Being saved every single day.

Our concepts of sin, guilt, remorse, repentance, forgiveness and grace are all directly connected to our concept of holiness and righteousness.
The more we think of God and esteem his holiness and righteousness, the more we feel sinful, unworthy and grateful and thankful for his grace and the unconditional aspects of his love. The closer to the light we get, the more obvious is the dirt in our own lives.
If someone isn’t convicted of their sin, or maybe not even aware of it, they’re probably not worshipping God or not in the Word. Those who are really in the Spirit and the Word typically think of themselves as the chief of sinners.
I believe our difficulty in comprehending that is that we often overlook the sins of omission and only focus on the sins of commission.
Remember the rich young ruler. He’d carefully considered that he had followed all the “thou shalt nots” but then Jesus said, “sell all you have and come follow me” and he did not. That was revealing that he overlooked that sin is not just what bad we avoid doing, it’s also about what good we avoid doing.
During my era of “willful carnality” as I now think of it, I committed both sins of commission and sins of omission. But truthfully, as I look back, the sins of commission seem rather temporal, even momentary. The sins of omission, –all those years out of fellowship and resisting God’s will for my life–are what now weigh most heavily on my conscience. All that lost time. So much I should have done (through God) but did not do!
So next time we’re in a prayer of confession, let us ask ourselves introspectively, let us consider of ourselves, what we have recently done to love our neighbor, witness our faith, console the sick, help the poor or edify the members of Christ’s Body. Let’s not just focus on what we have avoided doing wrong, let’s evaluate whether we are doing what’s expected of us. Let us not measure ourselves against our own unregenerate self, or against the standards of this world, let us measure ourselves against the measure set by Jesus Christ.
By doing so, even those among you who are considered to be “spiritual” or “mature” will recognize and appreciate that salvation in the New Testament is not merely about that one day in the past when you were “saved”, it’s about being saved continually throughout your life, and it’s about waiting and trusting that upon our death we will be truly and finally saved from sin, saved not just from the penalty of sin but from its power over us. (In the NT, there are three tenses for salvation, speaking of “having been saved” “being saved now” and “one day being saved).
It’s not about feeling secure in our salvation, it’s about needing God to persevere with us, while trusting that God will keep his promise and that we will in fact do so. It’s not about observing the past progress of our sanctification; it’s keeping one’s mind on how much more progress is necessary.
Let us not be merely thank God for having saved us one day in the past, let us thank God saving us each and every day. Let us feel the need to be saved that day, notwithstanding any assurance of salvation that we understand.
Let us thank God for saving us that very day we’re thanking Him for it. Let us thank God for saving us tomorrow, because we know that even tomorrow we will once again fall short, its’ our old nature.
And let us not be proud of our ability to avoid the don’ts. Let us strive to make our calling and election sure. But let us also, no matter how “mature” we might be in man’s eyes, ever be mindful that we still remain and will remain until we are glorified, merely sinners benefiting from unconditional mercy.