The One Reason Why You Are a Christian
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· 3 viewsThe cause of any person coming to faith in Christ is the iniating Love of God.
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Review of Man’s Condition
Review of Man’s Condition
-Man is dead in trespasses in sins… meaning completely unable to do anything but sin before God. He’s helpless. He has now power or strength to change himself.
-Man walks the course of this world, helpless but not innocent. He follows a path against God away from God. Like Joseph’s brothers who couldn’t help but hate their brother, man cannot help but hate God and love sin. (Slave to sin, son of Satan)
-This is true of all people whether pagan godless gentiles or religious Jews. All follow the paths of their lusts . All flesh is the same: spiritually separated from God, unable to please him, rebellious and disobedient. If man is to have hope for change, it has to come from outside himself.
-The common understanding that is held of salvation is that God gives a little help. Jesus came into the world to give men a fighting chance. That God simply provides the opportunity for you to choose to be saved.
This means that the gospel we preach and the hope we have in Christ is universally applicable. All men have the condition, their symptoms vary and there is but on solution.
The Point
The Point
Today’s verses teach us what happens when a man becomes a Christian, is that God exerts his power and resurrects him from the dead. In Chapter 1 we saw what God does for believers in eternity past and through the life and death of Jesus Christ. We see now in Chapter 2 what God does in believers to make them a Christian.
-The common understanding that is held of salvation is that God gives a little help. Jesus came into the world to give men a fighting chance. That God simply provides the opportunity for you to choose to be saved. If that’s the case no one would ever become a Christian. Man is like a pig who loves wallowing in the mire of sin. You can clean him up and place him at the finest table. Show him the sweet delicacies of grace, the finer delights of God’s love, spread to the natural man the feast of the Gospel and he turns his nose up to it. I’m sure that many of you are doing that just now. Why? That’s his nature! He like pigs, loves filth, but rather the filth of sin. In order for you to be saved, you need more than to hear glories and beauties of the gospel, you need a new nature, a new heart. That’s what Paul is talking about in our text. How God gives a new heart.
Paul wants us to see that our conversion was the result of the mighty power of God. It’s not in any way because of you, it was in spite of you.
What God Does to Save Us.
What God Does to Save Us.
What Motivates God?
-He sets his love on us.
Before the foundation of the world and nothing to do with us.
“For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
God is loving the unlovable. He is choosing as an act of his will to love someone.
-He Gives us mercy and grace
This means its the opposite of what we’ve earned or deserved.
He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
He is rich in these qualities. He is wealthy with mercy. This shows what kinda of God he is.
Illustration: Why does God save anyone? Josiah: because he loves us.
What Does He Do?
He makes us alive
He infuses us with life. It’s called regeneration or the New Birth.
It has to take place
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
It is a sovereign act of God
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.
It is Through a Union With Christ
Dead with Him, raised with him, seated with him.
It is Evidenced By A Turning and Believing
So Far:
Chosen in Him, redeemed in Him, Inheritance in Him, Trusted in Him.
Redeemed in HIm
We have such an interest in Christ that we share in his death resurrection and ascesion. We are Co-raised, co-ascended, co-seated. The effects of Christ’s union bleed over to us. We experience salvation through union with Him.
It is to show his grace in the coming ages.
“Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
Ezekiel 36:22-
It is Evidenced By A Turning and Believing
John 5:24
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.
Conclusions
Conclusions
Salvation is not best pictured by the illustration of a man afloat on the ocean who is crying for help. Other illustrations picture him next to Jesus and God the Father decides to throw the life reserver to you instead of Jesus.
Salvation is you dead and decayed rotting and stinking on the bottom of the ocean, and God makes you alive.
CPA’s
CPA’s
1) We live in humble assurance!
2) We have hope in our evangelism/prayers/future of our Church
3) This is why we counsel people for Baptism. We are acertaingin has God done a work on you?
4) This is why we don’t order our Church to please men.
3)