I Quit!

No more! No way and no how am I going to keep trying to keep the law! I can’t; never could! That is why Jesus Christ died, was buried, and rose from the dead. In this He established a new covenant; a new way in which we are saved by GRACE (see Hebrews 8:7-13)

So I quit. I stop. I rest in Him and Him alone because instead of getting mad at us, He made a way for us to be in right relationship with Him through Jesus Christ.

 “… immense in mercy and with an incredible love, He embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on His own, with no help from us! Then He picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. Now God has us where He wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all His idea, and all His work. All we do is trust Him enough to let Him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join Him in the work he does, the good work He has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.” (Ephesians 2:4-10 MSG)

“The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for.

And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by Him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.

I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience His resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with Him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it.

I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me.” (Philippians 3:7-12 MSG)

So, I quit! I’m no longer trying on my own for perfection coming from the law. I only want that which comes through my faith in Jesus. For Him I take the loss of everything and I look on everything as naught because I believe that nothing can outweigh the advantage of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. All I want is to know Jesus Christ and the power of His rising.  All I want is to know my Lord and in Him to abide.       

All Scripture is taken From The Message Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson)