Freed through Faith

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Welcome to week ONE of advent.

This is the time of year when we remember Jesus’ coming 2000 years ago as we move into the Christmas season.

This is also the time when we think about Jesus’ coming in the future, that’s why advent is a season of anticipation.

The first time Jesus came was as a baby with a life that led to the cross.

The second time is as our conquering king who is going to bring Heaven to earth.

Since it is the Christmas season it’s a great time to sit and mediate on who this Jesus is and what does it mean to be given salvation through him.

The Apostle Paul worked through this same issue.

As one who was a persecutor of the church who then came face to face with the risen Savior Jesus,

Paul had to wrestle with what this meant for his own life.

Paul came to the conclusion that Jesus was enough. Jesus was enough to justify him before God.

And Jesus was enough as Paul walked through life.

Paul had it settled in his mind, but there were friends of his that still had a hard time understanding the simple but weighty truth of what it meant to live in Christ.

Galatians chapter 2 presents two pictures of what it means to reverse the gospel back to a works based situation and then one picture about what it means to truly follow Jesus. Paul writes this in Galatians 2:1-10 (READ)

Three Pictures

First Picture - Legalism: Right behavior with wrong belief

He’s bringing them back to a moment when the respected church leadership made some decisions about the very issue that they were struggling with in the Galatian church. Most commentators line this up with the Antioch dispute in Acts chapter 15, when Paul went to the Jerusalem church to talk about the added regulations being put on the gentiles. I’m just calling it the Jesus plus movement. The Judiazers wanted to add the regulations of the law, specifically circumcision to the requirements of salvation. What Paul knows is that when you start down the Jesus plus path it’s hard to do a reverse back to the pure and free message that the gospel actually brings. What I mean is, and we see this from the experience of the nation of Israel, once you add a rule then your next course of action when things get complicated is to add another. And when that doesn’t solve the problem then you add another and another, and another. And what you find is that you are then being crushed under a load that you were not made to bear.

So Paul in his letter to the Galatian church is saying we need to nip this in the bud really quick. We can’t let this get out of control.

So let me tell you about a time when the church leaders in Jerusalem and I got together to talk through this circumcision thing.

Paul says that, just like you, there was another church who had false teachers come into their midst, he even uses the words to spy on us. Like the men you were listening to they also were compelling our gentile brothers to get circumcised and for the church to follow the customs of the law. We recognized this and decided to set off for Jerusalem to make sure that what we were preaching was the same message that they had received. I even took Titus with me because he was a Greek and he himself was not circumcised. We were dead set on not submitting to what these false teachers had to say, but we wanted to go down to Jerusalem just to make sure.

When we got there we met with those who were highest up in the church. And guess what, let me tell you what the leaders said. Chapter 2 verse 15 - “they added nothing to me.” In fact as we talked they saw that I had been given the same commission as the rest of the Apostles. Just like the gospel had gone out to our jewish brothers and sisters I was entrusted with that same message for the gentiles. And Paul tells his audience that “the ONE at work in Peter for an apostleship to the circumcised was also as work in me for the Gentiles.” If you want to talk about God working, well it was concluded that God was working in both our mission fields. They went as far as to give us the “right hand of fellowship” and agreed that we should continue our work with the gentiles. James, John, and Peter recognized that our work was on the same level as their’s and they acknowledged that we were equal partners in the ministry.

I could see Paul saying you Galatians have been told that I am an inferior Apostle. That I’m not carrying the full message. Tell you what, how about you go see James, or Peter, or John, you’ve heard of them right? If you need any further proof of the work that I did with you all you have to do is ask, and they will tell you.

False brothers - Gentile circumcision

Titus was not circumcised - Whereas Timothy went through the ritual

Legalism - working in our own power according to our own rules, to earn God’s favor.

Good things for the wrong reasons:

Judaizers - good thing of following God’s law. But doing the laws out of legalism so that by performing these acts they earned favor by God.

Today

Quiet times

Study of the Bible

Prayer

Avoiding certain sins

Certain types of worship

Helping others

Having to have certain characteristics - Christians should be like this. Leaders should be like this. This is how others should treat me.

Having to use certain spiritual gifts

Masks and no masks.

If you don’t vote this way then you are not a Christian.

Oh, and by the way, there is one more story that confirms the authority of my teaching and message.

Galatians 2:11-14 (READ)

Second Picture - Hypocrisy: Right belief with wrong behavior

Galatians chapter 2 verse 11 says, “But when Cephas, that is Peter, came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned.”

This will make you sit up straight and listen. On what grounds would Paul have to condemn Peter.

Big man Peter.

Peter came to Antioch to see what was going on in the growing church.

We were happy to have him!

He saw the freedom that we were enjoying in our meals and in our fellowship.

We had both jews and gentiles sitting around the same table, laughing, talking, sharing with one another.

And Peter jumped right in.

BUT when other men came representing James from Jerusalem,

all of the sudden Peter’s attitude and actions changed.

He got afraid and he wouldn’t sit at the table and eat with the rest of us anymore.

He put on the old robes of religion and made a separation or distinction between jews and gentiles.

He went back to the old ways.

It even went so far as having the other jewish believers, who had freely taken meals, to back away themselves and neglect fellowship with their gentile brothers.

Well, when Paul heard about this and saw this I had it out with Peter in front of everyone.

Peter had stepped away from the truth of the gospel.

Did you grow up having your mom tell you that you need to eat everything on your plate.

And when you go to someone else’s home that you eat what you are served.

Well it’s one thing to be honest and say, you know what I’m not supposed to eat this side item, or this certain thing isn’t one of my favorites, but I’m happy to enjoy the rest of the meal with you.

It’s another thing to get up remove yourself from the table because there is a disagreement on food.

Peter was removing himself from church fellowship because he felt conflict because of peer pressure from some folks from back home.

Peter, Paul says in verse 14, “If you, who are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel Gentiles to live like Jews?”

You sat and you ate and we were all equals around the table.

But you gave in and joined the side that said that the rest of these friends and family were not full followers of Jesus.

I could see Paul thinking, PETER you knew Jesus the best out of all of us.

You walked with him for three years.

You saw all of his teaching and witnessed all of the wonderful things that he did.

PETER - what would Jesus do?

Peter knew the gospel and knew that gentiles were invited in, without having to obey Jewish law. But he acted as if they were not.

Peter also led others astray by his actions.

Paul is fighting against a two tiered system of Christianity.

Jews on one side and Gentiles on another.

Think certain people in the front of the bus and all others in the back.

For Paul’s day it was between those who were circumcised and those who were not.

For us?

Those who are on the mission field and those who aren’t

Those who stand behind a pulpit and those who don’t

Those who vote Republican and those who vote Democrat or maybe some other party

Again, the specific act isn’t the question. When it leads to trying to gain favor with God then we run into problems.

When good things become the only way to live then we start to see the breaks.

Acts 10 - Peter gets a new direction

There is a better way

Galatians 2:15-21 (READ)

A Third Picture - Faith: Right belief with right behavior

Verse 15 starts - “We are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, and yet because we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we ourselves have believed in Christ Jesus.

Peter, we thought we were part of the elite.

We had a position as God’s chosen people.

We were his nation. The building ground for the promised messiah.

Going back to Abraham we were part of the promised blessing for the rest of the world.

You know the one for the Jews and the Gentiles alike.

If we, as God’s chosen people, couldn’t keep all of those commands how in the world would you expect them to live like us?

In fact we both recognized that we couldn’t be justified by our works and so we needed to put our faith in Jesus Christ because he had the answers for us.

Paul says - “This was so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no human being will be justified.”

Through faith in Christ, we are accepted before God.

To be declared righteous is be cleared of all charges. We are innocent before God. It’s the direct opposite of being condemned.

Some people don’t feel comfortable with idea of complete justification.

On the surface we do.

We certainly love the idea of not having all of our sins count against us.

But then we start to think about that freedom.

Well, we start to say: what if. What if someone says that they love Jesus but they live in a way that’s not consistent with what our faith is supposed to look like?

What if they do things that we aren’t comfortable with?

What if they actually do things that look like sin in our eyes?

One of the arguments being made to Paul is that if we throw out the requirements of the law then how do we know how to live?

If we only focus on justification to get into God’s family won’t we have to worry about people living however they want to live.

It sure looks like that when we see the gentiles.

How do we deal with that?

Justification is the gracious act of God

Psalm 143:1–2 CSB

1 Lord, hear my prayer. In your faithfulness listen to my plea, and in your righteousness answer me. 2 Do not bring your servant into judgment, for no one alive is righteous in your sight.

The author is at the end of himself. He is in a position where he knows that there is nothing he can do to make himself right before God.

There is no human method out there that causes faith. This gets us in a works based situation.

This is the prayer you have to pray.

This is a gracious act of God. Only He can provide this gracious act.

If Christ is responsible for our justification then is he responsible for how we live, including our sin.

So would you say that Christ is a promoter of sin? Absolutely not! Paul says

Paul in no way is going to encourage sin or make the claim that Jesus is behind our sin.

Verse 18 says: “If I rebuild those things that I tore down, I show myself to be a lawbreaker.”

I am responsible for my sin.

The one who goes back to the old, he is the one who is sinning.

BUT, but, but that is not even the emphasis of this letter. I’m going to talk to you about walking by the Spirit later on.

A life that’s about following God and not following our own sinful desires.

The first thing we need to get really clear is that salvation only comes through Jesus.

We were living in our sins, that was us. That’s on us.

We were supposed to feel the consequences of that.

And the consequences weren’t good.

To put it bluntly its death. We were dead.

But Jesus.

Paul says in verse 20 - “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Church we are on a new path and it’s because Jesus decided to take on the penalty for our sin,

and just as he was crucified we were crucified with him.

Our guilt was nailed to that cross along with Jesus.

How can we add anything else to that.

Paul writes later in his life that we are actually baptized into his death.

Romans 6:3 CSB

3 Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Baptized into Jesus’ death.

We die to sin - its power, penalty, and hold on our lives.

The act of salvation that comes by justification through faith is a wholistic change on our lives. It affects the whole person. AND it will affect the persons who happen to come in and out of that saved person’s circle. Because we are God’s kingdom people and we take kingdom steps through Jesus each and every day.

So, Christ covers our sins, but he also changes our lives.

The reality is that when we trust in Jesus we don’t just die to our sins we die to ourselves.

When Jesus says you need to count the cost this is the cost. Many of us don’t want to give up what we think we have. We love the idea of being forgiven for our sins, we just don’t like the idea of giving up some of the other stuff.

Paul says that this is a total package. For the Judiazers it was the idea of working and working and following the rituals.

But has that brought freedom in your life or kept you under a burden?

There is nothing wrong with wanting to keep a certain diet, wanting to keep certain hygenic practices.

Honoring what has been done in the past.

Heck there is even research out there showing the benefits of circumcision.

But if that is what you see as justifying you, then we have a problem.

In this section of Scripture Paul is speaking about two things that will bring down the church, legalism and hypocrisy.

Legalism is working in our own power, probably according to our own rules, to trying and earn God’s favor.

Hypocrisy is knowing what is right but then doing something else.

Both are dangerous sides of the spectrum to be on.

Paul like Jesus is calling out those who thought they had it all together when it came to their relationship with God.

Do it our way, because it’s the only way.

And we see from this section of Scripture that that path is a trap.

On one hand you have a group who says you really can’t be saved without all of this other stuff

and on the other hand you have Peter, in this one instance, preaching both justification by freedom and justification by the law through his action.

That’s a recipe for confusion and division in the body of Christ.

It’s no wonder Paul had to do so much clearing up about the gospel.

Bottom line - We are either free because of Jesus’ work or we aren’t.

And if you try and put on the burden of self-righteousness then you are really just casting God’s grace aside.

And if that is the case, Paul says in verse 21, then Jesus dies for nothing.

You will never hear me say that we should stop doing good works.

We just spent a few months going through the letter by James that talks about a life of good works.

But what is the reason and where is the source for the works.

I said it once before and I will say it again we received the gift of salvation and our lives are now a thank you note for that.

Thank you notes don’t try to repay or try to one up the gift.

They are not meant to square a debt that we might feel that we carry.

Thank you notes are a reflection of our gratitude for the gift.

If you are looking for good works to help ourselves climb the stairs to God.

Well that’s a stairway that goes nowhere, because Jesus leveled the playing field for all of humanity.

There is nothing extra we have to do or GET to make our salvation complete.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you need certain special spiritual gifts to confirm your salvation.

Don’t look to anyone else to bestow the power of God on you or give you more of their spirit because you don’t have enough.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you need a new filling of the spirit or else your salvation isn’t secure.

Paul wrote a letter to the Ephesians and in chapter one verse 13 he says this - “In him you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed.”

All of those promises and coaching’s that come from places like the prosperity gospel or the new Apostolic reformation are Jesus plus movements.

And they are really roads that lead away from the gospel.

There’s a lot of excitement behind them because they are flashy and there are a lot of promises, things like money, power, healing, being taken to a higher plane with your spirituality,

but like ALL the work that we do ON OUR OWN they are going to disappoint us,

they are going to confuse us,

and they are ultimately going to leave us empty because when we try and top Jesus what we are saying in the words of Paul is “ then Christ died for nothing”.

Think about it this way when we add anything on to the gospel we are saying that Christ’s death wasn’t enough.

And now we are right back to a works based religion

Paul reminds his audience that God’s people couldn’t even keep the law and so how in the world would we expect anyone else to be able to do that any better.

Jesus is enough.

So when we talk to our friends and they have questions about this Christianity thing.

We tell them about Jesus, - his life, his promises, the cross, the resurrection, and that He did all of that for them as well.

We don’t saddle them with rules,

we don’t saddle them with making immediate lifestyle changes before they can come to Jesus.

We don’t confuse them with our preferences or our routines and practices.

We give them the hope that only comes through Jesus and we say that that hope was meant for them as well.

When they decide to follow Jesus then the transformation starts to happen and the Holy Spirit begins working in their lives.

This is the season of hope.

This is the season where the world is focused on the birthday of Jesus, even if they aren’t focused on Jesus’ birth.

What a wonderful time to share the good news that we have experienced through Jesus’ life, his death, his resurrection from the dead, and now our security because he is King.

End Big!

Questions

Let me leave you with a few questions:

What are the things that you might be adding to the simple message of the Gospel?

In what ways might you be trying to generate a life that is pleasing to God, when in reality God already sees you through the lens of Jesus?

If the Gospel is a simple message then maybe we need to be more focused on simplicity. In what simple ways could you share the love of Jesus this holiday season?

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