Three Important Things About Our Salvation
2 Thessalonians 2:13 NLT
13 As for us, we can't help but thank God for you, dear brothers and sisters loved by the Lord. We are always thankful that God chose you to be among the first to experience salvation—a salvation that came through the Spirit who makes you holy and through your belief in the truth.
Three things stand out to me in this verse about our salvation: God's love, the work of the Holy Spirit, and our belief in the truth.
Loved by the Lord. One of the values of reading from different translations is that we don't overlook words we have become used to. For decades, my primary reading has been in the New King James Version. I started with King James and used it all through bible school. But when I was reading to my kids when they were younger, I was translating out of the thee's and thou's. So the New King James was a welcome change. But it's still easy to skip over words. The phrase in the NLT was 'loved by the Lord' for the phrase 'beloved by the Lord.' Beloved can become a religious word that loses meaning. Loved by the Lord is more intimate and personal. The Lord loves me; I am loved by the Lord. And because the Lord loves me, He has provided salvation for me.
The salvation came through the work of the Holy Spirit who made us holy. The word in my New King James Bible says, 'sanctification of the Spirit.' The word sanctification means to be set apart or to be made holy. I am not sure we have grasped this truth as we should. We have been set apart for God as His own special people. And as we learned in First Peter 1:16, God is holy, so we should live holy. We live separate because we have been made that way. Because spiritual changes are not always accompanied by strong changes in our feelings, we can overlook their importance. We have spoken for years at The Ark that we are new creations in Christ. We have been made new creations spiritually, and that new man is sanctified, made holy by the Holy Spirit.
And salvation came because we believed the truth. Now some of our Reformed brethren think that the only reason we are saved is because God chose us to be saved. But I believe that God has chosen all who believe. Everyone who chooses to believe the truth about what Jesus has done in His substitutionary work on the cross and His resurrection from the dead is blessed with salvation. This makes salvation truly the Good News, not just good news for a chosen few. But good news for all who willbelieve the truth.
Our salvation was initiated by God because of His love for us. And our salvation was carried out by the Holy Spirit the moment we believed the truth. God's love. The work of the Holy Spirit and our part, the belief of truth. That's a powerful combination. And we are still working with that combination today. We still depend on the love of God for us. We still see the Holy Spirit working in our hearts as we believe the truth in God's Word. Thank God, He still loves us, the Holy Spirit is still working, and we are still believing.
Prayer
Thank You, Heavenly Father, for Your great love for me. Thank You for the work of the mighty Holy Spirit who has set me apart and made me holy in Your sight. And thank You that I had the capacity to believe the truth when I heard the Good News of Jesus.