Noah’s family entered the ark’s door to escape the physical destruction of the flood. God has provided another “door” to save people from the coming eternal judgment. Jesus Christ said, “I am the door of the sheep” (John 10:7).
In that culture the shepherd really was the door to the pen—they would rest in the entryway, ensuring that the sheep would be kept safe. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is the door through which we must enter to be saved from our sin.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became a man, lived a sinless life, and then willingly died on the cross as a substitute. As man’s sin brought death, the Son of God died to redeem man from his sins. Three days later, Jesus rose from the dead, showing that he held power over death and demonstrating God’s acceptance of Christ’s payment for sin.
Jesus saved me from my sins. I lived a life of rebellion and sin before His grace drew me to repent and believe in Him. I’m not saved by my righteousness, but by the righteousness of Christ becoming my own. It’s by faith that anyone will go to heaven. Not good works. Just Jesus.
@MichelleDLesley@TFA303 I’ve no doubt they were blessed by what you taught. Your writings have been of great benefit to me personally and in trying to help other women. Thank you for all you do for His glory!♥️
@MichelleDLesley@TFA303 ‘Out of Formation’ by Gary Gilley is a good resource. He also writes topical and book reviews on https://t.co/szTN0ekhBr as a free resource.
This is beautiful. @Ligonier
May the birth of the one and only true God Jesus Christ bring peace and joy to your household, leading to the eternal hope of salvation by faith in Him. Happy Holy Christmas!
I’m so thankful that God saved such a wretched sinner like me.
Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will be saved.
Nabeel Qureshi (former Muslim) gives his inspirational and beautiful testimony of how he responded to being diagnosed with terminal cancer:
"I remember the crucifixion & I remember there's no suffering that I can go through that's greater than what my God went through for me."
“He made Him who knew no sin TO BE SIN ON OUR BEHALF, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
— 2 Cor 5:21
Am I just reading PSA into the Scriptures? Am I a slave to my own tribal interpretation?
A plain reading of verses like these leads to the truth. 👆🏼
“When you were dead in your transgressions… He made you alive… having FORGIVEN US ALL OUR TRANSGRESSIONS, having CANCELLED OUT THE CERTIFICATE OF DEBT… which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, HAVING NAILED IT TO THE CROSS.”
— Col. 2:13-14
Very clear. 👆🏼
How can any sinner be saved from the wrath of God? What must "YOU DO" to save yourself? God's Word is clear that salvation is not by human works, merit, effort, or even our best righteous deeds (Titus 3:5). God is the one who saves sinners. God is active in the salvation process and the sinner is passive, i.e., the sinner receives the action of being saved by God. Ephesians 2:8-10 explains the only way anyone has ever been saved, is being saved, or will be saved. Paul is speaking to believers and says:
1. Perfect passive participle, i.e., you "have been saved" by God in the past with the results of being saved by God continuing to the present.
2. "By Grace," i.e., the unearned, undeserved, unmerited choice, favor, and will of God to save you. Grace is put up front in the Greek to emphasize that all five modifying phrases of "you have been saved" are by grace alone apart from human works or merit.
3. "Through faith," i.e., a volitional commitment in, trust in or rely upon Jesus Christ alone to save you from His just wrath against you because you are part of Adam's sinful race (Rom. 5:12-14). Saving faith is granted to, supplied to God's elect alone by grace so that the elect believe and are saved (Jn. 6:29, 37, 39, 44, 65; Phil. 1:29). When a person believes unto salvation, they do so because of God's gracious enabling, not their will, desire, or unredeemed efforts apart from grace.
4. "Not of yourself," i.e., your salvation does not come from you in any way, i.e., not your thoughts, your works, your intentions, your hopes, your attempts to be good, church attendance, Bible knowledge, baptism, etc., your salvation is not from you.
5. "Gift of God," i.e., salvation is a gift and gifts are unearned, undeserved, not purchased, not received as a wage, but freely granted by grace with no strings or stipulations attached.
6. "Not as a result of works," i.e., your salvation did not come about by any good work or deed you performed (2 Tim. 1:9: Titus 3:5). You contribute nothing to your salvation, zero. Yes, you must repent and respond to the gospel by faith, but you only can do that in response to the saving grace of God granted to you in Christ Jesus. God chose you to salvation before the foundation of the world (Acts 2:47; 13:48; Eph. 1:3-5). God drew you to himself (Jn. 6:44). God the Holy Spirit, opened your heart to understand and respond to the gospel (Acts 16:14). God granted you repentance, the ability to turn from your sin (Acts 5:31; 11:18; Rom. 2:4; 2 Tim. 2:25). God justifies, sanctifies, glorifies you (Rom. 8:29-30). None of your works contribute to your salvation.
7. "That no one should boast" i.e., because you are saved by God's grace alone, apart from any of your works or merit, no one can boast even a little, that they helped God save them, or that they contributed to their salvation, or that they even added a spec of dust on the scales to assist God even a tiny bit in their salvation. In glory, the saints will have nothing to boast about before God concerning their salvation. God will receive all the glory for salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, bo the glory of God alone.
8. "We are His workmanship," i.e., after having been saved by God's grace apart from works, we are saved to do good works. God regenerates us, causes us to be born again, and transforms all believers into new creatures in Christ by grace alone (Jn. 3:1-7; 2 Cor. 5:17; 1 Pet. 1:3, 23). As a result of being saved by God', we are called to do the good works God that has prepared beforehand for us to do (Ezek. 36:27; Jn. 15:16; Rom. 1:5; 16:26; Phil. 2:12-13; Titus 2:11-14; Heb. 13:20-21).
Amazingly, incomprehensibly, after God does all to save, justify, sanctify, and glorify us so that we do His will, by His grace, He then rewards us for all eternity for what He has done for, in, and through us by His grace! Glory to God in the highest!
The call of God to repent and believe in Jesus Christ is universal. He calls all men to repent and believe (Isa. 45:22; Acts 17:30-31). If you are thinking to yourself, "But what if I am not one of God's elect?" Or maybe you are using the fact that God elects sinners to salvation as an excuse to continue in your sin saying to yourself, "I don't think I am one of God's elect, therefore I am going to continue in my sin." Repent! Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will know that you are one of God's elect.
J. C. Ryle says: “You may tell me that you have no right to accept this invitation, because you do not know that you are one of God’s elect. I answer, that you have no right to put words in Christ’s mouth, which He has not used. He does not say, “Come unto Me, all ye that are elect.” He addresses all the “laboring and heavy-laden ones,” without any exception. Are you one of them? Is there weight within on your soul? This is the only question you have to decide. If you are, you are one of those to whom Christ speaks.”
(Ryle, J. C. (2011-06-16). Old Paths)
Charles Spurgeon answers the same objection: "Many persons want to know their election before they look to Christ, but they cannot learn it that way. Your election is only to be discovered by “looking unto Jesus.” If you desire to ascertain your own election, do so in the following manner, . . .
Do you feel yourself to be a lost, guilty sinner? Go straightway to the cross of Christ, and tell Jesus so, and tell Him that you have read in the Bible, “He that comes to me, I will certainly not cast out.” Tell Him thate has said, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”
Look to Jesus and believe on Him, and you shall make proof of your election directly, for so surely as you believe, you are the elect. If you will give yourself wholly up to Christ and trust Him, then you are one of God’s chosen ones.
But if you stop and say, “I want to know first whether I am elect,” you don't know what you are asking. Go to Jesus, be you never so guilty, just as you are. Leave all curious inquiry about election alone. Go straight to Christ and hide in His wounds, and you shall know your election. The assurance of the Holy Spirit shall be given to you, so that you shall be able to say, “I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to him.”
Christ was at the everlasting council. He can tell you whether you were chosen or not; but you cannot find it out in any other way. Go and put your trust in Him, and His answer will be—“I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.” There will be no doubt about His having chosen you, when you have chosen Him."
(C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, morning reading, July 17th).
At the end of your life, wealth and worldly success won’t matter. The only thing that will matter is whether you’re in Christ. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36).
The gospel is not a call for us to try harder to be like Jesus in our own strength. The gospel is the good news that Jesus was strong for you. He stayed awake for you. He prayed for you. He submitted for you. He faced the cup of God’s wrath that you deserved, and he did not flinch. His perfect, trust-fueled response to the hour of darkness is not first and foremost an example to imitate, but a victory to be received. His success is the only ground for our hope.
Another faithful warrior has fallen. Another saint called home. I wanted him here longer. But the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Grateful for the victory of this Gospel in the life of my brother Voddie Baucham.
In his excellent book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, historian Carl Trueman argues that the dominant worldview of the contemporary secular West is what he calls “expressive individualism.” This is the idea that “each of us finds our meaning by giving expression to our own feelings and desires” (46).
The Enlightenment philosopher Rene Descartes is famous for the dictum, “I think, therefore I am.” Expressive individualism is captured by the motto: “I feel, therefore I am.” Or perhaps, “I am what I feel I am.”
“And,” the reasoning goes, “in order for me to be my authentic self, I must give unfettered expression to those feelings. And because I am my feelings, any contradiction of my psychological beliefs about myself—any failure to affirm and validate those feelings—is a hateful threat to my very self. It is violence against my personhood.”
That is western culture over the last 15 years, especially as promoted by the political left. It’s why “speech” is called “violence.” It’s why words are spoken of as being “weaponized.” Everything is a weapon if I am under attack when my feelings aren’t affirmed.
Any lack of wholehearted affirmation and even celebration of my feelings—and certainly the notion that my feelings ought to change in order to be brought in line with objective reality—is virtually the same as wanting me to die.
It’s not difficult to see the implication: I have to kill you before you “kill” me. There is a straight line between the deification of one’s own feelings to the political assassinations (and attempts) that we are now seeing more of.
But the answer is to this is: you are not your feelings. You are what God your Creator says you are: a creature, made in His image, male or female as He has designed you, created to glorify and honor Him. And yet you have fallen into sin and corruption through disobedience to God’s law, and that disobedience earns you the just penalty of eternal punishment for your sins in hell.
But the Father has sent His Son into the world, (1) to live the perfect life of obedience you and I have failed to live, and (2) to die the substitutionary death that you and I were required to die (but couldn’t survive), bearing the penalty of divine wrath that sin deserves, and (3) to rise from the grave in victory over sin and death.
And He promises that if you will turn from your sin and trust Christ alone for your righteousness before God, your sins will be forgiven. If you repudiate yourself and find your identity in Jesus, He will replace the sinking sands of your feelings with the solid rock of truth. And He will be to you all the satisfaction and fulfillment that you could ever wish.
Expressive individualism is willing to take the lives of others in pursuit of self-actualization. The Gospel is: Jesus was willing to surrender His life in pursuit of others’ salvation. We live consistently with that Gospel when we lay down our lives to pursue others’ freedom.
A nation can only survive on one of those worldviews. The answer to our country’s brokenness is the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone.
Join @BNinde & @losJimmy for a powerful conversation on #evangelism with special guest @D_B_Harrison from the @podcast_just of @thebar_network
Give a listen. Like. & Share!
“Have a Heart &
Go Share Your Faith!”
https://t.co/c4UQbObRWn