Two Routes

Excerpt of comment by Neil Booth in "My Hidden Life" (on his blog site "Pass the Toast"):

"It seems to me that there are two routes open to us as Christians who want to live holy, God-pleasing lives. One is to draw up a set of rules for holy living (or borrow an existing set) and keep tweaking them and adding to them and refining them and above all making sure we don’t break them. But Paul says that that is going back into the slavery from [which] Christ has freed us! The second is to be so wrapped up in Jesus, so devoted to him, having our minds so set on him, that we just do what pleases God without there being any “must” or “musn’t” about our response to people, places, situations and circumstances. Sadly, however, because we find it difficult to enter and to maintain this oneness with Christ, we resort to the moral and ethical rule book to do by law what we should be doing out of love."

"He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." -Micah 6:8 NIV