Qualified While Unqualified

Here is the audio for the sermon I preached this past Sunday, January 16, 2011, entitled "Qualified While Unqualified". The text for this sermon comes from Colossians 1:12-14, and the purpose of this sermon is to focus our hearts on giving thanks to God for qualifying us for an eternal inheritance, even while we were unqualified and even disqualified from it of ourselves. God qualifies us for this eternal inheritance by delivering us from the power of darkness and transferring us into the Kingdom of His beloved Son. The basis for this qualification, deliverance and transference, is Jesus Christ and Him alone. By His perfect life and substitutionary death on the cross, absorbing the wrath of God for our sins, God is able to declare us righteous in His sight and is able to adopt us as sons. We must be careful to not think that our works or anything that we can do will qualify us. These acts are by grace alone, and they are received by the empty hands of faith alone.