Blessings of Faith

(Galatians 3:4-9)

We see today so many Christians and so many churches who are bound up under the confines of the law. They believe that they MUST keep the law and worship under the law to be saved.

This is in spite of the fact that most of them also give praise to God and thanks to Jesus Christ who has taken away the law and set them free from sin. And it is one of the most puzzling oxymoron’s of the modern church: how they can believe they are both under law and set free from it. It is like saying you can be in two places at the same time. Can a person be in New York and Sydney at the same time? No? Then how can a person be under the law and free from the law at the same time?

Freedom from sin and freedom from the law were and are two fo the key promises of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Do you want to be truly free? Then read on!

The Blessings of Faith

First we must understand that all of the blessings of God are received by faith. In our case, it is specifically through faith in what God has achieved through and in Jesus Christ.

Prior to Jesus Christ appearing, the only people who had the blessings of God were the people of Israel, and only the high priest had direct access to God once a year in the temple. Every other Israelite had to come before God through the intermediaries of the Levitical priesthood.

But once Christ appeared and died, the blessings of God were open to all mankind, regardless of race, colour, status or ability. The blessings of God were open to all people on the basis of faith.

And faith is not about living under the confines of the law. Faith has nothing to do with living under the law. In fact, living under the law will negate the effect of faith and take you away from the grace of God. Don’t believe me? Get your bible (or look it up on the web) and read Galatians chapter 5, verses 1 to 4.

It is by FAITH that we receive the promises of God, not the law. It is by FAITH that we receive Jesus Christ. It is by FAITH that God gives us the Holy Spirit to teach, counsel and guide us into all the promises of God; to lead us to the place of perfection like God.

None of these great blessings of faith are possible for those living under the law. That is why God, through Jesus Christ set us free from the law…so we could live by FAITH.

Righteousness by Faith

So why do churches preach the need to live under the law? Why do Christians blindly accept what they are told by those churches and remain bound in the law, bound under the power of sin and falling away from the grace of God?

There are two main reasons why these things are so. One is to do with what the churches are doing and the other is what Christians are attempting.

The churches who follow this line of teaching, keeping people bound under the law, do it for power and control. Yes, it may seem like a good thing for people to keep the law of God, but when God Himself tells us that the law will “sever you from Christ,” and that, “You have fallen away from grace,” (Galatians 5:4), then I ask, who should you listen to?

Should you listen to a preacher or a church that promotes living under the law, when God has told us in the Bible that we are freed from it and to continue to live under the law separates from Christ and the grace of God?

The power that the law gives to preachers and churches today, and has over the past two millennia, is the same power Jesus saw in the Pharisees, and rejected as hypocrisy. The Pharisees used their power, based on the rules of the law, to lord it over the people rather than to help them. Churches today who use the law in the same way, who force people to tithe, which is not part of the new covenant, and who insist that congregations do many things that are based in law rather than grace, are separating people from the fullness of the gospel of Christ and keeping these people away from God’s grace.

The second reason that people use themselves to remain under the power of the law, is self-righteousness. They believe that by keeping the law they can stand righteous before God. They are wrong.

No man can stand righteous before God through the law, because in the law comes the knowledge of sin. The only righteousness by which man can stand before God, is the righteousness received by faith in Jesus Christ. And this righteousness does not come through the law but by faith, just as all of the rest of the promises of God come by faith.

Righteousness is possible, but it cannot be achieved through living under the power of law because the law is the power of sin. Do you think I am making this up? Get your bible again and look at the words in 1 Corinthians 15:56, which says,

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

Abraham was reckoned righteous through his faith, because he believed the words of God. We too are children of Abraham when we too follow his example of faith and believe in Jesus Christ. Without faith there can be no righteousness because the only source of true righteousness that exists is in God.

Seek the Truth

If you want to find the truth about these things, don’t just take my word for it. If you do that, then how is that any different than just blindly accepting what some preacher, teacher, pastor, minister or church is saying?

Go, find out for yourself. Seek and you will find. That is the promise of the Lord in Matthew chapter 7, verse 7. Seek the truth.

Remember also the words of Jesus when He said,

You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. (John 8:32

Ask yourself what Jesus REALLY meant by these words. What are you supposed to be being freed from? What is it that the truth will set you free from?

He was telling us that the truth will make us free from all the things that the law could not free us from. The truth will make you free from sin, law, the passions of the flesh and ultimately, death.

Only the truth can set us free. And the truth can only be found through the blessings of faith. You cannot be set free from all of these things by being an adherent of the law, only by receiving the truth or freedom through faith in Jesus Christ.

So ask Him. Seek the truth. Knock on the door and search diligently for the truth knowing that God will show you.

If you so desire, contact me by email or through comments here and I will answer any and all questions you may have. My desire is to help ALL Christians find the fullness of the truth, not by following me, but by following Christ.

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