This is my 600th teaching! Praise God!!!
There are times in our lives when we can look back and know that things could have gone very differently. We may remember a danger we escaped, a situation that could have ended badly, or a moment when we know God made a way for us. There are also things God has protected us from that we never even knew were coming. We cannot possibly know how many times His hand has been upon our lives, keeping us, guiding us, and giving us another day. When we stop and think about that, we have more than an immense amount to be grateful for.
David understood where his security really had to be. He said, Trust in God at all times, pour out your hearts before Him, because God is our refuge. People, whether they seem important or not, are only a breath, and when they are weighed together, they amount to nothing, Psalm 62:8-9. David was not saying that people have no value. He was reminding us that human beings are temporary, while God is our refuge. People can help us, love us, stand with us, and pray for us, but our ultimate trust cannot rest in another human being. God is the One we can pour our hearts out to because He is the One who remains when everything else changes.
Paul learned that lesson through circumstances that were far beyond his own ability to handle. He told the believers that the trouble he and those with him experienced in Asia was so severe that they were burdened beyond their strength and had even despaired of life. He said that they felt as though the sentence of death had been upon them, but then explained why this happened: We had this death sentence within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a great death, He continues to deliver us, and we have placed our hope in Him that He will continue to deliver us, 2 Corinthians 1:8-10. Paul knew what it was to be delivered from something that could have taken his life. He also knew that the point was not for him to become more confident in himself. The point was for him to become more dependent upon God.
Job’s trust went even deeper because he did not know how his situation was going to turn out. He had lost almost everything and was suffering terribly, yet he could still say, Even if He were to take my life, I will still hope in Him, Job 13:15. That is a different kind of trust. It is easy to thank God when He delivers us in the way we hoped He would. It takes deeper faith to say that God is still worthy of our trust when we do not know what He is going to do. Job did not understand his circumstances, but he knew the One in whom he had placed his trust.
Then we see something even more astonishing when we look at Jesus in the garden. Jesus knew what was coming. He knew He was about to suffer and die, and He brought His heart honestly before the Father. He prayed, Father, if You are willing, take this cup away from Me. Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done, Luke 22:42. Jesus did not pretend that the suffering did not matter. He did not hide His desire for another way. Yet He willingly placed His own will under the Father’s will. The One who had the power to call upon the Father did not turn away from what He had come into the world to accomplish. By Jesus accepting His mission, He delivered us from so great a death; we would have died for eternity. Instead, we will live for eternity. Let that sink in.
That brings us to something much greater than the dangers to us of this present life. Every earthly deliverance is precious, but our physical lives are temporary. God may deliver us from one danger, then another, and another, but eventually every person faces death. There was a deeper problem from which we needed to be delivered, and that problem was and is sin.
Scripture tells us how sin brought death into the human story. Sin entered the world through one man, and death came through sin, and death spread to all people because all sinned, Romans 5:12. This is why our need was greater than simply being protected from accidents, sickness, violence, or other dangers in this life. Sin had brought death, and no human being could undo what sin had done. We could not make ourselves innocent by trying harder. We could not remove our own sin. We could not give ourselves eternal life.
Paul explains the consequence and the answer in one sentence. The wages of sin are death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, Romans 6:23. A wage is something earned. A gift is something given. We earned the consequence of sin, but God gave us something we could never earn for ourselves. He gave us life through Christ.
This is where the magnitude of salvation begins to come into view. We needed more than another temporary rescue. We needed God to do something for us that we could never do for ourselves. We needed forgiveness. We needed reconciliation with God. We needed deliverance from the power and consequence of sin. We needed life beyond the grave.
And this is where the mercy of God becomes so astonishing. Jeremiah, speaking in the middle of tremendous suffering, recognized that the people had not been completely destroyed because God’s compassion had not failed. He said, The LORD’s mercies are the reason we are not consumed, because His compassion does not fail. His mercies are new every morning, and great is His faithfulness, Lamentations 3:22-23. Think about that. God’s compassion does not run out. His mercy is not something He used up long ago. Every morning is another testimony that His mercy is still there.
But God’s greatest demonstration of compassion was not simply giving us another day to live. It was giving us a way back to Him. Christ is God’s compassion made visible to us. Jesus did not merely tell people what God was like. He showed us the Father’s heart through His own life. When Philip asked Jesus to show them the Father, Jesus answered, Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father, John 14:9. In Jesus, we see God’s love and mercy revealed in a way human beings could see, hear, touch, and experience.
Jesus showed compassion to people who were hurting. He touched people others avoided. He cared about people others overlooked. He wept with those who mourned. He forgave. He healed. He taught the truth. But all of that compassion was moving toward something far greater. Jesus came to give Himself for us.
God’s love was not based upon our worthiness. Paul tells us exactly when God demonstrated His love toward us. God demonstrates His own love toward us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us, Romans 5:8. That is the part that should humble us. God did not wait for us to become good enough before He loved us. Christ died for us while we were still sinners. We did not clean ourselves up and then come to God. God came to us in mercy and provided the way for our salvation.
Jesus willingly went to the cross. The same Jesus who prayed in the garden, Not My will, but Yours, be done, Luke 22:42, surrendered Himself to the Father’s will and carried that obedience all the way to the cross. His death was not an accident or a failure of God’s plan. He gave Himself for us because our need was greater than anything we could ever solve on our own.
But the cross was not the end. The resurrection is essential to the magnitude of what God accomplished through Christ. Paul says, If Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless and you are still in your sins. But Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have died, 1 Corinthians 15:17, 20. Jesus did not simply die for us. He was raised from the dead. Because He lives, the hope He gives us reaches beyond the grave.
Jesus Himself explained the hope that belongs to those who trust in Him.I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in Me will never truly die, John 11:25-26. Our hope is therefore not merely that God will help us survive this present life. Our hope is in Jesus Christ, who is Himself the resurrection and the life.
Salvation also means that God brings us near to Himself. Paul says, You who were once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, and He has broken down the barrier that stood between us, Ephesians 2:13-14. We were not simply rescued from punishment and left standing somewhere outside God’s presence. Through Christ, we are brought near.
Paul explains this reconciliation even more clearly when he says, If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, and the new has come. All of this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their sins against them, 2 Corinthians 5:17-19.God did not merely patch up our old condition. In Christ, He makes us new and brings us into reconciliation with Himself.
Now the words “It could have gone the other way” carry an even deeper meaning. We can look back at the physical dangers from which God delivered us and thank Him for every one of them. We can thank Him for the times He protected us when we knew we were in danger and for the times He protected us when we had no idea there was danger. We can thank Him for every morning He gives us and every mercy He shows us. But all of those earthly deliverance’s are temporary reminders of a far greater deliverance.
The greatest danger was not the thing that might have taken our physical life yesterday. The greatest problem was sin and the death that came through sin. We could not save ourselves from that. We could not earn our way out of it. We could not repair the separation between ourselves and God. But God, in His mercy, made a way through Jesus Christ.
That is the magnitude of salvation. The One who could have left us in the consequences of our sin instead gave His Son for us. Christ died while we were still sinners. Christ was raised from the dead. Through Him we are forgiven, reconciled to God, brought near to Him, made new, and given the hope of resurrection and eternal life. We have more than an immense amount to be grateful for. We have the mercy of God, the compassion of God, and the love of God demonstrated through Christ.
When we really begin to understand what Jesus has done for us, gratitude becomes much bigger than being thankful for the good things that happen in our lives. We can thank God for every earthly deliverance, every answered prayer, every protection we recognize, and every mercy we never even saw. But above all of those things, we can thank Him for the salvation that He provided when there was nothing we could do to save ourselves.
Jesus’ love for us truly is astonishing and wondrous. He willingly surrendered Himself to the Father’s will. He gave Himself for sinners. He went to the cross. He conquered death. He brought us near to God. And because He lives, our salvation is not a temporary rescue. It is the gift of God that reaches beyond this present life and into eternity.
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Prayer:
Holy Father, I come before You with my whole heart, and I worship You for who You are. You are holy, You are faithful, You are merciful, and You are full of compassion. I praise You because Your mercy does not fail, and Your faithfulness is great. I praise You for every morning You have given me, for every breath You have allowed me to take, and for every time You have protected me when I knew I needed protection and when I did not even know I was in danger. You are my refuge, my strength, and my hope, and I thank You that I can pour out my heart before You and know that You hear me.
Father God, I worship You for the magnitude of Your salvation. I know that I could never have saved myself from sin and death, and I thank You that You did for me what I could never do for myself. I praise You for Your mercy that reached me when I was still a sinner. I praise You for Jesus Christ, Your Son, who willingly gave Himself for me. I worship You for the love that sent Him to the cross and for the power that raised Him from the dead.
Jesus, I praise You for Your obedience to the Father. I praise You because You willingly surrendered Your own will and walked the road that led to the cross. I am humbled when I consider that You gave Yourself for me while I was still a sinner. I thank You that Your death was not the end, because You were raised from the dead, and because You live, I have hope beyond this temporary life. You are the resurrection and the life, and I worship You.
Holy Father, I thank You that through Christ I have been brought near to You. I praise You because You have reconciled me to Yourself, forgiven me, and made me new. I did not earn this gift, and I could never repay You for it. I receive it with a grateful heart, and I worship You for the grace You have poured out upon me.
Father God, help me never to become casual about what You have done for me. When I remember the times You delivered me from earthly dangers, let my heart turn immediately toward gratitude. When I face something I cannot control, teach me to trust You. When I do not understand what You are doing, help me remember that You are still faithful. Let my life continually bear witness to Your mercy, Your compassion, Your faithfulness, and Your love.
I praise You, Holy Father, because Your compassion has not failed me. I praise You because Your mercy is new every morning. I praise You because You made a way when I could never have made one myself. I praise You for Jesus. I praise You for the cross. I praise You for the resurrection. I praise You for salvation. And with all that is within me, I worship You and thank You for the astonishing and wondrous love You have shown me through Christ. And it is in His name, I pray, Amen.
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Don’t take my word for it. Like the Bereans in Acts 17:11, search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so. Open your Bible, study God’s Word for yourself, and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you into all truth. Don’t simply accept my conclusions. If what I’ve written agrees with Scripture, hold fast to it. If it doesn’t, let God’s Word be your final authority.
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© AMKCH 2026
image done by imagefree.net at my direction.
If any of these people looks like you or someone you know, that is purely coincidental. They are not.
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