This is part three of a series on living a life that matters. I decided this year to do a study on church and writing about it as I go, but I thought it best to kick everything off with a birds-eye view of creation, salvation, church, and how we as individuals fit into God’s eternal plan. If you haven’t already, I recommend reading from the very beginning.
God does not have a reverse economy. Satan does, and we chose to settle for his perversion of God’s economy, God’s perfect creation. We are upside-down from what God created. Without understanding our good design as God intended, we will always misinterpret God’s creation as selfish cravings of our hearts.
When I lust, the problem is not desire.
The problem is I am wanting to fulfill a God-given desire in a way He never intended it to be fulfilled. Because of my fallen nature, my reversed mindset, I desperately try doing life without God (Ro. 5:12).
There are two ways I do life without God: either by completely ignoring Him and living entirely outside of His design, or by pulling myself up by my own bootstraps and trying to act as He designed without resting and realizing the grace and power of His Holy Spirit. Neither one works. Neither one is righteous. Both fail in animosity toward God.
In order to live a life that truly matters, life as God intended, you and I need a supernatural salvation.
Salvation is not so much about steps to avoid condemnation as it is understanding God’s original design for me and functioning in it. Following is a basic, birds-eye understanding of what I believe about salvation.
God relentlessly pursues me. Period.
If either Calvinism or Arminianism were a more accurate doctrine, I’m confident God would have made it clearer in His Word which one is right. This is what happens when we try finding detailed answers for every mysterious truth. God is sovereign, yes. And in His sovereignty He seems to give man freedom to choose. Whether things happen more the Calvinistic way or Arminian way, I don’t know.
I don’t have to know.
One thing I do know, however, is God relentlessly pursues me. He relentlessly pursues you.
We see this all throughout the Old Testament and on into the New Testament. God came walking in the Garden. He called Abraham and set him apart to bring about His Great Rescue Plan. He sent judges, prophets, and signs calling man back to relationship with Him.
Then He sent Jesus.
Throughout your life, God stands on His porch looking out at the road waiting to see you come walking home. He is not expecting you to get your act together before He loves you again. He still does. Always has. And already forgives you for walking away. He won’t force you to come home, but he does love you. He wants you back, and eagerly awaits your return.
I am saved by grace through faith. Nothing else.
Either I shift all responsibility from me, afraid that taking personal responsibility to respond to God’s love takes away glory from Him; or I shift all responsibility to man, afraid that acknowledging the work of grace in salvation will lead to unholy, disobedient life.
Grace is God taking personal responsibility to accomplish in me righteousness, and empowering me to live righteously from here forward.
We are saved by grace. Which means grace empowers us to live righteously as God intended. But righteousness is a free gift given by God. We do not bring it about. We accept it through faith. Simple belief that God actually did on the Cross what He says He did.
Grace is resistible.
You and I can fail to obtain grace, as the writer of Hebrews points out. We can choose to walk away from our Father as the prodigal son illustrates. Just because God relentlessly pursues us, as a love-struck man relentlessly pursues the infatuation of his heart, doesn’t mean we won’t ever dump Him.
Paul constantly urges us to “consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ.” Whether we walk in grace or in our flesh is our decision. God does the work if we choose grace, but we must choose it.
Choosing grace radically transforms my heart.
For the one who believes and receives the free gift of righteousness that Christ made possible through His perfect life and sacrifice, He pours abundant grace into his life so he is able to choose from the heart to obey, as Paul describes in Romans. His mindset, the control center of his life, is reset back to the way God made it originally. Sinful habits still work against his desire for holiness, but he is now free to want holiness. He is free to want God’s glory.
He is free to consider himself dead to his flesh even when his flesh feels stronger than God’s grace.
Grace does not excuse sin.
If we continue sinning, even though we are not justified by righteous living but by the work of Christ on the Cross, we simply prove we don’t believe Christ actually set us free from our fallen nature by dying on the Cross. Because of grace there are no excuses to continues sinning. We now have a way out, a way to live above our flesh.
However, this way out isn’t something we do. We are helpless in doing what we need to do. We cannot accomplish righteousness without the grace and power of God, for we do what we don’t want to do and we don’t do what we really want to do.
Two energies compete within us. One like an AC turned on in a hot room, wanting to be obedient to Christ. Another, like a crack in the door allowing warm air to creep back in, wanting to be obedient to our flesh.
We are a messed-up bunch!
But God.
God is for us. God pursued, not only in our sin before salvation, but He continues pursuing us to accomplish righteousness in our lives. He completes the good work He has begun. As we gaze on His glory, He does surgery in our hearts transforming us into His very image.
The point of salvation.
Jesus Christ enables us to live as God designed us to live in the first place. He reverts us back to the right economy, not a reverse one Satan introduced. Salvation is not just about spending eternity separated from God, but about walking with Him today and functioning as He designed.
If you have experienced salvation, then you now have a responsibility to bring others into this relationship with Christ. Each of us who have been reconciled with our Maker is now called to join Him in His ministry of reconciliation.
Are you participating?
