I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Galatians 1-6.

    It would be easy to get confused by what Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians. Many people also misinterpret what he writes here. Paul first tells us that we cannot be saved by our actions, we cannot be good enough to get into heaven. Any failure to keep even the least of God’s laws will disqualify us if we are trying to get in by our good works. The particular issue which Paul was addressing was circumcision. Someone had started teaching the Galatians that they needed to be circumcised and keep Jewish Law in order to be saved. However, what Paul writes here applies to any attempt we might make to obtain salvation by being “good enough”. We are not able to be good enough to be made right with God. We can only be made right with God by putting our faith in Jesus. If we stop here, as many people do, one could conclude that our actions do not matter. Once we are saved by our faith in Jesus, we can do whatever we please.

    This is where we can easily become confused. Paul makes it clear that our faith should change how we live. Our faith in Christ makes us free, but we should not use that freedom to indulge our sinful nature. Instead we should use that freedom to do as the Holy Spirit directs us. If we use our new freedom to indulge our sinful nature we will not inherit the kingdom of God. Our sinful nature gives us base desires, the Holy Spirit will give us holy desires. If we allow ourselves to indulge the sinful nature we will be unable to fulfill our holy desires. Again, it is easy to get confused about the holy desires which the Holy Spirit gives us. Everyone has these holy desires to some degree because we are, after all, all made in the image of God. However, the Holy Spirit will strengthen those holy desires and will show us how they conflict with our sinful desires.
    So, to recap: we cannot be good enough to earn admittance to heaven, but once we have accepted God’s salvation through faith in Christ we will do the righteous things which the Holy Spirit directs us to do. The more we do what is good and right, the less time and resources we will have to spend doing what is depraved and wrong.