Two Sides of the Coin

Are You Getting True Value!?!??

A message by Dave Gillette

The roof conversation:

Back in the years when I was going to college, I was working for a roofing company. We were doing commercial roofing. The guys I was working with were a rough lot. These guys all knew that I was a Christian. One day I was working on a small patch job with just one of the guys. He asked me, “Dave why are you a Christian?”

When I answered him I told him that the reason was because I believed that everything that everyone in the world is looking for is found in Christ. I said that people are looking for peace, joy, and fulfillment in life. The only place these can really and truly be experienced is in Christ.

After giving him my great words of wisdom I started down the ladder to get some supplies. As I was going down I was thinking that the things I had just said and believed were not true in my life. I was not experiencing incredible peace, joy or fulfillment in my life.

Months later … as I was striving to live an excellent Christian life and was finding only frustration, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and instructed me that I should quit trying so hard and should put my faith in Christ and the work that he has done.

Putting my faith in the complete work that Christ had done meant that I quit striving to change myself and began to live a life of obedience to the Holy Spirit as He guided me in my daily life.

Galatians 2:15-21

We Jews know that we have no advantage of birth over “non-Jewish sinners.” We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it-and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah, so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good.

Have some of you noticed that we are not yet perfect? (No great surprise, right?) And are you ready to make the accusation that since people like me, who go through Christ in order to get things right with God, aren’t perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an accessory to sin? The accusation is frivolous. If I was “trying to be good,” I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a charlatan.

What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.

Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. I f a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.

Philippians 3: 7-9, 12-21

The very credentials these people are waving around as some thing special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash- along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant – dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ – God’s Righteousness.

I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward – to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.

So let’s keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us. If any of you have something else in mind, something less than total commitment, God will clear your blurred vision – you’ll see it yet! Now that we’re on the right track, let’s stay on it.

Stick with me, friends. Keep track of those you see running this same course, headed for this same goal. There are many out there taking other paths, choosing other goals, and trying to get you to go along with them. I’ve warned you of them many times; sadly, I’m having to do it again. All they want is easy street. They hate Christ’s Cross. But easy street is a dead-end street. Those who live there make their bellies their gods; belches are their praise; all they can think of is their appetites.

But there’s far more to life for us. We’re citizens of high heaven! We’re waiting the arrival of the Savior, the Master, Jesus Christ, who will transform our earthy bodies into glorious bodies like his won. He’ll make us beautiful and whole with the same powerful skill by which he is putting everything as it should be, under and around him.

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