What A Deal!!

Isaiah 1:18  “Come now, let’s settle this,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool."

What a deal!  Thanks to Jesus Christ, we bring all of our junk to God and in exchange He gives us eternal life.  I bring my rusted out bucket of bolts and in exchange I get gold.  I bring my sickness and pain and He gives me health and relief.

Galatians 5 says that Christ has set us free.  Paul goes on in the chapter to write that since our freedom is based on Christ and what He did for us and it is not based on us or what we can do for ourselves it is up to Him to KEEP us free!  Further, he writes that when we try to add our own works or other men's regulations to what Christ already did we only muck it up...even saying in verse 4 that when we try to make ourselves right with God by keeping the law, we fall from God's grace!

What's more, the apostle goes on to right in verse 6 that when we place our faith in Christ, the rite of circumcision (which represents the Law and other regulations) are of NO BENEFIT.

Read Galatians 5 and tell me it can be read any other way!  It's so plain...right there in black and white...the words of the great Apostle Paul there for us to see.  No interpretation needed.  To see it any other way is to spin it into something that was not intended.

It's all about Him.  Not about us!  What a relief!  My encouragement for you is to stop trying to please God by the acts of your own righteousness which are as filthy rags in his sight (Isaiah 64:6).  Live out your freedom in Christ, without fear that He is out to get you.  You cannot EARN His love by doing good.  He cannot love you more than He does right now.  He loved you enough to die for you while you were in sin (Romans 5:8).  Let your works flow out of your love for Him rather than an effort to gain his forgiveness.

Thank you Jesus for loving me.  Thank you for taking my badness and exchanging it for YOUR goodness.  Thank you for giving me LIFE for the death I deserved.  Thank you for demolishing the death grip that slavery to sin and the law that held me in bondage.  Thank you for freedom in Christ!!