Tag Archives: Salvation

Explaining Divine History – Part 1

Posted on by
Reply

            The greatest adventure in life is submitting to God in order to understand His Word to us.  There is really nothing more exciting than reading what our Divine Holy God gave to us recorded in Scripture.  It is everything God wants us to know about life, salvation and our walk with Him.   There are many things we do to search for excitement, entertainment and outside interests.  But nothing – nothing – compares to the eternal significance of God’s holy Word to us!

            This is an eleven part series to explain how God administrates human history.  God did far more than orchestrate a perfect creation, watch the fall of man in the Garden of Eden and then try to redeem His people throughout the rest of Scripture.  There is far more going on.  There are several principles that must be understood.  The first is related to God’s mechanism for deliverance from His wrath or what we call salvation.  Notice the principles below:

        There is, and always was, one way of salvation  John 14:6; Acts 4:12; Gen. 3:15; 15:6

·         Salvation was never achieved through keeping the Mosaic or any other law. Rom. 3:28; 5:1; Gal. 2:16; 3:11,24

      ·         God does all the work at salvation and man does not do anything John 1:12-13

·         There is nothing man can do for the salvation gift Eph. 2:8-9

·         Man’s part is to believe, accept what Jesus has done for him on the cross, then God simultaneously regenerates the human spirit for salvation John 3:16; Titus 3:5.

          There is only one way of salvation and that is through Jesus Christ – what He did for man on the cross.  There is no other name under heaven that has been given to man than Jesus Christ.  For in the reality of His name – that He was both God and man – He satisfied the perfect righteousness of God and by dying on the cross, He paid the penalty for our sins and He removed the barrier that existed between God and man.  From the beginning, man believed in the revelation that was given to Him that God’s promise of salvation was all sufficient and by trusting in that all sufficient payment, man would have redemption.  That redemption is found only in the shed blood of Christ – His death on the cross.

             The next installment will describe the hermeneutic, or method of interpretation, for understanding God’s Word in order to understand God’s so great plan of salvation.

Reconciliation

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks again for your great support and prayer during the loss of my dad and that we could rejoice together about the salvation of my high school buddy, Dale.

I don’t know if you caught my thoughts on 2 Cor. 5:14-19 on Sunday as well as the thoughts from Colossians. We humanly struggle with reconciliation, because we “hope” things will work out, but we’re not absolutely sure.  If the person was forever gone, then we never have to think about it again.  If the person who hurt you dies, then you never have to deal with them physically again (I understand the memories that might exist).  You can have peace and not be suspicious, questioning, or be on guard.  That’s what God did with all the sins of the world in Christ.  God put all the sins of the world on Christ and when Christ died, all the sins of the world were put away – forever.

Now all that has to happen is to accept the gift of salvation by faith.  Paul writes that “If One died for all, then all died,” and then “…that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them,…”  As unbelievers, we are convicted by the Holy Spirit of sin (John 16:8-11), that we haven’t believed in Christ, of righteousness, that Jesus satisfied the righteousness of the Father and a judgment is coming for those who reject.  Sin is no longer the issue for salvation that I have to do something about; we know because that is not the issue for judgment at the Great White Throne judgment (Rev. 20:11-15).  All the world has to do is accept what the Substitute of the world has done, died for them, thus removing the enmity, the hostility, away eternally.  The Righteousness of God was satisfied and the Love of God welcomes unbelievers who accept the gift of salvation by faith.  Those who do not, reject the pardon and are forever banished from God’s presence.  That exalts God’s character beyond the universe.

I thought I’d also include those five statements that we walked through regarding initiating practical reconciliation.  They were:

  • Expressing regret.  “I’m sorry for what I did.”
  • Accepting responsibility.  “I was wrong.”
  • Making restitution.  “What can I do to make things right?”
  • Genuine repentance.  “I don’t want to ever do that again.”
  • Requesting forgiveness.  “Will you please forgive me?” 

Let me know if you have any questions.  This message was a great way to see the Grace of God for me.