Friends in Christ Weekly Message
July 28, 2007

When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive - right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ's Cross. He stripped all the spiritual tyrants in the universe of their sham authority at the Cross and marched them naked through the streets.
     So don't put up with anyone pressuring you in details of diet, worship services, or holy days. All those things are mere shadows cast before what was to come; the substance is Christ.
     Don't tolerate people who try to run your life, ordering you to bow and scrape, insisting that you join their obsession with angels and that you seek out visions. They're a lot of hot air, that's all they are. They're completely out of touch with the source of life, Christ, who puts us together in one piece, whose very breath and blood flow through us. He is the Head and we are the body. We can grow up healthy in God only as he nourishes us.
Colossians 2:13-19 (Message*)

Christ didn't free us from the old rituals and religious system only to impose a new legalistic system upon us. The Apostle Paul tells us in no uncertain terms not to tolerate the imposition of some legalistic religious system. We are to reject those who say they are imposing a set of rules in the name of Christ. What we are to rely upon is Christ himself, not some religious system.

Bill Samuel

* The Message version ©2002 by Eugene H. Peterson.

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