Our Heavenly Father is a happy God, happier than our human emotions can express. All of creation speaks of His handiwork, and everything pure and excellent joins together in perfect harmony to sing His praises. He is magnificent in every way, and full of glory, love, and power. He is as happy as happy can be, and He wants us to be that way too. 1John 4:16(ESV) says, “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” Our Heavenly Father is love—love is who He is, and it is impossible for love to ever be separated from who God is. His heart’s desire is for us, His created masterpiece, to dwell in His love and be perfectly at home in it. He created us for the expressed purpose of being and sharing His love, and not only this, He gave us free-will. So, we get to choose love every time, the same way that Christ did, but you and I must want to do this. We must accept God’s love deep in our hearts. This is accomplished when we accept the gift of salvation that God has made available to us through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 1:3(NLT) tells us, “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.” Our Heavenly Father informs us in this verse that nothing has been spared when it comes to our victory in Christ. He has blessed us with every (all without exception) spiritual blessing, so we are complete in every way in Christ Jesus because we are united with him. This is what God accomplished by giving Jesus Christ to the world as a sacrifice for our sins. We lack nothing because of Christ. Again, no good thing has been spared. God loves us unconditionally and without limits; He desires that we live every day in the truth of this reality.
God didn’t want robots. He wanted a family and we’re it! He will not force anyone to come to Him, because His love never forces or shoves. God lovingly guides us when we allow Him to do so. Adam, the first man, and his wife, Eve, communed with God daily as He delighted in them and they delighted in Him. He gave them free-will, and they chose to use it to sin against God by doing the one thing He told them not to do. Heavenly Father made it clear to Adam that he could freely eat the fruit of every tree in Garden of Eden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That tree was forbidden, and in Genesis 2:17(NLT), God said, “If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.” Adam and his wife, Eve, used their free-will choice to go against the Word that God had given them. They listened to satan’s lies and bowed to him by making the choice to act upon those lies. There are no words to define how tragic their mistake was.
Although He was grieved by their sinful actions, it wasn’t a surprise to God. He is aware of everything because He knows everything. He knows the end at the beginning and the beginning at the end. So, even before Adam’s and Eve’s terrible debacle, God already had redemption’s plan. 1Peter 1:19-20(NLT) tells us, “19 It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. 20 God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but he has now revealed him to you in these last days.” Jesus Christ was always the precious Lamb of God who was slain from the foundation of the world. God knew we would sin against Him, and He knew we would need a Savoir to redeem us. This tells us all we need to know about God, the perfection of His Word, and the infallible nature of His Being. He’s not working out the plan as we go along. His plan was established eons before we entered our mother’s wombs.
We did not choose God first, He chose us first. Again, our names were written in the Book of Life of the Lamb long before we were born. Ephesians 1:4(NLT) says, “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.” The Holy Spirit has been drawing us ever so close to God since the day we began our lives on earth. He’s been with us, but not in us, and our guardian angel(s) have been busy watching out for us until the day we finally acknowledged the reality of Jesus Christ and the love God has for us. Those of us that are called by God must come to a place in life where we reject the actions of Adam and Eve, seek God’s forgiveness, and trust in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ whose blood was shed for the remission of our sins. We must believe in God’s resurrection power, because Jesus Christ didn’t stay in the grave. He got up from the grave victoriously, with a new glorified body, and with the fullness of life and power.
Jesus Christ completed the work of our salvation because this is what God wanted him to do for us. Ephesians 1:5(NLT) tells us, “5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.” Through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God took care of the sin issue for us. Jesus declared in John 3:16(NKJV), “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” God’s work of salvation through Christ has freed us from the bondage of sin and death. When we accept this unfathomable gift, we receive the gift of eternal life. We are forever changed, and we will be with our precious Lord and Savior forever more.
Ephesians 2:8-9(NLT), "8 God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. 9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it." God’s grace is His unmerited favor. Through His grace, He has given us salvation as a gift, and we could never do anything to earn it. We can’t brag and say that we received it because we are so good. We received it because God is so good.
As His created human beings, we have an obligation to demonstrate our gratitude for receiving such an overwhelmingly good gift. God is love, and as children who have His seed, we must be love as well. So, we express gratitude for receiving overwhelmingly good gifts because as loving, caring, and intelligent people that are made in God’s image, that’s what we’re supposed to do. We can’t repay Him for His gifts, but we must be thankful for them, and God has told us that the way you and I demonstrate gratitude to Him is to have faith in His Word and obey it.
God has given us the freedom to make our own choices and decisions, and He knew that our flesh would desire the things that pleasure it. Even though God has commanded us to abstain from sin and to live by the Spirit and not the flesh, we give in to temptation. We do some of the things that we know we shouldn’t. So, in the greatness of His brilliance and foreknowledge, our Heavenly Father did not make salvation dependent on what we do or don’t do. It cannot be earned or received by human effort. God made salvation dependent on His grace. He saved us because He loves us, and He doesn’t discriminate. Salvation is a free gift to all who will accept it by faith.
Acts 2:33(NLT) says, “Now he is exalted to the place of highest honor in heaven, at God's right hand. And the Father, as he had promised, gave him the Holy Spirit to pour out upon us, just as you see and hear today.” Jesus Christ finished the work that God sent him to do. We are saved by his blood, and now he is sitting in the place of highest honor at God’s right hand. He promised to send the Holy Spirit to be our Helper, Comforter, Teacher, and Guide. The Holy Spirit is God’s seed, and he, the Spirit, lives inside us, helping us to live like Jesus Christ.
God paid the highest price so that we could be rescued from sin and darkness and live in the liberty of Jesus Christ. We have been made brand new, and 2Corinthians 5:17-18 (NLT) affirms, “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him.” God sent Christ to redeem us! We were born-again through salvation, not physically, but spiritually. We are fully clothed in the Father’s righteousness, and because we have accepted Jesus Christ and the salvation he offers, we are God’s children, His called-out ones, and we can live in God’s love and walk in the victory Jesus Christ won for us every day of our lives.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001, 2007, 2011, 2016 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
"The Gift of Salvation", written for Springfield Fellowship © 2023. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
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