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Podcast 4: Grace for Salvation, Grace for Sanctification

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     The love of God is revealed to me in the words of Jesus in John 15:9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” The best activity I can engage in to make me a loving husband and father, is to believe that God loves me, just as I am.

     As I soak in the love of God, I am a new man, more like my savior and prepared to love others as He has loved me. My vision for the family has changed from: “Where each lives for the other and all live for Christ”, to: what I now I see as a more biblical statement: “Where each lives for Christ and all love for the other”.

     To begin to grasp the love of God, we need to being with the good news, or the gospel of Jesus. I have chosen 2 Corinthians 5:21 to represent the truths of the gospel. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

     There is nothing I can do or anything I can add to make God love you more. In Christ we are accepted totally and completely. Our salvation and sanctification are both gracious gifts from God.

     I mistakenly believed that salvation was by His grace, but sanctification, was by my efforts. The more I did for God, the better the husband and father, the more God would love me and like me. Any semblance of works, nullifies grace. If I am working for something it is no longer a gift.

     Ephesians 2:1 “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, … 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works…”

     The only appropriate response to grace is, “Thanks”.

     Closing Prayer: John 17:26 “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”