A Faith with a Purpose

They formed an angry, threatening crowd. They were going to throw him over a cliff. Why? Because his claims were so preposterous! What did he mean, "These scriptures have been fulfilled - today?" That could only be true if he was the Messiah!

He looked through them and walked straight past the mob. He was right, a prophet is not welcome in his home town...

There's an old saying. Familiarity breeds contempt. Sometimes we overlook precious Bible truth because we have grown up with a scripture.

It is easy to memorise and quote Ephesians ch.2 v.8-9 "for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast." - but what about the verse that follows?

This is the passage that answers the big question - why?

Why does God give salvation freely - why are there no preconditions? What does God get out of this?

The answer is simple. Each of us has a destiny that only we can fulfill. By receiving that gift of faith, it opens the door to exploring that purpose - but note the order. We are saved to do good works. We do not do good works in order to be saved.

In fact, the whole point is that without experiencing that freely available, life-changing grace through the gift of faith, we would be unable to achieve those good works. In essence, that is the heart of legalism - trying to do good in our own strength, and failing - so we hedge ourselves with more rules to safeguard whatever we can, and fail more...

But by faith, we can achieve that purpose - not because we have to, but because we want to, it's in our nature - to do otherwise would be to deny the reality of what we have become - not by our own efforts, but through His Spirit transforming and empowering us.

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