By Lisa Groen
The truth is all of us have sinned. We’ve all fallen short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)
I don’t mean God isn’t interested in our obedience, because He is! (Romans 1:5) But He must save us first before we can have the kind of obedience he is looking for! (2 Timothy 1:9, Galatians 3:6-9) When God begins with us, we deserve God’s wrath for eternity because it’s about who we’ve sinned against. Why is sin so serious? –because of who we’ve sinned against. The greater the person to whom a wrong is done, the greater the wrong that is done. It’s ultimately against God that we’ve sinned. Every sin we commit is against God in the least sense and against two or more persons in the broadest sense.
God cannot and does not need our efforts to save us because Jesus said it is finished. (John 19:30) It would go against God’s aseity if salvation were dependent on us, (Psalm 3:8) and if it’s against His aseity, it’s against his nature. (Isaiah 45:5, Psalm 86:10) And it would go against what Jesus said if it were not finished but was dependent on us. And that would make Jesus a liar, and he is not! That would make him not Lord but he is Lord! (1 Corinthians 8:6, John 20:28)
If he needed us to do part of the work of our own salvation, and we sometimes err, that means I will or could potentially mess up if it were dependent on me, because erring is the very reason we need salvation. (Romans 3:23) And if my salvation depended on myself, and not God, that potential for error could or would somehow get translated into the work of salvation in my life IF the work of salvation was somehow my work. (Ecclesiastes 7:20, John 3:19) But it’s NOT, it’s God’s work in spite of our work, (Isaiah 57:18) it’s God’s work in place of our work, (Genesis 15:12-21) his work in times of us bewildered because of our failure, (Job 42:6) it’s God’s work in exchange for our work, (2 Corinthians 5:21) it’s God’s work because we don’t have the capacity to work it out left to ourselves, (Romans 5:6) it’s God’s work and him taking the initiative because He sees our work is broken.(Genesis 3:21) It’s God working and us resting in him, Him doing and us trusting, because his work is everlasting (Jeremiah 31:3, Isaiah 41:28) and even when we feel frozen, (Psalm 46:10) or pausing because of our loud weaknesses, (Matthew 26:75) it’s God’s strength made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
The act of him making us born again is his work 100%. (Isaiah 43:11, Hosea 13:4) That saves us from having to produce the work of making us holy. He will make us holy and he’ll do it by using our obedience (Leviticus 20:8) but not because he is short on obedience but uses ours to shape us. (2 Corinthians 3:18, Romans 8:29). So He is totally in control of the work of saving and sanctifying us. He began the good work and He will finish it.(Philippians 1:6) He is the author and perfector of our faith. (Hebrews 12:2) He is the birther of our walk of service to God, (Exodus 23:25) the designer of it, the upholder of our salvation, (Isaiah 41:13) the producer of it, (1 John 5:4-12) the continuer or it (John 8:31-32) and the founder and completer (Hebrews 11:10, 12:25-29) of the life given by God (1 Corinthians 3:11)
It has to be his work, or it cannot be pure; (2 Samuel 22:7, Habakkuk 1:13) it must be his work or it’s not trustworthy; (Psalm13:5, Isaiah 26:3-4) his work (Revelation 7:10) or it’s not genuine from start to finish. (1 Peter 1:7) And there is only one type of thing from us he needs and that is our failures and sins, our errors and impurities, our falling short and our inadequacies, our blotches and our messes, our missing the mark, and our misunderstandings. Then it’s real! (Colossians 2:14, Galatians 3:14) LG
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