FREEDOOOM!!!!

I absolutely love the way Paul starts out his letter to the Philippians. It is classic Jesus. Encouraging us to rejoice and be glad in the Lord and then says that he doesn't mind telling the church the same things again. I feel like God is constantly telling me the same stuff over and over again. It seems like I am much better at falling back to my old self than I would like to believe. And that's the struggle isn't it? That we can't do it on our own. Although the law isn't burdensome, it is pretty dang hard to follow every single point at all times (well murder is a pretty easy one to not break). God created the law knowing that we can't follow it completely! That's why we have Jesus. Jesus is the plan from the beginning! The whole of scripture points towards that! Man! God is good!

I hate that I think this way but I tend to definitely get caught in the "performance Christianity" mindset. That, because I'm a Christian, I have to act a certain way, do or restrain from doing certain things specifically because I'm a Christian and the Bible says to act in those ways. I forget the promise of God that He has FREED us from those thoughts. "It is by grace that we have been saved, not by works". Think back to when we were in sin. What role did we play in earning salvation? At what point did God say 'Alright Mike, you've been good enough to earn your salvation." The point is there wasn't. We can not earn justification. We can not be declared innocent and be made excellent before God on our own accord. Jesus came to do that for us! Jesus died so that we may be declared innocent though we are guilty and treated excellent even though we don't deserve it! If Christ's death was enough to set us free from sin in the first place, what makes us think that now we need to perform well in order to continue to be accepted? We must get out of this "performance Christianity" and rest in the person of Jesus. Knowing that He is the reason that we are saved. We are free from the penalty of the Law because Christ took that penalty upon Himself! AMEN!

But I love how Paul puts it in verses 12-14. Paul explains that he is not already perfect... No man is perfect except for Jesus. Even though we're saved, the fact of the matter is that we still sin. I sin. As my ESV study Bible puts it "The full glory of the resurrection remains in the future". Though we are free from the penalty of sin, we continue to be more and more like Christ as a response to what He has done. We press onward despite falling. The ultimate prize is the fullness of what God has in store for our lives; His blessings.

We are made righteous through faith. Not by works. Have you ever stopped to think about how Abraham was declared righteous before God even though the law of Moses was given much, much later in history? We celebrate our freedom from sin and freedom from trying to impress God through the person of Jesus Christ.