How to Measure Salvation | The Whole Counsel

The Gospel as the Power and Wisdom of God

Yeah, so great application. Never again let the world or even perhaps the cultural modern church give you the measurements of salvation. Salvation is an infinitely glorious and big thing. I've always been fascinated when Paul writes to the Corinthians in the first chapter of the first letter, he does not say the gospel is the mercy of God, or the gospel is the love of God, or the gospel is the grace of God, or even the gospel is the holiness of God.

He says the gospel, he says two things, it is the power of God. And then later he says it's the wisdom of God. And when we look at these 14 things, if a person were to slow down and kind of work carefully through what Friedlinghausen points out from Scripture, you do walk away with those two things.

You walk away and you think for any man or woman or child to be brought from death to life, from a stranger to a child of God, and to run that race well to the end. This is the wisdom of God on display.

This is the power of God.

And it is the grace of God on display. None of these things make light of grace. They highlight grace. You can't do it. Do you have no leg to stand on? If it's not the grace of God, then you're lost.

Discernment, Fruit, and Regenerate Church Membership

Yeah, and it's a good chance for us to kind of do a very practical check on our theology. When a person in a church where we're at, when a person in your home says, I've believed in Christ, I've asked Jesus into my heart, you want to be as encouraging as you can be.

You certainly don't want to be that grumpy old person that always starts off with, I doubt it, you know, prove it. But you do want to ask yourself, do you look, you know, graciously, do you look for the changes that only a living God would be able to make in a person?

Because that's the salvation that we want for our loved ones, for the people that come to the churches and, you know, and listen to us.

Yeah, we could say that maybe it's a good test for church membership as well. I mean, if we have a regenerate church membership, then how do we determine as best we can looking at fruit what a regenerate person is?

What do they look like? Yeah. Well, fruits that only God can produce.