To Deliver Us From the Present Evil Age

Galatians 1:1-5

    This series of messages that will take us through Paul's letter to the Galatians. The reason I have chosen to preach from Galatians over the next several months is that more than any other New Testament letter this one is alive. I mean that in Galatians Paul is at his most vigorous. The sheer emotional force of the book has captured me again and again over the years. You can't read the first ten verses without feeling that something utterly important is at stake.

     You can't read Galatians and think, "Well this is an interesting piece of religious reflection"—any more than you can examine a piece of hot charcoal with your bare hands. Galatians is a statement of the central truths of Christianity. If we as a people can make these truths and this vigor a part of our thinking and our willing, the bones of our faith will be strong and not brittle, and the emotional force of our life in Christ will not be lukewarm but ardent and intense and undivided.

     The Scottish minister, P.T. Forsythe, said, "The secret of the Lord is with those who have been broken by his cross and healed by his Spirit." Galatians exalts these two things: the cross of Christ as the only way a person can get right with God, and the Spirit of Christ as the only way a person can obey God.

-Anything that diminishes the beauty and all-sufficiency of what happened on the cross of Christ is a curse to Paul.

-Anything that puts our willing or running where the Holy Spirit belongs is evil to Paul.

   And the reason we sense a kind of compassionate rage running beneath this letter is that someone had bewitched the Galatians to put themselves where the Spirit belonged and the works of law where faith in the cross alone belonged.

     My hope is that you will study this great book with me. That you will marry it and that "the two will become one." There is nothing that I would rather be than a spiritual cupid to help you fall in love afresh with the magnificent Christ of Galatians.

    Let's begin with 1:1-5. First, I will sum up the whole and then come back and look at the parts with you in more detail. In verse 1 Paul lays claim to the unique authority of an apostle which is not dependent at all on other people, but comes from Christ and God the Father. In verse 2 Paul says that all the brothers with him stand behind his letter. Though Paul's authority does not come from his brothers, but indeed sets him off from them as an apostle (v. 1), nevertheless the message which God has given him as an apostle unites him with his brothers and together they declare to the Galatians: This letter is the true gospel and there is no other.

    The content of verses 3-5 may be summed up like this: Grace may now come to you (1:3), glory may now go to God (1:5), for Christ has died for our sins and freed us from the present evil age (1:4).

     Verse 3 is the offer of grace and peace to the Galatians, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Verse 5 is the ascription of glory to God, "To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen." And sandwiched between grace and glory in verse four is their foundation: The death of Christ for our sin and our new freedom from the present evil age.

     Therefore, even though 1:1-5 is formally a salutation or a greeting, Paul has already gotten down to the main business at hand: verses 1 & 2 claim authority for his message; verses 3-5 give a summary of that message. So the greeting of the letter itself is a preview of the whole letter. Paul takes these two things (the authority and content of his message) and unfolds them in that order (cf. 1:6-2:10; 2:11-6:18).

    Let's go back now and look more closely at what he says. In verse 1 Paul calls himself an "apostle." The word means "one who is sent." This is most obvious in John 13:16 where Jesus says, "Truly, truly I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, neither is an apostle greater than the one who sent him." In the New Testament the word "apostle" had a general and particular usage.

    In the general sense it was used, for example, for representatives sent out by a church on a mission. In Philippians 2:25 Paul calls Epaphroditus "your apostle and minister for my need." He had been sent by the Philippian church on a mission to give Paul their gifts. And in 2 Corinthians 8:23 the men who were appointed by the churches of Macedonia to help Paul take money to the poor in Jerusalem are called the "apostles of the churches," that is, men appointed by the churches to represent them in this mission. Today’s Missionaries.

    But in Galatians 1:1 Paul explicitly denies that he is an apostle merely in this general sense: "Paul an apostle, not from men or through men." Do not class me with those who come with letters of recommendation from men. I was not made an apostle by any council or church. Rather, as verse 1 continues, "through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead." The one who sent Paul on his mission is Christ. So Paul is "an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God" (2 Cor. 1: 1).

    That meant for Paul that he was something very different than a congregational representative from Antioch. He says in 1 Corinthians 9:1. "Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?" And in 1 Corinthians 15:8-9 he says, "Last of all as to one untimely born, Jesus appeared also to me. For I am least of the apostles unfit to be called an apostle for I persecuted the church of God." From these two texts we can see that "apostle" in the more particular sense means one who had seen the risen Christ, and not only had seen him, but as the word implies, had been sent or commissioned by him (Acts 26:16-17; Gal. 1: 16).

   This meant for Paul that he was among that unrepeatable band of apostles who together with the prophets of old were the foundation of the church. Ephesians 2:20 says that the church is "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone." Paul's apostleship was virtually the same as Peter's, for Galatians 2:8 says, "He who worked through Peter for the apostleship to the circumcision, worked through me also for the Gentiles."

    Therefore, we conclude that the risen Christ, who is at the right hand of God, supreme over all creation, and head of the church, had appeared to Paul on the Damascus road; and he had sent him to preach and teach and do wonders with the same authority that Christ had once given to the Twelve. Jesus had said to the twelve apostles in Matthew 10:40, "He who receives you receive me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me (cf. Luke 10:16; John 13:20).

    Paul knew that he had a unique place in redemptive history. God had given him an authority that would not be passed on in a person but only in a book, the New Testament. Paul was keenly aware that as an apostle he carried an authority to govern and teach the churches of Christ. He says, for example, in 2 Corinthians 13:10, "I write this while I am away from you in order that when I come I may not have to be severe in my use of the authority which the Lord gave me for building up and not for tearing down." This authority rests on his apostleship: He has seen the risen Christ; Christ has commissioned him as his representative to preach and teach with authority; and (as 1 Corinthians 2:13 says) the Spirit of Christ worked in him to guide his words in truth.

     We should stop and absorb for a moment the implications this should have for us. Soon I will talk about how Paul argues for his authority (in 1:11ff). But here I will assume that we accept his claim. But what an assumption! Do you see what it means? It means that when you read Galatians you are hearing Jesus Christ. An apostle speaks with authority the message of the one who sent him.

    Galatians is the very word of the King of kings. Oh how many of us are tempted to cry out to Jesus for some message, some revelation, some dream or vision, but make almost no serious effort to understand the deep things of Scripture, the very word of Christ.

    How many times have Christians come to me in search of counsel for some problem, but when I ask if they have searched the Scriptures relating to the issue, they get nervous and begin to make excuses. There really isn't a lot of disciplined submission to the apostles' word in the contemporary church. We treat the Bible mainly as a kind of spiritual shot to boost our emotions. But the practice of submitting all our ideas and attitudes and habits day by day to the scrutiny and absolute authority of the apostles is very, very rare.

     For some the ongoing attitudes and habits of relating to each other at home is clearly contradicted by the apostles' teaching. A few go on as they do because Christ is not the glorious Master of your lives and so the instructions of his apostles are of no great weight. But for others the problem is different. You want Jesus to be the Master of your life but over the years there has developed a relationship between you and Scripture in which Scripture is just a blur of hazy notions. There is no real life-changing encounter between the lucid and vivid conceptions of Scripture and your own thoughts, because you have inherited habits of reading which simply spread a fog across the crisp, angular skyline of the Biblical teaching.

    And it's not all your fault. Too many teachers and preachers today have never been shown anything better, and so they continue to cultivate in their classes and congregations an approach to Scripture which says it is authoritative, but which sees in it only vague, imprecise generalizations that can not refine our theology or transform behavior. They use a kind of massage technique on the Bible. They give the text a dreamy and blurry massage until a feeling or notion arises and then they talk for a while about that feeling or notion (normally quite separated from the grammar of the text as though they were interpreting Scripture.

    You would be surprised if you knew how many pastors when they get together and discuss an issue rarely, if ever, take out their Bibles and argue their case from the words and phrases and flow of the text. Why? Because the massage technique doesn't yield anything precise enough to bring another thought into judgment.

     And do you see where that leaves the church? In bondage to tradition, with no chance of Biblical renewal and reformation. It is no coincidence that reformation and renewal came to the church in the 16th century because John Calvin and Martin Luther returned to the grammar and syntax of Scripture. When preachers began to deal with the text, and laymen began to read the text, with attention to its words and phrases and logical connections and thread of thought and immediate context, the Bible broke loose from its bondage to the dense fog it was under and changed the world.

    I know that I have a long way to go before I become the preacher I want to be. But I do have a goal: that the preachers and Sunday School teachers at Faith Temple Baptist Church not only say we believe the Bible is authoritative, but also submit our minds and hearts to it by reading with precision and care and disciplined attention to the meaning of words in context, and intended relationships among sequences of statements, and the coherent thread of thought through whole paragraphs.

     This is not optional. It is not an esoteric game for scholars. It is a matter of humility and submissiveness to the Word of God. It is the only way to own up to the implications of Galatians 1:1, "Paul an apostle, not from men or through man but through Jesus Christ." This letter is the word of the living Christ through his authoritative representative. If we believe that and count Jesus as Lord we will not be satisfied with a text massage or with imprecise, hazy notions about the meaning of texts. We will study and analyze and define, and sketch, and write, and research, and ponder, and meditate, and muse, and stare, and make connections, and synthesize until the mind of the apostle is lucid, sharp, clear, and unavoidable. And then we will bow down and exchange our thoughts for his and we will gain the mind of Christ.

Verse 2 and two additions to the claim of authority in verse 1

    Verse 2 makes two additions to the claim of authority in verse 1. First, Paul says that all the brothers with him endorse his message. His authority distinguishes him from other men; his message binds him to them. Paul does not boast in being the odd man out. He is glad when his teaching is shared by others. We'll see this again in 2:1-10. The other point of verse 2 is that the intended readers of this letter are the churches of Galatia. Galatia was a Roman province that stretched from Pontus on the Black Sea to Pamphylia on the Mediterranean. It cut through the middle of Asia Minor, or what today is Turkey. So "the churches of Galatia" could be the churches of Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, which Paul started on his first missionary journey in southern Galatia. Or they could be unknown churches farther north which he started later on. Keep in mind at least that the letter is for more than one congregation. The false teaching Paul opposes here was fairly widespread.

     Now let's look at verses 3-5 briefly and then relate them back to the focus on authority in verse 1. I can symbolize these three verses by how I stand here and position my hands. My right hand lifted slightly above my head and extended outward and open represents the offer of grace and peace to sinful Galatians; sinful people like me and you. Supporting that free offer of grace and peace from God is my body with its bowed head representing Christ's giving himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of God our Father (v. 4). Only because Jesus died to bear the penalty of my sins can Paul extend to me the offer of God's love and favor and peace. The cross supports the gospel. And since that great sacrifice and the deliverance it achieved was all according to God's will and plan, Paul breaks forth (in v. 5) into a song of praise to God, "to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen."

    The name of this message could be "Grace to You and Glory to God." The center and foundation of all gospel (the right hand extended) and all worship (the left hand lifted) is Christ crucified for our deliverance according to God's will (the body). Galatians gives grace to man and glory to God because it preaches Christ crucified for our deliverance from the present evil age.

     What does it mean to be delivered from the present evil age? Jesus prayed for us in John 17:15, "Father don't take them out of the world, but keep them from evil." The present age is an evil age because sin has such a grip on our lives and on the institutions of our society and because Satan is allowed so much power. In fact, in 2 Corinthians 4:4 Paul says, "The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ (cf. Luke 4:6).

But for those who trust Christ, a liberation has begun to take place. Colossians 1: 13 says, "God has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son."

     The reason we are no longer enslaved to the fear and guilt and anger and pessimism and selfishness and greed and pride of the present evil age is that "we have tasted the powers of the age to come " (Heb. 6:5), or as Jesus said, "the kingdom of God has come upon you" (Luke 11:20). "If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come" (2 Cor. 5:17). The new age, with new powers and new ways has broken into this evil age to deliver us from the present evil age.

     The experience of deliverance from the present evil age enables us to bear witness with our lives that we belong to another King and another kingdom and another age. And it begins with a changed heart and a changed mind. Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:10, "Demas has deserted me in love with this present age." Deliverance means a change of heart so that we love a new age, we get our kicks in new and higher ways than this age can offer. And Paul said in Romans 12:2, "Do not be conformed to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind." Deliverance from the present evil age means freedom not to think like this age. Freedom! "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery" (Gal. 5: 1). Jesus Christ died to deliver you from the curse of the law—glorious forgiveness!—and he died to deliver you from the conceptions of our age—glorious freedom and independence of mind!

     So the message is that this is one of those wonderful Biblical paradoxes. Verse 1: I, Paul, am an apostle not with mere human authority, but with the very authority of Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead: Subject yourselves to this word, submit to this authority. Verse 4: Christ gave himself to deliver you from the present evil age: Loose yourselves from the world, don't feel or think like this age thinks and feels, be free! Verse 1: Be subject! Verse 4: Be free! Is that a contradiction? No. Because the freest people of all are those who submit most fully to the authority of Christ in Scripture.

    So my appeal to you is this: Remember that Christ died to cover all your sins so that a holy God could come upon you with gracious power and free you from the evil of this age. Live every moment by faith in him and you will not think or feel the way the world does. And remember that this Jesus rose from the dead, and appeared to Paul on the Damascus road, and commissioned him as an apostle, and today speaks to us through his letter to the Galatians. He died to free us from a mindset that leads to destruction; and he rose and authorized the writing of this book to fill us with a mindset that leads to eternal life. Trust him. Study him. It will be grace to you and glory to God!

When Not to Believe an Angel

Galatians 1:6-10

     The truth that underlies this passage is that there is only one gospel. Growing up out of this truth are three statements which are very crucial for us to hear and believe, because nothing has happened to change them between Paul's day and ours.

   The first is that it is astonishing when a person hears and believes the gospel but afterward turns away from it (1:6-7).

   The second is that if a person rejects the gospel he stands under God's curse, whether he is an angel or an apostle (1:8,9).

    The third statement is that the servant of the gospel seeks to please God alone, not men.

    This text does not define the gospel. The rest of the book does. So our focus today will not be on the content of the gospel but on its cruciality. First of all, the underlying truth of the passage: There is only one gospel. In verse 6 Paul says that the Galatians are starting to turn away to a "different gospel." Then in verse 7 he corrects a false impression. He did not mean to say that there are several possible gospels and that they have simply chosen another of several options. In verse 7 he carefully says, "Not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel."

     This verse is very clear: There is no other gospel than the one he preached to them and which they received. To be sure, as verses 6 and 7 make plain, there are people presenting their ideas as gospel, but these are perversions.

    The implications of this text for our day are very important. The text is a radical and forthright denial of a pluralism which says that we are all on different roads to heaven but our destination is the same. There are popular forms of this universalism and there are technical, scholarly forms of it, but there is no Biblical universalism—that is, no Biblical teaching that a person can go on rejecting the gospel of Christ and still be saved. There are other religions besides Christianity and there are other leaders besides Jesus Christ, but there is no other gospel, no other good news of salvation.

    And what makes that underlying truth in the text so powerful is that the "different gospel" in the churches of Galatia was not a religion from a foreign land. It was a close counterfeit to the real thing. The people in verse 7 who were perverting the gospel were professing Christians. They probably belonged to the church in Jerusalem and knew its leaders (2:12). This "different gospel" was not on the order of Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam. It was an in-house distortion. It was promoted by men who called themselves Christian "brothers" (2:4).

    So another implication of verses 6 and 7 for us is that doctrinal maturity is not a luxury at Faith Temple. It is a necessity. If a "different gospel," which is no gospel but only a perversion, can spring up inside the church, then surely we must make it our aim to become rigorous and discriminating in our doctrinal knowledge. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14:20, "Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; be babes in evil but in thinking be mature."

    Galatians is one of the best books in the Bible for helping us refine and clarify what the heart of the gospel is which can't be replaced or altered. There is a tragic pattern in churches and in history, I think. Renewal breaks forth on a church or on an age through a fresh encounter with the gospel and the Spirit. Hearts are filled with the love of Christ and mouths are filled with praise, the concern for evangelism and justice rises. But in all the glorious stirrings of heart there begins to be an impatience with doctrinal refinements.

   See, clear doctrine requires thought, and thought is seen to be the enemy of feeling, so it is resisted. There is the widespread sense that the Holy Spirit will guard the church from all error and so rigorous study and thought about the gospel are felt to be not only a threat to joy but a failure of faith. The result over a generation is the emergence of a people whose understanding of Biblical teaching is so hazy and imprecise that they are sitting ducks for the Galatians heresy.

   It arises right in their midst. Paul said to the elders of Ephesus in Acts 20:30, "From among your own selves will arise men speaking distorted things to draw away the disciples after them" He says in verse 27 that he has done his part to prepare them by "declaring the whole counsel of God." I hope to be able to say the same thing some day about Faith Temple: "I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God."

    So the underlying truth of the passage (Gal. 1:6-10) is that there is no other gospel. And the two implications we need to hear from that are that universalism is wrong (there are not many roads to heaven, but only one) and that rigorous attention to doctrinal clarity and faithfulness is crucial in the long run of church life.

   The first of three statements now that grow up out of this underlying truth is that it is astonishing when a person first believes the true gospel and then turns away from it. In verse 6 Paul says, "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel." In this verse there are two reasons implied why turning to a different gospel is so astonishing.

   First, it is a turning from a calling God. "You are deserting him who called you." They are not just turning from a doctrine, or an idea. Don't fall prey to the notion that a concern for doctrine is impersonal. The gospel is the very personal good news of God's call to you. If you turn to a different gospel, you turn away from God and that is astonishing.

    The second reason turning to a different gospel is astonishing is that it is a turning away from grace. In Galatians 5:4 Paul describes what is happening like this: 'You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace." Paul is simply stunned that so soon after his beautiful portrayal of Christ crucified for their sin they would begin to turn to another gospel. He says in 3:1, "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?"

     You can picture Paul back in Antioch listening in stunned silence to the reports that the churches of Galatia are turning away from God and away from the grace of Christ. And he puts his head in his hands and wonders if his work was in vain. It was astonishing then and it is astonishing today that anyone hearing the best news in all the world (that God offers you full and free forgiveness and hope) would turn to a different gospel, which is no gospel at all.

    The second statement that grows out of the underlying truth that there is no other gospel is that rejection of that gospel leaves a person under God's curse. Verses 8 and 9: "Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you the gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed."

    The word repeated here is anathema (accursed). When a person is anathema he is cut off from Christ (Rom. 9:3) and doomed to eternal punishment. In 2 Thess. 1:9 Paul said that those who don't obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus "shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might." When a person rejects the gospel, the free, gracious gift of God's forgiveness and kingship, then he remains under the divine curse for his sin—a terrifying prospect because of its torment and unending length. The reason I say this curse abides on anyone who rejects the gospel and not just on the false teachers in these verses is that Paul uses the same word in 1 Cor. 16:22, "If anyone does not love the Lord let him be accursed."

    Paul does not have a cotton candy concern for the gospel. He does not offer sugary smiles in controversy and say, "To each his own." For Paul the gospel of Christ is the point at which the awesome life of God touches the life of this foul world of sin. And when that offer of eternal grace to utterly unworthy creatures like us is rejected or perverted to satisfy our pride somewhere someone must rage at the heinousness of the crime.

   O, how we need to meditate on the horror of rejecting the gospel. Satan does his best with television and radio to create in us a mind that is so trivial and banal and petty and earthly that we find ourselves incapable of feeling what terrifying truth is in this word anathema.

   O, how we need to guard ourselves from the barrage of eternity-denying entertainment. We need to cultivate a pure and childlike imagination that hears a word like anathema the way a child hears his first peal of thunder, or feels his first earthquake, or suffers his first storm at sea.

   The Bible does not reveal to us the eternal curse of God that we may yawn and turn the page. The wrath of God is revealed to shake unbelievers out of their stupor and to take the swagger out of the Christian's walk and the cocky twang out of his voice. Don't skim over verses 8 and 9 quickly. There is much humbling and sobering and sanctifying to be had here. Ponder these things in quietness.

   Finally, the third statement that grows out of the underlying truth of only one gospel is that the servant of the gospel seeks to please God alone and not men. Verse 10: "Am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ." In verses 8 and 9 Paul had just said something that will not win him many friends. It doesn't please most people to hear someone pronounce the sentence of eternal damnation. And so what Paul does in verse 10 is give an account of why he is willing to talk this way. He is willing to talk this way because pleasing people is much lower on his list of priorities than serving Christ.

    Two things are at stake when the gospel is perverted: One is the glory of Christ; the other is the salvation of sinners. If the gospel is twisted, the all-sufficiency of Christ's work is dishonored and the way to salvation for sinners is blocked. Therefore, in order to serve Christ—to advance his glory and achieve his saving purpose—Paul must oppose the perversion of the gospel with all his might, whether it please people or not. For the glory of Christ (6:14) and for the good of those who may yet believe the gospel (2:5) Paul is willing to speak unpleasant truth.

     The lesson to learn from verse 10 is not that the more people you can displease the more spiritual you are. It was never Paul's aim to alienate people. On the contrary, in 1 Cor. 10:31f. he says, "Do all to the glory of God. Give no offence to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please all men in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage but that of many that they may be saved." And in Romans 15:2 he says, "Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to edify him; for Christ did not please himself, but as it is written. 'The reproaches of those who reproached thee fell on me."' In other words, it is good to please people provided that pleasing them is a means to their salvation and their edification and to God's glory. This calls for a heart of deep spiritual wisdom to know when to be angry and say, "Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees!" and when to weep and say, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft would I have gathered you like a hen gathers her chicks, but you would not." "Let your speech be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone" (Col. 4:6).

   The most thrilling implication of verse 10 for me personally is this: The absoluteness of Christ's Lordship is gloriously liberating. It frees me from having to worry about pleasing one person here and another person there. It brings unity and integrity to my life. When you live to please only one person, everything you do is integrated because it relates to that one person. Shall I go to this movie? Read this book? Make this purchase? Take this job? Go out on this date? Marry this person? What a freeing thing it is to know that there is one person who is to be pleased in every decision of life—Jesus. Sometimes pleasing him will please others. Sometimes it won't, and that will hurt. But the deep joy of a single-minded life is worth it all.

     In summary: The underlying truth of this passage is that there is one and only one gospel. It is therefore astonishing to turn away from it—away from God who calls and away from grace in Christ. It is not only astonishing, it is tragic, because the person who rejects the gospel is anathema, accursed and cut off from God. But on the other hand, if you embrace the one true gospel, not only are all your sins forgiven by God, but a thrilling unity and integrity and liberty come into your life because there is only one person to please, Jesus Christ, and He only wills what is best for you.

3 This Is Not Mans Gospel Galatians 1:11-24

    The first thing to notice today is the similarity between verse 1 and verse 12 of Galatians 1. In verse 1 Paul defends his apostleship: "Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead…" In verse 12 he defends his gospel: "I did not receive it from man nor was I taught it but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ." Paul's apostleship is not from man and his gospel is not from man. On the contrary, the risen Christ—who is much more (though not less) than a man—had commissioned Paul as an apostle and had revealed to him the gospel.

     The two verses are similar because for Paul the truth of his apostleship and the truth of his message stand or fall together. If Paul was no apostle then his claim to authority and truth collapses. Likewise, if his gospel proves to be a human concoction, then he forfeits the right to be called an apostle.

    Why is Paul on the defensive like this? Because, according to verse 7, "there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel." But in order to change the gospel they had to discredit Paul's gospel, who had founded these churches and taught them the gospel in the first place. It doesn't take too much reading between the lines to see that the people in verse 7 were calling into question Paul's apostleship. Since they basically were emphasizing circumcision (5:2) and the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament (4:10), they were probably Jewish Christians (in the loose sense) who had come from Jerusalem (like the men in 2:12) and who claimed to have James and Peter and John (the pillars of 2:9) as their authority.

    For them Paul was just a Johnny-come-lately to the apostolic band. He had not been with Jesus in his earthly ministry; and now here he was starting churches in the name of the Messiah but telling Gentiles they don't have to be circumcised or keep the feasts. So these people (whom we will call Judaizers now) have gone out to set the Galatian churches straight.

    Paul may claim to be an apostle, but he is not really one; he may claim to preach the true gospel but he only has it secondhand from the true apostles and his version is seriously flawed. That is the situation that seems to make sense out of Paul's double defense in chapter one: verse 1, I am an apostle, just as much as Peter, because I have seen the risen Christ and it is he, not any mere man, who sent me to preach in his name. Verse 12, my gospel is true, as true as Peter's, because I did not learn it from any mere man secondhand, but received it just as much from Jesus as the first apostles did.

     Now notice that verse 12 is an argument for verse 11. "For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not man's gospel (or: is not according to man). For I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ."

    Paul is arguing in verse 12 for the truth of his preaching. His gospel is not a human concoction. It is not his own private version of something he picked up secondhand from the Jerusalem apostles. It is not, verse 11 says, "according to man."

    That probably means, first, that it didn't originate with man but with God. It didn't come out of   Paul's head, it came out of God's heart. In Romans 1:1 Paul identifies himself and his gospel like this: "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God." Paul's gospel is from God not from man. But when verse 11 says Paul's gospel is not "according to man" it probably also means that his gospel doesn't square with natural human desires.

    The implication is that the Judaizers have adjusted the gospel to make it fit better with their own proud inclinations. Galatians 6:12 says. "It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh that would compel you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ." In other words, their version of the gospel was very much "according to man." It catered to the self-assertive and self-defendent yearnings of their flesh.

    Now pause a moment and let what's happening here sink in. Authority and truth are the central issues here. Two messages are vying for our allegiance: Paul's and the Judaizer's. According to verses 8 and 9, heaven and hell are at stake. Only one of these gospels is true. Believing the true one is the most important thing in the world for every one of us. Paul is forcing upon us the issue of truth.

      So there's a lesson for us already. We should be the kind of people for whom truth matters. I stress this because I think our culture communicates just the opposite. Everywhere you turn in the media or in your personal life people are expressing opinions. Almost everybody has some gospel to share. It may be "sex over sixty" or "the joy of jogging" or "the delight of organic dieting" or "the power of intimidation and self-assertion" or a hundred other things that people get interviewed about on the radio.  

     The world is rife with opinions about the good life. But how often do you hear a solid statement about the basis of those opinions? Does not this barrage of unfounded opinions communicate that truth does not really matter? That one opinion is as good as the next? When was the last time you heard someone make an effort to clarify and defend Its foundational understanding of reality which might make his convictions plausible? Most people probably regard this concern for well-founded truth as a stage in later adolescence that you get over after a few philosophy classes and perhaps some sleepless nights. Real adult daily life doesn't have much to do with questions of solid truth; and so most people aren't driven bananas by the thousands of unsupported opinions that pass for gospel in the media.

        Let it not be so among the people of God. At least for us the question of truth must matter terribly. It must not sit well with us when people give their opinions with no concern to show that they are true because they conform to ultimate reality. You are the light of the world because you care about truth in all areas of life. You are the salt of the earth. And the tang of your seasoning is a life based on the rock of truth and not the sands of opinion.

        I know that this sounds threatening, because it sounds intellectual. It sounds as if you are going to have to be able to answer every question someone asks you about your faith. But I want to encourage you that you are in a better position than you think.  

     We have let the world intimidate us too long. You see, the world knows that we Christians believe we are in touch with ultimate truth. That is very offensive. So as soon as we begin to make claims about truth (no matter how humbly), they start doing something that they almost never do with their own philosophy of life—they start asking us critical questions. Now that's okay. We ought to try to answer them. But here's a suggestion to keep you from feeling like they've got it all together intellectually while you are full of uncertainties. Make sure that if they probe your view of reality, you probe their view of reality.

    And if they ask you how you know your view is true, you ask how they know their view is true. What you will find, I think, is that as a Christian you have a grasp of reality that is more comprehensive and more coherent than theirs is. Most unbelievers (except in a tiny intellectual subculture) have never thought through the ultimate questions of life and formulated a comprehensive view of reality that governs their thought and action. And not only that, but you will find that those who have an integrating philosophy of life cannot give the kind of objective evidences for its truth that they so boldly demand from us Christians.

      What I'm saying is this: just make sure that your non-Christian friend plays fair with you. It is not fair to take pot shots at life commitments from the grandstand of agnosticism and indifference. Let them come down onto the field and state their commitments (O, yes, they have commitments!) and state their underlying world view and then give the evidences. Then you will see that what you thought were only your difficulties are shared by everyone who is serious about the question of truth. In fact, you will confirm that the best reason for being a Christian is that we have fewer difficulties making sense out of all reality than does the unbeliever. So be the light of the world. Raise the question of truth when the piling up of opinions starts to darken an issue.

        Now in our text the big question is: Will Paul just fling his authority against that of the Judaizers and let the Galatians shoot in the dark about which is true? Or will he give evidence and make his case?

    It's clear, I think, that verses 13-24 are Paul's argument for the truth of his apostleship and his gospel. I want to spend the rest of our time looking at how he makes his case. I think you will find it relevant to your situation.

Verse 12 has said that the gospel had come to Paul by a revelation of Christ. He stakes the truth of his gospel on the fact that the risen Christ appeared to him and commissioned him personally to preach the gospel. He begins his argument in verses 13 and 14 by recounting how unremittingly anti-Christian he was before his conversion "For you have heard of my former life in Judaism" [NOTE: THIS IS COMMON GROUND; ANYONE COULD CHECK OUT WHAT HE WAS ABOUT TO SAY], how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it; and I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers." Negatively, Paul ravaged the church ("breathing out threats and murder" says Acts 9:1, throwing men and women into prison). Positively, he was one of the most rigorous Pharisees of his day. Behind both achievements was the unsurpassed zeal for the Pharisaic traditions inherited from the fathers. Christianity offered salvation by faith in Christ and so relativised the ordinances that Paul was devoting his life to. For example, circumcision was optional. The very meaning of his existence was at stake. So he lashed out with all his might.

     Now why does he tell this to the Galatians here? What's the point of this little piece of ugly biography? Notice verse 13 begins with "for." This account in verses 13 and 14 is an argument that his gospel came from Christ, not man. How does the argument work? There is a clue in verses 22-24, "I was still not known by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea; they only heard it said, 'He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.' And they glorified God because of me." Paul closes the unit by pointing out how complete and astonishing his conversion was. From persecutor to preacher. From one ready to kill Christians to one ready to be killed as a Christian. From one who heard in the Christian message a threat to everything he stood for, to one who now had a vision of the gospel that blew his Pharisaism to smithereens. What happened? How do we account for such an astonishing reversal? Or to be more precise, as Paul put the question, was the grasp of the gospel that revolutionized Paul's life a work of man or a work of God? Did Paul somehow in those days of persecution get attracted to the apostles in Jerusalem and then go off on his own and botch their message? Or did Jesus Christ, alive from the dead, meet Paul on the Damascus road, manifest to him the truth of the gospel and call him into service as an apostle?

    The reason Paul describes his pre-conversion life is to show how utterly improbably it is that he could ever have been allured into the ranks of the apostles by any human effort. The apostles were his arch-enemies. Paul argues that there is only one adequate explanation of how he came to devote his life to the Christ he hated and how he came to preach a gospel that overturned his whole life of Pharisaic pride: verse 15, 'When he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles…" Paul's explanation is that Christ appeared to him. "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" (Acts 9:4). "Rise and stand upon your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and to bear witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from the people and from the Gentiles—to whom I send you to open their eyes that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God..." (Acts 26:16-18). Every effect in the world must have an adequate cause. And Paul argues that to try to explain the change from his pre-conversion persecution to his post-conversion passion for the gospel merely by the work of men is to grasp at a straw. He knew that he had seen the risen Christ and had been commissioned to preach; and the only way he could verify that experience for others is to point to its effects. They are remarkable, indeed. In fact, all things considered, the argument should persuade the Galatians and us that Paul's gospel did come by revelation and is not "according to man" (v. 11).

    But to tighten the case further Paul sketches in verse 16ff what he did after his encounter with Christ. No one should get the idea that the vision of Christ simply said: "Go study with the apostles." Paul says he did not confer with flesh and blood or go up to study with the apostles. He went to Arabia! Then he returned to Damascus. Then, only after three years, after his gospel had probably taken definitive shape, Paul went up to Jerusalem to get to know Peter. During his fifteen-day stay in Jerusalem he did not see the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother. Paul's point is that three years of meditation and ministry on his own immediately after his revelation from Christ, followed by a mere fifteen day visit to Peter cannot possibly support the Judaizers' apparent contention that he was a secondhand disciple of the Jerusalem apostles. The point is that he was an independent witness.

Even more, in verse 22 Paul says that the churches in Judea do not know him personally. The point here is: If Paul had been an understudy of the apostles in Jerusalem these are precisely the churches where he would have worked. But they don't even know him. Therefore, the whole attempt of the Judaizers to discredit Paul's independent apostleship is a failure. On the basis of evidence which the Galatians could check out Paul makes a compelling case that his amazing 180° turn from persecutor to apostle can only be explained by a revelation and commission from Jesus Christ. Therefore, his apostleship is "not from men or through man" (as verse 1 says) and his gospel (as verse 12 says) "he did not receive from man nor was he taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ." Therefore, the point of verse 11 is well established: "This is not man's gospel." It is God's gospel: Good News that comes from God and accords with his great heart of holiness and love.

    I close with a story from Jesus' life (Matt. 21:23-27). In the last week of his life in Jerusalem the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him and asked, "By what authority are you doing these things and who gave you this authority?" And Jesus answered, "I will ask you a question and if you tell me the answer then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John—was it from heaven or from men?" This morning Jesus puts it like this: "The gospel Paul preaches—is it from heaven or is it from men?" Jesus is asking you that question as personally as though it were just him and you in this room.

     The chief priests and elders said to themselves, "If we say, from heaven, he will say, Why didn't you believe him?' But if we say, from men, we are afraid of the multitude, because they think John was a prophet." So they answered Jesus, 'We don't know." And Jesus said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things."

   Some of you do not come to Christ because you have a question for God he must answer first. But God will not be badgered from the grandstand of agnosticism and indifference. This morning he says, Come down on the field and get serious with me. I have a question for you. Tell me the answer to my question and I will answer yours. The gospel which Paul preaches—salvation by grace through faith in Christ to the glory of God—is it from heaven or from men?

That the Truth of the Gospel Be Preserved for You

Galatians 2:1-10

        Sometime after Paul had established the churches of Galatia, other teachers had come to the churches preaching a different gospel which in 1:7 Paul says is no gospel at all but a perversion of the truth. We began to call these other teachers Judaizers last time because they insisted that Gentiles be circumcised (6:12; 5:2) and keep the Jewish feasts (4:10) if they wanted to be justified and reach completion as Christians (3:3).

    The Judaizers thought Paul's gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone was inadequate. So they added their other requirements. But to make their version of the gospel stick they had to discredit Paul's; and to do that they had to discredit his authority as an apostle. They had done this in Paul's absence by saying Paul was a second-hand Apostle. He was not one of the original twelve apostles who were with Jesus during his life. Therefore, he had learned his gospel secondhand at best from the Jerusalem apostles and had adapted it in illegitimate ways. His authority was not binding because it only came from man not God.

     The first two chapters of Galatians give Paul's defense against these charges. Galatians 1:1 asserts that his authority as Christ's apostle was "not from man or through man but through Jesus Christ and God the Father."

Galatians 1:12 asserts that he did not receive his gospel message from man nor was he taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

     The point of Galatians 1:11-24 is to argue that Paul was not a second-hander. He was not a Johnny-come-lately to the apostolic band. He argues that there is enough public information about his life before and after his encounter with the living Christ, that no one can reasonably assert that he is a second-hander. He makes a persuasive case (as we saw last week) that his apostleship and his gospel came to him independently from the Jerusalem apostles and that he stands on an equal footing before Christ with Peter, James and John.

    But now, put yourself in the place of the Galatian believers. Paul has made a powerful case and has reestablished his credibility in their minds as they read this letter. But the question inevitably arises: Is there, then, a contradiction among the apostles themselves? Do we have men of equal authority preaching two different gospels? The Judaizers claimed to represent the apostles in Jerusalem, but their message did not square with Paul's. So even when the question of Paul's authority is settled, another serious and threatening question looms up: Is there disunity among the apostles? If one apostle preaches one gospel and another apostle preaches another gospel the foundation of the church (Eph. 2:20) is cracked and the whole edifice will eventually collapse.

     So in Galatians 2:1-10 Paul deals with this serious question. But he must do it very carefully and with complete integrity. On the one hand, he must maintain his independence from the Jerusalem apostles to protect himself from the charge of being a second-hander; but on the other hand he must show that the gospel he preaches and the gospel the Jerusalem apostles preach are the same gospel. And what's more, everything he says in this section is open to public verification or falsification.

     The way Paul deals with the question of possible disunity among the apostles can be outlined like this:

(1) In 2:1-2 he tells when, with whom and why he went up to Jerusalem.

(2) In 2:3-5 he describes his encounter with some false brothers against whom he stands his ground (and thus emphasizes his independence).

(3) In 2:6-10 he describes his meeting with the apostles themselves and how they endorse his ministry entirely (so that the unity of the gospel is preserved). The two-fold main point of the paragraph is found in the last part of verse 6: "Those who were of repute added nothing to me," and verse 9: "when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised."

    In other words, Paul's main point is: When, after fourteen years, I did finally confer with the apostles they added nothing to my gospel (and so I remain an independent authority) but instead they approved of my work and gave me their blessing (and so there are not two gospels but one). The Galatians should conclude, then, that the Judaizers do not really represent the Jerusalem apostles.

    On the contrary, they belong to the false brothers of 2:4 whom Paul resisted and who were not endorsed by the Jerusalem apostles. Stand firm, therefore, in the wonderful freedom of the gospel and do not submit to the legalistic enslavement demanded by the Judaizers.

    That is the main purpose of 2:1-10. Now let's go through it in more detail and see how Paul accomplishes his purpose and how it applies to us.

First, verses 1 and 2: "Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up by revelation; and I laid before them (but privately before those who were of repute) the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, lest somehow I should be running or had run in vain." I have four observations to clarify these verses.

   1. Paul did not go to Jerusalem because he had second thoughts about his gospel and wanted to make sure it was true. That would have played right into the hands of the Judaizers. It says in verse 2: "I went up by revelation." Not only did Paul receive his gospel through a revelation of Jesus (1: 12), but even fourteen years later the living Lord in heaven is directing the steps of his apostle by revelation.

   2. Why did Paul take Titus? Because he is not playing games. His gospel has laid hold on real people. Titus is going to be Exhibit A of Paul's gospel preaching. Titus is a Greek and he is not circumcised according to Old Testament laws. Yet he is a brother in Christ by faith. This is the freedom Paul stands for. And Titus is his best case. Will he be forced to be circumcised by the apostles in Jerusalem or won't he? There was no better way of forcing the real issue than to take along a real person.

  3. "Those who are of repute" (in v. 2) refer to the apostles, especially Peter, James (the Lord's brother), and John. You can see that in verse 9 where these three are described as "those who are reputed to be pillars." So verse 2 is saying that Paul had a private meeting with the apostles. You can tell from verses 4 and 5 why a private meeting might be necessary. The false brothers who insisted on having Titus circumcised were in no mood for a careful hearing. Sometimes the chiefs have to deliberate in private and then present their unified thoughts to the rowdy braves.

  4. Paul's purpose in going up to Jerusalem, according to verse 2, was to confirm that he had not run in vain. Paul's ministry would have been in vain if the Judaizers were right; that is, if the apostles in Jerusalem disagreed with Paul and insisted on circumcision for Gentile believers. This would mean that the apostles of Christ had contradictory messages and no church could be established on such a fractured foundation. Paul did not need to confirm his own gospel, he needed to confirm that the other apostles agreed, and that there was unity.

     Now from these two verses alone let me draw out two implications for us. First, the fact that Paul went up to Jerusalem by revelation teaches us that Christ wants us to confront disagreement head on. If we are going to be a Biblical people we must be a confronting people. If we think someone is wrong, or if we think the ministry of the church might be in jeopardy, we must seek God for grace to go to the person and lay before them our position. Almost none of us does that naturally. It creates tense feelings and we would just as soon avoid it.

     But the desire for personal comfort and the fear of conflict which hinder our confronting one another in love, do not spring from faith in Christ. They are not the fruit of the Spirit. They are products of the flesh. They are the kind of thing we experience when we do not look to Christ for resources of power beyond our selves. But we do not look to Christ for resources of power beyond ourselves. But Paul says in Galatians 5:24, "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh - with its passions and desires. " By putting our faith in Christ and drawing on the power of his Spirit we cease to be enslaved by the love of comfort and the fear of conflict.

   And we experience a freedom to do what Paul did—to confront disagreement head on. Whatever peace we maintain in our personal relationships or in the church or in the Southern Baptist Convention by avoiding needed confrontation will be a superficial and spiritually unproductive peace, and will make us weak in the long run because it will mean that we are walking by the flesh and not by the Spirit. That's one implication of verses 1 and 2: Christ wants us to confront disagreement head on.

     The second implication from verses 1 and 2 is that we ought to care about doctrinal unity, especially on points that are crucial. It ought to bother us that there is so much division in the church over matters of important doctrine. The disunity of God's people on important matters of faith should send us to prayer and the study of Scripture; but I fear that what it does is make us think disunity is harmless or even valuable.

   For example, a new "in" word in scholarly treatments of the Bible is the word "richness." The "richness" of a collection of traditions is its "diversity"; and "diversity" is often a euphemism of contradiction. Very few people today stand up and praise the unity and coherence of truth. And the way that trickles from the halls of ivy to ordinary people like us is that we simply take disunity and disagreement for granted, relativism is equated with humility, indifference to error is equated with respect for other persons, and we are hard put to imagine any doctrine being clear and certain enough to die for. It seems to me that Paul's example here teaches us that it matters a lot whether Christians agree on crucial doctrines of our faith.

     Now in verses 3-5 Paul describes his encounter with the false brothers in Jerusalem. "But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. But because of false brethren secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy out our freedom which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage—to them we did not yield submission even for a moment, that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you." Why did Paul include this incident in his letter if his main point was to show that he and the apostles were unified? He could have gone straight from verse 2 to verse 6 and made that point very powerfully.

   I don't think the only reason is to show that Titus did not have to be circumcised. He could have said that in a sentence. The real reason for verses 3-5 is to show the Galatian Christians that there are false brothers, they come from Jerusalem, they insist on circumcision for salvation (Acts 15: 1), and, most importantly, they do not represent the position of Peter, James, and John.

    In verse 5 Paul says that he did not submit to these false-brothers for this reason: "That the truth of the gospel be preserved for you." If Paul had given in to the demand of the false brothers, the gospel would have been destroyed! That is astonishing. There would be no gospel, no good news, if Paul gave in to the demand for circumcision. The good news to the world is that right standing before God was totally paid for by the death of Christ at Calvary and can be enjoyed only through faith in him. Any requirement that causes us to rely on our work and not Christ's work is the end of the gospel.

    So what Paul has accomplished here in verses 3-5 is to show the Galatians who the Judaizers in their midst really are (the false brothers from Jerusalem), and what is at stake in their demands (the truth of the gospel). The teachers among them may come from Jerusalem but they do not represent the Jerusalem apostles. They are false brothers, and their demands that you be circumcised and keep the feasts are a different gospel which is no gospel at all (1:7).

     Finally, in verses 6-10 Paul describes his encounter with the apostles themselves. Verse 6 makes the crucial negative statement that Paul has been maintaining all along: "They added nothing to me." Recall 1:12, "I did not receive the gospel from man nor was I taught it but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ." Years after his conversion, Paul finally spread his gospel before the Jerusalem apostles; but they did not feel a need to add anything to it.

     But even more Important than this is the positive statement of verses 7-10. The second half of verse 9 says that "James and Cephas and John … gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised." There it was: the unity Paul longed for. He had not run in vain. The Judaizers did not represent the Jerusalem apostles. The apostolic witness, the foundation of the church, was not split. It was firm and solid.

     There was a strong, united base for two great missions, one to the Jews and one to the Gentiles. That was a great day for missions, a great day for us Gentiles. Paul stood his ground "that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for us." There ought to be a warm place in our hearts for this great man of God. Just like his Master before him, he lived and died that we might have the gospel and be saved.

    But as we close do not think that it is to a man that you owe the gospel. It is to God. Not only did God conceive the gospel before the foundation if the world (Eph. 1:4); not only did God accomplish the gospel by sending his Son to die for our sins and raising him from the dead; but it was God who chose the apostles, set them apart, and did the preaching of the gospel through them.

   Verse 8 says that the reason the Jerusalem apostles could recognize Paul as an apostle was that "he who worked through Peter … worked also through Paul."

When Paul was born it was God at work (1:15).

When Paul was called to be an apostle it was God at work (1:16).

When Paul preached it was God at work (2 Cor. 5:20; 1 Cor. 15:10).

And when Paul refused to yield to the false brothers it was God at work "that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you."

   I close with two questions.

   (1) If God worked before the foundation of the world, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, at the Jerusalem Council, over the past two thousand years, and in my message today "that the truth of the gospel be preserved for you," then does he not love you and merit your faith and obedience? If God has worked in this way to preserve the truth of the gospel for people who need it, is this not still an incomparable challenge to give your life to the spreading of the gospel?

   And (2) unless God has changed, can we not say that if you undertake to preserve and herald the good news of Christ for others, almighty God will work in you and for you.    And beneath you will not be a cracked foundation of truth, but a unified, divinely inspired, apostolic witness to the greatest events in history: the Son of God died for our sins, was buried, and rose on the third day to save forever those who trust him.

5. In Sync with the Gospel Galatians 2:11-14

    Last time we saw in Galatians 2:4,5 that there were certain professing Jewish Christians in Jerusalem who tried to compel Titus, a Christian Greek, to be circumcised. The apostle Paul refused to submit to this pressure. The reason verse 5 gives is, "that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you." If Paul had yielded to the demand for Titus to be circumcised under those circumstances, he would have torpedoed the truth of the gospel. The Gentile mission would be over, Christ would have died in vain, and we would all still be under the wrath of God for our sin. The gospel is the good news that the privilege of getting right with God was purchased fully when Christ died for our sins and rose again and that the only way to enjoy this privilege is to live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. If you add other requirements which encourage people to rely on their own willing or working, you torpedo the gospel. For if justification and sanctification are not by faith, they are not by anything and Christ has died in vain. Therefore, Paul drove his stake and took his stand: Titus will not be compelled to be circumcised; the truth of the gospel shall be preserved.

   Now in 2:11-14 the "truth of the gospel" is again at stake. Again Gentiles are about to be compelled to live like Jews. In Jerusalem the issue was circumcision. In Antioch the issue is Jewish dietary laws. Two terms make the connection between the Titus affair and the Antioch affair explicit. First, the term "compel." In verse 3 Paul says, "But even Titus … was not compelled to be circumcised." And in the last part of verse 14 he says to Cephas, in Antioch, "If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?" The other term is "the truth of the gospel." In verse 5 Paul says, "We did not yield submission even for a moment that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you." And in verse 14 he says, "When I saw they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel…" So in verses 11-14 Paul teaches us that we can contradict the gospel in our life not only by requiring circumcision but other kinds of ritual demands as well.

   But alongside Paul's concern to demonstrate the purity of the gospel is his concern to continue his defense as an apostle. Remember that the false teachers in Galatia had opposed Paul's gospel by discrediting his independent authority as an apostle. So Paul made a case in chapter one that his apostleship and his gospel were not from men but had come to him by revelation (1:1,12). He is not a second hander: he is not dependent on the Jerusalem apostles. Then in 2:1-10 he showed that in spite of this independence his apostleship and his gospel were warmly approved by the Jerusalem apostles including Peter (or Cephas). So there is a unified apostolic gospel and the church does not totter on a fractured foundation.

     Now in 2:11-14 Paul takes one more opportunity to prove his independence from the Jerusalem apostles. If anyone in Galatia should get the notion that after the Council in Jerusalem Paul functioned only at the endorsement and guidance of Peter, James, and John, then 2:11-14 should dispel that notion immediately. Not only is Paul not guided by Peter, he becomes Peter's guide: "When Cephas came to Antioch I opposed him to his face." So even after the Council Paul asserts his independence as forcefully as ever. He was intensely aware of being Christ's ambassador and no one else's.

    Some scholars think that in 2:11-14 Paul has confessed too much about his disagreement with Peter and that his case collapses. They argue that these verses reveal such a deep disagreement between Paul and Peter that Paul's insistence on their unity is hopelessly contradicted. I have three problems with this thinking:

(1) There is no persuasive evidence that after this conflict in Antioch Peter and Paul were adversaries or disagreed about the truth of the gospel. On the contrary, Peter's first epistle, written later, reflects the same attitude to the Gentiles Paul does.

(2) The conflict in 2:11-14 seems to be because of a temporary inconsistency in Peter's behavior, not because of a deep difference in principle.

(3) If it was well known (as it no doubt would have been) that Paul and Peter were at loggerheads over the truth of the gospel, then 2:1-10 would have been pointless to write. If the Judaizers could say to the Galatian Christians, "Sure, Peter and Paul agreed in Jerusalem but as soon as the apostles saw Paul in action they did not go along and have disagreed ever since,"—if they could say that, and point to a present impasse between Peter and Paul, then why would Paul have even told the account of 2:1-10?

     It seems far more likely to me that the reason Paul wrote 2:1-10 is that even after the conflict in Antioch that unity remained. The conflict in Antioch did not reveal a fundamental difference in theology. It revealed a temporary lapse of faith in the hearts of Peter and Barnabas, which Paul said was out of step with the gospel and, indeed, with their own convictions (hence the term "hypocrisy"). And we do well now to look closely at what happened so we don't make the same mistake they did.

    The conflict in Antioch develops in seven stages.

First, Cephas (Peter) comes to Antioch and begins to eat with Christian Gentiles (vv. 11, 12).

Second, certain men from James came to Antioch (v. 12).

Third, Peter becomes afraid of this group (last part of v. 12).

Fourth, his fear causes him to draw back and separate himself from the Gentile Christians (v. 12).

Fifth, the rest of the Jews and even Barnabas, Paul's partner, withdrew and joined the hypocrisy (v. 13).

Sixth, therefore, Peter stood condemned, that is, guilty of wrong (v. 11).

Seventh, therefore Paul rebukes him to his face (v. 11). Verse 14 gives Paul's assessment of the situation and the content of his rebuke: this behavior was out of sync with the gospel and inconsistent with Peter's own life commitments. Let's go back now and probe a little into these seven stages with this very urgent, practical question before us: How do we keep our life in sync with the gospel?

        First of all, verse 12 says that, "Before certain men came from James, Cephas ate with the Gentiles." Or, as Paul puts it in verse 14, though Cephas was a Jew he was living like a Gentile. Peter was enjoying the freedom of the gospel. Not only was he not requiring that Gentile believers become Jews (and get circumcised and keep the ceremonial laws), but. he realized even as a Jew he was free in Christ to become, as it were, a Gentile.

       I think it's important for us to see how Peter came to this fairly radical freedom. In Acts 10 is an incident in Peter's life that took place earlier than the council in Jerusalem reported in Gal. 2:1-10.) There was a Gentile named Cornelius at Caesarea, whom God intended for Peter to evangelize. To prepare Peter, a Jew, to visit the home of Cornelius, a Gentile, God gave Peter a vision in Acts 10:11-14. A sheet was lowered from heaven with all kinds of animals that the Old Testament pronounced unclean (Lev. 11). A voice says (v. 13), "Rise, Peter, kill and eat." But Peter responds, "No, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean." And the voice came back, "What God has cleansed you must not call common or unclean."

     This is a tremendously important turning point for Peter, and indeed, for the mission of the church and for world history. God was saying, "Peter, a new era of redemptive history has dawned, the Messiah has come. The sacrificial and ceremonial laws of the Old Testament have done their preparatory work, let them go (cf. Mark 7:19).

     I will show you something great at the house of Cornelius." So when Peter is called for, he goes—to the house of a Gentile! Verse 28 shows how he understood the vision in relation to Cornelius. He says to the Gentiles there, "You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation; but God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean."

    That doesn't mean that men aren't sinners. It means that nothing in a Gentile should keep a Jew from being with him to seek his salvation. So Peter preached the gospel to them and as he was preaching, the Holy Spirit fell upon them. And it utterly astonished the Jews that uncircumcised Gentiles who kept none of their ceremonial laws could receive the Holy Spirit simply by hearing the gospel with faith.

       But now Peter was in trouble in Jerusalem. In Acts 11:2 it says, "So when Peter went up to Jerusalem the circumcision party (cf. Gal. 2:12!) criticized him, saying, 'Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?"' That's the same group that came to Antioch and it's probably the same question they asked there. Peter's defense comes to a climax in Acts 11:17. After telling them about the vision and the coming of the Holy Spirit, he says (v. 17), "If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?"

     This was an utterly life-changing experience for Peter. He evidently inferred from it that not only did Gentiles not have to keep the Old Testament law of circumcision or the Old Testament ceremonial laws in order to have the same spiritual blessings as Christian Jews, but also he inferred rightly that he as a Jew is free from those same laws. Slowly but surely Peter and Paul had been moving independently by revelation to the same understanding of the truth of the gospel. The condition for receiving the Holy Spirit and enjoying all his benefits is a living faith in Jesus Christ (cf. Gal. 3:2).

That is all. That is the gospel and therefore when Peter ate with Gentile brothers and sisters in Antioch he was in sync with the gospel. He was standing fast in freedom, honoring the all-sufficiency of Christ by faith and walking in love.

     But then something happened. The circumcision party came to Antioch from James (v. 12). All we can do is speculate about how they were connected with James or why they came or what they said. But one thing is made explicit in verse 12: Peter feared this group (v. 12). Why? Perhaps they were capable of violence. Or perhaps Peter fears he may not be able to give a good enough rationale for his freedom and will look foolish. Or perhaps he fears falling into disfavor among the conservatives in Jerusalem and losing his prestigious standing as the leader. We are not told why he feared. But he did. And in a moment of weakness he cut off the fellowship with his Gentile brothers and sisters. And when he did it as the leader, so did Barnabas and all the other Jews. Put yourself in the place of a Christian Gentile in Antioch and imagine what that would have meant!

        Now according to verse 14 Paul says that Peter and Barnabas and the others are not being "straightforward with the truth of the gospel." They are not walking right with the truth of the gospel. They are now out of sync. Do you see what this means? The benefits of the gospel can only be received by a living faith in the Son of God, not by works of the law. But when the gospel is received by faith your life changes. When you finally hear and believe the drumbeat of the gospel the rhythm of your step changes. It gets in tune with the gospel. There is a life in step with the gospel and there is a life out of step with the gospel. You don't attain the benefits of the gospel by doing a little moral clean-up job on your life. You attain forgiveness and joy and peace and power through daily reliance upon Jesus Christ who loved you and gave himself for you. But that faith, when it is genuine, creates a rhythm of life that is in step with the truth of the gospel.

        And what we need to see, finally, from this text are the three things that are out of step with the drumbeat of the gospel and why faith in the gospel should guard us from these things. They are fear, hypocrisy, and legalism.

(1) The fear of man is out of step with the gospel.

       The gospel does not beget fear, it begets confidence and hope and boldness. Paul says in 2 Timothy 1:7, "God did not give us a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control." If you come this morning tense and depressed with fear or with a vague feeling of anxiety that something is going to go wrong, your primary need is to see the gospel again. You need to stop and ponder what it implies about God's intentions toward you that he gave his Son to die for you. The Gospel means that God Almighty is for you and not against you if you trust him.

      What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies; who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us? (Romans 8:31-34)

     A life that sees and believes this gospel says, "The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid; what can man do to me?" We have our temporary lapses of faith, like Peter here. But God is gracious to his erring children. He sent Paul to Peter to bring him back in step with the gospel, and he sent me to you this morning to remind you that since our great gospel is true you don't have to fear any man if you believe it.

(2) Hypocrisy is out of step with the Gospel.

        Verse 13 says that with Peter "the rest of the Jews acted insincerely (i.e., hypocritically), so that even Barnabas was carried away by their insincerity (i.e., hypocrisy)." Peter and Barnabas and the others were being two-faced when they withdrew from eating with the Gentile Christians. They were saying one thing with their actions and believing another in their heart. They sought to avoid censure from the circumcision party at the expense of their principles. They feared what man might do and so they put up a front. All hypocrisy is rooted in fear or insecurity (cf. Luke 12:1-4). That is why it is so out of step with the gospel. Insecurity is inconsistent with the gospel. When you feel insecure or frightened and are tempted to put up a front and avoid taking a stand for what you believe is right, the battle you are fighting is a battle to believe the gospel. The Gospel tells us that the death of Christ assures us of God's love and so it gives deep root and stability and security to our lives. But more than that the sheer beauty and power of Christ's resolve to suffer for me instead of putting up a front to save his skin, shames me in my fear of man and my inclination to play the hypocrite in order to avoid suffering. Center your life on Jesus and his gospel and the root of hypocrisy will be severed.

(3) Legalism is out of step with the gospel.

      Paul says to Peter in verse 14, "If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?" If Peter had said, "What compelling? I haven't said they have to live like Jews," Paul would, I think, have said, "Your actions speak louder than your words. When you as an apostle cut off table fellowship with Gentile brothers and sisters because they don't keep dietary laws and you take Barnabas and all the Jews with you, the Gentile believers cannot escape the impression that they are not fully Christians unless they become Jews. That, Peter, is compulsion." And that is legalism—requiring that a person do some works of law to be accepted by God and by the church. And that is out of sync with the gospel. Notice 2:21, "I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose."

If Titus has to be circumcised to be accepted in Jerusalem, or if Gentile Christians in Antioch have to keep the Jewish dietary laws to enjoy full fellowship in the body of Christ, then grace is nullified and Christ died in vain.

So I conclude with three admonitions.

1.   Believe the great gospel of Christ and do not fear what men can do to you.

2.   Believe the great gospel of Christ and do not play the hypocrite. Hold to your Biblical principles and be willing to suffer the consequences. There is great security and comfort in the gospel.

3.   Believe the great gospel of Christ and do not nullify the grace of God. "By grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works lest any man should boast."

    Make it your aim in all you do to magnify the sovereign, free grace of God rather than the achievements of man, and you will be in sync with the gospel. You will walk right with the truth of the gospel.

6. I Do Not Nullify the Grace of God

Galatians 2:15-21

      When Peter and Barnabas and the rest of the Jews cut off table fellowship from the Gentile Christians in Antioch because they weren't keeping Jewish dietary laws, Paul rebuked Peter, and said that this behavior amounted to compelling Gentiles to keep the Jewish laws as a means of full acceptance with God and the church. It was out of sync with the gospel and inconsistent with Peter's own deep convictions.

     In verses 15 and 16 Paul continues his argument with Peter. In a nutshell, what Paul does in verses 15 and 16 is show Peter (and us) how unified they are in theology and in the experience of faith and, therefore, how inconsistent Peter is to suggest by his behavior that the Gentiles (or Jews!) have to keep the dietary laws in order to enjoy full fellowship with Christ. He says, "We ourselves, who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet who know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ…"

     Notice the word "know" ("…who know that a man is not justified by works of law"). That's where I get the idea that Peter and Paul share the same theology of justification by faith. "Peter, you and I both know, we agree, justification does not come when we work for God but when we trust Christ to justify us freely. So stop acting as though Gentiles have to do works for God in order to get right with God."

     One minor point in this verse is going to be crucial when we get to verse 17; so let me clarify it now. The word "sinners" in verse 15 ("we are Jews … not Gentile sinners") is used in a limited sense. Paul does not mean that Jews aren't sinners, but Gentiles are. He means that he and Peter, as kosher Jews, were not guilty of the flagrant and constant neglect of the Jewish dietary laws. Gentiles, on the other hand, were all automatically in the category of "sinners" in the sense that they neither knew nor kept the rigorous legal requirements of Jewish life.

      It is going to be very important in verse 17 to remember that the term "sinners" (as in Luke 7:34,37; 15:1,2; Mark 14:41; Luke 24:7) may not refer to real wrongdoers since many of the Jewish laws no longer stand in force. So what Paul is saying in the first part of verse 15 is that he and Peter were brought up as law-keeping Jews not as law-neglecting Gentiles, but now both he and Peter have come to "know" that no one can gain a just standing before God on the basis of efforts to keep laws. On the contrary, God has taken the whole affair into his own hands, sent his own Son to die for our sins and accomplished our justification without our help at Calvary. That is the theology Peter and Paul share according to the first half of verse 15.

       Now the verse continues and shows that they share not only a theology but a faith as well. "… even we have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law shall no flesh be justified." The point is this: even though we are natural, law-keeping Jews and not Gentile "sinners" still we both have come to stake our lives on Jesus Christ.

We have trusted him. We have shown not just with our heads but with our hands and lives that if you try to work your way to heaven you will fail. "By works of the law no flesh shall be justified!" We have ceased to hope in ourselves at all. We find no basis of justification in us. God has done it all in Christ on the cross. And in that we believe. In Christ we trust, not in ourselves and our works. The silent implication then of verse 15 is: Peter, since we share this glorious theology and have even endorsed it with our own faith, you dare not compel the Gentiles to live like Jews. You dare not imply that keeping the dietary laws is a work by which they can show themselves more worthy before God.

     Now in verse 17 we can hear the echo of an argument that the Judaizers or the men from James (2:12) probably used against Paul. They probably said: By encouraging Jews to neglect the laws of God (that is, the ones Peter neglected when he ate with Gentiles) and thus act like Gentile sinners, you are making Christ the agent of sin. Paul answers in verse 17, "But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ we ourselves were found to be sinners, is Christ then an agent of sin? Certainly not!" It is utterly crucial that you see what Paul is admitting and what he is denying. He is admitting first that he and Peter and other Jewish Christians are seeking justification not in works of law but only in Christ.

    And he is admitting second, that in doing this they become "sinners." Now here is where we must remember the limited meaning of "sinners" from verse 15. Paul means that when a Jew trusts Christ for justification, he is free from the Jewish ceremonial regulations and may, if he chooses, neglect the dietary laws in order to eat with Gentile brothers and sisters. But people who live like that are called "sinners" by the Judaizers. So Paul accepts the term in that limited sense. Yes, we are found to be "sinners" in this sense. That's what he admits.

     But he denies emphatically that this makes Christ an agent of sin. Why? Because it is not sin to be a "sinner" in this sense. It is not sin to free yourself from the ceremonial Jewish laws in order to walk in love toward Gentile Christians. It is not sin to stop depending on works. Christ is not the agent of sin. He is the agent of freedom. Freedom for God and freedom for love. That's Paul's answer to the Judaizers: Yes, Christ frees us from the works of law; no, he is not thereby an agent of sin.

     Now in verses 18-20 Paul supports his answer. Verse 18 begins with "for" in Greek  NIV omits; NASB and ESV: "For") and being Paul's argument for why Christ is no agent of sin when he frees us from dependence on law. "For if I build up again those things which I tore down, then I prove myself a transgressor." What had Paul torn down in the preceding verse? It's clear, isn't it: in seeking to be justified in Christ Paul had torn down the law as a means of justification. But mind you, the law of Moses never taught justification by works. What Paul tore down was not the law as Moses preached but as many Pharisees used it.

     A picture may help. God gave the law originally as a railroad track to guide Israel's obedience. The engine that was supposed to pull a person along the track was God's grace, the power of the Spirit. And the coupling between our car and the engine was faith. So that in the Old Testament, like the New Testament, salvation was by grace, through faith, along the track of obedience (or sanctification).

    But this way of salvation is so uncomplimentary to the human ego (since God is having to do everything for us) it has never been very popular. The Pharisees, and many other Jews with them (as well as many people today), did an amazing thing.

    They took the railroad track, rails, ties, nails and all, lifted it up on end and leaned it against the door of heaven and turned it into a ladder to climb. This is the essence of legalism: Making the law into a long list of steps which we use to demonstrate our moral fitness to attain heaven. While the track is on the ground some of the ceremonials ties could be pulled out from under the rails without ruining the track. But as a ladder, every rung is crucial or you may not be able to climb the next.

    This ladder is what Paul tore down. He tore down the legalistic misuse of the law. And he says (v. 18), "If I build up again those things which I tore down, then I prove myself a transgressor." You transgress the law of God when you try to erect the law as a ladder to heaven on which you will demonstrate your moral fitness for salvation.

    So the connection between verses 17 and 18 is this: When Christ leads us to trust him for justification instead of trusting our own legal (climbing) efforts, he is not an agent of sin, for what really makes a person a true transgressor of the law is not the neglect of its ceremonial statutes, but the horrible prostitution of the law of God which turns it from a railroad track of grace into a ladder of works. The transgression against God is to presume that you can climb your way up a ladder of morality into his favor.

     Verse 19 gives additional support for verse 18 (note the "for"). Paul says, "For I through the law died to the law, that I might live to God." If you must die to the law in order to live to God, then clearly it is a transgression to try to build the law again. That's the connection between verses 18 and 19. Verse 19 makes the amazing point that as long as you are trying to earn your way to God by works of law you cannot have a close relation to God. The closer you try to get to God by works, the farther you drive him from you.

     There are two possibilities in religion: you can think of your ability, God's demand, and the ladder of law; or you can think of your inability, God's demand, and the free gift of justification by faith. Paul had learned through his own long experience with the law that in order to live in close communion with God and have his power, he had to simply give up on legalism and die. The old self that loves to boast in its ability to climb ladders must die.

     Verse 20 spells out for us what this experience of death to law and life to God is like. "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." What does it mean to be crucified with Christ?

     I think it means this: First, that the gruesome death of the all-glorious, innocent, loving Son of God for my sin is the most radical indictment of my hopeless condition imaginable. The crucifixion of Jesus is the open display of my hellish nature. And, second, when I see this and believe that he really died for me, then my old proud self which loves to display its power by climbing ladders of morality and intellect and beauty and daring dies. Self-reliance and self-confidence cannot live at the foot of the cross. Therefore, when Christ died I died.

    What remains then? Verse 20 puts it two ways. First, "Christ lives in me." Christ remains. He rose from the dead and he took over where the life of pride and self-direction had died. The great and awesome mystery of the gospel is "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). Brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ in you, our only hope of glory" this is conversion. A Christian is not a person who believes in his head the teachings of the Bible……. Satan believes in his head the teachings of the Bible!

    A Christian is a person who has died with Christ, whose stiff neck has been broken, whose brazen forehead has been shattered, whose stormy heart has been crushed, whose pride has been slain, and whose life is now mastered by Jesus Christ. "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me!"

    But verse 20 puts it another way, too: "And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." There is a new "I"—I do still live. But look who it is. It is no longer an "I" who craves self-reliance or self-confidence or self-direction or self-exaltation. The new "I" looks away from itself and trusts in the Son of God whose love and power was proved at Calvary. From the moment you wake in the morning 'til the moment you fall asleep at night the new "I" of faith despairs of itself and looks to Christ for protection and the motivation, courage, direction, and enablement to walk in joy and peace and righteousness. What a great way to live!

    So to the Judaizers who say Paul makes Christ an agent of sin when he tears down the ladder of law, Paul responds: you who are so concerned about the honor of Christ, just think what you make of his cross when you erect the law as a ladder of justification. As verse 21 says, "If justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose." No, I do not make Christ the agent of sin, but you make him the agent of folly. I take my stand beneath the cross of Jesus. I do not nullify the grace of God.

7. Can You Begin By the Spirit and Be Completed By the Flesh?

Galatians 3:1-5

      We have learned at least four things from chapters one and two that we need to keep in mind as we begin the main body of the letter.

1) There are false teachers in the Galatian churches preaching what Paul calls a different gospel (1:6), which is no gospel at all.

2) The opponents of Paul are discrediting his message by denying Paul's authority as an apostle. They say he has his gospel and apostleship secondhand and that the real authorities are the Jerusalem apostles.

3) Paul establishes by historical reports that his gospel and authority are not from any mere man, but came by revelation of Jesus Christ, and not only that, there is a deep unity of theology and faith between Paul and the Jerusalem apostles in spite of their independence.

4) The way Paul has defended his authority and his gospel show the kind of false teaching that is threatening the churches of Galatia. It appears that a Jewish group of professing Christians who claim to have James on their side (2:12) are teaching that it is not enough to trust Christ for righteousness. If you rely on faith alone you become a "Gentile sinner" and make Christ the agent of sin (2:17)—they said. So faith must be supplemented with "works of the law." Trusting in what Christ did for you has to be supplemented by what you can do for Christ. God's work plus your work equals justification. So the Judaizers required circumcision (2:3), dietary restrictions (2:12,13), and the keeping of feasts and holy days (4:10), and at least implied that by these works the Galatians could contribute their part to the transaction of justification.

     As far as Paul is concerned, if you buy into this mingling of faith and works you nullify the grace of God (2:21), you step out of sync with the truth of the gospel (2:14) and you remove the stumbling block of the cross (5:11). As close as it may sound to the truth, as close as it may seem to be tied to the apostles, it is another gospel which is no gospel (1:7), and those who follow it will be accursed and cut off from Christ (1:8,9).

    The importance and relevance of this issue for us only increases as we turn to Galatians 3:1-5. For here it becomes crystal clear that the heresy of the Judaizers is not so much related to how you begin the Christian life but how you live it and try to bring it to completion. Anyone who says, "Well, I know that I began the Christian life by faith alone and so the warnings of Galatians don't apply to me,"—that person has not understood the book, especially 3:1-5.

    In 3:1-5 Paul does the same thing to the Galatians that he did to Peter in 2:11,14ff—he confronts them head on with their folly and the inconsistency of their behavior. They have begun to be sucked in by the Judaizers, and Paul shows them that their action contradicts the work of Christ on the cross and contradicts the work of the Spirit in their lives. Let's see how he does it. If you want to know the main point in advance it is stated in 5:5. Galatians 3:1-5 is a series of rhetorical questions that don't come right out and state Paul's point. But 5:5 does: "Through the Spirit by faith we wait for the hope of righteousness."

    The hope and confidence of every Christian is that at the end of the world, when he stands before the Judge of the universe, the verdict he will hear is "righteous." And the point of this verse is that the only way to hear that verdict is to wait for it through the Spirit, not the flesh, and by faith not by works. That's the main point of 3:1-5, indeed, of the whole book. So let's listen carefully to 3:1-5 and let the Lord teach us how to live through the Spirit by faith rather than through the flesh by works. For as Paul says in Romans 8:13, "Those who live according to the flesh will die."

    Twice Paul calls the Galatians foolish. Verse 1: "O foolish Galatians"; and verse 3: "Are you so foolish?" The next phrase in verse 1 explains what he means by foolish: "Who has bewitched you?" He means that they are acting as if someone cast a spell on them. It's as if they have been hypnotized. They are irrational, out of touch with reality, mentally drunk.

     Let me draw out two minor implications of these words. First, don't ever forget that it is the people who don't take Christ into account who are in a dreamworld. The real fairy tale is not the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ, but the fantasy of godlessness. The most seriously bewitched people are those who don't believe in demons. The most deluding stupor in the world is caused by the sedative of secularism. If Christ is real it is not his followers who are fools.

     Second, even though the Galatians are, as it were, bewitched, irrational, out of touch with reality, Paul still writes a very reasonable and tightly argued letter to break the spell. Some people say, "If people are dead in their sins (Eph. 2:1) and blinded by the God of this age (2 Cor. 4:4), there is no point in reasoning with them. Only the Holy Spirit can open their eyes." But Paul reasons for six chapters with people so deluded he calls them bewitched.

    The reason is that the Holy Spirit does not work in a vacuum. He uses the word to break the spell of confusion and unbelief. Don't let the unreasonableness of your acquaintances stop you from sharing the wealth of the gospel. God may grant them to repent and come to know the truth and escape from the snare of the devil (2 Tim. 2:25,26).

    The main thing Paul does in 3:1-5 is help the Galatians see why their actions are so foolish. The two reasons he gives is that they are contradicting the work of Christ on the cross and they are contradicting the work of the Spirit in their lives. Verse 1 says, "O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?" It was incredible to Paul that anyone who had seen Christ crucified in the gospel could still get caught up in legalism. The death of Christ for our sin shows how hopelessly lost we are and how we can't make any contribution to our salvation. The stumbling block of the cross, the thing that makes it so offensive, is that it means in ourselves we are helpless (Rom. 5:6) and can't do anything to enhance our justification or sanctification. Paul said in Galatians 5:11 "If I preach circumcision … the stumbling block of the cross has been removed." If we believe that by being circumcised or doing any other work of law (tithing, going to church, teaching Sunday School), we can add to the work of Christ then we are bewitched and do not understand the gospel.

     Not only does the death of Christ for our sin show how hopelessly lost we are. It shows how utterly sufficient the atonement is which God made in Christ for our sin. The death of Christ is the death knell to our pride but also the dawn of our hope. That it should take the death of the Son of God to atone for my sin should shut my mouth forever and bring my life to an end. But that it was no less than the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me (2:20) awakens new life of hope and faith. The cross kills the independent, self-reliant, insubordinate me, and the cross quickens a new me who lives only by faith in the all-sufficiency of Christ and never looks to itself with any expectancy of power or virtue. Therefore, when we or the Galatians follow the Judaizers and erect the law as a ladder to heaven on which to demonstrate our contribution of will or effort, we nullify the grace of God (2:21), we remove the stumbling block of the cross (5:11) and we show that we are bewitched and foolish (3:1,3). That, then, is the first reason Paul gives for why the action of the Galatians is so foolish: it contradicts the work of Christ on the cross.

       The second reason Paul gives that the Galatians are foolish is that their action contradicts the work of the Spirit in their lives. In Galatians 2:20, ("It is not I who live but Christ lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.") And I think 3:2-5 are a commentary on that verse; only instead of speaking of Christ in us, Paul speaks of the Spirit. The experience is the same because 4:6 says the Spirit which God sends is the Spirit of his Son. Christ and the Spirit are one. Christ comes to us in his Spirit. So keep 2:20 in view as we look at 3:2-5.

       Paul begins to show them how their action contradicts the work of the Spirit by reminding them how they received the Spirit at the start of their Christian lives. Verse 2: "Let me ask you only this: did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?"

Verse 2: "Let me ask you only this: did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?" (Subgective Genative, faith subjective to the hearing, that is the hearing.)

This verse raises three questions:

1) What is the relationship between becoming a Christian and receiving the Spirit?

2) What is the evidence that the Spirit is present in your life?

3) How do you receive the Spirit?

1) The answer to the first question is that becoming a Christian means receiving the Spirit of Christ. Paul assumes in this verse that all Christians have received the Spirit. It's not something that happens later. Romans 8:9 makes this crystal clear, "Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him." This is why it is impossible to think of Christianity merely in terms of a change of beliefs and a change of status before God. Becoming a Christian always involves the coming of Christ's Spirit to dwell and work in the believer. As 2:20 said, the old self dies with Christ and in its place the risen Christ comes to live. As a Christian you are no longer your own, you have been bought by Christ and possessed by his Spirit.

2) What is the evidence of the Spirit's presence in your life?

     The New Testament teaches three kinds of evidence, and all of them are mentioned in Galatians. The first is mentioned in verse 5, "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?"    

     One evidence that the Galatians could point to was miracles that God was doing by the Spirit in their midst. I think this refers to the kinds of miraculous signs Jesus did, because the language used is so close to the language which describes Jesus' miracles in Mt. 14:2 and the gift of miracles in 1 Cor. 12:6. In other words, mighty works like healing and exorcisms and significant altering of circumstances through prayer—these gave evidence to the Galatian believers that the Spirit had been poured into their lives. But Paul is aware that physical miracles in themselves do not verify the work of God's Spirit, since (according to 2 Thess 2:9) Satan himself can produce powerful signs and wonders.

     So it is important that we consider the second evidence of the Spirit in the Christian life, namely, the deep assurance that God is our Father and we are his children. Galatians 4:6 says, "And because you are sons God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying, 'Abba! Father!"' When your heart is enabled to cry out sincerely to God as your loving Father, it is evidence that the Spirit of Sonship is in you. Paul puts it like this in Romans 8:15,16, "You received the Spirit of sonship”. When we cry, 'Abba! Father!', it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." So the second evidence of the Spirit's presence is the assurance we feel that God is our Father and that we are heirs with Christ of glory. (We could also see this in

1 Cor. 12:3, "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit.")

     But even assurance can be deceitful. Jesus tells about people who felt they were his disciples but will be turned away from heaven because their lives weren't changed (Mt. 7:21-23). So the third evidence of the Spirit's presence should be added, namely, a genuine impulse of love. Galatians 5:22 says, "The fruit of the Spirit is love." The bottom line in testing the Spirit is the test of love. For most of us there is a combination of these and other evidences (like joy in affliction, 1 Thess. 1:6; and boldness in witness, Acts 4:31) that signify the Spirit's reality in our lives.

3) Now the third question verse two raises (and answers) is how we receive the Spirit.

    "Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?" Answer: by hearing with faith. Paul asks them, Remember back to the time I was preaching there in the synagogues and in the streets? I was reasoning from the Old Testament Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ; I was arguing that all people are sinners, that this Jesus died for sin and rose again, that any who trust him can have forgiveness and hope … and as you were hearing my message faith happened. You didn't plan it, you didn't force it. It came upon you like dawn comes upon a darkened city, and with it—whether in front or behind you could not tell—came the Spirit. And you felt yourself crying out in your heart, "Abba! Father!" (Gal. 4:6), and, "Jesus is Lord!" (1 Cor. 12:3).

     You did no works. You were worked upon. The Word of God, "sharper than any two-edged sword" (Heb. 4:12), cut away all your defenses and laid bare your need and God's provision. "The light of the gospel of the glory of Christ" drove out the darkness of unbelief. You found yourself as helpless as a little child, yet utterly secure in the love of Jesus. He had come to you in his Word; the word had produced faith; the old self of rebellion died; and the Spirit of Christ took up residence in your heart. Galatians, you did not get the Spirit, you did not become Christians, by working for God. You received the Spirit when God worked for you. As James 1:18 says, "Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth."

    So verse two is the first step in showing the Galatians why their actions contradict the work of the Spirit in their lives. Paul reminded them how they began the Christian life. Then, as step two, Paul tells them in verse 3, you have to keep going the same way you began. "Are you foolish? Having begun in the Spirit are you now ending (or being completed) in the flesh?" The clear implication is, it can't be done. If you try it you will make a shipwreck of the Christian life (Rom. 8:13). So we need to be very clear about what the Galatians were about to do here so we can avoid it like the plague.

    Notice the change in terminology between verse 2 and verse 3. In verse 2 the contrast is between works of law and hearing of faith. In verse 3 the contrast is between beginning by the Spirit and trying to be completed by the flesh. We've talked about the Spirit. But now, what is this "flesh"? It is not physical. It's the old "I" which cherishes independence and self-assertion. Romans 8:7 says, "The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, indeed, it cannot."

    Flesh is the autonomous self, so in love with its personal power of self-determination that it does not and cannot submit to God's absolute authority. But don't think the flesh always looks wicked. (It is but it does not always look it.)

In its irreligious form the flesh always flaunts its insubordination to God in immorality, idolatry, envy, drunkenness, and the like, as Paul says in Galatians 5:19 where he describes the works of the flesh.

But in its religious form, this is where it can be deceiving, the subtlety of insubordination and self-determination can manifest itself in a philosophy of Christian growth which encourages people who begin with faith to grow by works.

     Consider verse 3 very carefully. It is not directed to those who are yet to start the Christian life. It is written for us who began some time ago and are now in grave danger of trying to live the Christian life in a way that nullifies grace and leads to destruction. The point of the verse is that you must go on in the Christian life the same way you started it. Since we began by the work of the Spirit, we must go on relying on the Spirit. The essence of the Galatian heresy is the teaching that you begin the Christian life by faith and then you grow in the Christian life by works, that is, by drawing on powers in yourself to make your contribution to salvation.

     One modern form of the heresy is: "God helps those who help themselves." If you buy into that as a way of advancing in the Christian life you have put works where faith belongs. Faith is the only response to God's word which makes room for the Spirit to work in us and through us. Flesh, on the other hand, is the insubordinate, self-determining ego which in religious people responds to God's word not with reliance on the Spirit but with reliance on self. It can produce a very rigorous morality, but it nullifies grace and removes the stumbling block of the cross.

     I hope you can see that the essential mark of a Christian is not how far you have progressed in sanctification, but on what you are relying to get there. Are you striving for sanctification by works? Or are you striving for sanctification by faith? (Note well the issue in verse 3 is how to be completed, i.e., sanctification.) Are you advancing in the life of love by the power of the Spirit? Or are you trying to love in the power of the flesh, that is, by your own works?

     Let me close by describing very practically how one can live the Christian life so that   one can say it is "not I but Christ"; it is not by the flesh but by the Spirit. If we begin the day with it and follow it when we must exert some effort to do right. The goal is for this way of thinking and feeling to become so much a part of us that we approach all of life this way.

We acknowledge that apart from Christ we can do nothing of eternal value (John 15:5). We acknowledge with Paul in Romans 7:18, "In me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing." We acknowledge that the old "Us" which loved to deny this fact was crucified with Christ.

We pray. We pray with Paul in 1 Thess. 3:12 that Christ would make me abound in love. We pray that grace might reign in my life through righteousness (Rom. 5:21). We pray that God would produce in me the obedience he demands (Heb. 13:21; 2 Thess. 1:11).

We trust. This is the key because Gal. 3:5 says, "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?" In other words, the ongoing work of the Spirit to enable us to love as we ought happens only as we trust the promises of God (Gal. 5:6). So by faith I lay hold on a promise like Isaiah 41:10: "Fear not, for I am with you, be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand." We trust that as we act it will not be us but the power of Christ in us and us only clinging to him in faith.

We act in obedience to God's word. But, O, what a world of difference now between such an act and what Paul calls works of law. The acknowledgment that we are helpless in prayer for divine enablement, the trust that Christ himself is our help and strength--these transform the act so that it is a fruit of the Spirit not a work of the flesh.

Finally, when the deed is done and the day is over we thank God for whatever good may have come of our life (Col. 1:3-5). We thank him for conquering at least in some measure our selfishness and pride. We give him the glory (1 Pet. 4:11).

Acknowledge your inability to do good on your own.

Pray for divine enablement.

Trust the promises of God for help and strength and guidance.

Act in obedience to God's word.

Thank God for whatever good comes.

If you feel that this makes too little of you and too much of God, then I urge you to check your testimony against that of Paul who said in

1 Cor. 15:10, "I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God which was with me."

And in Romans 15:18, "I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought through me."

So we are back to the main point of 3:1-5 stated in 5:5. Through the Spirit (not the flesh) by faith (not works) we wait for the hope of righteousness. Only when that is true can we say, "I am sure that the one who began a good work in me, he (and he alone!) will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6).

8. Those Who Have Faith Are the Sons of Abraham

Galatians 3:6-9

     The Word of God from this text for us today is that anyone—Jew or Gentile, rich or poor, male or female, white or black or brown, quick-witted or slow, old or young--anyone can be a child of Abraham and inherit the blessings promised to Abraham's children if you live by faith.

   The structure of the text is simple. The main point is stated in two different ways, once in verse 7 and once in verse 9. And each of these is preceded by its Old Testament support.

Verse six quotes Genesis 15:6, "Abraham 'believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness."'

And verse 7 draws out of that verse together with verse 5 a general inference: "So (or: therefore) you see that it is those of faith who are sons of Abraham." The thing that makes a person a "son of Abraham" is faith.

Then verse 8 quotes Genesis 12:3 (and 18:18), "In you shall all the nations be blessed."

And verse 9 draws out the inference, "So then, those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith." The thing that qualifies a person to inherit Abraham's blessing is faith.

So the main point—the Word of God for us today (expressed in verses 7 and 9)—is that anyone of us who lives by faith is a child of Abraham and will inherit Abraham's blessing.

   I can think of at least two reasons why most modern people would simply shrug their shoulders at this announcement. One reason is that they have no idea what it means to be a son of Abraham and no sense of the stupendous value of the blessing promised to Abraham's children. And the other reason is that they can't see how a 21st century American who doesn't have a Jewish cell in his body can be called a son of Abraham.

    In other words, if this promise in Gal. 3:6-9 is going to strengthen our faith and increase our joy we have to dig in and see what it means and how it is grounded in the Old Testament. And that's my aim: the advancement and joy of your faith (Phil. 1:25), because I know that genuine faith works itself out in love (Gal. 5:6) and when people see the sacrificial love of God's people many are gripped and give glory to him (Mt. 5:16). So for the sake of our faith, our love and ultimately, of God's glory, let's see how Paul gets verses 7 and 9 out of the Old Testament and what they mean for us today.

     A great deal in this passage hangs on what it means to be a son of Abraham. So let's try to answer that question first. The first thing that needs to be said is that Paul thinks sonship does not depend on physical descent. For example, in 3:28, 29 he says, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise."

     So the first thing to be said is that Jews and non-Jews can be offspring or children or sons of Abraham. Sonship does not depend on physical descent. Romans 9:6,7 confirm this: "Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham just because they are descendants." But we don't even have to go beyond our text to see this. Aren't verses 7 and 9 referring to the same group of people? Verse 7 says that "those of faith are sons of Abraham." And verse 9 says that "those of faith are blessed with Abraham." Surely, these are the same people: sons of Abraham who will therefore enjoy the blessings promised to Abraham and his children.   

     But it is made clear from the connection between verses 8 and 9 that these people include Gentiles. Verse 8 quotes Genesis 12:3, "In you shall all the nations (i.e., Gentiles) be blessed"—not just Jews. And from that Paul infers verse 9: "So then, those of faith are blessed." So the believers of verse 9 must include Gentiles, and since these are the same as the believers in verse 7 who are called Sons of Abraham, the sons of Abraham must include Gentiles. That's the first thing about being a son of Abraham: it does not depend on physical descent from Abraham.

      I know it sounds strange to us, but it is very close to the heart of the gospel: and white Anglo-Saxon protestants can become sons of Abraham, Hispanics and Asians and Africans can become sons of Abraham; Muslims can become sons of Abraham; anti-Semitic, redneck Nazi vigilantes can become sons of Abraham; Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini could have become a son of Abraham.

    Now, before we ask what that sonship involves and why it is good news, we need to ask whether Paul's view of Abrahamic sonship is the same as the Old Testament's view. It is no good telling our Jewish friends that we are sons of Abraham if they can simply point to the Torah and show us that Paul has distorted what Moses taught. Turn with me to Genesis 12:1-3. Here is the foundational promise of the Jewish people.

    When God chose Abram to found a new nation he made sure that Abram knew that the Jewish people were being created for the world. Their mission is to "be a blessing." Their destiny is to serve all the nations. (Genesis 18:18 says the same thing, and uses "nations" = Gentiles, instead of "families.") This is the text Paul quotes in Galatians 3:8, "In you shall all the nations be blessed."

    But is this blessing which the nations get the same as sonship? Is there any clue in Genesis that the nations would be blessed in Abraham because they would become his sons?.... Yes, there is in Genesis 17. Here God spells out the terms of his covenant with Abraham and says in verses 4,5, "Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations."   

    Some have tried to refer the "nations" here to the Ishmaelites and Edomites, who can trace their physical descent to Abraham. But surely the word "multitude" in Gen. 17:4,5 means more than two. Surely God has in view here the same nations that will be blessed in Gen. 12:3 and 18:18, namely, "all the families (nations) of the earth." In other words, Genesis 17:4 explains how the nations of Gen. 12:3 and 18:18 are going to be blessed. They are going to be blessed because Abraham will become their father. They are going to be blessed by becoming sons of Abraham. So it does not look as though Paul has distorted the Old Testament when he teaches that Gentiles can be sons of Abraham. That's the first thing we need to see about Abraham's children—they include more than Jews. They can include you and me. (See Romans 4:16 and 17 to confirm that Gen. 17:4 lies behind Paul's thinking about Gentile sonship.)

     The second thing to notice about being a child of Abraham is that it means being like Abraham. In John 8:39 the Jews defend themselves against Jesus' criticisms by saying, "'Abraham is our father.' Jesus said to them, 'If you were Abraham's children you would do what Abraham did."' Jesus shows us two things in this response. First, he shows us that they are not Abraham's children even though they are Jews—and so he confirms our first point, that being a child of Abraham is not the same as Jewishness. And the second thing he shows us is that being a child of Abraham means being like Abraham--doing what he does: "If you were Abraham's children you would do what Abraham did." In Galatians 3:6 what Abraham did was believe God. "Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness" (Gen. 15:6). Then Paul infers from this in verse 7, "So you see, it is those of faith who are sons of Abraham." Abraham was a man of faith, so if you do what he did, if you have faith, you will be his child.

    So the first thing we said about being sons of Abraham is that it's not the same as being a physical descendant. Anyone here can become a child of Abraham. Now the second thing we've said is that being a son of Abraham involves doing what he did—not in every particular way, of course, but in the essential thing, namely, believing God's promises. Abraham believed God; therefore, those of faith are sons of Abraham.

     The third thing to say about sons of Abraham is that they are heirs of the blessing to Abraham and his descendants. Gal. 3:29 makes this especially clear: "If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise." Remember, this comes right after verse 28 which shows that Paul has in mind here male and female, slave and free, Jew and Greek. The most astonishing thing asserted here is that Greeks—uncircumcised Gentiles!—are heirs of the promises made to Abraham. You and I can become beneficiaries of God's promises to Abraham if we have the faith of Abraham and belong to Jesus Christ. (Romans 4:16, 17 also shows that Gentiles are made heirs of "the promise" because of faith. See also Gal. 3:14 and 4:30.)

    Those are the three things I wanted to say about being children of Abraham:

1) It is not the same thing as being Jewish, Gentiles can be included;

2) it means being like Abraham, especially trusting the promises of God like Abraham did;

3) it means inheriting the blessings promised to Abraham.

So the question that begs to be answered now is: What are those blessings? Is there anything in this inheritance that should interest a twenty-first-century American businessman, housewife, student, professional, laborer, teenager, senior citizen? I think there is. I'll mention two of them—two things that you inherit if you are a child of Abraham. And each of these is promised in order to take away a fear that you have (or ought to have):

1) The fear of meeting an infinitely holy God loaded with all your sin; and

2) the fear of death.

First, if you are a child of Abraham part of your guaranteed inheritance is the bequest of justification. And only justification can take away your fear of meeting God loaded with your sin. Notice Gal. 3:8, "And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, 'In you shall all the nations be blessed."'

     This verse teaches that the reason the Scripture promises blessing to the nations through Abraham is that God intended to justify people from every nation. "Since the Scripture saw God justifying the Gentiles … therefore the Scripture promised blessing to the Gentiles through Abraham." So the promised blessing of Abraham must involve justification. And you recall from the connection between Genesis 12:3 and 17:4 that the reason the nations will be blessed is because Abraham becomes their father. They become his sons. Therefore, justification is part of our inheritance as children of Abraham. If you are his child, and only then, you are justified.

     Which means that in spite of all your sins God reckons you to be righteous. If you are a child of Abraham all the things you have done wrong or ever will do wrong are forgiven because of Christ, and God does not hold your sins against you. I don't know of any cultural, intellectual or technological changes over the past two thousand years that makes this inheritance any less needed or less desirable today than it was for the Galatians. This and this alone can take away the fear of meeting an infinitely holy God loaded with our sin. So the first thing we inherit from God as children of Abraham is justification, acquittal of all our sin. (And this is the basis for all the other blessings!)

     Second, if you are a child of Abraham part of your guaranteed inheritance is the Spirit of God who seals you for eternal life. Only the Spirit can take away the fear of death and hell and replace it with the hope of eternal life. Notice two key texts from Galatians which make this plain. Gal. 3:14 says that Christ became a curse for us "that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in order that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." This verse teaches that part of Abraham's blessing which we Gentiles can inherit is the gift of the Spirit. One of the marks of the children of Abraham is that they are indwelt by the Spirit of Christ (2:20; 4:6,29).

    The connection between this and eternal life is then brought out in Galatians 6:8, "He who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life." The only ground out of which eternal life can be harvested is the ground of the Spirit. If you plant your life in the flesh, if you count on what you can achieve and enjoy in this world, then the harvest you will get is corruption, death and hell, for that is an immeasurable insult to God who offers himself to you in the Spirit.

      But if you plant your life in the Spirit and count on what he can do through you and for you the harvest you will get is eternal life. So when Gal. 3:14 says that the Spirit is a part of our inheritance as children of Abraham, it implies that only the children of Abraham will enjoy eternal life.

And that takes away the fear of death and hell, which is just as real and terrible in the twenty-first century as it was in the first. (Note: the Spirit is not explicitly promised to Abraham in Genesis. It is promised to God's people in Joel 2 and Ezekiel 36. Paul's assumption is that whatever goes into making the children of Abraham what they ought to be is a fulfillment of God's intention in the promise to Abraham. See Gen. 17:7.)

In summary, we have seen five things about what it means to be children of Abraham. 1) It is not the same as physical descent from Abraham. Even twenty-first century Gentiles can be Abraham's sons.

2) It implies being like Abraham, a chip off the old block, as it were, especially in his life of faith.

3) If you are a child of Abraham you inherit the blessing of Abraham. You become the beneficiary of the promises God made to his children. That means

4) you are justified, acquitted by God of all your sins on the basis of Christ's death in your place. And finally,

5) if you are Abraham's child you have the Spirit who will lead you into eternal life.

       Therefore, it is surely no overstatement this evening to say that the most important concern of your life is to make sure that you are a child of Abraham. So I close with an observation from our text and an illustration. The text makes plain that the only way to be a child of Abraham is to live by faith. Literally, Gal. 3:7 says, "Know therefore that those of faith, these are the sons of Abraham."

    The test of whether you are of faith, not whether you once made a decision somewhere in the past, but whether your life is a life of faith. The child of Abraham can say without insincerity, "I am crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." We are children of Abraham if we live by faith in the promises of God summed up in Christ.

       I end with an illustration. Picture heaven as Orchestra Hall and the music of the symphony as the glory of God. Everybody here knows that faith is the precondition for entering that hall and enjoying that music. But some I fear, have gotten the notion that trusting in Christ is like buying a ticket to Orchestra Hall once for all, and that you can put this ticket away in your pocket as the guarantee of your admission someday, even though the affections of your life are captured by the music of this world, not the grand symphony of heaven. That is not a Biblical view of saving faith. It's a delusion.

    Faith is a precondition for enjoying the symphony of God's glory not in the sense of getting a ticket but in the sense of getting an ear for heaven's music. The real precondition of enjoying the music of heaven throughout eternity is a new heart which delights in the things of God, not a decision card which you carry in our pocket to ease our conscience while our mind is captivated by the delights of this world.

  I pray we are enjoying the symphony of God’s glory!

9. Christ Redeemed Us From the Curse of the Law

Galatians 3:10-14

    When Paul says in verse 10 that "all who rely on works of the law are under a curse," it reminds us of 1:7,8, where he says, "There are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed." Evidently Paul believed that there was a teaching among the churches of Galatia which was so destructive to people and so dishonoring to God that it merited a divine curse. It was a teaching propagated not by secular humanists from Athens but by God-fearing Jewish "Christian" church members from Jerusalem.

    The reason the book of Galatians has such a radical, life-changing message is that it pronounces a curse from God not on atheistic or agnostic outsiders but, hear me,  on professing Christians who try to serve God in a way that diminishes his grace and cultivates their own pride.

    Galatians is God's reminder to Faith Temple that we are in constant danger of false assurances. Satan is continuously at work tempting us to think and feel that because we use God-talk, and come to church, and pray at meal times and avoid gross sins, we are therefore under God's blessing. But the book of Galatians concerns a group of people (called Judaizers) who do all those things and are under God's curse. None of us should sit easily under the scrutiny of this book. Divine blessing and divine curse are the issue. And the huge divide between the two is not between church people and non-church people, nor is it between those who call Jesus "Lord" and those who don't. It is between those, on the one hand, who have been crucified with Christ and now in poverty live in continuing reliance on the living Christ, and those, on the other hand, who have never really died to self-reliance and whose religious activity, though "moral" and intense, is all an exercise in self-reformation.

    The one group glories only in the cross of Christ by which they died to all but God. But the other group extols the powers and potentials of the self and diminishes the grace of God (2:21) and the cross of Christ (5:11). The one group of church members enjoys the blessing of God promised to Abraham and his descendants; the other group of church members is under a divine curse.

    Therefore, the way to listen to this message from Galatians 3:10-14 is in a spirit of sober self-examination. 2 Corinthians 13:5 says, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are (standing) in faith. Test yourselves. For you should know yourselves—that Christ Jesus is in you, unless indeed you fail to meet the test." Whenever the word of God is faithfully preached you are given a standard by which to test yourselves. It may affirm the reality of Christ's work in your life and send you rejoicing with new power.

     Or it may prick your conscience and send you to prayer and repentance. But God forbid that you should pigeonhole a message from Galatians as applicable only to unbelievers or only to your degree of blessing in heaven. It is written for the church and the issue is the huge divide between divine blessing and divine curse.

     Galatians 3:10-14 makes three high-level statements which ought to be just as momentous to you as if you heard over the loudspeaker that Iran had just launched 80 nuclear warheads toward this country. The first statement is verse 10: "Those who rely on works of the law are under a curse." The second is verse 13: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law." The third, in verse 14, gives the purpose and result of the second: "that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." Let's try to understand these one at a time and apply them to ourselves.

First, "those who rely on works of the law are under a curse." The opposite of curse is blessing. This is clear from verses 13 and 14 where it says that Christ became a curse for us that we might have the blessing of Abraham. And since the blessing (according to verse 14) is the Holy Spirit, the curse must be at least the absence of the Holy Spirit. So when verse 10 says that "those who rely on works of the law are under a curse," it means that they are without the Holy Spirit (as 3:5 says). And that means that they are cut off from God and that his wrath abides on them. So you can see how crucial it is to avoid being one who relies on works of the law. What does that mean?

    Well, there is no Greek word for legalism. When Paul wanted to refer to the legalistic misuse of Moses' teaching he either had to use the term "law" and trust that the context would clarify the meaning, "misuse of law"; or he had to use a phrase like "works of law" which for him always had a negative, legalistic meaning. We know from the context of 2:18 that Paul distinguished what Moses really taught from what the Judaizers did with his teachings. There is a difference between law as God intended it and law as legalism.

    Recall how Peter, who had been eating with Gentiles (in 2:12), withdrew under pressure from the Judaizers. He had been free from the dietary laws but then began again to follow them and to imply that for Gentiles to be fully Christian they had to do this, too. Paul saw this as out of sync with the gospel (2:14) and also as contrary to the law itself. He said in 2:18, "If I build again those things which I tore down, then I prove myself a transgressor." That is, if we have ceased to depend on "works of law" to show our worth to God, but then start to use the law like that again, then we show ourselves to be transgressors. Of what? Of the law! The law itself condemns the use of its own commands as a way of proving our worth to God and trying to earn his blessing. Paul uses the term "works of law" to refer to this legalistic misuse of law.

    So the "works of law" in 3:10 does not refer to obedience which comes from faith, but to self-reliant efforts at obedience which are the very opposite of faith. That's why "works of law" are contrasted with faith in verse 5: "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?" "Works of law" are not the "good works" that a Christian does in reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit. They are the self-reliant effort to demonstrate virtue to man and God. Therefore, the phrase "works of law" is synonymous with legalism. And as we saw from 2:18, the Mosaic law itself condemns legalism.

     You recall the picture of the railroad track raised as a ladder to heaven? God gave the law to show us the route to heaven along which the engine of the Spirit would pull us if we were coupled to him by faith. But the Judaizers and many religious people today who know nothing of living union with Christ, took the railroad track of the law and raised it up on end and turned it into a ladder on which they would climb up to heaven by their own moral initiative. Wherever that happens you have legalism or, as Paul says, you have "works of the law."

    Now I hope we can see what verse 10 is getting at. In verses 1-5 the Judaizers had told the Christian Galatians that it is o.k. to start the Christian life by faith, but then later you have to do some of the work yourself. You began by faith in the power of the Spirit. Now you have to complete yourself by works in the power of the flesh. Paul's answer is that it can't be done. The God who goes on supplying the Spirit and working miracles in the believers does so only by faith, not by works of law. Verse 10 confirms this with these stark words: If you start with faith and then shift over to "works of law" you are going to be under a curse.

    Notice carefully. The curse in verse 10 is not because you fail to do the works of the law. It is because you do them. The advice of the Judaizers to supplement faith with "works of law" has exactly the opposite effect from the one intended—it brings a curse, not a blessing. It was when Peter started keeping the dietary laws that Paul said he was out of sync with the gospel and transgressing the law. It was when the Judaizers wanted to keep the command to circumcise Titus in 2:3 that Paul said the truth of the gospel was about to be compromised. The problem with the Judaizers is not their failure to follow the detailed statutes of the law; the problem was that they missed the larger lesson of the law, namely, that without a new heart (Deut. 30:6,7) and without the enablement of God (Deut. 4:30,31; 5:29; 29:4) and without faith (Ex. 14:31; Num. 14:11; 20:21; Deut. 1:32) all efforts to obey the law would simply be legalistic strivings of the flesh.

    Now if you are with me so far you may be able to hang on through verse 12. I'm going to suggest an interpretation of these verses which is not common and will require some effort to follow. If there were any way I could make this simpler, believe me, I would.

The usual interpretation of verses 10-12 says that Paul contrasts the Mosaic Law with faith and argues that since no one keeps the Mosaic law perfectly all are under a curse. My understanding is that Paul contrasts faith not with the Mosaic Law itself, but with legalism and that the Mosaic Law itself pronounces a curse precisely on that legalism. I think the word law in verses 11 and 12 refers not to the teaching of Moses but to the distortion of the law into legalism by the Judaizers. Let me just paraphrase it for your consideration and then move on to the second high-level statement.

(V10) "All who cease to live wholly by faith and apply themselves to keeping the law in their own strength in order to earn God's fullest favor are under the curse of the law. For in Deuteronomy 27:26 it says people are cursed who try to keep the law but neglect those parts which teach the evils of self-reliance and legalism. (They don't do all the things written in the law, they neglect the weightier matters like faith—as Jesus said.)

(V11) It is patently clear that justification can never be achieved by legalism ("law" in the distorted sense), for Habakkuk 2:4 makes clear that faith, which is the opposite of the pride of legalism, is what makes a person righteous before God.

(V12) But legalism (not Mosaic law) is not rooted in faith; on the contrary, it has roots in the Judaizer's slogan from Leviticus 18:5, 'He who does them shall live by them,' by which they mean (again contrary to God's intention): that if you expect to gain life you must add the effort of your own flesh to the faith with which you began."

     If you take these verses in the usual way, and make verse 12 teach that the Mosaic Law was not based on faith, then there seem to be major contradictions in Paul's teaching. For in Romans 3:31, he said that the law is established, not overthrown, by faith. And in Romans 9:32 he said that the law itself intended to be followed by faith not works. So it seems to me that we honor the near and distant contexts best by taking law in Gal. 3:11 and 12 to mean legalism, not the law as Moses taught it.

      So the first point of the passage is this: "good," moral, religious people, who have not been crucified with Christ and do not have his Spirit empowering them with humility and joy and love by faith, often come into the church, espouse the doctrines and undertake to work for God in the power of the flesh, and are therefore under a curse from the law itself.

      The second high-level statement is verse 13, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law." Paul knew that he stood under a curse for all the years he had devoted to legalistic law-keeping. He said in Philippians 3:6 that from a legal standpoint he had been blameless. He excelled all his contemporaries in zeal for the law (Gal. 1:14). But he did not know the first thing about the obedience that comes from faith in reliance on the Holy Spirit. (He did not know APTAT in his heart.) And so he was under a curse with the rest of his kinsmen, who were striving to "establish their own righteousness" (Rom. 10:3).

    And so I ask, what hope is there when one has tried to bribe God with one’s own pitiful virtues? When you have insulted the all-sufficient Creator by exalting yourself to barter with him: your morality in exchange for his mercy? No hope at all, unless God, in his remarkable love, is willing to transfer your sentence of death to another. The heart of the gospel is that Christ, who knew no sin, was made to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus was not guilty of one moment of legalism. He trusted his Father perfectly and lived in the power of the Spirit. He fulfilled the law perfectly because he knew that at the root the law taught faith which worked through love. So that when he experienced the curse of the law on the cross it was not his own but ours.

   Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Is. 53:4-6)

    The good news for people who have come under the curse of God for the sin of moral self-reliance (and that is all of us at one time or another) is that "God was in Christ reconciling us to himself." There is a way out if we look away from ourselves to Christ and hope in him while we live.

   The final high-level statement is in verse 14, which says that God's aim in providing Christ as a saving substitute was that "in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith."  

    Paul sees the blessing of Abraham summed up in the Holy Spirit, and (as v. 5 says), the Spirit is received through faith. When you quit holding on to your desires for self-exaltation and look away for righteousness and strength to the grace of God, then you experience the power of the Holy Spirit.

    And the connection between verses 13 and 14 teaches us that the substitutionary death of Jesus purchased for us the right to receive this incomparable gift of the Spirit, and shows us that the only way to receive it is by looking away from ourselves to Christ crucified.

    So what is Paul doing in chapter 3? He is pleading and arguing with the Galatian Christians not to be bewitched by the Judaizers who want them to supplement a life of faith with the effort of the flesh. Did you receive the Spirit by works of law or by hearing with faith? … Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? … Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of law or by hearing with faith? …

   It is people of faith, not works, who are the children of Abraham and who inherit his blessing. People who take up works of the law are under a curse. The law itself pronounces it. The substitutionary death of Christ is our only and all-sufficient hope of escaping God's wrath. And because of it God is willing to grace us with his very Spirit when we repent and turn away from self-confidence and put all our confidence in him, that is, when we are crucified to the old way of legal effort and life, instead, by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.

         So I close by putting before you the way of blessing (v. 14) and the way of the curse (v. 10). What sets you under the one or under the other is not so much what you do as the spirit in which you do it. Circumcision may be a "work of law" or an act of love which flows from faith. Subjecting yourself to certain dietary restrictions may be a "work of law" or a free act of love which comes from faith. Sunday School teaching, preaching, your own job--all these may be "works of law" which we do in our strength, to move God's favor our way, or they may be done in humble reliance on the strength which God freely supplies that in everything he may get the glory. The decision of curse or blessing hangs on how you obey and who gets the credit.

    When I was preparing last week for the Sunday Sermon the major battle was the fight of faith. Did I really believe that when Jesus died, all my curse was lifted so that I could say with Scripture, "What can man do to me?" (Hebrews 13:6; Rom. 8:31-34).

    Did I really believe that the death of Jesus is the pledge of God to withhold no good thing from those who trust him? (Ps. 84:11; Rom. 8:32.)

    Did I really believe all things would work together for my good? (Rom. 8:28.)

    Did I really trust the counsel of Christ when he said, "Do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say; but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit" (Mark 13:11)?

    This is the struggle of everyday Christian life and it is your most important work every day: how to keep your day's activities from becoming works of law and how to live by faith in the Son of God who loved you and gave himself for you to redeem you from the curse of legalism.

10. The Law Does Not Annul the Promise 3/1/06

Galatians 3:15-18

   Whether or not you have the patience to look with me for half an hour at Galatians 3:15-18 depends in large measure on the way you live your life. This text has nothing in it that is immediately practical. It has to do with the theological content of the Abrahamic covenant and the historical and theological relationship between that covenant and the Law of Moses, which came 430 years later. If you live your life on the basis of spiritual pep pills that give you an immediate emotional charge and specific practical guidance, then you will have a hard time with the next thirty minutes. But if you live your life on the basis of an ever-deepening understanding of the ways of God in Scripture, you will relish Paul's theology in these verses and seek to enlarge and (if necessary) correct the theological foundation of your life.

   I said that the text is not immediately practical. There are profound implications for practice here, as we will see; but to see and experience them requires a process of thought. The implications for what we should be and do, lie not on the surface. But I hope and pray that at Faith Temple we are not so immature and impatient that we think texts like these are useless. I hope we can see that when texts like these take root in our understanding we become like sturdy trees planted by streams of water, whose leaves do not wither, who do not get blown over by false teaching, and who keep on bearing fruit when the shallow plants have all dried up.

    To see what Paul is about here in Galatians 3:15-18 we need to go back and follow his line of thought up to this point in chapter three.

First, in 3:1-5 Paul makes clear that you must end with the same principles you use to begin. If you received the Spirit of God through faith in Christ at the beginning not through works of law, then the only way to go on empowered by the Spirit is by faith not by works of law. Some of the church members in Galatia had been bewitched into thinking that you start the Christian life by faith but you complete yourself by works. That the Spirit is sort of a booster rocket to get you going, but then your own engines kick in and the flesh completes what the Spirit began. Paul says, No! That nullifies grace and dishonors Christ. Not only justification but also sanctification is by faith, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

Second, in 3:6-9 Paul supports this view further with the example of Abraham and the teaching that the only way to be a child of Abraham is through the faith Abraham had. The blessing of Abraham comes not to those who show their merit through works of law but to those who trust the promises of God as Abraham did.

Third, in 3:10-14 Paul makes the same point in a different way. He says that if you do engage in works of law you are under a curse (3:10).

    Anyone who takes the gracious railroad track of the law on which the locomotive of the Spirit is pulling us to glory in the Pullman car of faith, and lifts that track up on end and turns it into a ladder on which to climb to heaven by works—the person who does that with God's law is under the law's own curse (2:18). For such a misused law (legalism) is not based on faith, but the law of Moses taught faith and condemned the pride of works. Yet, even though we are all under a curse for the sin of pride, Christ came precisely to redeem people like us from the curse of the law (3:13). He became a curse for us. And the result, in verse 14, is that instead of a curse we now inherit the blessing of Abraham; that is, we receive the Spirit when we trust Christ.

     In other words, in all three paragraphs so far in chapter three the point has been: you can't become a complete, sanctified Christian, you can't become a child of Abraham, you can't enjoy the promise of the Spirit if you are living by "works of law" instead of by faith in the Son of God (2:20). The effort to keep the law as a means of obliging God or man to bless you is a transgression of the law itself (2:18), and it brings a person under the law's curse (3:10). So the Judaizers are wrong to teach the Galatian Christians to supplement their faith with works of the law, and Paul is bending all his efforts in this book to cure Christians of such deadly legalism.

    Now in 3:15-18 I think Paul deals with a possible objection the Judaizers may have with his position. I think they may have said something like this: Well, Paul, we don't agree with you about Abraham; we think it was his works that showed him worthy of the promised blessing. But let's grant you your point that Abraham was justified by faith. Maybe that's the way God wanted to start Israel's history. But there is no way you can escape the fact that 430 years after Abraham God thought it necessary to add the law through Moses at Mt. Sinai. And if the law, with its 600+ commandments, does not teach that our inheritance comes on the basis of works, what does it teach?

    When we tell Galatian believers who have begun with faith to exert their own efforts now to complete their sanctification through works of law, we are doing just what God did. He gave our people a promise through Abraham which, you say, was received by faith, and then he added the law to make clear what our part in the process is. So the course of redemptive history shows that our inheritance does come from works of the law. Why else would God have added a law 430 years later if not to make crystal clear that we must go beyond your view, Paul, of Abraham and exert our own effort and in this way earn our right to the inheritance.

    I think 3:15-18 is Paul's counter-argument to this kind of thinking. Notice that verse 19 begins, "Why then the law?" This confirms that in verses 15-18 Paul is demolishing one explanation of why the law was given, namely, the one suggested by the Judaizers. Then, in verses 19ff, he will explain why he thinks the law was added (see next week's message). But in 3:15-18 the point is negative. No, you are quite wrong; the law was not added to teach a different way for Israel to gain the inheritance. The law (as 3:21 says) is not at all against the promises. Let's see how Paul makes this point.

    He begins in verse 15 with an analogy. "To give a human example, brethren: no one annuls a man's will, or adds to it once it has been ratified." Of course, to us that sounds incorrect because we can change our wills and add codicils. But there were Roman and Greek and Jewish laws under which this statement would have been precisely accurate. What's important is that there were (and are) kinds of testaments or dispositions of property or inheritance arrangements or oaths which cannot be cancelled or changed by addition. Paul sets this up as an illustration of how the Mosaic law must not be interpreted as an annulment or alteration of the terms of the Abrahamic covenant.

     Verse 12 gives the application of the analogy: "This is what I mean: the law, which came four hundred and thirty years afterward [i.e., after the promise to Abraham], does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void." Paul agrees with the Judaizers that it was God who spoke the promise to Abraham and it was the same God who gave the law to his descendants. He agrees that in both the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants blessing is offered to Israel under certain conditions (Gen. 12:1-3; Ex. 20:24; Deut. 7:12,13; 30:16-20).

      But Paul will not allow the Judaizers to put in his mouth the assertion that the way God offered blessing to Israel through Abraham and the way God offered blessing to Israel through Moses were contrary ways. If, in the law, God were telling men to earn their way to blessing by works, then the covenant with Abraham would be annulled. If God were adding stipulations so that people could supplement their faith with their own effort, then the promise to Abraham is void. For God's dealings with Abraham showed that divine blessing is freely given only to those who have faith (3:7,9), not to those who try to earn it through works of law. Had he taught something contrary to this his integrity would be jeopardized.

     What then is the law? The law is fundamentally a restatement of the Abrahamic covenant applied to a new state in redemptive history. It is not a nullification or a basic alteration. In both covenants the only way to attain blessing from God is to trust him for his grace. And in both covenants final blessing depends on a life of faith not just a single act of faith. Or to put it another way: in both covenants the promise of God's blessing comes by grace through faith and is not earned. But in both covenants the faith which saves taps into God's power in such a way that obedience results. And this obedience is such a necessary extension of saving faith that in both covenants obedience to God is a condition of final salvation. Not legalistic "works of law," but the Spirit-empowered "obedience of faith."

     Let me try to show you that obedience to God is a condition for inheriting salvation both in the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants. In Genesis 22:16-18 God says to Abraham after his obedience in offering Isaac, "Because you have done this … I will indeed bless you and multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven … By your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice." And in Genesis 26:4,5, God says to Isaac, "I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven … and by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes and my laws." And in Genesis 18:19 God says, "I have chosen [Abraham] that he may charge his children … to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him."

    So it seems clear that the covenant with Abraham was not unconditional as many have said. God's ultimate blessing does depend on obedience, but not on works of law—works that aim to earn God's blessing. The obedience on which salvation depends is simply the way a person acts which he is really trusting in the promises of God. Such obedience is simply a life lived by faith in God's power and love.

     So when the law is given 430 years later it is wrong to think that any fundamental changes were made in the stipulations of God's covenant relationship with Israel. Of course, an elaborate sacrificial system was created that wasn't there before. But basically the commands of the law were simply a general outlining of what the life of faith would look like in the theocracy. It would be terribly wrong to say that the Mosaic law was opposed in its teaching to the Abrahamic covenant and was a kind of parenthesis between Abraham and Christ during which God taught men to try to earn their salvation by works. Moses himself saw the law as simply a restatement of the conditions of the Abrahamic covenant. He says in Deut. 7:12,13, "Because you hearken to these ordinances and keep and do them the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love which he swore to your fathers to keep; he will love you and bless you and multiply you." (Cf. 30:16-20; 8:18, 4:31.) For Moses the covenant made at Mount Sinai was a reaffirmation and spelling out of the covenant made with Abraham. Faith (Ex. 14:31; Num. 14:11; 20:21; Dt. 1:32) as evidenced in its fruit was the requirement of both covenants. So Paul seems fully warranted in saying that the law, which came 430 years later, did not nullify or basically alter the covenant ratified with Abraham. They are in perfect harmony.

     Now two verses are left to understand: 16 and 18. I have left them for last because I think verse 16 is the key for understanding verse 18. So let's look at verse 16 first. It is a puzzling verse. "Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, 'And to offsprings,' referring to many; but, referring to one, 'And to your offspring,' which is Christ." The main point of this verse is that Jesus Christ is the seed, or the descendant of Abraham.

Four things qualify Christ to be called the offspring (seed) of Abraham. 1)

He is a Jew in the strict physical sense and can trace his parentage back to Abraham. 2) He lived the life of faith which, according to 3:7, qualifies some, but not all, Jews to be sons of Abraham.

3) Christ's death and resurrection as the Son of God atoned for sin and purchased all the blessings promised to Abraham's descendants.

4) Only by belonging to him now can any Jew or Gentile become a true child of Abraham and heir of the promises.

   Galatians 3:29 says: "If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise."

     So if we become descendants of Abraham and heirs of the promise only by belonging to Christ, then it is easy to see why Paul thought of Christ as the final or decisive offspring to whom all the promises were made and who indeed secured the fulfillment of all the promises for our sake. So the point of verse 16 is that the promise of the inheritance made to Abraham and his offspring is fulfilled only in Christ, by his death and resurrection. This point is crucial for understanding verse 18.

      But before we look at verse 18, a word is needed about how Paul is justified in saying that the Old Testament word "offspring" because it is singular (not plural) can be seen as fulfilled in Christ. This seems strange to us because we know that offspring is a collective word and does refer to more than one individual. How can Paul base anything on its singularity? Isn't it like saying that because you refer to the Dallas Cowboy Football Team instead of teams, there can only be one person on the team (since it's singular)?

     Two observations go a long way to helping us see how Paul was thinking.

1) He knew "offspring" (or seed) in its singular form referred to many people. He uses the singular to refer to many in Romans 4:18 and 9:7. So this is not a naive mistake. It is a conscious procedure.

2) In Genesis 21:12 the word "offspring" (seed) is used to refer not to all the children of Abraham but to the one who is promised, Isaac (not Ishmael): "In Isaac shall your seed be called." Paul quotes this in Romans 9:7 and then says, "This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of promise are reckoned as seed (or offspring)." In other words, when Genesis 21:12 calls Isaac the "offspring" (seed), not Ishmael, simply because he is a child of promise, Paul detects a divine purpose of election which would culminate in the Messiah. And this is not a reading into the Old Testament text anything foreign to its meaning. Paul is saying that when you understand the word "offspring" (or seed) in its Old Testament context (Genesis 21:12) and you see that it represents a unified and limited offspring, not all the descendants of Abraham, and then you learn from other Scripture that there is a Messiah coming who will be the offspring of Abraham and fulfill the promises, then it is fitting to say that God's promise to the limited, unified offspring of Abraham must refer in a unique and special way to the Christ.

    And from Paul's perspective of later revelation it was all the more certain that the promise made to Abraham and to his offspring was only fulfilled in Christ who died (as 3:14 says) that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles. So the main point of verse 16, as I said above, is that the promised inheritance (the Holy Spirit, salvation) comes only by Jesus Christ. He is the promise without which no one can attain the inheritance.

   Now we can see, finally, the meaning of verse 18. There are no verbs in the first half of verse 18 in the Greek and I doubt that the present tense verbs supplied by some Bibles are best. I would translate: "For if the inheritance had been by law, it would no longer have been by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise."

    I think verse 16 was written to help us know what promise is being spoken of here in verse 18, namely, the promise of Christ. So verse 18 means, "If the inheritance (i.e., salvation) had been achieved by means of the law (i.e., merely keeping Moses' commandments) then the way of salvation would not be by the promised Christ. Christ would not be needed, had the inheritance already been attained. But God gave the inheritance (salvation) to Abraham by a promise, namely, the Christ (as verse 16 makes plain).

    The closest parallel to 3:18 seems to be 2:21, "I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose." This is almost the same as saying: if the inheritance had been based on law-keeping, then it would not have been based on the promised Christ, and his coming and death would have been in vain.

   To sum up in conclusion. The Judaizers seem to be saying: All right, Paul, let's assume that God began his dealings with Israel by making a promise and calling for faith. But you can't deny that 430 years later he thought it needful to lay down the law for Israel. And the most natural thing to assume is that even if one does begin with faith in a promise, one ought then to be completed and perfected by engaging his will and effort to keep the law and show himself worthy of the promised inheritance. So you see, Paul, we are simply taking your converts and applying to their individual lives what God did in redemptive history: begin with faith in a promise, but then go on to add your work to God's in keeping the law in order to become worthy of the blessing. Having begun by the Spirit you must be completed by the flesh.

     Paul's response in Gal. 3:15-18 is this: There are among men (v. 15) and between God and man unalterable pacts. God made one with Abraham and his offspring. The pact was that the inheritance of salvation would come, not to all Abraham's descendants, but to the seed which is ultimately the Christ and all who are in him. No Christ, no inheritance! Given the nature of God and his pact, no later stipulation could annul it or void the promise of this pact.

   Therefore, (v. 17) in the law (given 430 years later) God is not putting the inheritance on a new basis. He is not saying: once I taught you to trust me; now I teach you to work for me; once I taught you to rely on grace, now I teach you to earn merit; once I taught you to magnify me through childlikeness, now I teach you to magnify yourselves through legalism. NO! God does not contradict his covenant in this way. He does not commend contrary ways of salvation.

    If God had set the inheritance on a new basis and taught people to earn their salvation, he would have opposed the promise and nullified grace and promoted pride and cancelled the stumbling block of the cross. The law is holy and just and good; it does not teach us to engage in the Galatian heresy, legalism, it teaches the obedience which comes from faith and applies the Abrahamic covenant to a new stage of redemptive history.

11. Why Then the Law?

Galatians 3:19-22

    The apostle Paul. If I read Galatians and Romans correctly, would have agreed with Rudyard Kipling when he wrote, I keep six honest serving men (They taught me all I knew); their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.       See, in a universe created by a personal God who does all things according to His purpose, the most important of those two "serving men" are WHO and WHY. There was no question who gave the law to Israel. The question was why. "Why then the law?" (Gal. 3:19).

    Not everybody cares. You can imagine someone saying: "What differences does it make, why. It's there. So let's make the most of it. Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do and die. “Many in Israel did and died precisely because they did not know the reason why the law was given. You can't make the most of it unless you know what it is there for. If you don't know why the traffic light is red you may get smashed in the intersection. If you don't know why a skull and cross bones is on the bottle you may get poisoned. In many areas of life yours is to reason why lest you do and die.

   And that includes the law of God. If we don't understand why it was given we can kill ourselves with it. Paul said in Romans 9:32 that the reason Israel stumbled into destruction was not that they didn't pursue the law, but that they pursued it in the wrong way: from works and not from faith; in the effort of the flesh instead of the power of the Spirit. In other words, moral effort can be a mortal sin.

   I tell you legalism is a greater menace to the church than alcoholism and I say that not for its shock effect. It is a straightforward theological truth. Alcoholics are in a tragic bondage. And we must do all we can to help. But legalism is more subtle and more pervasive and, in the end, more destructive. Satan clothes himself as an angel of light and makes the very commandments of God his base of operations. And the human heart is so habitually proud and unsubmissive that it often uses religion and morality to express its rebellion. As Romans 10:3 says, "In seeking to establish their own righteousness, they would not submit to the righteousness of God." The pursuit of righteousness can lead straight to perdition. So Galatians admonishes us: Know why the law was given and don't be bewitched into pursuing it in a way that leads to death but only in a way that leads to life.

    Galatians 3:19-22 gives two answers to why the law was given to Israel and became part of our Holy Scripture. Both of these answers are stated twice, once in verse 19 and once in verse 22. The first answer in verse 19 is that the law "was added because of transgressions." I'll try to show in a minute what this means and that it is virtually the same as the first part of verse 22: "the scripture (or the law) consigned all things to sin."

      The second answer to the question, "Why then the law?" is the latter half of verse 22, "that what was promised to faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe." And this is the same as the part of verse 19 which says, "till the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made."

     So in summary, the two purposes of the law in this text are first to shut up the world under sin and increase trespasses; and second, to see to it that the inheritance will come to and through the promised seed, Jesus Christ, and no other way. I'm going to save this second purpose for next week when we finish chapter three and talk about the law as a custodian. Today I want us to think mainly about the first purpose: the law was added for the sake of trespasses and for shutting people up in sin.

   But first a brief comment about the last half of verse 19 and verse 20. It says, "The law was ordained by angels through an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one; but God is one." I am not going to deal with this too much because I don't know exactly what it means. I cannot figure out how the two halves of verse 20 relate to each other for sure. We know Moses, to be sure, was a great man. But God is greater by far. The Galatians must not permit the Judaizers to exalt Moses above God. Paul says: Now the intermediary does not represent (just) one party—literally, “Now the intermediary is not of one”—but God is one. Instead of confounding you with the hundreds of different interpretations to which this passage has given rise, I will immediately state the one which appears to me to be the most consistent with the context. It is this: Though a human intermediary may be very important, he is, after all, only a third party acting between two other parties. Moses served as a human link between God and the people. Such an intermediary lacks independent authority. God, however, is One. When he made his promise to Abraham—and through him to all believers, whether Jew or Gentile (Rom. 3:30!)—He did this on His own sovereign account, directly, personally. He was speaking from the heart to the heart.

   So that leaves us with one chief task: to understand and apply to ourselves the first purpose of the law. We'll start with verse 19. When it says, "the law was added because of transgressions," does it mean that the law came in to produce transgressions or that the transgressions were there and the law came in to punish them? The former is almost certainly the meaning: the law was added to produce transgressions. The key parallel to this verse is in Romans 5:20. There Paul makes his meaning very clear: "Law came in to increase the trespass."

   This is true in two senses. The first is clear from Romans 4:15, "For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression." I think what this means is that….. you may distrust your doctor in your heart but….. that distrust doesn't become visible until he gives you a prescription and you toss it in the garbage. The prescription makes a visible transgression out of invisible rebellion. So when Paul says in Gal. 3:19 that the law was added because of transgressions and in Rom. 5:20 that it came in to increase trespass, he means first of all that it functions like a doctor's prescription to show who trusts the doctor and who doesn't. By prescribing the obedience of faith the law turns the hidden sin of distrust and rebellion into the open transgression of disobedience.

    There is a second sense in which the law came in to increase the trespass. The law doesn't just give visibility to present sin; it gives rise to more sin. Romans 5:20 says, "Law came in to increase the trespass," but it goes on to say, "but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more." Sin doesn't just become visible in open trespasses; it increases. The rebellion and insubordination and distrust of the human heart intensifies and expands when it meets the law. This is clear from several verses in Romans 7. For example, verse 5, "While we were living in the flesh our sinful passions, aroused by the law," were at work in our members to bear fruit for death." The sinful inclinations of the heart are not just exposed by the law; they are aroused by the law. Here's why. Apart from the Holy Spirit our hearts are utterly self-centered and when such a heart sees that it is being called into question and criticized by the authority of the law it "seeks all the more furiously to defend itself" (Cranfield). And so the law increases sin by stirring up more self-assertion and by hardening people in their self-satisfaction.

    Another example from Romans 7 is verse 8: "But sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, wrought in me all kinds of covetousness." Covetousness is the kind of desire you have for something when you are not trusting in the mercy of God to satisfy you with all you need. How then did the law produce covetousness in Paul? Perhaps like this: the law held out blessings to Paul which he wanted; but instead of humbling himself to trust in God's mercy to provide them, Paul undertook a rigorous program of law-keeping in reliance on his own moral effort and sought the blessings of the law without trusting the mercy of God. And that is the essence of covetousness: the kind of desire you have for things when you are not trusting in the mercy of God. So the law increases sin even in those who set out to obey it, if they do it in their own strength and not by faith in the power which God supplies.

   One last illustration from Romans 7:13, "Did that which is good (the law) then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good (the law), in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure." This verse mentions both senses in which the law increases trespasses. The first is "that sin might be shown to be sin." The second is that sin "might become sinful beyond measure." The law reveals sin and the law intensifies sin. But Paul insists that the law is not itself sinful or evil. On the contrary, the fact that the human heart could take something as pure and good as the law of God and make it a vehicle of pride and selfish passion and covetousness and death shows how dreadfully corrupt the human heart is.

   That gives us some understanding, then, of Galatians 3:19, "Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions." It was added to turn invisible sin into visible transgressions of law. It was added to stir up the insubordination and rebellion of the human heart and make it sinful beyond measure. Now let's look at verses 21 and 22: "Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not, for if a law had been given which could make alive, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the scripture consigned all things to sin that what was promised to faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe." Verse 21 makes the same point as last week's message on 3:15-18: the law, which came 430 years after the promise to Abraham and his seed, is not an annulment or alteration of God's original covenant relation to Israel.  

    As verse 21 says, it is not at all contrary to the promises. The promise was made in a final sense to the seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ (3:16). But, as verse 21 implies, the law could not make alive. Instead, as verse 22 says, it shut up all people under sin. I think the word "scripture" (v. 22) refers to the written "law." So the text says: the purpose of the law was not to make people alive (and so short-circuit the work of Christ) but to hold them in sin until Christ came.

    Now there are two crucial questions to ask and they have the same answer, I think. So I will ask them together: Why couldn't the law make people alive? And why did it shut up people under sin? The answer is found again in Romans (8:3,4). "God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh could not do;;"….. "sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." Just like Galatians 3:21, Romans 8:3 says there was something the law could not do. It could not do away with sin in people's lives nor could it empower people with the Spirit. And so it could not make alive. So the reason the law could not give life (Gal. 3:21) was not due to its own defect but to defect in the people. 

    Romans 8:3 says the law was weak through the flesh. The reason the law compounded sin instead of giving life was that the recipients of the law were ruled by the flesh and devoid of the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:7 describes the kind of mind which the law met with when it came: "The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, indeed, it cannot; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God."

    So the answer to our two crucial questions is the same: Why couldn't the law make people alive? Because they were ruled by the flesh and were without the renewing Spirit of God. Why did the law shut people up under sin? Because they were ruled by the flesh without the renewing Spirit of God. Or to put it another way: the law kept people in sin and did not give them life because it was not accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit to enable people to obey. Wherever the command of God is proclaimed (as it is in the law and in the gospel) but the sovereign, regenerating work of the Holy Spirit is withheld, the natural self-centeredness of the human heart will express its rebellion, either by rejecting the law and living in immorality or by embracing the law and living in legalistic morality. In either case (whether you are a self-reliant moral person or a self-reliant immoral person), the flesh, or the self-reliant ego is in charge and the result is bondage to sin and finally, eternal death.

   Therefore, Paul's point in Gal. 3:19-22 is that God gave the law, without giving the Holy Spirit to most Israelites, so that the deep rebellion of man could be exposed and so that sin would become exceedingly sinful (as it made the holy law a moral means of self-exaltation).

   Moses himself had said in Deut. 29:4, after giving Israel the law, "to this day the Lord has not given you a mind to understand, or eyes to see or ears to hear." And so he knew the law would not give life but only condemn. He said in Deut. 31:26,27, "Take this book of the law and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against you. For I know how rebellious and stubborn you are." The law increases transgressions and shuts people up under sin, not because it requires imperfect people to merit God's favor, but because it requires proud and independent people to humble themselves and depend on God's transforming mercy. The law is the aroma of death wherever those who smell it are rebellious and stubborn (cf. Heb. 4:2).

    But the story will have a happy ending. Moses sees a day of life coming. In Deut. 30:6 he says: "The Lord your God will circumcise your heart … so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul." Jeremiah picks up the prophecy in 31:33, "After those days, says the Lord, I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts." And Ezekiel picks it up in 36:26: "A new heart I will give you (says the Lord), and a new Spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. And Paul announces in Rom. 8:4 that with Christ the day has arrived. Sins are atoned for and the Spirit has been poured out and "the just requirement of the law is fulfilled by those who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." (See Gal. 3:5 for how to walk by the Spirit.)

    So what lessons are there for us in this text? I'll mention three in closing.

   First, God has devoted over a thousand years of history (from Moses to Christ) to help us see ourselves in the failures of Israel. He aims to make visible the exceeding sinfulness of sin and the depth and subtlety of our own pride and insubordination. Therefore, we should look and be appalled in the mirror of God's law. And we should admit that there are yet roots of independence and pride and distrust to be dug out.

   Second, we should cherish Christ and adore the grace that opened our hearts to receive him. The lesson of the law is that we are utterly dependent on grace to remove our heart of stone and give us a soft heart of faith and love. Contrition, humility, lowliness, gratitude—let your heart be filled with these as you recall, "where sin abounded, grace much more abounded" (Rom. 5:20).

   Finally, if God thought it wise and helpful not to let the sediment of pride and rebellion and distrust lie quietly at the bottom of the human heart, but instead, stirred it up and made it visible by demanding the obedience which comes from faith, then that's why my preaching should aim to do. more than ever I see the need for pastors to preach and Sunday School teachers to teach and members to admonish each other in such a way that the sediment of sin in the lives of so-called "carnal Christians" be stirred up and come to a crisis. Could it be that one of the reasons we see raindrops of blessing at Faith Temple instead of showers is that week after week several dozen people sit in these services with a layer of sinful muck at the bottom of their lives with no intention of doing anything about it? If so, let's pray that God use the Word to stir it up so it can be seen for what it is, so there can be repentance and forgiveness and cleansing and renewal.

12. If You Are Christ's, You Are Heirs of the Promise

Galatians 3:23-29

    I see four steps in Paul's thought in Galatians 3:23-29.

First, before faith came, Israel was confined under the law which functioned like a guardian (or tutor or schoolmaster), which gave restraint and guidance but couldn't give the inheritance (3:18).

Second, Christ came and with him a great movement of faith.

Third, wherever men and women unite with Christ by faith (symbolized in baptism) they are justified, and become children of God and heirs of his promise to Abraham. Fourth, therefore we who are in Christ are no longer under the law.

Let's try to understand each of these steps in the paragraph.

   The first step is taken in verses 23 and 24, "Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. So that the law was our guardian until Christ came." The word guardian refers to a servant of the family responsible to watch over the son from the nursery to his entrance upon manhood. He governs the child's behavior until the child has the maturity to do what is right without external constraints. The "guardian" or "tutor" or "schoolmaster" does not have the power to make the child's heart good, nor can he give the child his inheritance.

   That's how the law functioned for Israel. It provided direction and restraint. It prescribed the way a mature child should behave. But it could not give Israel a new heart nor could it give the inheritance. And according to Hebrews 4:2, the reason the law did not benefit Israel was that it did not meet with faith. Faith is the mark of maturity which the law prescribed, and so the law kept Israel under restraint until faith came.   

    The law instructed the youthful Israel how to live a life of faith in the merciful promises of God (cf. Ex. 14:31; Num. 14:11; 20:12; Deut. 1:32; 8:17; 9:23; 28:52; 32:37); but the response was by and large adolescent rebellion. Israel, for the most part, did not humble themselves and so the law functioned to expose Israel's sin and hold them under restraint until the day when God began to take away the blindness and give them a heart to trust him (Jer. 24:7).

    And the law works that way today, too. If you don't have a heart to trust God and rely on mercy, the law will feel like a burdensome, offensive, deadening job description given by a harsh schoolmaster. But if you do have a heart to trust God and rely on his mercy, then the law will feel like a much-needed and desired prescription from a wise and beloved Physician. What the law is for you depends on what you are toward the Law-giver. 1 John 5:3 says, "This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome." But for Israel the law was by and large a burdensome job description for earning their blessing, because it did not meet with faith. (There were obvious exceptions though, as Psalm 1 and 119 show.)

      The second step in Paul's thought is that faith has now come. Its coming is simultaneous with the coming of Christ. Verse 25, "But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian." What does he mean: "Faith has come"? I don't think he can mean that no one in Israel had saving faith before Christ came. Abraham did (Gal. 3:6). And Psalm 32 portrays a man whom the Lord reckons righteous by faith apart from works (Rom. 4:6-8). Hebrews 11 gives a believers' hall of fame from the time of the law. So Paul does not mean that no one had faith before Christ came or that justification was by works before Christ came. There were believers who were justified by faith all along, 7,000 Paul says, in the time of Elijah (Rom. 11:4).

    What Paul means when he says that "faith has come," is that by God's grace a period in redemptive history has come in which great numbers of people, especially Gentiles, are responding to God's word in faith. "Faith has come" means that a great movement has begun whose members are marked by this above all else—they trust like little children in the mercy of God. When the law was preached it met with very little faith. But when the gospel is preached many believe and are saved. The movement has spread around the world. The reason for this is not that the law taught men to earn salvation while the gospel offers salvation freely to faith. No, both the law and the gospel offer salvation freely to faith and both describe the obedience that shows the genuineness of this faith. The reason why the law mostly shut people up in sin while the gospel wins faith from large numbers, is that the preaching of the gospel is accompanied by a powerful work of the Holy Spirit to open the hearts of the listeners (Acts 16:14; 2 Cor. 4:6).

     "Faith has come" means that God is fulfilling the promises of Ezek. 36:26,27 to give new hearts (also Jer. 24:7; Deut. 30:6). If God were not causing the gospel of Christ to be accompanied by the convicting, opening work of the Spirit, the gospel would shut us under sin just like the law did. But that was not God's plan. And every one of us here who lives by faith in the Son of God is living evidence that by the sovereign, effectual grace of the Holy Spirit "faith has come"—even to us, and taken up residence in our hearts, and made us new.

     If you know the hardness of your own heart apart from renewing grace, you thank God every day that you are a believer.

    The third step in the text is that faith in Christ so unites us to him that all the benefits he can give become ours.

   See, with Christ. If you entrust yourself to Christ, and say you want to be his eternal guest and wear his garments and accept his customs, his honor is at stake, he cannot refuse you. You have so honored his value and trustworthiness, that he would be denying himself to turn you away. And so all he has is yours. Foremost, in verse 24, is justification—that is, acquittal of all guilt, forgiveness of all sin. Then, as verse 26 says, sonship. To belong to Christ is to be a child of God with all the stupendous privileges implied in that relationship. Another way to say the same thing is verse 29: "If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise." To be a descendant of Abraham and to be a child of God are virtually the same in Paul's mind. You become both when you entrust yourself to Christ and say, "I want to be your guest."

     And one of the most wonderful things in Christ's household where guests become family members is that our own racial, social and sexual status does not make us any more or less than child and heir. Verse 28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female." Woe to the presumptuous guest who thinks that his Jewishness or free status or maleness has won his admission to the Lord's house, or merits a greater share of the inheritance.

    Ephesians 2:19 says that Jews and Gentiles in Christ are "fellow citizens … and members of the household of God."

    Ephesians 6:9 says that masters and slaves have but one master in heaven who shows no partiality.

     And 1 Peter 3:7 says that husbands and wives are joint-heirs of the grace of life in Christ.

        When Christ admits us into his protection and care by faith alone ("May I be your guest?") every possible ground for boasting is removed, whether racial, social or sexual. We are all utterly dependent on the honor of Christ not the value of our distinctives. And nothing is more secure than the honor of Christ.

    Finally, the fourth step is simply this: we are no longer under the guardian, the law. We will talk more about this next week. But this evening let me just say this. Being "under the guardian" or "under law" means here being oppressed by God's demand when you have no power to fulfill it. You either rebel against it or you try forever to keep it in your own strength. In either case "the letter kills" (2 Cor. 3:6).

    But that is no longer our relation to the law. We are not under it any more, desperately trying to climb it to heaven. For us the ladder of the law has fallen and become a railroad track of joyful obedience. It is not on us any more as a deathly burden; we are on it. What has happened? The answer is given in Gal. 5:18, "If you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law." The Spirit so transforms our life as we trust the promises of God (Gal. 3:5), that we love what God loves and hate what God hates. And so his law is no longer a burden but a mountain railroad of joy.

   My prayer this evening is that many of us would learn how to rest in the Pullman car of grace and delight ourselves in the Lord's itinerary.

13. Don’t Go Back From Sonship to Slavery

Galatians 4:1-11

    I want to talk this evening about a typical way demons go to work in contemporary religions, including the visible Christian church. I think you will find that this particular method they use is fairly dull. They often avoid the appearance of evil lest they be exposed for the merciless, life-destroying demons they are. Therefore, the work they do in the church is extraordinarily deceptive.

    Of course, not many people today believe that there are such things as demons—evil spirits who oppose God and blind the minds of unbelievers, and do their best to deceive, if possible, even the elect. There is such a difference between voodoo, witch doctors, black magic, divination and exorcism on the one hand and space technology, micro-surgery, word processors and psychotherapy on the other hand, that the emancipated, enlightened, high-tech West finds it hard to believe in demons. Even though our Lord took demons with deadly seriousness, we find it hard to take them seriously because in our culture we don't see many of the kinds of strange supernatural manifestations we typically associate with demons.

    But if we reject their reality we reject the counsel of Jesus and all his apostles. "If by the finger of God I cast out demons, the kingdom of God has come upon you," Jesus said (Luke 11:20). Paul said, "We are not contending against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers … against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places" (Eph. 6:12). Peter said, "Your adversary, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour" (1 Pet. 5:8). James said, "Resist the devil and he will flee from you" (James 4:7). John said, "Every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already" (1 John 4:3).

    What we need to realize is that already in the pre-scientific first century the apostle Paul, under divine inspiration, exposed a typical demonic scheme which is quite prevalent in twenty first century Western society and just as destructive as any voodoo or witchcraft or divination. It is clean, it is moral, it is religious and it is hellish. Paul lays it out for us in Galatians 4:1-11.

  The main point of the passage is, don't turn back from Christ and become the slaves of demons. Notice verse 8: "Formerly, when you did not know God, you were, enslaved, literally, in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods." Paul wants to reserve the word "God" for the one true God. But he knows that formerly the Galatians were in bondage to beings which they called "gods." And what's important for us to see is that he does not deny the existence of these beings. He only denies that they have a nature which qualifies them to be called gods. We see the same thing in 1 Cor. 8:5, "For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many 'gods' and many 'lords'—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things." In other words, though he doesn't like the titles they carry, Paul admits that other so-called "gods" or "lords" do exist. And in 1 Cor. 10:20 he makes clear that these beings are demons: "What pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons."

     So in Gal. 4:8 Paul is saying that formerly the Gentile Galatians had not known the true God but had been enslaved to demons, who exercised their power through religious practices.

    The danger they were facing now as new Christians is that they might turn back and become enslaved again after having tasted the joy and freedom of Christ. Notice verse 9, "But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary spirits whose slaves you want to be once more?" It is clear in the ESV that the translators regard the "weak and worthless elemental spirits" (in v. 9) to be the same as the enslaving beings of verse 8. Verse 8: You once were in slavery to these demonic beings. Verse 9: How is it that you want to turn back now to those same enslaving elemental spirits? But other versions don't use the translation "elementary spirits."

The KJV has "weak and beggarly elements."

The NIV has "weak and miserable principles."

And the NASB has "weak and worthless elemental things."

   The Greek word behind all this (stoicheia) can have all those meanings: basic principles, elements of the material world or spiritual beings standing between man and God. So the question is, which one fits the context better?

    I think the connection between verses 8 and 9 makes it very likely that the best translation is "elemental spirits," because verse 8 talks about former bondage to spiritual beings and verse 9 talks about the danger of returning to that bondage. But look at the connection between verses 9 and 10. This would suggest that the Galatians are returning not to evil spirits but to Jewish law. Verse 10 says, "You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I have labored over you in vain."   

     These probably refer to Jewish holy days and festivals. So, when you read verse 9 in the light of verse 10 the elemental things would seem to be legal ordinances rather than spiritual beings.

      How shall we honor both verse 8 and verse 10 in trying to understand verse 9? Verse 9 says the Galatians are turning back from Christ to slavery. Verse 8 suggests that the slavery is to demons. Verse 10 suggests that the slavery is to legal ordinances about holy days and festivals. I think the way to honor both verses is to let both be true and let them point us to a profound and subtle relationship between demons and the law of God.

      It is true, as verse 10 suggests, that the Galatians were in the process of accepting the Judaizers' teaching that circumcision and dietary laws and holy days should be used to show God that they are worthy of blessing. Verse 10 fits perfectly with all we've seen so far about the dangers of legalism. In fact, Paul's fear in verse 11 that he has labored in vain sounds just like Gal. 3:3,4, "Did you receive the Spirit by works of law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so many things in vain?—if it really is in vain."

Both in 3:3,4 and 4:9-11 the danger is that these new Christians will turn back from dependence on the Spirit of Christ to dependence on themselves (the flesh). The danger is that they begin to use the law of God as a divine job description to help them demonstrate their moral accomplishment to God in the hope of obtaining the wages of blessing. So verse 10 fits in perfectly with all we've seen so far about the dangers of legalism.

     But what verse 8 does is to give us an even deeper understanding of what happens when a person uses the law like that. Verse 8 show us that bondage to the law as a job description is really bondage to demons. "When you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods." The most astonishing thing in this passage is that Paul says Galatian Christians are in danger of going back to the slavery of their former Gentile pagan religion when they turn to the legalism of the Judaizers.

     Remember these new Galatian believers were Gentiles whose past was not Jewish law but Gentile paganism and idolatry. So the Judaizers—these rigorous, moral monotheists out of Jerusalem—must have been really struck to hear Paul say to the Galatians: if you begin to use the Jewish law to show God the merit of your virtue you come under the sway of demons and are no better off than in your former idolatry. In other words, Paul has uncovered for us a typical demonic scheme which is just as prevalent in the religions of the twenty first century as it was in Paul's day. It is clean, it is moral, it is religious and it is hellish.

    One of my duties as the pastor of this flock is to help you stay alert to the deceitful methods of Satan. He is relentless in his efforts to destroy your wholehearted dependence on God's sovereign grace. So if he cannot make you disobey the commandments of God, he will bend every effort to make you obey them with the wrong spirit. Rom. 7:11 says, "Sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and by it killed me." Paul could write that very thing about Satan and the demons: they love to take God's holy law and use it to deceive us and kill us if they can—by tempting us to use the law as a vehicle for self-righteousness.

    There were some false apostles at Corinth who were missing the law like this. Listen to what Paul says about them in 2 Cor. 11:13-15, "Such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is not strange if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness." That is a daring statement: Satan and his servants achieve some of their most destructive work in the church by becoming "servants of righteousness." What kind of righteousness? The kind described in Rom. 10:3, "Being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God and seeking to establish their own righteousness they did not submit to God's righteousness."

     Satan and his demons specialize in taking the commandments of the law and alluring people in the church to make those commandments a basis of self-righteousness. And therefore Paul saw behind the legalistic teaching of the Judaizers an age-old demonic scheme to destroy genuine faith and with it the church. Small wonder that this letter bristles with Paul's righteous indignation.

     Do you see what this means now for us?

Satan does not care if you try to keep the ten commandments, provided that you take the credit for keeping them. In fact, he will assist your moral resolve if you will do it that way.

Satan does not mind if you come to church, or teach Sunday School, or preach, or work for a right to human life law, or seek prayer in the schools—he's all in favor of whatever your moral agenda is, provided you rely on yourself instead of the Spirit of Christ and take credit for it yourself instead of humbly giving all glory to God. So do not be unprepared. Our adversary has a clever scheme by which he aims to ruin us and the church.

    An example of the word that can fell Satan in our lives is Gal. 4:3-7, "When we were children, we were slaves to the elementary spirits of the universe. But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!' So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir."

    Do you see what that means? It means that when the appointed time came God looked down on his own world under the dominion of Satan and said to his Son, "Prepare for the invasion. The artillery of the enemy will be heavy. In fact, before you get very far on the beach you will be killed. But I will raise you from the dead and the beachhead you established will spread until it invades every tongue and tribe and nation. And I will free town after town from slavery to demons and slavery to the law. And we will draw into our movement all those who trust in you, my Son, and we will send your Spirit to empower them and bring them to glory. And they will be my children and heirs of everything I have. Satan will be vanquished, all unbelievers will be banished to outer darkness and our glory will fill the earth like the waters cover the sea."

14. Oh That Christ Would Be Formed in You!

Galatians 4:12-20

    I think the basic reason why Christian faith meets with opposition in the world and even finds resistance in our own hearts is that true saving faith always brings with it the reshaping of our heart and mind so that it is no longer we who live but Christ in us.    

    There is in every human heart an intense and powerful love for the praise of men. Just as naturally as apples fall downward, human beings gravitate toward ideas and actions which make them look great and resist ideas and actions which make them look small. Therefore, apart from the powerful grace of God overcoming our natural disposition to pride, we would always resist the coming of faith into our lives, because by faith Christ takes such dominant control of our lives and reshapes us so much into his image that we can no longer boast in anything good that we do. It does not appeal to the natural mind to be so transformed by Christ that we must give him credit for all the good we do.

    This is the fundamental stumbling block to Christian faith—which is what Jesus meant when he said in John 5:44, "How can you believe, who receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God"? Our love for the praise of men hinders us from trusting Christ because the purpose of Christ is to remove every ground of boasting in us and put it all in God (1 Cor. 1:29-31; Eph. 2:8-9; Gal. 6:14).

    He did this once by accomplishing our redemption on the cross without our help; and he continues to do it by applying that redemption to our hearts without our help. By his sovereign grace Christ paid our debt to God, and by his sovereign grace he is putting his own form upon our lives so that we will say with the Psalmist (115:1), "Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory." Saving faith is a resting in that sovereign work of Christ past, present, and future. which gives all glory to God (1 Pet. 4:10,11).  

    Therefore, in one sense saving faith is the easiest thing in the world—as easy as being clay in the potter's hands. But in another sense it is the hardest thing in the world because human clay hates being shaped and formed by Christ so that he gets all the glory for what we become.

     It's not surprising then that the Judaizers should find a foothold for their false teaching in the hearts of the recent Galatian converts, just like all kinds of cults and ego-centric fads are able to gain a foothold in the church today. The teaching of the Judaizers did not oppose the pride left in the Galatian believers. It catered to that pride.  

     They said, move on from faith to works; move on from the booster rocket of the Holy Spirit and kick in with the efforts of your flesh (Gal. 3:1-5). They offered the law as a means of enjoying one's pride in a morally acceptable way. And so their teaching was not as radical and humbling as Paul's was. It was in fact very appealing to people who wanted to be religious and moral but did not want to become putty in the hands of God.

     In Galatians 4:12-21 Paul continues his effort to rescue the Galatians from the false Gospel of the Judaizers. The main point of the paragraph is found in vv. 12 & 19. Verse 12 says. "Brethren I beseech you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are." It was a terrible irony to Paul that he, a Jew, had become a Gentile, as it were, to win the Galatian Gentiles (1 Cor. 9:21). but they were now trying to become Jews in order to win God's favor. Paul reminds the Galatians in verse 12 that the very fact that he did not depend on his Jewish distinctives should make them forsake the Judaizers and become as he is, free in Christ. That's the main point: become free like me.

     But verse 19 puts it in a way that shows why freedom from the law does not result in self-glorifying lawlessness. 'My little children with whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ be formed in you!" When Paul says in verse 12. "Become as I am," he means, "Let Christ be formed in you."

   My evidence for this is Galatians 2:20 where Paul tells us how he understands his own life: "I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." What is clear from this verse is that when Paul says, "Become like me," he means, "Die like I have died and live by faith in the Son of God so that it is his life in you that shapes and forms who you are." Paul's whole ministry was like a mother in labor pains—he struggled to give birth to people who had Christ taking shape in their lives. "My little children, with whom I am in pain again until Christ be formed In you." That's the main point of the paragraph. "Become as I am: have Christ formed in you."

    This message was diametrically opposed to the teaching of the Judaizers. We can see this by contrasting verses 17 and 19. In verse 17 Paul uncovers a motive in the Judaizers which is not surprising in view of their theology of works. "They make much of you, for no good purpose; they want to shut you out, that you may make much of them." Paul says that at root the Judaizers are motivated by the love for human praise. They want to be made much of, to be sought out, to be depended on. And to get this kind of ego-building attention they tell the Galatians they win be shut out from God's final blessing if they don't accept their teaching of works.

    So every Galatian Gentile who capitulates and gets circumcised in hope of making points with God is another notch in the Judaizer's pistol of pride. That's what Galatians 6:13 means when it says, "For even those who receive circumcision do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may glory in your flesh." The very theology they propagate is rooted in pride, since it urges people to depend partly on God and partly on themselves; and therefore it is inevitable that this motive for propagating that theology would also be rooted in pride, namely the desire to be made much of. A theology which boosts the human ego and therefore caters to our desire for praise, will surely be propagated out of that same motive; and that's the point of verse 17.

        But contrast this with the heart of Paul's message in verse 19—his longing is not that he be made much of but that Christ be made much of. O, that Christ would be formed in you! (cf. 1:10). What is this experience Paul is talking about here? There is a lot of talk today, especially on seminary campuses, about "spiritual formation." I want to say a hearty yes to this concern, provided that it means the formation of Christ in the believer. O, that Christ would be formed in you! The Biblical quest for spiritual formation is a quest to be so shaped from within by the presence of the living Christ that we are no longer "conformed to this age but are transformed by the renewal of our mind" (Rom 12:1,2): to be so shaped by our union with him that "the life of Jesus may be manifested in our bodies" (2 Cor. 4:10); to be so formed and dominated by Christ that we must say with Paul after a life of labor, "It was not I but the grace of God which is with me" (1 Cor. 15:10). "It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). "I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought through me" (Rom. 15:18).

    It doesn't take a genius to see that, when Christ shapes and forms our inner life after his own image, our freedom from the law will hardly result in a lawless self-glorifying license. On the contrary, it is the power of Christ living and reigning and forming himself within us that frees us to delight in God's will. We are freed from the burden of the law when we are given the power to fulfill it from within. And that happens when Christ is formed in us.

     How does that happen? Under what conditions does it come about? The answer is made plain by linking three verses.

First link 4:19 to 4:6. Verse 19 says Christ should be formed in us. Verse 6 says that the way Christ comes to us is by his Spirit: God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.

     Then link 4:6 to 3:5. There Paul says that "the One who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you does so not by works of law but by hearing with faith."      In other words, the ongoing supply of the Spirit of Christ and his miraculous work happens through faith. So the answer to the question, How is Christ formed in your life? Is: by your faith.

    It's really quite simple: the Son of God comes and shapes us from within if we rely on him to come and shape us. The Son takes shape in those who abandon themselves to him. Christ forms himself in the lives of those who will let go of all the forms of life in which they have shaped on their own. Christ takes shape in a life that is willing to become putty in God's hands. Christ presses the shape of his own face into the clay of our soul when we cease to be hard and resistant, and when we take our own amateur hands off and admit that we are not such good artists as he is.

    Here we can see clearly what faith is. Faith is the assurance that what God will make of you, as Christ is formed in your life, is vastly to be preferred over what you can make of yourself. Faith is the confidence that the demonstration of Christ's work in your life is more wonderful than all the praise you could get for yourself by being a self-made man—or woman. Faith is a happy resting in the all-sufficiency of what Christ did on the cross, what he is doing now in our heart and what he promises to do for us for ever.

    So it's clear how Paul's message and the Judaizers' message are opposed to each other. Their message caters to our natural pride—our desire to be "self-made" people who get glory for ourselves. Paul's message robs us of all such pride by saying we should be "Christ-made" people who get glory for God by trusting him to shape us every day. God is not glorified by the self-wrought moral, aesthetic, or technical achievements of human life. He is glorified when we turn from ourselves and trust him like little children to enable us to do his bidding. This is the best news in the world, because it opens up the way of salvation to the simplest and weakest of us all.

    In trying to persuade the Galatians that it is indeed good news and that they should not forsake it to follow the Judaizers, Paul reminds them of how valuable the gospel was to them back at the beginning. Look at verses 12-16: "You did me no wrong; you know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first; and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. What has become of the satisfaction you felt? For I bear you witness that, if possible, you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me. Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?"

    To all his Biblical and theological arguments in chapter 3 for why the Galatians should not follow the Judaizers but keep faith in the gospel. Paul now adds an argument from experience. He says in effect. Do you recall how my plans to move on were interrupted because of that terrible attack in my eyes—how they were red and infected and filled up with puss. You had every reason to switch channels and watch a more attractive preacher…. My disease was a trial to you… My message did not come well-packaged. But you did me no wrong; you didn't despise me; you received me like an angel; you saw Christ in me; you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me. Why? Because you saw the beauty and truth of the gospel! It persuaded you. It satisfied you. It was so valuable that you would have given up your eyes to keep the message going --your own eyes! your own eyes!! ….Is the message of the Judaizers really more valuable, really more valid?

      I think Paul must have believed that if he could just bring to their memory how powerful and beautiful the gospel was at the beginning, they would stop being attracted by the false gospel of the Judaizers. And perhaps that's the way I should close today.

    For some of us these are the very days in which for the first time the beauty of the gospel of grace is beginning to shine on the horizon of your soul. But others of you look back months or years or decades, to a golden era of faith when Christ was powerfully taking shape in your life. But something has changed. There has been a kind of settling into the world, and the vibrant sense of being an alien and an exile in the world has faded. And the powerful shaping forces in your life are not coming from Christ within but from the world without.

    The word of encouragement and admonition to us all this evening is this: the Spirit of the living Christ can be poured into us afresh today. Paul would not have written this letter if there were no hope for the Galatians. Therefore, I urge you, take your amateur hands off the clay of your life and yield yourselves into the sovereign hands of God. Forget the praise of men and all your efforts to achieve it. Turn your hearts to Christ and say: I am not my own; you have bought me; forgive me; be formed within me. Not to me, O Lord, not to me, but to your name give glory (Ps. 115:1). Amen.

15. Hagar and Slavery Vs Sarah and Freedom

Galatians 4:21-31

   The allegory of Hagar and Sarah is written to persuade us (along with the Galatians) not to follow the Judaizers into slavery with Hagar and Ishmael but to follow Sarah and Isaac into freedom. So I want to begin with a definition of freedom that I think is implied here. Then we will look at the allegory and learn from it how to have freedom.

   Full freedom Is what you have when no lack of opportunity, no lack of ability and no lack of desire prevents you from doing what will make you happiest In a thousand years. In order to be free in the fullest sense you have to have opportunity, ability and desire to do what will make you happy in a thousand years. Another way to say it would be that there are four kinds of freedom, or better, four stages of freedom on the way to the full freedom all of us long for: the freedom of opportunity to do what we can, the freedom of ability to do what we desire and the freedom of desire to do what will bring us unending joy.

   Let's take sky diving, for example. Suppose you are on your way to the airport to go up for your first real jump, but your car hits a pothole on the freeway, you have a blowout and run into a telephone pole. You are no longer free to jump whether you have the ability or not because the opportunity passes while you wait for the tow truck. You lack the freedom of opportunity.

    Or suppose you do make it to the airport but you have no ability at all—you have never studied sky diving and never learned the first thing about how a parachute works. The opportunity is there, but you don't have the freedom of ability—you are in bondage to your own lack of know-how.

    But suppose that you make it to the airport, you've been to school and been trained and have all the abilities needed. and you take off for your first jump. But as soon as you look down all your desire vanishes and in its place comes a tremendous fear. The opportunity is there, the ability and know-how are there, but you don't have the freedom of desire. The interesting thing about the freedom of desire is that you might be able to go ahead and jump without it, but it won't be a free act.

    For example, you might feel so humiliated in front of your instructor (or wife, or girlfriend) that the desire not to be humiliated overcomes the desire not to jump. So you jump. But the emotional experience is not what we call freedom. You are acting under very uncomfortable external constraints. You are like Herod when his step-daughter asked for the head of John the Baptist. He didn't want to kill John but he wanted even less to be shamed before his guests. So he acted, but not with the freedom of desire. You have the freedom of desire when you do what you love to do.

    That's the way a lot of professing Christians try to keep the commandments of Christ. They don't really delight to do them but they feel some uncomfortable constraints like social pressures or fear of hell or desire to impress someone. So they go through outward motions of obedience but the desire of their hearts is fixed somewhere else. They do not enjoy the freedom of desire which Christ gives when he is being formed in the heart (Gal. 4:19).

    But there is one last requirement for full freedom. Suppose you get to the airport with no obstacle; you have all the know-how necessary; you look out the door at the tiny clusters of silos and barns and farmhouses and just can't wait to jump. You have freedom of opportunity, freedom of ability and freedom of desire. So you jump. And as you free fall unbeknown to you, your parachute malfunctions and will not open. Are you free? In three senses, yes. But in that critical fourth sense, no. What you are doing so happily, so freely, is going to kill you. Whether you know it or not, you are in bondage to destruction. It would be a mockery to exult in the freedom of an exhilarating free fall if you knew it was leading to destruction. In order to be fully free it is not enough to have opportunity, ability and desire to act. The acts you desire and perform have to lead to life indeed, eternal life not destruction.

    This is why it is naive for a Christian young person to envy the so-called freedom of those who pitch themselves out the window of sin and exult for a season in the exhilaration of free fall sex or free fall greed, or free fall drugs or free fall luxury. They will pass away like a vapor but those who do the will of the Lord will abide for ever (1 John 2:17). True freedom is not just the opportunity and ability to do what you desire to do. It is the opportunity, ability and desire to do what will make you happy in a thousand years.

    Therefore, true Christians are the freest people in the world. And Paul is fighting with all his might in Galatians to expose the teaching of the Judaizers for what it really is: slavery.

    For Paul, the experience of freedom is not icing on the cake of Christianity. Freedom in Christ is Christianity. It is a matter of eternity. That's the first point of the allegory. So let's see if we can understand it and strengthen our stand in freedom.

In verse 21 Paul simply says that those who are turning back to the law of Moses as a job description for how to earn the wages of blessing from God, should listen to what the law says. Note this well, lest anything I or Paul have said sounds anti-Semitic. Paul only wants to teach things that are implied in the Jewish Bible. His problem with the Judaizers is not that they are Jewish but that they aren't Jewish enough. Paul himself was a Jew and never surrendered his allegiance to the law. What does that teach about freedom?

      Verses 22 and 23, "It is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise." Let's go back to Genesis 15 and remind ourselves of what happened to Abraham and Sarah. In Genesis 15:1-6 Abraham is downcast because he and Sarah have no children, no heir to fulfill the promises of becoming a great nation (12:2). There is only Eliezer the slave. But God says in verse 4, "This man shall not be your heir; your own son shall be your heir." God's intention was to give Abraham a son and an heir when it looked humanly impossible so that Abraham would have to rely solely on God.

     But in Genesis 16 Abraham and Sarah weaken in their faith for a time and devise a plan by which they will use their own resources to help God fulfill his promise. Sarah gives Hagar, her handmaid, to Abraham so she can bear him a son (16:2). And in Genesis 16:15 it says, "Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son whom Hagar bore to him Ishmael." So when Paul says in Galatians 4:23 that Ishmael was born "according to the flesh" it means that he was the product of self-reliance. Abraham ceased to rely on God's power to fulfill his word and instead relied on his own power and ingenuity to get a son.

     Then, fourteen years later, in Genesis 17:16 God says to Abraham that his wife, Sarah, will have a son. God intends to fulfill his promise in a way that removes all ground for boasting. In verses 17-19 it says, "Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, 'Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah who is 90 years old bear a child?' And Abraham said to God, 'O, that Ishmael might live in thy sight!' God said, 'No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him."' God rejects what Abraham was able to produce on his own and promises again that in spite of Abraham's age, he will have a son by his own wife.

     So in Genesis 21:1 it says, 'The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised." Isaac was not born according to the flesh because his birth was the result of God's supernatural intervention in fulfillment of his own promise. Abraham had learned his lesson: the only acceptable response to God's merciful promise is trust in that promise, not works of the flesh that try, to bring down God's blessing with our efforts.

    So Galatians 4:23 sums up the story: "The son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise." Verse 24 says that Paul sees an allegory in these events, that is, he sees them as apt representations of something more than their literal meaning. I don't think Paul would say that the original meaning of Genesis had reference to Mt. Sinai or to Jerusalem. I think he would say that the truth implied in the stories about Hagar and Sarah is the same truth that we can now see in what happened at Mt. Sinai and continues to happen in the present Jerusalem. So it is fully legitimate to use those stories from Genesis to symbolize and illustrate the later events.

    According to verse 24, Hagar and Sarah represent two covenants. First, he focuses on Hagar and says, "One (covenant) is from Mt. Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mt. Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children." The key question here is: how is Hagar and her affair with Abraham and their son Ishmael like the covenant of Mt. Sinai - the giving of the law through Moses? There are two similarities at least. Hagar's giving birth to Ishmael is done "according to the flesh" (v. 23); Abraham and Hagar tried to get God's promised blessing by their own strength without relying on God's supernatural enablement.

    That is just what happened when the law was given at Mt. Sinai. Instead of humbling themselves and trusting God for help to obey his commands Israel says confidently, "All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do" (Ex. 24:3; Deut. 5:27). But they did not have hearts inclined to trust in God (Heb. 4:2) or truly depend on him (Deut. 5:29). And so like Hagar and Abraham they depended on their own resources. And just as Ishmael was born according to the flesh, so the law offered was not received because (as Romans 8:3 says) the law was "weakened by the flesh." All that Abraham and Hagar produced on their own was a son who would not be the heir. All that Israel produced when they tried to keep the law on their own was a legalism which would inherit nothing.

     Which leads to the second similarity between Hagar and Mt. Sinai—both of them bear children for slavery. Verse 24 says that the covenant Hagar represents is from Mt. Sinai "bearing children for slavery." Since Ishmael was not accepted as an heir he was no better than his mother, a slave. And when the Israelites take the law upon themselves without trusting God for gracious enablement, they become slaves because they have no freedom to do the law from the heart and because their unbelief locks them into disobedience and excludes them from the inheritance.

    Then to bring the allegory up to date at the end of verse 25 Paul says, "She corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children." This is a direct attack on the Judaizers who have come from Jerusalem (cf. 2:12). They are the children of Jerusalem and they are slaves to the law and to the demonic forces of the world (4:3,8). So you can see Paul's point: don't follow these false teachers—they may show you how to become sons of Abraham, but beware! With them you will be an Ishmael, not an Isaac. A slave, not an heir.

     Then in verse 26 Paul turns his attention to the other half of the allegory—Sarah and her child, Isaac. But he skips over any mention of the (Abrahamic) covenant and gets right up to date: "But the Jerusalem above is free. and she is our mother." He contrasts the present Jerusalem in verse 25 with the "Jerusalem above" in verse 26. What he means by the Jerusalem above can be seen in Colossians 3:1-3, "If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. For you have died and your life is hid with Christ in God." The Jerusalem above represents the dwelling place of God. Our life and our freedom flow down from him and our lives are already secure on the citizen books of that city. Sarah represents that city because she gave birth to Isaac not by reliance on herself but by an act of God from above in fulfillment of his promise. Therefore, spiritually speaking, she is the mother of all Christians—of people whose lives are not merely the product of human resources but of God's supernatural work in their heart. So Paul says in verse 28, "Now we brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise." Our real life is not, like Ishmael's, simply owing to the work of man. Our real life is owing to the work of God in us fulfilling his promise to make for himself a people (Gen. 12:1-3) and to put his Spirit within them (Ezek. 36:27) and write his law on their hearts (Jer. 31:33).

    This is confirmed by the contrast in verse 29. It says, "But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now." Recall how in verse 23 the contrast was between one born according to the flesh and one born through promise. But notice here in verse 29 that the same contrast is between one born according to the flesh and one born according to the Spirit. "Born according to the Spirit" is interchangeable with "born through promise." This confirms that "children of promise" in verse 28 refers to people whose inner life is the work of God's Spirit in fulfillment of his promise. The difference between Ishmael-types and Isaac-types is a supernatural work of the Spirit of God.

     Then verse 30 assures us that not the Ishmael-types—not the Judaizers—but the Isaac-types will inherit the blessing of Abraham, even though they may be persecuted. Finally, Paul concludes in verse 31 that we—that is, we who live by faith in the Son of God and don't rely on what we can achieve on our own—are not in the slave category but in the category of the free.

     Which brings us back to our definition of freedom. Freedom is what you have when there is opportunity. ability and desire to do what will make you happy in a thousand years. Surely everyone here wants this full freedom—to have occasion and ability to do what you love to do with the result that you live in perfect joy forever. If that's what you want, then this text is crucial for you, because Paul says the Ishmael-types don't have this freedom but the Isaac-types do.

    Why aren't the Ishmael-types free? They are not free because they lack the desire to rest in God's promises. They lack the desire to show their own resourcefulness. It's not that they desire to reject God. They simply want him on their own terms. Abraham and Hagar wanted God's blessing but not on his terms.

     The Judaizers want God's blessing but not on his terms. Ishmael-types in every age rely on human resources and don't desire to feel like children in need of a father, or like a patient in need of a doctor. Ishmael-types think you can outgrow: Jesus loves me, this I know For the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong, We are weak but he is strong.

     Therefore, when it comes to saving faith, Ishmael-types do not have the freedom of desire. They do not want it. Therefore they also lack the freedom of eternal life, because no one who prefers to live in his own strength rather than trusting God will be saved and go to heaven. And what's more, the hardness of heart that spurns childlike dependence on God will also darken the understanding. Every one of us knows that the most common use of the mind is to justify our desires. Therefore, deeply wrong desires will deeply mislead the mind until it is not able to understand what is right. So Ishmael-types are not free because they lack the freedom of desire to rest in God's sovereign grace; and therefore they lack the freedom of ability to understand God's will, and finally, they lack the freedom of eternal joy, because the life they have chosen leads to destruction.

      But we, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise (Gal. 4:28). We have been born of the Holy Spirit. The essence of Christianity is the miracle of new birth. The hallmark of the Isaac-types is that we have been converted, changed, transformed at the center of our lives so that we desire to rest in God's sovereign grace. We desire to become as little children and receive the power and wisdom and holiness from our all-sufficient Father. We hate the remaining tendencies in us to be proud and to trust in ourselves or other people instead of God. Our delight is in the law of the Lord and our choicest food is to do his will in reliance on his power. This is what it means to be born according to the Spirit. This is what it means to say I no longer live but Christ lives in me (Gal. 2:20). His passion becomes our passion.

     Therefore, Isaac-types have the freedom of desire. We don't labor slavishly under the burden of having to do what we don't want to do. We are free to do what we love to do and to do it forever in perfect joy. For God has caused us to be born again by the Spirit of his Son, and is shaping our desires according to his will.

"For freedom Christ has set us free! Stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."

16. For Freedom Christ Has Set Us Free Galatians 5:1-5

     The text begins with a clear and refreshing statement of Christ's will for our lives. Sometimes we get bogged down in a quandary about God's will. And often we worry about decisions which are simply not a great issue with God (where to go to school, what job to take, where to live, etc.). We need to orient our lives on the clear statements of Scripture regarding God's will. And here is one: "For freedom Christ has set us free." Christ's will for you is that you enjoy freedom. Where you go to school, what job you do, where you live, etc., are not nearly so crucial as whether you stand fast in freedom. If they were, the Bible would have commanded those things as clearly as it here commands freedom. But it doesn't. So your enjoyment of freedom is much more important to God than many of the day-to-day decisions that fill us with so much concern.

     A good test of your priorities in life would be whether you are just as concerned about the command to enjoy your freedom as you are about other pressing decisions in your life. Do you exercise as much diligence in prayer and study to stand fast in freedom as you do to decide about home, job, school, marriage partner? It is a clear and unqualified command: "Stand fast and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."     

This is the will of God for you: your freedom. Uncompromising, unrelenting, indomitable freedom. For this Christ died. For this he rose. For this he sent his Spirit. There is nothing he wills with more intensity under the glory of his own name than this: your freedom. That's my message today. All else is explanation and incentive.

    There is a clue here for how we can live in freedom and obey Galatians 5:1. The key to freedom is whether we have to do the work ourselves to escape punishment, or whether our Father comes down to be with us and help us. I think this will be evident from Galatians 5:2-5.

    Verses 2,3 and 4 each portray a way to stay under a yoke of slavery. So these verses function as warnings against slavery. Then verse 5 gives a positive description of how to stand in freedom. Let's look at each of these verses in turn.

     We'll take verses 2 and 3 together: "Now I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you (or: Christ will profit you nothing). I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is bound to keep the whole law (literally: that he is a debtor to do the whole law)."

    A reader who is totally insensitive to all that has gone before in Galatians might say, "O, that's easy. Paul says circumcision is wrong and displeases God and non-circumcision is right and pleases God. So the point is: do what pleases God—avoid circumcision at all costs." But do you see what that superficial reading does: it makes non-circumcision into something just as dangerous as circumcision, namely, a work that you can use to earn things from God.

    The point of verses 2 and 3 is not that circumcision in itself is wrong, but that any act is wrong that we do to bribe God for blessings. Circumcision happened to be the foremost requirement of the Judaizers who were teaching the Galatians to work their way into God's favor. Gal. 2:3-5 reminds us how circumcision relates to freedom and slavery. Paul went up to Jerusalem, "but even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek, but because of false brethren (probably the Judaizers), secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy out our freedom which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage—to them we did not yield submission even for a moment, that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you." That's what Paul means in 5:1 by "stand fast and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." That is, do not let the Judaizers bewitch you into thinking that circumcision or any other outward act of obedience can be offered to God as a benefit to him which he must then reward with some payment.

    Look more closely at verse 2. "If you get circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing." The problem with the Judaizers was that they wanted to cash in on Christ's profit, but only by making investments with him from their own moral assets. And Paul says that if you try to earn dividends from Christ from your own investment of circumcision or dietary rules or feast days, Christ will profit you nothing. Why? Because all the spiritual and physical benefits Christ gives are dividends paid from his own investment at Calvary. When the Son of God died for our sins the moral assets which he invested in the bank of God's glory were so great that the dividends are infinite, endless and available to all who … who what? Verse 2 says: Christ's profits are not yours if you try to earn them with your own investments. Why? Because that dishonors Christ, nullifies grace (2:21) and removes the stumbling block of the cross (5:11). We exalt the cross and grace and Christ when we admit we have no assets to invest, and that Christ's investment at Calvary was totally sufficient to win free dividends of righteousness and life for all who trust him. So verse 2 teaches that slavery is when you reject Christ as the merciful benefactor who gives us freely a share in his endless profit. Slavery is when you choose to deal with him as a banker who needs your investment to produce dividends for his customers.

    Verse 3 says the same thing a bit differently. "I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is a debtor to do the whole law." This verse teaches that the mindset of slavery is the mindset of a debtor—one who is under pressure to pay back what he has borrowed or needs to borrow. All the works of the law (including circumcision) are the currency with which the Judaizers aim to satisfy their debts to God. And the surprising point of the verse for us is that God does not want to deal with us as debtors in this way.

   I say this is surprising because there is a very common view of Christian behavior which this verse contradicts. It is called the "Gratitude Ethic." It says that God has done so much for me that I will devote my life to paying back my debt even though I know I will never be able to completely. And even though most Christians who work out of this gratitude ethic would say that they are not trying to earn their salvation, nevertheless, when they start working for God because he has given them so much, it is very easy to begin to think of God's free gift as a loan to be repaid or as advance wages to be earned. So the gratitude ethic tends to put you in the position of a debtor instead of a son. And that is slavery. None of us feels completely free while we are burdened with a debt to be repaid. Christ does not want you to relate to him as a debtor who uses the law to make installment payments on an unending loan.

    There are at least three reasons why this gratitude ethic is wrong. First, true gratitude is indeed a sense of joyful indebtedness. But as soon as this delight in another person's generosity turns into a feeling that we must pay something back, what once was a free gift starts to become a business transaction. Genuine gratitude is not the feeling of having to pay back.

    The second reason the gratitude ethic is wrong is that it diminishes the cross of Christ. When Christ died for our sins to repair the injury we had done to God's honor, our debt was totally covered! Any effort to increase, from our account, the deposit made for us by Christ at Calvary, is an insult to its infinite value.

    Yes, all the good things that come to us sinners now and in eternity must be paid for. But the gospel is that they have already been paid for by Someone else. Therefore, we must never try to relate to God as a debtor trying to pay back a debt, no matter how thankfully.

The third reason why the gratitude ethic is wrong is that it tends to think of God's work for us as only in the past. It says, God has done so much for me, now I will do for him. But this overlooks the fact that God's work for us is past, present and future, and it is not only work for us but in us. The gratitude ethic tends to forget that apart from Christ's present indwelling power we can do nothing valuable (John 15:5). The gratitude ethic forgets that any patience, kindness, goodness, worship, etc., which we may offer to God is the fruit of his Spirit (Gal. 5:22; Phil. 3:3). It is God now working in us that which is pleasing in his sight (Heb. 13:21). Therefore, even our gifts to God are gifts from God. The gratitude ethic overlooks this never-ending work of grace in our lives. We can't even begin to pay God back because the slightest movement toward him is a new gift from him.

     So when verse three says that the person who gets circumcised is putting himself in the place of a debtor to God, we learn that God does not want to relate to us as debtors who try to pay him back. His will for us is that we be free—that we recognize that the whole debt is paid. We are not slaves who have to work to stay out of the poorhouse.

     Now verse four says the same thing as verses two and three, warning us to stand fast in freedom and not submit to a yoke of slavery: "You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by law; you have fallen away from grace." If you take upon yourself the yoke of the law and aim to use it to achieve your own righteousness before God you have submitted to a yoke of slavery and are not standing in the freedom for which Christ freed you. Or to use the words of the verse: your relation to Christ is nullified and you no longer benefit from grace. What this verse teaches then is that the experience of freedom, including the freedom of eternal life, can only be enjoyed as we depend on the grace of Christ. Slavery is what happens when you fall away from the power of grace. The key to freedom is to keep depending on grace.

    But what is grace? Grace is the powerful work of God which he exerts freely for you in your present life. You've heard the acronym: G.R.A.C.E. - God's Riches At Christ's Expense. That is excellent. But to remind us that grace is also God's action for now, here is another acronym: G.R.A.C.E. - God's Rescuing And Caring Exertion.

   For example, in 1 Cor. 15:10, Paul says, "I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God which was with me." Grace is God's exertion in our lives to help us. Another example is Romans 5:21, "As sin reigned in death, grace also will reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Grace is like a powerful king who exerts his reign in the lives of Christians.

    So when Gal. 5:4 implies that the key to freedom is depending on grace, it means that the key to freedom is God's rescuing and caring exertion in our lives here and now. We are free when God freely comes to help us and we joyfully trust his help instead of turning to the yoke of law.The key to freedom is whether God comes down to help us do what he requires and whether we live by faith in that work of grace.

     I close by simply pointing out how verse 5 describes the life of freedom. "For through the Spirit by faith we wait for the hope of righteousness." Even though there is a sense in which we are already justified by faith in Christ and clothed with his righteousness (Rom. 5:1; 1 Cor. 1:30) the final judgment lies before us at which the final verdict will be spoken and we will be made fully and ethically righteous. This is the hope we wait for and long for. But so do the Judaizers! The question is how are we waiting: as free or as slaves.

    Two phrases in verse five sum up how free people wait for the last day. First, "through the Spirit." Our lives began by a work of the Spirit (like Isaac's began with a divine intervention, Gen. 21:1). And our lives go on by the work of the Spirit. "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." We are free because God has sent the Spirit of his Son to come help us put the blocks away. He does not stand aloof and make demands. He offers his fellowship and help, and even makes the life of obedience a life of joy. The Christian life is a life of freedom because it is lived in the power of the Spirit.

    The second phrase that shows how free people wait for the hope of righteousness is "by faith." "Through the Spirit by faith we wait for the hope of righteousness." It is conceivable that a Christian would pout and say, "I don't want your help. I’ll do it myself. I'll show you what I can do. I'll show I don't need your charity." If he continued in that proud way he would fall from grace and God would be of no advantage to him. He would opt for legalism over grace and slavery over freedom.

   The human side of freedom is faith. And Gal. 3:5 reminds us how it connects with God's side: "Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by the hearing of faith?" If we really rely on our Father to help us, he helps us.

    And note well in Gal. 5:5 that faith is not merely a past decision. It is an ongoing way of waiting for the hope of righteousness. So the currency of freedom has two sides. One side is the sovereign, gracious work of God in us and for us day by day—Our Father coming down to us and turning obedience into fun. The other side is our faith—a life of joyful reliance on what God does for us, not what we can do for God—a life that is distinctively different from the world because, as we will see next week, it is freed to love. "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."