May I never boast about anything except
the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in this
world has been crucified, and the world's interest in me has also died. Galatians
6:14
You can have Christian
law just as much as you can have Mosaic law; you can be in bondage in
Christianity just as much as men were in Judaism. Christianity can be made into
an imposed system just as much as Mosaic law was, and there are many Christians
today who live under the fear of the "Thou shalt" and the "Thou
shalt not" of a legalistic conception of the Christian life. You can take
the Bible as God's standard for your life and try to fulfill it and yet still
be burdened with a sense of constant failure. It is God's standard, and it is a
very exhaustive one which leaves no part of the practical life untouched, but
those who make the effort to try to live up to it only end in disillusion. No,
it is not just a matter of a Book but of a Person, the Person who did live up
to that standard, absolutely fulfilling every least demand with the most
perfect success, so satisfying God to the full. By His death He has delivered
us from the bondage of legal demands. This same Person now lives in us by His
Holy Spirit, seeking to work out that perfect will of God not on the basis of
some binding instructions from without but as a living force within. We have
the law written in our hearts. To be in Christ is a matter of Life and not of
legalism.
Christ, and Christ
crucified, is the power of God to bring deliverance from sin, from the flesh,
from the law and from the world. "God forbid that I should glory save in
the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me
and I to the world" (Galatians 6:14). Paul was not glorying that he could enjoy
so much of the world and yet have a clear conscience, but was enthusiastic
about having been delivered from the world. For believers the only possible way
of staying in this world is to know that they no longer belong to it.
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