"The result of the Gospel" by Pastor Stefan Ras, Grace Baptist Church, Kabega Park, Port Elizabeth

Описание: Pastor Stefan Ras will be preaching from the book of Romans, Chapter 1, Verses 5 to 7.

The title of the message is “The result of the Gospel”.

When you have the Son, you have ALL that is necessary for life and godliness both now and forever.

In one sentence (the first 7 verses of Romans 1), God explains the whole plan of salvation, the person of salvation and the change that happens in a man after salvation and then he uses the rest of the book of Romans to go into more detail about each part.

The first result of the Gospel is that we have received grace, which is unmerited favour, from God. We did nothing to earn this favour, it originates in God’s love.

When grace is bestowed on someone, that person does not remain unchanged. That person receives apostleship, which means that they become “sent ones”. It becomes our sacred task to share the message of this freely available grace with others.

Another result of our receiving this grace is that it leads us to obedience. The grace applied to our lives brings the desire to be obedient to the faith, which covers the entire faith, not just our faith to believe, but our faith to depend on Him and on Him alone for everything. We cannot be faithful and not obedient and we cannot be obedient and not be faithful, the two go hand-in-hand, two sides of the same coin.

We become beloved of God. As we realise how sinful we truly are when we are faced by His amazing grace, we start to understand the true depths of the Love which God has for us. That He loved us while we were His enemy, while we were in our sin, while we despised Him and His Word, while we ignored the price His Son paid for our sins on the cross, while we hated Him and fought against Him, even then He loved us. When we finally accept His love and free gift of Grace we take our rightful place as His beloved. We are so beloved by God that He sings over us and He rejoices over us – all because of His Grace that He sent down to us to draw us to Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ. We cannot truly understand this kind of love, eternal, unchanging, perfect, holy love.

We are saints, holy and, separated unto Him. We do not “become” saints or grow into saints, or work ourselves upwards to becoming a saint, we are saints already when He applies His Grace to us.

We have peace, both in our hearts and with God our Father.