Barrier of Legalism

Content library Barrier of Legalism
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Southeast Christian Church

Jul 14, 2022

For some people, it can be really difficult to fully understand that you can't earn the grace of Jesus. We try to fill our lives with rules and the regulations that we think that God wants us to live by, because we think if we do that, we'll make him proud and we'll find that real life that we are looking for. We can fall into the trap of believing that if we check off all the necessary “to-dos” as Christians that we can earn God’s favor and punch our ticket to the life we really want. But you’re never going to find real life by chasing after rules and regulations. The only way you find real life is when you step into the real grace of Jesus.

Paul also challenges false worship in these verses in Colossians 2. Verse 18 states, “Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind.” It may sound crazy to us that people would worship angels, but yet, we do similar acts all the time. We do it when we see a leader in the church or an influencer on social media, and we think about how perfect they look and how incredible their life is. We can worship people sometimes and let that get in the way of us worshiping Jesus. We just need to be careful and make sure our worship is just centered on Jesus, and nothing or no one else.

DISCUSSION/REFLECTION QUESTIONS: Have you ever realized that you were following a list of rules and regulations instead of having a real relationship with Jesus? What can you do to break this way of thinking?

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Purpose

Growing in Faith

Spiritual Disciplines

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Todd Seales July 14, 2022 11:40 AM

Catholicism is a great example of this. Growing up Catholic, I was taught I had to do certain things for Gods forgiveness. I am so thankful that it’s not because of what I have to do but what He has done. You don’t do works to get to Jesus, you do works because of Jesus.

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