We can serve God out of a cringing feeling of failure to measure up, or we can serve Him out of gratitude for the work of grace He has fully brought into our life. Grace is by far a superior motivation to guilt. God doesn’t want us running holes in our shoes on some guilt trip. He doesn’t want us living life by some Levitical checklist of rules and regulations. He wants us to be free -- not just from sin, but from the chafing collar constraint that the Law clamped around our necks.
God wants us to be free, He wants us to live free, as Hebrews 10:15-18 indicates: “The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First He says: ‘This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put My laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.’ Then He adds: ‘Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.’ And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.”
Having the Law in our hearts as opposed to an external standard of stone is the primary difference between the New Covenant and the Old (Jeremiah 31:31-33). The power of God’s Spirit residing within us is sufficient for us to live fully, to live fruitfully, and to live freely, unfettered from the shackles of sin and from slavery to legalism…
“It was for freedom that Christ set us free, therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)
-- Charles R. Swindoll in “The Preeminent Person of Christ: A Study of Hebrews”
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