Our eldest son, returning from a weekend retreat, was so eager to tell me about how for the first time he really began to understand the difference between living by the flesh and walking in the Spirit. Yesterday, Brian Habig, the pastor of Downtown Pres. in Greenville, SC, said something new about the Holy Spirit: the Spirit helps us love God by revealing to us who Jesus really is. (John 14). The lifestyle we are called to as Christians is so very different than the lifestyle the world tries to lay on us. It is really good news, this news that our new lives of loving and serving God does not depend on our “working our heads off to please God”! Listen to Galatians 3: 1- 8 in The Message translation:
You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a hex on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it’s obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives. His sacrifice on the cross was certainly set before you clearly enough.
Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up!
Answer this question: Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you? Don’t these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God.
Is it not obvious to you that persons who put their trust in Christ (not persons who put their trust in the law!) are like Abraham: children of faith? It was all laid out beforehand in Scripture that God would set things right with non-Jews by faith. Scripture anticipated this in the promise to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed in you.”