God’s grace is His unmerited favor towards man … and without it man cannot please God!
God’s grace includes all of the following …
(1) the possibility that even some people can be saved, (2) His ingenious plan of salvation,
(3) His sending God the Son to earth, (4) His giving the free gift of grace-faith to some people,
(5) His giving God the Holy Spirit to these people, and (6) the sanctifying work of His Spirit.
However, God’s gift of grace was NOT given to man just for him to say, “Gee thanks, Lord.”
Details to follow …
The entire Bible is all about man’s free will.
How willing is man to obey God’s will and God’s commands?
And how willing is he to co-operate with God in fulfilling His objectives on earth?
God created all of His angels and humans with free will.
We know how His #1 arch-angel and 1/3 of His angels handled their free will, don’t we!
God didn’t want to be worshipped by robots in heaven, or by robots on earth.
And He didn’t want to live with robots in heaven!
In the old covenant, God proved that man was totally incapable of satisfying Him …
because almost every last one of His “chosen people” were hopelessly sinful and rebellious!
God was always having a fit about all of the sinning and disobedience of His people.
The Holy God certainly did NOT wish to share heaven with sinful man for all of eternity,
so He decided to devise a plan to clean man up so he could actually be acceptable to Him.
God dispersed His original chosen people throughout the world (Deut 28:64, Ezek 12:15),
and promised to institute a new and better covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34, Ezekiel 36:24-28).
1 … God created His “God-man” Jesus Christ, His special Messiah-Redeemer-Savior.
This anointed One personally delivered the necessary spiritual truths to the world,
and also accomplished many other critically important things.
2 … God gave His free gift of grace-faith to some people.
Certain people were chosen (for whatever reason) to be given saving faith,
which enabled them to believe in Jesus and His “foolish” gospel.
However, God’s grace is only an opportunity to gain heaven … it is not a free ride!
3 … God sent His Holy Spirit (the Comforter-Helper) to be placed inside of these people.
This “Spirit of grace” would provide invaluable help to them in a multitude of ways.
They could choose to co-operate with God in being cleaned up and made acceptable to Him!
If we co-operate with Him, the precious Holy Spirit is God’s sin eradication specialist.
This trinity of good stuff above is mixed in with some incredibly bad stuff,
which really gets in the way: man’s sin nature, and man’s mortal enemy Satan.
These are 2 major obstacles, which need to be overcome for man to be spiritually successful.
It is all about sin and getting rid of it …
God’s church must be made holy and spotless. Will you end up being part of it?
This is the major reason for all of the warnings and threats in Scripture!
NOT all Christians will be willing to co-operate with God to get rid of their sins.
The Bible describes Satan as the god and ruler of this world,
who is a total and complete liar and the one who deceives the whole world.
Yes, we’re dealing with the greatest liar and deceiver in the history of the world.
And he has been successful in deceiving the churches in some areas.
So, let’s not be too sure that all of our pet doctrines are iron-clad truth.
The best source of spiritual truth is when the Holy Spirit confirms Scripture.
God’s grace includes all of the following …
(1) the possibility that even some people can be saved, (2) His ingenious plan of salvation,
(3) His sending God the Son to earth, (4) His giving the free gift of grace-faith to some people,
(5) His giving God the Holy Spirit to these people, and (6) the sanctifying work of His Spirit.
However, God’s gift of grace was NOT given to man just for him to say, “Gee thanks, Lord.”
Details to follow …
The entire Bible is all about man’s free will.
How willing is man to obey God’s will and God’s commands?
And how willing is he to co-operate with God in fulfilling His objectives on earth?
God created all of His angels and humans with free will.
We know how His #1 arch-angel and 1/3 of His angels handled their free will, don’t we!
God didn’t want to be worshipped by robots in heaven, or by robots on earth.
And He didn’t want to live with robots in heaven!
In the old covenant, God proved that man was totally incapable of satisfying Him …
because almost every last one of His “chosen people” were hopelessly sinful and rebellious!
God was always having a fit about all of the sinning and disobedience of His people.
The Holy God certainly did NOT wish to share heaven with sinful man for all of eternity,
so He decided to devise a plan to clean man up so he could actually be acceptable to Him.
God dispersed His original chosen people throughout the world (Deut 28:64, Ezek 12:15),
and promised to institute a new and better covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34, Ezekiel 36:24-28).
1 … God created His “God-man” Jesus Christ, His special Messiah-Redeemer-Savior.
This anointed One personally delivered the necessary spiritual truths to the world,
and also accomplished many other critically important things.
2 … God gave His free gift of grace-faith to some people.
Certain people were chosen (for whatever reason) to be given saving faith,
which enabled them to believe in Jesus and His “foolish” gospel.
However, God’s grace is only an opportunity to gain heaven … it is not a free ride!
3 … God sent His Holy Spirit (the Comforter-Helper) to be placed inside of these people.
This “Spirit of grace” would provide invaluable help to them in a multitude of ways.
They could choose to co-operate with God in being cleaned up and made acceptable to Him!
If we co-operate with Him, the precious Holy Spirit is God’s sin eradication specialist.
This trinity of good stuff above is mixed in with some incredibly bad stuff,
which really gets in the way: man’s sin nature, and man’s mortal enemy Satan.
These are 2 major obstacles, which need to be overcome for man to be spiritually successful.
It is all about sin and getting rid of it …
God’s church must be made holy and spotless. Will you end up being part of it?
This is the major reason for all of the warnings and threats in Scripture!
NOT all Christians will be willing to co-operate with God to get rid of their sins.
The Bible describes Satan as the god and ruler of this world,
who is a total and complete liar and the one who deceives the whole world.
Yes, we’re dealing with the greatest liar and deceiver in the history of the world.
And he has been successful in deceiving the churches in some areas.
So, let’s not be too sure that all of our pet doctrines are iron-clad truth.
The best source of spiritual truth is when the Holy Spirit confirms Scripture.
