Galatians 5:1-12 The Stakes Are High

Grace as the Gift of Salvation in Galatians

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community and service. We're currently studying Galatians in a series called Off the Chain, Finding Freedom in Galatians.

Here's Pastor Don Filsack.

We're going to continue through the book of Galatians with a new chapter, so we're going to jump into Galatians chapter 5, and like usual I wanted to just get our thoughts moving towards God's Word before we come to Him in worship, so I'm going to take just a few minutes here and introduce this text of Galatians 5, 1 -12.

Now remember we're jumping back into the middle of argumentation that Paul has been giving all through this book for a gospel that is based on grace instead of law. That is, that salvation comes to us as a gift from God and not based on works or based on the things that we accomplish or do.

But how many of you know grace can become kind of a muddy word, a fuzzy word in our culture. Would you agree with that? That grace is used in a lot of different ways, and it's something that can be sometimes difficult to define.

And part of it is that grace is an overarching theme in Scripture. You're not going to turn to a chapter and verse that describes and defines, now here is the definition of grace, and then lays it out that way for you.

Grace is more an operating theme that we see all throughout Scripture. We see the word itself used, but it's that overarching theme in the Bible. It is the concept that the way that salvation comes to us is as a gift.

Not as a wage that we earn, not as a payment for works that we have done, but it is something that is unmerited. It is something that is undeserved, it is unearned, and it is something that is a gift from God.

And that is the concept of grace. Salvation comes to us as a gift. And Paul has been seeking to make that abundantly clear throughout the book of Galatians. He's been basically saying there's a way of approaching life that looks like laws and rules and regulations, and doing a bunch of stuff to think that you're becoming better in God's eyes, and that's not the way of a Christian life.

The way of the Christian life, the way we understand it, is that we come into faith by grace, it's a gift from God, and then we walk forward in our lives based on grace. Not based on laws and rules and regulations.

He's made it clear that apart from Christ, without that one important, all important piece of salvation that is Jesus Christ crucified, died on the cross for us, paying the penalty, all of humanity is enslaved to something.

All of humanity in general, but individuals who are apart from Christ are enslaved to something. And either we are enslaved to laws, rules, and regulations, that is being kind of a moralistic religious enslavement, can you picture that in your minds?

Maybe some of you have experienced that to some degree, maybe some of you are still rustling through that, a sense in which you are enslaved to laws and rules and regulations attempting to make your life better for God.

Or we're enslaved to our own desires and sins. There's really two kind of basic categories of enslavement, but in reality, if we're honest with ourselves, we're probably more prone to being enslaved to both.

How many of you know life is never quite cut and dried, it's like I've got this problem but not this problem, well the two kind of marry together at some point. The dark ages in world history were dark particularly because of the wedding of these two enslavements in established religion.

Okay, so absolute power in politics and religion were married with very ugly results, would you agree with that? Any of you who have studied history would say that you see how having an exterior veneer of religiosity and having a boiling, seething sin under the surface is an ugly mess in our lives.

And if we're honest, all of us to some degree have that going on simultaneously, where we desire to project forward an other self, a self that looks good, we have a veneer of goodness and righteousness, self-righteousness, but underneath we know, do you know yourself?

You know your struggles? You know your sins? You know the darkness that you see in your own heart? You lead off with that in a conversation when you meet with somebody for the first time? All the crud and the junk?

No, no, it's always like, hey, everything's going good, fine, you know, excellent. Paul is going to suggest to us that in Christ there is a new way to live our lives, no longer based on laws and this intense work at trying to project forward a self-righteousness, but also no longer based on slavery to our own desires, but a life of freedom.

We're going to see the word freedom in our text this morning. And that's freedom to love, freedom to become what we were created to be, freedom to say no to sin, freedom to genuinely serve each other, that kind of freedom.

So as we come to the text this morning and then we come to worship in songs, let's come as those who have been set free by Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God. So let's read this text, Galatians 5, 1 -12.

If you grab the Bible in the seat back in front of you, that's page 834, so that would be easy to find there. And if you don't own a copy of the Bible or an English Standard Version, which is the one that I use, you can take that one with you.

We want everybody to have a copy of the Word of God. Follow along as I read Galatians 5, 1 -12. And remember, this is the Word of God to us this morning. For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.

Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law.

You have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view than mine, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is.

But if I, brother, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves. Let's pray.

Father, as we have an opportunity to come and worship, there is a concept in this passage of faith working through love, and Father, I ask for that to become reality for all of us. Father, that as we encounter your word, you would change us from the enslavements and the things that hold us down to recognize that it is for freedom that you have set us free.

And as we walk through this one particular illustration of circumcision, Father, that you would make abundantly clear to us how that applies to our daily life here and now, Father, that we would be transformed and changed by encountering not your word alone, but you through your word, that your spirit would, which is alive in our hearts, would ignite the truth and change us and transform us.

And Father, as we have an opportunity to sing songs before you, I ask that this would not be an exercise of singing, not an exercise of our vocal cords, not an exercise of our voice, but it would be an exercise of our hearts and humility before you in exalting and joy over our salvation.

I ask this in Jesus' name. Make sure you have your Bibles open to Galatians 5, 1 through 12. I know some people came in after I made that, after we read that passage, so at page 834 again in the Bible, and sit back in front of you.

I want you to be able to look at the text as we walk through it this morning. Start off here with a very plain, direct statement. For freedom, Christ has set us free. For freedom, Christ has set us free.

For freedom, Christ has set us free. Now, at face value, that statement might make some of us say, duh, like thanks Paul, I was thinking it was for slavery that Christ set us free, but thank you for clarifying that.

But as I broke this verse down, it's full of some very important answers. Just this very pithy, just small statement has set us free. It has some radical things to say about our salvation. Who has set us free according to this text?

Christ. What exactly has he done in salvation? He has set us free. When did he set us free? In the past. He has, past tense, set us free. Why did he set us free? For the purpose of freedom. There was a life, there is a life, that God desires each one of us to live.

And that life is characterized by this word, freedom. Something about the word freedom has something to do with the way that Christ desires you and me to live. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

And it could not be accomplished through slavery to the law, it couldn't be accomplished while you were still a slave to idolatry, it could not be accomplished while you were still a slave to your self-centered living.

And so he has set us free that we might live, therefore, now a life of freedom. Now a word about this freedom is important, very important. Scripture is very clear that there is a way that God wants you to live, there is good and bad, there are categories of sin.

You should be in the process in your life of shunning sin, of pushing sin away, of what is called repentance, of turning your back on sin and turning towards God. Scripture reveals to us what is pleasing to God.

Freedom in Christ could never accurately be construed from the pages of Scripture, you're not going to dig into Scripture and walk away with the conclusion that I've been set free to do whatever I will please, whatever pleases me.

I've been set free to take care of myself. You're not going to walk away. Would you agree with me? Those of you who have read some of Scripture, would you agree that that's not going to be your end conclusion?

You read the Bible and you go, okay, I've been set free just to do whatever I want to please myself. That's not the kind of freedom that we're talking about. We are not set free to serve ourselves, we are set free from serving ourselves.

Because our deepest and greatest joy is going to come in serving others and in serving God. And so that's what's going on here in the text when we talk about freedom. We are free like a train is most free when it stays on the tracks.

Have you heard that illustration used before? Some of you, nobody's heard that illustration? Think about a train, think about a train, what's a train designed to do? Take a train, set it out in a cornfield, no tracks, and get that engine fired up, what's going to happen?

Is it going to go anywhere? Might even tip over. But it's not going anywhere. It can churn that engine and those wheels and you might burn it out or whatever, but it's not going to go anywhere. A train is meant to be on the tracks and I would say that Jesus has given us two tracks that our lives are supposed to be on and it's his work picking us up like an engine out in the middle of the cornfield, like a crane, picking us up and setting on these two tracks.

Two tracks, two things that sum up the law. The entirety of the Old Testament law is summed up in two things. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second, love your neighbor as yourself.

Those are the two rails of the, those are the two rails of the train tracks of our lives and we are set free. Freedom for a human being looks like being placed on that track, on those twin tracks of loving God and loving others.

Are you getting what I'm saying? And that's freedom. Where in our minds sometimes we tend to think of freedom in terms of a libertarian type of freedom where, that's just a big fancy word that means anything goes.

Libertarian, everything is free. Every single component aspect. And if you're not free to jump off the tracks and do what you want, then you're not genuinely free. I mean, can you relate to that in our culture, the way that our culture tells us that?

So we ought to be set free to do whatever we want. You are. You're free to jump the tracks if you want. You can go ahead and, but what's that going to do for your life? Is that going to be a benefit to you, a train steaming on the tracks that goes off the tracks?

Good job, great. How's that working for you? Are you getting what I'm saying? I mean, you have the freedom to sideline your life. You have the freedom to go ahead and derail things, right? But is that, how's that going to work for you?

Is that what you've been set free to do? No, you've been set free to be on the tracks of God's will by loving Him and loving others. And that's what we're talking about. And so Paul commands the Galatians and us through this letter to stand firm in our freedom, to stand strong in that freedom to love others and to love Christ or to love God.

We are not to then submit again to the yoke of slavery that we once were under, that churning the wheels out in the middle of the cornfield, if you will. Whether it was a life of self-righteousness, trying to make ourselves look better so that we look better in others' eyes, so that maybe God might like us because, hey, it's a big, self-righteousness is a big comparison game, isn't it?

As long as I look better than most of you, I feel okay about myself. And so it's a constant battle to try to look best. So whether it's that self-righteous lifestyle or a life of slavery to alcohol, sex, drugs, whatever has held you captive, you are to now stand firm and not reconnect your life to those old things.

The yoke that he talks about here in verse 1, a yoke is a farm implement. It was primarily a chunk of wood with two half circles cut out of it to fit over an animal's neck. And then through a chaining process and bridling, the two animals were fixed together by a yoke.

And usually, I'm saying two, you could have four, you could have six, you could have 12, you could have all kinds of combinations of animals. But what it did is it made their efforts together, work together to pull as a unit.

And so if you yoke two oxen together, you get double the pulling power, right? That's the point. But they are now working together as a unit. They're held at a strict distance apart from each other, and they're working together because that wood is rigid and it holds on to the shoulders.

Are you picturing what I'm saying here? What a yoke is like? And he's likening this, don't be yoked to those things that used to enslave you before. You know what they are. You know right now where you're sitting, you can think of, whether it's a primary yoking to self-righteousness towards thinking more highly of yourself than you ought, is that your primary issue?

Or are there other enslavements, are there idols, are there other things that take over in your life and take the place that God rightfully owns? Don't, he's saying, stand firm, don't re-yoke yourself to those things.

You see, Jesus asked his followers to yoke themselves to something, didn't he? He said, if you're going to come and follow me, take up my yoke. Yoke yourself to me, says Jesus. And then he went on to say, his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

How many of you know, if you're pulling in the field of life alongside of Jesus, he's doing more than his fair share? That's what he means when he says his yoke is easy and his burden is light. To be yoked to him is for him to pull you along.

You get the privilege of being yoked to Jesus Christ and towards his labor and his work. But let me tell you this, the things that our heart gravitates towards enslavement to, those are heavy burdens.

Those are things that are going to destroy and annihilate and break apart. Sin leads to death, death of something, death of relationships. All kinds of death comes as a result of sin. And that's reality.

And so if we are choosing to yoke ourselves, re-yoke ourselves to those kinds of things, we're in trouble. Religious slavery, though, is no less a burden, no less a burden than illegal drugs, even though if you think about it, it's socially more acceptable to be religiously enslaved, right?

To be enslaved to, and in all honesty, we might even say it's less detrimental in the short run, right? We might even categorize and say, better a life lived self-righteously than a life lived in licentious drugs and alcohol and raves and parties and all of that stuff, right?

Would you say that on the external? The result for both is the same, if you really think about it. Is that right? But as a society, we might categorize those and say, yeah, better the one than the other.

Both the self-righteous who is trusting in themselves for salvation and the wild and crazy who are living it up end up in the same place in the end. And Paul points out that obedience to even the law of Moses is dangerous ground as a basis for true hope.

Even the law of Moses, even following the Old Testament laws is a dangerous thing if it is your basis for hope. Do you hear me? The law is, I'm not saying the law is a bad thing. I'm not saying the law is a dangerous thing.

The law is dangerous as it becomes the central focus of your life. Paul says very blatantly, and he even uses the word behold, he uses the word look at the beginning of verse two because he expects what comes next to shock his listeners, to shock those who hear.

He says if someone accepts circumcision of their own will as a religious duty, that they are making a hard choice of where they are going to place their trust for salvation. If they accept circumcision as a religious duty, since circumcision was seen as the initiation for a young male into the Old Covenant community, it's what it meant to become a Jew.

He's saying you're coming under that. He says in essence, you've chosen law abiding over the sacrifice and grace, that is gift of Jesus Christ. One who does this has not accepted Christ as the umbrella of protection from judgment.

All of us are under the rightful, just judgment of God. Every human being, because they have broken God's law, they have broken his commands, they have walked away from him in essence, and they need something to protect them from the wrath of God in the end.

It's if you can picture in your mind the wrath of God falling, and there's this large umbrella called Jesus Christ, and those who are under him are protected from the falling wrath of God. But it's like we like to invent other umbrellas of our own devise.

We like to think of ourselves as somewhat of an umbrella. We like to try to protect ourselves. Are you getting the image in your mind? What umbrella are you standing under is really the question. Christ is the one who will protect us from judgment.

In this sense, he says, if you are standing under the law as your protection, if you're standing under your flesh, if you're standing under your own ability to keep the law, your own ability to please God, then Christ will be of no advantage to you.

Do you see that in the text? Christ will be of no advantage. Only those who are firmly all in with Christ are going to receive the advantage from him in the final judgment. Only those who are all in and completely under his umbrella, only those trusting fully in Christ for salvation will actually realize that salvation, and Christ will be of benefit to you.

And in verse 3, Paul restates it again with an important addition. You see, everyone who accepts circumcision as a sign of entering into a relationship with God, based on that old covenant way of thinking, are technically agreeing to keep the entire covenant.

Now I've mentioned this a couple of times, some of you are new here, but the concept of covenant is something that we've misunderstood. And so the idea of law, it's like we have misunderstood, I think primarily in evangelical Christian culture, that the law, the Old Testament law, is a hodgepodge of rules, generic rules that God has given to humanity, things that he kind of thinks is a good idea for you.

And so we can't quite make sense of the whole don't eat pork thing, and some of the things are just kind of mysterious to us. And what we're not understanding is that the law in its entirety was a contract between God and the nation, God and a specific people at a specific time, the Israelites.

And that, you see, what we can't get our minds around is that the Ten Commandments are wrapped up in that same notion. And so we have a tendency to go, oh, the Ten Commandments are for us, right? But the other parts of the law are for them.

And we end up dissecting the law in a way that it was never intended to be dissected. The law was not meant to be a pick and choose. I'll take this one, I'll take five of these, and you keep that one, and we'll do this, and we'll kind of have a barter for the law.

No, no, no. It was a contract, like a lease agreement. You don't get to pick and choose which parts of a lease agreement you sign that you're going to keep, right? You sign the lease agreement, is it binding on you?

All of it? A Jew knew nothing of separating out the Ten Commandments from the laws about how to maintain your beard, okay? There was none of that. I mean, it was all together, it was keep the law, this is the law.

And the signature at the bottom of the page for a Jew was, for a male Jew, was circumcision. That's signing the document. You've agreed to the document. If you've undergone that right through a religious ceremony intentionally to bring yourself under the law, then you've now signed the document, says Paul.

And you are now in agreement that you're going to keep the entirety of the law. That's what he's getting at here in this verse. If you want to seek righteousness through the law, then you ought to know in advance what you're signing up for, and he's saying that to the Galatians.

The only hope for someone under the law is that they might completely obey the law in its entirety. Now, does anybody here in the room besides me find the notion of keeping everything that's written in the Old Testament law a little bit daunting?

Maybe overwhelming a little bit? Maybe overwhelming is an understatement? Maybe a better word is impossible? Have you read Exodus, the second half of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy? Have any of you read that before?

It's intense. There are people in modern times who have attempted to try to live according to the law. They haven't done it. I mean, notwithstanding there's not even a temple to take a sacrifice to, you can't.

You cannot do it. Scripture's not for the faint of heart, though. As we move through this text, Paul mystifies me at times. He uses all kinds of double entendres and plays on words here that get uncomfortable in Greek.

But he says in our text that those who would enter into that legal relationship with God through circumcision have been severed from Christ. He's playing with words. That word severed means severed. If anyone thinks of himself as made right in God's eyes by keeping the law, then he says they have fallen from the vantage point of grace.

It's like they've been climbing a mountain and they've come to the top and the pinnacle and they've seen grace and now they have fallen away from it. I believe two things are important for us to identify as some of us in our minds immediately move to the concept of losing your salvation.

As I read that, did any of you think about that? Anybody as you read through, as I was reading through this passage earlier, were you thinking about the potential? I wonder if you can fall away from grace, if you can be severed from Christ.

What does that mean? It's important, I think, for us to get down to the notion of those because the notion, that phrase severed from Christ, the phrase fallen from grace, sounds a lot to me like losing your salvation.

Would any of you agree with me on that? Doesn't it sound like that? But first of all, Paul doesn't speak directly about the spiritual condition of those who, he says, have fallen. They have been separated from Christ and fallen away from grace, but it does not say they've fallen out of grace.

There's different Greek words that are available for Paul to use. One is an in and then now removed kind of Greek word, and this one is a at the door of or up at the pinnacle of and have fallen away from.

Do you see the difference between falling away from something and falling out of something? They were close. They were close to grace, but they've fallen away from it. But there's even something that's more significant in the text that I think matters, most important, is that Paul does not believe that these Galatians, I mean rather does believe that these Galatians are true believers and therefore they will not fall away.

Paul presupposes that if you are in with Christ, you will not fall. Go ahead and look over at verse 10 for a second, a few verses down the road. He had confidence in the Lord that they would see things his way and that those false teachers among them would be punished.

Paul takes for granted that the proof is in the pudding. If you are in Christ, you will persevere to the end. If you do not persevere until the end, then you were not ever in Christ. That might not be very comforting to us.

I mean as a practical comfort, how does that work in your life then? Like am I in or am I out? Although it might not sound comforting, Scripture offers comfort for those who are in with Christ, but equally strong warnings to stand firm in your faith.

Both are true. You can have comfort and assurance that God has saved you, but equally you are to be guarding your heart, to be careful and to be cautious. I do not believe that a person who is truly in with Christ, truly under the umbrella can ever be removed from being under that umbrella of salvation.

I believe you will persevere to the end if you are in Christ, but I think there is a way to be confused. There is a way to think that you are in with Christ and you are not. Let me be clear, because some of you have sensitive consciences, the minute that somebody talks like this, you are like, maybe I am out.

Immediately you are like, I am not a Christian, I am pretty sure and I better pray again to accept Jesus Christ as Savior. Let me just say this very, very clear. If you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, you want to be with Him someday, you have a longing, a sense in your heart that you are like, there is something beautiful about Jesus, there is something amazing about Him, and I want Him to save me and I believe that He can save me.

That is what is needed. That is it. Think in your life, have I done that and then am I living in that? If you are not living in that, then go back to that point and say, go ahead and say it again. Go ahead and say, Jesus, I need you and I want you and I know that I need you to save me because I am more concerned with where you are at today than with some decision that you made when you were ten years old.

Do you understand what I am saying by that? In all honesty, are you walking with Christ now? If you are walking with Christ now, awesome. That means steps forward, steps back. You are going to have setbacks.

Do you agree with me on that? You are going to have setbacks, but in reality, are you desiring God? You sense that in your heart. Does your spirit, as Paul said earlier, cry out, Abba, Father, I am dependent upon you, I need you.

That's key in the Christian life. But there are warnings to stand firm in his grace. You see, for those who live enslaved to the law or enslaved to self, there is very little hope. We don't sense that hope.

For those who are under the law, think about this, when have you done enough to please God? Have you been to that stage in your life when you have been kind of trying to please God by your own works? How do you know when you have crossed the line into an assurance, any sense of hope that I have done enough now that God will like me?

I have done enough now that I have hope that when I stand before him, I am going to be okay. There is no end to that. There is always more. Is there always more you could be doing? Always more to spin the tires and try to get yourself moving like that train out in the middle of the cornfield.

Always more to try to push yourself forward, put some logs under the wheels or something, just anything to get some movement, right? Always more effort. And in verse 5, Paul says, for those who approach God by faith, that is trusting God to keep his promises to bless us through Jesus Christ, that is what faith is, the Spirit uses that faith to produce anticipation and hope that one day we will genuinely be righteous.

Paul says that those who are in Christ eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. Do you eagerly wait for that hope? Are you longing for the day of the return of Jesus Christ? Are you looking forward to his return when you hear, well done, good and faithful servant?

Is your longing that one day you will be set free from sin? Is that in your heart? Do you want that day? Jesus said, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. For what? They will be sad.

Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? Then you will be satisfied, says Jesus Christ. If your life is based on law, you live a life based on wishful, hopeful thinking. That maybe someday you will arrive, maybe someday by some chance you will prove yourself to be good enough.

But for those who are under the promise, our faith is in the goodness and faithfulness of God. And that faith and the goodness of God drives us to bank on his promises. We can count on it that he will present us one day righteous before his father.

Because in Christ we no longer are motivated by law keeping, but according to the text by faith working through love. That's our motivation now. The cross of Jesus Christ moves us to love because of the amazing model of love we have in Jesus Christ.

Where did Jesus Christ model love for us? Where did he model that for us? On the cross. That is the place. The cross of Jesus Christ moves us to love because of the amazing model that we have. But it's not merely his example.

It's not just that example that we have that motivates, but in trusting in his sacrifice for me, I experience what it means to be truly loved through the cross. I know love because of the cross. I understand what it means.

A true love came to me at the cross, an honest love, a pure love, a sacrificially costly love I encounter at the cross of Jesus Christ. Nowhere else in life have I encountered that kind of love. And that is the kind of love that has the power to transform the human heart.

That is where the power comes from, is in recognizing and coming to the place of love and to the one who has loved us so much that he laid down his life for you and me. And that is why I keep encouraging all of us to keep the cross in our minds, to keep the cross in our hearts, to keep it before our eyes, seeing him there, dying in our place is the way we are motivated to humility.

It's the way we are motivated to sacrifice. The way we are motivated to love others is because we have seen his great love. The life of the Christian is ignited by the spirit, informed by faith, fueled by the cross and characterized by love.

Let me say that again. The life of the Christian is ignited by the spirit, informed by faith, fueled by the cross and characterized by love. So then Paul goes on to say to be circumcised or not to be circumcised in the end counts for nothing.

It is irrelevant in Christ. All of these externals, all the law, all the things in the hoops that we can jump through and the different things that we can do to try to make ourselves more presentable or pleasing to God, it's irrelevant.

And then you look down at verses 7 and 8. The Galatians who had started their race so well have now had hurdles placed in their way. It's like they've been out on the track running the two miler and others have crowded into their lane or better yet have now placed hurdles.

How many of you know there's no such thing as a two mile hurdle? But now, good reason, if you've ever ran two miles, you know. But now there's hurdles placed in their lanes and they are hurdles that they need to come over.