To Christians only: A complete salvation 1
Dear All:
First of all, this is a letter for Christians to read only! If you have not accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, you'd better get baptized and be reborn first before you read this letter. Otherwise, one might not understand it properly.
I am writing these series of letters to try to share some grace I am learning from Holy Spirit to whom all praises and thanks belong with those who might have some questions such as:
"How can I guarantee to go to Heaven?
How can I be closer to God and walk with God?
What are the obstacles that might keep Holy Spirit away from me?"
Actually, all the answers are clearly in the Bible already.(What are in Bible are all God want us to know. No need to add a word or to reduce a word or to update.) In the New Testament, Jesus Christ gives the answers from every respects who can and who can not enter the kingdom of Heaven. All the disciples' letters further address it under the guidance of Holy Spirit. I will only repeat part of them here. If it is of any help and inspiration, praises and thanks to God. If there is any immaturity and incompleteness, that is because I need to learn and grow up more spiritually.
1. What is a complete salvation:
After we accepted Jesus Christ as our savior and claim it through the baptizing, all the sins before (not after) are forgiven and we are reborn spiritually as God promised in the Bible. Praises and thanks be to God.
However, does it guarantee we will go to Heaven and have eternal life with God for sure? If we didn't make any change and keep our old life style, worry about what we worried before and enjoy what we enjoyed before. Go to church only to have a place to spend the weekend and to social and to entertain ourselves. Then we stay as an infant who never grow up. I am not sure the destiny of such cases. It is up to God to make the judgment. But we know that
"But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (MATTHEW 7:14)
"For many are invited, but few are chosen." (MATTHEW 22:14) "If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning." (PETER 2:20)
The conversion is only the start of the salvation. Salvation is a process of becoming who we really should be in God's mind. It begins at conversion and continues until we are fully transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. After the reborn, we need to grow up.
"…so that the body of Christ may be build up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to whole measure of the fullness of Christ." (EPHESIANS 4:13)
"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:…" (PHILIPPIANS 2:5)
Christians are not only someone believed in Jesus Christ; but also are someone who follow Jesus' example and are similar to Jesus Christ who surely pleased God and approved by God; who will surely go to Heaven and are allowed to live with God forever. If we will not behave at least better than Eve and Adam, Why God bother to bring us to Heaven and then have to drive one out of it, again?
However, we can never be as good as Jesus and live by all the words in the Bible every moment through our own efforts. God knows that well. That's why He sends Holy Spirit to help us to become a saint like Jesus that we can't be by ourselves. Praises and thanks to God.
"And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you." (John 14:16-17)
In some sense, Holy Spirit is like a ridge tree sent to help one who naturally will grow in a crook way by oneself. By tied with the ridge tree – the help and guidance from God, we are also possible to grow up straightly by letting Holy Spirit guild and take charge of our life.
"When he (Holy Spirit) comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment:…" (JOHN 16:8)
Salvation is a great grace and gift from God. We don't need to get stressed to figure it out and work on it under a lot of pressures. That is not God's way. All we need to do is to prepare a willing heart and to let God do the work.
Being a Christian, we do have different status compared to non-Christians. We are given a new life as God promised. But the spring of water of the new life is blocked in a lot of cases by ourselves and never flow out or dry out only after a few drops. That brings us to the question:
2. What kind of rocks that we need to move away from the exit of the spring and let the water of new life flow?
To be continued …
All praises, glories and thanks be to God
God bless you
in Jesus
servant of Christ
