It is by grace I have been saved | Friday, September 25, 2009
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from youselves, it is the gift of God -not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do " (Eph. 2:8-9) So there's this confusion in many of our hearts, that if we don't do good works and preach like Christ called us to do, we can't get God's nod of approval, and we won't get to heaven. Or something around those lines eh? There's a misunderstanding here. We don't get into heaven by being a missionary, or serving like crazy. Or simply by being a goody goody mommy's boy. WRONG. WRONG. We got to trace the steps, trace the steps! Christ died on the cross for all our sins. Why did He have to die? He had to become the sacrificial lamb for our sins, which no other sacrifice on earth can replace. Here we go... EVERY fellow on earth has sinned, like it or not. You can be the good Christian, or the bad boy Christian, or the lukewarm Christian. Every type has sinned and will never stop sinning, WHETHER we do good works or not! There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins. -Ecclesiastes 7:20 Why did God have to intervene? Because when we sin, we cannot get close to God, who is holy, sinless and pure. Because we sin, we die. The wages of sin is death, Romans 6:23 So for God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God DID NOT send His Son into the world to condemn the world, BUT to SAVE the world through Him. Whoever BELIEVES IN HIM is not condemned (-John 3:16-18a) to living a life away from the glory of God, and into eternal death after we die. Emphases mine. God sent His son Jesus to die for us to propitiate the wrath of God. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppresses the truth by their wickedness. Romans 1:18 Does the above sound familiar to you? It should! That's you and me there! Wicked in our very nature. Who can say that they are sinless, when the Bible says that Man has fallen? This Jesus saved us from all hell, literally, by being THAT sacrifice in propitiation, to save us from this wrath of God. In dying for us when WE were supposed to die, the price for our sins had been PAID FOR, and thus we no longer need to die eternally, but we can be with Him in heaven. And where does all that come from? GRACE! Did God save you because you deserved it? Obviously, no! It is by His grace you have been saved. And whether you like it or not, however many good works you do or however LITTLE, it's His grace that gets you to heaven anyway. If you believe in this power of Christ, you're saved. And if you're saved, you're saved. That's why it's called grace: getting something we don't deserve. Till the day you STOP BELIEVING. That's when you doubt and you no longer hold on to God's promise of eternity, ie stop believing in it and denounce Christianity, you lose the inheritance of eternal life too. John 3:18b, ...but whosoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. And as BELIEVERS, we're COMMISSIONED to go out and spread the gospel and serve in the body of Christ and all. BUT again. Does that mean that if we believe, but we don't serve, it means we don't get to heaven? The answer is NO. Even lukewarm Christians who don't serve get to heaven. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained from the law, Christ died for NOTHING! -Galatians 2:21 (emphasis mine) The law meaning justice as defined by man. If we can only be deemed righteous through our own concept of righteousness, through good works and all, then Christ would have died in vain! That's why we're all working so hard to spread the gospel in the first place: if a new Christian starts learning and growing in Christ and suddenly his life is taken from him before he can start serving -or even start learning about the Word!- then how?! Go to hell ah? OF COURSE NOT. That is falsehood. When we pray for a dying man and he accepts Christ because he BELIEVES in Jesus, we have faith that when he goes the next moment, he'll be with Jesus. This is because by His grace, He's done His side of the bargain, and that by having FAITH in this promise that stems from GRACE, this dying man, who never served, who never learnt anything about the Bible, will get to be with God after death. To my fellow Christian brothers and sisters, I believe many of us have faced this question before. We look at the Christians who are serving and we ask, is this fair at all? I serve, he/she doesn't, but we all go to heaven anyway! What's the deal here? Yes, it isn't fair. If it were fair, we'd ALL be roasting in hell whichever way. It's a PRIVILEGE to serve. It's a privilege to know the joy that comes from doing good works IN HIS NAME. We KNOW and UNDERSTAND His GRACE and therefore we have strength to serve only because we recognise that. Let us not judge our brothers and sisters who aren't serving or in the missions field, but instead be models of Christians who indeed know the light, who have experienced God's grace some way or another, and thus are serving and working for the Lord. We, the ones who have seen and understood, are the ones who need to hear this message. Because we know and we have experienced the grace of God before others have, we simply cannot lie down and be fed. We HAVE to go out first, and to pray about where to serve in missions, because we have already been fed and we have understood and experienced God's work in our lives. Perhaps the lukewarm or so-called bad Christians have heard the message and have been warming the pews for years... But that is not for us to judge, because it is only in God's timing and plan that we rise up to serve. "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Eph 2:10 Remember in John 21:21-22, where Peter asks about the fate of another disciple? Jesus replied, what is that to you? So what is that to you? Let's observe our own walks, and let us hold fast to the truth that we have already been saved... It is now time to live a life guided by the Spirit and Word, which calls us to do the many things that Christians in the missions field and in ministries are doing now. If you think you aren't gonna get to heaven because you haven't been doing enough, think again! Understand that it's the grace that gets us to heaven, not the amount of things you do. It's the understanding of His grace and love for us that makes you want to serve fervently, not the other way round! By His grace, you will get to heaven, even if you continue to sit in church like it were nothing to you. But this grace that saved the entire world from sin... you, my fellow Christian brother/sister. If you haven't been serving, or are not hungry for doing works in His name... Then really. Does this grace from God Himself mean so little to you?
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Created at 7:40 PM
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