LIVE IT! - Week 3

This week's sermon was a bit heavy on personal testimony for me - I felt a real link between a real life situation and what had happened with Peter and Paul in this passage

(Read Galatians 2:11-21 here)

Paul is using a personal testimony of his time in Antioch to illustrate for the Galatians how they should act in their present situation... and in many senses how we should act in situations we find ourselves in as well.

We are truly free and we should not be held down by any tradition, religious piousness, incorrect teaching or human arrogance. We should always strive to live out this Gospel we have received.  And amazingly this Gospel keeps us in-line, not because of strict rules, but because of overwhelming love.  When you are loved so purely you naturally want to engage with that person in a pure way.  You want to share that love in the same manner it has been shown to you... it's a natural reaction... not a regulation of a law.

Where Paul says; "For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." [Gal 2:19-20]; we get a glimpse at how that natural reaction we have to love is implicated because of the change that the Gospel has in our lives.

The life I now live physically here on earth is powered by my faith in Jesus... and that faith is powered because of the love He has for me and that love was shown in the amazing way He gave himself for me on the cross.  That's why I seek to help the poor, comfort the hurting... why I choose not to get drunk or be sexually immoral.  It's not because there is a law that says I should or shouldn't do those things... it's because the person who set me free has a love so pure I want to live a life that is worthy of that.