Jesus will end up being your delight and savior, or else he will get in your way, becoming a stumbling stone or your life plans and a rock of offense to your self righteousness.

When God explains his faithfulness to all his historical promises, the central piece he wants us to remember is that sovereign control, even over the whole of salvation. He knows we need to know this and stresses that we embrace this, even when we cannot fully understand how it harmonizes perfectly with His righteousness, mercy, compassion and justice. It does harmonize, but we are not shown now. He is in control and perfectly just in that control. We find our closure in this in the power and character of God himself.

In both the Old Testament and New Testament, salvation always has been and will be determined by the call of God expressed through promises, not genetic, biological birthrights or moral merit.

If the God of the universe is for us… inclined towards us.. finds favor in us… then the opinion or opposition of any other person just really doesn’t matter ultimately.

Our Father is aware of and using every detail and element of our life to create true and best good for us. Those he touches, he promises to complete and shape them progressively into the image of Jesus.

The promised sonship of salvation is legally accomplished by the work of Jesus and carried out by the indwelling Spirit. The unforeseen effect of us becoming sons is that we eventually become co-heirs with Christ, and in are transformed in our resurrected bodies and in role into such majestic significance that God describes it as our revelations and being glorified with Him. And there we find that all of creation and our souls yearns for the freedom and joy of us finally being fully us.

While it is not the only description and demonstration of authentic salvation, the presence of the indwelling Spirit who leads us is an essential sign of salvation. If you are not led by the Spirit, then why would you consider yourself a child of God?

The Mosaic Obedience Code was God’s good gift to believers before Christ came and gave us the Spirit by which He would lead us. Spiritual under that Law was very difficult and not a way of life any New Covenant believer should desire, admire or mimic.

The God who gave the Law as the obedience code has now brought his children out from under its leadership by their death with Christ. He now leads them by the Spirit into lives of fruit for life and his pleasure.

We have gained the true opportunity to live with and for God today by dying with Christ on the Cross. The old master is dead!

Baptism is the whole hearted… whole bodied statement of the absolute end of my old self by my death happening with Jesus’s death. I am no longer the old me. I am now unified with Christ and there is not a single category of my life aside from that. The new life of living with God is our new life and it is, as promised.. the sweetest, deepest, richest life. God gives us three calls to action to live in this new freedom for God.

Look at the horrible situation that we all existed in and then how powerfully, thoroughly and magnificently Jesus crushed the whole situation and brought us far greater good out if it than we started with.

The sweet grace of Christ is not primarily escape from the penalty of our sin, but rather escape from the darkness of sin itself and, in its place, having hearts able to see, long for and take confidence in the superior wonder of God.