JESUS CHRIST AND SALVATION SUMMARY PART 3.

I believe that believers are predestined after they have chosen salvation. I believe that all have a free-will to make their own choices, to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to God. When they have chosen salvation by saying ‘yes’ to God, and yes, the faith and grace that leads them to this point is a gift of God, then they are predestined to become what God has destined them to become, while they learn to yield to God’s will as they are growing from glory to glory! ( 2 Corinthians 3: 18). Even those that backslid will at one point yield to God’s will once again!

According to Erickson “the evangelical position holds that salvation is a total change in an individual that progresses through sanctification toward glorification.” 4 For me, personally, there was a point where I took the step of faith to say ‘Jesus, come into my life and be my Lord and Savior’. That made me go from being spiritually dead to becoming alive in my spirit to the Spirit of God! My conversion was turning to God, and I know there was a transformation that took place at that moment.

After Man puts his faith in Jesus, which is also a gift of God, there is no longer a sin record held against Man that he needs to pay. All that believe in Jesus are declared ‘Not Guilty’ by God. And because he has been ‘justified through Christ’ Man now has peace with God, so that he no longer needs to live under condemnation of His judgment even when he may still stumble and fall.( Romans 8: 1).

Sanctification is the process of being set apart from sin towards becoming holy and towards the goal of leading an almost sinless life. So it is about being and becoming holy. To the question of what is the work of sanctification, an online source says the following: 5 “Sanctification can be described as an inward spiritual process whereby God brings about holiness and change in the life of a Christian by means of the Holy Spirit.” Because of the effects of living in a fallen world, it has harmed different people in different ways. So believers face different issues, struggling with sin in different ways, and facing past hurts of varying degrees. So where comes the work of the Holy Spirit, just as Erickson states: “the Christian life is a process of growth and progress, lived not in the Christian’s own strength, but in the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit.”

NOTES
4Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology,(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006),901
5http://www.allaboutfollowingjesus.org/sanctification.htm (February 25, 2011),2.