There is so much more to becoming a Christian than saying a prayer and expressing the need to repent while trusting Jesus as one’s personal savior. If that’s all it was, we’d be like vagabonds trying to make our own way, hitchhiking for rides, staying in motels, and using any desperate means to get by.
However, upon faith we receive the Holy Spirit who brought us to life so we could receive the gift of faith and God’s free Grace which came at Jesus’s expense. With this comes the receipt of Jesus’s perfect record of righteousness which is imputed to our account while simultaneously our rotten, sinful roots are removed.
We as believers become joint heirs with Christ and equal heirs with Him to the Kingdom. No longer are we walking as God’s children of wrath but are now His adopted sons. We are now considered part of Christ’s body and have a oneness and a new identity with Him.
This oneness means He will neither leave us nor forsake us. He will persevere with us to the end. Romans 8:30 says, “and those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” Philippians 1:6 furthers this point by saying, “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” John 6:39 says, “it is the will of the one who sent me that I will lose none of all whom the Father has given me.” Jesus is also our Great Shepherd who brings us closer to Him when we stray.
It’s clear from scripture that we were saved to serve. Ephesians 2:10 says, “we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works which He planned beforehand for us to walk in.” Romans 8:17 tells us that not only do we share glory with Christ through our union with Him but walking with Him also means suffering as He did. “And if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”
Being united with Christ means we are pardoned from our sin and can now fellowship with the Father. During times of doubt as we contend with the world, the flesh, and the devil, Jesus our High Priest, assures us that our guilty record has been expunged. He sanctifies us by the administering of the Word (John 17:17) grows us through fellowship, and the sacraments which He instituted. God makes Himself known through General Revelation which we can observe through creation and through Special Revelation found in Scripture which the Holy Spirit aids us in understanding.
As believers, we are God’s Covenant people whom He inherited and thus adopted because of Jesus’s shed blood on the cross. Our faith is one of family. Our Federal Head has always kept His promises. This, we must remember especially during times of doubt and uncertainty. Scriptures tell us that God perseveres with His people whom He promised Abraham would be a blessing to all nations. We can rest assured in this knowing that He is loving, merciful, and
just. He is also completely sovereign and all knowing, all powerful, and all present. Being all knowing, He foreknew us and by His power he assured that Jesus’s death completely paid the debt for our sin.
Being one with Christ provides confidence like nothing else though not from ourselves. He is the solid rock by which we stand and as the classic hymn says, everything else is sinking sand. Christ is the ultimate rescuer. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 1:15, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” Ephesians 2:4-5 speaks to Christ making us alive, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—”. Along those same lines Colossians 1:13 tells us, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”
So, Christ clearly is our rescuer and redeemer and by imputing His righteousness to our account we stand before God blamelessly and are heirs to the Kingdom. Finally, I’ll conclude with Romans 8:31, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”
In His Image 