2 Timothy 1:9-10He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, 10 but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
Did you ever win a prize for a contest you didn’t enter? I’m not talking about the scams that begin with “you have been selected to receive….” I’m talking about the actual delivery of a prize for a contest you didn’t even know about. Has that ever happened to you?
I didn’t think it had. One of the basics of a contest is that you have to enter. They don’t enter you. You have to at least put in the effort to register for the contest, and they can then sell your information that you provided and make back their prize money. They are not going to give you something for nothing.
But the way God works is quite different. Jesus payment for your sin happened apart from any action we took. He just entered our name in the pool of people that His payment covered. And that pool includes every human being who ever lived. Now that is a BIG pool!
You see, the LORD has a purpose for our lives. He rescued us from the sin predicament and then has a particular kind of life He wasn’t us to live in response to His rescue. Our text calls this new life “a holy life.” Living a holy life is not an optional addition to our life here. Living a holy life is the essence of being human.
The LORD has two powers at work in the life of the Jesus-follower. He has His purpose and His grace. His purpose directs the action of His grace, and both work in bringing people to Himself and into a life of holiness. He saves us and directs us to change, to become more and more like Jesus. We aren’t saved to stay the same, only with a new relationship with Him. He saves us so that we can become everything we were created to be.
Now so many today miss the second half of this two sided coin. They collect salvation like a trophy, and seem to stay basically the same. They never allow the Gospel to change them through and through. They polish the outside a bit, but not too much, and the core of who they are stays the same.
We need to live like those whose death was destroyed in Jesus’ resurrection. We were fatally ill, even beyond death. And in that condition, rotting and decaying, Jesus rescued us. It would be like going into a mortuary and bringing an embalmed corpse back to life. That is what Jesus did. No hope of life on our own, but He brought the life with Him.
The Gospel is the one place that hope and reality are brought together. Many claim to offer a different kind of life, one filled with new products and carefully crafted images of ‘perfection.’ But the Gospel actually delivers the change promised. Just as Jesus rose from the dead and lives again, so we too can rise from our death and live again.
That is what holy living is about. We acknowledge our death in sin, and then we live a life given by the LORD, a new life filled with purpose and grace. But we must participate in the change prompted by the Holy Spirit who now lives in us. We become joint heirs with Christ in the work of God in the world.
And He does His work in us and through us in this place, filled with death and evil. He brings life and immortality where death and destruction had once reigned. That is the Good News, the Gospel.
The Arnold Journey 