How can Christianity be used as an escape? We can turn our Christian faith around by making it about what we do rather than what God does for us. We can focus on obeying rules that exist to govern our external behavior. When we do this, we miss the core of what Christianity is about, that is, what God has given us through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus. The focus of our faith should be the gift our Father has given us.
We can escape from true Christianity when we forget about God’s gift and view Christian life as all about rules that govern our behavior. We can believe our righteousness is solely about following God’s rules found on the stone tablets, the ten commandments. An example of focusing on the rules instead of the gift of Jesus is found in Mark 2:27. “The sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath.” People were criticizing Jesus for healing on the Sabbath – laboring on the day of rest. Jesus told the people; your righteousness is not about following the Sabbath as a rule. The Sabbath was given to bless your life.
When we depend on our actions, seeking righteousness ourselves, we ignore the gift of righteousness given through Christ. We can also look at ourselves as people who get it right and view others as getting it wrong.
Our Christian faith, through the gift of Christ, is designed to lead us to the fruits of the Spirit: love, peace, patience, joy, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is a transformation within us. This is how we find righteousness through Jesus Christ, accepting His gift and measuring ourselves against the fruits of the Spirit - not escaping this threshold by measuring ourselves against how well we follow rules. When we do the latter, we tend to measure ourselves against others and find ourselves being more critical, judgmental, and self-righteous.
God does not want us to escape to a false righteousness that is of our own doing. He wants us to take what He gives us in love through Jesus Christ.
