My New Life in Christ

Knowing Jesus Christ is the most exciting relationship I can have. It is the beginning of a life of tremendous adventure with an all-loving, and all powerful God. It is great to know that He is on my side. Today I am going to review the 4 Spiritual Laws that a person needs to know to begin a new life in Christ. A brief review of these will help me and you as we grow in our relationship with Christ. I was recently introduced to these 4 Laws as I participated in my one to one follow up and so now I am going to share them with you:

Law One: God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.

Law Two: Man is sinful and separated from God. Therefore, he cannot know and experience God's love and plan for his life.

Law Three: Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin. through Him you can know and experience God's love and plan for you life.

Law Four: We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives.

How can a person who has received Christ know with certainty that he will spend eternity with God? This question will be answered over the course of the next couple of days as I examine each spirtual law and delve into passages.

I can be confident in my new relationship with Christ because I have been completely forgiven and accepted by God. Only Christ's death on the cross is sufficient to provide this proper relationship with God. So because I choose to believe in Christ, I can be secure in my relationship with God.

Ephesians 2:8,9 states, "For it is by grace you ahve been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works so that no one can boast.."

There are three important words in these verses that explain our acceptance before God: grace, saved, and faith.

Grace means an unmerited favor, an undeserved gift. I didn't deserve this relationship with God nor did I earn it by any good works. Rather is is a free gift from God that I accepted when I received Christ. I didn't realize the true meaning of grace until I read this and reviewed it with my mentor. I always thought my relationship with God was earned by doing good works, but it states clearly in the Bible that it cannot be earned.

Saved means rescued, spared from disaster. When I received Christ's death on the cross as payment for my sins, I was rescued (saved) from eternal condemnation...from having to pay the penalty for my my own sins.

Faith means a beleif, trust, commitment of mind, attitude, action. Faith is beleiving or trusting God and His word. When I received Christ, I put my trust in Christ and His death for my sins.Instead of believing in my own ability to earn God's favor, I now trust that I have been reconciled to God through what Christ has done for me.

So if I was standing before God and He asked me, "Why should I let you into heaven?" I would say because I believe in Christ and I believe that he died for my sins. God would know that I understood that I couldn't earn my way into heaven through any good works, but instead my good works were done out of love for him and to please him. Just as he loved us so much to give us his only son. My good works are done in appreciation for the sacrifice he made.