Salvation

Picked Before Birth!

Every once in a while, God gives us a glimpse of His gracious, sovereign choosing of particular individuals. One such place is Jeremiah 1. The significance of this glimpse is that the Lord tells Jeremiah that the choosing didn’t take place in recent days as a result of Jeremiah’s good behavior, faithfulness to the Lord,…

Doing the Hard Thing

To the scribes of Jesus’ day, His powerful displays of healing and casting out demons were most frustrating. These made it difficult to convince people that Jesus was an imposter, a charlatan, who was simply attempting to drum up a following for personal aggrandizement. More offensive than that, though, was Jesus’ declaration of someone’s sins…

Certainly Elect!

The doctrine of election is not very popular in some circles of Christianity. If mentioned at all, it’s usually in a negative, critical way. Nevertheless, you can’t escape its presence. There are too many illustrations of God’s choosing (e.g. Abraham, Jacob over Isaac, David, Peter, Andrew, James, John, Paul…). And there are too many clear…

Diligent Efforts

On the one hand, for us to experience God’s gift of salvation is quite easy because it takes no work. In contrast to every other religion in the world, the Christian doctrine of salvation requires no amount of good works in order to be saved, for “by the works of the law shall no flesh…

“A Fruitful Branch”

Every true believer in Christ will produce fruit of some kind, in some measure. Jesus makes that quite clear in John 15, where He declares, “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit He takes away…” (v. 2). Then He describes what becomes of such branches in v. 6, “If anyone does not abide…