Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B:

Housekeeping Stuff & Announcements:

Housekeeping Stuff & Announcements:

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!

Opening

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.”

To

NO>>>THIS ISN”T WORKING>

We have been set free to...

We have been set free from...

We have been set free for...

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:

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.

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

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

The first half of verse one

Freedom.

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

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-

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

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:

“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:

1) We are truly free in Christ.

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 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.

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.