Free, but not cheap!
Your salvation is a gift freely given and received from God, but it is not cheap. It is the most expensive gift you will ever receive.
God comes and offers us free salvation. But He does not change His standard. He remains a righteous and holy God.
How could it be possible that Jesus Christ could die as a substitute for my penalty as a sinner? It is because He is the infinite God, not a sinful man, that He could die for an infinite number of sinners. Because He is God He could pay the eternal punishment for all of our sins.
Second Corinthians 5:21 tells us it was not enough that He should only die and pay the penalty of our sins, but that His perfect righteousness would be counted in God’s eyes as our righteousness. All of the pure righteousness of Jesus Christ is now available through Him to the believing sinner.
Based upon the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, God can now come and offer the great invitation to all sinners to come and join Him in heaven.
How do I know that this is absolute truth? Look at the empty tomb! Christ is alive! The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the proof that God is eternally satisfied with the sacrifice of His Son on the cross.
Now you and I can take the righteousness of God and go boldly or trembling to the scales of justice and put it over against all the perfection God has demanded and that He must demand. The balance is immediately made. The Christian believer stands before God justified. God can never have anything against you and me forever.
You are justified when you trust in that perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, rather than in your own self-righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21). You will never be justified in the eyes of God if you cling to your own good works.
We can sing with great profound theology: “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling.” We are justified by faith alone, through grace alone, in Jesus Christ alone.
However, we are not justified by a faith that is alone. Therefore, if you really go to that cross, believing in the saving work of Christ, you will be abounding in the works of the Lord.
If our salvation is received as a free gift someone had to pay for it. Since you and I did not, who did?
The apostle Paul tells us that Jesus Christ redeemed us, not with perishable things like silver and gold, but “with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ” (1 Pet. 1:19).
Our salvation is an expensive gift which we do not deserve and cannot merit! We were “redeemed” meaning to release, to purchase a release by a ransom, to deliver by the payment of a price. Our spiritual freedom was purchased with the great payment of the blood of Jesus Christ. Thus, the grace that saves us is not cheap.
