Ephesians 1:4-5, 2:10, 2 Timothy 1:9, 2 Peter 1:10-11.
\”Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,\”
2 Peter 1:2 KJV
Grace increases (in multiples) unto you as you press in to know God personally to the extent that Jesus becomes your LORD and Master. This grace speaks of how you become effective and competent in the New Life. The totality of your Christian walk depends on the level of grace at work in you; and that grace is multiplied to you as you know God more and more. And this knowledge of God comes by revelation; that is, the insight we receive supernaturally as we read/study the Bible and in the place of prayer.
As we walk with God more and more, we come to discover truths upon truths about ourselves in the Word of God. These seemingly isolated truths gets interconnected subsequently and they grow into an understanding of the mind of God. Personally, I did not know that God chose me even before the foundation of the world when I became born again (Ephesians 1:4-5). Yet, that did not keep me from being saved because it was not a requirement for salvation. The requirement is faith.
But after many, many years, I came to discover one day that I was not the one who first chose God, it was God Who first chose me. What led to this was a personal search of the Word of God when the hyper-grace and eternal security movement began to gain entrance to the body of Christ. As one who have learnt not to jump on a bandwagon before investigating the truth, I decided to read the Bible simply and I discovered the truth of predestination that has revolutionized my life.
I saw that God had decided beforehand that I will belong to Him. In fact, what we call purpose is a subset of predestination. The reason why there is a purpose for my life is because God decided whom I should be before He even ventured to create the world. If you understand this, you will understand why redemption or salvation was the only reasonable divine response to man\’s sin after creation. So, the whole plan of redemption was not an afterthought. Since God knew before hand, the plan was there waiting to kick-in. It is at this point that I began to understand the Eternal Purpose of God and how that shapes everything in both testaments of Scriptures.
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The reason why grace multiplies to you is that you decide to press into God to know Him through the Word of God and the operation of the Holy Spirit on your heart. This multiplication of grace is accompanied with a further establishment of peace – which is an unshakable certainty in the power of God to keep you in a position of salvation until you complete your journey here on earth. This peace, as you may see, is part assurance of salvation and that inward witness that you are right with God in the practical situations of your life. So, if you were to miss it in one area of your life, the loss of your peace is the built-in internal system of reconciling (rerouting) you back to God. That knowing that something is not right will drive you to the place of prayer for a spiritual x-ray of your life and a rectification of your experience.
Pressing into God through His Word and praying will help you to see that your salvation was not meant to be lost at any point. It is that understanding in itself that makes me see the foolishness of sin and the presumption involved in in experimenting with lawlessness. Knowing that this is what salvation was designed to be makes me walk in the deep reverence of the LORD. So, I \”work out my own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in me both to will and to do of his good pleasure.\” (Philippians 1:12-13 personalized). That working out of my salvation in fear and trembling is the way to make my calling and election sure (2 Peter 1:10).
\”Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.\” (1 Corinthians 10:12) While it is okay to think you are standing, the only way to dwell in genuine assurance and certainty of eternal life is by taking heed, watching out, being vigilant so that you don\’t fall. Any sense of safety and security (allegedly in Christ) that does not give you an equal sense of watchfulness, as well as a growing passion for the LORD practically expressed in a righteous life, is trap of the devil to ensnare you and make sure you never recover. A biblical understanding of predestination will never make you careless; rather, it deepens you in all the possibilities programmed into your potential as child of God.
