God's Amazing Grace: A New Nature

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.   Ephesians 2:1-10 

In my prior blog entry (God's Amazing Grace: Election), I discussed the doctrine of election and grace.  Because I am Southern Baptist and because I believe in divine election and what is often referred to as the eternal security of the saints (once saved, always saved), I have often been accused of believing "you can't lose your salvation no matter what you do so you believe you can just run around sinning and doing what you want."

In theory, I would agree with that.  In THEORY.  Because IF I had truly been saved and regenerated by God's grace and I was capable of a life of violence and murder then I would still find myself in Heaven with God at the end of my life.  Now before you burn me at the stake, let me finish.  

The problem with that theory is the Bible makes it very clear that if we have truly come to salvation in Christ Jesus, a complete change in nature and spirit take place.  Our new spirit is encased with the old flesh, so we still struggle with the flesh and still sin (which does not negate salvation) but our nature and lifestyle cannot be the same as it was before He changed our nature.

Do you understand the implications and the importance of the doctrine of God's divine election?  Something amazing had to take place in our life for us to become a child of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Most High and Holy One.  Our nature has to totally change not just to follow Him but it has to change before we are even willing to accept the gift of grace and call out for forgiveness and seek a relationship with Him.  

Often it is taught that our salvation experience changes our nature and spirit and brings us to the relationship.  What is broken cannot repair itself.  What is dead cannot resurrect itself.  What is lost in darkness cannot find the light.  Only God has power over sin and death.  God chooses to have a relationship with His children and He changes our nature and our spirit to bring us to our salvation experience.

Paul explains in Ephesian 2 that we are saved by grace through faith and that neither the grace nor the faith come from us but that salvation is completely a work of God in our life.  When we understand that we don't earn salvation or "find God" it begins to change our perspective.  We begin to better understand the reason for our devotion to and worship of Jesus Christ.