Who Deserves to be Saved?

The answer you give to this question probably depends on your upbringing.
Jews might believe it is them, because they belong to the nation God chose to head up his kingdom.
Others might believe it is those who live good, moral lives, because they follow the Ten Commandments
Still others might believe it is those who place their faith in Jesus Christ, because of the teaching of their church.

However, the Bible suggests that none of these deserves to be saved.

There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
[Romans 3 : 22, 23  NIV]

This seems pretty hopeless doesn't it?
Although no one deserves to be saved, God's solution completes the sentence above.

and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
[Romans 3 : 24  NIV]

Even though none of us deserves it, Jesus has provided all of us with the solution.
The Bible reveals this in many places and these occurrences have been discussed in many previous posts.

But today this post will focus on the word 'freely' from verse 24.

Other translations use 'as a gift' or 'without charge' or 'by the free gift' or 'gratuitously' for the word 'freely' in the NIV text.

The Greek word under-pinning 'freely' is 'dorean', and it pops up in a few other places. We'll use one of those places to get a fuller understanding of its meaning.

John 15 : 18 - 25 records a training session conducted by Jesus for his disciples.
In preparing his disciples for ministry without him, Jesus warned them that they would be hated as he was.
He finishes with:

"They hated me without reason."
[John 15 : 25  NIV]

Other translations use 'gratuitously' or 'without a cause' or 'undeservedly' for the phrase 'without reason' in this sentence.

This final statement could be paraphrased as:
"I've given them no cause for this."
or
"They've just decided to hate me in spite of what I taught or showed them."
or
"Nothing I did warranted me being hated."
or
"I certainly didn't deserve their hatred."

If we use these underlying thoughts, we would understand verse 24 to be saying that we are all undeservedly justified by his grace, even though we have given God no cause or reason for him doing so.

So, who deserves to be saved?
Clearly, no one.
We have given God no reason to befriend us, let alone save us.

But he's done it anyway!
The "contract" was signed 2000 years ago.

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
[2 Corinthians 9 : 15  NIV]

Blessings, Barry