THE PROVISION OF THE GOSPEL
Part 1
Rev. 22:17
Morning Meditation 11/3/2012
"And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."
There are many things that the gospel of Christ provides for the lost sinner. I want to mention some of those things:
IT PROVIDES ACCEPTANCE FOR THE UNWORTHY
Ephesians 1:5-6, "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved." One of the things that is becoming more evident as time goes on is to get the unsaved to admit they are sinners. This is what repentance is. It is agreeing with what God says about us. This is what He says, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; Rom. 3:23. Then He says in Romans 3:10, "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:" These verses set before us plainly that we are sinners and in need of salvation. The Lord plainly says that we cannot save ourselves: Romans 3:19-20, "Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin." A Jew born under the law had a strict regiment of standards taught him from birth. He knew from his earliest understanding what God required if a man were to make it to heaven by his own good works.
Wherein was man unable to reach heaven by the works of the law? Romans 8:2-3, "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:" Paul fully explains the weakness of the law to save. He said, "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh." There it is. We are weak through the flesh. The flesh was so weakened through Adam's sin that there is not a single descendant who was able to keep God's standard of righteousness. The temptation to sin is not just from without. It is also from within. There is a relentless hunger for sin some of which we have named here. The unsaved man does not have to acquire a taste for sin. He comes born with the taste built in.
Psalms 58:1-3, "Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men? Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth. The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies." We see that man is wicked from birth but God in grace has made provision for his salvation.
THERE ARE BLESSINGS FOR THE CURSED
Galatians 3:13, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:" The words "hath redeemed" translates "exagorazo" and means, "by the paying of a price to recover from the power of another, to ransom. Metaphorically it is used of Christ freeing the elect from the dominion of the Mosaic Law at the price of his vicarious death." --Lexicon from Online Bible
The Lord Jesus has provided a blessing for the cursed. It is a blessing that will take him and remove him from the curse of the law. Have you been redeemed from the curse of the law by faith in Jesus Christ?
There is only one way to have the curse removed. It is a curse removed by Jesus on the cross. Then to apply what He did for us on the cross we must repent and accept His sacrifice by faith what He did for us. At that point the death He died becomes our death in payment for our sins. The resurrection that He accomplished is ours also. Romans 6:11 says, "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord."
THERE IS CLEANSING FOR THE POLLUTED
1 John 1:7, "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." 1 John 1:7, "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." The word "cleanseth" in the Greek grammar means to continually cleanseth us. So it is not just something that happened at a point of time but something that happened and will keep on happening as long as we live and that eternal life will be ours and go with us forever. This is a quality of life not just life in generic form. Once a person is saved He continues to be ours without end.
There is no question that we will be polluted along the way. It is sad, but the saved of this world demonstrate that fact on a regular basis. That is the reason John said in 1 John 1:8-9, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." We are God's property not only by creation but also by recreation and when we sin there must be forgiveness. So we must confess our sins and come back for cleansing and have our conscience cleansed. A renewed and cleansed conscience will keep us walking down a straight path as we wait on the glorious Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
THERE IS ALSO DELIVERANCE FOR THE CAPTIVE
2 Corinthians 1:10, "Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us;" Those sins that the Christian gets caught up in are unable to dominate his life. Because our sins are forgiven both past, present, and future. That is something for which we should be eternally grateful. Sin is something for which we need to be forgiven as an act in the past but also for a slip and an act in the present. And thanks be unto God that we can have forgiveness in the present tense of our Christian lives.
THERE IS ALSO ENRICHMENT FOR THE POOR
2 Corinthians 2:9-11, "For to this end also did I write, that I might know the proof of you, whether ye be obedient in all things. To whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also: for if I forgave any thing, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ; Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices."
Satan is full of devices. This word means carefully laid traps that he sets to trap the believer and then preach a false gospel of false religion. It might surprise that we believe in salvation by grace apart from works and then we switch to works so far as keeping it is concerned. Now first of all, it would be foolish and completely out of sink to believe that God would save us by grace and say to us, "Now I have saved you by grace, but you are on your own from now on." We are saved by grace and kept by grace. Sometimes we Christians complain because things don't seem to be going right for us. But the fact is that the grace of God clears the path for us to get to God for salvation and blocks the way for Satan to get to us to steal our salvation after we get it.
May the Lord bless these words to our hearts.
In Christ,
Bro. White