The Gospel is Relationship

The Gospel (the Good News!) is not about rules. It is about relationship. God put the rules in place to show us what sin is, not to punish us. And the rules were all made void when Christ came, died and rose from the dead.

Also, referring to the scripture below in Romans, being identified with the death and crucifixion of Christ, we are made new again in order to walk in newness of life. This is referring to restoring the life (from the Tree of Life, found initially in the Garden of Eden) that Adam and Eve gave up when they chose instead to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This tree actually made them aware of the rules that were not necessary before. This Tree of Life and the fruit from it is Christ...it is His broken but perfect body and blood poured out as a perfect sacrifice that restores the life and brings us back into the relationship we were intended to have with God.



Galatians 2:19

* The Message (MSG)
What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a "law man" so that I could be God's man. Christ's life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that. Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.

The Message (MSG)

Copyright �� 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson
The Message at Navpress NavPress


Romans 6 (New American Standard Bible)
New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Copyright �� 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation
NASB at Lockman The Lockman Foundation NASB at Zondervan Zondervan

Romans 6
Believers Are Dead to Sin, Alive to God
1(A)What shall we say then? Are we to (B)continue in sin so that grace may increase?

2(C)May it never be! How shall we who (D)died to sin still live in it?

3Or do you not know that all of us who have been (E)baptized into (F)Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?

4Therefore we have been (G)buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was (H)raised from the dead through the (I)glory of the Father, so we too might walk in (J)newness of life.

5For (K)if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,

6knowing this, that our (L)old self was (M)crucified with Him, in order that our (N)body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;

7for (O)he who has died is freed from sin.

8Now (P)if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,

9knowing that Christ, having been (Q)raised from the dead, is never to die again; (R)death no longer is master over Him.

10For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.

11Even so consider yourselves to be (S)dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

12Therefore do not let sin (T)reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,

13and do not go on (U)presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but (V)present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

14For (W)sin shall not (X)be master over you, for (Y)you are not under law but (Z)under grace.

15What then? (AA)Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? (AB)May it never be!