OUTLINE:

Jesus Christ
He is the most accessible human being to ever live, yet multitudes live their whole lives estranged from Him, His friendship, His love. This is the great tragedy throughout the ages.

Simplicity
The simplest people are often the ones who bring the most glory to God.

Grace and Works
Any confusion about works is preceded by confusion about grace!

Jesus' Gracious Words
By grace, at salvation, YOU have been given a new nature. Like Jesus' perfect nature, your new nature cannot say/do anything inconsistent with grace! Your old nature is just the opposite, hence Paul's own admission of his struggle between the two in Ro 7.

Justification
If the doctrine of justification were equivalent to the doctrine of salvation, we wouldn't call them out differently. Salvation is a much larger subject than just the judicial/forensic aspects of what happens when God saves us.

Justification
Justification opens the door to reconciliation, which implies a real relationship between a new creature, come alive in Christ, and a living God. This is not merely a judicial reality, but a very personal one.

Justification
Justification is not the close of salvation, it is the doorway. It is how God can righteously adopt His children into His holy family. The penalty is no longer an issue for a saved person. Eternal life is much more than simply being justified, it is a gift, in and of itself!

The New Creature
A true believer, a person who has been saved by grace through faith, has been made "new". This new nature is a partaker of the divine nature of Jesus Christ. This is a grace gift given at salvation, or not at all. It is not something a person chooses after being saved; for that supposition implies a person has not been truly saved from sin (Ro 6:2).

Greek - aorist-active-indicative
Refers to something that dogmatically happened at a specific point in the past and continues to hold true. A perfect example is when a person is saved.

"died to sin"
aorist-active-indicative - from apothnesko - means that when a person is saved, sin loses its dominion over them (they become "dead to sin", from sin's perspective). Being made a "new creature" (2Co 5:17) means being placed "alive to God in Christ" (Ro 6:11).

Ro 6:2 [KJV]
God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

Ro 6:2 [Amplified]
Certainly not! How can we, the very ones who died to sin, continue to live in it any longer?

Efficacious Grace
Grace is perfect. It never fails. It saves and sanctifies. It saves and subjects. It makes new. It changes. Its recipients bear fruit, they persist, they endure, they overcome, they submit and obey. "Efficacious" means "effective; able to produce a desired result".

Perverted Grace
Any gospel that supposes a person is able (not God) to effectuate grace is a perverted gospel, NOT the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Being a "new creature" isn't simply an "ability to become", it "IS become". We don't sanctify the new creature with our volition - the new creature is already sanctified wholly.

Grace and Works
One of the easiest ways to discern if your works are by grace is to understand your motivation. If the predominant motivation isn't towards pleasing God, then you need to step back and question your actual motives.

Grace and Works
There's no blessing guaranteed from works done outside of true grace-orientation. If God sees that your heart is self-centered, fleshly, then you cannot expect the blessing you'd receive if your heart was selfless, godly.

Grace and Works
There's no laundry list or "honey-do" list in the Bible that gives us what are good and bad works. Something may be good for one person, but bad for another. God doesn't judge based on the activity; rather, He looks at the person's heart. This is why you'll never be blessed for simply doing something. Your heart must be "in it".

1st Order Blessings
The blessing is in your attitude, not necessarily how your actions are received by others. YOU must stay focused on the fact that God sees the heart. If you give graciously to others, with proper motivation, God is pleased, even if the other person responds poorly, ungratefully, etc.