Free salvation with a purpose ...

Thursday, Nov 11, 2010. In the letter to the Ephesians Paul writes about salvation. Salvation reaches into our past as well as our future. Today we want to explore these two directions, the focus we might have.

First of all, salvation looks back into what we have done. It studies how we have lived. It finds that we have not been what we were meant to be. We did not live the life which was created for us. We did not.

Undeserved kindness …

God looks at our past with undeserved kindness. He does not stay with our faults. He does not stay with our wasted days, with our ignorance, with our cruelty, with our egoism. He does not! He is looking forward instead. Paul writes:

7 He did this so that in the ages to come, he might show the treasures of his great kindness to us – the kindness he showed to us through Jesus Christ. 8 It is through this undeserved kindness that we have been rescued from evil, because we trusted in Jesus. In fact even this trust was not something we had – it was a gift that he gave us. 9 We were not rescued because of good things we had done – if it were, we might boast about it. 10 It is God who created us. He created us so that through our union with Jesus Christ, we might do good deeds – deeds which he had already chosen for us to do. (Ephesians 2: 7-10)

It is a gift in Christ and through Christ: salvation. God wants salvation for us. He offers salvation to us. He created it. It is all done. He opens the door to a new world, a new life.

Salvation with a purpose …

Salvation has a purpose. It longs to show the kindness and love of God. It wants to lead us into this kindness. It wants us to fully live in his love. We are made to experience his love. We are created to mirror his love. We are determined to show his love, to live in it, to know it, to experiment with it, to be fully filled with it!

God wants us to live in good deeds. He wants us to live in a way which is really good, which has a perspective and which is a blessing for others. He wants us to be just, to be fair, to be honest. The salvation in Jesus is not just something for our past. It is something for our future. It has a purpose. It has a goal. It has content. It has hope and future. We will talk more about this tomorrow. ... more texts