![]() ![]() What exactly is this thing called Salvation. It answers the question as to how that rescue has taken place and who is ultimately responsible for it.īut, to me, that begs a question. Salvation, according to Paul, has to do with people being rescued from the fate that they would otherwise have incurred. Only through God’s grace, are we able to have the hope of salvation. We can’t be good enough smart enough, love enough, and follow Jesus enough to somehow have God in our debt. Salvation is a work of Jesus and a gift given to us. It is about his work, his life, his death, and his resurrection. The Apostle Paul in the first two verses is saying that the hope of salvation is Jesus. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” ![]() The text that we’ll be looking at this morning is Ephesians 2:8-10 which says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast. To look at the idea of the hope of Salvation we are going to look at a passage of Scripture that many use to talk about grace and the fact that we can’t “earn salvation” but we are going to include the very next verse, which is often missing when people talk about grace and salvation, and use this particular text. Once we do that we will, I believe, realize that Salvation is a more beautiful, more wonderful, and more hope filled reality, not only for the future but also for right now in the present. ![]() But if we are really honest, we realize that this is a biblical term, and that we need to unpack it from its cultural context (or at least the evangelical, fundamentalist context). Images of hellfire and brimstone, heavy handed evangelist yelling “Are you saved?”, and the images of the movie called Saved that came out a few years ago. I almost hesitate in using the word saved due to the almost negative connotation that it brings up in a lot of us. We will be spending time taking a good look at what is Salvation, what it isn’t, what we are saved from, and more importantly what we are saved for. So today we are talking about the Hope of Salvation. Not come down, scoop us off this doomed planet, and destroy it, as so many think. We talked about the hope of the second coming means that he will come and set the world right, and return it back to the way that it was truly meant to be. Last week we talked about the Hope of the Second Coming. And we are called to participate in that work as well. We then looked at the Hope of Heaven, and talked about the fact that heaven and earth overlap, and that Jesus is moving and working to make earth look more and more like heaven. That we are to be people of hope right now, right here, right in the present. Matt did a great job making us aware that the Kingdom of God isn’t just a not yet reality, but that it is a present reality as well. We have taken a look at the Hope for the world. Our theme this last 4 weeks have been Surprised by Hope. From the grief and pain to the joy and the hope. ![]() Today we continue our Lenten journey towards the cross, and then to the surprise of that first Easter morning. Would love to hear your thoughts, comments, insights, etc. Below is the text and the discussion questions from our 4th week of our Surprised by Hope series looking at the Hope of Salvation. ![]()
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