Marilyn Adamson went further to unveil the incomparable compassion of GOD towards mankind,and the difference between the weight GOD carried in the process of our Christianity vs our effort:
- God chose you before the foundation of the world and called you to be his
- God came to earth for you
- God personally died for your sins
- God made sure someone explained the gospel to you
- God offered to come into your life
- God gave you the desire to know him and respond to him
- You turned to him and received him.
- God entered your life, declared you righteous and forgiven, and called you his own.
- You became a Christian by simply responding to God in faith. That is
the same way he wants you to live the Christian life…by simply
responding to God in faith. The weight of responsibility (and ability)
stays with God. You may be thinking, “That seems simple enough. What’s
the big deal?” The problem is that almost every Christian gets tripped
up on this at one time or another. Why?
It is human nature to think that you owe God for what he has given
you. It is also human nature to think that now that you know the Bible a
little, now that you know a little bit about prayer, or now that you
may understand a little about talking to others about God…now it’s time
to take on the responsibility of being a “good Christian.” There is
nothing that will more quickly zap your joy in knowing God.
And if, on your own, you don’t come to this erroneous conclusion that
you must now perform for God, then other Christians, unfortunately,
are very good at making you feel a measure of guilt, pressure and
expectation to obey God better. This article (hopefully) will give you
an understanding from Scripture about how to live the Christian life
without beginning to feel a weight of false expectations to perform for
God. It will show you how deeply God loves you and how he wants you to
relate to him.
God has not set up your relationship with him as contingent upon you,
but rather contingent upon himself. Let me illustrate from these
verses:
How are we acceptable to God?
You
were declared forgiven by his grace (his kindness), because of Jesus’
death for you. You received his gift of forgiveness by believing that
Jesus has paid for your sin, right? You didn’t earn your forgiveness.
You simply believed God when he says he has forgiven you.
“…when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared,
he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in
virtue of his own mercy.”
“In him we have redemption through
his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of
God’s grace that he lavished on us…”
OK, now that you are a Christian, do the rules change? Does God now
have a long list of expectations for you? No. Now you may think, “Wait a
minute. The Bible is FULL of commands. You can’t read a paragraph
without being told what to do.” That is true. But while God gives you
commands, he also tells you that you can’t fully obey them. In fact, he
tells you that the harder you concentrate on trying to obey them, the
more that you will see your sin.Also, the harder you try,
the more you might feel like a failure, deserving of God’s judgment and
condemnation, and thus the more distant you will feel from God.
The apostle Paul talks about this frustration that he also felt. He
looked at God’s law and said, “The commandment is holy, righteous and
good.” Yet as much as he tried to live according to it, he kept on
sinning. He said, “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot
carry it out…the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”
In complete frustration he says, “What a wretched man I am! Who will
rescue me from this body of death?” His solution? “Thanks be to
God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
The feelings of failure, sin, condemnation need to be faced with
Scripture. “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ
Jesus.”
“For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were
reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having
been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!”
So when you look at God’s commands, don’t attempt to obey them on
your own effort…but instead ask God, who lives inside of you, to
produce that in you. If God says to love each other, he doesn’t intend
for you to march off with enthusiastic responsibility and show God how
loving you can be. Instead he wants you to depend on him, “God, I ask
you to live in my heart and cause me to see this person as you do, and
put love in my heart for this person in the same way that you love them.
I cannot love them on my own, but ask that your great love would be
produced in my life for them.”
We do not mature into independence from God. We mature only by
remaining dependent upon him, and that’s the way he wants it. He wants
you to enjoy the freedom and love of being in relationship with him,
trusting him, depending upon him. He is not expecting you to perform
for him.
The Bible refers to God’s commands as “the law.” Now that you are a
Christian, you are no longer under the law or under God’s judgment and
condemnation – instead you have forgiveness and eternal life. You have
been set free from the law’s demands.
Paul said, we “know that a man is not justified by observing the law,
but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ
Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing
the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.”
How
much does Paul focus on God’s commands and trying to fulfill them? “…I
died to the law so that I might live for God…I have been crucified
with Christ…Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by
faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not
set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained
through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
Before you received Jesus, you were distant from God, able to only
know God’s commands, and you were under God’s judgment. But now you know
Christ and his Spirit lives within you.
God says, “I will put my laws in their hearts and I will write them
on their minds.” And in the same place he says, “Their sins and lawless
acts I will remember no more.” So, instead of the law
being outside you, hovering over you with its demands, God has placed
his law within your heart, and as the Holy Spirit changes you, he gives
you an increasing desire to do what pleases him. Over time, as you
grow in your relationship with God, he will continue to build in you
the desire and capacity to live a holy life before him.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is
not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one
can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do
good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
God has a plan for your life, to use your life to benefit others and
for his glory. Your relationship is now with God, with his life living
in you, producing good works in you.
Oh LORD restore to us the joy of your salvation,and uphold us with your FREE SPIRIT,Amen!
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