God’s Free Gift of Salvation for Human Beings While salvation has been provided through Christ as a free gift, each human being must accept it as an individual person. Salvation can now only be obtained through faith in Jesus Christ ever since His death and resurrection nearly two thousand years ago. This contrasted with the period before the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Before Christ’s resurrection, human beings were saved through their works of goodness and holy lives ( Romans 2 verses 6 – 11). During this time, there were two classifications of people on the earth, Jews (or Israel) and non Jews (or Gentiles ). The Jews were saved by observant of God’s law and commandments delivered through Moses, the servant of God. When any Israelite sin, this person will offer an animal sacrifice to God for the remission of such sin in order to obtain pardon from God. This would normally be done regularly whether the person sins consciously or unconsciously. ( The animal sacrifice is a foreshadow of the single sacrifice that will be provided by Jesus Christ many hundreds of years later ). If this person trust in God and believes the law and the prophets inspite of that individual’s failing ( in terms of occasionally mistakenly falling into Sin ), he or she goes into a place known as “Abraham’s bosom” or paradise after death. Here the person awaits full redemption which is to be provided by Jesus Christ dying and rising again. ( Luke 16 verses 27 – 31 ). All Israelites ( from the giving of the law to the time Jesus died and rose again) are judged according to the law of Moses (Romans 2 verse 12 ) For the non Jewish who lived before Christ death and resurrection (including those who knew God before the law, those who never knew about God and His laws and those who never hear about Jesus Christ up to this present time), they are judged without the law of God ( Romans 2 verse 12). God said He will judge them righteously. Because these people do not know God or any of His laws, they will be judged according to their conscience (Read Romans 2 verses 12 - 15). In other words, God puts in the hearts of every human being to know the basics of what is good and bad (even without the law being present to act as a guide). For example, an individual will always have a conviction to know that killing a fellow human being is evil. So in the case of the non Jewish, his or her submission to the conviction of the conscience on committing murder will determine whether that person will be saved after death or not. When this set of people who lived properly according to their conscience died, they went into paradise. Immediately after Jesus died on the cross, His Spirit and Soul went inside the earth where paradise existed (paradise was beside Hell-fire as revealed in Luke 16 verses 22 – 26; Luke 23 verse 43). He first extended God’s free gift of Salvation here by leading the souls of men, women and children out of paradise ( Ephesians 4 verses 8 & 9). After opening the gates of paradise, Jesus took the lead by rising from the dead the third day after His death on the cross. All the souls in paradise also follow suite and rose from their graves respectively with new physical immortal bodies and appeared unto some of the Jews living at that time in Palestine (Read Mathew 27 verses 50 – 53 ). Now before Jesus marched this new army of saints into Heaven, He was stopped by Mary (a normal human being who hasn’t died) and interestingly told her “…I am not yet ascended to my father” (John 20 verses 16 & 17; Mark 16 verse 9 ). This comment shows that since Christ death, His trips consisted of journey from the surface of the earth ( where living human being exists) into inside the earth ( where the souls of men are either in Hell or Paradise ) and then back to the surface of the earth. In order words, Christ has not yet gone back to Heaven. Christ subsequently marched the resurrected saints into Heaven. (Until this time, no single human being has ever gone to heaven John 3 verse 13; 1 verse 18). God the Father then magnify the name JESUS so that at its mention, salvation will be achieved ( Philippians 2 verses 5 – 11 ). Christ return to the earth and assured His disciples that power has been given to His name and salvation is now readily available in
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 05:28:14 +0000
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