Tag: salvation

I Was Blind, But Now I See

The Greatest Miracle – A Changed Life

“Even when we were dead in sins, has He quickened us together with Christ, (by Grace are you saved)” (Ephesians 2:5).

We are dead in sins, or blind spiritually, until we are born again. When we come to the Lord we are acknowledging our lost state and looking to the Lord and His sacrificial death at Calvary. He paid the sin debt at the Cross and we are saved by faith in His great sacrifice there. We can know that we have Eternal Life. Why? Because it does not depend on our efforts and works. As mentioned, the Lord paid a great price at Calvary to provide our salvation. He cried out just before his death “It is Finished.” The Lord has provided a complete Salvation.

We need not, and should not, attempt to add anything to this great Salvation. We come to Him in repentance and faith believing that His death on the Cross paid the sin debt owed to God and opened the way for us to be born again into “Newness of life” and become sons of God. We have Eternal Lfe at the very moment our faith is placed in Christ.

There are many today who point to works as the way to Salvation. They advocate for a works-based life as the answer for how we gain access to Heaven. Others advocate for a faith plus works approach. Both of these are wrong. This is religion which is man trying to approach the Lord by what we do. The Lord reached down in His Mercy and Grace and we are to believe in the Salvation He has provided. That’s it! The Gospel is simple. It can be understood by a child. We come by faith and are saved. the following verses from Romans show us the Way:

“That if you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness; and with the mouth, confession is made unto Salvation” (Romans 10:9,10)

This is the only way it could be. We were lost and undone in our fallen nature. The Bible says “There is none righteous, no, not one” and “For all have sinned and come short of the Glory of God.” We are unable to save ourselves, or walk out a holy life in our own efforts.  Jesus said the following making it very clear that there is only one way to Salvation and how we obtain it:

“I (Jesus) am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man comes to the Father, but by Me”  (John 14:6).

                                                     And

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

So, Jesus is the only way to Salvation and when we come that way we are born again, or born spiritual. That is the one and only way. We must be born from above because in our fallen state we are “dead in trespasses and sins.” Our salvation is by faith from first to last. The following defines the born-again experience:

“If any man be in Christ (saved by the Blood), he is a new creature (creation): old things are passed away (what we were before Salvation); behold, all things are become new (the old is no longer usable, with everything given to us now by Christ as ‘ new’)” (2 Corinthians 5:17 – commentary from the Expositor’s Study Bible.)

When we are born again and come to realize all the Lord has done for us we want his will in our lives and we will do good works, but our faith must not be in these. We cannot earn anything from God. We should go to church, read the Bible, pray, and share the Gospel, but, again, our faith must be in Christ and Him Crucified for Salvation and for our daily Christian walk.

In the very next verse after our introductory verse, John tells us that if our faith is right and we are seeking God’s will, then we can make our requests known to the Lord and he will hear us an answer. What a promise! We have a wonderful Lord who provides a complete salvation and hears our requests and answers them. We will close with this promise that the Lord, through John, gives us after assuring us of our salvation in the previous verse:

“And this is the confidence we have in Him, that, if we ask anything according to His Will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions we desired of Him” (1 John 5:14,15).

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Prayer Changes Things

The Lord wants us to come to Him with all our needs. Prayer requests can be left on the comments page of this website.

“For the eyes of the Lord are on the Righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers…” (1 Peter 3:12).

The Lord hears our prayers and is faithful to answer.

Always Remember,

God Loves You!

Find podcasts of this article, and all the articles on this website on the “Here I Am Lord” podcast on Spotify for Podcasters, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Breaker, Pocket Casts, and RadioPublic. Also, Here I Am, Lord is on Telegram.

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Here I Am, Lord – Tom Quinn Ministries – tqministries.com 2024

Salvation Is Not a Carrot on a Stick!

We Can Know That We Know

“These things have I written unto you who believe on the Name of the Son of God; that you may know that you have Eternal Life, and that you may (continue to) believe on the Name of the Son of God” (1 John 5:13).

The Apostle John is reaffirming the Gospel of Grace to those to whom he is writing. When faith is placed in Christ and Him Crucified then the result is that one is saved and has Eternal Life. Salvation is all of God. We are saved and kept by Grace through faith. We do not have to wonder about this. The Word of God makes it perfectly clear. Salvation is the result of the Goodness of God.

“For by Grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians  2:8,9).

Some attend churches today that do not preach the Gospel as it is meant to be preached. The Lord paid a great price at Calvary to provide Salvation for us and He wants us to know that His sacrifice at Calvary, in payment for the sin debt owed by us all, was sufficient for the Salvation of all those who come to Him in repentance and faith.

Our Salvation is not something we must work toward or wonder about. We can know we have Salvation today. If your church does not preach a Gospel of Salvation by the shed Blood of Christ and nothing else then you are hearing a false Gospel. Strong words? Yes, but, the importance of the true Gospel being preached cannot be overemphasized.

The Lord did not want us to be unsure about our Salvation. It is not to be presented as something to work toward or something that remains just out of reach like a carrot on a stick. What exactly does that mean?  There are churches and denominations today that require their members to follow their rules, ordinances, and sacraments promising that these will result in the favor of the Lord and a future in Heaven. The problem is that the people never really reach the point of knowing that they have obtained Salvation. It is a constant works regimen that leads nowhere. It’s called religion which is man trying to approach God by what he does. It does not, and cannot, bring about Salvation.

Salvation comes as a result of a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, it’s a relationship, not religion, that results in Salvation. We are to place our faith in Christ and Him Crucified. This will result in our Salvation because our faith is not in ourselves, but in Christ and what He accomplished at Calvary.

The Father, seeing our lost and hopeless condition, sent His Son to die on the Cross to pay the sin debt owed. We were born into our fallen nature and cannot save ourselves. When we think about the price the Lord paid at the Cross; how can we then believe that we must add anything to that to acquire Salvation?

The Lord, just before He died, cried out, “It is finished.” He was telling all that the payment for sin had been accomplished by Him and that whosoever will believe and come by faith in His great work will be forgiven and will have, at that very moment, Eternal Life.

So, if you are attending a church, no matter how established they might be, that does not preach the Salvation message of Grace by faith in Christ and Him Crucified then you are hearing a false Gospel. Preaching the true Gospel always results in souls being saved. We are to come in repentance and faith in what the Lord accomplished at Calvary. If we come His way then we can know that we are saved and on our way to Heaven.

The Gospel is not a carrot on a stick always just out of reach. It is what the Lord paid a great price to provide and comes to us totally by faith. We cannot earn it. It is not the result of faith plus works. Anything other than faith from first to last is rejected by the Lord.

Yes, we can know that we know. It’s the only way it could be. Christ paid it all and offers Salvation to us as we come by faith. When we truly see the love the Lord has for us, the result will be that we will worship Him for Who He is and praise Him for all He has done for us.

“Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His Courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His Name. For the Lord is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations” (Psalm 100:4,5).

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Prayer Changes Things

The Lord wants us to come to Him with all our needs. Prayer requests can be left on the comments page of this website.

“For the eyes of the Lord are on the Righteous, and His ears are open unto their prayers…” (1 Peter 3:12).

The Lord hears our prayers and is faithful to answer.

Always Remember,

God Loves You!

Find podcasts of this article, and all the articles on this website on the “Here I Am Lord” podcast on Spotify for Podcasters, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Breaker, Pocket Casts, and RadioPublic. Also, Here I Am, Lord is on Telegram.

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Here I Am, Lord – Tom Quinn Ministries – tqministries.com 2024

Mirror, Mirror On the Wall…..

……I See My Need and Hear His Call!

“There’s none righteous, no, not one. For all have sinned and come short of the Glory of God” (Romans: 3:10, 23).

When we take a good look at ourselves it becomes obvious that we are not perfect. We may try to ignore this obvious fact by trying to live a good life or we may look to others that we see as less “perfect” and try to justify our own failings. But the truth is that we are a fallen race unable to walk out a perfect life. We can hide this fact from ourselves or face the truth. In His Mercy and Grace, the Lord shows us our true condition and reaches out to us through the Gospel. The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin and draws us to the Lord. We can reject the Gospel and the imputed Righteousness (i.e. His Righteousness is ours by faith) He graciously offers us, or we can accept this judgment on our fallen nature and repent of our sins and come by faith to the God Who loves us and has provided a way in which we can have fellowship with Him.

“Therefore being justified by faith (in Christ and Him Crucified) we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1 w/ commentary).

Having placed our faith in Christ and His sacrificial death at Calvary we have peace with God. We now look to Him to walk out this life. It is no longer us trying to justify ourselves, but the Lord living within us by the presence of the Holy Spirit. We can look at ourselves as saved by the “Blood of the Lamb.” His shedding his Blood and dying on the Cross as payment for the sin debt owed to God, opened all the blessings of Heaven for us.

“But God commended His love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Roman 5:8).

We walk out our new life in Christ by faith. We cannot live this new life in our own strength any more than we could walk out a perfect life before we were saved. The Lord does not give us a stronger willpower to live this life. The following verse shows us what happens to us when we come to the Lord by faith:

“Know you not, that so many of us were baptized (spiritually, not by water) into His Death (spiritually, we died with Christ)? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death (along with all our sins): that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the Glory of the Father, even so we should walk in Newness of Life” (Romans 6:3,4 w/ commentary).

We have “Newness of Life” because we believe in all that the Lord accomplished at Calvary. The Lord provides a complete Salvation. By faith alone, we are saved from our fallen nature becoming “children of God,” and He has given us many wonderful promises whereas we become partakers of the Divine Nature as the Apostle Peter tells us in the following verse:

“According to His Divine power has given unto us all things for life and Godliness, through the knowledge of Him Who has called us to glory and virtue. Whereby are given unto us precious promises: that we might be partakers of the Divine Nature….” (2 Peter 1:3,4).

We have this “knowledge of Him” by our faith in what Christ accomplished at the Cross. He has given us “precious promises” in His “Word” that we might be partakers of the “Divine Nature.” All that has been afforded us is due to the Father’s love for us in sending His Son to die on a cruel cross so that we might be forgiven and given “Newness of Life” in Christ. He has given us “all things for life and Godliness” by the Holy Spirit Who lives in us. Romans 8:2 shows us how the Holy Spirit works to bring this about in our lives.

“For the Law of the Spirit (how He works in our lives) of life (all life comes from Christ through the Spirit) in Christ Jesus (by what He accomplished at the Cross) has made me free (victorious living) from the Law of Sin and Death (we cannot overcome this “Law” by our own efforts)” (Romans 8:2 w/ commentary).

Our complete salvation comes from the Lord and now, when we look at ourselves, we can say that we are saved by the Mercy and Grace of the Lord. He has given us His Righteousness, imputed to us by our faith in Christ Crucified, and we now have peace with God. We no longer depend on our own efforts to live a victorious life, but we now know that victory comes by the power of the Holy Spirit as we daily place our faith in Christ and His sacrificial death at Calvary. How great a Salvation the Lord has provided for us!!!!! When peering into the mirror we can now say:

Mirror, mirror on the wall, I’ve come to Jesus and He has forgiven me all!

                                                          

Mirror, mirror on the wall, when I walk out this life by faith I will not fall!

Always Remember,

God Loves You!

Find podcasts of this article, and all the articles on this website on the “Here I Am Lord” podcast on Spotify for Podcasters, Google Podcasts, Breaker, Pocket Casts, and RadioPublic.

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Here I Am, Lord – Tom Quinn Ministries – tqministries.com 2024

It Happened Without Warning!

We Do Not Know What a Day May Bring

A Fictional Narrative

“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the Judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

The man found himself in Hell. Death had come suddenly! It happened without warning, in a moment. He had lived a good life according to the standards of this world. He worked hard and provided for his family. He raised three sons and they all were living successful lives with families of their own. The man realized as he looked around at all the suffering around him that this was his final destination. How had it come to this?

“There’s a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverb 14:12).

The man knew why he was there. He realized that he had gone his own way and that all his success in life meant nothing here. He had lived his life thinking that living a good life would earn him Heaven if there was such a place. As he looked around he did not recognize anyone. They all seemed to be in great pain. Their features seemed to be contorted due to the suffering of this place. He knew that he too appeared as they did with the look of hopelessness on their faces.

“Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away” (James 4:14).

He thought back to that moment. He was enjoying working in his garden in the backyard. He was harvesting some of the fresh vegetables for a special dinner party they were hosting that evening. The last thing he saw before collapsing was his wife through the kitchen window preparing for the party. His health wasn’t perfect but to have this happen so suddenly was something none in the family ever expected. The finality of it. He had no last chance to see his family or to say goodbye.

He thought about his sons. He had raised them to be independent. They all respected their father and sought to live a life that he would be proud of. In other words, to follow in his footsteps. He knew now, being in this place of torment, that, although he tried to live an ethical life, He had ignored the most important thing he could have given his family. And that was faith in God!

“If you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved” (Romans 10:9).

He had heard this Gospel from other family members but had ignored its call to repentance and faith. He thought that these family members were weaker than he and needed the crutch of religion. He was a “self-made” man and stood in his own strength. In the natural, it had paid off for him in that he was very successful. All that success now seemed like nothing compared with what he could have had by coming to the Lord. He realized now that being successful was not wrong, in fact, the Lord wants to bless His children. What was so wrong was rejecting the love that had sent the Son of God to the Cross to pay our sin debt and to open the door for a relationship with the Lord.

The man wished that he could warn his family to not come to this place. He knew that was not possible, but hoped that they would hear and accept the Gospel. He thought of the many times he had the opportunity and rejected it. He now knows that the Lord loves all those in the world and calls whosoever will come to Him to “Newness of Life” in Him. He also knows there are faithful workers who go forth with the Gospel. Although he knows that he cannot be heard by the ones he loves; He continually calls out into the darkness of this place of suffering yelling, “Please, hear the Gospel that will save you so that you will not end up here.”

“Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth” (Proverbs 27:1).

[A discussion on Hell is not a pleasant or popular subject. It’s something not spoken of much today, but it is a real place and needs to be understood by all. Jesus spoke of it many times. Hell and the Lake of Fire are the final destinations for all those who reject the Gospel. We are unable to save ourselves and will perish if we do not accept the “gift” of eternal life that cost our Savior greatly to provide at Calvary. The Gospel is going forth through those who have accepted the love offered them by our Great God and know the end for those who reject it. If you do not know the Lord today, do not put off coming to Him, but hear and accept the Gospel as it’s presented by those whose lives it has changed.]

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim Salvation……” (Isaiah 52:7).

Always Remember,

God Loves You!

Find podcasts of this article, and all the articles on this website on the “Here I Am Lord” podcast on Spotify for Podcasters, Google Podcasts, Breaker, Pocket Casts, and RadioPublic.

Here I Am, Lord is also on Telegram

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Here I Am, Lord – Tom Quinn Ministries – tqministries.com 2024