Many Christians walk by trying their best for God, then when they screw up, they ask for forgiveness, rededicate their self efforts and try harder for God. All this does is lead to frustration, because we can never live the sinless, perfect life that God requires. The only one that can is Jesus! Over 2,000 years ago when He was walking on this earth He did it. Now his body ascended to heaven but his life is in you, and He can still walk this earth righteously through you! The law was created to cause frustration in the Christian life so that we would be torn away from relying on ourselves and start to rely on Jesus as our source of power and life.
It may seem weird to not focus on following the laws that govern the way God wants you to live (that is the way that most Christians are taught from their first church service), but it makes sense. When you focus instead on Jesus and allow him to live through you, your life will be in obedience to God's rules! Because God is the one that is living your life, and He doesn't know any other way than to live it perfectly.
Values and morals are a form of legalism when they become the source of our attention rather than our relationship with God. God is interested in you and his relationship with you more than values, morals, or systems of living-even if they are biblical! To try to use your "biblical values" to gain an intimate relationship to Christ and experience a godly lifestyle is not going to work. But a focus on an intimate relationship with Him, will produce a godly lifestyle!
The idea that by following our own standards (or even biblical ones) of right and wrong to avoid as much sin and do as much good as possible is ludicrous. Anything that we do that is not flowing from the life of Christ inside us- abiding in him, is flesh and flesh is sin. Romans 14:23 says, " - and everything that does not come from faith is sin." When we are focusing on Christ and acknowledging him day by day as our life, this produces the godly lifestyle that God desires. All Christians have the divine life of Christ inside them, to let him live through us produces righteous behavior, and to live out of our own sufficiency produces sin.
As Christians we shouldn't focus on what we should or shouldn't do, whether something is right or wrong, but on Christ. There are so many arguments these days over what is right or wrong for the Christian to do. Is it ok to drink wine? Can I watch an R-rated movie? What about PG-13? Can I say "damn" or "hell" because they're in the Bible? What about "frickin"? Should Christians date? And the list will continue to get longer and longer the more our society develops and there are new technologies and inventions that can be abused or exploited.
Instead of asking, "is it right or wrong for me to do this?" a better question would be, "am I resting in Christ at this moment?" If we are evaluating our actions and inactions based on a system of beliefs, or values then we are approaching the decisions in the same manner an unsaved person does. These decisions will be made apparent when you focus on the person of Christ and him living his life through you.
I see a lot of bumper stickers today that say, "Keep the Ten Commandments". This is well meaning I guess, but keeping the Ten Commandments is impossible for anyone to do. Nor is it going to bring about any shred of righteousness or salvation. The Ten Commandments purpose is to bring about condemnation and death. They were created to make people aware that they needed Jesus. Keeping the Ten Commandments will not do anything to save your soul for an unbeliever, nor will it bring spiritual victory or and intimate relationship with Christ to the believer.
When you are focused on right and wrong, you are focused on your self and what you are doing. This is the complete opposite of what God would have us do. God wants you to love him with all your heart, soul and mind (Matthew 22:37). How can you possibly do that if you are always focused on yourself and your actions and whether or not you are doing the "right or wrong" thing? When you focus on and abide in Christ the question of right or wrong becomes miniscule and His life is expressed through you naturally. In the same way, when we are not resting in Him and totally focused on the object of our faith, even our "good" actions have no value!
How can you possibly enjoy your Christian life if you are in a constant state of introspective analysis of your every action and thought classifying them as right or wrong? Is that going to make your burden light, and your yoke easy (Matthew 11:30)? I was the victim of this type of thought process many times during my Christian walk, especially when I was first starting to understand my relationship to Christ and trying to let him live his life through me. I would question every thought and action to try to test it to see if it was right or wrong. Then upon further studying I realized that I was focusing on the wrong things, my focus wasn't on Christ, it was on me, myself, and I. That isn't any way to live an abundant, victorious, carefree Christian life now is it?
When you are focused on living a good life you are focusing on the wrong thing. This is what separates Christianity from every other religion in the world. Other religions are belief systems or moral, ethical, value systems on how to live. Christianity is about a relationship! Even unsaved persons can adopt a set of values and live a "good life". Focusing on living a good life is keeping many Christians back from experiencing the divine life that God wants to express through them. True righteousness can only come from the one that was righteous, God's son, when He is living his life through us.
You wouldn't even know what right and wrong is, unless the law was there to tell you what it was. Without it you can't tell what is right, what is wrong (see Romans 7:7). The law is a picture of what God deems righteous, an external example of his wholesomeness. When focused on the law one can't experience anything but frustration because the law in itself can only show you what the problem is, it can't correct it. Jesus is the source that changes and corrects and makes us pure and holy before God (Colossians 1:22). So if your focus is on what you should and shouldn't do, all you will see is where you fall short, you won't find the answer of how to correct the problem. Frustration and condemnation is the purpose of the law.
What's really great is that we are dead to the law! Consider Romans 7:6, "But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter." So now we don't have to worry about following a really thick book full of rights and wrongs, we can just focus on Christ and let Him take care of it! I'm going to be bold here and say that God isn't concerned so much about right or wrong, but that He's more concerned about the fact that He loves you and wants you to enjoy Him and His love, and love Him right back! Then just trust Him and allow Him to take care of the rest, through you.
