Are you concerned about the moral issues of the day?

Believers, are you concerned about morality and doing the right thing always? Don't put the cart before the horse! Trying to live a holy life by sheer willpower and determination or by suppressing the urge to sin is like scrubbing only the outside of a maggot-infested pot and leaving the inside unwashed. The outside can look clean for a while but sooner or later, what's inside will start crawling out. 

This is how come Peter denied Jesus. Before his strength failed him, he was 100% sure that he would never deny Jesus, much like many of us know that we will never do such and such; but Peter still denied our Lord because he relied on his own strength, which is what the devil wants you to keep doing because it keeps even believers in the realm of failure and condemnation; and with condemnation comes judgment - all the curses in Deut.28!

Believers in Christ, our Heavenly Father will never be angry with us or rebuke us (Isaiah 54:9). He swore it! As the righteousness of God in Christ, no matter what we do or do not do, we are still righteous in His eyes because our reconciliation and right standing with Him was never obtained through our own effort to begin with; it was bought with the precious blood of our Saviour Jesus! It is an everlasting gift that has nothing to do with our sinning or lack of it. Our Heavenly Father is always happy with us because of what our Lord Jesus has done for us. In God's eyes, we are always spotlessly clean, even when we stumble. With Christ, He gives us all things FREELY (Romans 8:32) and not because of some filthy rags fasting, seed sowing or bodily neglect done to curry His favour. He is our Daddy!

But many people, even pastors and leaders, think that this teaching will make people go on a sinning spree and stop paying tithes! (Paul was also wrongly accused of preaching that it is okay to continue sinning because of God's grace). So to balance things out with their knowledge of good and evil (the tree of which Adam and Eve ate and died,) they preach a mixture of law and grace. They say "Yes you are saved by grace but you still have to make sure that you don't sin and be generous so God can bless you." Not so! This mixture is the lukewarmness that our Lord Jesus spoke of in His letter to one of the churches in Revelation: neither hot or cold. This neither law nor under grace. This is putting new wine into old wineskins and losing both ways.

Christ would rather believers were completely under His grace so we can reign in life, or completely under the law so we can see the futility of trying to be made righteous by it and be pushed to His grace! No one can be justified by obeying the law in God's sight but these 'shepherds' still tell the sheep that they need to work hard or else their freely-given fleece will not grow!

Paul says clearly in Galatians 5:4 that Christ is of no effect in the lives of those that keep the law to get right with God.

If we could save ourselves by our works or stop sinning on our own, Jesus would not have needed to come and save us. If our good works, generosity and seed sowing (filthy rags!) could make us righteous, there would be no need for God to make Jesus to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Being born-again is not about suppressing the urge to sin in order to please God or receive from Him. This is the Law. Being in Christ is about freedom from sin and death! You will live a righteous life without even knowing how because it is Christ in you that does it all.

The inside is what needs to be transformed in order for one to live right. Our Saviour Jesus did not come to make bad people good or better. He came to raise the dead in trespasses to life. He came to transform hearts. Only He can remove that urge to continue in sin!

Let His Spirit transform you to the image of His glory by (your) believing and accepting His gift of righteousness apart from works; look in the mirror of your life and see His perfection in yourself- this is how you behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord as written in 2 Corinthians 3:18. Once the heart is believing right, your actions and behaviour will line up with the Spirit within. The maggots outside the pot will dry up and die with none crawling out to replace them because the inside is pure! Not only will you Live Right and not continue in sin, you will do exploits "For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure." - Philippians 2:13

With Christ's gift of righteousness comes no condemnation, and it is this gift of no condemnation makes us go and sin no more.

Believe Right and you will Live Right.