Page 24 - 《每日活水》靈修月刊7月號

8 真信徒的基本樣式
2:17~21

17 17-18 Have some of you noticed that we
18 * are not yet perfect? (No great surprise,
19 right?) And are you ready to make the accu-
20 sation that since people like me, who go
through Christ in order to get things right
21 with God, aren’t perfectly virtuous, Christ
must therefore be an accessory to sin? The
accusation is frivolous. 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.

19-21 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. Christ’s life showed me how, and
enabled me to do it. I identified myself com-
pletely with him. Indeed, I have been cruci-
fied with Christ. My ego is no longer central.
It is no longer important that I appear righ-
teous 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. 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.

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