Salvation Available for All

August 1, 2021 Background Scripture: Romans 10:5 – 17 Lesson Passage: Romans 10:5 – 17 “God has made salvation available to every person.” That’s a statement that makes a lot of sense to a Christian. In fact, Christians should see this statement as a declaration of truth. But how would a non-Christian view this statement? If a non-Christian knows a person who professes to be a Christian, they will likely view this statement as “church talk” that has nothing to do with them. This is one of the major challenges of evangelism. Christians and non-Christians often understand religious statements totally different. Christians can sometimes say a lot of things that make sense to other Christians and yet make absolutely no sense to a non-Christian. We cannot evangelize the lost by having a Christian conversation. A lost person must sense the need for God on the inside before the word of God affects them. For this reason, it is important to understand the passage of scripture that precedes the Background Scripture if we are going to know how to apply this lesson to evangelism. Paul began by saying his prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. God must give people the thirst, or desire, that makes them receptive to His word. That’s the beginning of the process. Until that internal desire is there, then our Lesson Passage doesn’t matter to the lost. If we leave the lost out of the discussion of this lesson, then it will just be a discussion among Christians about our own salvation. We can discuss and revel in our own salvation while doing nothing to reach the lost for Christ. When we start with prayer for the lost, then this lesson reveals the possibilities of evangelism. A person must know they have a need for God to desire to be in the right relationship with Him. A person must know what is preventing them from knowing and experiencing God’s presence in their life. If we know that something in us keeps us from experiencing God, and there is nothing we can do to remove it, then we know the answer must be outside of us. Experiencing the presence of God in a personal relationship is what we call salvation. The desire to experience God makes us receptive to the way that God has provided. No one has to do anything new, but we must accept what has already been done. The answer is not hidden in heaven nor is it buried in a grave. Salvation is closer to us than we could have imagined. Jesus Christ has fulfilled everything that God requires of us for salvation. We were born separated from God by sin that is within us. Jesus was born without sin. Jesus chose to become sin and suffer for sin in our stead. This he accomplished by being nailed to a tree and dying a sinner’s death. God demonstrated His approval of what Jesus did by raising Jesus back to life on the third day. God extends salvation to all who believes what Jesus did and accepts it as being in their stead. So, why isn’t everybody saved already? First, everybody does not feel the need for salvation. That’s why evangelism must start with prayer. We pray that God places the desire for salvation in the hearts of the lost. Secondly, the persons who feel the need don’t know what Jesus has done for them. Somebody must share with the lost the good news of what Jesus has done for the lost. The only way a person can share the good news is that God must send them to do so. Pray and then spread the good news: Salvation is available to all. Robert C. Hudson July 17, 2021

Peace with God

July 25, 2021 Background Scripture: Romans 5:1 – 11 Lesson Passage: Romans 5:1 – 11 Peace. The absence of confusion. The absence of conflict. The absence of turmoil. The absence of differences that separate. We want peace of mind. We want to live and work in an environment of peace. We want to live as a nation in a state of peace with other nations. Let’s face it, peace, in all its dimensions, should be at the top of everyone’s agenda. Having peace is important to one’s quality of life. Of all the ways we can think about peace, there is one that must be prioritized above all others. We need peace with God. In fact, it can be said that it is impossible to achieve lasting peace in any other area without first having peace with God. On the other hand, if we could achieve lasting peace without having peace with God, what difference would it make? To know that we are at odds with God hangs over everything like a dark cloud. Unfortunately, some are so accustomed to darkness that a dark cloud goes unnoticed. However, the good news is that God extends to every person the opportunity to have peace with Him. Our sins separate us from God and creates enmity between us. God offers to take away our sin and to bring us into right relationship with Him. This offer is only extended to us through Jesus Christ. When we accept Jesus’ cruel death on the cross as being in our stead, then God considers us just, or in right standing with Him. Our faith in the finished works of Christ is the only means whereby we can have peace with God. No wonder Jesus is called the Prince of Peace. It is only through Jesus that peace with God is possible. Because of saving faith, we experience the grace of God in our lives. Grace is God’s unmerited favor shown towards us. God places His Holy Spirit in us as evidence of the peace we experience with Him. There was nothing we could do—or had to do to earn such favor from God. God made all this available to us while we were still sinners and living in opposition to His will. Yes, while mankind was yet living in sin and lingering in darkness, God was working out a plan to bring us into His light. This was the ultimate demonstration of the love God has for mankind. God created mankind to be a physical reflection of His spiritual image and likeness. When God looks at His physical creation, He expects to see a reflection of Himself in mankind. Sin distorts that image. Sin puts us at odds with God. Sin destines us for eternal damnation and separation from the presence of God. God interrupted our destiny by sending Jesus to reconcile mankind back to Him. When mankind was at its worst, God sent His best. Having been saved from the penalty of sin, God is now delivering us from the power of sin in our daily lives. All this points towards the inevitable promise that God will one day deliver us from the presence of sin. Through the death of Jesus on the cross, we have been justified, or delivered from the penalty of sin. Through the work of the Holy Spirit in us, we are being sanctified, or delivered from the power of sin in our daily lives. The final stage of God’s work through Christ is that we shall be glorified, i.e., delivered from the presence of sin. Justification, sanctification, and glorification all come to us because of saving faith in Jesus Christ that has given us peace with God. Robert C. Hudson June 12, 2021

Faith of Abraham

July 18, 2021 Background Scripture: Romans 4 Lesson Passage: Romans 4:1 – 12 Abraham is known as the father of the faithful. Abraham’s faith is spoken of because of the relationship God developed with him as a result of his faith. God promised Abraham some things that were humanly impossible and quite unlikely. At the time of the promise, Abraham was at least seventy-five years old, and his wife was ten years younger than him. Abraham and his wife had not been able to have children. God promised Abraham that he would father a child and as a result would have more descendants than he could count. Abraham believed what the Lord told him. God accounted Abraham’s belief in what He said as righteousness. Righteousness means to be in right standing with God—or to have the right relationship with God. Sin prevents us from having the right relationship with God. Sin is against God and all things holy. But God accepted Abraham’s faith in what He said as sufficient to deliver Abraham from his sin. Faith in the promises of God is the only method given in the bible whereby a person can be saved from their sin and brought into right relationship with God. Therefore, any person who believes in the promises of God for salvation is brought into right relationship with God. Such persons become the spiritual children of Abraham. The Lesson Passage notes that Abraham’s faith in God’s promise happened before God gave him the ritual of circumcision. Circumcision was given as a sign of the promises God made to Abraham. There are no rituals required as a predecessor for faith in God. This is the faith of Abraham that establishes the right relationship between a person and God. Once that relationship is in place, then we should go further and endeavor to live a life of faith as Abraham did. Indeed, Abraham’s faith did not stop at believing in the long range promises of God. Abraham submitted himself to do what God told him to do and led him to do. Abraham was willing to leave his extended family and move to a place where he was a foreigner. Abraham erected altars and openly proclaimed the name of God in the presence of strangers. Abraham did not blend in with the foreigners around him. He allowed himself to remain different and lived in the fear of God before them. This required a lot of faith on Abraham’s part. Believing what God said privately and living in a way that pleases God publicly are two very different things. They both require faith in God. Abraham demonstrated both. These are not two different faiths but rather a single-minded faith in God that is used in different scenarios. In other words, Abraham’s faith was not just a private expression of belief in the promises of God. Abraham’s life was a public demonstration of the faith he had in God. Christians are challenged today to demonstrate their faith in God through their daily living. If we are to have the faith of Abraham, then it must be more than a Sunday morning expression. Our faith should become our lifestyle and not just our statement of profession. The bible does more than record what Abraham believed. The bible also records many events in Abraham’s life when he was not at the altar proclaiming the name of God. It can be said that Abraham demonstrated a faith in action. Abraham was far from perfect, and we know this because the bible reveals it. That makes his faith in God and God’s response to it even more relevant for us today. We should challenge ourselves by asking “Do I have the faith of Abraham?” Robert C. Hudson June 12, 2021

Power of the Gospel

July 11, 2021 Background Scripture: Romans 1 Lesson Passage: Romans 1:8 – 17 Every person born into this world of man and woman is born in sin. It has been like that since the day Cain and Abel were born. Adam sinned before any human had been conceived and born. (Adam and Eve were not born but rather created by God.) Since Adam was a sinner, all his offspring that are conceived naturally through a man and a woman are conceived in sin. Sin is both the opposite of holiness and opposed to it. Put another way, not only is sin unholy, but sin causes the sinner to actively fight against the things of God. Therefore, God has judged sin and condemned sin and the sinner to eternal damnation. This damnation is described as separated from the presence of God forever and an existence of perpetual agony and pain. It is not God’s desire that any person should be condemned to such a fate. God offers mankind a way to be delivered from such a condemnation and to spend eternity in His divine presence. Since God is all powerful, why doesn’t He pronounce this as the outcome and abolish sin in the process? That would be a violation of the very premise by which God created man in the beginning. In the beginning, God said let Us make man in Our image and after Our likeness. One of the necessary characteristics of being in the “image and likeness” of God is that man must be a free moral agent. A free moral agent has the privilege and power to make personal decisions. Therefore, a free moral agent must have choices—hence the reason why the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was placed in the Garden of Eden as a bad choice. Adam, as a free moral agent, was told about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and warned of the consequences of eating its fruit. When Adam freely chose to eat from that tree, it was in opposition to God’s revealed will for him. That’s how sin came into this world, and now it infects all of us. Despite the presence of sin in us, we, like Adam, still retain some of the “image and likeness” of God in us. We are born in sin, and we are born as free moral agents—we have the power of personal choice. God is not going to violate mankind’s free moral agency. Instead, God uses our freedom of personal choice to give us a way to be delivered from sin. God uses a substitute to bear the penalty of sin in our stead. When God provided skins to cover Adam and Eve after sin entered the world, the life of the animal that provided its skin was the substitute for their sin. Yes, that animal paid for their sin with its own life. It was Adam and Eve’s personal decision to accept those skins from God. Here is the gospel: “God sent Jesus into the world to become the substitute for our sin. Jesus had to be born without sin. Therefore, he could not be born of man and woman. As a man, Jesus had to willingly accept being the sin substitute and bear the penalty of sin. Jesus became sin when he hung on Calvary’s cross. The penalty of sin was paid when Jesus died on Calvary’s cross. God demonstrated His approval by raising Jesus from the dead on the third day. Any person who freely accepts Jesus’ death as being in their stead, is immediately brought into right standing with God. All their sin is exchanged for Jesus’ death. Jesus became what we were, sin, so that we could become what he is, in right standing with God.” That is the simplicity of the gospel message. It demonstrates the power of God to save sinners eternally and judge their sin through a substitute. Robert C. Hudson June 12, 2021