No Longer I Who Live, but Christ Who Lives in Me

Galatians 2: 17-21

Have you ever thought of God as a big, scary man in the sky who tells you how to live? This is the view I had of God for a long, long time. I thought, “Why even try to live for God when I know I’m not going to get it right. He expects too much.” I thought I would never be good enough in God’s eyes.

All of this changed the moment I began to understand God’s grace. We are saved through our faith in what Jesus did for us on the cross and not by whether we do enough good things for God or perfectly follow his rules. Good works come as a result of our faith in Jesus, but they do not save us. I had it so twisted in thinking that my “rightness with God” had anything to do with me. It wasn’t about me. It was about Jesus all along.

Believing we can earn salvation through good works and following rules is undermining what Jesus did for us on the cross, saying it is not good enough. Jesus said, “It is finished,” so that’s it. It’s finished. We don’t have to do anything else other than trust in those words.

Of course, we still sin after we accept Christ. It is human nature to sin, and we will never be able to live perfect, sinless lives. It would be unrealistic to expect ourselves to get it right all the time. God certainly doesn’t expect us to be perfect. He knows we are going to mess up and that’s exactly why His grace exists. Because of this grace and our faith, God doesn’t hold our sin against us. We are free.

When we accept Christ as our savior, our old selves die. He transforms us from the inside out, performing a literal miracle within us and giving us new life. It is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives within us. We get to experience life in a whole new way, knowing who we are and what we were made for.

If we could become right with God through our own efforts, there would be no point to God’s grace and Jesus would have died for nothing. It’s important to note that Jesus didn’t want to die on the cross. He literally asked God to spare Him, but God said no, and He did it anyway because it was the only way. The reality is that we can’t do it on our own. We can’t save ourselves. If we could, Jesus wouldn’t have had to die.

Christ not only died for the salvation of the world, but He also died for YOU. We hear this so much in church that it’s easy to forget the weight of what it means.

This is a big deal!! Claim it for yourself and remind yourself of it every day. This isn’t something that changes day to day based on how much time we’ve spent with God or how many good deeds we’ve done. It is already done. It is God’s grace alone and our faith in Jesus that saves us. All we have to do is believe it and receive it.

Carmen K