Christ set us free for freedom, don't let anybody convince you otherwise! You are no longer in the prison you grew up in, why do you live as if it's part of your new reality? Let me be very blunt. If you give into the system's requirement (whatever it is) you won't need Christ! Or didn't you know that this token religious requirement bull is only a scam to lure you in? Those of you who have found your worth in your performance have cut Christ right out of your daily living. You've slipped from operating in freedom, and are living as if you had not been taken out of your former prison!

Have you learned nothing from all your Bible study? Don't you know how true godliness is brought about? What does the story of Abraham and the promise tell you? When everything inside you screams out that you have to do something spiritual, refuse that lie and live in view of what God has done. Expect Him to perform His work in you to His satisfaction in His time. Of course it doesn't appear as if it's working. But hasn't the child of your own performance convinced you that you'll keep getting the same worthless results? For your life in Christ Jesus has nothing to do with what you do or what you don't do; instead, your life is a miracle of faith operating through love.

Don't kid yourself, your attempts at obedience have only gotten in the way of the reality of obedience. Who has convinced you to pursue this counterproductive course of self-effort? It's not God, so don't even go there! And it only takes a little bit of this poison to permeate all of your thought processes. I only wish that whoever is doing this to you will have their imprisonment made openly obvious. There's only one reason you'll hear someone trying to twist what I say to fit with their system: they don't want their rejection of true freedom to go public.

Refuse to let their system of performance pervert your freedom! For when you turn freedom into a set of Biblical principles you effectively re-establish a structure where your world revolves around sin and not around love by which you serve one another. Don't you know that the whole system of doing is fulfilled by love? So why do you revert to principles that only establish a system of measurement by which you tear each other up? I advise you to take care because you will eventually destroy one another!

Instead of continuing down this performance-oriented, sin-conscious road to mutual destruction, I suggest you live your life in the expectation that God's Spirit is the One doing His work in you. This is the only reality you can fall back on to curtail evil desires.

Don't kid yourself, the stuff of your old life goes against everything of the Spirit - and vice versa. We're talking total opposition. That means that you can't produce any spirituality just because you want to, nor can you keep from doing evil by any attempts on your part! You can't do it and you know it because you've tried and it doesn't work! But if the Spirit of Christ really is the One doing the work in you, then you are not under the law.

But look what you have settled for. Public programs that spotlight moral issues (which only seem to reveal the immorality of any who get caught in its glare)! Living in the fallacy that life is as it appears to the senses. Dissatisfaction with who you are and what you have. Seeking God's will in the same manner as those who consult the horoscope. Holding to principles that establish a system by which you can scrutinize one another, resulting in hatred, jealousy, despising and resentment. A system that promotes disputes and challenges. A mentality that goes nuts when it can't change or control someone else. The formation of new programs or teachings to subdivide the body of Christ. A neatly packaged facade that is really out of control, and displays the addictive characteristics of giving into anything that will help you cope with it and produce the illusion that all is well!

Spirituality is not found within these parameters.  So don't give in to the enticements no matter how right they seem!

This is what the Spirit of God produces in us. True love from within that is not explained or understood by any system. An inner rejoicing that is not conditioned upon our feelings or circumstances. An unexplained power that destroys fear and produces a compassion that allows us to deal with one another, and to treat each other with a not-of-this-world consideration.  A good that cannot be measured or compared. A life that can do nothing but believe. A gentleness found from one who took the judgment on Himself. The self-control He offers has been made possible by having killed our uncontrollable former life.

Has it escaped your notice that there are no laws against what we have in Christ? Quit with the rule-based living already, it only produces destructive comparisons.