Octavius Winslow Quote

Do you ask what is a legal spirit from which the Spirit of adoption frees us? I answer, it is that bondage which springs from looking within yourself for evidences, for comfort, and for motives which only can be found in looking to Jesus. It is that spirit of legality, which prompts you to be incessantly poring over your works, instead of dealing simply and solely with the finished work of Christ. That is a spirit of bondage, which makes a Christ of duties and labor and sacrifices, of tears and confessions and faith, rather than directly and supremely dealing with him 'who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption'. Beloved, your works, your doing, your sacrifices as means of comfort and as ground of hope, are nothing but filthy rags, the bones of the skeleton, the chaff which the wind scatters. Why have you not joy and peace and hope in believing? Simply because, unsuspected by yourself, you are putting your own work in the place of Christ's work. Oh that you may be led to cast yourself more entirely upon the atoning sacrifice of Jesus; to believe that God looks not at a single work you do as justifying you in his sight, but that he looks only to the divine, sacrificial, flawless, perfect work of his beloved Son!. Oh, come and rest where God rests, in the Crucified One! If he is pleased to accept you only in His Son, are you not satisfied so to be accepted? Away, then, with your fears and distrust and bondage, and enter fully into Christ!"