Galatians 2:16 – nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus…….
We Christians sometime spend our time trying to obey the 10 Commandments and trying to do the right thing, when in actuality, we don’t need to be trying to keep the law at all.
We will go to church every time the door is open, tithe our 10 percent, we will not smoke, drink, dance, go to movies, we will look down and condemn those who do or do not do what we feel the Bible commands. We feel guilty every time we mess up and think God is going punish us if we do not do everything we know is ‘right’ to do as Christians.
What happened to grace? What happened to being saved through faith in Christ, and Him alone. Not Jesus and baptism, not Jesus and doing this or that, not Jesus and refraining from doing certain things. We are saved through faith in Christ and to be quite blunt, we do not ‘have’ to do any of these things or do not ‘have’ to avoid certain things to be a child of God. We have a freedom in Christ that was bought and paid for with the death and resurrection of Jesus. That does not mean we just live our lives doing whatever we want, but we living in the freedom we have through grace. We do things out of love, love for God and love for others. It is no longer out of obligation or trying to follow any law.
Let’s stop putting all the rules and regulations on others that we think will make them better people and love them with the love of Christ and let God lead them in the way He wants them to go.
I like that Dennis. Thanks for sharing.
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The great jazz singer Abbey Lincoln has a song lyric that says:”Love is an emotion; it will move you to do things’. I have always taken that to mean that when you are touched by the Grace of God, that Grace moves you to be more like God. It moves you to embrace all living beings with the same love and acceptance that God has. It moves you to comfort those in need. It moves you to lend a helping hand. And all you have to do is to follow along.
But a lot of times we ignore this “movement of Grace” and try to replace it with an attitude of “I’m so good, because I don’t do all of those bad and unholy things that sinful people do”.
This “I’m so good because of what I don’t do” is what is meant by trying to be saved by works. And that is not what saves us.
We are saved by God’s love, and that love is freely given. But that love is a moving thing that will start to encourage you to move also.
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