A Christian isn’t someone who believes in God and is a good person. How good do you have to be to go to heaven? Who determines the morality and the strength of our actions? Do sins cancel obedience? Do you trust your ability to be good or do you trust what He has done for you in Jesus? We are in a condition of need, but we cannot remedy our condition of need by ourselves. We cannot cleanse ourselves. We cannot fix ourselves. We cannot heal ourselves. The teaching of the Scriptures is not that we should have faith in ourselves and our ability to fix ourselves and to make ourselves pleasing to God. We should trust not in our works but the works of Jesus. We should have faith in Him, and we should not rest and sleep well because of our goodness, but because of His goodness, and not because of the things that we have done, but solely because of the things that He has done. Galatians 2:4 says that, “The righteous live by faith.” To be righteous is to live by faith, not by law, tradition, culture, legalism or any other form of moral movement.
This faith will change our heart and the desire to live a life pleasing to God will flow out of us, through Him. Fruit of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control) are gifts from God that are produced in us when we put faith and trust in Jesus! It's nothing we can claim to be good that we have done...these are from Him.
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