Tag: gospel

A love relationship with God?

God’s purpose and desire in creating people in his likeness is that we experience a harmonious relationship with him; this is the real purpose of life, ignored or disregarded by so many.

And this harmonious relationship should be one of love! God is love, and he made persons in his likeness that he could love and that could love him in return. But loving God seems bizarre: so many people deny his existence, avoid him, or even hate him. But since loving God is our raison d’être, those who miss out on that harmonious relationship end up truly frustrated. Indeed, those who spurn God’s loving presence wander aimless, lost, and confused – and their bad relationship with God is the source of their inner distress.

The Bible says that God loved us first: he is the one who desires a good relationship with us. Human sinners don’t want God to get close and personal, for God is holy, and we feel his disapproval. Yet he is kind to the unworthy creatures that we are and comes looking for us. “God so loved the world [therefore, you] that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish [in an aimless existence here and hell hereafter] but have eternal life”. He loves us so much he sent his Son to save us – at the cost of his horrendous suffering on the Cross; and he warmly invites sinners to be reconciled to him. When we are converted and start to follow Jesus, doing what he taught us, then God loves us in a further way; for Jesus said, “He who loves me will be loved of my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (John 14.23). God is glad to find hearts that open to his love and respond in loving obedience to him. He is pleased to find people in tune with his heart and purposes.

Jesus radically laid down the first of all God’s commandments: to “love the Lord your God with all you heart and… soul and… mind and… strength” (Mark 12.30). This is his main command, because he loves us and wants us to love him in return. In fact, “we love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4.19). He wins our love by granting us salvation by grace – undeserved love; our gratitude for being saved is the beginning of our love for God.

We are therefore called, by our conversion, to develop a love relationship with God, responding to his great love for us. To love God is to seek to please him. We find ways to show him we love him: we can cultivate closeness and intimacy with him in prayer, we can submit to his perfect will for our lives, we can depend on him for help, unite our hearts with his and seek to fulfil his purposes for our lives. It’s a whole new relationship to cultivate, with a loving Saviour who is ever close to us.

Then as we learn to love Jesus, we become more like him. Indeed, we learn to love our neighbour as well, showing others something of the love that has touched our hearts. Furthermore, Jesus even calls us to love those of our neighbours who we consider our enemies; loving them, says Jesus, will show them how God loves; for he loved us when we were either indifferent to him or rebellious against his will, living in sin. “As I have loved you,” said Jesus, “you are to love one another” (John 13.34).

Clive Every-Clayton

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What about our failures?

There is one further aspect to the Christian’s struggle with ongoing sin in his or her life that I need to deal with. It is the universal experience of believers, albeit born again justified and children of God, that at times they still sin. Indeed, the new Christian may well feel more conscious of his moral imperfection after his conversion, whereas his sins didn’t bother him before. The new believer may be distraught when he sees that despite his conversion, he still falls into sin sometimes. (I refer principally to what we may consider lesser sins such as selfishness, ill temper, untruth, pride, jealousy, and covetousness – though this problem would also arise with worse sins). What does a good Christian do when he is conscious of having sinned? Might our sins annul our justification?

Here again, the Bible has the answer and it is good to read the first letter of John chapter 1 verse 8 to chapter 2 verse 2. This passage shows that no Christian is perfectly without sin. So we all have to deal with our failures as Christians. The passage tells us what to do, and gives a wonderful promise: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1.9).

To confess our sin means to acknowledge the wrong we have done and to tell God we are sorry. We need not confess our sins to any person, unless we have sinned against someone and we feel we should apologise for what we did. But as we confess our sin to God, we recommit to living as best we can without sinning.

God’s promise is that as we confess our sin, “he is faithful and just and will forgive our sin”. He is faithful to his fatherly promises to be gracious to his children; we can count on him to wipe them all away and never to come back at us to reproach us about them. When he forgives, he forgets. More: the promise says he will “cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. Christ’s blood was spilt so that we might be cleansed from our sins, and God’s faithfulness renews his fatherly forgiveness whenever we confess.

Technically, there is a difference between God’s fatherly forgiveness of his saved children and the full legal forgiveness granted as supreme judge, when he justifies the sinner when he believes, freeing him of all condemnation. God’s legal forgiveness is forever given. God’s fatherly forgiveness is ongoing: as we repent and confess sins committed in our Christian walk, he forgives them and cleanses them away. By this fatherly forgiveness, he renews his love towards us, his erring children, and as we return from our devious ways, submitting afresh to him in repentance, our fellowship with God is renewed.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus tacitly recognised the imperfection of his disciples, when he taught them to pray, “Forgive us our sins as we also forgive those who sin against us”. In our confession, we ask and receive by faith the forgiveness our Father promised. But we are reminded in this prayer that we must show to others the like kindness that God has shown in forgiving us. This is a kind of spiritual law: the one who is forgiven must forgive. Indeed, refusal of forgiveness, according to Jesus, is a serious sin. We are to forgive others because we have been forgiven. Harmony is restored in our relationship both with God and with others as we confess our sins and forgive others. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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Already saved? So why not sin?

The believer may count on the promises of the saviour, that he is saved, forgiven, and has eternal life: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5.24). The believer who is justified by faith in Christ is accepted by God as righteous and needs fear no final condemnation in God’s ultimate judgment. 

So one might wonder: why not therefore sin as much as I want, since I am justified and accepted at God’s final judgment? This question has its full answer in the teaching of the Bible. 

First, as I wrote in the previous post, the justification of the one who repents and believes in Jesus remains intact. God has promised it and we can count on him. Jesus in the verse already quoted promised “he will not come into judgment”: the ultimate salvation of the true convert is assured.

Two factors in our experience confirm this truth for us: first, at conversion, we repented and made a commitment not to sin any more. We obviously cannot stretch out our right hand to receive God’s forgiveness while our left hand continues committing all kinds of sin. We are saved from sin – not only from its punishment, but also from its grip on us. We dedicate ourselves therefore, as sinners forgiven by grace, not to betray God’s kindness. Rather, motivated by gratitude for our salvation, we will honour our commitment to follow Jesus as our master and Lord by doing his will, overcoming temptation and refraining from sin.

The second factor is vital in this: no-one is justified by faith who is not also, at the same time, born again by the Holy Spirit. They are both operations of the same conversion experience. And being “born of the Spirit” is a life-changing dynamic, as the Holy Spirit comes to make his dwelling in our hearts, and there proceeds to the work of purifying us. He gives new aspirations for a holy life, new love for God and a desire to please him. The Holy Spirit communicates the presence of Christ within us: the result is that we no longer desire to sin, but rather to obey and please our saviour. This is, in fact, the deep reason why the true believer does not continue in sin. The believer who experiences this has reassuring proof that the Lord Jesus has indeed saved him.

So God justifies you by granting you full legal forgiveness and a status of being accepted as righteous before God; he can do that because he also gives you the Holy Spirit to energise you in the way of holiness with new desires and new power to conquer sin. You have to commit to continual repentance, of course, taking a stand against all sin in your life. You will understand progressively what that entails, but conversion involves the decision in principle not to displease your Saviour. He has called you to be his disciple, he has called you to holiness, and your growth in Christian living involves further repentance of whatever sinful deed the Holy Spirit reproves you of.

Having said that, we are not totally delivered from sin in this life; there will always be a struggle between the old sinful pre-Christian nature, the “flesh”, and the nature renewed by the Spirit: hence the call and the promise, “Walk according to the Spirit and you will not fulfil the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5.16).

Clive Every-Clayton

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What does salvation mean?

The Bible makes clear that everyone needs salvation, and it is wonderful to know that “By grace you have been saved, through faith” as the apostle Paul writes to believers in Ephesians 2.8. The Bible word “salvation” summarises a number of spiritual blessings that every believer receives from the moment he is touched by God’s saving grace. 

Notice three things of importance in that quote from Ephesians. First, you “have been saved”; salvation has happened to you if you have repented and believed in Christ. It is no longer something you have to seek after or try to obtain. The verb is in the past tense: you have been saved, or as Jesus put it, you have “passed from death to life” (John 5.24). Secondly – the reason for that is that God has blessed you “by grace”. That means without you having to deserve it. God is so kind, he grants salvation freely by pure grace to those who could never deserve or merit it. Paul adds in Ephesians 2.9, “it is not because of works, lest anyone should boast”. So, thirdly, salvation is by faith, the faith that receives Christ as Saviour and Lord. Saving faith is not merely believing some facts; it is entrusting your life and your eternity into the hands of the Lord Jesus, beginning a new life in relationship with him. It is called “saving faith” because by that commitment or conversion a sinner is saved from sin and its consequences.

What does salvation mean, then? It means the believer, counting on Jesus’ promise, may know that he has become a child of God, that he has eternal life; he is saved from being eternally lost at the judgment. He is now reconciled to God, in good relationship with God. Salvation sums up all that and more: specifically the forgiveness of our sins is an important part of salvation.

When we are saved we receive the full forgiveness of all our sins. God wipes them all away. Furthermore, the Lord declares the believer in Christ to be acceptable to him in the day of final judgment. We are saved from the eternal negative consequences of our sins – we are free from condemnation. We have been saved from hell. 

The technical word for this is “justification”: “Since we have been justified by faith,” Paul writes in Romans 5.1, “we have peace with God”. We do not have to fear final rejection at the judgment day; we are accepted in Christ. We live our Christian lives therefore not in order to be saved from that judgment, but because, by God’s grace, we are already assured by his word that we are saved, justified, accepted as righteous, and free from ultimate divine condemnation. This is no small blessing!

Justification abolishes our guilt before God. Forgiveness clears our conscience from all that might accuse us. It’s all gone; our salvation is assured, so Paul uses the past tense when he writes to his colleague, “God saved us and called us to a holy calling” (2 Timothy 1.9). And note, he calls us to a holy life.

You might be thinking, “If my final salvation is assured, I could commit any sins I want, because I’m already justified”. Interestingly, Paul saw that response coming: “Shall we continue in sin, so that grace may abound?” His answer is categorical: “By no means!” (Romans 6.1, 2). For as God saves, forgives, and justifies us, he also calls us to holiness, giving us the Holy Spirit to transform us into saints! My next post will explain that more fully.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Clarifying your identity

Many young people these days are confused about their identity. Some believe that by stating their chosen preferred identity, the problem is resolved – at last they know who they are. This is not the best way to go about this deeply personal and potentially complex issue.
The fact of deciding to follow Jesus brings the question of identity into a whole new perspective. The only one who ultimately knows us totally and can define who we are is our Maker and Saviour. By creation he has made us in his image, either male or female; but due to the entry of sin into human existence, an essential element of our identity is that we are fallen: “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1.8).

So there is something glorious in our human constitution – “in the likeness of God!” Yet there is something humbling too: we are sinners in need of redemption. As I shall explain further on, once you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are redeemed: your status is radically altered. You have a new identity as “a sinner saved by grace”. But much more is involved in your new identity.

Your becoming a child of God is an important element in your new identity as a Christian believer. As a result you have become a brother or a sister of all the others who by trusting Jesus have become children of the same heavenly Father as you. You are a member of God’s family, which is also called the church. (The church, in its biblical meaning, is the company of born-again believers in Jesus). So as you meet up to worship with others who know the same saviour as you do, you find the family atmosphere of brothers and sisters in Christ.

A surprising word used in the New Testament to describe the believers is “saints”. This is not to be confused with the Middle Ages’ idea of super-good Christians with halos round their heads. Rather, when the apostles wrote their letters to quite ordinary believers, they greeted them as saints. It was a perfectly normal way of speaking about the believers in the local churches: Paul writes his letter to “the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 1.1; see also 2 Corinthians 1.1, 1 Corinthians 1.1.) In Romans 1.7 they are “called [to be] saints”, that is, committed to a life of goodness, truthfulness, and obedience to God. Saintliness is in fact living a good down-to-earth Christian life, doing what Jesus wants his followers to do; and we receive help from the Holy Spirit to live as saints in the modern world.

So we are brothers and sisters, saints, beloved children of God, forgiven sinners, members of the family of God… the list goes on. All this because we have become believers: believers in Jesus who gave his life that we might be saved; and believers in God our Father who has “adopted” us (that concept is in the Bible too) as his dear children. This new identity that you received upon believing in Jesus, in many ways boosts your self-image; but it should do so in a way that keeps you humble, for all these blessings were granted out of God’s loving heart by grace. It was he who he drew you to himself. We do not deserve such kindness from Him, but he acts towards us not according to what we deserve, but out of his grace, which means his undeserved favour. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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Are you a child of God?

Some people like to think that everyone is a child of God, but John 1.12, as we saw last time, makes clear that believers become children of God by receiving Christ by faith as Lord and Saviour. This assumes they were not children of God before. 

Writing to believers therefore, the apostle John says: “Now we are the sons [and daughters] of God” (1 John 3.1-2). Christian conversion changes our standing before God; henceforth we are his children and he is our Father. A new relationship is established which will not be annulled. And a radical change has come over us. 

Formerly we were among the “sons of disobedience… by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2.2-3). But now, you “are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3.26). The apostle calls believers, “the sons of light” and exhorts us to “walk as children of light – in all that is good and right and true” (Ephesians 5.8-9). In the context (which is worth checking out – verses 3 to 11) this means giving up all sin and impurity, and walking in the light, in holiness and truth. So being a child of God has moral implications: we are to resemble our heavenly Father in his goodness, purity, and holiness – bearing the family likeness.

But we also have entered a new relationship with God, as a child beloved of its father. Either you had a good father, in which case you have a good idea of how God is now your Father; if you had a not so good father – even an absentee father – you may learn from God’s self-revelation in the Bible what it means for you to have God as your good Father now. First, it means he loves you unconditionally. You may mess up at times, drift away, grow cold spiritually; God remains constant in his love for you. His love means he always wants the very best for you. You can trust him absolutely; he is incapable of ill will towards his children. 

And you can talk to him at all times. It’s good to set time aside to pray to him, share with him your situation, your worries, projects and desires, seeking his guidance and help. He is always there to listen with attention, eager to lead you in the right way. So as you read his Word, look out for those passages which tell you how best to live and to please him.

Whatever you may have to face, you can count on his presence to support you. Though at times he may lovingly reproach you for your waywardness and failures, the Bible is categorical: “God is for us” (Romans 8.31). He is never far away. He has promised, “I will never leave you nor forsake you”, so we may boldly say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13.5-6).

Your heavenly Father is your supreme ally in living a good life in a difficult world. You can talk to him about anything and everything. He talks to you as you read the Bible, speaking words of truth, guidance, and encouragement that you need to hear.

He also gives good gifts to his children, so feel free to ask him for what you need in order to live a life that pleases him. You nourish this relationship by time consciously spent in communion with him. He will help you in various ways as he watches over you every moment to do you good.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Being “born again”?

“Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of heaven”, is Jesus’ categorical teaching. He insisted, “You must be born again” (John 3.3, 7). God operates this new spiritual birth, granting new life to people who turn in faith and repentance to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the indispensable doorway into the kingdom of God; and it happened to you if you believed.

Another verse in John’s Gospel (1.12-13) makes this clear: “To all who did receive [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born … of God”. To be born of God (not by human descent) makes you a child of God.

How is a person born again, born of God? What does this verse say? By “receiving the Lord Jesus and believing in his name”. Have you trusted in Jesus for your salvation? By that faith you were born again.

The apostle Peter picks up this idea in his first letter as he writes to encourage believers: “Blessed be God! … According to his great mercy he has caused us to be born again” (1 Peter 1.3). He encourages his readers further on in verse 23: “you have been born again… through the living and abiding word of God”. This verse fleshes out the image of being spiritually like a new-born baby, born however not by a human process, but “born of the Spirit” (John 3.8) through the “seed” of the word of God.

The concept of being “born again” means that as the Gospel is received by faith, so the Holy Spirit of God communicates new life to the believer.

When this happens to you, what are the consequences? There are at least two: a new life has begun for you; you have become a child of God.

Let’s consider the first of these. When a baby is born he or she receives physical, human life. When you as a believer are born again, you receive life of a different kind: it is spiritual life, called “eternal life” and also “abundant life” (John 10.10). It adds an extra dimension to the life that you lived up till now. As physical life starts out very small, so new life in Christ has humble beginnings. Some babies are born screaming, while others are calm. Even so, some new believers are so overwhelmed by their experience of God’s saving power that they are instantly transformed by God’s saving love. Others, also born again by faith in Christ, experience God’s presence more quietly, almost imperceptibly.

But as the new-born baby slowly grows, so the new-born-again believer is called upon to grow. Peter continues this theme: “Like new-born infants, [you should] long for the pure spiritual milk [the milk of God’s word], that by it you may grow up into salvation” (1 Peter 2.2). We will look again at the whole aspect of spiritual growth, but here, the key element that Peter underlines is God’s Word, the Bible. It was the seed of God’s Gospel that fell into the prepared ground of your heart and began to bring forth fruit in a new life; that life is nourished by reading, studying, and meditating on further truths revealed in God’s Word.

So the Holy Spirit communicates a fresh upsurge of holy life in newly born-again Christians, promoting spiritual growth as they read the Bible and apply it in their particular circumstances. 

The Christian life is not therefore just acquiring new religious practices: it is the uprising of new life that needs to be nourished and encouraged.

Clive Every-Clayton

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What is repentance?

In upcoming posts I shall show how God responds to the believer – all the blessings he showered upon you when you believed; but before that, there’s one more aspect to what’s involved in opening your heart to Christ in faith: you also make a decision to repent. This decision may or may not have been accentuated in your thinking, but it is part of the Christian commitment of faith and conversion as announced by the first apostles: “Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3.19).

Coming to Christ involves and leads to a profound change of life. We come to him for forgiveness because we are sinners. We will consider later what that forgiveness is, as it is important to understand it. But it is obviously illogical to expect to receive forgiveness of our sins while we continue to sin as much as we want! We must play fair! “Sin no more” was Jesus’ way of putting it (John 5.14, 8.11). 

So as believers ask Christ to save and forgive them, they also commit to repenting, which means turning away from sin, to follow Jesus and obey his teaching.

It is good, wise, and proper that you should tell the Lord in prayer that this is indeed your decision; you will need (and obtain) his help to overcome the pull of sin that we all feel.

Repentance is involved therefore in your decision to follow Jesus. It means taking a stand against all evil in your life. It may well take time for you to understand that you are habitually falling into sins of thought and desire, but the amazing and wonderful thing about receiving Christ in your heart is that his Spirit begins to pin-point those areas, habits, sinful reactions, and deeds that you are used to doing without your conscience complaining. But the new presence of Jesus within you alerts you when you do things that displease him. This means that new converts, to their surprise find all of a sudden that they are not as good as they thought they were. This can be disconcerting, but don’t worry – it’s quite normal. It is how God begins (and will continue) to clean up your life.

So initial repentance at conversion must be followed by regular self-checking and confessing to God and repenting before him of any sin you may become conscious of having committed. The more conscientious and honest you are in your heart before God, the better your life as a Christian will proceed. I can scarcely emphasise that enough!

You don’t have to confess all the sins of your past life, because conversion wipes them all away: they are “blotted out” (Acts 3.19). But it is helpful to realise that you are called now to a new life.

“Sin no more” is, of course, an absolute high standard, and no Christian reaches it perfectly in this life. The important thing is that our heart’s commitment is henceforth not to sin, but rather to live a life that Jesus would approve of. And that’s a whole life-long programme!

We do, however, benefit from God’s gracious help. He gives us the Holy Spirit when we receive Christ by faith. Jesus comes to indwell us by his Spirit. The Holy Spirit, the third member of the divine Trinity, is the Spirit of Christ and it is thanks to his ministry in us that we are changed to become more like Jesus.

So, welcome to your new life, learning to follow Jesus and “walking according to the Spirit” (Galatians 5.16).

Clive Every-Clayton

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How to believe in Christ?

Whatever may have been your previous acquaintanceship with the person of Jesus, you have come, as it were, to hear his call, “Come, follow me”. Like those in the Gospels, you arose and followed him. It was a personal decision; you may not have understood too much about what it all involved, but you decided to open your heart and you asked Jesus to be your Saviour.

When out for climbing in some great mountains, it is indispensable to procure the services of a guide: the situation may prove perilous ahead. As you journey through life you may now have the services of Jesus, the only reliable Guide to human living at its best. You may trust him to lead you in the right path. There is no better Spiritual Master.

Jesus made numerous promises to those who would believe in him. That’s not simply to believe he existed, nor even to believe he was the Son of God, though these facts about him are foundational. Rather he was referring to a personal commitment between the believer and himself.

When I came to believe in Christ, the evangelist compared what I was about to do to the way a young couple get together. He said that the guy likes the girl and wants to get to know her over time, learning to love her, and desiring to enter a long-lasting relationship. “But,” he said to me, “the two are not married until they stand before the minister who asks them “Do you want to have this woman (or man) to be your lawfully wedded spouse?” In the same way, he said, Jesus says to you, “Do you want me to be your personal Lord and Saviour?” Then he asked me, “What do you want to say to him?” I acquiesced: I wanted to believe. Then he added, “Whenever anyone asks Jesus, ‘Do you want to accept this sinner as your disciple?’ He never says no!”

Maybe like me, you prayed that the Lord would “come into your heart” and save you. After I left the evangelist, I went for a walk, thinking that I had made an important decision that day. It was Easter Sunday afternoon, and I felt that as one “dead in trespasses and sins” I had now become alive in and with the risen Christ (Ephesians 2.5). 

So to “believe” in Jesus has that kind of meaning. He promised “eternal life” to those who believe in him (see John 3.16, 5.24, 6.47, 11.26). Eternal life is the gift of God; he gives it as we believe and receive Christ as Saviour and Lord, committing ourselves to him, to follow and obey as our new friend and Master. 

If I asked you, “Have you believed in Jesus like that? Have you received him as your Lord and Saviour?” – how would you reply? It helps our faith when we tell someone else that we have decided to follow Jesus. This is sometimes called “confessing Christ” and it allows you to exteriorise before a friend the decision that you have taken in your heart.

If you’re not sure if you’ve actually taken that step, there’s no harm in turning in prayer, just by yourself, and saying, “Lord Jesus, thank you for coming into the world to seek and save the lost like me; I open the door of my heart and receive you as my Lord and Saviour. Help me from now on to grow in my faith and to live as a Christian. Amen”

Jesus will gladly welcome you as his follower. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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What is this new Life in Christ?

The Bible says we are to welcome those who are not yet strong in the faith, and as a mature believer I would welcome you if you are starting out as a Jesus-follower. New believers require help in reorienting their lives, both to understand what it’s all about, and to discover the steps towards spiritual growth. 

A new believer, returning into her habitual milieu, was asked after a while, “What’s happened to you?” She didn’t need to say she had turned to Jesus, but it became evident to her friends by a certain joy and peace that now characterised her life. But how would she – or you – answer that question: what’s happened to you? 

Well, the first thing that I trust has happened to you is that You have heard the good news of Jesus.

Whether you heard it on the internet, in a local meeting, or read it in a book, you have come to understand that “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1.15). This is the essence of the Good News (which is what the word “Gospel” means). It is good news because we are all to some extent sinners and therefore we all need to be “saved”.

When Jesus’ mother Mary was still a virgin, Jesus’ arrival by a miraculous birth was announced to Mary by an angel. Joseph, Mary’s fiancé, was stunned and confused by the news, until he too had an angelic visitation.  An angel appeared to him in a dream, explaining that it was God’s miraculous work that had made Mary pregnant: “she will give birth to a son,” said the angel of God, “and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1.20-21).

Jesus came, therefore, to save people from their sins. When you heard this message, you began to understand  that in God’s sight you were in the category of “sinner”. Probably this was quite a humbling experience – no-one likes to be called a sinner; but the Bible is clear: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3.23). None of us is perfect as we should be; we all have a bad conscience and know we have done wrong. 

Not only that, but you were made to realise that you were in a serious predicament before a holy and just God. You needed his forgiveness. Then you heard the Good News, the essence of what the apostles preached: “Christ died for our sins… and was raised from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). Though our sins deserved God’s just punishment, Jesus stood in for us and bore that penalty by dying “for our sins” on the cross. This is the message that Jesus wants diffused throughout the world: “preach the Good News to all creation”, he said, adding, “Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved” (Mark 16.15-16).

As you heard this message, you were encouraged to turn to the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. You opened your heart to him in prayer and faith, calling on him to save you. You put your trust in Jesus and he welcomed you as one of his followers, his “disciples”; this essentially means a learner, an apprentice in the art of good living. Your new life had begun, developing into a process of spiritual growth.

At Jesus’ school there is a lot to learn: spiritual growth, like physical growth, takes time; the important thing for you today is to say to yourself, the process has begun.

Clive Every-Clayton

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