We are created in the image of God and we have allowed sin to corrupt that image. It is God's grace that saves us and restores that image. God's grace is essential to our nature in the restoration process. It is His love of course that is actively working in us. From this I can affirm that all creation is the Lord's. God's creation holds a special place to Him with the creation of humanity. We share His nature as immortal spirits who as Jones says, “have various divine capacities understanding freedom of the will, and affections”[i]. Creation for humanity is for us to imply that each person is a spirit that is separated from the body at death. While none of us ever truly die, it is separation and that need to come back to God through Jesus that bridges that gap for us. We are created in the image of God we are now at fault as mankind in the fall from God. It is in our United Methodist doctrine that we are taught that there is a major human problem and that problem is sin. John Wesley tells us that when Adam first sinned all of humanity was forever changed. We have broken the covenant with God, and that covenant is only restored with the saving grace of God. Wesley tells us that the natural person is so mired in sin that we don't even recognize our chronic situation.
We have to take that first step in understanding ourselves as sinners. It is through this first step that starts the process of our salvation. It is our human actions such as tempers, and disposition of the heart that have become such problems that we have fallen even further from God. God's creation has become such a disappointment! We are in such a state of sin that we don't even realize it when we sin. It is the gift of Prevenient Grace that has allowed each of us to make it this far in life without suffering the consequences of His wrath and judgment. This grace is the love of God at work in our lives from the very beginning until we come to know Jesus as our savior. God loved me enough to protect and bless me through my life until I came to place where His call was so strong that it convicted my heart.
Repentance allows us to confess to the Father and ask His forgiveness of things that we have done. We can also call this our own spiritual knowledge? When we repent of our sins we recognize our human behavior as being sinful. It is this self-knowledge that enables us to come to Father and ask for His forgiveness. This is also our awakening to the awareness of needing God for our human sin problem. One of the central teachings in United Methodist doctrine is saving grace or justification by grace through faith. While everything begins with God's prevenient grace, salvation is the next part of the process. Through salvation it is a way back to the Father. With our salvation comes a two part process that includes justification, and sanctification. Sanctification is God's way of accepting us just as we are and allowing us to grow in perfection with the mind of Christ. Justification is humans being justified when they are forgiven of sin by God and then become a child of the Father. John Wesley believed that the Holy Spirit gives us the assurance of salvation at our new birth in Jesus.
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