Friday, April 25, 2014

The life-giving arms of love

Ephesians 2:8-9 (NLT) “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.”
“Sin entered the world through one man…and in this way death came to all men, because all have sinned.” (Romans 5:12) As a result of Adam’s fall in the Garden of Eden, we were all born with a sin nature but according to these verses in Ephesians, we don’t have to remain dead in them. Salvation is a gift from God. It’s not something we can earn or an award we can win for the good things we’ve done.
God gave us the ultimate gift of salvation in Christ Jesus, his one and only son. 4 “He (Jesus) took our suffering on him and felt our pain for us. We saw his suffering and thought God was punishing him. But he was wounded for the wrong we did; he was crushed for the evil we did. The punishment, which made us well, was given to him, and we are healed because of his wounds.” (Isaiah 53:4-5)

We will never be able to earn salvation by helping the needy, working with children in orphanages, going on trips to help with disaster relief efforts, or even by living a good and moral life. The only way we can receive the gift of Salvation is to accept what Christ did for us all on Calvary. He was beaten, whipped, and nailed to a cross so that he (and he alone) could pay the price for our sin. 

He died so we wouldn’t have to. 

He (Jesus Christ) is worthy of all our praise and worship, for paying our debt and pulling us from sin’s death-grip into his life-giving, arms of love.

Related scripture: Matthew 7:13 – 14; Matthew 11: 28 – 30; John 6:37; Romans 10:13



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