Did you get your Christmas shopping done yet? Me? NO! Barb and I have started well and we hope to finish strong! Nothing like spending your busy nights at the mall. And this brings me to what I’ve been thinking about…finishing strong!

The messages on Sunday morning have been from the book of Galatians. The study of these four verses in chapter four has been intentional. The beginning of Galatians Four is a foundation for us to understand why God sent His Son and what takes place in a believer’s heart when we receive redemption. The background of Galatians is “legalism.” The religious Jews were promoting the view that the way to get to God was through keeping The Law, and the way to stay close to God was through the same process. Paul wrote Galatians to refute this error. Two verses come to mind,

Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?
(Galatians 3:3)

You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth? (Galatians 5:7)

Remember: The way we got in is the way we stay in! That means that if we are saved by grace through faith then that is the way God wants us to live. He doesn’t want us to revert to some list of rules or “badges” that we wear. Yes, the works are important. But they are only important in that they point to the reality of our faith in God’s amazing grace!

If we revert to keeping the law in order to be accepted by God then we make the grace of God cheap and we make the death of Christ empty. Why? Glad you asked. If we can keep our salvation by keeping the rules or wearing the right “badges” then Christ really didn’t have to come and die on the cross. The whole of Christianity is then not something God did when He sent Jesus to be born in a cradle and end up on a cross; the whole of Christianity is women and men scratching out eternal significance on their own. It becomes our religion and not God’s relationship with us.

So, let’s not cheapen God’s grace by making it performance oriented…it must be grace oriented. We do what we do because we are God’s children and we want to finish strong!

Grace & Peace, Scott