Acts 15:11 - “We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”

It’s easy to fall into the trap of making our relationship with God dependent upon keeping certain rules. We have to go to church and youth group. We have to dress a certain way. We have to keep both our room and locker clean. The list can go on and on. And, everyone’s list is different.

That’s basically what was going on in the early church. Paul and his buddies had been preaching the gospel to non-Jews. As the Gentiles believed, they were baptized into the church and accepted as equals with the Jewish Christians. Some of the Jews took exception to this, insisting that the Gentile believers had to become Jews in order to be truly saved. Rules, Rules, Rules!

First off, we could never ever come close to keeping a list of rules perfectly enough to deserve to be in heaven with God. Just about the time we got close to being perfect in not lying, we would slip up in the area of anger. The pressure to be perfect would backfire and we would be raving maniacs or hypocritical judges of everyone else.

Trying to earn God’s acceptance by keeping rules or laws is called legalism. Satan wants to distract us from the truth of God’s grace and mercy by making us believe we have to act and dress and worship in certain ways. We can get ourselves so tied up in the ropes of rules that we don’t have any joy or satisfaction in our relationship with God.

God’s answer to our efforts to be good enough is the same as it was to the Gentile Christians and their Jewish accusers: “We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved.” We don’t have to keep the Ten Commandments or do certain things in order to be accepted by God. We have to place our faith in Jesus to save us. God provided for our salvation by having His Son die for us. How ridiculous to think that we can add anything to what he did in dying on the cross and coming back to life again!

Once we understand how wonderful God is to have freely given us salvation at his own expense, we naturally want to please him. We look at his word and find that meeting with other believers in order to worship and build each other up helps us love him more. We begin to see living for Jesus as a great adventure that can have eternal consequences. We desire to do what Scriptures tells us to do.