Ezekiel 36 - 7th part

Ezekiel 36:29a

I will also save you from all your uncleannesses:

Lord, it's interesting that the word "uncleannesses" means "RELIGIOUS IMPURITY. Yes, this is just what I've been meditating on. You have delivered me from the "religious impurity" of thinking that there was something I must DO to gain Your favor. I was always afraid that if I
screamed at my kids or something and then immediately ran off the bridge and drowned, that I would be lost forever. Assurance was never really mine until one day Your "light shined" in my heart and I KNEW that if that happened I would just have to bow before You in tears and plead, "Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to thy cross I cling."

There is no way I can climb that "ladder" to heaven, and if I died before I had time to ask You to forgive me for my anger…well, salvation is based not on my keeping close accounts with You
(although I need to do that if I'm able), but simply on this: Your death on my behalf…Your punishment for my sins….YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS given to me! Amen!

You are delivering me from "religious impurity" also by making it clear to me that the works I do may not always be done in the power of the Holy Spirit. If they are done in the "flesh" and for the WRONG REASON, then they are worth nothing. The question, "Why do I do what I do" is an important one! Piper puts it like this:

I…put…before you the way of blessing (v. 14) and the way of the curse (v.10). What sets you under the one or under the other is not so much what you do as the spirit in which you do it. Circumcision may be a "work of law" or an act of love which flows from faith. Subjecting yourself to certain dietary restrictions may be a "work of law" or a free act of love which comes from faith. Sunday school teaching, preaching…all these may be "works of law" which we do in our
strength, to move God's favor our way, or they may be done in humble reliance on the strength which God freely supplies that in everything he may get the glory. The decision of curse or blessing hangs on how you obey and who gets the credit.

(From Piper's Sermon on Gal. 3:10-14...