Thankfulness starts with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  This evening, we remember our chains of bondage before Christ.  Our bondage was an enslavement to sin and we were storing up God’s wrath as we suppressed truth in unrighteousness.  But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love….

Our salvation in Christ Jesus is the core of all thankfulness.  In 2 Timothy 1:9, we learn to remember five truths about our salvation:

1. It us undeserved love, because we deserve only His wrath.
2. It is an unlikely conversion, because it is a holy calling.
3. It is unmerited and not according to works.
4. It is undefiled because it is authored by a Savior who is perfect.
5. It is an unbounded decree granted from all eternity.
   1. Before anything was created, Christ Jesus’ righteousness was ordained to cover my sin.
   2. His love was decreed from eternity past and it would cover for all of eternity forward.
   3. The timing of the holy calling was decreed and perfectly executed at the exact moment in which God ordained us to believe and repent.
   4. And gloriously, it would be only available through Christ’s sacrifice and not by works (cf. Ephesians 1:4).