Good evening, ladies! I can't believe we are at week five of our study + coming to the end of chapter two. I had planned to reflect on the different parts of these last few verses, but the more I read it the more I just wanted to settle on this:
17 Have some of you noticed that we are not yet perfect? (No great surprise, right?) And are you ready to make the accusation that since people like me, who go through Christ in order to get things right with God, aren't perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an accessory to sin? The accusation is frivolous.18 If I was "trying to be good," I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a charlatan [fraud].
19 What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a "law man" so that I could be God's man.20 Christ's life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.21 I am not going to go back on that. Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily. [MSG]
Throughout all that we have read so far in Galatians, we know that this life is simply not about us. This Greater Story being written has Christ as the center, so very graciously allowing us to play a part in God being glorified. So as we go throughout the rest of this week + then open chapter three, I want us to slightly pause + do some authentic heart-work:
am I "working my head off to please God"? If so.. why?
what is inhibiting my ability to be called "God's man" instead of "law's man"?
This is such a struggle for me, so know that you are not alone! I pray that God would use this Word as a turning point for you - so that you would be known as God's woman, living free of the rule-keeping, people-pleasing nonsense that the enemy is trying to keep you in.
I hope you are blessed greatly in the weeks to come!
Justine
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