Avoid two dangerous extremes in regards to God's law.
Galatians 5:1-6 (NIV)
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
Listen to passage & devotional:
Belgic Confession of Faith, Article 24: The Sanctification of Sinners
We believe that this true faith,
produced in man by the hearing of God’s Word
and by the work of the Holy Spirit,
regenerates him and makes him a “new man,”
causing him to live the “new life”
and freeing him from the slavery of sin.
Therefore,
far from making people cold
toward living in a pious and holy way,
this justifying faith,
quite to the contrary,
so works within them that
apart from it
they will never do a thing out of love for God
but only out of love for themselves
and fear of being condemned.
So then, it is impossible
for this holy faith to be unfruitful in a human being,
seeing that we do not speak of an empty faith
but of what Scripture calls
“faith working through love,”
which leads a man to do by himself
the works that God has commanded
in his Word.
Summary
Once again we turn to Paul's letter to the Galatians - these new Christian converts who'd been convinced they needed to believe in Jesus and continue to meet certain Jewish religious requirements in order to gain salvation. Paul repeats here what he's written so many times in both Galatians and other epistles: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free."
But Sarx (your internal sinful nature) wants to keep you "burdened again by a yoke of slavery." Sarx knows that the more you depend upon religious rites to make you right with God, the less you'll depend upon Christ. One of the regulations the Galatians were depending on was applying the sign on circumcision to new Gentile (non-Jewish) converts to Christianity.
Paul doesn't mince words: if you insist upon keeping any religious rituals, you need to keep every religious ritual, because "Christ will be of no value to you at all (v2)." In other words, if you're not relying on Christ for everything, you better not be relying upon Him for anything.
You do need perfect righteousness to be right with God. The good news we're reminded of in v5 is that "through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope [and need!]."
Dig Deeper
You need to avoid two opposite polarities in how you regard God's law. On one hand, you don't want to be a legalist, like these Galatians were, by insisting that your righteousness before God comes from keeping rules and checking off boxes.
But neither do you want to be an antinomian (literally: one who is against law) by living in a way that has no regard for what God has clearly delineated as being right and wrong in His Word. Such people erroneously conclude that if Jesus is going to forgive all of their sin, they might as well make their pile of sins as big as possible.
Our Confession helps you thread the needle and avoid these dangerous extremes. It says that faith in Christ isn't "an empty faith," but rather that it "leads a man to do by himself the works that God has commanded in his Word."
This is what Paul means at the end of v6 when he writes "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love."
The faith which has been given to you by God, which you "make every effort" to strengthen and increase, shifts your attitude regarding God's law from something that you have to do in order to stave of His wrath to something that you want to do because you love Him and show your gratitude for what Christ has done for you.
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who gave us the perfect righteousness of His Son through the faith given to us by His Spirit;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray you will be able to "stand firm (v1)" and that your faith will "express itself through love (v6)."
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
Read the New Testament in a year! Today: Luke 22
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