Raising the Bar

"Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven"    -Matthew 5:19

     I don't know about you, but to me it sounds like Jesus is not joking around in this passage. "Will be called least in the kingdom of heaven." Now that's pretty harsh. For most people, we want to be first. And we want to get the best. And most of the time we want to do that with little effort involved. (Well, I do at least ;)
     But that's not what Jesus is asking us for. He's actually asking us a lot. More then we can do on our own. If you read all of Matthew 5 you'll see that Jesus is raising the bar. In the Old Testament God gave his people a set of rules. And if they broke those rules, which they very often did, they had to sacrifice something. Well, when Jesus died for us, He became our sacrifice. Now instead of needing to kill a sheep or bird or something everytime we sin, we know that if we have been saved, Jesus has already paid the price.
     God knows us to well though. He knew that if he left it at that we would very often ignore our sin knowing that it was paid for by Jesus already. After all, it's not like I murder someone weekly. That's why he raised the bar. To make us more aware of our sin, and to slowly make us more like him. Now he says, don't just not murder people, don't even hate them in your heart because that's just as bad as murder. Not only should you not commit adultry, you should never even look lustfuly at someone.
     The sad part of it is, we often ignore our sin anyway. Or we tell ourselves the lie "He expects too much, we're human after all. We're not perfect."  No, he doesn't expect to much. Of course you can't do it on your own. It would be stupid to even try, which we often do. We need God. We need his love, his strength, and his power. There's no way we can do it on our own. He raised the bar knowing that we couldn't do it, just so that we would have to rely on him even more.
     Ephesians 6:10-11 says:

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you might be able to stand against the schemes of the devil."

     It then continues on to tell what the armor of God is. If you have never read this passage I would strongly encourage you to do so. And if you have, you should still go re-read it. :)
But here's the point of this post: Jesus raised the bar, are we now striving to achieve that? Are we trusting and relying on God to help us? Are we putting on the armor of God so as to fight against the devil who is trying to tear us down? We can't just sit back and hope for God to change us. We have to act. We have to pray. We have to read the Bible so as to grow. If we're not growing Satan is winning.
     I'm not posting this because I'm the perfect church girl who reads her Bible daily. I'm posting this because it's a struggle for me everyday. And God is making me more and more aware of it. (I actually have a post on that for tomorrow on how God is working in me through that area.)
Every little choice we make has an effect. Satan is going to attack in ways that will seam harmless. Are we ready for those attacks? Are we even noticing it's him? Or are we so caught up in this world that we're losing sight of God?
     My challenge to you is this:

"To put off your old slef, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." (Ephesians 4:22-24)

 "So whether you ear of drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." (1Cor.10:31)

 "Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good." (Romans 12:9)