WHAT WE BELIEVE: SALVATION || TITUS 3:3-7
Prevenient Grace
Jesus said about His reason for coming into this world in Luke 19:10, “‘For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.’” In Luke 15 Jesus shared 3 illustrations or parables about how He has come in God’s grace to those of us who are lost in order to save us from our captivity to sin. He talked about Jesus being like a
looking to save that one lost sheep that’s gone astray, turning a house upside down to find one lost coin, and of reaching out in God’s grace and love to a wayward, broken, lost, prodigal son. In every instance something precious was lost and in every instance a great celebration broke out when it was found. All of it is God’s passion for
and
those of us who have rejected God and are lost in our sin. In our Methodist theology we call God’s love that pursues us at all costs before we even know of God’s love or want anything to do with God love, God’s
or
Grace.
Convicting Grace
We also learn in Scripture that GOD CONVICTS US WITH HIS GRACE. Before Jesus died, He told His disciples that when He does go back home to heaven, He will send the
. Jesus then said in John 16:8 this about the Holy Spirit’s role, “And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment.” It is the role of the Holy Spirit to work deep within every human being’s heart to create a sense of urgency within us that says I need help for my sin problem. We call this in our Methodist theology,
or
Grace.
New Life
Once God has taken the initiative to reach out to us with His loving
, and the Holy Spirit has been working to convict us of
and convince us that we need Jesus, we then experience a major aspect of God’s grace and that is that GOD GIVES US NEW LIFE WITH HIS GRACE. When we experience God reaching out to us with His loving grace, kindness, and mercy and realize that we are broken and desperately need God’s grace and then say yes to God’s love, God’s grace performs a miracle in our hearts through what we call
Grace.
