Good Day, Meetpastordan Readers…How can we feel anything except awe and wonder when we read these words from Ephesians, 1:3- 4 :”Long ago, even before He created the world (and Man), God loved us and chose us to be worthy and acceptable in His sight because we are in Christ. His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His own family through Jesus Christ, and this gave Him great pleasure.” Wow! What incredible power in those words! Even before He created us, He loved us, and He already had a plan for our salvation. This also testifies to God’s omniscience, because He could see into the future, and He already knew we were going to be problem children in need of a Savior. In my opinion, the most astounding take away from these words is this fact; He still created us! No doubt these words are good news, but let’s look more closely at how this Good News played out.
God knew we were going to use our gift of “free will” for something other than its original intention. He also knew we were going to encounter the dark domain, and from that moment on, He knew we were going to choose to live for “self” rather than honoring Him. Therefore, He gave Man from Creation until the fulfillment of His plan 2020 years ago to wrestle with the issue of Sin (living separated from His will). But instead of overcoming that dilemma, Man continued to sink deeper and deeper into the dark abyss of hopelessness. So when it became obvious that Man could not save himself, God implemented His plan, as presented Ephesians 1:10: “At just the right time, He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ…everything in heaven and on earth.” Since Jesus Christ shed His blood on the cross for the redemption of our lost souls, we NOW have the opportunity to reverse the effects of “the Fall” by restoring that broken spiritual connection with God. (Ironically, the same free will that led Man astray in the Garden can now save him.) Romans 6:23 states this truth: “For the wages of sin is death, BUT, the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” How that plays out for each one of us depends on whether we accept His Gift of Grace, or whether we choose to ignore His offer.
Here is a pillar of truth that cannot be overstated. Ever since Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden, the original spiritual connection they had with God was broken. Therefore, they could only pass on to every generation born after them that same spiritual brokenness. So, truth be told, all people born into this world can go from the cradle to the grave spiritually disconnected from God, unless at some point they decide to reconnect with their Creator. That is exactly what happens when we accept His Gift of Grace, also known as The Good News. When that happens, we receive God’s promise, found in Ephesians 1:4 in the first paragraph. (Take a moment and review that message…(His unchanging plan…)
Now let’s look at Man’s hopeless situation through God’s eyes. Roman’s 1: 20-23, 25, 28-30 presents this declaration (written by me in the “first person present”). “From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that I made. They can clearly see My invisible qualities, My eternal power and My divine nature. Therefore, they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing Me. Yes, they know Me, but they won’t worship Me, or even give Me thanks. Instead, they begin thinking up foolish ideas of what I am like. The result is, their minds become confused. Claiming to be wise, they become utter fools! Instead of worshiping Me, they choose to worship idols made to look like mere people, or birds, or animals or snakes. Instead of believing what they intuitively know about Me, they deliberately choose to believe lies. They worship the things I made, but not Me! Therefore, I abandon them to their evil minds, and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives become full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, fighting, deception, malicious behavior and gossip. They become backstabbers, haters of Me, insolent, proud and boastful.” This is indeed an indictment of Mankind!
In the paragraph above, when it talks about God abandoning Man to his evil ways, that does not mean He left us, or that He gave up on us. No indeed! He just let man be in the driver’s seat long enough to prove his own inability to live according to His standard. Without God’s guidance, Man failed miserably at that challenge. Apostle Paul describes our pathetic state in Romans 3: 10-18 by using the psalmist’s insightful words: “No one is good – not even one. No one has real understanding; no one is seeking God. All have turned away from Him; all have gone wrong. No one does good, not even one. Their talk is foul, like the stench from an open grave. Their speech is filled with lies. The poison of a deadly snake drips from their lips; their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. They have no fear of God to restrain them.” Even though God gave Man His Law on Mt. Sinai to keep him safe from facing impending judgement, the harder he tried, the more evident it became that Man could not, through his own effort, rise above his sin-nature. (That statement is as apropos for our culture today as it was when David penned those words three-thousand years ago.)
Clearly, the world was/is under indictment. Man proved, without a doubt, that he could not save himself. I can only imagine God looking down at His proudest creation, shaking His head, and saying, “I created them for an eternal relationship with Me, but none of them can qualify to enter My Kingdom. I guess if I want them here, I’ll have to do for them what they clearly cannot do for themselves.”
Well, here is the Good News that bridges that chasm called “sin and death!” Romans 3:21-24 presents this awesome, clear, concise picture of God’s Gift of Grace. “But now God has shown us a different way of being right in His sight – not by obeying the Law, but by the Way promised in the Scriptures long ago. We are made right in His sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way, no matter who we are, or what we have done. For all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in His gracious kindness, declares us NOT GUILTY! He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy His anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed His blood, sacrificing His life for us.”
I mentioned a few weeks ago about us living in an eternal morality play entitled Good vs Evil. In my mind, that title represents the source of the options we have to choose from. It’s about the dark domain vs the Kingdom of Light, and us relying on the Holy Spirit to keep us steadfast as we grow in the Kingdom of Light. I mention this only because good works is not the criteria for entering the Kingdom of Heaven. No doubt God wants us to do good works, but not as a way of earning His favor. That was the Old Covenant; that was before His Gift of Grace. But when we accept His Gift of Grace, we are immediately grafted into His family. Now we are sin-free and set aside for a sacred purpose – to be His ambassadors, and to further His Kingdom right here on earth. We are now worthy and acceptable in His eyes, so when we do good things, it is our way of saying “Thank You, Jesus, for what you did for me.”
To reiterate my message, salvation is not about being good or bad. Salvation is about being saved or not being saved. Period! Under the Old Covenant, people “did” to “get”; under the New Covenant, we already “have” so we “do”. Jesus added the final exclamation point to this message when He proclaimed this Truth in John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me! There is no other good news than can compare with this Good News! Only a God of Love could have drafted this plan to save His proudest creation’s collective souls.
Feel free to respond to this message, and please share it with other social media friends.
May God Bless You Abundantly
Dan Presgrave (a.k.a. Pastor Dan)
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