A Forty-Day Study of Sin, Salvation, and Sanctification

There is nothing we can do to earn God’s love.

Let that sink in.

“Nothing” means nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada.

There is nothing we can do to earn God’s love because He has already shown us how much we are loved.

He died for us.

What more can God possibly do than that which He has already done?

Recognizing this allows us to get the first hurdle out of the way.

We can forget about all the things we have done, or want to do, or could do, or should do, or will do, or hope to do in order to gain God’s approval—God’s love. Striving to earn God’s love is what we call “religion”—people reaching for God.

Let’s avoid this. Historically it hasn’t been a winner.

During the time Jesus walked the earth, a group of highly religious people—passionate zealots probably far more religious than you and I will ever be—tried all of this. Jesus called them a family of snakes. He did this twice.

I don’t think that’s what we want.

I think what we genuinely desire is Christianity.

While religion is humankind reaching for God, Christianity is God reaching for humankind. And that makes all the difference on earth. And in heaven.

Religion focuses on how we can appease God—what we can do for God. Religion is trying to get God’s attention and earn God’s favor. Christianity focuses on God’s grace and what God has done for us.

Religion is tied up in behaviors. Christianity is wrapped around belonging.

Religion is a set of practices we are to perform. Christianity is a person and a relationship we are to enjoy.

Religion is being in bondage to the extremes of self-righteousness or that of overburdening guilt. Christianity is freedom.

Christianity is not religion. It is peace with God because of what God has done (Romans 5:1). It is adoption into God’s family because of what God has done (Romans 8:14). It is the assuredness that nothing, nothing whatsoever can ever separate us from God’s love because of what God has done (Romans 8:38–39).

Christianity is a life of trust and faith—one filled with such blessings as love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:23–24). It is life to the full (John 10:10). We are blessed with all of this, and much, much more because of what God has done.

But, by definition, Christianity involves, and indeed requires salvation. Since this is the case, a reasonable topic to address is how we go about obtaining salvation. Isn’t salvation us reaching for God? Isn’t that something we take part in—something we do to achieve peace with God?

No.

Salvation is not religion. Salvation is God reaching for humanity. And we will have much to say about this as our lessons continue.

We will begin our journey, though, talking about why we need salvation. This requires a discussion on sin and the human condition of sinfulness and of being spiritually dead. We will start by focusing on the first three chapters of the Bible. We will look at the four foundational principles God established for humankind and how the first man and woman (our great, great, great…great grandparents) quickly violated each of the four.

Sin—disobeying and turning away from God—led to four broken relationships. We will cover this in a brief lesson. We’ll then look at our sinful condition from what Paul teaches in the first three chapters of his letter to the Roman believers.

We will then enter the second portion of our journey: lessons on salvation. We start with a discussion on what saves us. We are saved by the blood of Christ. Salvation is not something we do—it involves the many things that God does. It is not associated with us reaching for God. It centers on how God has reached out to you and me and all that is involved in this divine activity.

We’ll talk about the work of the Father in our salvation—and this doesn’t include anything we do.

We’ll talk about the work of the Son in our salvation—and this doesn’t include anything we do.

And we will talk about the work of the Holy Spirit in our salvation—and this too doesn’t include anything we do.

All that is involved and required for salvation leaves us out of the picture—other than to receive an unearned and unmerited gift graciously given to us.

But there is far more to salvation than meets the eye. We’ll have lessons covering such topics as:

• Election—God’s sovereign choice for our salvation.
• Regeneration—The Holy Spirit bringing us from spiritual death to new life.
• Imputation—Our sins being given to Christ.
• Substitution—Christ being our substitute for taking on the punishment we deserve.
• Propitiation—Christ accepting this punishment as God judges sin, fulfilling the demands of His righteousness.
• Reconciliation—God’s actions in repairing the broken relationship between God and us.
• Imputation—Christ’s righteousness given to us.
• Justification—God’s determination and declaration that we are “not guilty.”
• Redemption—Another term for God’s actions in saving us—the purchase of our freedom.
• Positional Sanctification—Our position before God in the here and now and for all of eternity.
• Adoption—God bringing us into his family.
• Security—Our assuredness that we cannot lose our salvation and eternal relationship with God.
• Resurrection—Our future bodily resurrection.
• Glorification—The eternity that awaits us.

There is a lot to cover, but this is just part of our journey.

It is here that you might be saying, “Wait a minute . . . stop . . . what about faith?”

We will have an extensive lesson on faith as well—the longest lesson in this book. But perhaps this needs to be said upfront, right now, and clearly: Our faith does not save us. Faith cannot save us.

Period.

It is the blood of Christ that provides for our salvation.

Oh yes, faith is essential—and it evidences our salvation. But faith cannot save. That’s true for you. That’s true for me. That’s even true for Moses and Abraham. It is the blood of Christ that saves. We’ll talk about this throughout these lessons.

We will then move to the third and final section of this book as we discuss sanctification: what we are saved for. Sanctification is where we now take part in the works of God. It is the process where God does His work through us due to the presence of the Holy Spirit within us.

This section begins with a discussion on the Holy Spirit—perhaps the most neglected Personage of the Trinity. We will also make sure we understand what is meant by the “works” associated with our sanctification. And lastly, we will discuss both the gifts of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit.

Learning about sin, salvation, and sanctification is not of value, though, if you are spiritually dead. None of this will make sense to you. It will all be foolishness. There will be a lesson that looks into this as well.

I began by saying there is nothing one can do to earn God’s love. But many, many people try to do this, and they work at this in many, many different ways.

That’s religion.

Religion versus Christianity.

We need to separate the two.

That’s what we’ll talk about next.