Galatians 2.16: "Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law."
We must remind ourselves daily of God's good grace: the Good News that it is NOT up to us to rescue ourselves from our hopeless condition. Something about the human physic always defaults to a "works" mentality. Even when we as Christians proclaim grace, in the back of our minds, much of the time we still depend on the things we do to make us acceptable to God.
We are faced with quite the dilemma. While we know we should not "sin that grace may abound," we must still fight off the self-damning tendency to "try to be good enough." (Now, that's something to think about...)
I imagine Paul's confrontation of Peter, mentioned in verse 11, would have been an interesting discourse to overhear. These guys were doing their best to get this thing figured out and yet had conflicts. I suspect if these guys struggled to get it right, it is safe to assume we too will experience the difficulties of truly walking and living by grace alone.
God help us all live by grace. Help us walk in grace not only toward ourselves, but to those around us. Let out lives reflect most clearly the real freedom we have in Jesus Christ.
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