Religion vs Redemption

I was going through our "office/storage" room the other day and throwing stuff away, just trying to get organized before our big move. As I was doing this I came across a folded piece of paper. On one side it had my wifi information from college. On the other side was this:


Religion never leads to joy.
Redemption- joy, there's nothing good about me except Jesus loves me.
Religion- do this, do this, do that, don't do this or that and I'll love you.
Sin always catches up with us.
You'll never check off enough good things to be good enough.
Redemption- Jesus loves us no matter what we do or don't do.

I don't know if this was from a sermon or what. For some reason I didn't write that part down. But it was a very good reminder and I'm really glad God placed it in my way. It's so easy to get caught up in the legalistic tendencies of the church. But (thankfully) that's not the Gospel. That's not to say that our actions aren't important, because they certainly are. Faith without works is dead.(James 2:14-26). We can't just have faith, and we can't just have works. Our faith in Christ should lead us to make decisions that honor him daily. Faith and works go hand in hand.

Considering we are not perfect, it's very comforting yet convicting that Jesus loves us regardless of what we've done or neglect to do. Christ redeems us. He saves us. Legalistic religion doesn't. I say redemption wins.



Leave a Reply

Powered by Blogger.