January 21, 2016

Galatians 6:14-15 (NIV) ¹⁴May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. ¹⁵Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.

The letter to the church of Galatia was meant to help them see that obeying the laws of Moses could never help their relationship with God. The men who were insisting that obedience was necessary were missing the main point. Jesus paid it all! They wanted to convert these non-Jewish Christians to Judaism. Then they could boast about them conforming to their customs and laws.

Paul was teaching them that the only thing worth boasting about was the one thing that made them right with God. That is the cross of Calvary. The cross, not laws, is what makes us dead to the world. The laws could never change the heart of man that desires sin. The law just made you guilty. It looked forward to the final solution, the cross. The autopilot of the heart keeps guiding us into sin unless it is changed. The law couldn't change it. The cross does.

It doesn't matter to God whether you have performed Jewish rituals that are symbolic of spiritual things or if you haven't. What matters is if your heart has been changed. Is your autopilot now set upon the Spirit? If it is still set on the sinful nature, all the good laws in the world won't do anything about it.

Perhaps you have been trying to keep a list of good things that Christians should do, but you still constantly yield to sin. Those good things are wonderful, but they can't change your heart any more than laws can. To be a new creation in Christ you must first crucify the old one. You must take it to the cross in repentance and crucify it with Jesus. The sins of the world were placed on Him. Have you put your sinful nature there to be dealt with by the justice of God? If you have, you should be as Paul was, crucified to the world. Your autopilot is then set on pleasing the heart of God by cooperating with the Spirit that lives within you.

Consider: Where is your autopilot taking you?