While celebrating the New Year we hear a lot about making resolutions that may or may not become reality for us. The clock turning to 12:01 on New Year’s Day is different from any other night of the year. We are more likely to reflect on the past and we hope to not make the same mistakes over again.
Reflection is often a good thing, but what about those memories that cause you shame and deep regret. Many Christians struggle…..
Tomorrow we will celebrate Christmas to remember the birth of Jesus Christ as a human child: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: when as His mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. 1:18). But the message of Christmas is incomplete without the message of Easter.
Jesus Christ grew up as any other child does. As was typical in Jewish families, He was taught…..
When our children were little, a large part of our Advent activities involved Old Testament prophecy concerning the coming of Jesus. Of those passages, Micah 5:2 sums up the big picture of the coming of Messiah:
“But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”
The passage makes clear…..
Before we even said yes to Jesus, He knew us and chose us to be the recipients of His love.
Our positions as Christians began with God’s eternal plan for each of us. We were foreknown, elect, predestined, chosen, and called. The Apostle Peter begins his first epistle with this reminder to his readers: “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto…..
2 Corinthians 2:14-16a says, “Now thanks be unto God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ, and makes manifest the [distinctive quality] of His knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved and in them that perish; to the one we are the savor of death unto death and to the other the savor of life unto life.”
As we learn and grow in faith and holiness…..
When we accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior by faith, we were “sanctified”. It means “set apart”. We are set-apart-ones to God from the moment of belief.
We spend the rest of our lives learning what that means, in pursuit of the Christ-like character, to follow Christ in the consecration of one’s self to God, and to apply the principles of God’s Word, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to the goal of separation from sin. This is…..
Reconciliation is the restoration of our broken relationship with God. When he sinned in the Garden of Eden, Adam broke the relationship of fellowship with God, not only for himself, but also for every human to be born afterwards. God gave Israel the Tabernacle, the priests, the rituals, and the sacrifices for temporary remission of sins. Until the cross of Christ, however, only a few people under the Old Covenant (the Old Testament) had the privilege of actual fellowship and…..
Regeneration is God’s response to our faith in Jesus Christ. When God created the world and everything in it, He created us in His image. But because we are naturally born spiritually dead in sin, His image in us is marred. When we accept His Son as our Savior, we are born again, our human spirit recreated back into the image of God.
Ephesians 2:1-4 explains regeneration in terms of a complete about-face from the bondage of sin: “You hath he…..
Justification is another attribute of salvation. It is the principle that, not only are we forgiven, but also our sin is completely forgotten, never to be brought up by God again: “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). You are declared not guilty and all evidence of your sin is expunged, “just as if I had never sinned”.
The sin of the first man, Adam, caused sin…..
With salvation comes the remission and forgiveness of sin. God is able to forgive each of us our past, present, and future sin because Jesus paid the price for your sin as the ultimate one sacrifice for all sin.
Jesus Christ, God the Son, took the form of a human so that He could pay the price for our sin and save us from hell. Romans 5:8–9 tells us that “God commends (reveals) his love toward us, in that, while we were yet…..