"Painstaking" Will Give You Pain: Jesus Gives You All Things

"If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it." (AA, pg 83)

Any works on our behalf, in our own strength, to effect the right living that defines righteousness will never produce the life that we need.

Paul warned the Galatians about returning to a system of rules and laws:

"8However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods.9But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again?10You observe days and months and seasons and years.11I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain." (Galatians 4: 8-11)

Just as members of AA observe meetings and celebrate "sobriety dates", so too the Galatian church were going back to the Jewish customs and seeking to live under the Old Covenant of law, which included the Ten Commandments.

The writer of Hebrews mentions that the Old Covenant is passing away:

"In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away." (Hebrews 8: 13)

The law, which the Galatians were returning to, was imperfect because of man, who cannot keep the law:

"Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." (Romans 3: 19)
Paul then wrote to the Romans:

"Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." (Romans 5: 20)

The law was never about showing man the way to live, but bringing man to die, so that he would recognize his need for the Savior, who then becomes a God to us, and leads us from within.

Here are the specifics of the New Covenant which Jesus cut for us at the Cross:

"10For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:

"11And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.

 

"12For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." (Hebrews 8: 10-12)

 

The New Covenant does not include anything that we do, but rather focuses everything on God, who cuts the covenant with Jesus Christ, our mediator and representative at the right hand of the Father:

 

"22But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels,23to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,24and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel." (Hebrews 12: 22-24)

 

Because of this new covenant, we can trust that God will supply all our needs (Philippians 4: 19):

 

"31What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?32He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" (Romans 8: 31-32)'

 

Instead of taking pains, reckon yourself dead to sin (Romans 6: 11), and bring every condemning and fearful thought into obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10: 5)