Adoption as God’s children

The Christian life is the life of repentance, faith, and good works lived through the power of the Spirit and with the help of the means of grace as the Christian is conformed to the image of Christ to the glory of God.

The Basis of the Christian Life :

We shall only understand the Christian life in the present if we grasp the foundation upon which it is built. The Bible speaks of this in at least the following seven ways.

Repentance and Faith :

God commands all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30–31). Peter gives this command on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:38) and it is the consistent teaching of the New Testament. We are to turn from our sin and to trust in Jesus Christ the Savior and Lord. Without this repentance and faith, there is no Christian life. Indeed, repentance and faith are not simply the shape of the beginning of the Christian life; they are the shape of all of the Christian life, day after day after day.

New Birth :

By nature, we are spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1). We can do nothing to save ourselves. God must give us birth from above, or new birth (John 3:1-8)

The Means of the Christian Life :

The Christian life begins, continues, and ends entirely by the free unmerited grace of God, yet God has chosen to use instruments through which to bring his grace into our lives. The old-fashioned expression for these is “the means of grace.” We shall consider four.

Further Reading