ONLINE CHURCH BULLETIN

Undeserved Favor

Salvation does not come by confirmation, communion, church membership, church attendance, prayer, trying to keep the Ten Commandments, or living out the Sermon on the Mount. It does not come by giving to various charities or even by simply believing there is a God. It does not come by only living a moral and respectable life. Salvation does not even come by claiming to be a Christian. Salvation comes ONLY when we receive by faith the gift of God's grace, repent of our sins, confess Jesus as God's Son, and are baptized into Him for the forgiveness of sins. Hell will be full of people who tried to reach heaven some other way.

The apostle Paul said, "The law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. 5:20-21) He would later write in Rom. 6:1-4, "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we w ere buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life."

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse said, "Love that gives upward is worship; love that goes outward is affection; love that stoops is grace." God has stooped to give us grace. Have you received it?

For His Cause,
Tim Woodward