Freedom

How does one struggle against one's sinful nature but also experience Christian freedom?

I will never be good enough. No matter how hard I try, I will never be good enough for God. I "knew" this growing up, but I realized that I didn't really understand or believe it. In the past year or 2, I have finally come to an understanding of what this means. And it is freeing. To throw yourself a the mercy of Christ and ask Him to cover everything is a relief. A release from fear. But, we are called to hate our sin and to struggle against our sinful natures. How do we do this without an accompanying guilt and fear? Are these not the motivating factors to strive against our nature? If not these, then what should be our motivation? Love for God should be our motivation, but this is sometimes forgotten or cast aside. It is easier, once the fear and shame and guilt is gone, to do whatever one desires, to use freedom in Christ as an excuse to do what I want.

It is not hard to understand legalism. It's man's way of figuring out faith. We are finite with minimal understanding and finite minds. Legalism helps us make sense, put God and faith in a big religious box. A list of dos and don'ts. But it's not that easy. God doesn't play by our rules. He cannot be contained, and for us to put limits on Him is demeaning and implies that we know better than Him. That we know exactly how this world is supposed to work and how everything is going to be revealed. But we don't. And while there are some things that are clearly noted and spelled out for us in God's word, we must be careful about the other things. Allow for grace. Allow for faith.

I am reading "On Christian Liberty" by Martin Luther. I bought it for one of my classes in college, but we never read it. I kept it though, and it is, so far, a good read. He makes a really interesting point using the metaphor of Christ as the bridegroom and us as the bride of Christ. Luther says,
"Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ's, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul's; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride's and bestow upon her the things that are his." (pg 19)

Luther also says 2 pages later, "Here this rich and divine bridegroom Christ marries this poor, wicked harlot, redeems her from all her evil, and adorns her with all his goodness. Her sins cannot now destroy her, since they are laid upon Christ and swallowed up by him. And she has that righteousness in Christ, her husband, of which she may boast as of her own and which she can confidently display alongside her sins in the face of death and hell and say, 'If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his is mine and all mine is his.'" (pg 21)

I know that the Church is the bride of Christ, but I had never thought of it in the way that Luther phrases it. But if we are the bride of Christ, then we are one with Him, and our sin and shame is put upon and taken away by Him, and His goodness and righteousness is given to us. It is a wonderful, unfair exchange that I do not really understand, but I am grateful.