You have been saved by grace, through faith! This doesn’t happen on your own initiative; it’s God’s gift.

Ephesians 2:8 (NTE)

Salvation is free but it is not cheap.

It costs God the Father everything to save us through His Son so that we can be made right and be reconciled to Him. The gospel is all about grace. We receive grace even though we are deserving of punishment for the horror of our sins and have no hope of eternal life. Grace is therefore not a reward for the righteous but an undeserved gift for the unrighteous.

No one obtains salvation by being perfect or working to earn it.

You don’t have to feel good enough or worthy enough for God to accept you or love you. God has made you enough for everything He has for you in Christ. He did it by including and incorporating you into an inseparable union with Christ. Christ not only imputes His righteousness to you, but He also imparts His righteousness for you to reign in life. Thus, we have a Saviour who not only pardoned us of our sins but also delivered us from our sins.

It doesn’t just take faith, but it also takes a lot of humility to admit we need a Saviour.

Salvation is the work and initiative of God. We trust God’s power more than in our own ability to save ourselves. We need to understand that everything we do for God starts with what God has already done for us. God not only gives us the grace to believe but also the grace to live by faith. The same grace that justifies us is the same grace that sanctifies us.

Our position, identity, and inheritance are firmly rooted in Christ within this framework of grace so that our faithfulness and fruitfulness rest on God’s sovereign purpose and might at work in and through us.

It is more necessary to grow in your knowledge and understanding of grace than in any other doctrinal matter. Because our salvation rests on the firm foundation of who we are and what we have in Christ and everything else pertaining to the Christian life flows from that understanding.