By Faith and Faith alone

DEVOTION
GALATIONS
BY FAITH
Gal 2:20-21
20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"
NIV
This is it; this is what I have been saying all along. Of what value is the death of Christ is there is another way for me to gain eternal life? If I could be saved because I was a good person then why would he have had to come at all? It is so completely clear to me. I have no other way. It is essential to my very being. It does not matter how good I can be, or how many rules and regulations I try to obey, I simply cannot do enough of anything to enact eternal life for myself. I certainly do not deceive myself with thoughts of any righteousness within my own being. I have no doubts about that at all, I am not worthy in any way to stand before God. How could I ever? The rub is in these first words about being crucified with Christ and the fact I no longer live, but him living in me. If that is true, and I have no doubts it is, why do I still fail to live up to the standard God has for me? If Christ is living in me I should be able to succeed in being pleasing to God. I should be able to live totally free from failure, from sin. How can this be? How can I continue to fail, to sin in areas of my life if I am dead and it is Christ who lives in me? It is the awareness of sin that Christ in me causes? That could be the situation. Before when I live all by my lonesome, I could care less about how I acted or what I did, or about pleases God. But now that I no longer live alone in this body, but Christ is in me, I am so acutely aware of each and every failure, of each time I commit any kind of sin. I suppose that is why I, like Paul, could never set aside the grace of God. I could never put aside that act of graciousness he did for me. How could I ever do that, because that is all I have? How could I ever think I would be able to meet any of his conditions for righteousness? Nothing I can ever do would be enough. Granted I don’t think I would just keep on doing anything I felt like just to show his grace. True I try to please him. But maybe just accepting Christ by faith and faith alone is the greatest pleasure I bring to God.