No Longer Yourself

Welcome to the Saturday addition of Our Daily Bread. The devotional writer for today is Glenn PACU and the reading is titled no longer yourself in the summer of 1859, Charles Blondie became the first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tight rope, something he would go on to do hundreds of times.

Once he did with his manager, Harry Cole cord on his back. Blondie gave Concorde. These instructions look up Harry. You are no longer co-cord you are blind Dean. If I sway sway with me. Do not attempt to do any balancing yourself. If you do, we will both go to our death. Paul in essence said to the Galatian believers. You can't walk the line of living a life that is pleasing to God apart from faith in Christ. But here's the good news you don't have to. No amount of attempting to earn our way to God will ever cut it. So are we passive in our salvation know our invitation is to cling to Christ, clinging to Jesus means putting to death an old independent way of living.

It's as if we ourselves have died yet we go on living, but as Paul says in Galatians 220. The life we now live in the body we live by faith in the son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. Where are we trying to walk the tightrope today. God hasn't called us to walk on the rope to him. He's called us to cling to him and walk this life with him. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional Scripture reading is taken from Galatians chapter 2 verses 14 through 21. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel. I said to Cephas in front of them all. You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it then that you forced Gentiles to follow Jewish customs, we who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, so we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners. Doesn't that mean that Christ promotes sin, absolutely not. If I rebuild what I destroyed that I really would be a lawbreaker for through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

The life I now live in the body I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing zealots pray. Dear Jesus, thank you for doing what we could never do for ourselves. Help us to turn away right now from trying to please you on our own and to remember that your love is unconditional and your desire is that we would trust you completely with our life and with eternity. It's in your gracious name that we pray.

Amen on today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread ministries