Tag: Sinfulness

OUR BLESSED ASSURANCE

Our human sinfulness alienates us from God our Creator, but the wonderful and amazing good news is that Jesus Christ gives us everlasting salvation from this self-imposed alienation, granting us reconciliation with God and eternal heavenly life. This is our blessed assurance in Christ! Thanks be to God!

This blessed assurance of God’s grace through Jesus Christ is not merely some broad, uncertain appeal to the generic mercy of God. Rather, through the compassionate life, sacrificial death and redemptive resurrection of Jesus our Lord, we have absolute assurance of our atonement and salvation with God. What good news indeed! What amazing grace this is!

Fully acknowledging and confessing that we are sinners who have alienated ourselves from God, we believe and trust that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was raised for our redemption. Therefore, by the power of his Holy Spirit, we profess him as our Savior who gives us renewal of life here and heavenly life hereafter. So now, in thanksgiving and praise for Christ’s gospel of salvation and eternal life, I would like to simply bless you with the following Bible quotations:

ROMANS 10:9-13

For if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

SECOND CORINTHIANS 4:16-17

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure…

Brothers and sisters, this life is so brief, and, compared to a heavenly eternity with God, this life is really a fleeting bubble in a stream or flash of lightning in a cloud. And in response to the faith and hope and eternal salvation we have received through Jesus Christ our Lord, we seek to live this present mortal life in light of these great gifts, looking forward to the ultimate fulfillment of God’s Kingdom at the great Second Advent of Christ. With that in mind, I conclude this brief article with the words of the timeless hymn, Blessed Assurance:

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

Happy & Blessed Eastertide!!!  Pastor Tim

WHY DOES GOD LOVE US?

As Christians we’re very acquainted with the gospel message that God loves us, and that God loves us so much that he gave to the world his Divine Son, our Lord Jesus the Messiah (Mashiach), to atone for our sinfulness and to redeem us from sin, death and the devil. But have you ever wondered why God loves us?

So, why is it that God loves us in the first place?

Thankfully, we find the beautiful and powerful answer to this question from the Word of God within the Holy Scriptures. In many passages throughout the Holy Bible, the twofold biblical reason why God loves us so much is simply because we are [1] his cherished creations and [2] his beloved children. As God’s cherished creations, we are his artwork, his building, his craftsmanship. We are God’s painting, God’s musical composition, God’s architectural design, God’s masterwork. And, of course, as we are Almighty God’s offspring (children of our Heavenly Father), we are loved with a fully parental, self-giving and self-sacrificing kind of love.

(Psalm 139:13-14a) – “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works…”

(Isaiah 64:8) – “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”

(Matthew 6:9) – “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name’…”

We are indeed cherished creations and beloved children of God, first and foremost. Humankind is created in the image of God (imago Dei) as a complementary balance of female and male (yin/yang), and, although women and men are very different, we are equal in our God-given value and dignity. In addition, humanity is a beautiful kaleidoscope of ethnicities and cultures, but we are one human race that is endowed with inalienable human rights and responsibilities.

(Genesis 1:27) – “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

(Acts 17:26-29) – “From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God, and perhaps grope for him and find him — though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals…”

Consequently, our core identity is not centered on any sociological ideology or theory of conflict that’s obsessed with group identities, differences and partialities. Rather, as beloved children of God, our core identity is purely based upon the universal truth of the Word of God and upon the all-encompassing love and grace of God revealed in Jesus the Christ (Christos).

(John 17:17) – “Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth.”

(Ephesians 5:1-2) – “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

Knowing why God loves us, we can live our daily lives in this wonderful awareness “as beloved children.” Although our human condition is fallen and sinful, our human nature is divine as offspring of Almighty God. So, we must always uplift and rejoice in our true identity and heavenly heritage as human beings.

Therefore, we praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom God created us and the countless worlds of our universe (see John 1:1-4 and Colossians 1:15-17 and Hebrews 1:1-2). With deep gratitude and thanksgiving, we can live every single day in the awareness that we are cherished creations and beloved children of our Heavenly Father, and that God loves us so much that he gave us his Holy Son, Jesus (Yeshua), to be the once-and-for-all sacrificial offering of atonement for the sins of humanity (see John 3:16-17 and Hebrews 10:10-14 and First John 4:9-11). Glory to God in the highest!!!

Happy Thanksgiving & Good Advent! Pastor Tim