Galatians 5:1-6

Intro:

If you were to ask me to tell you about my marriage and why I like being married, there’s many things I could tell you

-I could say that it’s beneficial for me financially to be married when it comes to sharing incomes with another person and for tax reasons

-I could say that I enjoy having food cooked for me since I’m not a very good cook

-I could say that it’s very nice when the bathrooms get cleaned or the dishes get put away

-And while all those things are very true, there seems to be something missing in the way that I discuss being married

-Because for all of these benefits that I’ve just mentioned, I have not discussed the person that my marriage is all about, namely my wife Ashley

-And when it comes to our salvation, it can be easy to think in terms of the benefits that I get from salvation

-I get forgiveness of sins

-I get to escape hell

-I get a mansion in heaven

And while all those things are true and ought to be rejoiced in, these are all side-benefits of salvation

-For at the center of salvation is a person: Jesus Christ

-And if you look over our text for this evening, Galatians 5:1-6, Paul refers to Christ by name 4 different times

-Paul is writing to a church in Galatia that he planted, a church that is being influenced by a group of people called the Judiazers

-These are people who believe a person is saved by believing in Jesus AND keeping the OT Law

-And so they have told these Galatian Christians, probably most of whom are Gentiles, that they need to get circumcised and keep the Law as well as believe in Jesus

-And so it seems that these Galatian believers are in danger of going along with this

-And so Paul writes this letter, and he tells them that they’re abandoning the Gospel

-Paul spends the first couple chapters defending His Apostleship, that He really is an Apostle who was given the Gospel by direct revelation from Jesus Himself, and therefore he is a credible authority about the Gospel

-And then he spends chapters 3 and 4 explaining and defending the true Gospel of grace through faith, showing that the Law was never intended to save

-That salvation has always been through faith, even citing Abraham as an example of that

-And so now in chapters 5-6, he turns a corner and begins bringing his letter to a climactic finish, applying the truths he’s expounded to the lives of his hearers

-And his referring to Christ by name 4 times in these 6 verses shows that he wants to begin this section by showing how Christ is the center of the Gospel, and how their rejection of the Gospel will affect their relationship with Christ.

So as we read the text and then jump into it, let’s be ready to see and love Jesus Christ and be reminded of how the Gospel is all about Him

**read the text and pray**

1. What Christ has done (5:1)

-The text literally reads “for freedom, Christ has set us free.”

-Through His life, His death and His resurrection, Christ has set us free from the demands of the Law

-Remember, the Law was a guardian to bring us to Christ

-The Law could never save, it could only show us our sin and condemn us

-But Christ set us free from that Law through His life, death, and resurrection

-And He has set us free, for the purpose of us enjoying that freedom

-How silly it would be for Christ to go to all that effort to free us from the Law, for us to then go right back to it

**Imagine that you are an FBI agent, or a police office, or an undercover spy, like what you might see in some of the movies you like

-And your job is to come up with a daring rescue plan to rescue an innocent hostage that is being cruelly tormented and kept by terrorists

-So you come up with an elaborate, daring plan

-You infiltrate enemy ranks at great cost to you and your team of agents

-And you pull of the incredible rescue operation, freeing this hostage

-Imagine bringing this person into your headquarters, and asking this person where they would like to go now

-You expect them to give their home address, or the address of their closest family members

-Instead, they tell you that they want to go back to their cruel captors

What would you think about that??

-How would you feel if this person who you rescued at great effort and risk to your life decides that he simply wants to go back to captivity?

-Wouldn’t you feel insulted?

-Wouldn’t you feel betrayed?

-Wouldn’t you feel that this person was incredibly ungrateful and selfish and arrogant?

-Brothers and sisters, how does Christ feel when He purchases our freedom from trying to earn our salvation by our works, only for us to go right back to works??

-Christ freed us for us to be free!!

-So the application that Paul gives is obvious! Stand firm and don’t go back to slavery!

-Your good works are not enough to save you!

-Your effort at being a perfect parent is not enough to justify you!

-Your baptism, tithing, church membership, daily bible reading and your prayer life are not enough to make you right before God!

-So don’t go back to those things as means of earning something from God!

**A few days ago, I had another Churches of Christ member call into the prayer line and talk to me

-These are the same kind of people who called in and debated me on their podcast about a year ago

-It was some guy, basically telling me that in order to be saved, I needed to live a certain way and be baptized, and that faith alone is not enough to save me

-You know what I did? I hung up on him

-Why? Because I’m not interested in his message of works-based salvation, because Christ has set me free from that!

-That’s how I lived before I was saved. Why on earth would I go back to that??

Brothers and sisters, stand firm in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work

-Don’t fall into the temptation to become overwhelmed and discouraged on your bad days when you’re struggling to obey God

-And don’t become proud and self-sufficient on your good days of obeying God

-Christ (through the Gospel of faith) frees us from both despair when our performance for God is poor, and pride when our performance is exemplary, because God doesn’t love you and hasn’t justified you based on your performance, but on the finished work of Christ

-Your standing before God is maintained by the ongoing intercessory ministry of Christ on your behalf as He shows His the scars on His hands and feet for you, declaring you not guilty based on His finished work, not your inadequate works

-Be encouraged and humble, and do not go back to that kind of slavery! Fix your eyes on Christ, the one who has freed you!

But notice next . . .

2. The Wrong Response to Christ (5:2-4)

-When the Galatians accepted the Judaizers and began to follow their ways, I’m sure they never imagined that they were committing treason against Christ Himself

-After all, there’s no evidence that the Judaizers taught anything false or unorthodox against Christ

-It doesn’t seem that they denied the Deity or the humanity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, or His vicarious death, triumphant resurrection, or His ascension and ongoing ministry

-So what Paul is about to say next would probably rock them to the core as they sat in their church meeting and listened to this letter being read

Galatians 5:2 NKJV

Indeed I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing.

-You see, Christ is not part of the solution to justification

-As one theologian put it, Jesus did not die in order to make salvation possible for those who do their part

-The good news is not that Jesus gets you halfway to reconciliation with God, and your effort at righteous living gets you the rest of the way

-And so Paul tells these Galatians, probably mostly Gentile Christians, that if they go and get themselves circumcised, Christ will be of no profit to them

-You can almost imagine the Judaizers preaching about how God had given the command of circumcision, and how all His people from Abraham onward (including Jesus) was circumcised

-This is a biblical command

-And perhaps these Gentile believers in Galatia thought, “Why not? It certainly wouldn’t be a bad idea right? I mean, this is something that God commanded. At the very least, what harm could it do?”

-And Paul tells them: it will do immense harm

-Turning to circumcision for a righteous standing before God actually undermines the work of Christ to reconcile sinners to God

Why??

-Because you can’t have it both ways!

-Salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone is mutually exclusive with every other attempt to be made right with God

-To attempt to add something to the finished work of Christ is to destroy the Gospel

**So I looked it up today, and I found a baseball that was autographed by Babe Ruth on amazon

-It’s officially certified and everything, and you can add it to your cart and buy it for a mere $220,000 in case you’re interested

-Now, imagine that you were the owner of that baseball, and you wanted to sell this ball that’s worth so much money

-But you look at that signature on the ball, and it’s kind of faded and a little messy for your liking

-So you go and grab a sharpie, and you decide that in order to help things out, you’ll go ahead and re-trace the signature

-And so you begin to write Babe Ruth’s name over his own signature

-And then you decide that on the back of the ball, you’ll go ahead and draw a nice picture of babe ruth with that same sharpie, hoping to add to the artistic value of the ball

-What have you just done?

-By adding your signature and your drawing to the signature of Babe Ruth, you’ve not increased the value at all

-As a matter of fact, you’ve taken something of incredible value and you’ve made it almost worthless

-And when it comes to the Gospel, we dishonor Christ and undercut His work in our lives when we try to add our good works to His finished work

-John Calvin says, “Whoever wants to have a half-Christ loses the whole.”

Furthermore, Paul says that if you get circumcised, you’ll have to keep the whole law!

-Contrary to popular opinion among many Americans, especially in the South, God’s moral Law is not for you to pick and choose what you like and don’t like

** I don’t know if you’re like me in this, but sometimes at an event of get-together, someone else orders pizza, and they order supreme pizza, which has everything except the kitchen sink on it

-And when that happens, you grab a piece of the pizza, and you begin to pick off all the parts you don’t like

-You get rid of the olives, or the mushrooms, or other horrible things that should never be on a pizza to begin with

-That’s how a lot of people treat God’s moral law

-If you ask the average unsaved person if they’re good person, they’ll usually say something like, “yes, I think so, because I’ve never murdered anyone or raped someone, or stolen something”

-They’re listing the parts of God’s Law that they like and agree with

-But even when you press them on their claim not to have stolen, what they mean by that is that they’ve never robbed a bank, although they have cheated on a test before

-And Paul is saying here that God’s Law doesn’t work like that!

-You don’t just get to pick out your favorite parts of it and keep those

-If you turn from Christ to good works for your salvation, you’d better do all of them!

-And brothers and sisters, that is a weight that neither you nor I could ever bear!

-This is what Peter says at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, when they were discussing this very issue of whether Gentiles should keep the Law

Acts 15:10 NKJV

Now therefore, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?

But look finally at the last implication of what Paul says this turn away from Christ towards circumcision means:

Galatians 5:4 NKJV

You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.

**I don’t know if you’ve ever witnessed or experienced estrangement or alienation firsthand or observed it within your family or the life of a friend, but there are few things that are more sad and heartrending than to see two people who used to be close become estranged from one another

-A marriage that is ripped apart and the man and woman never speak again

-Parents or children who cut each other off permanently

-Siblings who never speak to one another again

-And more than anything else, this is the bottom line of turning to law-keeping as a means of salvation: it alienates you from Christ

-In the same ways that you would never marry someone if they told you, “I want to be with you, but I also want to be with a lot of other people as well”

-So similarly Christ is a jealous husband who is not willing to share you with anyone or anything

-For the Galatians to turn back to the law would be to be estranged from Christ and from the Gospel of grace

-Now, we don’t believe that people can lose their salvation if they’re genuinely saved

-Romans 8 teaches us that those who are justified will be glorified

-But the NT teaches the necessity of perseverance, that those who are genuinely saved will continue in the faith as an evidence of their salvation

-And to depend on my effort to save me is to depart from Christ

-Brothers and sisters, I hope you understand how serious this is

-If you’re a true Christian, nothing in the whole world is more precious to you than Jesus Christ

-He is the pearl of great price, the most valuable and beautiful treasure in the whole world

-There is nothing that you love more than Jesus if you’re truly saved

-And to lose Him is the worst thing that could ever happen to someone

-That’s how serious it is to add your works to Christ’s work

But there is . . .

3. A Right Response to Christ (5:5-6)

-What is the proper response to Christ?

Galatians 5:5 NKJV

For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.

-As opposed to the Judaizers, who were trying to be justified by believing in Jesus, plus keeping the law and getting circumcised

-Paul says that “we” who are true believers

-Those, who as he’s going to talk about a couple of paragraphs later, walk in the Spirit

-These true believers don’t work for their salvation

-Don’t attain justification by effort

-Don’t earn their right standing with God

-No, true believers eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith

-They’re like Abraham, who believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness

-They’re like David, who said Psalm 32:1

Psalm 32:1 NKJV

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered.

-True believers firmly and eagerly wait for the true hope of righteousness, when their faith will one day be made sight

How can we do this? On what basis is this hope?

Galatians 5:6 NKJV

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.

Who else but Christ can do this?

-The history of civilization is full of leaders and politicians who promise to level the playing field and give everyone an equal chance

-Politicians want you to believe that if you elect them, they’ll make everything fair again and give all their citizens an equal shot and an equal footing

-But only Christ is the one who can accomplish it!

-For in Christ, your effort doesn’t mean anything

-Whether you’re the smartest, wealthiest person on the planet

-Or the most meager, unimpressive person imaginable

-No one can be made right with God based on their efforts of being a good person

-Neither the most religious Jew or the most despicable Gentile is one inch closer to reconciliation with God than the other based on their works

-You see, in Christ, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything

-It doesn’t matter whether your grew up in church from the time you were a baby and know all the books of the Bible by heart and all the Bible stories and how to dress at church and act at church

-Or if had never been to church in your life and wouldn’t know the difference between Leviticus and Romans

-No person is saved based on their perceived religiosity or effort

-In Christ, what matters, is faith working through love

-The only currency that matters in the economy of God is genuine faith that evidences through love for God and others

**There was a man who thought he was really really good

-He was a Jew

-He was an expert on God’s Word

-He knew all that it had to say, and worked hard to keep all of it

-He says this about himself

Philippians 3:4–9 (HCSB)

I once also had confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he has grounds for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised the eighth day; of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; regarding the law, a Pharisee; regarding zeal, persecuting the church; regarding the righteousness that is in the law, blameless.

But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of Him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them filth, so that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ —the righteousness from God based on faith.

That’s what everything comes down to: knowing Christ

-And the only way to have a real relationship with Him is to lay down all your good works and everything that you think could possibly justify you

-And to trust in Him alone, not in anything you can do

Application:

-So as we close, let me ask you something:

-Do you love Christ?

-Do you treasure Him?

-Do you want to honor Him and enjoy Him?

-Then stay fixated on Him and what He has accomplished

-Rest in His finished work

-Enjoy the freedom He gives

-Don’t go back to relying on your efforts to earn God’s love or favor

I love the 3rd stanza of Be Thou My Vision

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise; Thou mine inheritance, now and always; Thou and Thou only, first in my heart; High King of Heaven, my treasure Thou art.