In the book of Galatians, Paul enters into battle with the religious experts who try to force a legalistic life upon the new believers. Right from the first few verses of this letter Paul makes clear that 
our relationship with God the father is by God’s grace. It is God’s grace that saves sinners. He writes in Chapter 1, verses 3-5, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” It is a true gift as Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:8-9, “it is a gift of God. It’s not of yourself. It’s not of works lest any man should boast.” But like the Galatians it’s so easy to turn from Grace to Works again. It appeals to our human nature and seems to be the default setting for mankind. Commenting on the radical grace of God Bush and Due write in their commentary, “The gospel’s radical negation of ceaseless striving and hard work is unfathomable to us. Our thoughts can’t produce it; our will doesn’t originate it. It’s otherworldly, ‘according to the will of our God and Father’ (Gal 1:4). Christ suffered not because we are worthy, or because we moved him to act, but only because it was the will of God.” They quote Peter’s sermon in Acts 2:23 then, “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” Their conclusion is, “It’s hard to imagine a statement better calculated to oppose the intrusion of human will in salvation.”
Many will argue that it’s human will that initiates our salvation and it’s human will that maintains our salvation. Yet John chapter 1 argues a more secure perspective on it. John 1:12-13, says, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” When Jesus talked to Nicodemus about what he needed for salvation, Jesus said you must be “born again.” But he was talking about a spiritual birth of course. Jesus explained it all: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born? Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
If it’s up to me and my weak will, i’m in a tenuous situation in my relationship with God. But since it’s not my will that saved me it’s not my will that will preserve me! I was a pretty rebellious teen at times and I often regret the things I said to my parents. But there was something truer than my feelings, desires, or attitudes that maintained my relationship with them. I could denounce them and say “I’m not your son.” I could even change my name if I wanted to and try to be somebody else. I could ignore my parents and live a life without any relationship with them. But none of the efforts of my will, attitudes of my mind, dispositions of my heart make me less my father’s son. There is a force greater than me that maintains the bond! That’s what it’s like for all those born of the Spirit through faith in Jesus Christ. The older I get, the more grateful I become for this fact!
without a doubt, those with incurable ailments and diseases paid the most attention. As He enters a village on the border between Galilee and Samaria, He sees ten lepers crying out to Him from a distance “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Leprosy was a highly contagious life-threatening skin disease that had plagued the region for centuries.
sister!” Or she’d say, “for the Love of God, stop picking on your little brother.” More than once I heard her say, “for the Love of God, please do your homework.” Yep, my mother thought that the love of God should have been a motivating force in my life for good. But honestly it didn’t really motivate me at all. I never was very nice to my sister. I never stopped picking on my little brother and seldom did I do my homework.
give us rest for our souls. In Jesus’ call to us who are overburdened, He speaks of taking His yoke upon us. Now we all know that a yoke in that agricultural society was a wooden press that bound two animals together who would then contribute equally to the pulling of the plow by putting their strength together. Some yokes were extremely heavy according to some commentators and some were lighter but all involved some kind of a burden. But the yoke that Jesus was referring to was the heavy burden that the religious leaders had placed around the necks of the people binding them to a law that was unbearable. That yoke, the Yoke of the Law, only drove us to the recognition of our true sinfulness. Jeremiah made this clear when he used the idea of a yoke in his lament. In Lamentations 1:14 we read “…My transgressions were bound into a yoke…they were set upon my neck.”
while on Saturdays. I was 15 at the time turning 16 on January 15th of 1963. The City Golden Gloves Tournament was held on January 25-26. I just made the age cut off by 10 days. There were two requirements we had to meet. We had to be 16 years of age and we had to weigh at or below our weight class. I was a flyweight the lightest of all the classes which was the class of everything up to 112 pounds. I weighed in at 110 ¾ pounds. That was my sophomore year of High School. Now you know why I didn’t do well in football. I met the requirements! Interestingly enough I was the only 16 year old that weighed less than 112 pounds that year. I think I might be the only one, or one of a very few, that hold a Golden Glove Championship title without every throwing a punch or receiving a punch!
father was furious over what he considered a waste of his son’s education. Desperate to find relief from the weight of his guilt, the young man once spent six hours in the confessional with the vicar of the monastery Johann Von Staupitz. Rumor had it that the comprehensive breadth of his confessions rivaled that of Saint Augustine himself after whom the monastery was named. Staupitz would later say of this young man, Martin Luther, that he would confess for hours on end without confessing “anything interesting.”
about Jesus and hung on to the old laws and rituals and insisted they were essential to true faith. But Paul tells Timothy that some of these legalists “have swerved from the faith.” Ken Taylor in his Living Bible Paraphrase translates 1 Timothy 6:21 with these words, “Some of these people have missed the most important thing in life—they don’t know God.” There is a lot of liberty taken with that translation but I think he captures the main idea.
interceptions. I remember the days when our defense was a force to be reckoned with, intimidating every team in the nation. Now our defense intimidates no one.