Galatians 1

Introduction

Illustration - re expectations.

Expectations. Our lives are full of people who it seems are expecting something from us. Family, teachers, coaches, pastors, friends, even and sometimes most of all ourselves. Expectations to achieve, to suceed, to be a good person, a good friend, these are all the things we feel like we need to do in order to be accepted to get approval. Now sometimes these expecations are real as they were for ____ in the example I shared earlier, sometimes though we also read into things, and imagine expectations that aren’t really there. One person who we often do this for is God. What are God’s expectations for me? What does he require of me to gain his acceptance? Well as most people today imagine, if there is a God then he just wants me to do more good than bad, and as long as I do that, I’m ok in his books. Perhaps instead, you say come on John, I’ve been going to church for a long time, I’ve been listening in Sunday school, I know that all I have to do is to repent of my sins, and believe in God, and that’s how I’m accepted. Well, of course, you’d be right, but I wonder if that’s really how you’re living your life today, is that really how you think and feel about God, is what God says about you more important than all of the other voices in your life and their expectations. You see I think for many of us we feel this constant pressure of having to do more, to be better, in order to truly be accepted, whether its by God or by others, or perhaps you’re someone that’s given up, you feel like it doesnt’ matter what you do you’ll never live up to the expectations of others and you’re out of options. This my friends, is why we need to understand the goodness, the scandalous greatness of the grace of God, which says that to be accepted by God it doesn’t matter how good you are, it doesn’t how matter how bad you are, what matters is what Christ has done for you. The gospel frees us from expectations. Paul here in Galatians, is writing to a church who have gotten mixed up with what God’s expectations for them are. Some people have come along to the church and are telling them that what God wants is for them to not only confess their sins and to believe, but to also follow the Old Testament law, that’s what they have to do if they really want to be accepted by God and by others. And so Paul in the opening of his letter, lays out for the Galatians, 3 important things about the gospel, 1 the gospel is from God, 2. It’s for the forgiveness of sins, and 3. its final, so we’re going to explore that today with Paul.

From God

So, firstly, the gospel is from God. It’s really easy when we’re reading some of Paul’s letters to skip over the Greetings. We often think of these opening few verses, as a bit of waffle, something to be skipped, but in fact these are the TLDR; of Paul’s letters. You know what TLDR is? On social media and in blogs, when people do a really long post, at the start or end they’ll sometimes leave a TLDR which stands for too long didn’t read, and its just meant to be a really short summary of the main ideas of the longer post. So Paul’s little greetings at the start of his letters, will very often contain the main ideas for the letter, what Paul is really wanting to get across. So it’s actually important that Paul starts off the way he does, he wants us to take notice of it. So he says:

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Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead

What Paul is doing here is right from the start he is really stressing where his authority, his standing as an apostle comes from. Who is the one who has comissioned Paul, who has sent Paul. And he starts off by emphasising that he’s not an apostle from men, so he hasn’t been sent by anyone, and his authority doesn’t come from man but it comes from God. This is kind of a defensive way to start off a letter. Its a bit like if you’ve got a sibling and they come running up to you and say ‘Dad says that you have go and help me tidy my room.’ They’re effectively saying I’ve been sent by Dad to tell you this so you have to listen to what I say. And this is essentially what Paul is doing. Why would Paul start of his letter like this? Well when we read Galatians as a whole we start to build a bit of a picture of what was going on in the church. Paul had been the one to intitally go and preach the gospel to them. And now people have come from outside of the church, and they’re saying that the Galatians need to start following the Old Testament law and particularly the males need to be circumsied if they want to be part of the church. Part of the way that these people argue this is that they directly attack Paul and the message of the gospel that he was telling them. They tell the Galatians that actually Paul doesn’t really know what he’s talking about, the gospel he taught to you he got from other people, it isn’t the whole picture, Paul was just trying to soften up the message up a bit, make it easier so that it would seem more appealing. We get a sense of this in verse 10 where Paul says:

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10 For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

and then he goes on and says:

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11 For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. 12 For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ

Paul here is directly refuting the accusations of the trouble makers. God is the one who has sent Paul, and the message that Paul proclaimed to them, the message of the good news of what Jesus did for them, is likewise not made up or from men but from God, himself, and therefore this is what is true.

If you’re an argument with friend about whether something is true or not, what do you do? Well you google it? But the problem with the internet is you can often find countless opinions, so then what do you do? Well you try and find experts and the most reliable sources, people have studied it closely and use them to try and back up your case. Paul here is calling on the ultimate expert as his backup. God who not only knows all things, and sees all things, but who has power over everything. If God says something is true, then it doesn’t matter what anyone else says, that’s who we need to listen to.

There’s a lot of voices in all of our lives, a lot of so called experts, people who want to tell us what is true about us and about our lives. They might tell you that you’re never going to be accepted, never going to be loved, because you’re not smart enough, not fit enough, not strong enough, not kind enough, not attractive enough, not athlectic enough, not funny enough, not popular. But the thing is, that the only one who really counts, the only person who is truly able to tell you who you are and whether you should be accepted or not, is God. He is the authority on everything. He knows all things, and so he is the one you should listen to. The message of the gospel frees us from expectations of others because it is a message which is from God. The gospel is from God. And so therefore what the gospel has to say about who we are and how we can be accepted is the truth and what we really need to listen to. Now that’s not to say the others never have anything good or helpful to say about us, but what I’m saying is the person who get’s the ulimate say, who has the final say is God. The gospel is from God, but what does the Gosepl actually say about his expectations for us?

Well the second thing we see today is that the Gospel is

For the Forgiveness of Sins

What does God say about us? Paul here, wants to talk about the gospel, that’s the message that is under attack, and so right from the bat, again in his introduction he offers us a snippet of what the gospel is. Now already Ive used the term gospel a lot, but what does it mean? Well the gospel is the good news of what Christ Jesus has done. It literally means good news, and so Paul in v3-5 offers us a summary of what this gospel is.

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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

What our God’s expectations of us, what do we need to do? Well the answer is that they’re impossible. We will never be good enough, strong enough, smart enough, kind enough, to meet what God requires to be accepted by him, because God demands perfection. Paul says Christ gave himself for our sins, but implicit within this is that we have sinned. We need delivering. An adult doesn’t need saving from a little kid’s pool. he can just stand up. But a baby in a pool, who can’t swim, who can’t lift their head, who can’t even stand, needs savings, they’re helpless. If we need delivering, then we too are helpless. This is what Paul says a bit later on in Galitans 2:15 “because by works of the law noone will be justified” no one will be made righteous, declared perfect, in other words, you can’t save yourself. You will never meet God’s expectations. In fact you have horribly wronged him. But the good news of the gospel, is that God is a gracious and merciful God. Jesus gave himself for our sins to deliver us. He was perfect where we were not. Jesus and Jesus alone met God’s expectations, and then he took the punishment for our sins and for our failures. In 3:13 Paul says Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. What he’s saying here isn’t that God’s law is bad in and of itself, but that its impossible for us to meet and so we have this curse over us where we deserve to die because we have not lived up to God’s law, his expectations for our lives, but now Christ has saved us from this fate, by taking the curse of death upon himself, and then v1 he has been raised again. He didnt’ stay dead but he rose again, winning the final victory against sin and death. How do we meet God’s expectations? We can’t, but Christ has, and when we place our faith in him our trust in him, God freely gives us life, that’s what grace means, its a free gift from God. So by God’s grace we are made acceptable before God, we are given Christ’s perfect record.

Now for the Galatians you had a bunch of people coming into the church saying here’s all these things you need to do be made right with God, and Paul’s point throughout this letter, is that the whole point of the gospel, the whole point of Jesus coming down to earth is that we’ve failed to do what is right, we’ve failed to keep the law, and so the only way we could ever be accepted by God, is by his grace, by him freely to giving us the forgiveness of our sins. It’s God’s grace that determines our acceptance by trusting in Christ.

that’s what Pail is getting at in 2:20

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20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

if we could meet God’s expectations on our own why did Christ even die? but we cant’ so we need God’s grace, we need Christ’s sacrifice, and that’s what Paul reminds the Galatians. v3 Grace to you, v 6 him who called you in the grace of Christ.

So again, I’ll ask you what does God have to say about you? Well if you’ve put your trust in Christ and in his life, death and resurrection, then you are accepted by God, loved by him, welcomed by him. He looks at you and sees someone who has met his expectations, because he sees Christ. The more we understand this, the more we understand how freeing this is. Perhaps you’re someone who feels pressure. Pressure to get good grades, pressure to do what is right, you don’t really know how to approach God or how to pray to him because you feel like you have to say the right things, pray prayers that sound good. Or you feel guilty or ashamed, because you know that deep down you’ll never be good enough, so you think that God doesn’t want you. To you, God says, you are accepted by me, loved by me, chosen by me, because of christ, because of the good news that he died and is now risen again and is king of kings and lord of lords, and you are part of his kingdom, a child of God. That is who you are. The Gospel is for the forgiveness of sins

finally,

The Gospel is Final

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I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

Paul after his intro, in his letters, normally has a section about how he is thankful for the church he is writing to. But there’s no such section here. Paul is so concerned about what is going with the Galatians that he gets right to the point. He’s astonished that they are turning away, and he accuses them, not of turning away from a message but of turning away from Christ himself.

The temptation for us as humans is always to want to add a little bit that we can do. God’s grace is incredibly humbling. We don’t like it, it’s hard to swallow. We like to think that we can contribute something, that at least, I’ve done quite a few good things they should count shouldn’t they. But when we start to do this, we completely undermine the message of the gospel, the messsage of God’s grace, and in the end this leads to an inevitable sense of pride, where we start trying to compare ourselves to others to show that we’ve done something worthy. We come along like the troublemakers in the Galatians church, and we look down our noses at others, ‘you only read your bible twice a week, those are some rookie number, I do 5’ ‘did you see how well I served at church the other day, you weren’t even helping’ Ironically our ‘good deeds’ then become all about us because we think that there’s something we can do to earn God’s favour. We’ll only truly be able to serve others, to love others well when we are freed from thinking that we somehow need to do it.

Anything we seek to add the gospel, destroys it, and turns our good works into works of pride. The grace of God is everything you need to be saved.

What are we called to do in response, because we are called to respond, the primary thing we are called to do is to tell others of the great grace of God, his grace and his freedom, and the more we have experienced this in our own lives the easier it will become.