Once for All

I was just thinking…

If we say that salvation is progressive—

I loathe the word progressive these days—and that there is not that moment when we are set free from the law of sin and death, then we obviously are still under the law, trying by our own feeble efforts to save ourselves.

How debilitating.

Besides, that’s not going to happen.

We don’t have what it takes.

Or maybe we’re waiting for God to perform

some random act of kindness toward us that will take

us out of the misery of not knowing whether we’re saved or not, because it is a progressive thing,
and if it is a progressive thing, then whenever will God do whatever it is He wants to do to make  it happen?

See how outrageous it sounds?

There is an answer, you know.

Romans 8:2 says, “For the law of the Spirit of life

In Christ Jesus hath made me FREE from the law of sin and death.”

We never had to work for it in the first place.

The freedom Christ gives is—let’s see—FREE!
Paid for in precious blood... the Blood of Christ.

To know whether or not, according to scripture,

you are a child of God because you have passed from

death unto life is not rocket science.

If we have the Spirit of God who raised up Christ from the dead—

well, that Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are

Children of God.  In that moment when we said “yes” to Christ and

“no” to sin, we passed from death unto life.

Does that make us sinless and perfect?

No. Just forgiven and accepted in the Beloved.

Immediately.

God’s not an Indian-giver, nor does he

make us wonder if His free gift is really that—FREE.

It must be a chore, indeed, and extremely uncomfortable

trying to “make it” in a progressive so-called salvation situation

when the Apostle spent his life writing to us, assuring us that

we have full pardon the hour, the moment, we first believed and

received Christ as our Savior.

He stood up that day on the Damascus Road

and said, “LORD, what wilt thou have me to do…?”

That alone is proof text enough for me that Salvation happens

momentarily when we trust the full and finished

work of Christ on the Cross.

We try desperately to make something difficult out of

something so significantly uncomplicated and magnificent.

This is the bottom line:  —Jesus died

                                                 —Once for all (not over and over again)

                                                 —He offered—once for all
                                                 —We believe and receive—once for all.

__________________________

The Book of I John is written to "my little children."
Born-ones of the Father, those that are in Him.
That would be moi! How about you?
It's about the family and the privileges of family members.
I think that pretty well clears up the "progressive salvation" idea.
I like it God's way.

And we know that the Son of God is come,
and hath given us an understanding,
that we may know him that is true,
and we are in him that is true, even in
His Son Jesus Christ . . . (I John 5:20).