Galatians 3: Christ Promises

We Can’t Replace what God has Given

The first 5 or so verses deal with enchantment and bewitching. People chose to go their own way more than the way of Christ

Galatians 3:1–2 ESV

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

The Galatians were bewitched. Meaning they were duped or they were deceived through some kind of enchantment or evil force. Paul is so shocked at this that he treats it as if someone cast an “evil eye” upon the Galatians.

They were Bewitched. they were tricked

They we enchanted, so to speak to see one thing as something else. 

The church in Galatia saw the works of the law as the same as the grace found in Christ through the work of the Spirit. They pushed them together.

And Paul says, not at all!

Now we do this all the time. We believe we see one thing but we are actually not seeing it right. We have to own how easy it is to be bewitched, or to be swindled or to be distracted.

How easy it is to think one thing is really another.

Video?

This video is the parable of our lives. We are distracted enough that we are amazed at these small things that we assume are true but are not.

sometimes our eyes trick us. Sometimes we get tripped up and see something that is there that isn’t there. But this is exactly the issue that Paul wants to untangle here.

He asks the Galatians how they can be bewitched, or deceived, when in fact they have already understood Jesus Christ as publicly portrayed as crucified. While this church would have been in the generation of Christ’s resurrection, they wouldn’t have been eyewitnesses. That is not what Paul is talking about. Paul is recognizing that they have trusted in the work of Christ and the witness of the church. And that in that they understood the singular importance of Christ’s work.

But even in the midst of the witness, they believe otherwise. Or really they believe parralel. They believe the means to the end are all the same.

They think they have God figured out. And this is the problem. They develop this kind of superstition as a formula where they have some kind of control over God. We often want to turn a life giving relationship with God into knocking on wood to make sure we get into heaven (resource note: bear://x-callback-url/open-note?id=39407000-8DB9-464D-9254-A8F5A557063F-2056-00000146352B60A1).

We do this too. The problem is that the problem always becomes our responsbility. We have to figure ourselves out. We don’t need a Savior, just better techniques.

We see one thing and think it is another

We see our own works and think they equate to the works of Christ.

We see our ways and means and perspective and we think that they equate to the way of Christ. (How could anyone think differently?)

And this is where we get into trouble. Because we end up equating all sorts of things with the Gospel, and believing it has the same power.

Your works don’t have the power of the Good News of Jesus

Nor does this church. You attending here cannot save you. Christ who attends here, can.

Politics has never and will never affect the soul of any human being. We are decieved to equate politics with any kind of Gospel activity.

This is the primary difference between religion and magic, according to Emile Durkheim, the 19th century sociologist. Magic, he says is left up the individual. They are tricks that individuals perform that do not need anyone else.

Religion, as he calls it, draws us into the other. We find that we need support from other sources. God is our primary support and we find Him working through the church. (source note: bear://x-callback-url/open-note?id=70E46130-0D84-4F61-A4C5-A9237AA74FCB).

When we begin to believe that faith is entirely up to what we can see and what we can do, we create this new category of magic or superstition. It is the imitation of what is real and true. (Source note: bear://x-callback-url/open-note?id=77E00648-91F5-4177-BE42-8A604D67C4DB-2056-0000014633F9A224)

We think that we have more and more authority in the supernatural working of the world or that we have a clear understanding of the boundaries of the cosmos. We don’t even have a clear understanding of the boundaries of our lives!

But what Paul wants us to see is the singular nature of Christ, and to not mistake His work through the Spirit of God for anything less.

This chapter will go to great lengths to show how we can and have been deceived, how whatever we have been deceived by will never be enough, and the lengths Christ has gone through to deliver on real and true salvation.

Here’s what we can see:

The most appealing and most deceptive thing you and I can do is to think that ourselves or someone else can complete what Christ has started

But your faith is larger than that. We have the Spirit of God engaged in our lives, working at length, with the strength of Heaven, to show us who delivers on the real promises of life

So this morning we see Paul contrast the life formed by superstition and the life formed by the Spirit of God.

The Holy Spirit is the reminder of Christ’s complete work and complete embrace in our lives

We notice in chapter three how much Paul talks about the SPirit. Paul is concerned about how they received Christ. Did they receive their understanding from the Spirit of God or from their own disenchanted attempts?

How does God work amongst His people? Does He give the Spirit and does He work miracles around you?

Galatians 3:3–5 ESV

Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith—

Paul says don’t be deceived, instead, look at what God has given. The first couple of chapters have shown that we cannot do what God has done. We can’t negotiate our way to Christ and we cannot add to Christ.

This chapter shows us that we cannot replace who Christ has Given. We have the Spirit of God and He is in us to reveal Christ and empower us for living. If you are living today and Christ is in you through His Spirit then He is empowering you for ministry.

So let’s take a moment and talk about the Holy Spirit.

Third person of the Trinity

When Jesus was preparing to leave He began to teach on the Holy Spirit. That instead of God being local in one space, He would dwell in the believers.

And that the Spirit would not only dwell in us, He would also help us.

John 14:15–18 ESV

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

So when you trust Christ, as we have been talking about, you receive the Holy Spirit, who dwells in you. And His role, based on His name, the Helper, is the “One who comes alongside.”

The Holy Spirit dwells in us to empower us to serve (Romans 12) and empowers us to live as a response to Christ’s justification (Galatians 5:22-24). This is the promise of Christ. That we are not left as orphans. We are not left alone or to ourselves. We are given the Spirit.

We have been given everything we need for life and godliness, empowered to do the very work God has set aside for us to do.

Look at Galatians 3:13-14

Galatians 3:13–14 ESV

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

What happens in Christ is that we become people of the promise of God. And that the Spirit of God is the reminder and the catalyst of living out that promise. The Spirit matters because we are not called to a living trust, where we can do whatever we want and will receieve the inheritance as soon as we come of age. Instead we are called into a living promise.

Look at Ephesians 1:13-14

Ephesians 1:13–14 ESV

In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

And the Spirit of God is the One who works in and through that promise.

If we forget, the Spirit reminds us.

If we go off trail, the Spirit corrects.

If we don’t know what to do, the Spirit helps us.

If we are angry, the Spirit comforts. If we are sad, the Spirit supports.

The Spirit of God is the One who day in and Day out comes alongside us, reminding us of the promise of God. That we are justified, redeemed, restored.

This is the beauty of the Spirit of God. Because He reminds us of all that Jesus has done and spoken. God through His Spirit works within our daily victories and failures.

The Spirit of God is the constant and persistent guarantee and reminder of Christ’s complete work at the Cross and His complete embrace of your life through faith.

We belong to God through the Holy Spirit.

This is the Gospel. Christ has embraced us by His Spirit. The Gospel is the reminder that even in our inconsistencies and even in our sin Christ came to overrule our own enchantments, our own superstitions. Christ has shown Himself larger than whatever it is we have looked at adoringly. Or whatever it is we have looked at to try and fix that gaping hole left by our own sin and selfishness.

The love of Christ washes over all that. And in that Christ doesn’t do the work and then leave us be. He calls us into an entire new life. He gives us the Spirit. We are never alone, we are not only called by the Spirit but we belong to God as sons and daughters.

This is why Paul gets firey. The Galatians are opting out for their own understanding of faith rather than opting in to Christ.

Look at the last section in the Galatians 3

Galatians 3:24–29 ESV

So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

Paul is telling the Galatians that everything they had believed before, the law and it’s ability to hold them up, was not enough.

He says we are no longer under the guardian. For in Christ Jesus you are sons and daughters of God.

A guardian in this case is likened to a babysitter. A babysitter comes over on a Friday night and watches the kids. He or she maybe makes dinner, maybe watches a movie with the kids, reads a story and puts them to sleep for the night. But the babysitter is there to get paid, they do enough to keep the kids safe. But the babysitter doesn’t even have to like the kids, they just have to keep them safe until mom and dad get home.

Paul is saying that everything before Christ that has tried to keep us safe, in the example of the letter, the law, has now gone home. We recognize that we are kept by God who calls us sons and daughters. Christ’s complete work is the work to bind us to God. To bind us in such a way that we are not just being watched out for, we are being called sons and daughters.

We are brought into the family of God. And God is a good Father. He cares for His children. We know that because the Spirit has called us God’s own.

We are so easily enchanted by so many things. We cling to the promises of things that say they can save us. But Christ has not only saved us He has called us His own.

belonging to the spirit talk about serenity’s adoption.

That it is quite a miraculous thing to watch someone to go from not belonging to belonging

And that truly you belong in Christ. By his spirit, he swooped us up and moves us from a fractured state into a whole and complete state.