Privilege or Obligation

Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God?" Paul in Galatians 2:21 (The Message.)

A friend has the verse above pasted at the bottom of his emails. Perhaps it is a reminder to him and others that Christianity at its essence is not a system of morals, activities, or religious ideals. This scripture is the conclusion of the confrontation that Paul had with Peter and the elders at Jerusalem when the influence of the Judaizers followed Paul into the churches in Galatia, evidently with the approval, or at least the knowledge of James and the elders in Jerusalem. The Judaizers were Jews who agreed that Jesus was the Messiah, but taught that circumcision and the keeping of the Feasts, etc. was a requirement of salvation for the Gentile Christians as well as the Jewish ones. Paul’s message to the Galatians refuted this strongly and he confronted Peter to his face when Peter came to Antioch (Gal. 2:11.) 
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