ACCEPTING CHRIST

FRIDAY 19 NOVEMBER 2021

God desires our salvation more than anything else. This desire is an expression of His unconditional love to all mankind, as in His foreknowledge that everyone who confesses and receives Christ as Lord would be saved. Having initiated the death of His Beloved Son as the mediator of sinners, God showed the riches of the glory of His grace to all and sundry. Since He spared not His One and only Son, but delivered Him up to die for all, there is an important response expected of all men. Let's find out!

Reference: Romans 10:9-10 New International Version (NIV) "If you declare with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved."

This Scripture is a divinely-conceived disclosure, ultimately aimed to deliver salvation to man. It leads us on to the mystery of Christ's mediation, the very source of salvation, rooted in God's love, in whom all being is gathered up for redemption and justification by faith. In fact, this Scripture is in itself, the expression of the good pleasure of God's will, on which the hope of all who will spend eternity with Him solely depends. Although its a self-choice, because the Scripture says, "If you declare with your mouth", which means, "on condition that you uttered it", it is a necessity in God's agenda for man's salvation according to divine will.

To accept and declare that "Jesus is Lord" and to believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, is to enter into the state of reconciliation with God, through the mediation of the reconciling death of Christ. By means of faith in Christ, a man believes and he's justified and saved. And this is a complete process determined by God's grace. By this I mean that there must be a heartfelt "belief" response and confession on man's part, and then the justification and righteousness imputed to man on God's part, which make up the eternal counsel in the realm of salvation by faith.

The final purpose of today's Scripture is to show forth God's glory in the gift of His grace regarding salvation, wherein He made us accepted in Christ. Therefore, all who are chosen to spend eternity with God by predestination, will at a point in their lifetime, make this confession. This implies that today's referenced Scripture is not a religious view principally attributed to apostle Paul, the vigorous writer, who, in his opinion, had suggested it as a means to salvation. No its not so! It's an eternal counsel, in the quality of its efficacy, by which man is redeemed from bondage of sin to sonship in Christ and transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of light.

Beloved, all who are chosen by God to live forever, will end up chosen as the elect in Christ. And the Bible says, "For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe" (1 Corinthians 2:21 ESV). This is why through the wisdom (foolishness) of preaching, we spread the gospel so that we can locate the elect, who don't know yet. And with their lips, they'll declare His Lordship and receive justification by faith, with the righteousness of Christ being imputed to them, in order to become accepted of God as the righteous. Simply put, Romans 10:9-10 is the principle by which every chosen man lays hold on Christ as Lord, so that with His righteousness, he will appear in the radar of God's sight as the "righteous". That radar is a system for detecting our presence and position in Christ before God.

No wonder apostle Paul noted, "And be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith" (Philippians 3:9 NIV). If you have declared with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be found in Christ with the righteousness that comes from God, in the order of divine radar. If you haven't made this declaration yet, please do this right away by confessing the prayer of salvation below. Shalom!

Scripture Reading - John 3:16; Acts 2:21; Romans 6:23; John 17:3.

Guided Prayer: Heavenly Father, I acknowledge today that you demonstrated your unconditional love for me in this: While I'm living without Christ, you sent Him ahead of time to die for me. Therefore I renounce the nature of sin and I accept Jesus as my Saviour. I believe and confess with my heart that Jesus is the Son of the true living God, who died for me and was raised from the dead on the third day by God. I believe that Jesus is risen and He's alive forever. I accept Him into my heart and I declare His Lordship over my life now and forever. From today, I'm born again. I'm now a new creation and I have eternal life: my present-moment reality! Thank you Lord Jesus for saving me and taking full charge of my life, as my Lord. GLORY TO GOD!