Before doing anything outward, look inward at your relationship with your Lord...
Here is the best definition from Scripture of who a Christian is...
Philippians 3:3 For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.
Christ alone is my grounds for boasting...there is nothing, nothing I can do in my flesh that would make me fit for heaven or help me to gain merit before God.
The Christian attitude is that we have died to the flesh with all its passions and lusts, and from now on we live to the glory of God. We do this, not out of fear of punishment, but rather out of love to the One who gave Himself for us. A. T. Robertson put it well: “It is love that makes us really free to do right. Love makes the choice easy. Love makes the face of duty beautiful. Love makes it sweet to keep up with Christ. Love makes the service of goodness freedom.”
Colossians 2:11-23 speaks to this issue very succinctly. The emphasis (bolding) is mine in verses 20-23.
Not Legalism but Christ
In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.
So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.
Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations— “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.
Here is the mystery..here are some of the most beautiful words in Scripture:
The mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Christ in me...my hope of glory. Biblical hope is sure and certain as if what you are waiting for had already occurred. Christ indwells me...the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ is my guarantee of future glory as well as to all other believers. We have this treasure in our earthen vessel that the power is not of us but of Him.
I will end with these words of Christ.
John 14:15-18 “If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
John 14:23 Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.
1 John 5:3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.
