This is where I stand since my last post. God’s done some work.

Have some of you noticed that we are not yet perfect? And are you ready to make the accusation that since people like me, who seek to be justified by Christ, aren’t perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an accessory to sin? The accusation is frivolous. If I was “trying to be good,” I would be reconstructing the same old barn that I tore down and acting as a charlatan. What actually took place is this: I tried keeping the rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work; so I quit so that I could simply be, so I could live in harmony with God. Christ’s life showed me how and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him; indeed I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven [even] to please God. Christ lives in me: the life you see me living is lived by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go 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 relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God came by rule keeping, then Christ died gratuitously. We are justified by faith in Christ. Justification means being put together the way we are supposed to be. Made right–not improved, not decorated, not veneered, not patched up, but justified. Our fundamental being is set in right relationship with God. This setting right is not impersonal fixing; it is personal reconciliation. We are never right in ourselves, but only in response to and as a result of God working in and through us.

Gal. 2–The Message

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