Living Salvation.

Joh 8:34  Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. 

Joh 8:35  And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. 

Joh 8:36  If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. 

We are all servants of sin as we live in this world. But we are not going to live in this world forever.  What is forever is the Son of God and the Son of God can make us free from sins, no longer servants to sin.

Joh 8:31  Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; 

Joh 8:32  And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. 

The Son of God can make us free. We need to continue in the Word of the Lord, knowing the truth, because it is God's truth that will set us free.

We need to be free, because to be captive to sin is to be a part of the world, and to be a part of the world is to be conformed to the world, and being conformed to the world is to belong to Satan.

This needs to be our prayer--

Psa 19:12  Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults. 

Psa 19:13  Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. 

Psa 19:14  Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer. 

We need to be kept from willful sinning. Sin can have dominion over us, but through our Savior it can be overcome.  Are the words of our mouth, and the meditation of our hearts acceptable to God? We need to examine ourselves--

2Co_13:5  Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates

When we examine ourselves we can tell whether we are in the faith- and if our words and heart are not acceptable to God, to our Savior then we are not in the faith, we are not living in the truth of our LORD.  We don't like thinking about this kind of stuff though because the weight of our sin is so incredibly heavy as we realize how far we are from where we should be. To shrug it off, to deny it, to hide from it, to pretend that it doesn’t matter is to live in ignorance and it's in ignorance that our Savior is going to tell many that He doesn't know them. They will be ignorant of the truth because they don't want to face the truth at all, the lies are so much easier to live.

Our Savior will set us free through His truth, and that truth has commands.

Our Savior has commands.

Joh 14:6  Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. 

Joh_14:15  If ye love me, keep my commandments.

Yet, we ignore that last part because we pit it against salvation being only found in Jesus through grace and not works, it's a gift.  We equate keeping the commands of our God with works.

An analogy might be as follows-

Your father tells you that he has a gift for you and he gives it to you, no strings attached, the gift is yours. You take the gift and it's yours for as long as you desire to keep it, you can't trash the gift unless you really want to. Your life continues and you go on as usual and your father tells you that if you love him you'll listen to him and what he tells you to do because he only has your best interests at heart in all he commands you. He continues on and tells you all sort of things that he'd like you to do which ultimately stem from loving him and loving others. Now you have to choose always, in all you do, if you are going to do the things he's told you or not. It will be something you'll have to choose all the time, all your actions stemming from these commands he's given you.  He also tells you that if you love him and follow his commands then you will be living in love. When you choose not to follow the commands and you let yourself stray, you are choosing to turn from Him and that gift He gave you will become less and less a gift you want to keep.

Salvation is a gift, and keeping the commandments make that gift more and more precious to us. Keeping the commandments isn't a way to earn salvation, it's a way to love and live the salvation given to us.

All by the grace and mercy, the love of our SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD now and forever!!!!!!!