Galatians 5:1-6 (Message)
The Life of Freedom
5 Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.
2-3 I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ’s hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.
4-6 I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.
Paul wrote passionately in this passage concerning the freedom we have in Christ. We must not get wrapped up in the legalism of religious practices. In doing so, we negate the redemptive work of Christ. We must remember that we are not saved because of our own works but because of the love of Christ. When we begin to walk in religious laws ( I am not talking about God's principles and commandments) we take the stance that our keeping these practices is what keeps us saved. We are not saved by any religious practice. It is because of man's failure to keep the Mosiac law that God graced us with a better way. Thank God we are under the dispensation of grace!
Never allow anyone to enslave you with religious rules and bylaws. The Holy Ghost should always be your guide. We never want to fall from grace or allow any man made laws to overtake us. We want to walk in love and in a personal relationship with Christ not follow rituals or religious steps or plans. Christ wants relationship not religion. Do a self examination. Have you fallen into ritual living? Going through a scheduled religious plan? This is not what God desires. Christ is alive and that my friend is what He wants from you a relationship that is alive and fueled by love not religious practices.
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