It’s easy to think so much about grace and salvation that we forget there’s a reason. God is love, but he didn’t save us just for ourselves, so we could live the lives we want. He saved us for his own purposes.
Hebrews 9:14 says: “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”
We get clean consciences and freedom from death so that we can serve. God has work for us to do. He has goals for the world, things he intends to do. Those things involve us, the ones he has saved.
At first that doesn’t sound good, does it? It sounds not far from slavery. “OK, I saved you so now I own you and you have to do what I tell you to.” That’s truth, of course, but our human natures don’t like it. Because we don’t realize that what our natures want isn’t going to make us happy. But serving God will.
We were made for exactly this. All of our giftedness and our sociability and our love of engagement perfectly fits us for God’s purposes. When we serve as we were made to, we find joy. When we push back against God and try to go our own way, we end up miserable.
In the end, all God is trying to do is bring us back to what he knows (because he designed and made us) will make us happiest. That’s why he saved us.
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