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February 24
No Righteousness Through the Law
We are to be holy as God is holy. We
should desire to follow the law because it
pleases God. We should want to obey
because obedience is a way of showing our love
for the Lord. And we should want to obey
God because sin hurts our relationship with God.
We should not obey the law of God because we
believe that we are better people because of it
however. This was the major problem of the
Pharisees. They believed that they were
righteous because they followed the law.
They compared themselves to others and saw that
they were better people.
Instead of seeing the sin in their lives - even
if it truly was less sin than the average person
- they were blinded by their own perceived self
righteousness.
We should obey God out of love, not because it
is what we're supposed to do. The
Pharisees obeyed because they thought it was
what they were supposed to do, not because they
actually wanted to do it.
If we were capable of being righteous on our
own, Jesus didn't have to die. In claiming
to have upheld the law, the Pharisees and others
like them claimed that Jesus wasted His time and
his life. We need Jesus because we can't
keep the law. But we continue to try to
keep the law not out of duty but of love for
God. |
