Salvation is Devotion to Christ

It is good now and then to relook and reflect on the meaning of salvation.

Past postings include

• Reconciliation- A Better Term for Salvation
• Salvation Re-visited - Relational View

Last Sunday, Pastor preached such a topic. My reflection is to look at it as "devotion" to Christ as Mary towards to Jesus (Luke 10:42). Jesus defining purpose of eternal life as knowing God the Father (John 17:3) and a warning by Paul in 2 Cor 11:3 that devil wants to prevent us from such a pure devotion to Christ.

The details are in the mind-map:

Life & Death

Rev Samuel Sia preached at my church Mandarin Service yesterday morning. I found his message very useful in our witness and sharing of the Gospel. Below is my reflections and summary. i.e. include my learning of his message and my own additions even though many ideas are from his message.

Jesus Breaks the Inevitable March from Birth to Death to Give us Zoe Eternal Life
When man are born into this world, he begins his match to death. The only way to reverse or break free from this covenant of death (Isa 28:15) is Jesus. Accepting Jesus not only reverse this sequence, bring us out of death into the life, He gives us a better life of Zoe, Godly eternal life (Isa 28:18).

I Don't Want to Receive Christ because I want to Join My Passed Away Spouse in Hell
While sharing the Gospel with older people, we came across, often, the refusal to accept Jesus because they wanted not to be separated from their passed away spouse in hell. Rev Sia offerred two key points:

a. They may not be there! Rev Sia shared two stories about the Fathers had already received Christ in earlier times but did not tell their spouse or children nor did they go to church.
b. Those in Hell wish that you don't come to join them. Luke 16:28

I wish to add a third point - seeing from the view of your children. My friend shared with me how his mother accepted Christ after years of refusal using the reason that she did not want to be separated from her husband. He told her to think of it from her children, his point of view. How much pains they will have to carry with them to see their beloved mother in hell. She was convinced and receive Jesus as saviour.

For other detials, please read the mindmap below:

Grace Based Doctrines

It is good to reflect on what we have learned after some years. My growth in Christ goes through several stages. Firstly, I got to know Jesus as my personal savior and then I tried to please Him by trying to be a good Christian and following the Bible as much as I could. Then I discovered the spiritual gift of tongues and experienced the miracles working God of the Bible. After this I discovered that it was God within me, Christ in Me, that empowered me to be the Christian that Jesus wanted me to be. It used to be 'have-do-be'. Now it is 'Be-Do-Have' (see Be-Do-Have Repeat and Grow). I started this blog showing the great love and empowerment of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not just save us but gave us His Zoe life so that we are empowered to live out  His glory. It helped me through my desert time of betrayals, disappointments, and attacks. It enables us to come through all the more confidence in His love and empowerment for us. This is now commonly known as the grace-based doctrine.

What are then the essential beliefs of the Grace Based Doctrines?
Below is the mind map showing the key beliefs.
I wish to quote John Piper's "God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him."
Know for yourself that God is delighted in you - just as you are. But He loves you too much to leave you in your present state. He will bring you to greater heights to show forth His glory through you.

What about work?
It is about obedience to the general and unique calling of our lives. Our work of obedience is not for gaining salvation for we have already been saved, but for extending God's Kingdom and God's glory from and through us from within. Our obedience brings the blessings that God has appropriated for us and shows forth His glory to others so that others may be drawn toward him. (updated on 19 Aug 2009)

KP#20 Focus & Priority - Building Strengths more than Overcoming Weaknesses

Parables of "The Hidden Treasures" and "The Pearl of Great Price"
Everyone has limited time and limited resources. The key to effectiveness and productivity is knowing what are the important ones and then concentrating effort and time on doing them. Life is much simplified, stressed free when we identify the things of utmost of values. Jesus taught this principle of "finding the treasure and giving all to get it" in the parables of "The Hidden Treasures Mat 13:44" and "The Pearl of Great Price Mat 13:45-46". It is so important that Jesus uses two illustrations. This principle is put into practice by Paul in Php 3:8 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.

1st Find the Treasure
What is the Treasure? What are things that are of importance and value? This is found in our mission statement for the corporation and in our calling for our personal life. The mission gives us the purpose and meaning of existent. We need to spend time to search for it and to craft it. It is the most important thing to do. Do it first. Find the mission.

2nd Give All to Get It
The follow on step is to spend all the effort and time to realize the found mission. To Paul, it is Jesus Christ. He spent his all to get to know Christ in an intimate way and to grow up to be like Him. All others are considered less valueable than that. Knowing our mission and meaning of life, an individual or in a corporation, enables us to work out a priority list. We should use the things of lower value to get the things of higher value.

Core & Context - Work on Building Up Strength more than Overcoming Weaknesses
This concept is well illustrated by Geoffrey Moore in his books when he speak of core and context. He suggested we should spend time in enhancing and building the core of differentiation from the markets and outsourcing our context. In the book "7 Practices of Effective Ministry", Andy Stanley et al use the Baseball game as illustration - a pitcher (his mission) is to spend effort in improving his pitching rather than spend effort in improving his batting. For me, we need to spend effort in improving our weakness to an acceptable level and spend more efforts in improving our strengths. This pre-supposes that we have found a role than utilizes our strengths.

Not all activities are of equal important. Activities that help you move in the direction of your mission and vision are needful. The others are just distortion. Find your treasure first and spend all to get it.

Next: Watch and Ride the Trend

Advanced Doctrine - Covenant of Grace

In the posting Laying of Hands, we covered the 6 basic doctrines. The 6 doctrines only take 2 verses to cover. What is the advanced doctrine that Paul wanted to cover and spend the entire book of 13 chapters of Hebrew to do it? (There are dispute about who the author of Hebrew was. Most believe it was Paul.)

I think it is the "Doctrine of Grace" or "The New Covenant of Grace". The 6 basic doctrines are actually covered in the Old Testament. The new, more excellence Covenant, the once for all and eternal, the desires and aims of the OT, is accomplished and brought about, by Jesus Christ, the true Great High Priest.

We need to spend lot more time understanding and living out this new covenant of grace. Paul went through great extent explaining the why and how for our benefits that we may focus on Christ, empowered by Christ, put our faith in Christ, run and complete the race before us, following our leaders, encouraging and loving one another, doing God glorifying works to testify the goodness and love of God, and enter into the rest and rewards that Christ has gone before us to obtain for us.

The details are in the mind map Growing Up in Grace.

A comparison of the old and new is shown below:

	Old	New
mediator	High Priest	Christ
with	Animal Blood	His Blood
frequency	Every Year	Once for all
effect	cannot perfect the conscience Heb 9:9	purify our conscience Heb 9:14
result	dead work	God glorifying work
justification	obey the Laws	By faith in Christ's work
purpose	payment for sins	payment + new life
power	no power	Grace Empowerment CIU
effort	manual - follow the laws	Laws within Heart & Mind

Be-Do-Have Repeat and Grow

In "Be-Do-Have" of Grace Based Doctrine I wrote about the grace-based doctrine of be-do-have and the conventional performance-based doctrine of have-do-be.

In this post, I want to bring up the reinforcing effect of doing and have-ing on the be. By doing so, we get to understand our identity better. Having strengthens our faith and gives us confidence in our 'be-ing" that was there originally. This is growth. Big accomplishments are achieved through repeated small steps.

If we do and we don't have the success of "have" then we need to check on the method and process of our do. 

• Did we have the right motive?
• Did we hear God correctly?
• Did we have the right methods,?
• And very often, did we give time for the effects to be seen.
  The seeds that germinate inside the earth, growing its roots are not seen until the stem and leaves sprout out of the earth. Being persistent and patient is a quality of maturity, especially towards people. On the other hand, we must be alert and flexible to adopt a new strategy if the situation has changed. Life has such interesting variations that make for real joy and challenge in living.

Reconciliation- A Better Term for Salvation

In an earlier posting, Salvation Re-visited - Relational View we said that salvation is actually about bring people back to God. A shorter term for the rebuilding of relationship between two parties is 'Reconciliation'.

Death is not cessation of life but disconnection from God. Man rejection of God resulted in amity between God and man. It takes Jesus' substitutional death on cross to remove this amity. However, while Jesus makes possible the way back to God, it is still up to man to choose to be reconciled to God. It is a free will decision.

Giving & Receiving in Christmas

Christmas is about the greatest gift of God, His Son, Jesus Christ, to man.
It is the greatest from God's viewpoint - His only Son given to die and to pay for man's sin.
It is the greatest from man's viewpoint - Man can now live forever with God.

We catch the spirit of the loving God - giving of Himself.
We say the spirit of Christmas is about giving.

However, now that God, in His love, has given us the best and greatest gift, it is more important for us to receive His gift of love.

A gift of love not received is a great pain to the giver. The greater the love and the gift, the greater the pain that rejection causes. Don't reject this love from God. Receive His gift of Jesus Christ.

I prayed that in this Christmas, many will truly receive the Gift of Jesus Christ from God and be born anew into a new joyful relationship with God the Father. The very wish of God the Father is for us to receive His Son, the Gift.

Let us learn to receive the gifts of love from those who dearly love us this Christmas.
Christmas is more than just giving but also properly receiving the gifts of love, especially, the receiving the greatest Gift of all from God our heavenly Father.