. And I want us to look at our text to see more clearly and specifically the sovereignty of God in regards to salvation. There are some words here that we need to examine such as foreknowledge, predestined, called, justified, and glorified. This is the progression of our salvation and we are saved according to the predetermined plan of God.
Last week we examined Romans 8:28 and looked at the promise of security, the purpose of security, and the principle of security.
The Purpose of Salvation
Now, we come to Romans 8:29 and I first want us to look at the purpose of salvation. God saves us, redeems us, justifies us, glorifies us for what purpose? In verse 29 we are told so that we would become conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.
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God calls us into His family and Jesus Christ calls us His brothers and sisters in the divine family of God. God’s purpose in salvation is that we would become more like Christ in which we would glorify Him forever.
Jesus Christ deserves our praise, worship, honor, and glory because He is the only way to the Father. Adam and Eve rebelled against God plunging the entire human race at enmity with God. God, in His perfect plan, sent His Son, Jesus Christ to take upon Himself all the sins of everyone who would ever believe. In other words, God’s plan was to bring mankind back to Himself. Those who trust in Christ alone for salvation are saved from their sins and will praise and give glory and honor to God through Jesus Christ for eternity.
Process of Salvation
Now there is also the process of salvation which is seen in this verse as well. Notice the process of salvation in 5 distinct stages: Foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification.
Stage 1: Foreknowledge
Let’s take a look at the first stage in the process of salvation. For whom He foreknew. Now some would say that this word foreknew means that God looked down the corridor of time to see those who would believe and then chose those people for
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Well, I don’t think we want what is fair. Fair is that everyone goes to hell and no one receives God’s grace and mercy. No one deserves eternal life. R.C. Sproul says it well, “The saved get mercy and the unsaved get justice. Nobody gets injustice.”
What we see here in the process of salvation is that God knows and knew from the foundation of the world everyone who would believe because it is God who saved them before time began. It was settled, it was decreed, it was ordained by God. In other words, every part of this process of salvation originates with God.
It comes back to divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Jesus said in John 6:37: “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who come to Me I will certainly not cast out.” See, people say, anyone can come and can choose! It is up to man!
Not so fast, the only ones who come are the ones God has chosen. Verse 44: No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent me draws Him.” Verse 65: No one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father.”
We can go back to John 1:13 which says that our eternal life does not come from “the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
of children, rising up and teaching them. He says that salvation will come from the people
When beginning to work to understand Wesley’s Scripture way of salvation in his sermons, it is perhaps best to start with his sermon titled The Scripture Way of Salvation, preached in 1765. In this sermon, Wesley again clarifies what he means by the word salvation. He states early in his message that “[…] the salvation which is here spoken of might be extended to the entire work of God, from the first dawning of grace in the soul till it is consummated in glory.” Here Wesley is reminding Christians that salvation is an ongoing process that starts with prevenient grace that is with Christians from the time we are born and works to prepare Christians to live in Christ, then moves to justifying grace that actually brings Christians into living in Christ, and then finally ends with sanctifying grace that moves Christians on to perfection. And if salvation is an ongoing process, then one could potentially assume that there must be other things happening continually as well throughout it.
“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). In order for humanity to fulfill it’s created purpose and be completely satisfied in life, each individual must worship God in every deed, word, and thought. God reveals this purpose over and over again in the first eleven chapters of Genesis in the story of Cain and Able, Noah and the flood, the tower of Babel, and most importantly, the fall. With all of this in mind, one must ask the question, “How can we fulfill our purpose if we are unable to worship God?” That is where Christ comes in. Because of His great love, He came to this earth and died for humanity so that they could be restored to life (Romans 5:8). By accepting Jesus’ free gift of salvation, His blood covers all sin and His righteousness is credited to the sinner (Romans 6:23). The result, then, is that everyone who receives this gift is now free to live their lives for Christ; fulfilling their created purpose. There is, then, only two human identities. Either one has accepted Christ’s gift of salvation and now identifies as a child of God, or he rejects God and chooses death over life. The child of God now lives under the authority of Christ and interprets everything through a different
We were designed for one purpose, to honor and love our creator (Matthew 6:24). When we look at ourselves, and others we find that we each have individual humanistic characteristics. Each with different thoughts of how we perceive God and what we think he wants from us. By using our talents and gifts wisely and just we are giving praise back to our creator (1 Timothy 6:17).
On the issue of predestination Wesley held that “God has decreed that those who believe will be saved; those who do not believe will not be saved” (p. 174, Abraham). Wesley went ever farther in the “God makes the decree, but the decree does not exclude genuine human agency and freedom; indeed, it builds the exercise of such freedom into the very content of the decree” (p. 174, Abraham). He held that if one would come to God that they should have no doubts about their salvation. God has a drive for our salvation but it is an active choice that we must make, even those God knows what the decision will be from the very beginning.
"For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you—not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to Him."
By redemption, Jesus Christ has reconciled us to God from whom we were estranged because of sin.
...it sound as though humans are in control. It is up to us to decide whether or not this is true. The process through which accepting teachings and winning salvation is shown throughout both texts. They show the exact process of becoming more spiritual and connected. We have always characterized this connection as something abstract- something an individual must do to avoid something bad happening. Whenever we doubt our own path, or lose sight of the process, we must remember that we are evolving toward, what the process of living is all about (Redfield 243). Reaching Heaven on Earth is why we are here. Now we know how it can be done.
The result of sin, then, would be considered a blurring of the image of God and a barrier between God and man. In addition, salvation is a process not of justification, but of reestablishing man's communion with God (Ware 155-161).
God and the Bible’s teachings are used as a framework to find meaning in life and purpose of human presence. Purpose resides in every human’s potential to strive for peace, seek equality, nurture relationships and the environment to achieve harmony with the earth (Valk, 2012). “Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my savior and my hope is in you all day long” (Ps 25:5). The Holy Spirit, known as God’s active force and His power in action (Lk 1:35), is used as a guide by Christians to ascertain and determine what is right. “We choose to act based on good thinking, scripture and prayer, and the Holy Spirit helps us discern the right alternatives” (Shelly & Miller, 2006, p. 89). In seeing others as the image of God, choosing what is right from wrong is influenced by beliefs cultural background and respect for one another. In this religious culture, the tendency to do wrong is seen as sinfulness. However, it is the admission of sin that leads Christians to Jesus Christ to find and experience God’s forgiveness (Shelly & Miller, 2006). The recognition of sin and eventual redemption strengthens the relationship with God which directs a life of service to humanity (Shelly & Miller,
The human race needed salvation because of one sin that affected the rest of humanity. God reached out through Jesus to guide us, “He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men” (Athanasius 2). It was through Jesus that salvation was brought to us because, “God has not only made them of nothing, but had also graciously bestowed on them His own life by the grace of the Word” (Athanasius 5). Another name for Jesus is the Word, “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw His glory, The glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth” (Schroeder 20). Through this we understand that the Word has been with God since the dawn of time and it was through Him in which creation came to be (Pohle February Seventh).
The knowledge of salvation is not a subject to be determined. Salvation only has one way of process, but the scenarios of why people cry out to The Lord are numerou...
Injustice and justice balance out. One might even go so far as to say that the two are one and the same, that they are two sides of the same coin. But why are they so important? Why have wars been waged over instances of injustice? Why are the two usually thought of as being separate? Both Euripides' Electra and the King James Version of Matthew suggest that justice and injustice are important and distinct because one brings about salvation, while the other is itself a sort of salvation. Injustice leads to the instance of justice—of salvation. Consequently, injustice and justice may be thought of as two separate and distinct ideas. Salvation is a concern that is dependent upon instances of injustice and justice. In Electra and Matthew, these instances of injustice and justice are acts of murder.
... he was sent to earth to save human beings from sin and death. The teaching's of Jesus center around love. The way to salvation is do good works. Also too have faith in G-d and the Christ's resurrection.
Because Adam and Eve took of the forbidden fruit, sin and all kinds of evil were unleashed into the world. This sin is what separates men and women from the relationships that God intended them to have, not only with him, but all those around us (Jenson, 2016, p. 75). Even at birth, babies are born with this nature of selfishness, and this could carry on through the person’s whole adult life (Jenson, 2016, p. 76). However, we are given something we will never be deserve: salvation. This salvation is granted to us through the death of Jesus Christ, although, that is not the end to this story. Jesus was not subject to death. God raised his Son from the realm of death in order that this broken relationship between Himself and humanity may be restored in a way that death cannot overcome (Jenson, 2016, p. 79). In this event, humanity was buried with Christ so that each person could live a new life that is radically different from their old self (Romans 6:4). That is to say, though each person is born into sin, they have the opportunity to live a life free from sin through believing in this story, that Jesus was crucified, yet was raised from the dead in order that humanity can live a new life in honor of Him. This community of believers is known as the church. The church is considered to be one group whose common goal is to reach out to the rest of the world through the use of the gospel, which can