Tuesday, February 26



By this undeserved kindness, indeed, you have been saved through faith;
and this not owing to you, it is God’s gift.—Eph. 2:8.

Jehovah God accepted the ransom sacrifice that his Son offered.(Heb. 9:24; 10:10, 12) Still, Jesus’
disciples on earth, including his faithful apostles, remained imperfect.

Though they strove to avoid doing wrong, they did not always succeed. Why? Because
they had inherited sin. (Rom.7:18-20) But God could and did do something about that. He accepted
the “corresponding ransomâ€￾and was willing to apply it in behalf of his human servants.(1 Tim. 2:6)

It is not that God owed it to the apostles and others to apply the ransom because they had performed certain good works. Instead, God applied the ransom in their behalf out of his mercy and great love. He chose to
acquit the apostles and others of the judgment against them, viewing them as absolved of inherited guilt.

w11 6/15 2:12, 13
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Yes, God gives us this saving faith out of the goodness of His heart,
and there is no virtue attaching to our acceptance of it.

But this salvation involves more than just an acquittal from sin and
our restoration to the righteous standing Adam had before God
prior to his fall,

to encompass the indescribable free gift of acquiring the Divine
Nature bestowed upon the very Means of your salvation, the
glorified Jesus Christ.

This grace of God goes well beyond the principle of justice involved
in the undoing of the wrongful condemnation of those made to pay
for the transgression of their common forefather.

God’s righteousness is revealed in the death of Jesus because it
restores all those who want to believe it to the moral innocence
of God’s perfect creation, with the unimpaired ability to appropriate
His gift of everlasting life.

However, for humans to attain heavenly life goes way beyond the scope
of righteousness and any ethical consideration into the realm of pure grace.