The Advantage

Freedom is important to us.

Earlier this month, we celebrated our nation’s birthday.

4th of July.

243 years ago we declared our independence from England.

4th of July, 1776.

It’s a day of freedom.

We celebrate liberty.

We celebrate a nation that is governed by the people, for the people.

That period of time inspired a patriotic love of freedom.

Think of the slogans from that time, they were dripping with independence.

“Give me liberty or give me death.”

“Don’t tread on me.”

"I regret that I have but one life to give for my country." "Give me liberty or give me death." "Don't Tread On Me

But freedom is not just an American ideal.

It’s something that we have in Christ.

We’ve been going through Galatians.

The theme of Galatians is Freedom.

They were a church that was abandoning the freedom they had in Christ and were embracing legalism and works righteousness.

This prompts Paul to write a letter to the Galatian church.

The first few chapters he was stating his case.

Reminding them that there is only one Gospel.

Explaining his own fight against legalism.

How he fears no man when it comes to the Gospel.

He was even willing to confront leaders of the church, to their faces, in order to declare the Gospel in all its glorious freedom.

Chapter 3 was a study of Abraham and his own faith.

Today we find ourselves in .

Perhaps the clearest chapter in his fight against legalism.

Let’s look at .

Read

This letter has a sense of urgency behind it.

If it were being mailed today, it would be overnighted.

It would be urgent.

He will compare and contrast the two.

It would be sent by express mail.

Climaxing to the of the chapter when he talks about the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit.

The Galatian church had been flirting with legalism, and they are right on the edge of embracing it.

They are on the edge of making one of the worst decisions they could ever make.

Imagine a pregnant woman who has decided she will have an abortion.

She has decided that tomorrow she is going to drive down to an abortion clinic and terminate her pregnancy and the life within her.

You know that the baby within her womb is a human being.

The decision has been made, it’s going to happen tomorrow.

Knowing that time is of the essence, you make it a point to talk to her as soon as you get home.

Doing all that you can to spare the child’s life, and the woman of a terrible sin.

But you have to act fast.

Paul is doing this to the Galatian church.

The Galatian church, is composed of Gentiles.

And they’ve been persuaded that they need to be circumcised in order to be made right with God.

Paul quickly writes one of his bluntest and clearest letters, the letter to the Galatians.

Though, normally, he dictate his letter to someone, who would then put his words to paper - there isn’t time for that.

He quickly writes this epistle to a church on the verge of adopting another Gospel.

He hopes that it gets there in time.

Just as you would quickly reason with a woman not to get an abortion.

Paul is reasoning with the Galatians not to embrace legalism.

As we approach the 5th chapter, Paul explains The Disadvantage of the Flesh.

This letter has a sense of urgency behind it.

If it were being mailed today, it would be overnighted.

It would be urgent.

It would be sent by express mail.

The Galatian church had been flirting with legalism, and they are right on the edge of embracing it.

They are on the edge of making one of the worst decisions they could ever make.

Imagine a pregnant woman who has decided she will have an abortion.

She has decided that tomorrow she is going to drive down to an abortion clinic and terminate her pregnancy and the life within her.

You know that the baby within her womb is a human being.

The decision has been made, it’s going to happen tomorrow.

Knowing that time is of the essence, you make it a point to talk to her as soon as you get home.

Doing all that you can to spare the child’s life, and the woman of a terrible sin.

You explain the harm that this procedure will do.

You list the disadvantages of what she is proposing.

It will end a child’s life.

It will be a violation of the 6th commandment.

You persuade.

You list the disadvantages

Paul is doing this to the Galatian church.

The Galatian church, is composed of Gentiles.

And they’ve been persuaded that they need to be circumcised in order to be made right with God.

That is completely contrary to the Gospel.

Instead of embracing Christ - it’s embracing the flesh, a work.

The decision is made, they are about to leave the freedom of Christ.

The clock is ticking.

Paul quickly writes one of his bluntest and clearest letters, the letter to the Galatians.

Though, normally, he would dictate his letter and have someone else put his words to paper, there isn’t time for that.

He quickly writes this epistle to a church on the verge of adopting another Gospel.

Will it make it there in time?

There is still hope.

If they can read this letter before doing anything drastic, then God be praised.

Verse 2 says, “Look, I Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision ...”

It hasn’t happened yet.

He needs to act quickly.

Let’s understand the context of circumcision to understand that what they were doing was more than just a minor surgery.

It was something that was commanded in the Old Testament.

All Israeli males were commanded to be circumcised.

What was it?

It was the cutting away of the foreskin on a man.

Though literally, it was a cutting away, it was actually a picture of something different.

All mankind is born with a sinful nature.

Man has a natural tendency, leaning, drive to sin.

The Bible doesn’t describe us as naturally good, but as naturally wicked and separated from God.

The Bible would say the reason is that we have a heart problem.

says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

Just as a person who has a physical heart problem will have circulatory and physical problems.

Since we have a spiritual heart problem, then we have spiritual problems.

Namely, we are opposed to God and live in willful rebellion against Him.

And what needs to happen is for this corrupt heart to be fixed.

So, using that same language of circumcision, in God says, “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.”

God desired to have a people that were like Adam before the fall.

Circumcision was supposed to be a picture of the cutting off of this sinful nature.

People who don’t sin.

We need our heart circumcised.

Like an appendix that is inflamed and filling the body with poisonous bile, the sinful heart is killing the human soul.

So God says, circumcise your heart.

The problem is that we

If the heart is diseased and killing the soul.

Then God says cut away the disease part of the heart.

Circumcision was supposed to be a picture, a symbol of the cutting off of this sinful nature.

So God calls for people to circumcise their heart, to change their nature.

But there was a problem with circumcision, it didn’t actually fix the heart of man.

It didn’t change a man’s nature.

It brought a lot of pain, but didn’t remove that tendency to sin.

People were circumcised and they still sinned.

The Old Testament is filled with circumcised men who sinned.

In fact the world is still filled with circumcised men who still sin.

How are you supposed to change your nature?

A man might be able to go through circumcision, but no one can circumcise their heart.

Well, the reality is that it’s impossible.

You cannot change your nature.

You you can’t just remove your sin nature.

says, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.”

Those are both rhetorical questions.

No, you cannot do good who are accustomed to doing evil.

No, you cannot change your nature.

Mankind is incapable of changing his heart.

Which asks the question, why would God command circumcision, if it didn’t change a person’s nature?

Because it was a symbol or a sign of what God would do.

So God says, “circumcise your heart.”

Then we learn it’s impossible.

says, “And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.”

God says circumcise your heart.

We can’t.

He does.

The physical act of circumcision was worthless.

It was a very graphic picture of how the sinful nature would be removed.

How would it be removed?

Not by our efforts.

But God would cut it out of a person’s life.

Circumcision was a reminder of God’s promise to change a person.

That’s what it was about.

It was a human’s weak act, displaying God’s power over the soul.

The Galatians had misunderstood circumcision.

They didn’t see it as a promise of what God would do, instead they saw it as how man removed sin.

Which is not true.

They were truly thinking that by them being circumcised, their heart would be changed and they would be made right with God.

Now we see why Paul is so urgent in his writing to them.

They had at one time said it was Christ that forgave sins.

But now they are thinking that it’s circumcision.

If they get circumcised for this reason, it goes against the Gospel they received.

They would be saying its circumcision that’s powerful, not Christ.

As crazy as that sounds, they aren’t alone in their thinking.

Every religion outside of true Christianity thinks like this.

Not necessarily about circumcision.

But every religion outside of Christianity thinks that there is something that we do that makes us right with God.

In fact, Southwest Christian Church used to hold to something similar.

We never said that circumcision is how your sins are removed, but we did say that baptism was how your sins are removed.

We took something good, something that’s commanded, and turned it into a salvific work.

We said baptism is the gateway into Christ.

We said your sins weren’t forgiven until you went under the waters.

We said you didn’t receive the Holy Spirit until you were baptized.

Let me put it another way.

You hear an amazing sermon on a Sunday morning.

It hits you right in the gut.

You see your sin.

You repent.

You cry out to God to forgive your sins.

You are on your way home from church and you get in a car crash and die … if you haven’t been baptized, you’re going to Hell.

That’s what we believed.

When in reality what is baptism?

It’s a picture of what God has done in your life.

It’s an image of your old self dying, something that the Spirit does, and being being born again.

It’s an image of your sins being washed away, something that happened on the Cross, and being cleansed of your sins.

I can’t tell you how many times, someone was baptized here in this baptismal, and instead of it being a testimony to the power of God … person was applauded.

Why were we applauding?

Because we were saying because of their obedience, their work, their sins were forgiven.

We took something that was good … and robbed God of His glory.

Circumcision, like baptism is a good thing.

Baptism certainly isn’t a sin.

In fact, it’s something we are commanded to do.

Circumcision isn’t evil either.

Paul isn’t telling us to stop these things.

But he is telling us that our motives matter.

Because if we do it wrongly … now it becomes a sin.

So for example, in 1940, during World War II, England had nearly all her forces trapped in France on the beaches of Dunkirk.

Your good actions do not count towards eternity.

says that our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.

The Germans were advancing upon them.

This doesn’t mean you stop doing good things, but it does mean you ask yourself what your motivation is behind them.

Because you can do a good thing … wrong.

Winston Churchhill, Prime Minister of England, had the option of having his 400,000 soldiers fight, or retreat.

One of the reasons why I delay baptizing young children, is because they haven’t been born again.

They don’t know the costs of their sin.

They haven’t been regenerated.

But they want to make their parents happy.

It should make their parents happy.

But their parents’ happiness shouldn’t be why they do it.

You can do a good thing … wrong.

And sometimes it’s hard to give up what you think is important.

You’re proud of what you do.

Paul is pleading with the Galatians, hoping that his letter gets to them in time.

He’s going to present to them 5 reasons why putting their confidence in the flesh, which would be circumcision, but it could be baptism for us, communion for others, he’s going to give them 5 reasons why putting confidence in the flesh is a disadvantage.

First, it put them back into slavery.

He’s of no help.

You see this in his verse 1, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

It tells us not to submit again to the yoke of slavery.

Yoke doesn’t mean what comes out of an egg.

What does that mean?

It’s the harness that you put on a beast of burden, an ox or a bull.

Think of two boys that are wrestling.

This slavery is the burden of having to be good enough, of having to be perfect.

When one boy finally pins the other, or has him in some hold that hurts just too bad, what does he do?

He taps out.

He submits.

To submit to the yoke of slavery is to let something rule over you.

To govern you.

More specifically, to punish you when you offend it.

And what is the yoke of slavery?

It’s not whats inside of an egg.

It’s the law.

To say that there is a law that you must obey to become right with God, means that the law now owns you.

It owns you, you have submitted to it.

And when you break the law, it brings with it all of its consequences.

You can’t get arrested for a crime when no law was broken.

A police officer can’t come to you and say, “I don’t like the way you look, I’m putting you in jail.”

There has to be a crime.

But when you put yourself back under the law … now you can break it.

And when you break it … it can condemn you.

The second disadvantage of the law is that you lose the advantage of Christ.

You see this in verse 2, “Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.”

God gave us a law.

And we broke that law.

When we broke His law it’s called a sin.

And the punishment for that sin is death.

Jesus came on this earth.

He says He fulfilled the law.

He was perfect where you were not perfect.

He was obedient where you were not obedient.

But even more than that, your sin called for your death.

In Christ’s great love, He took on all of your sins.

All of them.

Your past ones.

Your present ones.

Even your future ones that you haven’t committed yet.

He took your sins, and then He died for your sins.

All of them.

Never needing another sacrifice again.

says, “… he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.”

What the Galatians were saying is that Jesus died for all of their sins … except their lack of circumcision.

As if circumcision or the lack thereof, is somehow some great unforgivable sin.

They could accept Christ.

They could repent.

They could have faith.

They could call Him Lord.

But if they weren’t circumcised … then they were going to Hell, because that was the one sin He didn’t die for.

And the same goes for those who think that baptism is required for salvation.

Jesus died for all my sins … except my lack of baptism.

Let’s pretend that the Galatians are right.

Let’s pretend that circumcision is a commanded, and if you aren’t circumcised then you’re going to Hell.

That means that when Jesus died for sins, His death was of no help to their circumcision.

Let’s modernize it.

Let’s say baptism is the requirement for salvation.

And if you aren’t baptized, then you are still in your sins.

If not being baptized is an unforgivable sin, then this means that Jesus is no help, or no advantage.

But our hope is that Jesus died for all of your sins.

For those who think that if you aren’t baptized you’re going to Hell, all I can think of is the thief on the Cross.

At the start of the crucifixion he was mocking Jesus.

By the end, he was assured a place in paradise.

And he was never baptized.

says, “… he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.”

For those that Jesus died for … He put away all of their sins.

They are gone.

The third disadvantage that the Gentiles were putting on themselves was they were bribing God.

Now I realize it doesn’t say the word “bribe” in the text.

But in verse 3 it does say, “I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.”

The Galatians thought that their circumcision made them more acceptable in God’s eyes.

As if it made them more pleasing to look at.

This is nothing more than bribery.

“God I’ll do this - then you do that.”

“I’ll get circumcised - then you will like me.”

Or in our case, I’ll be baptized - then you’ll forgive my sins.

If God’s love for you, is based on your perfection … we are in trouble.

Let me put this in terms of marriage.

It’s appropriate, because the church is the bride of Christ, we are married to Christ.

The marriage relationship is a picture of Christ’s relationship to us.

If a husband says, “I will only love my wife as long as she looks a certain way” - that will not be a healthy marriage.

She will always worry about looking just right.

And we age.

We don’t look the same way our whole lives.

What’s going to happen when she weighs a little more and has a couple extra wrinkles.

A husband’s love for his wife cannot be based on the looks of his wife.

Even as Christians, we still sin.

There are times, you are on fire for the Lord, and things are great.

Then there are times you will sin.

What is your hope during those dark times?

It better not be you.

It’s Christ.

The fourth disadvantage of the flesh is found in verse 4, “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.”

Those are strong words.

Think of the god of rain.

If they accept circumcision as what makes them pleasing to God … he says they are severed from Christ.

People were dying of dehydration, their crops aren’t growing.

Christ plus any kind of ceremonial law does NOT equal Christianity.

They offer a human sacrifice.

It equals apostasy.

It means they are heretics.

They manipulate their god.

It equals heresy.

He was bribed.

They are apostate.

Now he sends rain.

Christianity is:

Christ alone.

It’s the Cross of Christ alone.

It’s grace alone.

Any plus, any extra is actually a minus when it comes to the Gospel.

It removes what we have in Christ.

This is the fight that Christianity has with every religion out there.

They all say that it’s Jesus plus something.

And according to Paul, that plus, is a separation from Christ.

How often do you find yourself talking to someone who is a part of another pseudo-Christian religion, and they claim to be your brother, a Christian?

They say the right words.

They say the core truth.

Jesus died for sins.

But then they believe extras.

Can you think of any religions that do that?

It starts with Jesus.

Then adds some.

What do we do with them?

Isn’t that what Paul was dealing with when it came to the Galatians?

If they accepted an extra, he says if they accept the extra they are severed from Christ.

Any religion that says it’s Jesus plus something, is severed from grace.

Occasionally, we accidentally can fall into this trap.

We start thinking about our sin, the cross, and we start feeling bad about ourselves.

I call this a gratitude problem.

What I mean is that He has done so much for me … I have to pay Him back.

We act as if God has given us a loan in giving us Jesus.

And if Jesus is a loan, then we are in a debt, and we need to repay Him.

Do you see how this can become a problem?

If there was a way to repay Him … what He gave us would not be grace, it would not be a gift.

If you could somehow repay God for giving Jesus, then you’d have room to boast.

Think about a time when you paid off a debt.

Could have been a credit card, student loans, a car, or a house.

You sent in that last payment, and it felt good, didn’t it?

You thought, “I did this. It’s mine now.”

That’s not how forgiveness goes.

It’s all Christ.

says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

The emphasis is on His gift.

He doesn’t want paid back.

He doesn’t want you to ever have that sense of pride that you had when you paid off your car.

And if you could pay Him back, what would you give?

What do you truly have to offer?

Your best deeds are filthy rags.

And the 5th disadvantage isn’t directly mentioned, it’s inferred in verse 5, in the flesh there is no assurance.

If being at peace with God, if being right with God is based on your behavior, then what about when you fail?

You’re at risk of losing it all because of your sin.

Thankfully, our confidence is not in us, it’s in Christ.

, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Paul is contrasting the flesh and the spirit.

And at the end of , Paul says, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

He’s showing us that the flesh cannot

That mentions everything in creation, and it hammers home the point, nothing in all of creation can separate us from God in Christ Jesus.

We’ve seen the disadvantages of basing our hope on the flesh.

Now we see The Advantage of living by the Spirit.

The first thing advantage is that we live by faith.

You see this in verse 5, “For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.”

In faith we have freedom.

We know that if Christ fulfilled the Law, that we are free.

If you are in Christ you will never be condemned.

He died for all of your sins.

You can’t be recondemned.

If Jesus died for a sin, paid for that sin, that sin can’t again be punished.

Some people are terrified that their past will some day catch up to them.

And so they spend their life trying to reverse the past.

They are on an endless treadmill of works and being good enough.

True freedom is offered.

Think about the freedom we have in Christ.

You no longer have to hide what you were.

You can acknowledge your sin.

You can say I was a bad guy.

You can own your sin.

Confess your sin.

And then know that Jesus died for your sin.

Living by faith means we can trust in God’s promises.

The second half of verse 5 says, “… we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.”

This calls for us to stop.

We always want to be doing something

To stop and wait.

And what do we do?

We enjoy God.

God has secured certain things for us, and promised others.

In the meantime, we spend our time, enjoying Him.

As opposed to working to earn something.

We get to spend our time enjoying Him.

How do we do that?

Worship

Fellowship

Meditating

Prayer

Trusting in the what He will do in the future.

I look forward to Christ returning.

You’ve been created to give God glory.

The fun thing is that He has freed you up to do just that.

says, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”

It’s interesting this call to wait for the Lord.

If I were to ask you how you’re saved, you’d probably say by the grace of God through Christ alone.

That’s the right answer.

But are we living that out?

In reality, many of us live lives that are more like the Galatians.

We are always going, and never stopping to wait, to rest in Christ.

Some are so busy that they never stop.

When was the last time you stopped?

So we live by faith, and the second advantage that we have is we live through the Spirit.

We rely upon God’s power even now in our life.

The Galatians tried living on their own.

They thought they could manufacture what God wanted in their lives.

On the flip side, those who are in Christ live through the power of the Spirit.

We do things.

We are active.

But we are active through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Where they were doing things to try and make themselves worthy, we do things, because God has found us worthy in Christ.

The clearest example of doing things and being active in the Spirit are spiritual gifts.

says, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace:”

That’s a great picture of what it means to live through the Spirit.

He has gifted us.

And now we serve one another using those gifts.

So we do good works.

Why do we do them?

The legalist says to pay back a debt, to balance the scales, to make ourselves worthy.

The person living through the power of the Spirit, quotes , “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

In other words, God gifted me and saved me for his purpose.

Paul is presenting to us two views of life.

There is the life of the flesh, and the life of the Spirit.

One is slavery.

The other is freedom.

Which one are you living in?

The flesh is not one of faith.

And it lives apart from Christ.

It’s slavery.

Meanwhile the life lived by the Spirit is:

One of faith, and that lives an adventurous life in Christ.

With freedom and joy in Him.