The relationship between grace and faith

When we are worshipping the Lord, we praise Him, rejoicing in this: He has saved us by His grace. When we say that He has saved us by His grace, we do not deny that we have been saved through faith. We say both these things: "by grace" and "through faith". "Through faith" reminds us …

We have been saved by the Lord.

“Rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20). We must never forget Jesus Christ. He is our Saviour. Remembering Him will keep us from thinking too highly of ourselves. We are only servants. Jesus is the Saviour.

Salvation – the healing of our whole life

John 4:43-5:24 (Related reading - Psalm 51:1-19) At the heart of our Bible reading from John's Gospel, we have two healings - the healing of a boy suffering from a fever (John 4:46-54) and the healing of a man who had been ill for thirty-eight years (John 5:1-16). In our reading from the Psalms, we …

Prophets, speaking for God …

"Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. …

‘Justification By Faith’ Or ‘Justification By Grace Through Faith’?

Using the phrase, "justification by faith" can be misleading. It tends to suggest that it's our faith that saves us. It gives the impression that our faith is more important than it really is. It could lead us to think more highly of ourselves than we should. We should really speak about "justification by grace …

Suffering, Sickness, Sadness, Sin, Satan, Saviour, Salvation

Suffering, Sickness, SadnessWhy do these things happen to us? Are we to attempt to explain why some people suffer a lot more than others? Why? There are many questions to which we have no answer. There is one question we can answer. What are we to do when suffering, sadness and sickness come our way? …

Never the same again

Never the same again Here’s a link to a lovely testimony song. It’s about the change that comes from above. It’s about heavenly change. It’s about the God of heaven, breaking through – to change our way of living here on earth

Salvation And Judgment

Scripture speaks of both salvation and judgment. The Israelites were given "the land ... as an inheritance." The Amalekites were to be "blotted out" (Deuteronomy 25:19). Lazarus received salvation - "carried ... to Abraham's side." The rich man received judgment "in hell" (Luke 16:22-23). We must seek to honour Jesus Christ our Lord (Psalm 45:11). …

You Raise Me Up …

"Your eyes are too pure to look on evil" (Habakkuk 1:13). The contrast between our sinfulness and God's holiness is an absolute contrast - never the two shall meet. Can we raise ourselves up from our sinfulness to God's holiness? - No! We cannot. We need to be raised up from above, by the Lord. …

Sadness And Gladness

Sin brings sadness. Salvation brings gladness.

Why Did Christ Die?

In the death of Jesus Christ, we see both the holiness and the love of God. God hates sin. God loves sinners. Both are true - not one without the other but both together. Why did Christ die? - so that sin might be punished, so that sinners might be saved. God hates sin. The …

The sin is ours. The guilt is ours. The salvation comes from God. The glory belongs to God.

* May God give us grace to be "right with God" without taking any glory to ourselves. All the glory belongs to Him. Every sign of spiritual growth is always His doing. It has nothing to do with our being "pretty good people." * May God, through His Word and His Spirit, bring us each …

Three Very Important Questions

Three very important questions - questions that demand a personal answer: Who is Jesus? What can Jesus do for us? What will we do about Jesus?(1) Who is Jesus? Is he a mere man? or Is He somebody special?Every one of us must answer the question, "Who is Jesus?"- Jesus is the Word of God …

Let us worship the Saviour and live for Him.

Many people, who never attend Church, claim to live by the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. They don't make time for worshipping  God, but they tell us that the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12) is their favourite Bible passage. This is because the Beatitudes contains the ideals by which they live their lives. Are we …

Jesus Christ takes us out of judgment and into salvation.

Unbelievers have ridiculed “fire and brimstone” preaching. We cannot, however, allow their scornful attitude to lead us to dismiss “fire and brimstone” preaching. We dare not say that such preaching belongs to the past. We must note that the Bible preaches “fire and brimstone.” We must ask, “How does the Bible preach “fire and brimstone”?” …

The Most Important Question

Many people have a vast amount of knowledge and a great deal of understanding, but they don't have the wisdom which leads to salvation, because they refuse to open their hearts to Jesus Christ, the Saviour. Many people learn a lot about a wide range of subjects, but they don't learn what life is all …

Salvation through Christ

Drawing on L Newbigin’s book, The Finality of Christ, Michael Green writes, “It is one thing to claim that all salvation is through Christ … It is quite another to claim that nobody finds life with God unless they pass through the doorway of explicit Christian faith … The Christian Church has never maintained that overt knowledge of the person and work …

You get nothing for nothing … ?

"You get nothing for nothing. You only get what you pay for." Is this cynicism - or realism? Let's think together about something else - something that lifts us above all of this - the love of God, the grace of God, the mercy of God, the gift of God, the peace of God, the …

They Killed Him. God Raised Him!

"Come, let us kill him" (Matthew 21:38). This is the human story of Christ's crucifixion. He was "put to death by wicked men." There is also the divine story - "the deliberate plan and foreknowledge of God"(Acts 2:23). The wicked men thought that this was the end of Jesus. They were wrong! - "God raised …

Out Of The Curse And Into The Blessing

“Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29).   * What do we mean when we say, "Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world"? "Christ, our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7). To understand this description of Christ - …

A History Of Sin – And A History Of Salvation

Lord, we read about Israel’s sin - ‘They soon forgot what He had done and did not wait for His counsel... They despised the pleasant land; they did not believe His promise... They grumbled in their tents and did not obey the Lord... They rebelled against the Spirit of God’(Psalm 106:13,24-25,33). This is not only …

The Preaching Of John Wesley

"John Wesley’s Forty-Four Sermons" (published by the Epworth Press in 1944:  reprinted in 1977) - These sermons were first published, as four volumes, in 1746, 1748, 1750 and 1760. The language will seem, to the modern reader, to be very old-fashioned. There is, however, a great deal, in what Wesley says, that we need to hear today. My …

How many will be saved?

Jesus was asked the question, “How many will be saved?” He gave this answer, “Strive to enter by the narrow door” (Luke 13:24). His answer is not based on the things we don’t know. It’s based on the things we do know.These are the things that we do know:(a) the fact of human sin which …

Human language and divine revelation

Berkouwer's concept of the depth-aspect of salvation may be viewed as a serious attempt to understand the complex problem of the relation of human language to divine revelation. It need not be dismissed as a denial of what Scripture says. It may be regarded as an interpretation of what Scripture says, an attempt to understand …

The Vicarious Humanity of Christ and the Reality of Salvation (book review)

The Vicarious Humanity of Christ and the Reality of SalvationChristian D. KettlerUniversity Press of America, Lanham, MD, 1991; 338pp., $28.00;ISBN 0 8191 8273 7'A memorable month in 1981', when Kettler served as teaching assistant at Fuller Seminary to Thomas F. Torrance, stimulated him to explore further 'the profound evangelical and ecumenicalimplications of Torrance's doctrine of  …

The Spirit, the Scriptures and salvation

In his post, The perspicuity of Scripture, Ben Myers quotes from Berkouwer's "fine book", Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1975), p. 275.He begins his post, "Reformation theologians spoke of the "clarity" or "perspicuity of Scripture ... According to Reformation theology, the message of salvation shines out clearly from Scripture through the power of the Holy …

When someone stops trusting in Jesus and following Him …

1 John 5:4 tells us that "whatever is born of God overcomes the world; our faith overcomes the world." When someone stops trusting in Jesus and following Him, we must allow for the possibility that their "faith" was only a superficial faith, a "faith" that "endures for a time" but doesn't "endure to the end" …