The Triumph of Grace
¡§Freedom & Responsibility¡¨
July 30, 2000
This Morning¡¦s Text ¡V Galatians 5:1-15
¡§It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.
¡§Behold I, Paul, say tot you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law. You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love.
¡§You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion did not come from Him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough. I have confidence in you in the Lord that you will adopt no other view; but the one who is disturbing you will bear his judgment, whoever he is. But I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? Then the stumbling block of the cross has been abolished. I wish that those who are troubling you would even mutilate themselves.
¡§For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn you freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, ¡¥You shall love your neighbor as yourself.¡¦ But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.¡¨
We call him the Prodigal Son, but he is not a dusty, musty figure from a story told 2000 years ago; he is quite the 21st-century kind of guy! What was on his mind then is on the minds of so many today: freedom! His warped definition of freedom is one which currently holds great sway in our world today: an egocentric, narcissistic, self-centered desire to cast off all restraint and be¡Xan individual! Freedom is for these ¡§individuals¡¨ the absence of limitations, the presence of self-sufficiency and power. ¡§Finally, I¡¦m out from under all of those rules¡¨, is the idea. To be free is to experience individual freedom, in the minds of some.
In the minds of others, freedom is defined in a social sense. To realize freedom is to break down any social structures which would be deemed oppressive. There is a rush to break down all kinds of fences of these types, and while some fences ought to be torn down¡Xsuch as the fence which divides our society on the basis of skin color or ethnicity¡Xothers ought not necessarily be dismantled so cavalierly. Today we are engaged in the wholesale re-definition of the family, the very core unit of our society. A family today is a freeform thing; it is whatever you make it to be, and woe be to the one who would dare censure anyone else¡¦s definition! A man and a woman living together without benefit of marriage¡Xwhat¡¦s wrong with that? Two lesbians pledging devotion to each other and having a child by artificial insemination? Why, that¡¦s just Melissa Etheridge expressing her own decisions¡Xand who are you to say that¡¦s wrong? This is what some would call freedom.
And then there is what we might call ¡§psychological freedom¡¨. This is the freedom just to be your own person, to define who you are by whatever criterion you see fit. It is to ¡§find yourself¡¨. People go to great lengths to do just this, and as of a few years ago, this renegade Supreme Court of ours granted this idea of self-determination the status of a constitutionally-guaranteed ¡§right¡¨, pulling this nonsense out of the same hocus-pocus hat where they found the ¡§right to privacy¡¨ which entails the right to murder your baby. But freedom is for many the right to define your own reality as you see fit: psychological freedom.
What is important, though, is that we understand freedom in the way God does, don¡¦t you think? If we see freedom in one of these ways, we will miss Paul¡¦s point, and we will remain in slavery as a result. Understanding the Bible¡¦s kind of freedom begins with an understanding of the slavery we all find ourselves in: a slavery to sin. There is only one way to real freedom from sin: it is found in a relationship with God as a result of Jesus¡¦ death leading to the reality of a life lived in the Spirit. This is the kind of freedom that Paul is talking about when we look at the most important verse, arguably, in the book:
A transitional verse: Galatians 5:1
We will look at this verse in much greater detail below; suffice it to say that this is the very heart of Paul¡¦s thesis. We are made free in Christ, not as we obey the Law, but as we trust Christ by faith; we live free as we yield ourselves, not to the Law, but to the Spirit of God.
I. Faith in Christ leads to the irrelevance of the Law. :2-6
As a matter of consequence for the way I lead my life as a Christian, the O.T. Law in its detailed commands is irrelevant. Now, that is not to say that we throw the O.T. away at all; we gain many great insights into God¡¦s truth in a variety of different ways when we study it. There is great value in the study of the O.T.! But it is not the roadmap for my life. Paul is writing to a group of people who, under the tutelage of the Judaizers, have already begun to adopt some of the O.T. Law as principles by which they live their lives; they have begun to observe the system of feasts and holy days. Now, the pressure is being applied to go further and consent to circumcision, the ¡§entrance rite¡¨ into Judaism, a radical step of identification with the Jews. Paul gives them some severe warnings if they consent to circumcision. Now, let¡¦s be clear what the issue is here: it is not the act of circumcision in and of itself to which Paul objects. Rather, it is the reason: the idea that circumcision carries in and of itself some spiritual benefit, which it does not!
4 Warnings for those who insist on following the Law:
(MacArthur)
A. Christ is of no benefit. :2
The atoning work of Christ is of no benefit to those who would attempt to add to it some work of their own. To supplement Christ is to supplant Christ. Circumcision does not benefit the saved, and it plays no part in the saving of those who aren¡¦t saved.
B. You are obligated to keep the whole Law. :3
The Judaizers were introducing the Law little by little; Paul says that, if you try to shoulder a little of that burden, get ready to shoulder the whole thing. We can¡¦t pick and choose which parts of the Law we want to obey, if we place ourselves under its onerous burden. Paul is not saying that you must be sinlessly perfect; no one taught that. What he is saying, though, is that you will have to live under its whole force, including not only its rituals and detailed specifics, but also its continual system of atonement involving sacrifices and offerings.
What role does the Law play? Ken Wuest puts it as well as I¡¦ve seen it put:
¡§The ethics of the Pauline epistles and the ministry of the Holy Spirit take the place of and are an advance upon the Mosaic economy of regeneration and the objective written law. Whatever is of value for the Church in the legal enactments of the Mosaic code is found in the hortatory passages of the New Testament epistles.¡¨ ¡V Kenneth Wuest
C. You have fallen from grace. :4
You¡¦ve rejected God¡¦s grace if you do this. Now, what does this mean? Some of our friends see in these words a warning about losing one¡¦s salvation, and speak of ¡§falling from grace¡¨ as referring to this. This is the only time in the N.T. where we find this phrase; further, there are an overwhelming number of Scriptures where the opposite seems to be taught: that since salvation is the work of God for us, the keeping of our salvation is in His hands and not ours.
¡§Just because the process of sanctification is temporarily retarded in a believer¡¦s life does not say that his justification is taken away. If that were the case, then the retention of salvation would depend upon the believer¡¦s works, and then salvation would not depend upon grace anymore. And we find ourselves in the camp of the Judaizers, ancient and modern.¡¨ ¡V Kenneth Wuest
What would it mean, then, to ¡§fall from grace¡¨? I believe that it means this: to relinquish grace as the principle by which we relate to God in favor of a legalistic principle. ¡§Fallen¡¨ can be rendered ¡§unaffected¡¨; I believe that to fall from grace is to live in a kind of relationship with God which seeks to please Him apart from His grace¡Xand that¡¦s impossible!
D. You are excluded from practical righteousness. :5-6
Our ¡§hoped-for¡¨ righteousness is the righteousness of sanctification. We are declared righteous in Christ instantaneously at the moment of our salvation; this is called ¡§justification¡¨, and it is true of every believer. We don¡¦t have to look forward in hope to the possibility that we will be declared righteous by God; this is a settled fact. Paul is saying that we believers do not choose legalism, but rather we wait in hope for the full reality of practical righteousness to be our experience!
What really counts is not some outward ritual, or the absence of it, but faith that works itself out in love¡Xwhich we¡¦ll talk about in a few minutes.
II. Faith in Christ leads us into the truth. :7-12
The natural state for the believer is to be led into the truth as he follows Christ. Paul says that something has gone terribly wrong; this is not happening. The Bible warns us that false teachers will be prevalent (II Pet. 2:1; I Tim. 4:1-2; II Tim. 3:7-8). He goes on to talk about these false teachers:
6 Characteristics of False Teachers:
(MacArthur)
A. They hinder the truth. :7
Paul asks a rhetorical question: who cut in on you? Paul loved athletic metaphors, and his picture here is of a runner in a race being cut off by another running stepping between him and the goal. These Galatians had been experiencing a real ¡§head and heart¡¨ relationship with God in Christ. They were believing the truth¡Xand then they were acting upon it. But someone had cut in and blocked them from the truth¡Xand this is what false teachers do!
B. They are not of God. :8
Well, if these teachers that purport to be teaching the truth of God are not in fact doing that, then who is ultimately behind their false teaching? Jesus said of the Pharisees who perverted the truth that ¡§you are of your father, the devil.¡¨ The same applies here.
C. They contaminate the church. :9
Leaven, in Scripture, is generally used as a metaphor for evil and especially for its permeating influence (Matthew 16:6-12; I Cor. 5:6). The God-fearing Jews were required to rid their homes of every bit of leaven in order to be ready for certain feasts. One tiny bit of yeast can permeate and have a massive effect¡Xand so it is with false teaching. The best counterfeit looks closest to the original and the real; some of the most effective false teaching in the church through the centuries involves the twisting of one or two tiny elements of truth. We need to apply the Barney Fife defense to false teaching: nip it in the bud!
D. They will be judged. :10
Paul expresses confidence that the Galatians, once they understand the true issues at stake and the true consequences, will come around to the truth, and he says that these who are leading them astray will be judged. The word ¡§bastazo¡¨ translated ¡§bear¡¨ speaks of the bearing of a grievous burden; the Bible indicates that false teachers will be subject to judgment (Matthew 18:6; II Peter 2:2-3,9).
E. They persecute true teachers. :11
Paul is experiencing persecution from these false teachers; he says this wouldn¡¦t be happening ¡§if I still preach circumcision¡¨. This is a phrase that has been handled differently by different commentators. Some suggest that the Judaizers were accusing Paul of himself preaching circumcision when it was convenient¡Xin front of Jewish audiences¡Xand leaving it out to water down the gospel when he was in front of Gentiles. Others think that Paul is referring back to his pre-conversion days when he was zealous for Judaism and most certainly did preach the necessity of circumcision. One other very plausible possibility is that these Judaizers saw themselves as completing the work that Paul left incomplete, that Paul left the Galatians before he got around to instructing them on the importance of living by the Law. Paul would have preached circumcision, they might have argued, if he¡¦d only stuck around long enough. Still, Paul¡¦s persecution, as well as that of others, came because of preaching that did not insist on the necessity of the observance of Jewish Law in order to be pleasing to God. The cross of Christ is a stumbling block in this sense: it failed to require obedience to Jewish ancestral laws in order for a person to be right with God. Remember the stoning of Stephen, the first martyr? He was not condemned for preaching Christ, per se, but rather for speaking against the holy place and the Law (Acts 7). Paul himself describes his zealotry before Christ as being for ¡§ancestral traditions¡¨. To preach the cross was offensive to Jews because it spelled the end of the necessity of those ancestral traditions, and the end of any sense that anyone might have of works-righteousness!
F. They should be cut off. :12
Pagan worshippers sometimes went to such extremes as to mutilate their bodies. Paul has already stated that circumcision or lack thereof is completely irrelevant. But if these folks want to point to some outward bodily act as being an act of supreme devotion to God, then the mutilation of the pagans might be even more convincing evidence of their sincerity¡Xwhy not go to this extreme?
III. Faith in Christ leads us into freedom. :1, 13-15
We spoke earlier of some of the cravings for freedom¡Xand some of the bogus definitions¡Xwhich we hear and see in our society today. It seems to me that we have a schizophrenic approach even, sometimes. On the one hand, a lot of people are clamoring for what to them are various ¡§freedoms¡¨; on the other hand, we have millions of folks who seem to be perfectly willing to hand over freedoms to our government in exchange for ¡§security¡¨. And a power-hungry government is all too willing to make that trade! And so in the name of freedom and sometimes in the name of security we are witnessing the gradual erosion of many of our constitutional freedoms.
What does it mean to be free in Christ? I want to suggest several senses in which we are free in Christ. We are free from the Law
1. As to its condemnation
2. As a means of justification
3. As an obligation to obey all of its stipulations
We are free from the tyranny of a legal system which is impossible to keep fully. We are free to be accepted by God on the basis of Christ¡¦s merit rather than trying to be right with God on the basis of our insufficient merit. We experience the freedom of total, once-for-all cleansing from sin. Romans 8:1 says that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!
A. Freedom is our true calling in Christ. :1a, 13a
What is the method by which we live our lives? Is it as free people who rely upon the Holy Spirit to guide us in the application of God¡¦s truth for living? Or is it as people who are always consulting a rule book, trying to do everything just so, but eventually resorting to ways to get around those laws, loopholes through which we might slip? That is what always happens in a legalistic approach to life. We look for the loopholes so that we might profess to be keeping the law when what we are doing is only merely trying to attend to the barest minimum of its letter rather than living by its spirit. Paul says that Christ has set us free!
B. Freedom is something we must guard with all we¡¦re worth. :1b
Obstinate perseverance!
C. Freedom does not mean license! :13b
Here is where we need to park for a moment today. Here is the legitimate question which the Judaizers might have posed: ¡§isn¡¦t the Law the only restraint on licentious living?¡¨ Fair question! This is a question which Paul felt an obligation to address in the sister book to Galatians, the book of Romans. In the first five chapters, Paul has laid out an airtight defense of justification by faith alone in Christ alone. He makes the case that our justification does not rest at all upon our good works¡Xfor we don¡¦t have any before we come to Christ! But in Chapter 6, he anticipates where this will lead, if not careful. The old Christian hymn ¡§Free from the Law, o Happy Condition¡¨ has been co-opted by wags from time to time and changed to say,
¡§Free from the Law, o Happy Condition; now I can sin with Jesus¡¦ permission!¡¨
How does Paul answer this? Read in Romans 6:1-2; compare with Galatians 5:13. Legalism and license are two opposite bugaboos, but they both are man-centered, and here¡¦s how: legalism says, ¡§I can make it to God by my own contributions to the cause¡¨. License says, ¡§I am justified apart from the Law; now I can live as I please and make it to Heaven because I¡¦ve gotten my fire insurance.¡¨ The freedom that Paul is speaking of is not a tolerance of self-indulgence! When we see ¡§flesh¡¨ here, Paul is not referring to the body, but rather to the sinful inclinations of fallen mankind. Paul tells us that we dare not understand and then live out our freedom in such a way that we ignore holiness! Peter tells us in I Peter 2:16 that we are to ¡§act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but as bondslaves to God.¡¨ Gotta serve somebody! Freedom is in serving God!
Christian freedom is not ¡§situation ethics¡¨. A few decades back Joseph Fletcher popularized what he called ¡§situation ethics¡¨ which laid aside all moral absolutes for an ethic which suggested that we make every decision based upon what the most loving thing to do would be. Now this sounds good, and sounds close to what Paul is advocating, with one massive¡Xand all-important¡Xdistinction: Fletcher jettisoned the idea of loving God first! Paul¡¦s encouragement to us is that we live free, and base our decisions on love¡Xbut Paul¡¦s words stand inside the context of Scripture, which make it clear that we must love God supremely first! Fletcher would say that we must do the most loving thing toward an individual in any given situation¡Xand the most loving thing might be to lie to the person (if it were ¡§for his own good¡¨); steal from a person (if in so doing we enrich the poor); or even murder a person (¡§mercy killing¡¨). Problem? Our love for each other must be grounded in a context of loving God supremely first, and we do not love God if we lie, cheat, steal, and kill!
Romans 15:3 indicates that even Jesus, who certainly had the prerogative, didn¡¦t live to please Himself. We of all people as the followers of Christ cannot buy into a value system that suggests that the world revolves around us and our needs and thus we must do whatever we do in order that we might be pampered and live well. Paul makes the case in Galatians, as we¡¦ll see very clearly next week, that we are not without any governance when we come to Christ; rather, we are not under the Law, but we are to voluntarily place ourselves under the control of the Holy Spirit!
D. Freedom entails responsibilities toward others
1. Serving others :13c
Paul says, in effect, ¡§don¡¦t be slaves to the Law. Oh, by the way, become slaves to each other! ¡§ Here is the paradox: true freedom comes from serving others. This is what Jesus was referring to in Luke 22:24-27. This is a voluntary slavery and it leads to deep joy, as opposed to slavery to the Law, which leads to drudgery. Paul says not merely that we are to ¡§oppose the flesh¡¨ above, but that we are to positively exercise ourselves to serve other people!
2. Loving others as we love ourselves :14
Jesus tells us in the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:36-40) that we are to love God supremely and love each other as well. Romans 13:8-10 speaks of the debt of love that we owe to others. We all naturally love ourselves (and let¡¦s not get into this silly nonsense about how this is teaching us that we must first learn to love ourselves before we can ever hope to love others; this is a gross misunderstanding of the whole passage!), Jesus is saying and Paul is quoting, and our goal is to extend that same love to other people with which I love myself!
3. Living in peace with one another :15
Quite naturally, it is to be expected that this false teaching would stir up strife among the Galatian believers; the Greek word here speaks of wild animals engaged in a furious struggle! Though we don¡¦t know for certain what type of ¡§biting and devouring¡¨ were going on, it is fairly easy to imagine. Legalism tends to create the type of environment where people do this to one another. I had a conversation awhile back with a friend who attends this church. She told me of her experience in a very legalistic church, and how in that church the women¡¦s ¡§fellowship times¡¨ always seemed to quickly degenerate into gossip sessions along the lines of who had violated the extensive list of rules that this church laid down re lifestyle! This is not surprising, for where there is legalism, there is generally little love!
We began today by talking about several different definitions of freedom:
„h Individual freedom, the kind of freedom that revels in throwing off personal restraint;
„h Social freedom, the kind of freedom that wants to break down all societal norms; and
„h Psychological freedom, the kind of freedom that allows one to ¡§be his own person.¡¨
May I close by suggesting that freedom in Christ is the answer for all of these searches?
„h It frees us from our greatest individual enslavement, to the power of sin;
„h It frees us to break down all social barriers by serving one another, and receiving the same from others; and
„h It frees us psychologically to become the person whom we have always wanted to be, whether we knew it or not, for we are never truly whole until we find our wholeness in a relationship with our Maker!
A Few Questions Regarding Freedom in Your Own Life
1. Are there any ¡§religious rules¡¨ you currently keep which have their sole basis in a legalistic approach to holiness?
2. Do you live out any aspect of your Christian life from the standpoint that ¡§God might zap me if I don¡¦t do this?¡¨
3. Honestly, are you closer to legalism¡Xor to license¡Xin your walk with Christ? Do you ever find yourself justifying things which are questionable on the basis of ¡§I¡¦m free in Christ!¡¨, or on the basis of ¡§I know another Christian who does this!¡¨ Is your goal holiness, or is it to ¡§walk as close to the line¡¨ as you can?
4. What did you do this week to go out of your way to serve someone else? Can you think of any? Did you draw back from serving someone because he/she was ¡§different¡¨, or because you were too preoccupied, or because¡K?
5. Think about how you treat yourself. The Bible says that ¡§no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it.¡¨ We know that we love ourselves naturally and pamper ourselves in a million and one ways. How does your love of others compare with the way you treat yourself?
6. Got a grudge against anyone? Are you holding something against someone else? It will eat you up from the inside and render you ineffective in your service to God. Deal with it¡Xnow!
