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 become God's man. Christ's life showed me how and enabled me to do it. It is no longer important that I appear righteous 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 His life for me. I am not going 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.
-from Galations 2 in The Message Bible
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