A Christian relationship with God is an elegant thing. It is a relationship that is not easily explained. There are many who believe that one chooses to accept Jesus as his savior. Although this sounds like a reasonable thing to do, it misses one of the critical points of our salvation by grace. That is, our salvation is by the grace of God given as a gift. It is not earned by our works.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”. – Ephesians 2: 8 – 10

On the surface, there is nothing about this passage that would indicate that our “acceptance” of God’s salvation is incorrect. You might think that the “gift” of grace can be accepted or rejected. This is true. However, the critical element is not the gift but the nature of our relationship with God. As this passage states, and is stated throughout the Bible, we are God’s workmanship. In other words, He created us. We are His. So, He created us. What does that have to do with our “acceptance” of His grace?

There is a parallel that helps explain this relationship. It is our relationship with our human parents. When we are born, we are born into a family. We have a father and a mother that we did not choose. We inherit our name, our house, our inheritance, if there is one. We do nothing to earn it. It is a gift. We do not claim our parents or “accept” them as our parents. They simply are. Our inheritance is given to us on our birth.

From that day, only one thing can happen to our inheritance. We can lose it. We can lose it through our rejection of our parents. If we choose to deny our birthright and leave our family’s house, we will be cut off from our family. We may even choose to change our name. Of course, if we do this, we are no longer associated with our family. We are on our own. And when it is time for us to receive our full inheritance, we will not.

So it is the same with God. He made us. From the time we are conceived, we are His. There is nothing we can do to “accept” Him as our father and more than we can “accept” our own human father.

Chuck Hill is a Christian layperson from Plano, TX. http://www.yeshuaisrisen.com

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