http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAhDGYlpqY

Christ calls us into a Body, not a religion                                                      

We cannot claim to love God unless we learn to love those who are difficult to love. Christianity can be the most cliquish, segregated, exclusive club in America, or it can become the most vibrant, inclusive, and compassionate gathering of people known to the world. It all comes down to how we understand our life in Christ.

Religious people focus on a few primary words to describe their walk. Holiness or Purity (substitute words here like above reproach or integrity or good person or saint or other words which communicate the notion that the person is morally superior to others); Law (substitute rules or does what is right or good reputation or makes the church proud or great role model or however you choose to say it); Accountability (someone who is worthy of praise rather than punishment or someone who holds themselves to the standards set up for them or holds others to the standard they set up for them, etc.) On the surface these seem to be great criteria in order to judge a person’s faith. Only, they are not faith words. They are religious words. These are words that are used and defined by every religion in the world. Every religion has a notion of purity, a type of Law, and a system of accountability. The fact that all religions have these concepts is mentioned here simply to point out that we do not need Christianity to develop systems of holiness, Law and accountability. Each of these exist apart from the Christian faith. Christianity is different than other world religions precisely because we answer the questions of holiness, Law, and accountability in a different way. Instead of looking to ourselves to answer the questions these words create, we look to Someone outside ourselves, we look to One who provides these things for us, things that Jesus taught we cannot possibly provide for ourselves.

According to Jesus, we are not, nor can we be, holy, unless we are made holy by the actions of One whose provision of holiness is independent of our actions. According to Jesus, the Law has the opposite purpose within Christianity it has in other religions. The Law is not given to provide a standard to live by or to change us in any way. There is no Law given that can change a person. Instead, the Law has been given to point us to the total depravity we all share, in order to redirect us toward the grace of God that can only be found in the Son of God. As Paul states, if a law had been given that could provide salvation, then Christ would be unnecessary. Faith in Jesus becomes the only answer we have after the Law has fulfilled its ultimate purpose in each of us, exposing the futility of humans to obey it and the utter helplessness we share in ever keeping it. The Law is not a standard to live by, but instead a standard to die by, a moral mirror which reveals to us the utter futility that “religion” is faced with in bringing about true change in any of us. According to Jesus, we are no longer held accountable for our actions or our choices once He has entered our lives. This is not because we live up to the standard God sets for us, but rather because Jesus has. God can no longer hold us accountable for the things Jesus has been held accountable for, namely, our sin. When Paul cries out in Romans 8 that there is “now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” he is not denying the place and need for accountability, he is declaring to us that accountability is applied to Christ on our behalf. It is confusing to me that people still try to credit our sin to our own account, as if Jesus had never come. What we deserve is given to him, and what He deserves is given to us. The Christian faith is not about accountability, it is about Grace, freedom and forgiveness. When we forget these things, we not only misunderstand what Jesus has accomplished, but we undermine the cross, make a mockery of the finished work of Jesus, and eventually end up practicing religion rather than living in Christ.
 

It is not that Jesus has erased or nullified the standards above. Holiness, in and of itself, is a great thing. The Law is holy and good, and is needed in order to give our lives structure and goals to aspire toward. Accountability is a means toward a very important end, so that we can measure our growth in Christ and continue to allow him to transform us into the image of Christ living within us. But none of these things are the standard by which the Christian faith is defined. You see, Jesus has raised the standard, Jesus asks more of us than holiness, the Law, or accountability. Jesus introduced a new notion of what religion can be. And the word he gives us is simple to speak, yet so very difficult to live. Love. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself”. Galatians 5 lists for us the fruit of the Spirit, once again pointing to the truth that we can only live out these attributes as we learn to remove ourselves from the equation and allow God to live through us. Ultimately, the only question worth asking when it comes to evaluating the life of Christ in a person is this – Are you yielding your life to the Spirit of God at work in you? There is no other measuring stick for the Christian life. Paul even goes so far to say that when the fruit of the Spirit are manifest in us, there is no Law that can speak against us. The reason. There is no Law that can contain, measure, test, evaluate, or add to the work of the Spirit in our lives. And each and every one of these fruit turn out to be a manifestation of the Love of God a person’s life. Show me your faith by your keeping of Law and tradition, and I’ll show you a good religious person, a good church lady. Show me your faith by your acts of love and compassion toward a lost and dying world, and I’ll show you a person whose heart is a home for the Spirit to move and breathe.