What an astounding truth to ponder and really come to understand; a gift declaration of righteousness to those who could never gain that declaration through performance. We need to look at sanctification from the standpoint of who is doing the setting apart.
Where do people go to see how far they have removed themselves through their behavior from God’s favor? More often then not, they go right back to the Law of Moses taught in the halls of religianity by ministers of righteousness. That can only lead in one direction, instability.
The religiously minded begin to believe they are indeed measuring up as righteousness becomes relative to those people. There are to many preachers holding over the heads of their congregations a little law mixed with the possibility of losing their salvation, this is how they keep people in line!
They feed their congregations a little fear of missing heaven! Frighten them a bit with the possibility of hell fire and brimstone and they will keep on doing the do’s and avoiding the don’ts, that will keep them straight! They will live properly in order to merit heaven and miss hell!
Flesh wants to say if I broke it I can fix it. God is not asking us to turn from anything to be saved. God is asking us to believe Christ accomplished salvation for us and we are simply to believe it. Christ did it all, there is nothing left for us to do.
Our being setting apart is not contingent upon the degree to which we set ourselves apart. The pathway of rules and regulations for righteousness, otherwise called religion in the word of God, seems right to a lot of people today, yet when we look at the Scripture, we find it used in negative sense.
The law did not work within the religious system God gave to Israel to prove to them the law would not make them righteous. We find that rather than something that worked to produce what the natural mind thought could be produced through the law; the law worked to produce the opposite.
Some would say an unsaved person would never chose Christ in the first place, a person would be to dead to make a decision as to whether to believe gospel. So this person would have to be made alive, before that person can even make a decision, a person has to be saved in order to be saved.
The idea some people have is that God has to do a work in a person before belief by the person is even a possibility. God gives faith only to those he’s so chosen to be believers, saving faith, in order for a person to believe.
When Paul refers to us as the called, he is referring not just to the fact that God is extending a call to us, an invitation or summons. Paul’s also referring to the fact that God’s calling us to participate in that to which we have been called, the Body of Christ, participation in that which we have been called to.
A ransom for all - was not testified until Paul proclaimed it, the revelation of the secret, which was kept secret since the world began. Some have called God’s justification, cheap justification; if it is that easy, if a person can obtain righteousness without doing something, or even trying to do something in order to gain it, that would be too easy, and that would make it cheap.
That is difficult for people imbued with the pride of life to imagine; it is difficult to accept, because it does not seem fair to the human mind, especially to the religiously minded. It does not seem quite right that God could consider someone righteous, especially if that person is not expending the same amount of effort or attention that they are to become righteous by way of their practice.
The fact is Christ became the redeemer of the entire world, when he satisfied the justice of God for the sins of the entire world. The sin issue was resolved for everyone, but understand, that having a redeemer and accepting the redeemer that we have, and what that redeemer accomplished, are two different things.
God’s justification is absolutely free, but it was certainly not cheap, it came at tremendous cost. Apart from God’s grace, the justification Paul’s been telling us about would be totally impossible, but then, apart from the price the son of God paid to make it possible, God’s grace could not offer it.
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