But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.
God’s highest expression of love and kindness towards mankind is rooted in His eternal plan of redemption. Christ was appointed by the Father to fulfil His plan of salvation, and to secure it by the sacrifice of His righteous life through the spilling of His holy blood on Calvary’s Tree. The Son of the Father came to earth as the sacrifice for sin because of God’s great loving-kindness, God the Son, came to earth as the Son of Man, to lay down His life for His friends, displaying a supernatural love that is beyond our human comprehension. Divinity’s love stands in naked contradistinction to the dismal picture of man’s insufficient and twisted love. The love of God for mankind appeared in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ Who laid down His life for the sin of the whole world so that ALL who believe in Him might not perish, but have life eternal as a free gift of God’s indefinable grace. The love of Christ begins to permeate our bodies and transform our nature following our great salvation. It is as we grow in grace and in a knowledge of Him, that we discover that our new-life-in-Christ exposes the old sinful nature we received from Adam’s fallen race. It contrasts what we were with all that we are becoming, as He works His work in each of our hearts and pours the love of Christ into our very soul. The healing that flows from His nail-pierced hand is a streaming flood of forgiveness and grace that is as effective today as it was on that day when His hands were wounded for our transgressions and He took the full force of God’s wrath upon Himself, in our stead. There is nothing we can do, in and of ourselves, to assist God’s transforming work in our life, except submit to Him and acknowledge that it is through His goodness and grace, that we are being changed from glory into greater glory so that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us. In the light of His great love, how silly to contemplate that any of our ‘good deeds’ or ‘righteous living’ could contribute so much as one droplet to the overflowing fountain of God’s eternal, life-giving salvation and everlasting love for His children. Salvation in all its guises comes through Christ alone. How wonderful is the truth that we are saved, that all our sins were washed away, and we were born from above, the moment we trusted Christ Jesus as Savior. Salvation did not come to us because of any good deeds that we did or because we gained some merit. Indeed, one of the most difficult things for sinful man to accept is that salvation is a free gift of grace from God to those who simply believe on Christ as Savior, those who believe that He died on the Cross to pay the price for our sins, and through believing on Him are given life everlasting. We were not saved from our sins and brought into the family of God because of our good works, righteous deeds, important heritage, or exemplary behavior. Nor are we excluded because of our wicked past, our unholy behavior, due to an accident of birth, or because we are out of favor with God. There is nothing we have done or could ever do that would qualify or disqualify us for salvation. The whole matter is exclusively based on the kindness and love of God. It all centers on His grace and mercy towards us who by rights should be eternally separated from our holy God and eternal Creator. But because He is rich in mercy and not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance and turn from their sins, He washed away our sins and gave us new life in Christ, by the power of His Holy Spirit, and the one and only ‘condition’ is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Our salvation is NOT because of the righteousness that we have done, but according to His mercy. We were washed clean the moment we were born again and were made a new creation in Christ by means of the Holy Spirit. This can be summed up in three simple words…”He Saved Us.” This is speaking about the love of God toward mankind. We, as humans, love differently than how God loves. Therefore we tend to misinterpret the love of God. We think of love as how we want to receive it. However, God shows His love in many different ways. Oftentimes He shows his love in a way that we wouldn’t necessarily have chosen…but instead, He shows it in a way that we need it. God’s love and kindness was focused on saving us. And it was definitely not something we deserved. Our life of good works and good choices didn’t make God look at us and think, “look at this person; look at the things they’ve done! I should save them.” That’s just not true. It was purely God’s mercy that caused Him to save us. We were lost…we did that on our own. His mercy saw our helplessness and He chose to save us because of that mercy. Because of His love and kindness. Praise His holy name.
Spiritual Steve 