Wonderful Words
—The gospel’s special vocabulary
A study of seven technical words used in the gospel: Salvation, Justification, Sanctification, Reconciliation, Redemption, and Predestination. Tap any title next to an arrow in the list below.
➤ Salvation —Better understand meaning of terms like salvation, Saviour, and being saved.
➤ (YouTube) Wonderful Words (1) Salvation —Half hour video. This lesson is the first of six “Wonderful Words” videos explaining special words in the Bible.
➤ Justification —Our insufficiency of righteousness, sacrifice, suffering, and commitment, and our need of Christ to be justified.
➤ (YouTube) Wonderful Words (2) Justification —Half hour video. This lesson is the second of six in a series called Wonderful Words, explaining special words in the Bible. The good man Cornelius is an example of a righteous man who was not saved and needed to be justified by Christ.
➤ Sanctification —Sanctification or holiness is what makes people saints -a Bible term for Christians, God's holy or sanctified people.
➤ (YouTube) Wonderful Words (3) Sanctification —Half hour video. This video is the third of six in a series called Wonderful Words, explaining special words in the Bible. This lesson considers the Bible words sanctify, sanctification, and saint. We show how sanctification is connected to purification, and we are sanctified when our sins are forgiven. Sanctification is not a later second blessing. While purification is our main focus, we also briefly consider other marks of the saints (sanctified or holy people).
➤ Reconciliation —Our alienation from God was all our own fault. Reconciliation not entirely in our own power. We need Jesus Christ.
➤ (YouTube) Wonderful Words (4) Reconciliation —Half hour video. This video is the fourth of six in a series called Wonderful Words, explaining special words in the Bible. This lesson considers reconciliation or atonement. Because of sin and our own fault, we became separated, alienated, estranged from God. We became enemies at war with God. Jesus offered himself and shed his blood as a sacrifice so we could find mercy from God and come back home to him.
➤ Redemption —Redemption of sinners requires a ransom they cannot pay. Jesus paid the price with his blood, without any bargain with Satan.
➤ (YouTube) Wonderful Words (5) Redemption —Half hour video. In this lesson, we are thinking about redemption. This is the Bible word for what God demanded in order to save us —the payment of a price. In this lesson, we consider why a price had to be paid, why we couldn't pay it ourselves, and how Jesus paid it for us.
➤ Regeneration —Regeneration is renewal or rebirth, being “born again”. Rebirth is important in the doctrine of Christ. It is the bringing back to life of a person who is spiritually dead in sin.
➤ Predestination —Two issues in predestination: first God's sovereign will and counsel; second man's freedom of choice.
➤ (YouTube) Wonderful Words (6) Predestination —Half hour video. The Bible teaches that God has chosen some people to be saved, and these elect cannot, in that state, possibly be lost. People who choose to be in that elect state and remain so, are certainly predestined to salvation and eternal life, because they obey God and yield to God’s will.
Supplementary lessons
➤ Two Sides of God’s Nature —God does not have a split personality that changes whimsically. Yet God’s nature does have two sides, each of which is necessary to, and consistent with, the other.
➤ Two Sides of God’s Plan —About the two sides of the way of salvation. That way may be viewed in two different, but mutually consistent, modes.
➤ Two Sides of God's Covenant —God's part and our part — what God had to do and what we have to do.
➤ Salvation Study Outline —I found this sermon outline in one of my old notebooks and thought it would be a valuable supplement to our lessons on salvation.
➤ Sufficient Righteousness — It comes as a shock to some people to find out that if God based our admittance to heaven on our own goodness, none of us would get in the gate.
➤ Sufficient Sacrifice —God cannot accept just any sacrifice. An insufficient sacrifice could not justify those who suffer from insufficient righteousness.
➤ Sufficient Suffering —Many folk have the idea that you can somehow expunge sin with suffering. By yielding yourself to pain or deprivation, you purchase for yourself some grace with which to pay off your debt of sin. Is this possible?
➤ Sufficient Commitment —People may wrongly think that, since God looks on the righteousness of Jesus as their righteousness, they need not strive for righteousness in themselves.
➤ Sanctification a Second Blessing? —The doctrine of the second blessing is that sanctification is not fully given to all who receive the blessing of salvation. You can be saved, but not yet be entirely sanctified. Full sanctification is a kind of second conversion that brings a person into a state of sinless perfection.
➤ No Bargain with Satan —Although we sold ourselves to sin, and thus we belong to Satan, he has no bargaining rights in establishing the price. God is not interested in satisfying Satan. God is the one who must be satisfied.
➤ “Born Again Christian” —People say “born again Christian” because they believe that two kinds of Christians exist. There are those Christians who have experienced the new birth, and other Christians who supposedly haven't. They are the spiritually unborn. This belief is false.