One or the Other

B:

Welcome guests to the family gathering, introduce yourself. Thank the band. Invite guests to parlor after service.

Last week, we had a special time of prayer for our friends T & J and the issues that were happening with their visas. God has handled that issue, and they now have everything they need and are back together! Praise the Lord!

Tonight, we will have the ordination council and service for Chuck Crisler. If you are an ordained man and want to be a part of the council, it will be held in room 104 at 4:30 this afternoon. The service will follow at 5:30 here in the sanctuary. Then next week, November 3rd, we will be holding the ordination council and service for Wayne Whitlock. Please plan to be a part of these times of setting aside these godly men for the task of deacon.

Mission New Mexico State Mission Offering thru September and October. Goal is $8,000. Received so far: $10,231. That’s great! Today is the last Sunday that we will focus on this important offering, which goes to suppose our two camps, collegiate missions, the Children’s Home, hunger relief in the state, and church planting. Thanks, church!

Galatians 5:1–6 CSB

1 For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm then and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery. 2 Take note! I, Paul, am telling you that if you get yourselves circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all. 3 Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to do the entire law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace. 5 For we eagerly await through the Spirit, by faith, the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything; what matters is faith working through love.

Pray

Here in Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia, he shifts from his primarily theological argument about justification into beginning to describe what it actually should look like to live as a justified believer—not as a result of our human effort, but by our submission to the work of the Spirit in our lives through our faith in what God has done in Christ.

To a certain extent, we’ve begun to come full circle with the letter to the Galatians. Paul wrote early in the letter that he was concerned that these new believers were in the process of turning away from the Gospel of grace and toward “another gospel” which isn’t the Gospel of Jesus at all.

“Whoever wants to have a half-Christ loses the whole.”

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Paul shifts from primarily theological argument about justification into beginning to describe what it actually should look like to live as a justified believer—not as a result of our human effort, but our submission to the work of the Spirit in our lives.

Verse 1 is the key to the whole book.

Leave the slide up for a bit so people can write them down.

Now that you’ve had a chance to write those down, let’s look at verse 1:

Verse 1 is the key to the whole book.

Many commentators agree on their belief that verse 1 is the key verse on which the whole book pivots. I agree. Paul’s entire line of discussion since the beginning of this letter has been to address the issue of legalism versus grace, which he had just brought to a theological crescendo at the end of chapter 4 with his allegory of Hagar and Sarah. His transition verse gives us our first point, and echoes a point I made last week:

Galatians 5:1 CSB

1 For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm then and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5:1 CSB

1 For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm then and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Many commentators agree on their belief that verse 1 is the key verse on which the whole book pivots. I agree. Paul’s entire line of discussion since the beginning of this letter has been to address the issue of legalism versus grace, which he had just brought to a theological crescendo at the end of chapter 4 with his allegory of Hagar and Sarah. His transition verse gives us our first point, and echoes a point I made last week:

Many commentators agree on their belief that verse 1 is the key to the whole book.

The first half of verse one

Freedom.

Galatians 5:2–4 CSB

2 Take note! I, Paul, am telling you that if you get yourselves circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all. 3 Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to do the entire law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace.

To a certain extent, we’ve begun to come full circle with the letter to the Galatians. Paul wrote early in the letter that he was concerned that these new believers were in the process of turning away from the Gospel of grace and toward “another gospel” which isn’t the Gospel of Jesus at all.

gal 5:2-

Reformer John Calvin captured this idea well in this quote, which I think would have made a great tweet before they went to 280 characters:

Galatians 5:5–6 CSB

5 For we eagerly await through the Spirit, by faith, the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything; what matters is faith working through love.

“Whoever wants to have a half-Christ loses the whole.”

He’s stated and restated the doctrine of justification, and he’s just used this great example of an allegory from Abraham’s days of Hagar and Sarah representing those who would trust in the flesh, and those who would trust in the promise of God.

Now, in our focal passage today, Paul appears to actually defend

Most commentators agree that is the key verse of the entire epistle. It connects the theological argument to the practical part to follow in chapters 5 and 6. Let’s look at that first:

Galatians 5:1 CSB

1 For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm then and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.

The first part of this verse makes a declaration of what Christ has done for those who believe. He has set us free. Why? For freedom.

This would have been the big issue that the legalists, called Judaizers, had with Paul’s presentation of the Gospel to the Galatians: It was too simple. Too easy. It can’t just be that Jesus sets you free when you accept His promise by faith.

Why is that? Why would they have had such a problem with it?

The Judaizers were, as I said, legalists. They were all about following the rules contained in the Jewish law, and they believed that if you were a Christian, then you not only had to believe in Jesus, but that you also had to become a Jew in order to be justified before God: you had to follow the feast calendar, follow dietary and cleanliness rules (cf ), submit to circumcision, and these sorts of things.

But Paul had said that the law didn’t save us, and never could: in fact, it was the law that acted as our guardian, pointing us to Christ for our salvation, because no one was going to be justified by keeping the law (cf ). Paul knew that:

Our sins—the things we do that God hates and our refusal to do the things that God instructs us to do—make us imperfect and separate us from Him,

Jesus had lived a perfect life as a man,

that His death on the cross was as our substitute,

that He had taken our sins and the wrath that they deserve on Himself,

that He had risen again, defeating death,

that He had ascended into heaven, where He sat at the right hand of God the Father as our advocate,

that if we trust in what Christ had done as our substitute for the forgiveness of our sins, surrendering our lives to Him in faith, then we would be forgiven and also receive eternal life in Him,

and that Jesus is coming again to set the world right: to punish the wicked and reward the righteous, and only those who have Christ’s righteousness through faith are actually righteous (Rom 3:23).

It is in Christ and Christ alone that we are freed from bondage to sin and bondage to rule keeping and bondage to false worship.

This is why I have talked about freedom and bondage in some form or fashion nearly every week of this series: it’s the theme of the whole epistle! It’s the whole problem that the churches of Galatia were having. Which is true: the Gospel of grace, or the gospel of grace plus works?

This is why I used that quote from Calvin at the beginning. For us to have a “half-Christ” is for us to be half our own savior, which means that we will never be saved, because apart from Jesus, we are trapped in sin and death. It’s one or the other, not both. Either Jesus saves us completely, or we save ourselves. Jesus set us free so that we would truly be free: not free to do whatever we want, but have the freedom to do what God wants us to do, to bear fruit for Him, which we could never have done before we were set free:

Romans 7:4–6 CSB

4 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you also were put to death in relation to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another. You belong to him who was raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions aroused through the law were working in us to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we have been released from the law, since we have died to what held us, so that we may serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the old letter of the law.

romans 6:

We might think, then, that since freedom is why Christ set us free, then it is something that cannot be lost. While our salvation, if we have truly been saved, cannot be lost, our freedom in Christ unfortunately can be. This is why Paul tells the Galatians to “Stand firm then, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery,” in the rest of verse 1.

Our last point last week echoes this emphatic declaration: that we must stand firm in our freedom in Christ.

Galatians 4:30–5:1 CSB

30 But what does the Scripture say? “Drive out the slave and her son, for the son of the slave will never be a coheir with the son of the free woman.” 31 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of a slave but of the free woman. 1 For freedom, Christ set us free. Stand firm then and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.

gal 4:

There’s an interesting parallel here with political freedom: it takes vigilance and responsibility for a nation or a group of people to maintain their political independence. Since we have the freedom that we have, we are to be involved in the public, and even the political sphere, whether that means casting our vote at the polls, or even running for public office if God so directs and enables us. We are not to merely cloister ourselves off behind these walls and let the world go on without us. We must engage if we want to protect and maintain our freedoms. (rabbit)

Likewise, Jesus has set us free, but if we don’t diligently remember, preserve, rejoice in, and live in the Gospel, then we may find ourselves in bondage to sin once again:

Romans 6:16–18 CSB

16 Don’t you know that if you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of that one you obey—either of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness? 17 But thank God that, although you used to be slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching to which you were handed over, 18 and having been set free from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.

romans 6:16-

It’s one or the other: be a slave to sin, or be a slave of righteousness.

Bob Dylan had a song called “Gotta Serve Somebody.” In it, he spoke of the fact that we all ultimately serve someone. The chorus (if you can call it that… it’s really only two lines) says, “It might be the devil, and it might be the Lord… but you’re gonna serve somebody.”

Paul then tells the believers: “don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Notice that it’s something that the Galatians can choose to do, or not to do.

It’s apparent that the Galatians haven’t gone all the way over to legalism for their means of justification, a fact which we will see in the next few verses. He tells them not to submit to this “yoke.”

A “yoke” was a wooden plank or bar that was used to strap two oxen together so that they could be controlled together in order to do work. Jewish rabbis of the time often spoke of the law as a yoke, but in what was in their minds a positive sense: taking the “yoke of the law” on yourself was to commit to working to fulfill the law in your own life. Paul here turns the tables on that idea and says that the taking on a yoke of legalism was in fact, slavery, whether it was to the law or to other elemental principles like the paganism the Gentile Galatians had come out of (which we saw in chapter 4).

While we might not today see the Jewish law or some pagan god as things to be enslaved to, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have ungodly yokes that we operate under. Legalism is still a big one. Fear, pride, selfishness, a desire for power or control, an unhealthy need to look good to others… these things are all sinful ways that we let go of the fragile freedom that we have in Christ, and enslave ourselves to something or someone else. I’m right there with you. I have the same issues sometimes.

While this is what is in Paul’s mind, given

Paul says two critical things in this verse. First, he speaks of freedom, and then of avoiding bondage. We’ll look at each:

So while if we are in Christ, then Christ has truly set us free and we have our salvation assured, we can still choose to submit ourselves to some other means of getting God or others to value us, and thus not get to actually live out our freedom in Christ. This is what Paul was trying to keep the Galatians from getting themselves into.

Side note: if you aren’t in Christ, meaning that you haven’t believed the Gospel and surrendered your life to God in faith, then you’re in bondage to sin and death, and bound for eternal punishment. Trust in Christ today, I plead.

In Paul’s practical argument that follows, he focuses primarily on circumcision at first. This is because it was circumcision that was a physically observable difference between the Jews and the Gentiles. Therefore, it was a critical act of the legalism that the Judaizers were pushing on the Galatians. This also had happened with Titus, as we saw back in chapter 2, when Paul took him to Jerusalem, but he had not been compelled to be circumcised.

Paul’s explanation here is forceful to say the least. He says some things that might make us a little uncomfortable:

.

Galatians 5:2–4 CSB

2 Take note! I, Paul, am telling you that if you get yourselves circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all. 3 Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to do the entire law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace.

Galatians 5:2–3 CSB

2 Take note! I, Paul, am telling you that if you get yourselves circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all. 3 Again I testify to every man who gets himself circumcised that he is obligated to do the entire law.

gal 5:2-

We need to keep in mind during this conversation what Paul isn’t saying: He is NOT saying that if you are a circumcised male that you cannot be saved. Paul was a Jewish man. He was circumcised (in fact, he even said so in ). He’s referring to the Galatians voluntarily submitting to circumcision as an indicator of their reliance upon the law for their justification. He’s also NOT saying that a truly saved person can lose their salvation.

We need to keep in mind during this conversation what Paul isn’t saying: He is NOT saying that if you are a circumcised male that you cannot be saved. Paul was a Jewish man. He was circumcised (in fact, he even said so in ). He’s referring to the Galatians voluntarily submitting to circumcision as an indicator of their reliance upon the law for their justification.

There’s several things to consider here: first in verse 2, when Paul says, “Christ will not benefit you at all.” Again, throughout this letter, Paul’s focus is on the Galatians’ justification before God: how they are relating to God, or what they are trusting in for their right standing with Him. Remember our definition of justification throughout this study: Justification is the gracious act of God by which God declares a sinner righteous solely through faith in Jesus Christ.

But

Paul is convinced that the Galatians are genuine believers (he’ll say so in verse 10, which we will look at more closely next week). Likewise, we may be genuinely regenerated believers in Jesus, but we might start listening to these things that can enslave us, and thus start seeing our behavior as if this is why God saved us, or why He keeps us saved, or in the negative sense, why He might change His mind and cast us into hell because of how poorly we behave. The issue here is that if we start relying on ourselves and our performance, then we say that Jesus’ performance wasn’t good enough to save us… it’s really up to me. If that’s where we are, it is as if Christ is of no benefit to us. We can do it ourselves, even though we needed Christ to start it. This is isn’t moving toward God… it’s actually backsliding.

The second thing for us to consider in this passage: in verse 3, Paul says that if someone is going to choose to get himself circumcised in order to be justified before God, then he is “obligated to keep the entire law.” This is one or the other. We can’t add to Christ without subtracting Christ. If we have to earn even 0.1% of God’s favor, then it is completely and entirely based on our performance, not God’s promise in Christ. You are either justified through faith in Christ, or you’re not. Your system of justification is either faith or law. It can’t be both, because to say that it’s both is to deny the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice for you!

Imagine a 1,000 meter race where Jesus is carrying you. If Jesus were to carry you for 999 meters, and then set you down, how much of the race is up to you? All of it. If you don’t cross the finish line, then you never finish. You either finish, or you don’t. The problem is that in this race, you’re shackled and chained to a 3,000 lb brick called the law that you could never move. We saw this already in :

Galatians 3:10–11 CSB

10 For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, Everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed. 11 Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith.

gal 3:10-11

You’d never finish on your own. Doing it yourself only enslaves, and you either have to do the whole thing, or have the whole thing done for you by Jesus. Justification is only found through faith in Christ. How terrible it is to think that we have to earn our justification, because can we ever really know how good is “good enough?” This perspective enslaves us to uncertainty and fear as well.

You’d never finish on your own. Trying to justify yourself only enslaves. According to the law, you either are responsible to do the whole thing or none of it. The only option is to have the whole thing done for you by Jesus, which He did. Justification is only found through faith in Christ.

The third thing to consider: in verse 4, Paul writes that, “You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ.” This Greek word has the idea of “coming to the end of” something. Paul is saying that those who were wanting to trust in the law had come to what they thought were the limits of Jesus’s sacrifice: that it couldn’t do the whole work of salvation.

Romans 10:4 CSB

4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes,

Likewise, this is what it means that you have “fallen from grace.” Again, Paul was not saying that you can lose your salvation if you are truly saved, but that you have turned your back on grace as how you are justified. Remember that he’s talking about justification here: how we relate to God, how we have righteousness. If we trust in the law, then we have fallen away from our reliance on the promise given by God’s grace alone.

Romans 10:4 CSB

4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes,

Imagine if you had to earn your spouse’s love. What sort of wall would that build between you?

Likewise, this is what it means that you have “fallen from grace.” Again, Paul was not saying that you can lose your salvation if you are truly saved, but that you have turned your back on grace as how you are justified. Remember that he’s talking about justification here: how we relate to God, how we have righteousness. If we trust in the law, then we have fallen away from our reliance on the promise given by God’s grace alone.

Now, to be fair, some people might (Tim Keller is among them) take all of this to be kind of a litmus test for whether or not someone actually has saving faith. And this would not be a completely invalid way of looking at it. However, the fact that Paul has called the Galatians “brothers and sisters” five times already in the book, and will do so another four times; the fact that he speaks extremely inclusively about them as being saved, such as in 3:26 & 28, 4:28 & 31; and the fact that he assumes that they are going to see things his way in verse 10, all come together as evidence that Paul is not speaking of their salvation.

The first application would be from a perspective of salvation. Paul wrote in Romans that it is by faith in the Gospel that one is saved, and that, “the righteous will live by faith.” (). John wrote strongly in :

But this doesn’t make any sense. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that He came to fulfill the law of Moses. So, Jesus fulfilled it, and now believers need the law to fulfill His work? Huh? No, instead, the law pointed us both to its limits, which are actually our limits! We can’t fulfill the law. So Jesus fulfilled the law so that we don’t need to trust our own performance of the law in order to be saved… we can trust in His performance by faith:

Romans 10:4 CSB

4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes,

We could take this in one of two ways, both of which would be valid interpretations, depending on the spiritual state of the person we’re considering. The first interpretation would be about salvation. Paul wrote in Romans that it is by faith in the Gospel that one is saved, and that, “the righteous will live by faith.” (). John wrote strongly in :

Now, to be fair, some people might (Tim Keller is among them) take all of this passage in Galatians to be kind of a litmus test for whether or not someone actually has saving faith. And this would not be an invalid way of looking at it. However, the fact that Paul has called the Galatians “brothers and sisters” five times already in the book, and will do so another four times; the fact that he speaks extremely inclusively about them as being saved, such as in 3:26 & 28, 4:28 & 31; and the fact that he assumes that they are going to see things his way in verse 10, all come together as evidence that Paul is not speaking of their salvation.

This warrants a small rabbit trail.

1 John 2:19 CSB

19 They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. However, they went out so that it might be made clear that none of them belongs to us.

Paul wrote in Romans that it is by faith in the Gospel that one is saved, and that, “the righteous will live by faith.” (). John also wrote strongly in :

It’s a sad tale, but true: there are people in the church who are certain that they are saved simply because of the externals of their lives: that they were baptized, how they act, how they talk, that they attend worship services, that they serve on ministries, etc. A person who isn’t actually saved is still in bondage, even though they might look like they aren’t. The problem is that they have never actually believed the Gospel. If this person were to die today, Jesus would be of no benefit to them, because they have never believed the truth of the Gospel. They are acting the part, and to be honest, are likely terrified at the prospect that their lostness would ever come to light. But that’s exactly what needs to happen if that’s you.

1 John 2:19 CSB

19 They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. However, they went out so that it might be made clear that none of them belongs to us.

It’s a sad tale, but true: there are people in the church who are certain that they are saved simply because of the externals of their lives: that they were baptized, how they act, how they talk, that they attend worship services, that they serve on ministries, etc. A person who isn’t actually saved is still in bondage, even though they might look like they aren’t. The problem is that they have never actually believed the Gospel. If this person were to die today, Jesus would be of no benefit to them, because they have never believed the truth of the Gospel. They are acting the part, and to be honest, are likely terrified at the prospect that their lostness would ever come to light. But that’s exactly what needs to happen if that’s you.

If works-righteousness becomes a part of your system of salvation, it is your only system. You have to obey all of it, which you know you cannot do… so you’re hopeless if your hope for salvation is based on how perfectly you can keep the law.

We might consider this in two ways, both of which would be valid applications, depending on the spiritual state of the person we’re considering.

Also, if you think that you need to clean up your life before you come to Jesus, then I want to be clear: Jesus wants to be the One to clean up your life. He doesn’t expect you to come as a perfect person and present yourself to Him all spiffy so He’ll want to or have to save you. He wants to save you as you are. If you think that you’re going to somehow deserve the blessed salvation that the God offers by His grace through faith in Jesus, then you’re missing the point. We cannot keep the law. We cannot be good enough to be saved. No amount of good that we do is going to be enough to wipe the red off of our ledgers. Fall in the hands of Jesus and be saved. Then He will begin to work in your life to make you look like the son or daughter of God that you become by adoption when you’re saved by faith.

Likewise, this is what it means that you have “fallen from grace.” Not that you can lose your salvation if truly saved, but that you have turned your back on grace as how you are justified.

This is a process that takes the rest of your life. And it’s a work of the Spirit of God in the life of every believer:

At this point, our focus and Paul’s has mostly been on justification. But now, as he begins to step into this more practical part of the letter—how those who have been set free actually live out that freedom—we begin to really start to touch on another central Christian doctrine: the doctrine of sanctification. We’re just going to do kind of a quick “primer” on sanctification today, and we’ll spend more time on it in a couple of weeks.

“Sanctified” can mean simply being “set apart for a special purpose,” or, “holy.” But there is also this process aspect to sanctification.

As I said, sanctification is the work of the Spirit of God, wherein He gradually works in the life of the believer to help him or her actually look like what they have already been declared to be, namely, holy. This is how Paul says it to the Galatians:

Galatians 5:5 CSB

5 For we eagerly await through the Spirit, by faith, the hope of righteousness.

Paul says that we eagerly await, through the Spirit, by faith, the “hope of righteousness.” This “hope of righteousness” is the process of sanctification. Notice how Paul spoke of this idea of hope and eager waiting in :

Galatians 5:5–6 CSB

5 For we eagerly await through the Spirit, by faith, the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything; what matters is faith working through love.

Paul says that we eagerly await, through the Spirit, by faith, the “hope of righteousness.” This “hope of righteousness” is the process of sanctification. Notice how Paul spoke of this idea of hope and eager waiting in :

Romans 8:24–26 CSB

24 Now in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? 25 Now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience. 26 In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with unspoken groanings.

romans 8:24-

The “righteousness” that we “hope” for is not righteousness that we already have, rather, it is who we want to become as a result of the work of the Spirit in our lives through faith. Paul connected justification, sanctification, and the work of the Spirit again in Titus chapter 3:

Titus 3:4–7 CSB

4 But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, 5 he saved us—not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy—through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit. 6 He poured out his Spirit on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we may become heirs with the hope of eternal life.

“Hope of righteousness” sanctification.

Hebrews 11:1 CSB

1 Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen.

Hebrews 11:6 CSB

6 Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Notice that circumcision and uncircumcision both mean nothing. It’s not the act. It’s the focus. What matters is faith working through love. Our faith should work. It should act. It should do.

Titus 3:4–7 CSB

4 But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, 5 he saved us—not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy—through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit. 6 He poured out his Spirit on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we may become heirs with the hope of eternal life.

Amazed, she responded, “You mean, I’m free to do whatever I want?”

In fact, Paul said that he considered everything as a loss compared to that:

“Yes,” he said.

“Washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” This is His work in the life of the believer. The Spirit works to make us more and more like Christ, more and more righteous in practice, from the inside out, purifying us by His constant work.

In fact, Paul said that he considered everything as a loss compared to that:

“And to say whatever I want to say?”

Philippians 3:7–9 CSB

7 But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith.

“Yes, anything.”

“And to be whatever I want to be?”

“Yes.”

phil 2:7-

“And even go wherever I want to go?”

“Yes,” he answered with a smile. “You’re free to go wherever you’d like.”

She looked at him intently and said, “Then I will go with you.”

There are no halfway decisions for Jesus. Either with, or against.

The major difference between the doctrines of justification and sanctification are this: justification is completely a work of God by grace through faith. Sanctification, on the other hand, is a work of the Spirit, but requires our participation by faith to advance. We’ll get more into this aspect in the next couple of weeks. For now, it’s sufficient to say that sanctification is a both/and work: we willingly submit to the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. The last verse of our focal passage today bears this out as well:

Notice that circumcision and uncircumcision both mean nothing. It’s not the act. It’s the focus. What matters is faith working through love. Our faith should work. It should act. It should do.

Galatians 5:6 CSB

6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything; what matters is faith working through love.

Notice that circumcision and uncircumcision both mean nothing. Neither one is helpful and neither one is (spiritually, at least) harmful. Neither situation saves you or prevents you from being saved. This isn’t what matters in the life of the believer. What matters is faith working through love. Our faith should work. It should act. It should do.

And it should do through love.

So in this passage, we see Paul’s transition from talking about justification to beginning to talk about sanctification: how the justified believer’s life should look, given God’s grace.

We have been set free in Christ and in Christ alone, so we don’t need to try to work to be free—it’s already been given. While the true believer cannot lose their salvation, they can certainly lose the joy of it by thinking that they have to work to earn or maintain their right standing with God by their performance. Instead, God has given His Holy Spirit, not just a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance in Christ (which He is), but also an active participant in our being made to look like Jesus.

Include an invite for people who act they are saved, but know they aren’t.

This morning, I have tried to be as clear as I can be about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is only through faith in what God has done in giving Jesus to die in our place that we are saved. This goes not just for the person who may have come in this morning completely lost, but even those who have always been in church or who have a great church act down, but who have never actually surrendered their lives to Jesus by faith… never believed the Gospel. Jesus wants to start that work in you, to give you of His Spirit, so that you can be made holy. Do you believe the Gospel? Do you trust in Jesus to save you?

If this is you today, then come and share with one of us, so we can celebrate with you. Even if you’ve been in the church forever, if you know you’re lost and have just be going through the motions, and today are finally giving your life to Jesus, come and share that so we can celebrate together. No one is going to judge you or condemn you for admitting you’re lost.

Maybe God’s doing some other work in your life that you need to pray about in response. You can come and pray with one of us, or at the steps.

If God is leading you to become a member of this family of God, this body of Christ, here at Eastern Hills through formal membership, then come and share that with us as well, so that we can celebrate.

Invite the band down.

Pray.

Invite to the parlor.

Include an invite for people who act they are saved, but know they aren’t.

One or the Other

Bookmarks & Needs:

Housekeeping Stuff & Announcements:

Housekeeping Stuff & Announcements:

Opening

1) In Christ, we have been set free to...

1) In Christ, we have been set free to...

2) In Christ, we have been set free from...

3) In Christ, we have been set free for...

1) We are truly free in Christ.

2) If justification is by works at all, then it’s all by works.

3) The Holy Spirit works to sanctify believers by faith.

Closing