So much so-called Christianity is like any other religion, just a matter of following various rituals. Your whole life can be taken up by this and you may have a sense of fulfillment in doing it, but I assure you it is a false sense. What fulfillment is there is being in chains when there is another master who can set you free. Jesus didn't die for His people only to have them chained up in doing stuff that brings no benefit. Read the book to the Galatians and you will find right back then people were being pushed in the direction of doing things to make them more acceptable. The Jewish Christians wanted the gentile christians in the province of Galatia to take on the Jewish law by being circumcised. Paul wrote specifically to say that this was totally wrong. He said that if the Galatians did this they would be required to keep the whole law of the old covenant and then Christ would be of no use to them. Just take that in. If we try in any way to earn our own salvation, we are on our own and Christ cannot help us. A friend of mine once put it like this:- One day the milkman said to Mrs Jones(this is a milkman in the days when they still delivered to your door)"Mrs Jones I have decided that you will never have to pay anything again for your milk bill, from now on it is all free." Mrs Jones can't quite get the hang of this, but she accepts her milk for two or three weeks. Then one day she rushes out to the milkman and says,"I had some clotted cream this week I think I ought to pay for that." "No, no Mrs Jones I told you it is all free forever." We behave like that trying to make up for our sins by doing something about it ourselves. We must accept that Jesus has paid for it all or we will find ourselves hopelessly trying to make amends when we don't have the ability to do it. Here is this glorious salvation and instead of embracing it we run from it, think we know better. That's how the problem started. God told Adam not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but he and Eve thought they knew better. We haven't progressed much have we.
Every time I take a few days off from my blog my ratings slump. Very rarely do people go back into my old posts and read again. This is a typical attitude of the human heart, always wanting something different. At this time of year we should not be greedily wondering want new thing we will be getting for Christmas. Instead we should be looking at the old, old story, which is ever new of a baby who amazingly was God incarnate, God's gift to those who will put there trust in this one who was to grow up to give His life for His people. Set aside the controversy over whether December 25th is the actual date of His birth.(Shepherds do not keep their sheep out at night in Israel in December.) and set aside time to think about the fact that He did come and ponder if He came to set you free and if your answer is ,"Yes," He will make you free indeed.
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