith to believe, ("No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.” John 6:44) and God gives us a new life, God gives us deeds He wants to do though us, God prepares us for the Heaven He has for us and God brings us into Heaven eternally with Him. All we have to do is say YES when He calls and we are saved and then we learn to obey while here on this earth and eventually enjoy the glory of eternity and God had to give us the faith and power to do the believing and obeying. We ‘get to’ obey God from love; not ‘have to’ from fear of punishment. (Rom. 8:1) Jesus has done it all. Like He said, “it is finished”. There needs to be obedience, there needs to be fruit and deeds, but they need to be the ones God produces in and through us, not our own done in our power. Justification – brings freedom from the penalty of sin. This is a legal term meaning “to be declared righteous”. Jesus takes our sin and gives us His righteousness. “...found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,” Philippians 3:9 Even Abraham and all in the OT were saved the same way. “Then he (Abraham) believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Genesis 15:6 Sanctification – brings freedom from the power of sin. It is the day to day process where we learn about God and our freedom and practice walking This is the time we learn to grow and depend on the Holy Spirit and we become more and more like Christ and less and less like this fallen flesh we still carry around; we see our daily conduct conform to the new creation we have become in Christ. “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2 Glorification – is where we gain our freedom from the presence of sin. This is the time we look forward to when we lose our sin nature and our fleshly body and go to heaven until the rapture and new glorified bodies or we go in the rapture. “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” 1 John 3:2-3
Posted on: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 17:37:37 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015