wickedness and believe in Him. It would be unjust for God to tell us to do something that we were not capable of doing, then condemn us when we don't do it. God's Grace comes to indwell in us when we choose to repent. His resurrection power then strengthens the inner man to do the will of God and to keep his commands, out of a pure heart of faith and love, not hope and fear.

One thing I wish to make a distinction between those that serve God out of obedience springing from love to God and those that serves Him out of hope and fear. If you think that serving God is a painful thing, then you only have a religion of law. Have you ever found it a painful thing to do that which you love? Jesus said that His commands are not grievous, why? Those who truly love the Lord no longer serve God from a selfish heart to please themselves, but they love to please God; just like a wife who loves to please her husband, she would only do that which is pleasing to him. If she did sin against him, the love she has for him would constrain her and she would seek forgiveness of him and be reconciled back to an intimate relationship of love and understanding. If you only serve God out of hope and fear hoping that you are acceptable to God, living in fear that you haven't been living up to His standards and so go into duty serving Him from these motives you then have a religion of law always in turmoil of whether you're going to make it to heaven or not. Some days when you have done some particular good deeds, your conscience feels at ease and justified, but in just a short time later you begin to feel condemned because you're only running on how you feel and not on true faith.

Salvation comes by terms that we must clearly understand. Before a person is a Christian, he lived according to the desires of his flesh or the bodily appetites. Indulging them in unlawful and immoral ways, such as lying, stealing, sexual impurity, lusts, envying, gossips, slanderers, hating, fighting, selfishness, and the list can go on and on. The basic nature of man is selfishness, seeking to gratify the flesh to seek its own pleasure and in so doing he or she will even help to increase the pleasure of those around him to benefit himself. The way of selfishness is also a very long and intriguing list. All this said to say this, that before we knew God we were at war with Him because we did not love Him and we chose by our voluntary actions to disobey His moral commands, commonly stated as the Ten Commandments.

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