Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.
-Galatians 2:21, The Message
A living relationship with God that is personal and free. A living relationship, personal and free.
We have a lot going on in the church today, a lot of ideas of what it is to live the Christian life. But here, succinctly and directly Paul states the unequivocal, central purpose for everything we proclaim as believers – why Jesus came, what we are to do with it, where we are to go from here. Everything else we may do as believers falls second to that: evangelism, church attendance or lack of it, baptism, walking in our calling, feeding the hungry, Bible study – all of it. These are all fine things, and some very necessary, but they are second to a living relationship with God. That is central. A relationship with God often results in or overflows into these other things. But these are not first. If I were to ask you, “What is the central reason you are here on earth?” what would you say? Or, maybe, “What does God want from you?” What would your response be? Think on that for a bit. Don’t rush too quickly to the answers you’ve been given. Let yourself dream a bit. What do you hope the answer to that question would be?
