I heard something that said a lot to me this week. "Those who have learned to do good will do what they've learned to do. Those who have learned to do evil will do what they've learned to do. Those who have learned to obey will obey. Those who have learned to disobey will disobey. All of them need forgiveness".
One of the most difficult things I had to learn after coming understand the Gospel and how it's important in my life was to learn that no matter how good I get at obeying God's law, I am still as much a sinner as I ever was. In fact, I read in the Bible that knowing the law actually makes the sin worse, and a lot of the time I see how much more sinful I really am just by trying to follow God's law. It took a long time for me, in fact... it's still taking a long time because I still don't feel like I get this right. Sanctification would be easy if it really were only about changing the way I act or changing the way I behave. But it's not easy at all, because it involves a problem I have in my heart. There's something broken in me that's just not responding to treatment. People around might say, "oh Matthew, your acting so much better this year than you did last year", but to me I'm only going through the motions. It was hard to learn that this is how it is for a Christian.
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