21 Affirmations on Faith, the Gospel, and Personal Transformation

The purpose of this essay is simply to put out some affirmations without proof or further explanation. Some of them will be controversial to some readers. I feel good about each and every one of them and could make a case from Paul's writings for all of them. Here goes nothing:

#1 We did not choose to believe. Faith is a gift.

#2 The Gospel spreads organically through relationships, but the ultimate cause of any person's faith is God's direct, benevolent, revelatory action.

#3 God saves the undeserving. There is no boasting.

#4 God is primarily loving and his wrath is motivated by love, not retribution.

#5 God reveals Christ as Lord directly to each person through the hidden working of the Holy Spirit.

#6 God the Son became human like us to make us what he is.

#7 When Jesus died and rose, so did we in a mystical sense.

#8 When Jesus was seated at God's right hand, so were we.

#9 In God's apocalyptic time-table, we are already in the new reality while we continue to live in the old one.

#10 All that Christ did was effective for our transformation and pardon—incarnation, sinless life, example of love, faith to the end, death by crucifixion, resurrection into the new reality, ascension to God's right hand.

#11 Christ loves the Jewish people, having become a Jewish man, and God's covenants with Israel remain in full force.

#12 Christ loves and knows all people and intends to save all.

#13 Christ's solution is more powerful than "Adam's" fall.

#14 Whoever is in Christ is secure and certain of hope.

#15 There is a "Law of Sin" which paralyzes and kills the human soul, but when we are in Christ the "Law of the Spirit of Life" is more powerful.

#16 God does not leave us in our selfish, self-defeated state but will transform us in life or in death.

#17 God knew us and chose us before time, having predestined us to be glorious and pure.

#18 The truth of the Gospel was revealed to us by the Spirit and we are left with an "anointing," an internal knowledge of the Gospel, that transforms us when we live by it.

#19 Prior to our conversion we were unable to please God and were doomed to lose our battle with selfish drives. After conversion we have divine help in learning to love and be like Jesus.

#20 The Holy Spirit works invisibly in us and there is no boasting in virtue because this too is a gift of God and not our own achievement.

#21 Humble gratitude, inclusive love, transforming faith, Christ-like compassion, uncomplaining servitude, and a yearning for total redemption characterize healthy followers of Christ.