For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. – Galatians 5:1
We’ve heard it said, by our own pastor and others, that in order for us to turn from something, we have to be turning towards something else. The beauty of the Gospel is the balance that exists between what we were saved from, and what we were saved into. One without the other diminishes the full picture of the Gospel. Ephesians 2 details both sides of this for us in verses 1-10 –
What we are saved from…
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (v1-3)
We were saved from a life drowning in sin and distance from the Lord; a life lived for ourselves and by our own strength.
What we are saved into…
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (v4-10)
We were saved into a never-ending love, a life drenched in grace, and assured hope of the fulfillment of promises; a life lived for the Lord, doing works He’s prepared for us to do by His strength.
You may find yourself getting stuck on one side or the other of this. If our entire focus is on all that we were saved out of, and we don’t balance it with the truth of what we were saved into, we will live lives that constantly battle condemnation. If we’re focusing only on what we were saved into, we lose grip on the reality of the weight of our sin and its cost. But God is so faithful to remind us right in His word, in a pretty black and white fashion through Paul, that there are two sides to the Gospel and both sides matter much.
This balance is vital to our walk with Him. Let’s circle back to the verse I opened with…
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. – Galatians 5:1
Freedom. Freedom from who we would be without Christ. Freedom from being enslaved to our flesh. This is not speaking of freedom to do whatever / live however we want. While we can, that’s not the freedom Christ set us free for.
Sometimes, without realizing we’ve done it, we abuse our free will and call it freedom…therefore really abusing grace. As Paul writes in Romans, we’re not to just go on sinning because God’s grace abounds. As a result of the truth of the Gospel laid out in Ephesians 2, we are to use this freedom Christ bought us with His blood to pursue the life the Lord has called us to without the weight of our sin crushing us.
This truly is a simple Gospel, my friends.
We were saved from who we would be without Christ – saved from slavery to our sin and the destruction it reaps – and we were saved into the grace and freedom to pursue an abundant life in Christ, by His strength.
Oh how our lives would change if we lived everyday with the profound, powerful simplicity of the Gospel at the forefront of our heart and mind.
~ Alyssa