Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Perfect Gifts: Salvation

The redeemed will sing forever "Jesus saves!"



Ephesians 2:8  God saved you by His grace when you believed. And you can't take credit for this; it is a gift from God.

Romans 5:15-17  But there is a great difference between Adam's sin and God's gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God's wonderful grace and His gift of forgiveness to many through this other Man, Jesus Christ.   

16  And the result of God's gracious gift is very different from the result of that one man's sin. For Adam's sin led to condemnation, but God's free gift leads to our being made right with God, even though we are guilty of many sins.

17  For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many. But even greater is God's wonderful grace and His gift of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one Man, Jesus Christ.

FYI: The world's greatest Christmas gift has already been given, the pressure is off, so you don't have to knock yourself out to give the perfect gift. We have all received gifts that were not so great and we had to pretend that it is really a great gift, sometimes the gift is wrapped so well that it gave us false hope, the best of our efforts to give perfect gifts will fall short.

God gave us the perfect gift in his son. It didn't come in beautiful wrapping and at first there were very few people that realized what a great gift it was, there wasn't any of the usual signs that this gift would be anything special, some people even hated the gift. (Matthew 2:16-18, John 1:10-12)

God gave this perfect gift to every one of us even when we were not his friends, we don't usually have a shopping list that includes all of the people that have wronged us but God gives to all of us, even while we were his enemy. (Romans 5:10, James 4:4)

God didn't shop at the last minute for the perfect gift, ever since the beginning of time God knew that this gift would be given. Adam and Eve didn't surprise God and give him a reason to worry and rethink his plan. (Ephesians 1:3-5, 1 Peter 1:18-20)

The day of salvation is here

2 Corinthians 6:1-2  As God's partners, we beg you not to accept this marvelous gift of God's kindness and then ignore it.  2  For God says, "At just the right time, I heard you. On the day of salvation, I helped you." Indeed, the "right time" is now. Today is the day of salvation.
When you believe then God saves, it's that simple, your work didn't do it for you. God's gracious gift of forgiveness is waiting for you to accept it. It is so dangerous to think that you have another day to wait before you accept the gift and open it. After all of the effort that God went through to give such a perfect gift it is so rude of us to ignore it or to refuse to accept it. (2 Corinthians 6:2)