We are too far away from God. The past verses of our main verse today have been talking about many drawbacks and Paul has clearly said that the Gentiles are far from God. It is indeed true to all who sinned against God for one sin can give a big wedge between God and man.
This verse is one of the most wonderful and gracious verses in the Bible. Here shows how God is willing to initiate and that He really initiates a relationship with us. With just one read, we can say that we are brought to Christ. However, if we read it carefully we can see that it is Jesus that has been brought near. It is still not our effort, it is still not on our accord, we still don’t have any contribution to our salvation because it is Christ that has been brought to us.
Through this, we can see that God really initiates and He really wants to save us. We don’t have any contribution on it because even the fact of going near to God or confessing our sins to Him was not our own accord but it is Him that gives us the desire to do that and it is Him that encourages us to repent. It is indeed only through grace and not through any of our works.
Before Christ, we were all dead to sin. We are dead and dead people cannot do anything. We cannot do anything to contribute to our salvation because we are dead. Therefore, the God who knows everything has already promised us a Savior since the first fall of man. God knows that we are going to be slaves and dead to sin and that we will really need a Savior.
The big barrier that has been separating us from God is the result of sin. God is a holy God and He doesn’t tolerate sins. Given that we are very sinful by nature and our flesh will always crave sin, we are deserving of His wrath. He has made us perfect and blameless but we have tarnished this with Adam’s disobedience that has been infecting us. We have inherited Adam’s sin and that made us sinful by nature and God knows this.
God was very firm into His word when He told Adam and Eve that if they eat from the tree He warned them not to, they will be dead and indeed we are dead. We die because of that one disobedience, we die because sin and death has been slaving us for so many years. However, God is a loving God and He truly loves His creation that is why He initiates. He initiates our salvation and He reaches out His hand to hold ours because He knows that we cannot do it, even by only reaching our hands to meet His— we are incapable.
He knows that our sinful nature will always fight back and will always captivate us. So, He brought Jesus near to us. Again, it is not us who brought ourselves near to Christ but it is still God’s work that He is near to us. He brought Jesus near to us so that we will be able to receive His blood that can purify us and cleanse us our sins. We are near to God and saved from our sins because He is gracious and merciful. If it is all from our works, we would’ve been rotting in hell already but praise God that our salvation is through the work of Jesus Christ and by His grace we can be saved through our faith in Him.
Therefore let us always remember that we are very sinful and that we don’t have any, not even at least one contribution in our salvation. Our salvation and our nearness to God is still because of God’s grace and mercy in our lives. Jesus is indeed brought near to us and that our salvation was paid through His blood that underwent persecutions and hardships because the wrath of God was poured out in Him.
May we always remember this and remember that we don’t have any contribution because it is only by His grace through faith in Jesus that is also granted to us by the Holy Spirit. May we always remember that as people who are already cleansed and renewed by Christ’s blood, we no longer live but it is Christ who lives in us. Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him for His grace and mercy, praise Him for dying on the cross for us, praise Him for initiating the restoration of our relationship with Him. Amen and amen.
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