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Introduction
On May 30th, 2015, 13-year-old Izabel Laxamana jumped to her death off of a highway overpass in Tacoma, Washington.
She had been a happy, popular girl at her middle school who had been running for class president, but had recently come under intense bullying and shaming from her classmates and even some teachers, forcing her to withdraw.
All of her public humiliation had started when her father uploaded a video to YouTube that he recorded after he cut off all of her hair as a punishment for (in his words, “getting messed up”).
To this day, it is unclear what Izabel did to earn that punishment from her father, but the public humiliation that he subjected her to went far beyond what any 13-year-old girl should ever have to suffer at the hands of a parent.
It’s an extreme example, to be sure, but it is only one example of the trend of punishment by public humiliation that we are seeing in our culture.
If you go to places like Old Colonial Williamsburg you’ll see the stocks (or “pillory”) in the public square where hundreds of years ago people would be put on display as punishment for crimes like perjury or public drunkenness.
But over the past several years we have seen a resurgence of public humiliation as a form of punishment.
Sometimes it is actually court-appointed, like the judge in North Carolina a few years ago who sentenced a man to walk for hours around the courthouse with a sign that says “This is the face of domestic abuse”.
But far more often public humiliation takes place on social media—like the man who took a picture of a child sitting alone at a restaurant booth while his parents both went up to the buffet line, and then posted it on social media for people to attack them.
It’s out of control, isn’t it?
Everything is becoming a target for public shaming—you can hardly even post a comment on a YouTube video without running the risk of being called every name in the book!
Disagree with someone’s political stance, and you’re a “fascist” or a “communist”.
Point to God’s design for marriage as one man and one woman for life and you’re a “homophobe” and a “bigot”.
Defend an unborn baby’s right to life in the womb and you’re a”misogynist who wants women to die!”
The world runs on shame and humiliation—if you do not comply with the Accepted Belief System of the world, you will be ground down and kicked around and humiliated until you give up.
If you are a Christian, you know that the world works this way, don’t you?
This world wants to humiliate you out of following Christ, and will stop at nothing to shame you out of your faith.
Christians are ridiculed as weak, stupid, pathetic losers who are clinging to a dying superstition.
(And if you haven’t experienced that kind of attack yet, you will.)
So the question for us this morning is:
How do we stand against the world’s attempts to humiliate us out of following Christ?
Here in our text this morning, the Apostle Paul is finishing his letter to the Galatian Christians.
He has spent the past six chapters calling them to put their faith in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation, and not in their own abilities to keep the Law of Moses.
And here, as he concludes this letter, he leaves us with a powerful, glorious promise about how we can stand against a world that wants to shame us into walking away from Jesus:
Boasting in the Cross crucifies the power of the world to humiliate you!
So this morning I aim to show you this in three ways: First, we need to examine the way the world boasts; then we will look at how we are to boast, and third we will see how the death of Jesus turns our humiliation into boasting.
First, let’s look at how
I.
The World Boasts in Itself (vv.
11-13)
Paul says the false teachers were trying to “force” the Galatians to be circumcised—they were coercing or threatening them: “You aren’t a real Christian unless you do this!
You’re nothing unless you get circumcised!”
But notice what he says—why were the false teachers pushing them into this?
Because they were
A. Driven by Pride (v.
12)
They wanted to “make a good showing”—literally, they wanted to “put a good face on” their religious requirements.
They want to be able to boast and brag about how “good” they were.
And for us today, the pride of the world really is at the root of much of the pressure we face to abandon Christ—the world around us wants to boast in its accomplishments, its achievements, its philanthropy and charity.
So it hates the fact that the Bible says we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Being called a “sinner” is a deep insult to non-Christians.
People don’t like to be confronted by the fact that they have broken God’s laws and offended Him.
And so part of the reason that they want to humiliate and shame and attack Christians is because the Gospel attacks their pride!
“Don’t call me a sinner!
You’re the dirty, rotten homophobe, not me!!”
And this shows us another side of the world’s boasting in itself.
It is driven by pride, and it is
B. Driven by Guilt (v.
13)
The false teachers were forcing the Galatians into circumcision and following the Old Testament Law, but they didn’t even follow it themselves!
Jesus made the same accusations against the religious leaders during his earthly ministry:
The false teachers knew they were guilty before God!
They knew deep down inside that they weren’t righteous enough on the basis of their own deeds, that they had failed to keep God’s Law perfectly!
And so they wanted to force the Galatians to join them to make them feel better about their own guilt!
Paul says “They want you to go along with their sin so that they can ‘boast in your flesh’”.
“Hey, it can’t be that bad; after all, look at how many people are doing it with me!”
We see this kind of thing today all the time—if someone is ashamed of their behavior, and they know deep down inside that they are guilty, they will make themselves feel better by getting someone else to join them in their guilt!
“Well, it’s not so bad, because he’s doing it too!”
That’s why there are people who will work overtime to get you to join them in their sin—because if they can get a Christian to take a hit, then smoking dope can’t be that bad! “Well, he’s a Christian, and I got him to ‘borrow’ tools from work with me—so he’s no better than me after all!” Do you see how that works?
The world boasts in itself in its pride and so it hates the Gospel message that it needs forgiveness of sin.
And it cannot escape its guilt before God and so it wants to boast in its ability to get you to walk away from God by joining it in sin.
The world boasts in itself, but in verses 14-18 we see how the Christian boasts:
II.
The Christian Boasts in the Cross (vv.
14-15)
Now, we have to take a moment here and consider what Paul is telling us—there is only one thing he will “boast” in (or “glory” in, as the King James puts it)—he will boast only in the Cross.
Now, we don’t hear that phrase the same way that his original readers would have, because we really don’t know what the cross of crucifixion was like.
We see a cross as a symbol that we put on a piece of jewelry or work into the painting at the front of our sanctuary or put on top of a steeple.
We have forgotten that the cross was an instrument of execution.
It’s like putting a little gold charm in the shape of an electric chair around our necks, or hanging a noose from the top of a steeple, or a picture of a gas chamber on the front of our Bibles!
Paul is saying he boasts in a method of executing criminals!
But it’s not just that Paul is boasting in an execution—Paul says that he is boasting in a humiliating execution!
The fact is, no one in this room has ever seen an accurate depiction of Jesus’ crucifixion.
Because every single depiction of Christ on the cross that you will ever see includes a carefully-placed loincloth around His waist.
But that’s not how crucifixions were carried out—the humiliation was part of the punishment.
Crucifixions weren’t carried out inside the Roman barracks, in a courtyard somewhere out of the public eye—they were done publicly, at the busiest intersection of Jerusalem’s streets, right at the gate of the city.
Jesus was stripped naked and stretched out on the cross, spikes pounded into His wrists and feet and lifted up high where everyone passing by could get a good look at His naked, quivering body (and a good laugh at His expense!
)Crucifixions were designed not only to maximize the suffering of the victim (some could linger for days), but also to make sure that the victim died in the midst of the deepest humiliation possible.
And Paul says “Boast in the Cross because it represents
A. Jesus’ Humiliation for You (v.
14)
Jesus did not deserve that punishment—there was nothing He ever did, nothing He ever said or thought or felt that ever came even close to breaking God’s demands for righteousness—when He suffered that humiliation He did it for you!
The suffering you deserved, the humiliation and shame and guilt you earned before God—all of it was placed on Him!
He suffered all of that shame and humiliation so that you would be free from it!
The world wants to humiliate you, Christian?
There is no humiliation that the world can try to heap on you that will stick—because Jesus already took it!
Paul goes on to write in the book of Romans:
Because Jesus died in humiliation, Christian, you are free from humiliation!
You can boast in this Cross, because boasting in the Cross crucifies the power of the world to humiliate you!
And not only can you boast in the Cross because it represents Jesus’ humiliation for you, but you can boast in the Cross because it means
B. Jesus’ Life in You (v.
15; Gal.
2:20, p. 973)
In the Cross, Paul says, “the world has been crucified to me and I to the world!”
The world doesn’t have any power to humiliate you any more!
You are no longer driven by guilt—the world can’t get a handle on you by throwing your guilty or shameful past in your face because Jesus erased it on the Cross!
The Bible says in Colossians 2:
The world can’t accuse you anymore—it’s dead to you!
And you are dead to the world—the “old” you is gone, and instead you have Jesus’ life in you!
Christian, this is why you “boast in the Cross”—because the Cross is the place where Jesus took your shame and humiliation once and for all, and it is the place where you died once and for all to the world, and the world died to you!
You are now free from the pride and guilt and fear of humiliation that the world runs on!
And that means you are free to do something that the world simply cannot understand:
III.
You Can Boast in Your Weakness (6:11, 17)
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