God Did Not Remain Aloof

The primary issue that plagues humanity is sin.  Sin is a venomous poison, a disease that drives wedges of alienation in every relationship.  We are frustrated in our relationships to one another, we are alienated in our relationships to God, we are confused in our relationships to creation, and we are even devastated in our relationship with ourselves.  All of this is as a result of sin.  Without attempting to be too provocative, the reason we feel so disconnected from everything around us is sin.  Quite literally, everything is broken.

Who could possibly save us in our dire predicament?  What would it take for us to accept salvation?

In all reality, God could have saved us from the curses of sin without getting His hands dirty, so to speak.  He was not powerless against sin while sitting on His throne in heaven.  Surely He could have handled sin decisively without sending His Son to take on the form of sin, placing the curse of sin upon Christ's shoulders, and He could have washed away sin without requiring blood.  But that is not what He did.

God did not remain aloof in garnering salvation.  He actively reached down into humanity with a distinctly human hand.  He pulled salvation through the torn human ligaments.  He grabbed redemption through blood-soaked flesh.  He laid the immense weight of all the world's sin upon His own shoulders. He satisfied His wrath by becoming the curse of sin.

All this He did at the cross.  In Christ.

To this, there is only one appropriate response: Amen and praise be to God!

Luke 19:10–God Came To Seek And Save The Lost

Luke 19:10–"For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost."

God's heart is for salvation.  He has a heart to seek the lost but, even more so, to save the lost.  God did this through His Son, Jesus, who died as a substitutionary atonement for the sins of mankind.  All of this is to say that God saves sinners.  This is the core of the Gospel, the very core of God's heart.  The Gospel is, after all, Good News.  Let us always remember this.

Partakers in the nature of God

In 2 Peter, Peter writes that believers are 'partakers in the divine nature.'  This is a beautiful statement, profound both for its directness but also in its significance.  Perhaps there is no more important Christian doctrine than the fact that we are partakers not only in the Gospel of Christ but, by that virtue, we are also partakers in His divine nature too!

The reality of faith is that it is not merely a passive attitudinal change in reference to God.  No.  Faith is an actual change of person.  It is a constitutional transformation of character from a life of sin in the flesh to a life free of sin in the Spirit.  This means that the believer is not merely who they were before belief; rather, they are altered.

There is a metamorphosis that takes place in the person as a person turns from unbelief to faith.  The irony is that this change is not a change to something 'new' as much as it is a change to something meant to be.  The pervasiveness of sin has so marred humanity that our origins, our original constitution, have been damaged to such a degree that a complete overhaul is in order.  Enter Jesus.

It is thus not enough to speak of redemption from sin as merely a matter of cleansing.  Though this being wholly good and true, when we speak of redemption we must also consider that we are redeemed in restoration, mainly that we are restored, renewed in the image of our Creator in Christ Jesus.  In the end, we are partakers in the nature of God in the very sense that we belong to Him as He is our God.