Galatians 6:14
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.
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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