The Gift
EVERY religion expects good behavior from you.
You read their scriptures or hear them read to you and probably there are a
set of rules you got to follow, and rituals you have to perform. You are rewarded if you obey them or punished
if you don’t. On the day of reckoning, your good deeds are weighed against the
bad and a decision is made by God or His Regent as to where to send you. Variations of this are also available. You
are stuck on a cycle of incarnation and
depending upon your activities or your present position, the deity decides if
to promote you or demote.
Most major religions believe in the existence of heaven
or hell. But there is no way to tell with absolute surety if you are a good
person or not, hence there is no way of saying where you would be going. You
may be the best in the world, but there
is no certainty you would remain that way until death.
The Christian position is different: Colossians
1:12-14 says ‘’He (God) has enabled you to share in the
inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light. For He
has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness, and transferred us into the
Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins’’.
Because salvation is
by grace, and is not earned, not a result of human efforts, it is possible to
know with utmost certainty when one is saved. So the promise is received by faith. It is given as a free
GIFT. And anybody is eligible to receive it. (Romans 4:16a)” The only way in which
God could devise a SURE salvation for mankind was by grace through faith.
Salvation by grace means everything depends on God and nothing depends on the man.
When everything depends on God, there is no possible failure. Salvation by
grace means that eternal life is a GIFT. A person knows it when he accepts a
gift. There is no room for doubt.
The Holy Bible contains
a great deal of evidence to prove this point and argues in its favor with amazing
consistency. Let us examine a few examples:
I. He
has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who
live in the light. (Colossians 1:12)
When
we trust in Christ, we make an exchange. He takes us away our sins and
justifies us in God. "He made Christ to be sin on our behalf, that we
might become the righteousness of God in Him." Our condemnation is made
His; it is accepted, exhausted, annihilated, on His cross; and when we receive
the reconciliation, when we humble ourselves to be forgiven and restored at
this infinite cost - there is no longer condemnation for us: we are justified
by our faith, and have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ. This is what is meant by becoming the righteousness of
God in Him. This is what is called atonement for sin.
When
we exchange one merchandise for another, both goods are nearly of the same
value. But God offers His supreme righteousness in exchange for our mean sin. Something
of immeasurable value for something that is totally worthless. 2 Corinth
II.
For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the
Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins
(Colossians 1:13, 14)
Verses 13 and 14
contain one of the clearest declarations in the Bible about what God did for us
when we turned to Him and how the Holy Spirit renewed our hearts. We were all
born slaves to sin and from birth, we possess the mentality of a slave. God rescued us from this situation and
pulled us toward Himself. No demonic power is able to stand against this love
of God.
We are not only
rescued from the power of Satan. We are no longer a slave to our sinful nature. Even after being relieved from the
Egyptian bondage, many of the fleeing refugees of Israelites longed for the
delicacies of the old country. Similarly, our “old man” keeps pulling us down
unless we are dead with Christ and resurrected with him through our symbolic
baptism in Christ. Paul discusses this in detail in Romans 6.
God has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us
into the Kingdom of his dear Son in whom we have redemption
and forgiveness of sins. We are not autonomous
anymore. We are part of a kingdom in which we have citizenship, and we owe
obedience and loyalty to our Lord Jesus Christ. In Jesus we are part of a new
order of things. The key to this new order is “redemption and forgiveness of sins.”
There is a distinction between being rescued from the dominion of darkness and
being redeemed and forgiven. Pardon implies personal responsibility. God
forgives us but He holds us personally responsible for our acts.
III.
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. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us
who belong to his dear Son (Ephesians 1:5, 6).
That God decided in advance to adopt us is clear
proof that salvation is not our own
doing. Having adopted us in His great love as His own children through Jesus
Christ, He has made us part of His family, His heirs. (Romans
8:17). Adopted children enjoyed all the privileges natural children
enjoy (according to the then Roman law) – even if they had been ex-slaves. This is how strong
our relationship to God is. Galatians 4:5-7
explains this even more graphically:
God sent Him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the
law so that he could adopt us as his very own children. And
because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into
our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.” Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own
child. Since you are his child, God has made you his heir. By the aid of this figure, the Gentile convert was enabled to realize in a vivid manner the fatherhood of
God, the brotherhood of the faithful, the obliteration of past penalties, the
right to the mystic inheritance. He was enabled to realize that upon this
spiritual act "Old things passed away and all things became new."
IV.
Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, He entered in
once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. (Hebrews
9:12)
All
good things past, present, and to come, were and are founded upon the priestly
office of Christ, and come to us from Him. Our High Priest entered into heaven once for all, and has
obtained eternal redemption. The Old Testament sacrifices only freed the outward
man from ceremonial uncleanness and fitted him for some outward privileges.
What gave such power to the blood of Christ? It was Christ's offering himself
without any sinful stain in his nature or life. This cleanses the guiltiest conscience from dead, or deadly,
works to serve the living God; from sinful works, that contaminate the soul. Our
own efforts, when we try to make it on our own apart from Him destroy the power
of Christ that lives in us.
Though you know Christ, you may believe you may
have to work hard to make yourself for God. But rules and rituals have never
cleansed people’s hearts. Through Jesus’ blood alone we have our conscience
cleansed; we are freed from the death sting and can live to serve God and are
freed from sin’s power.
To those who hold lingering convictions that
salvation is somehow connected with good works, it sounds like presumption when
a Christian says he is saved. Indeed, if salvation depended on the least degree
upon what a man is or what he has done, then it would be an unspeakable
presumption for him to claim to have eternal life. But since salvation is by
grace, there is no presumption involved.
V. He
is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood
of his Son and forgave our sins. (Ephesians 1:7)
The reference here is
obviously to the death on the cross of our Lord. No love for Jesus is possible
without the acceptance of His death on our behalf. In the Old Testament, sin
committed was covered by the blood of an animal that was slain in the place of
the sinner. Acceptance of the death of Christ in our stead means much more than
covering up sin. It points to two wonderful truths – redemption and
forgiveness. Redemption was the price that used to be paid to gain freedom for
a slave.
We have already seen how we were all slaves to sin. Through His death, Jesus paid the price to release us from
slavery to sin. Forgiveness was granted in the Old Testament times on the basis
of shedding animal blood. Now we are saved on the basis of shedding Jesus’
blood. He died as the final and perfect sacrifice. “And since
we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will
certainly save us from God’s condemnation (Romans 5:9)”.
But
the GIFT that God was kind enough to give was very different from Adam’s sin.
That one sin brought death to many others. Yet in an even greater way, Jesus
Christ alone brought God’s gift of kindness to many people. (Romans 5:15)
God
saved us by His grace when you believed. And you cannot take credit for this.
It is a GIFT from God. Salvation is not
a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. (Ephesians 2:9,
10).
We thank God for the
immeasurably valuable GIFT we have received in Christ.
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