Purpose and Peace in the Last DaysSample

The Unbreakable Chain of Salvation

A story is told of a monastery in Europe. This monastery was very beautiful, and it sat on top of a cliff 3,000 ft. up in the air.

The only way to get to this monastery was in a basket connected to a rope. The monks would pull the rope and hoist the visitors up the mountain in the basket.

One day a tourist visited the area. He wanted to see this beautiful monastery. They told him, “You have to get in the basket.” When he was about halfway up, he noticed the rope was old, a little worn, and a tad frayed.

He nervously yells to the brothers at the monastery, “Hey, how often do you guys change the rope?”

And they yelled down, “Whenever it breaks!”

A lot of people view salvation the same way. They see it as a frayed rope that pulls them to heaven – a rope that could snap at any moment. These folks live with tense nerves and zero assurance of glory.

In today’s passage, the apostle Paul refutes this “frayed rope salvation” idea with some good news. I’ll call it good news for God’s people. It is good news because your salvation is less like a rope and more like a chain – a sturdy chain with four unbreakable links.

Link number one: The Lord loves you.

Those of us who are His children can rest in the fact that God loves us.

God hasn’t destined you for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Why? Because you’re loved by Him. He doesn’t love you because of who you are; He loves you because of whose you are: His! When you are born into the family of God, you become His child – and God loves His children. God will never stop loving His children.

Romans 8 asks the question, “What can separate us from the love of God?” The resounding answer is “absolutely nothing!”

Link number two: Not only does the Lord love you, but the Lord chose you.

We have been chosen from the beginning. The Bible says in Ephesians chapter one that God “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.” It’s such a wonderful thing to be chosen.

How did He do that? When did He do that? In the beginning, according to His foreknowledge.

You see, God knows everything in your life because He knows the end from the beginning. He’s seen the movie of your life before you were ever created. He knows every decision you will ever make before you ever made one of them.

He gives people the opportunity to respond to Him and His love. He says, “Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). He knew before the beginning of time who would call and who would not. Based on His foreknowledge, “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.”

Link number three: The Lord has given you His Spirit.

God sends His Spirit to convict our hearts, open our eyes to truth, and show us that we’re hopeless, helpless sinners in need of a Savior.

When we recognize this and put our puny little hand of faith in His great big hand of grace, He pulls us out of the miry pit of sin.

When you receive Christ, He comes to live in you through the person of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit starts working on you, shaping you to look more and more like Jesus in the way you act and react.

Link number four: The end result that the Lord wants is for you to share in His glory.

Verse 14 in today’s reading says God called you that “you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Why all this? Why the choosing? Why the Spirit’s working in our life? So that one day you and I would experience the glory of God in a place called heaven where we will be with our Lord forever and ever and ever.

These are the links in the chain of your salvation, and they cannot be broken. Because of this, you can stand firm in the truth and not be afraid to share this truth with others.

2 Questions:

1. Do you struggle with feeling like your salvation is a frayed rope, not secure or dependable? Ask God to remind you of the unbreakable links in the chain of your salvation.

2. How might the Holy Spirit be working in your life to sanctify you and make you more like Christ? Pray that God would open your eyes to the places where He is working on you.