{"id":438,"date":"2007-03-09T14:40:14","date_gmt":"2007-03-09T19:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.185.166.32\/~davidfoster\/?p=438"},"modified":"2009-10-10T14:40:52","modified_gmt":"2009-10-10T19:40:52","slug":"faq-why-try-to-do-the-right-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/faq-why-try-to-do-the-right-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"FAQ: Why try to do the right thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question:<\/strong> A lot of times people have questions when it comes to morality and Christianity and how we balance them. If we believe that as long as we have faith in Jesus we\u2019ll go to heaven, why try to do anything right at all? If we\u2019re forgiven for our sins, why do we continue to commit them, purposely or not? If we just get a free pass and do whatever we want to do in life, why try to do the right thing?<\/p>\n

Answer:<\/strong> Christianity is not about morality. It is not about trying to reform your behavior. It is about how God transforms our character or our nature. The Bible tells us we are in Christ. We are new creations, not just the old ones trying to impress God or be better. We are made new. We are born again as Jesus said to Nicodemus. And good works, therefore become the fruit of the life we\u2019re living.<\/p>\n

The real debate is will we do more for love than we\u2019ll do for guilt? A lot of people do good things because they feel guilty. They\u2019re trying to make up for what\u2019s lacking. But in the Christian faith, we do good works because that\u2019s what we hunger for. That\u2019s what we seek. These are the kind of people we are. We want to please God not because we fear Him, though we do understand He is Lord and sovereign. We want to please Him because we love Him.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same way a child wants to please a parent; not out of fear that the parent will abandon them, but because they know they have experienced the parent\u2019s love and they want to please the one they love. It\u2019s all about motivation. In Christianity our motivation is from the inside out. In religion the motivation is from the outside in. And truthfully, over time, only inside out motivation really works.<\/p>\n

As a Christian, when I sin the sin is far more serious in my mind because now it\u2019s a sin against my Heavenly Father. It\u2019s a sin from the inside out. It\u2019s a sin inside the family. It\u2019s a sin not of ignorance, but of direct disobedience. It doesn\u2019t sever the relationship, but it does alter the fellowship. And that is why God uses even guilt for His children to bring them back to repentance and to restoration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question: A lot of times people have questions when it comes to morality and Christianity and how we balance them. If we believe that as long as we have faith in Jesus we\u2019ll go to heaven, why try to do anything right at all? If we\u2019re forgiven for our sins, why do we continue to … Continue reading “FAQ: Why try to do the right thing?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"series":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}