April 16, 2021
Salvation has always been the wisdom of God’s grace providing an atonement for man, propitiating wrath, forgiveness of sins, redemption from evil, reconciliation unto God, justification by faith, and sanctification unto holiness.
Sin on the other hand, produces ignorance, injustice, punishable charges, a debt/bondage system, disunity/division, a state of bad/wrong/nothing right, an impure useless mess creating a situation that is hopeless.
Which do you want? It doesn’t take much looking to see that our world is in such a hopeless mess!
We are going to explore seven gifts that the cross brings to us through the grace of God. The cross is the answer.
When we speak of salvation, we mean atonement, propitiation, forgiveness, redemption, reconciliation, justification, sanctification. All this because God through Christ Jesus loves us and gave Himself for us.
1. We begin with the grace of God that brings to us atonement and propitiation for man.
Ephesians 2:7-8 That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.”
Grace is revealed to us! (Titus 2:11) We are now in the dispensation of God’s grace (Eph. 3:2). We don’t need to try to find it. It is right at our side. Grace is exceedingly abundant (1 Tim. 1:14-16). Just say YES to God’s free offer of salvation!
Grace brings to us atonement which means that there was a satisfaction for sins through a just sacrifice. Propitiation is the suffering, and it demonstrated the wrath of God which was necessary for the atonement to be possible. Atonement is the positive side and propitiation is the negative side. God the Father was satisfied through the propitiation – suffering of His Son Jesus Christ.
“And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.” Romans 5:11
Our sins were washed away through the suffering of Jesus on the cross that satisfied the wrath of God; atonement and propitiation.
2. Forgiveness – “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.” Ephesians 1:7.
We have redemption through the blood of Jesus, the forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness means to pardon an offender, to overlook an offense, remission of sin. God forgives man in that He does NOT impute, or charge to our account our trespasses (2 Cor. 5:19). He removes the debt and treats the offender as “not guilty”. This if offered by mercy and compassion in light of godly sorrow.
From the cross, our sins were dealt with and forgiven. All of our sins were yet future. All of our sins past, present, and future were remitted… all at once! They were not held against our account any longer. The next time you sin, and you will, just thank God for His love and grace and move on – learning from it.
We need to understand this important point; this is all contingent upon us believing and trusting in the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the gospel by which we are saved according to 1 Corinthians 15:3-4;
“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures”.
In our next post, we will consider the cross gifts of redemption from evil and reconciliation to God.
Grace and peace…