1023. Your Lifestyle Is Not Your Testimony

Behavior improvement is a great thing. It can be profitable in multiple ways for yourself and those around you. Avoiding sinful options is always good advice. But our conduct and good works should not be considered as our testimony of faith in Jesus Christ. To do so is boasting in the flesh with an attitude of self-righteousness. It proudly screams, "Look at me!"

Paul said if anyone thought they might have confidence in the flesh (of doing), he could surpass it even more. He wrote to the Philippians with an entirely different approach as one who does not have confidence in the flesh but rather, worships God in Spirit. He had a resume that was unmatched in being a keeper of the Mosaic law and the misguided righteousness found within it. But he counted it all as loss and nothing more than rubbish ... that was replaced with something better ... and that is Christ.

"And be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith" (Philippians 3:9).

The testimony for all of us is not something we perform to be temporarily seen ... but it is the Person of Jesus Christ and the gift of God's righteousness by faith. It's in knowing Him and the power of His resurrection. This only occurs apart from law and works.



   
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