Costumes and Characters

What a great time we had here on Thursday night for our Trunk or Treat celebration!

I’d like to thank everyone who took part and to all who worked so hard to get the church building and grounds ready for our guests.

About 200 of our neighbors joined us, and some of them stayed around for the whole evening, taking advantage of fresh-cooked s’mores, hot dogs, and hayrides around the cemetery.

I have to confess that I’m old enough now that I didn’t recognize 75 percent of the costumes I saw that night. But it was still good to see everyone dressed up and having fun.

It was especially enjoyable to see some folks who are with us today revealing what must be their true personalities. In fact, it was only yesterday that I learned Tracy came as Raggedy Ann. I thought she’d come as a clown.

My costume didn’t fool anybody. I came as a s’more, because the beached-whale costume was sold out. Fortunately, the best s’mores, as we saw on Thursday, have extra-large and pillowy-soft white middles, just like me, except with less hair.

I’ll tell you — I’ve never felt more like ME than I did on Thursday.

And it might surprise you to hear this from the pulpit, but I think there’s a good lesson for us from Halloween. Think of it: We’ve devoted a “holiday” to changing our identities — if only for one evening — and then pretending to be something or someone we’re not.

Over the years, I’ve pretended on Halloween — with limited success, I might add — to be any number of superheroes, a s’more, a Smurf, a gypsy woman, a giant pumpkin and other things.

Each time, I put on my new costume and headed out into the world, hoping to convince folks that I was exactly as I appeared.

And at the end of each Halloween night, I took off my costume and looked into the mirror to find the same, old dull guy looking back at me.

I was still the 8-year-old who COULDN’T swing through the air on ropes of spider silk. I was still the 19-year-old who wished he hadn’t used actual paint to make himself blue earlier that day.

I was still the 3-year-old who’d had to leave his chicken-wire-and-crépe-paper pumpkin suit behind after he fell on the sidewalk and crushed it almost as soon as he’d put it on.

Halloween gives us a chance to pretend to be something we’re not with the aid of a disguise.

But for we who follow Jesus in faith, this strange holiday can ALSO serve as a reminder of a much greater truth: that we followers of Jesus are now clothed in Him and in His righteousness and that in so doing, He MAKES us what we are not. He MAKES us righteous, even though we’re still sinners.

When we turn to Jesus in faith, the passage we’re studying today tells us, we have a new identity IN Him. But unlike the costumes of Halloween, THIS new identity changes us fundamentally.

We’re continuing our study of the Book of Galatians today, and we’ll be looking at the last four verses of chapter 3.

But first, let’s have a quick review.

Remember that the Apostle Paul wrote this letter to the churches he and Barnabas had planted in what’s now western Turkey during their first missionary journey.

He’d learned that after they’d left the region of Galatia, men from Jerusalem had come to those churches with the message that the mostly Gentile believers there had to follow much of the Mosaic Law in order to be truly saved.

The faith these Gentiles had put in Christ Jesus was good, the so-called Judaizers had said. But to be truly saved, they’d have to add their own works to the salvation equation.

The men would have to be circumcised, and all of them would need to adhere to much of the rest of the Mosaic Law.

When Paul heard about this false teaching, he understood the violence that it did to the true gospel message of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

He wanted the Galatians to understand that anything they did to try to EARN their salvation actually served to NULLIFY God’s grace.

He wanted them to understand that this false teaching by the Judaizers actually keeps people FROM salvation by encouraging them to rely on themselves and their own righteousness, instead of putting their complete trust in the life and work of Jesus Christ.

So far in this little letter to the Galatians, Paul has been taking a wide view of salvation. He’s focused broadly on the promises of God to Abraham that serve as the foundation for this part of his argument for the supremacy of salvation by grace, through faith.

Now, he narrows his focus to the individuals who receive this promise as spiritual descendants and heirs of this man of faith. What does Paul’s theology of salvation mean for them as individual believers?

Let’s read this passage together, starting in verse 26 of chapter 3:

Galatians 3:26–29 NASB95

26 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.

Now, the first thing to notice about this passage is that Paul seems to believe the original recipients of this letter were true followers of Jesus, “sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus,” as he puts it in verse 26.

He believed they’d made true professions of faith in Jesus and that they were truly saved and adopted into the family of God, by God’s grace.

So, he wasn’t concerned about their eternal destiny. After all, as he put it in Romans, chapter 8, “nothing can separate” those “who love God and are called according to His purpose” from “the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Paul’s concern here isn’t for the believers in the Galatian churches, but for those with whom they might share the gospel.

If they were going to be telling their friends and family about Jesus — as we all should — they needed to be sure they got their story straight. They needed to share the true gospel, like Paul did, and not a false one, like the Judaizers.

The Galatians of the churches to whom Paul wrote this letter had been saved through faith in Christ Jesus and not by any works they had done or COULD have done.

Only the blood of God Himself, in the person of His Son, could atone for their sins or ours. And only faith in Jesus — trusting that He is who He said He is and that He’ll do what He said He’ll do — can save any of us from the just punishment we deserve for our rebellion against God.

And when we turn to Jesus in faith, one of the wonderful things that happens is that we’re adopted into God’s family. We become sons and daughters of God.

The Greek word there refers to an adult son. We no longer are in need of a tutor, like the pedagogues — the harsh nannies of ancient Greece and Rome — whom Paul compared in last week’s passage to the Mosaic Law.

Remember that he said the Law was given to us to show us the extent of our sinfulness. And it was given to provide the harshest punishment when we inevitably failed in our calling to share the character of the righteous and holy God who made us in His image — to be LIKE Him.

The Law could show us our faults, and it could set forth the punishment for rebellion, but it could never bring life, Paul said. It could never save us from the penalty it had prescribed for our sins.

But faith in Jesus DOES bring life — eternal life — life the way it was always meant to be — in fellowship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We who’ve turned to Jesus in faith no longer need the Law as a tutor, because now we have the very Spirit of God Himself living within us. And this tutor convicts Christians without condemnation. He brings life to we who were dead in our trespasses.

And though Paul doesn’t mention the Holy Spirit in this passage, the work of the Spirit takes center stage in the next couple of verses.

“For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ,” he writes in verse 27.

Now, I want you to understand that this verse isn’t referring to water baptism.

Water baptism is an act of obedience to Jesus by someone who has already turned to Him in faith and has been regenerated — made new — by the work of the Holy Spirit.

It’s helpful to understand that the Greek word rendered as “baptism” here means “to immerse.” Thats part of the reason I believe in immersion for baptisms, rather than sprinkling.

But let’s go a little deeper.

A Greek poet named Nicander, who lived about 200 years before Jesus, is known to us today, not so much because of his poems, but because of a recipe he left for us. It’s a recipe for how to pickle vegetables.

“In his recipe, Nicander wrote that in order to make a pickle, the vegetable should first be dipped into boiling water, and then left immersed forever, in a vinegar solution.

“Obviously, he wrote all this in Greek.

“The Greek word he used to describe the process of dipping the vegetable in hot water is the word bapto.

“And the Greek word he used to describe the process of leaving the vegetable immersed forever in vinegar, is the word baptizo.

“Here’s what’s most interesting. Every single time the word baptism appears in the New Testament, the Greek word used is baptizo, not the word bapto.

“To be baptised does not mean to be dipped in Christ and then go on living the same lives we were living earlier. Not at all.

“To be baptised means to be left forever immersed in Christ, just as a pickle is left forever immersed in vinegar.

“When you taste a pickled vegetable, it tastes more like vinegar than the vegetable itself. This is what the faith that leads us to baptism should do to us. It should make us taste more of Christ than of ourselves.” [Anand Mahadevan, “What a Jar of Pickles Teaches Us About Baptism” https://in.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/enjoy-the-gospel/baptism/]

So, we who’ve turned to Jesus in faith are now “in Christ Jesus,” as Paul likes to put it.

We’ve been immersed into Jesus and remain in Him, being changed in character by the Holy Spirit, much as a cucumber is changed in character by being immersed into and left in vinegar.

Water baptism is important as an act of obedience and as a proclamation that we belong to Jesus, that we identify with Him rather than with the lost world. But water baptism doesn’t change anything about you, and it certainly can’t save you.

The baptism that changes you, that makes you a new creature, that replaces your heart of stone with a heart of flesh, is baptism into Christ through the indwelling Holy Spirit.

And we can only receive the Spirit — and, hence, baptism into Christ — through faith in who Jesus is, in what He’s done, and in His character as a promise-keeping God.

And this is the main reason I’m opposed to infant baptism. Since water baptism has no power to save, I would never want a child growing up in this church to think they’d been saved simply because they’d been sprinkled with water when they were babies.

In fact, infant baptism can be seen as a sort of works-based Christianity, the very thing that Paul has been arguing against throughout this letter to the Galatians.

If all I need to do to be saved is have some priest or pastor sprinkle me with water — or even dunk me — then why did Jesus have to die on the cross? If I can do something — anything — to save myself, then His death was completely unnecessary.

Believer’s baptism, on the other hand, recognizes that the power to save and transform lives is God’s alone and that He has decreed this power to be available only to those who’ve placed their faith in the life, death, and resurrection of His only Son.

Believer’s baptism is the outward sign of an inner reality: the reality of a sinner, saved by grace, through faith, who is publicly committing himself or herself to follow Jesus in faithful obedience.

Believer’s baptism proclaims not that we’re doing some work to make us acceptable to God, but that the work to make us acceptable to God was ALREADY done by Jesus and that the baptizing work of the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ Jesus.

So, what was necessary for the Galatians to be saved wasn’t circumcision, but being identified with Jesus through faith and the continual work of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

And the same thing is still true.

And as we followers of Jesus are all clothed with Christ, the external identities we once considered so important no longer are significant.

In Christ Jesus, there is no longer Jew nor Greek. There is no longer slave nor free man. There is no longer male nor female. There is no longer Republican nor Democrat, liberal nor conservative. These things lose their significance as we embrace our identity in Christ.

Believe me when I tell you today that there will be no Republican Party nor Democratic Party in heaven. There will be only one party, and it will be called HIS.

And there will be no division within it, because the Body of Christ will reflect the unity of the Godhead. We will have the same perfect unity among US that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have had among one another for all of eternity.

Would that we could embrace this reality in our present lives here on earth!

Oh, how I wish that followers of Jesus would lay aside all the old identities that divide us from one another and more importantly from HIM and cling to the only one that can unite us.

How I wish that we understood just how significant it is that we “belong to Christ,” that we’re loved by Him, used by Him, and kept by Him who is sovereign above all powers and principalities.

These are spiritual arguments that Paul is making here, but they have significant practical implications to our lives if we would only allow them.

Too often, we’re glad to have put on Christ but unwilling to ACT like Christ.

Look, every kid knows that if you’re going to wear a big, blow-up T-Rex costume for Halloween, you need to work on your roar ahead of time and be prepared to eat a small child or two.

But too many Christians are content to call one another brother or sister, to claim the benefits of being in the one Body of Christ — to wear the costume of the Church, as it were — while acting as if there were two or three or more bodies of Christ, with their own at the top of some hierarchy of bodies.

And that was one of the dangers of the Judaizers’ message. Not only did it endanger the message of the true gospel, but it also encouraged division within the Church.

Just the kind of division that was displayed in Antioch, when fear of the Judaizers there caused Peter and Barnabas to withdraw from fellowship with their Gentile brothers and sisters in Christ.

We who follow Jesus in faith are clothed in Christ. We’re clothed in the righteousness of Christ. When God sees us now, He no longer sees sinners covered in filth, but saints covered in robes washed white by the blood of His Son.

He doesn’t see Jews or Gentiles, slaves or freemen, male or female — but adopted sons and daughters in ONE family, under ONE Lord, sharing ONE faith, having been immersed in ONE baptism, for the glory of ONE God, who is above all, through all, and in all.

We sing and pray sometimes for God to give us eyes that see what His eyes see. If we had His eyes, I think what we’d see on every face is the words: “Loved by God. Desperate for His grace.” And on the faces of believers, these additional words: “Forgiven and adopted. Righteous in Christ.”

And those last two lines — or the lack of them — would be the ONLY identifying marks that mattered.

But before the Galatians could EVER understand what it meant for their identity to be in Christ, they had to understand that belonging to Jesus meant that they ALREADY had become heirs of the promise God had made to Abraham, the promise of righteousness imputed by faith.

Let me tell you this: If you’re trying to work your way into heaven, you’ll never get there. The only work that could be done to secure your place there or mine was done by Jesus on a cross at Calvary.

There, He gave Himself as the spotless Lamb of God, the one and only perfectly sinless man, who could represent us on the cross because of His perfect obedience to His Father.

Because He’d never sinned, He could take upon Himself our sins and their just punishment, paying the price that WE deserve to pay for our rebellion against God so that all who turn to Him in faith can be saved from God’s condemnation for their sins.

And because God raised Him from the dead, we know that He can and will keep His promise of eternal life to those who trust in Jesus.

And if you’ve made that decision to follow Jesus in faith, then let me say, “Welcome to the pickle jar. We’re all in here together. And we’re all being changed through the work of the Holy Spirit. We might be wearing Christ like an ill-fitting costume today, but one day our character will match our costume.”

One day, our character will match that of our Creator and Savior.

Sure, we can wait until we get to heaven in our glorified bodies, no longer subject to sin or temptation, to allow that change to take place.

But if I’m going to wear a T-Rex costume, I want to be the best T-Rex since Jurassic Park. I’m going to do everything I can do to make that identity shine.

I want folks to see a terrifying dinosaur and not an old guy with a big beard and a bigger belly trying to squeeze into a suit.

And if I’m wearing Christ and His righteousness, then I want to look and act as much like Jesus as possible. Today. Right now. Not 20 years from now. Not in heaven. But right here, right now.

Let’s not wait to be like Jesus. Let’s commit to allowing this baptism into Christ, this transformational work of the Holy Spirit to change us here and now.

Let’s commit to being the new creatures God has made us to be. Let’s commit to embracing our new identity in Christ and letting go of every other identity that separates us from Him. Let’s commit ourselves to truly belonging to Jesus.