01.03. GOD is willing and able to save us
GOD is willing and able to save us The birth into the Kingdom – which is, our spiritual transfer from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of GOD [Colossians 1:12-14] - is enabled through GOD’s willingness and His ability to save us.
GOD in His great love for man, whom he created in His own image [Genesis 1:26-27], has chosen to pay the price for our sin [Colossians 2:13-14]. The price of sin is death – in both natural and spiritual terms. The natural death that is our common experience is a consequence of sin destroying us spiritually. In paying the price for sin in death, GOD has established His Testimony which when communicated into us, brings into being in us the spiritual state of a “new man”. [Colossians 2:9-10] From a spiritual new birth, GOD engineers a process of actual change into us. This process of GOD-engineered spiritual change is called salvation, and is based on the actual communication of GOD’s own moral nature and character into our soul.
GOD communicates His moral nature and character into us, from the Testimony, that He has established for our freewill acceptance. The Bible explains this by declaring that GOD as the Father of creation, by His Spirit manifested His Word in human form – incarnated into the womb of a virgin named Mary, 2,000 years ago – to become the Savior of man.
GOD gave the Savior the Name Jesus. Jesus means “GOD Saves” or “GOD Is Salvation”.
Jesus is the Person and the Name through which man is saved! [Php 2:8-11]
Jesus became – by all that He accomplished by Testimony - the instrument for man’s salvation. Jesus paid the price for man’s sin according to the Law and the Prophets penned 500-1400 years before His coming into the earth.
Scripture through the Law and the Prophets categorically declares that the wages of sin is death. [Romans 6:23] In the context of the Law and the Prophets, written centuries before His advent, the Bible refers to Jesus as GOD’s Son, the Messiah (the Christ) – the Savior of man. The Law and the Prophets were written and compiled some 500 years before Jesus Christ came into the world.
Jesus Christ by Testimony through His life, His ministry, His sacrifice, and His resurrection from the dead, becomes – in the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets [Matthew 5:17-18] - the spiritual blueprint for a new man. The spiritual blueprint that communicates the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets – called the Testimony of Jesus - is the basis for our salvation. [Revelation 19:10; Revelation 3:14]
Jesus’ life attested to freedom from sin. Jesus is quoted in the Scripture as declaring to His enemies: “Which one of you convicts Me of sin!”! [John 8:46] His ministry involved teaching which, was vindicated by astonishing miracles, and the healing of the sick and the demonized. [Acts 2:22]
Jesus Christ raised the dead, walked on water, stopped the storms, turned water into wine and, healed the lame, the blind and, the leper. His sacrifice involved His actual and willing death on the cross, in order to pay the price for sin and, the consequences of sin – death, as stipulated by the Law of GOD. His resurrection from the dead is the visible proof of GOD’s sovereign vindication of the price that Jesus had paid for the sin of man. [Acts 2:22-32] In actually overcoming death, Jesus Christ becomes the spiritual blueprint for a new man. His Testimony, when actually communicated by GOD into the heart of man, changes lives through the process of salvation.
Such a communication of the Testimony of Jesus, by GOD, will take place provided we – in our own free will, respond to His Testimony, by believing in Him. GOD demands our willingness to believe as a spiritual conduit for the communication of the Testimony of Jesus that saves us. By receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior – by faith –we are opened to the privilege of actually becoming sons of GOD by being spiritually created in Jesus Christ, in the inward parts of spirit, soul and heart, in our inward man. [Ephesians 2:10] Our creation in Jesus Christ in our inward man comes into being through a process called salvation. This process of salvation commences from and through a new birth. In being “born again” we are given the opportunity to enter the Kingdom of GOD.
Jesus Christ, who is GOD’s Son and our Savior, instructs us on how to enter the Kingdom of GOD with these Words:
• Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you are born again you cannot see the Kingdom of GOD. [John 3:3]
• Unless you are born of Water (which Scripture describes as the Voice of GOD [Ezekiel 1:24; Revelation 1:15]) and the Spirit of GOD, you cannot enter the Kingdom of GOD. [John 3:5] • The GOD given realities of the Kingdom of GOD will be revealed in you. [Luke 17:20-21] Please understand that our first step into the Kingdom of GOD is to be born again.