really knew

Sunday June 30^th, Galatians 5:  1&2 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.  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. The question for Paul and for the Galatians was whether someone “had” to be circumcised in order to be a Christian.  It is the law vs. grace argument that dominated Paul’s ministry and much of Christendom today.  Circumcision itself may not seem like much of an issue today but the world if full of “You are saved by grace and all you have to do is….” Christianity, which is really the same argument.  What is at issue today are the many other litmus test the children of God have devised to prove you are a true Christian.  Keep in mind that any litmus test is always for the other and is devised for the strengths and/or phobias of the giver of the test.  Christ made you free so that you could bring that freedom to others.  Christ did not make you free so that you could impose a new slavery on someone else and in the process burden yourself.  But all of us do it some of the time and some of us do it all the time.  Just ask your friends who don’t go to church why they don’t go to church, or if they say they don’t believe in God, ask them to tell you about that God they don’t believe in.  You will get a vast array of assumptions, true or not, about the rules and slaveries of the Christian walk.  In the face of this, our calling is to preach salvation by Grace, nothing more, nothing less.  What difference would it make in how you live your life today if you knew, really knew, Jesus loved you and you were going to spend eternity in heaven?  Now go live it in grace.