Clothed in Christ

Sermon

We are continuing with our sermon series “Rooted in Grace.” We have been spending the last few weeks looking at how grace, a gift that we do not deserve or earn, given to us by God, can impact our lives.

You can find all of our previous sermons on our You Tube channel. This week we focus on being clothed in Christ and how it is through grace that this is possible. Our scripture comes from Galatians 3:23-29.

23 Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. 24 So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. 25 Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Please pray with me…

How many of you remember the saying “We all put on our pants one leg at a time?” That is basically the point that Paul is attempting to make in today’s scripture. He is trying to point out that the differences that previously existed among people groups are gone.

(Transition)

Last week our scripture began with a comparison between the Jews and the Gentiles in which Paul speaks of the spiritual differences by saying that “15 “We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles.” He is stating that the Jewish people used to have a different relationship with God.

This must have been a conflict that was occurring among the Galatians. The Jewish people and the Gentiles were divided. Each hanging out with their own kind. Paul between last week’s text and this week laid out the groundwork to make the point that Jesus ended the divide.

There no longer had to be division. Anyone who made the decision to become a follower of God through Jesus were now united together. The separation that had divided the Jewish people from the Gentiles had now ended.

(Transition)

The Jewish people in the audience may have been wondering than why did God give us the law to begin with? If we no longer are under the law, why did God have us waste our time attempting to follow it? Paul seems to expect this question and he gives them an answer, His answer was that God was giving them a way to stay connected with him until the coming of the Messiah.

The word “custody” that is used in today’s text can mean the word “confined” or “looked after.” It could be considered Paul is saying that God was attempting to keep the Jewish people separated from the rest of the world. He was trying to keep them away from outside influences that could move them away from him until the coming of the Messiah.

We can understand this best when we look at God as our Father. What happens when a child is born, they need to be protected by their parents. Even as they grow up, there still are rules in place to help to keep them safe.

That is what God was attempting to do for the Jewish people. He was attempting to keep them united together as followers of the one true God. They awaited the coming of the Messiah like a teenager waiting for adulthood. Everything was going to be better once that time came.

(Transition)

 What we know is that the Messiah caused confusion. He was not the Messiah they were expecting. He didn’t come only for the Jewish people; he came for all people. Jesus offered humanity the opportunity to take a different route in following God. He offered forgiveness. He allowed humanity to not have the weight of sin holding them down for the rest of their lives.

This would have also been a different way for those that were not Jewish during that time to look at God. There was an expectation that you served a god., no matter what god, you did what the God wanted, or you would face discipline for not following your god correctly.

We have talked about this before, they belonged to a blessings and curses culture. An understanding of God as either being for a person or group of people or against those that were facing turmoil in their lives.

Jesus instead offered grace to all people. A way for a person to live their lives with a focus on relationship. A God that served the people. A God that desired to first be in a relationship with those willing. He then hoped that the love he showed to them would lead them to desire to serve him.

(Transition)

What we know is that when we are not careful, we can get wrapped up into the “rule following” culture. In some ways it’s easier to have our relationship with God be based on how well we are following his rules. We can tangibly understand if we are doing what God wants, or we are not.

This can end up leading to the same issues faced by Jewish culture. We can end up with guilt and shame invading our relationship with God. We can allow our failures to lead us to try harder to do what God wants us to do instead of keeping ourselves focused on the love that God has for us.

The closer we get to God the more often we should find ourselves focused on both our relationship with him and how he desires for us to serve those around us. Our focus should turn from the personal to the communal.

This should occur through what we call sanctifying grace. This type of grace is God working within us to change us so that we end up becoming closer to him. We receive this grace when we are attempting to be in constant contact with God.

The end goal is stated in our text. We should desire to clothe ourselves in Christ. We should attempt to be covered from our head to our toes with the Christ. We should be clothed in his righteousness.

The word righteousness is referring to becoming right with God. It is us having our actions reflect what God desires from us. This is notabout rule following. Righteousness should be about listening to God and responding to what we hear from him.

(Transition)

The fact that Paul wants us to clothe ourselves with Christ should point out to us that there was a time that we were children naked and vulnerable. We needed to learn from our father what we needed to know to become closer to him.

Paul uses the analogy of clothes within his letters to offer us four distinct ways that putting on Christ changes our identity with God. It is through putting on the clothes of Christ that we become more like God and less like the world.

What is important to remember is that Paul is writing to individual churches. The fact that he addresses individual issues points out that this was a problem for that individual church or individuals within the church.

My point is that we don’t focus on believing that these are problems that we are facing currently. What looking at each of these cases can do is lead us to ask God to help us discern if these are areas that we need to work on.

This is why discern is a part of the way that we believe we grow in our faith together here at The Church of the Good Shepherd. We believe in asking God to help us grow closer to him. We do this when we are willing to ask and listen for God to help us discover what is next for us in our relationship with him.

The four areas that Paul speaks of using clothes as the analogy are through our actions, our faith, our practices, and our identity in him. We are going to take a few minutes to briefly look at these four analogies.

(Transition)

Romans chapter 13 states “Let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us behave decently… clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.”

This is a reminder that the law shouldn’t rule our lives but that the law does matter.. We are to choose to follow the ways of God. We should put on the clothes of Christ and follow the ways of God because of the realization of what God has and continues to do for us.

Ephesians 4 beginning in verse 22 tells us “22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

We have been asked to not only transform our actions but also our understanding of how we live our lives. We are to choose to allow God to help us decide what we are going to do instead of moving forward on our own.

We also find in Colossians that “since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”

We should not view people for what separates but look at those around us as all “children of God” loved by God. God is our creator, and we should view all people as those that are worthy of receiving our love and love from God.

(Transition)

This should then lead us to look at our current text from Galatians. “26 In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”

This goes back to the division that seems to be taking place at the church in Galatia. They were not united together. They were keeping themselves separated from each other. Paul is telling them that they are one body and should be acting as one instead of many.

This is why this is a year of traction at The Church of the Good Shepherd. We are focusing on uniting together so that we can go into 2026 ready to change the world. The hope is that by this time next year we will be using the gifts God has given us to serve our communities.

It is why I put in front of you our mission statement as often as I can. We have some words that can unite us together with a purpose. Words that speak of reaching out to others, making sure that we love all people, and uniting together to grow closer to God.

We are to live our lives reflecting the love that Jesus has for us to those around us. That is what it means for us to clothe ourselves with Jesus. It means that we will do what we can to live lives that show the same love and compassion that Jesus showed to those that he meant during his time on earth.

(Transition)

We can receive some understanding of what it means for us to follow the ways of God through our first reading. Micah was a prophet of Judah between 722 and 701 BCE. He offers us in this small portion of scripture what God desires from us and how we should choose to live our lives for him.

The first portion was to remind the Jewish people and through this scripture to us that our words and actions to those around us mean more to God than the actions that we take in our worship of him. We are to worship God with the correct intention.

Meaning, it is not that worshipping God on a Sunday morning or spending time with God daily as a spiritual exercise is not pleasing to God. But we have to evaluate why we are doing these things.

We need to make sure that our actions do not become rote behaviors that we are doing just because we feel we are supposed to do them or are we doing them in order to allow for us to become closer to God. God doesn’t want us to just go through the spiritual motions. God wants us to desire to become closer to him.

God desires for us to “walk humbly” with him. We have spoken of this before, we need to be willing to acknowledge that he is God we aren’t. We need to believe that God knows more than us and therefore we should choose to listen to what he says to us.

(Transition)

This scripture also points out that when we rely on God, we will live that out by acting justly and loving mercifully. This is an Old Testament scripture that should help us realize that we need to choose to live our lives with Jesus as our example.

“Act justly” is us treating those around us the way God would want all people to be treated. It goes back to our main scripture when Paul reminds us that

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Jesus showed us how to live this out through his treatment of those that were often considered the outcasts of Jewish society. He didn’t allow the opinion that others had of those that were considered unclean or unworthy to sway his treatment of them. We are called to do the same.

“Love mercifully” should lead us to desire to be people that are known for the way we show the love of God to those around us. There is a song that states, “They will know we are Christians by our love.”

What we know is that many people would disagree with this statement. Jesus reminds us in scripture that we are even supposed to love our enemies. There is no one that should not be able to feel the love of God through our words and actions.

Are you clothed in Christ? This should be a question that we should consider answering on a regular basis. Sanctifying grace can help us live this out. God desires to make us more holy each and every day.

Let us desire to live our lives in such a way that will reflect our love for God through Jesus each and every day.

Let us pray…