Galatians 5 - Unmerited Favor

READ GALATIANS 5 HERE!

 

The number one reason why Jesus came, died, and rose again, was to set us free, to set us free from sin’s pollution, sin’s penalty and sin’s power and to break our slavery to the law. 

 

How wrong would it be to have Christ die for our freedom from the law to just want to be placed under it again?

 

Imagine I told you that the only way you could be sure that you were saved was I you made your bed every day? What if you believed me? You’d become so concerned about making your bed every day that it would become a a ritual in your life and you’d be once again a slave.

 

Paul says in verse 2, ‘Christ will be of no advantage to you’. Your relationship with Him will no longer be one of faith and trust, but one of relying on your attempts to keep this ‘law’. You will be looking to your own efforts to obey, rather than to Him, and what He has done. 

In fact, what He has done on the cross has not changed, but you will get nothing out of it. You will not benefit by it. In other words, you are saying: ‘Christ is not enough. I also have to do this thing as well.’ In other words, your relationship with Him is no longer one of faith and trust alone. Since faith and trust alone is the basis upon which God accepts us, then Christ’s death is of no value to us when we add our works to His.

 

It really boils down to faith! We either trust and have faith that Christ works alone on the cross save us and that we are now under a new covenant of grace and mercy or we are not.

 

Many days I feel unworthy of this amount of grace and I too want to be back under the law so that I can feel “worthy” of the gift of salvation, yet we must remember grace by definition is unmerited favor.

 

Today rejoice that your father in heaven has given us such a gift and live your lives in a manner of gratitude.