Category: eternal life

How to Lead Someone to the Lord Jesus Christ

Sunday, May 6, 2012

“And brought [Paul and Silas] out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:30,31 KJV).

We dedicate this devotional to sharing the verses that are critical to leading someone to salvation in Christ Jesus.

Christians often have great difficulty in witnessing to the lost. Why? They have not grasped Bible basics; they are unsure of what to say. Many are confused because they have been taught anything and everything but the King James Bible rightly divided. For example, I once asked a Christian if she could show me our Gospel in the Bible. Her answer was swift in coming, “The Gospel of John” (NO!). The poor lady repeated what her church said.

Notice God’s plan of salvation for our Dispensation of Grace:

  1. Someone must first understand his/her need for salvation. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a). Without salvation, our sin will cause physical and spiritual death: ultimately, eternal separation from God in hellfire.
  2. Second, the person must understand that he/she can do nothing to save himself/herself. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8,9). You may also show them Romans 3:28, Romans 4:1-8, Galatians 2:16-21, and Titus 3:5-7.
  3. Finally, the person must understand that the Lord Jesus Christ “died for our sins, He was buried, and He rose again the third day for our justification.” This is the Gospel of Grace of 1 Corinthians 15:1-4: this is the only way we are saved from hell today. “… the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23b). The person must trust exclusively in Christ’s finished crosswork on Calvary as sufficient payment for their sins in order to receive God’s forgiveness and eternal salvation.

Have the person read these Scriptures from your King James Bible. You may also refer them to Ephesians 1:13,14, Romans 3:19-30, Romans 4:25-5:11, and Colossians 1:12-15.

Give Us A Free Meal!

Sunday, April 29, 2012

“Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because did eat of the loaves, and were filled” (John 6:26 KJV).

Israel, like all (sinful) sons of Adam, wanted only that which was temporary. Instead of seeking eternal life through their Messiah Jesus, they sought Him only to gain a free meal!

In the context of today’s Scripture, Jesus has just fed at least 5,000 individuals with two small fishes and five barley loaves (verse 7). Verse 15 says Jesus understood the people wanted to make Him king because He fed them!

In Acts 2:22, the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Peter explained: “Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves know:” Jesus Christ performed miracles in order to demonstrate that He had God the Father’s approval. However, Israel did not care about that; their hunger distracted them!

Mankind is naturally selfish: he wants to be his own god and do his own thing. Israel, although they were God’s earthly people, was no different. The Jews wanted nothing to do with God unless He could do something for them. (How many prayers still go, “Hey God, yes, it has been a long time, but I want you to give me…”?)

God offered Israel His only begotten Son, the God-Man who could save them from their sins, but they just wanted someone to rescue them from hunger pains and the Roman government! Jesus rebuked them, “Labour not for the meat which perisheth [physical food], but for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God sealed” (John 6:27).

For the rest of the chapter (John 6), Jesus taught them that He did not come to save their physical bodies from hunger, but to give Himself to save their spiritual bodies from hell!

Jesus came not to give us free meals, but free access to Father God.

What Does God Want Me to Do? #11

Sunday, April 8, 2012

“For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13 KJV).

Before God could do His “good pleasure” in and through us, and before Jesus Christ could live in and through us, He had to die and resurrect.

Jesus Christ died, not simply to help us get to heaven as religion teaches, but He died because our “good” works were nothing but “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6) and “dung” (Philippians 3:8). Jesus Christ’s death was the only acceptable sacrifice to God: our good works cannot save us and they will never save us. Christ died for us so He could then give His life to us when we trust Him, so He can then live His life in and through us! Christ’s life—not our life—is acceptable to God, for Christ’s life is not “dung” and “filthy rags.”

Have victory over sin by resting in your new identity in Christ Jesus. When Christ died, you died to sin (Romans 6:6). God has given you Christ’s life: “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:11). I encourage you to read all of Romans chapter 6 and rejoice in the glorious truths of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and their impact on us.

We should remember Jesus Christ’s resurrection every day. The same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is now causing Him to live His resurrected life in and through us as we walk by faith in an intelligent understanding of God’s Word to us.

What does God want you to do? He wants you to rejoice and glory in the resurrection life of Jesus Christ. If you have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour, you have Christ’s resurrection life now and forever. You have eternal life right now (you do not have to wait until you die to get eternal life).

Friend and brethren, study God’s Word God’s way, and then go and let Christ’s resurrection life live in and through you for His glory!

HAPPY EASTER!

*These past 11 devotionals have been adapted from a larger Bible study titled “Christ Liveth in Me.” The Bible study can be read here and watched here.

What Does God Want Me to Do?

Thursday, March 29, 2012

“For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13 KJV).

Someone recently asked, “What does God want me to do in life?” Well, what would God want us to do?

God wants to use us for His glory, but sin interferes: “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). So, in order to use us, God must first save us from ourselves (sin, death, and ultimately hell). This is why God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins, to shed His innocent blood for our forgiveness (to wash away our sins), and to resurrect the third day for our justification (to give us a right standing before God). That is Paul’s Gospel, the Gospel of the Grace of God (1 Corinthians 15:1-4).

God’s will is to have “all men saved” (1 Timothy 2:4a); God wants no one to go to hell forever (2 Peter 3:9). Do you want to do God’s will? Get saved! Trust Christ Jesus alone as your personal Saviour (Paul’s Gospel) and receive eternal life in heaven. God the Holy Spirit will then take you and place you into the Church the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:13). Salvation is that simple!

But, God’s will is to also have “all men… come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4b). Once a person is saved, God then wants him or her to learn why He saved them. God wants to teach us His overall goal for creation and our role in accomplishing that purpose (we learn this by studying His Word, the Bible). Do you want to do God’s will as a Christian? Follow the Apostle Paul as he follows Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1)! Learn about God’s will for you in this Dispensation of Grace by focusing on Paul’s epistles, Romans through Philemon.

As today’s Scripture teaches, God wants to accomplish a magnificent work in us, a work that will literally reverberate throughout the ages to come (eternity future). He wants to save us forever so He can use us forever.

My Soul is Secure in Christ

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

“For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2 Timothy 1:12 KJV).

According to today’s Scripture, those of us who have trusted exclusively in the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Saviour, we are eternally secure in Christ. We have committed unto God our very souls, and God Himself has promised that He will forever keep us. How can we unworthy sinners have such a glorious hope?

We Christians are unfaithful, rebellious creatures who still live in these sinful human bodies. Thankfully, our salvation is independent of our performance. “If we believe not, yet [Christ Jesus] abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). No matter what, we Christians are the Church the Body of Christ. Jesus Christ cannot deny Himself!

God the Father has given us Christians “the earnest [promise] of the [Holy] Spirit in our hearts” (2 Corinthians 1:22). God has guaranteed our salvation by giving us the indwelling Holy Spirit, “the earnest of our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:14). God has promised us salvation in Christ, and He cannot lie (Titus 1:2).

We have confidence in Christ Jesus. The Apostle Paul writes: “Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:5-8).

Verily, verily, once we members of the Body of Christ die physically, the Holy Spirit Himself will escort us to live with the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven’s glory (to wait for the resurrection/rapture; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

I rejoice in the Lord: God Almighty has captured my soul and my soul is secure in Christ (Romans 8:35-39).

Hast Thou Life, or Not?

Monday, February 27, 2012

“He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:12 KJV).

Look at today’s Scripture, and notice its simplicity. If you have God’s Son Jesus Christ, you have life. If you do not have God’s Son, you do not have life. The Bible could not be more straightforward!

While every breathing human being has physical life, how many have spiritual life? “Few.” The Lord Jesus explained: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait [small] is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13,14). According to the Lord Himself, many people will go to hell and few will go to heaven. Why?

Many people have gone (and will go) to hell because they have chosen to remain dead in their sins (Ephesians 2:1-3). “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a)—the rewards of sin is physical death and spiritual death (hellfire). But, we can be saved from our sins and hell by trusting Jesus Christ alone as our personal Saviour. Jesus Christ paid our sin debt by dying for us and as us, and He was raised again for our justification (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). By faith, we accept His resurrection life, eternal life.

Whether in Israel’s program, or our Dispensation of Grace, salvation is only found in Jesus Christ. The Apostle John wrote to Israel: “he that hath the Son hath life” (today’s Scripture; cf. John 3:36). Our Apostle Paul wrote in our dispensation: “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23b).

Hast thou life, or not? Salvation is not a “hope so.” You have either trusted in Christ Jesus alone (and you are going to heaven), or you have rejected Christ and have chosen to remain dead in your sins (and you are going to hell!). You can have eternal life through Jesus Christ if you trust in Him alone!

God’s Grace on Parade

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

“…But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Romans 5:20 KJV).

Today, especially here in southern Louisiana, the Catholic festival of Mardi Gras takes advantage of God’s grace. God’s grace abounds even when drunkenness, lasciviousness, and gluttony are committed overtly on our streets for religion. Because we live in the Dispensation of the Grace of God, they can flaunt their sin without being consumed by fire from heaven!

“Mardi Gras,” French for “Fat Tuesday,” is a day when religious people—professing “Christians”—lose self-control (excess alcohol, food, and partying). The following day, Ash Wednesday, they promise to live “holy” for the next 40 days (Lent). A priest will then place ashes on their foreheads proving that God forgave them for that riotous living. Blasphemy!

Regardless of all its biblical allusions (illusions!), Mardi Gras is still evil and anti-God. It was never Christian, originating from pagan Roman festivals, Saturnalia and Lupercalia (interestingly known for riots, drunkenness, gluttony, and fornication, and subsequent repentance).

The Holy Spirit, speaking through the Apostles Peter and Paul, was clearly against Mardi Gras reveling and drunkenness (Galatians 5:19-21; Ephesians 5:18; 1 Peter 4:3). So why do professing Christians engage in the very activities that God the Holy Spirit condemned?! As Christians, we should “deny” the activities of Mardi Gras (Romans 6:11-15; Titus 2:11-15).

If I appear offended, I am. Mardi Gras, despite its godly façade, is offensive to the great God and my Saviour Jesus Christ! God’s grace continues to tolerate such foolishness from mankind. Man parades his sin, and God parades His grace, holding back wrath.

Are you a Mardi Gras reveler? I declare unto you the wonderful Gospel of the Grace of God. God did for you at Calvary what you could never do: “Christ died for our sins, He was buried, and He was raised again the third day” (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). Jesus Christ shed His sinless blood and died to put away all of your sins, Mardi Gras revelry included.

If you rest in Christ Jesus alone as your Saviour, God will save you forever, make a trophy of His grace, and then YOUR life will be God’s grace on parade!

*Adapted from a larger Bible study with the same name. The Bible study can be read here or watched here.

The LORD is Exalted Far Above All gods #2

Saturday, January 7, 2012

“For thou, LORD, art high above all the earth: thou art exalted far above all gods” (Psalm 97:9 KJV).

The LORD is “the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy” (Isaiah 57:15). “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable… The LORD is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy. The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works” (Psalm 145:3,8,9).

Our finite human minds struggle to grasp Someone as magnificent and exalted as JEHOVAH our Creator because He differs from what we judge as “normal.” JEHOVAH is transcendent, existing independently of everything. He is everlasting, having neither beginning nor end. The LORD is sinless and holy. We never see Him physically or hear Him audibly. He exists outside of our universe.

Someone whose thoughts astronomically surpass our mental capabilities, whose ways (manners, behavior) are far grander and more complex than our simple activities (Isaiah 55:8,9). A Being who could devise a magnificent plan that would extend into the eons of eternity future, who could speak forth quadrillions of bodies into existence and then arrange them to form intricate systems (Hebrews 11:3), and finally set them into motion for His glory to accomplish that plan (Psalm 19:1)! How can He relate to us scrawny mortals?

Amazingly, JEHOVAH left that glory behind to become one of us! He “humbled Himself” and became “a Man of no reputation” (Philippians 2:5-11). Why? To die and shed His innocent blood for us to receive forgiveness of our sins. Wow… no idol ever did that!

Among the world’s gods, JEHOVAH alone can save you because JEHOVAH alone died to save you! Will you trust in the shed blood and resurrection of JEHOVAH (Jesus Christ), thereby receiving eternal salvation? Please do.

“Righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne… confounded be all they that serve graven images [manmade idols], that boast themselves of idols: worship him [JEHOVAH Jesus Christ], all ye gods” (Psalm 97:2,6). Hallelujah! Praise the LORD indeed—He will always be exalted far above all gods!

Three Basic Grace Doctrines

Monday, January 2, 2012

“For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:3,4 KJV).

Today’s Scripture identifies three basic grace doctrines:

  1. WE ARE DEAD WITH CHRIST: Romans 6:6 explains: “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him [Christ], that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” Our old Adamic sin nature is “crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). Thus, according to today’s Scripture, we Christians are “dead, and our life is hid with Christ in God.” We are “new creatures in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17). We have a new identity and we are a “new man” (Ephesians 2:15).
  2. WE ARE ALIVE WITH CHRIST: Nothing dead can serve God, so after God killed us, severing us from our identity in sinful Adam, God gave us life… His Son’s life! Thus, today’s Scripture says: “Christ, who is our life.” Galatians 2:20 continues: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me….” Philippians 1:21 affirms: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Our Christian life is not our life at all. Actually, it is Christ living His life in and through us! God left us, the Church the Body of Christ, on earth, so He could live His life in us… for the lost world to see. We are the body of Christ, who Himself is God incarnate; thus, since God is living His life through our mortal bodies, we Christians are also “God manifested in the flesh” (1 Timothy 3:15,16). The lost world only sees the invisible God by watching us, His visible servants. Wow!
  3. WE WILL APPEAR WITH CHRIST IN GLORY: Finally, today’s Scripture references “our appearing with Christ in glory,” or “our blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). When our earthly ministry ends, and the Body of Christ is complete, the rapture will transition us to heaven’s glory, beginning our eternal ministry there!

…But We Have Been Given God’s Grace

Sunday, December 25, 2011

“In whom [the Lord Jesus Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;” (Ephesians 1:7 KJV).

In yesterday’s devotional, we learned how we, the sinful human race, are worthy of our holy Creator God’s wrath. God has created a special place, hell, for Satan and those who follow his sinful rebellion against God (Matthew 25:41). The simple truth is that, because of our sinful nature (and the resulting sinful actions), we all deserve to go to hell, and ultimately, separated from God forever in the lake of fire (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9; Revelation 20:14,15; Revelation 21:8; et al.).

“But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Romans 5:20b). God, in His grace, dealt with our sin at Calvary’s cross, and took it out of the way. Through the finished crosswork of God incarnate, Jesus Christ, the riches of God’s grace are manifest. God left heaven’s glory to live in a human body, to “humble himself, and become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross”(Philippians 2:5-8). Why?

  • To commend God’s love toward us (Romans 5:8).
  • To die, not simply for us, but as us (Romans 6:3-9; Colossians 2:11-15).
  • To undo the damage caused by sinful Adam (Romans 5:12-21; Colossians 1:20-21).
  • To “put away [our] sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26).
  • To deliver us from Satan’s policy of evil, and make us sinners saints (Colossians 1:12-14).
  • To give us everlasting life…His life (Galatians 2:20) and thus, do for us what we could not do for ourselves—accomplish our salvation from the second death (spiritual death) (Ephesians 2:1-9)!
  • To give us “peace with God” (Romans 5:1).

Today, God is not imputing the world’s sin unto it (2 Corinthians 5:18-20). Everyone, regardless of religion, race, or social standing, can now receive forgiveness through the Lord Jesus Christ. All they have to do is place their faith in the Gospel of Grace as found in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4—“that Christ died for our sins, He was buried, and He was raised again for our justification!”

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM arC MINISTRIES!

*This is excerpted from a larger Bible study titled “Emmanuel 2.” The Bible study can be read here and watched here.