Dear Church, I hope you are having a good Christmas season. 
 
Here is a devotional from this week’s message.
 
All humans naturally think in terms of give and take – ‘I get this from you, and I give you that’. We think of religion as no different – ‘I do this for God, and he gives me that’. We try to make up for the bad things we have done with different rituals or gifts. At the same time, we do good works to gain special favour so that we can receive God’s blessing. This is what I call transactional religion. If you look at different religions all over the world this is the way you see people living. There are endless streams of people trying to placate and manipulate God into doing what they want, all the while deep down living in fear of Him. 
 
As Paul preached Christ crucified, the Galatians through the Spirit came to understand something which the natural man can never understand: the grace of God. However, instead of living in this grace they exchanged the joy of a living relationship with God their Father for outward rituals and rules. They fell back into transactional religion, seeking through their own efforts to win favour with God. In doing this they were despising the grace that they have freely received in Christ. Paul’s call to them is to become like him (Gal 4:12). His plea is to count all these outward things that they are putting their hope in as rubbish compared with the worth of knowing Jesus Christ their Lord (Phil 3:8). To come back to this precious relationship they have with God by faith through Jesus Christ, their only hope.  
 
Have we like the Galatians slipped into transactional religion? In our evangelical circles we talk a lot about grace and a relationship with God. We can talk ‘the talk’ quite well. This can lead us to believe that we do not struggle like the Galatians with legalism. However, I believe if we took an honest look at ourselves, we would see often we fall into the same trap as the Galatians. Here are three marks of transactional religion to examine ourselves by:
 
     1. Transactional religion is self-seeking. Ultimately, everything we do for God is about us and for our own gain. We only go to God when we need or want something.
 
     2. Transactional religion is solely outward. It consists of outward  actions often only done when others are around. It is not personal and does not transform our hearts or the way we live.
 
     3. Transactional religion is based on fear. We compulsively find  ourselves doing things for God to try to make our feelings of guilt go away.
 
How do we escape this transactional religion? The simple answer is by knowing and being known by God (Gal 4:9). This is how the Galatians escaped it and it is how we escape it. God, through his Son, has paid the debt I owed and made me right with God, so I can now be a child of God by faith. I am no longer trying to placate God or manipulate him for my own ends. I am his child, filled with his Spirit. I call him “Abba” Father and am in a living intimate relationship with him through Christ. As we come to know God in this way, our legalism and transactional religion disappears, and we become people who are not self seeking, but who seek our Father’s glory. We become people who are transformed from the inside out into the image of Christ. We become people who are not controlled by fear but by the love of God.
 
May God preserve us from transactional religion and make us people transformed by His grace.
 
God Bless,
 
Taylor Ewert
Pastor, Friendship Baptist Church
taylorewert@friendship-bc.com
604.970.8506