Untitled Sermon
HUMAN BEINGS have a remarkably high capacity for foolishness. My favorite is the story of a man who woke one morning in the dead of a Minnesota winter to find that the engine of his car had frozen. His solution? Pour hot gasoline into his car. So he put some into a pot and warmed it on his kitchen stove. As you can guess, that didn’t go so well.
Or there’s the story of two truck drivers who stopped before a low-hanging overpass to decide whether their eighteen-wheeler could go under it. The driver pointed out that the overpass only had a clearance of thirteen feet, one inch, yet their truck required at least fourteen feet. But his colleague had an even more astute observation. There weren’t any cops around, so they should just go for it. And they did. Again it didn’t go so well.
The only way you could top this kind of folly would be to try to finish the Christian life in your own strength. That’s not a good idea; in fact, it’s foolish. Yet how prone we are to do this very thing!
The Christians in Galatia are trying to finish the Christian race in their own strength. And Paul is beside himself as a result. He can’t believe it; surely some devilry is at work in Galatia, prompting such madness. Hence Paul peppers them with a string of rhetorical questions:
O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith …? (3:1–5)
This isn’t Paul’s first, or only, rebuke of these “foolish” Galatians. The letter’s opening salvo is similarly chiding (cf. 1:6–9). But here Paul doesn’t simply repeat his earlier rebuke; he further clarifies the issues at stake. The Galatians are attempting to do the unthinkable: they’re contemplating circumcision and thus trying to finish the Christian race by the flesh rather than by the Spirit (3:3).
But why would adult male converts to Christ, living in the ancient world, want to get circumcised? There was no doubt some social pressure, given their precarious identity. But ultimately they’d become convinced that circumcision was the key to finishing the race, crossing the finish line, and finding success with God on the Last Day.
Presumably they’d been told by the agitators, the Judaizers, that no matter how well they’d started, they wouldn’t find success at the finish without undergoing circumcision. Or to put it in theological terms, the Galatians had become convinced that they needed circumcision in order to be saved. No doubt what was being touted in Antioch was also being promulgated in Galatia. Certain men were telling these believers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). And evidently the Galatians were buying it.
Thus Paul is distraught over his wayward flock, for their behavior implies nothing less than a departure from the gospel. And a departure from the gospel, in turn, jeopardizes their entire future. Paul fears he’s labored over them in vain (4:11). Though they were “running well,” they’re not any longer (5:7). Indeed, they appear to have “fallen away from grace” (5:4), having turned away from the One who “called [them] in the grace of Christ” (1:6). And if they don’t finish the race by grace, they can’t possibly receive the prize. It’s that simple. To go to circumcision is to leave Christ; but leaving Christ will only leave them utterly exposed on the Day of Judgment. Christ will be of no help to them on that day.
So what’s Paul’s response? In short, he pleads with the Galatians not to look to the Law but instead to stick with the Spirit. If they want to finish their race, they must rely on the Spirit’s empowering presence. The Law, with its works, won’t lift a finger to help. The Spirit alone is able to grant them success in their race.
The question for the Galatians, then, is a crucial one for you and me as well. How can we promote the presence of the Spirit? Or more accurately, by what means does God pour the Spirit into our lives? Paul says God is the one “who supplies the Spirit to you” (3:5). But our question is, how? This paragraph of Galatians is designed to answer that question and to get the Galatians back on track, to finish the race by the Spirit and not by the flesh.
God Supplies the Spirit through the Cross of Christ (3:1)
But before Paul points the Galatians to the key issue, he takes them back to how they began their life in the Spirit. He reminds them how it all began with something they saw, indeed, with something they encountered. “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified” (3:1). The Galatians began life in the Spirit when they saw Jesus Christ crucified.
Notice that Paul emphasizes how visible this sight of Christ was: “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified” (3:1). This is an allusion to more than vivid, imaginative preaching. Paul wants them to recall how he physically embodied the cross of Christ. The Galatians thus saw the crucified Christ in the crucified Paul.
How? Through, Paul says, his own apostolic suffering. As a result of his many trials and tribulations, he has indeed been “crucified with Christ” (2:20). And in the flesh-and-blood of his very real suffering—the gash across his forehead, the welts on his arm, the black-and-blue around his eyes, the scars down his back—the Galatians see the crucified Christ publicly portrayed.
But Paul reminds them of how they saw the crucified Christ to reinforce the fact that the Spirit comes only through the cross of Christ. That is to say, God only supplies us with the Spirit if our sins have been forgiven because of the death of Jesus Christ. Unless our sins have been washed away by the blood of Christ, the Holy Spirit cannot enter our lives. Apart from having our sins forgiven, the Holy Spirit would destroy, not sanctify us.
Paul’s point, then, is that the Spirit comes through the cross of Christ and only through the cross of Christ. The Spirit never does an end run around the cross. It all begins with the forgiveness of sins God accomplishes in the death of Jesus. This is the door through which the Spirit travels; the door is opened by the death of Christ.
But this is also where we must return, again and again, as we continue to struggle with sin. Every day we must pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). While a true believer cannot lose his union with the Spirit, he can interrupt his communion with the Spirit. And sin is the great disruption to communion with God. Like unplugging the cord to your computer, sin cuts us off from the source of power.
This is why confession of sin ought to be a regular part of our Christian life. “Confess your sins to one another,” James tells us (5:16). Have you ever noticed how almost instantly we feel stronger when we’ve confessed sin? How do we explain this empowerment? Confession takes us back to the cross, where we see the crucified Christ. And there we gaze afresh at God’s forgiveness and there receive a fresh outpouring of God’s Spirit. “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19, 20).
God Supplies the Spirit in Response to the Hearing of Faith (3:2, 5)
But if the cross of Christ and the forgiveness of sins is the door God opens to enter into our sinful lives, then what’s the door we open to allow God to enter? Paul points the way with a rhetorical question intended to cut to the chase: “Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” (3:2).
Of course, the Galatians know they didn’t receive the Spirit by getting circumcised or by doing any of the other works of the Law. When Peter preached in Joppa to Cornelius and those of his household, the Holy Spirit simply came upon them as Peter was speaking to them. “And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles” (Acts 10:45). How did the Spirit come upon these Gentiles or those in Galatia? As Paul says, not by “works of the law” but by “hearing with faith.”
But the giving of the Spirit isn’t a onetime thing. As Paul adds, the Spirit continues to come into their lives in response to that same responsive faith: “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?” (3:5). The Galatians began their Christian life with the hearing of faith; so, too, this is how they must continue in the Christian life. And, indeed, this is how they must complete the Christian life—by the hearing of faith.
God pours his Spirit into our lives when we are responsive to the word of the gospel. But we must recognize that there are two ways to hear: there’s hearing with the ear, and there’s hearing with faith. Only the latter kind of hearing opens the door to the Spirit’s presence.
Realize, then, that religious activities in themselves do not mediate the presence of the Spirit. We can engage in all sorts of church activities, but if the hearing of faith isn’t undergirding it, then all we have is lots of activity. We may be busy, but we’ll lack the empowering presence of the Spirit.
This insight ought to motivate us to give top priority to the Word of God in everything we do. If we desire the Spirit’s presence, we must be Bible people; we need to be Word-driven in our approach to ministry and to life because God’s presence comes as we respond to God’s Word with faith.
God the Father loves to honor God the Son by supplying us with God the Spirit in response to our responsiveness to his Word. For as God says through the prophet Isaiah, “This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (66:2). God looks to the one who hears his Word with faith; God pours out his very presence into the life of just that kind of person.
God Supplies the Spirit in the Midst of Suffering (3:4)
So the cross of Christ and the hearing of faith are the two doors through which God’s Spirit travels in order to enter into our lives. But there’s a third way in which God supplies his Spirit to us.
Did you notice Paul’s curious mention of the Galatians’ suffering in this passage? “Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?” (3:4). Why would Paul remind them of their suffering at this point? Why warn them that their suffering will go to waste if they continue down the path they’re on? Is Paul only adding insult to injury?
Paul wants them to realize this: God supplies his Spirit generously in times of great difficulty. The Galatians remember that when they came to Christ, they began to experience various challenges and hardships because of their new faith. But they also recall that God wasn’t hindered by this; in fact, these were the very circumstances in which God through his Spirit moved with great power in their lives. Like the Thessalonians, the Galatians “received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 1:6).
Some of us only like to invite guests into our home when we have everything clean and in its place. We’ve mopped the kitchen floor, taken out the trash, vacuumed the carpets, washed the windows, dusted the lampshades and bookshelves, stocked the refrigerator, bought freshly cut flowers, even given the kids a bath. Of course, it’s tempting to think of the Holy Spirit in a similar way, as though he only likes to show up when everything in our lives is as it should be, when we’ve passed through the rough patches and dispensed with the difficulties.
But the experience of countless Christians points in a different direction. In fact, many seasoned believers will tell you they never experience greater or sweeter supplies of God’s Spirit than when they’re in the midst of suffering. This certainly was Paul’s experience. He’d learned to be content in the most difficult times, times of “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities” (2 Corinthians 12:10). How did he do it? He’d come to know this glorious truth: “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). Indeed, he’d heard the Lord Jesus say to him in those very circumstances, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Have you ever been around someone who is experiencing great suffering and loss and yet, at the same time, great faith in God? There’s a beautiful radiance to such a person. The Holy Spirit appears to rest quite tangibly on him or her. Recently at a funeral I spoke with a man in his forties who’d lost his wife to cancer. He was understandably heartbroken, and yet he was radiant. His soul was saturated with a joy and peace clearly born of the Holy Spirit (cf. Romans 15:13). God’s presence was palpable. You could see the Lord’s sustaining presence in his eyes, watch it in his demeanor, hear it in his voice and in the words he spoke. Clearly God was pouring out his Spirit into this grieving and yet faith-filled heart.
God loves to show forth his power in the midst of our weakness. Suffering is thus not a hindrance to experiencing more of God; rather it’s often the ideal situation in which to receive fresh empowerment from on high.
So we shouldn’t begrudge the difficulties in our life, whether big or little. Instead let’s view them as God’s loving design for us, to give us more of himself through his Holy Spirit. Indeed, we can embrace suffering—respond to it with the hearing of faith—as a God-given opportunity to experience more of God. Such opportunities are the very things we need to keep us moving toward the finish line.
Of course, this isn’t easy to do. But when we live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us in the midst of our hardships, we will find that God will be pleased to supply us with an abundance of his Spirit; we will find Christ living in us.
Conclusion
What challenges do we face? Where do we need the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit to help us persevere to the end? And how will we find that power or strength to get us from where we are to where we need to be? It is God who supplies the Spirit to us. And he does so through the cross of Christ, in response to the hearing of faith, and often in the midst of difficulty.
As Christians we need a fresh supply of the Spirit every single day. We live the Christian life only by the Spirit, in reliance upon the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Some of us have been trying to live the Christian life in our own strength; that’s why we find it so taxing and even tedious. We’re trying to live for God apart from the empowering presence of God. But that simply won’t work. The only way to live to God is to no longer live in ourselves but to find Christ living in us (cf. 2:19, 20).
Let’s go back, then, to the cross of Christ, look to the Word of God, and not begrudge the suffering God sends our way, for these are the very means by which God supplies his Spirit to us. This is what we need to keep us running the race!
How did Abraham especially please God? It was not by doing the works of the law, because at that time the law did not exist; it was by taking God at his word in a great act of faith.
Therefore, it is not those who seek merit through the law who inherit the promise made to Abraham, but those of every nation who repeat his act of faith in God. It was by an act of faith that the Galatians had begun. Surely they are not going to slip back into legalism—and lose their inheritance?
The easiest way to grasp an idea is to see it embodied in a person. In a sense, every great word must become flesh. So, Paul pointed the Galatians to a man who embodied faith—Abraham.