Week 1-Freedom

What is “works”?

This is an important question to ask. And we may not be happy with the answer.

Paul is talking about the legalistic jew. Which…doesn’t really apply to many people . But it CAN still apply to us today in a way that maybe we’re not comfortable with. We may do different things, but we do them for the same reasons they did.

The problem at hand was this. Paul was running around, preaching the gospel of freedom in Christ.

Then there were other people following behind him. And these people added onto that message.

‘Absolutely, you were forgiven in Christ. But.... If you want to continue in that forgiveness, there’s specific things you have to do, specific ways you have to act, specific actions you have to repeat’.

To the jews at the time, the answers were ‘get circumcised’, ‘follow the jewish dietary laws’, stuff like that. But the important part isn’t the what - it’s the why. It’s not like, God was unhappy with circumcision, but he’s cool with OUR concept of works.

The why was the really big problem.

They knew that Jesus died for their sins. But they believed that he hadn’t fully forgiven them unless they did specific things. That the Spirit wouldn’t be with them unless they were taking specific actions.

And that pushes it closer to home for us.

Many churches everywhere struggle with this every single week. But we don’t struggle with circumcision or dietary restrictions. The north american church struggles with things like, what sort of music is the exact music that the Spirit responds to? What’s the right way a Pastor should sound? What’s the right way we should arrange the sanctuary? Where in service should we be doing prayer? How do we serve communion correctly?

The moment that we start saying, ‘The Spirit won’t (BLANK) answer unless I do this thing...’ then we’re in the camp of works.

Don’t get me wrong. I STRONGLY believe that the Spirit will lead us to to do many things. Often, when we talk about this, pastors get accused of denying the life-changing power of the spirit and downplaying how God calls us to work.

But that’s not true. And we’ll talk about the REAL and RIGHT motivation for activity later.

But this idea of works, and the spirit of the ‘law’, it’s such a big problem that we need to spend time rooting every single fibre of it out before we can really move on.

Paul waits all the way until halfway through chapter 5 (out of 6) to talk about what living by the Spirit looks like. So he takes 5 1/2 chapters just to blast this idea of faith by works.

So works is whatever activity we place in between us and the movement of the Spirit. That thing we think needs to be present, or to happen, beyond simply our belief in Christ, for the Spirit to go ‘ok, the requirements have been fulfilled, I’m ok to move now’.

Now, Sidebar, and I think it’s a really important one.

Why Send Paul to the Gentiles?

God picked one of the most legalistic people of the time, and sent THAT GUY out to the gentiles to preach the Gospel.

Paul’s journey from the pursuit of legalistic righteousness (and what that turned him into - a violent, vicious murder) into genuine faith in Christ, and letting go of all that, was essential for the Gospel to the gentiles.

You can’t really present the truth of Christ without understanding that dynamic - from works to faith. And the best person to talk to the gentiles about the freedom that comes in faith was a person who had tried really hard to do it the other way. A person who had shaken off the deepest and strongest kind of chains.

So basically, God had a message of Freedom to bring to the world - but because people were SO entrenched in this idea of ‘how do we ACT the right way to get God to respond’, he sends out Paul to go talk to them about it.

OK, so, starting in Galatians 1.

Paul has a pretty…strong opening to the letter.

The Gospel of Works is a False Gospel

Galatians 1:6–7 NIV

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.

In fact, Paul says, that anybody who preaches a gospel other than his Gospel of Freedom deserves to be under God’s curse (Galatians 1:8)

This isn’t about just, oh, we got the wrong idea.

Paul says - if you’re doing this by works, you’re not even facing the right direction. You’re not looking at the cross, or worshipping the same God.

Paul thinks the Galatians are starting to succumb to this pressure of works, and he straight up says, Galatians 3:4 “Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain?”

So to Paul, there’s two perspectives on approaching God.

Grace or Nothing

Galatians 2:21 NIV

I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

We BELIEVE that we’re here by the grace of God. We preach that and we tell people that. But sometimes we ACT like we’re here, or we continue to be allowed here, as a result of our good behaviour.

Paul here connects the dots for us - believing that our righteousness could be gained by our actions is the same as simply picking up the grace of God, pushing it to the side, and saying, ‘no thanks. I got this’.

STORY - We wouldn’t do this to our family. ‘I love you, but if you don’t keep on doing the right thing and performing at the standard I expect, I’ll stop loving you’. They can do stuff wrong - and it can break our heart, and affect them really badly. But - we still love them. It’s literally the definition of emotional abuse to say, I’ll only love you if you are doing specific things that I approve. If we understand it - how much more should God?

He even goes so far as to say, if this process even WORKED, then Jesus’ sacrifice was worthless. If it was POSSIBLE that God would answer primarily because we had performed the right actions, instead of simply faith, the cross would be meaningless.

Have you ever thought about it like that?

STORY - When i was younger, I thought prayer was only about saying the specifically right thing. Praying for good grades wouldn’t work - you had to pray that by december, God would increase your grade from a 60 to an 85. If you weren’t exact, the Holy Spirit went I DUNNO and just wandered off.

But the truth is, God doesn’t answer my prayers because I’m very specific. He doesn’t answer my prayers because I’ve done something right. He answers my prayers because he loves me, and because he thinks what i’m asking for is in line with his plan. Both reasons are because of him - not because of me. I’m just the guy who knows the truth.

The truth is this:

The only reason the Spirit accepts us and moves in us is because of His grace

The ONLY reason.

We could be the best person in the world. Honor every single scripture, walk every single footstep Jesus walked.

Or we could be the worst. Never done a thing right in our lives.

But when we turn to Jesus, and we seek Him - he accepts us. Because of HIS Grace, not because of our scorecard.

And I can say this, and we can believe it, but again. How come so many people, when the rubber hits the road, believe otherwise?

Paul has his own example - Peter. Peter had been working with Gentiles, but as more Jewish believers showed up, Peter started distancing himself from the gentiles.

And the issue here was, who was accepted as ‘right’ in the early church. Peter was pushing the gentiles away, and putting himself in with the jewish believers. He believed that their efforts were justified by God.

They had, in his eyes, all the outward signs of being the right ones.

Galatians 2:15–16 NIV

“We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

This word JUSTIFIED, it means ‘show or prove to be right’, in the sense of God deems you to be righteous (which just means, ‘right living’).

So Paul says, they have faith, you have faith. You both stand fully justified before the Lord, on equal footing. It’s your belief, and the grace from Jesus that comes with it, that makes you right. Not anything you will or can ever do.

It doesn’t matter what works either one of you are doing - they don’t bring you closer to Jesus.

So what does that mean for us?

We are Free to Receive the Spirit

Galatians 3:2–5 NIV

I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?

The Spirit indwells people not because of their efforts - but because of God’s forgiveness and our acceptance of that.

And there’s an important dynamic to understand here. Paul is saying - they have the spirit not because of their works, but because of their faith.

Now, we like to believe, we can do the wrong things and miss the Spirit. But there’s a scarier reality out there.

It’s possible to do the “right things” - and not have the Spirit

It is possible to live a works based life, do all the right actions that the Bible commands, and be entirely devoid of the Spirit. (In fact, it’s not only possible - I believe that if our focus is entirely on works, we WILL live a spirit-devoid life).

And not from a deceptive place either. See, WE believe that people who focus only on works secretly don’t believe God.

It’s possible to genuinely believe that God only answers you, or joins with you, if you’re doing things right. And try really, really hard, and do everything you think is good - and COMPLETELY miss the Spirit.

This assumption - that if we only do the right things, the Spirit will show up, and if we’re doing the wrong things, He’ll leave - it’s a very important assumption to break in ourselves.

That’s the danger of works. Not just that we think we should earn our way there - but we think that God should have to respond simply because of what we’ve done, or how we’ve done it.

It erases a primary truth about our connection to God

Faith is a relationship where God is the supreme partner

we’re ONLY here because he loves us and welcomed us in, and everything we receive or ever will receive is based simply off his generosity. If the Spirit EVER moves in our midst - it’s ONLY because of God’s grace, not because we struck the right chord or sang the right song.

How freeing is that? Knowing that we don’t have to prove that we’re accepted, or we don’t have to perform at a certain level to be forgiven- we only have to accept it ourselves.

Approaching God by works turns this relationship into a vending machine - I put my coin in, now I get my candy bar. It moves the emphasis off God’s kindness, and onto our efforts. Something happened because of some action we took.

If you get to eat because you’re starving, and you can’t make it work yourself, and someone is generous to you - that creates gratefulness.

If you get to eat because you put money in the slot, and you’re sitting waiting for your prize to drop down - that creates entitlement.

The Gospel of Freedom that Jesus calls us to, it’s so simple, that the ONLY requirement to it is that we believe, we accept.

John 3:16 NIV

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

This is SO foundational to our faith. We believe that we have eternal life, not because of anything WE’VE done - but because Jesus loved us, and gave himself for us.

what we invite you to today - it’s freedom. Freedom from our past, from our failures, from our problems. But also freedom from that crushing expectation to have to be good enough.

Right now, Jesus invites you into a relationship with Him. And He wants to have one with you - no matter what. He’ll never leave, he’ll never condemn, and he’ll always accept you.