Fourteenth Sunday After Trinity Service

I added a video of God to Audible, that's 46 hours of listening to that. By audio? Yeah. Oh, that's what I wanted to know. I didn't know if it was going to take more than 10 minutes. Oh, one minute. One minute?

I don't think so. Or do you promise that? No. I'm not going to. No? No. Okay. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Now, the Kongsvinger Lutheran Church, today is the 14th Sunday after Trinity, and we're.

Still continuing to follow the order of Divine Service Setting 3. For our intro at today, we will be using psalm tone D, as in DeLulu, psalm tone D, as in DeLulu. So, if you are physically present here at Kongsvinger, and you are able, please rise for the opening hymn.

Of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Beloved in the Lord, let us draw near with a true heart, and confess our sins unto God, our Father, beseeching Him in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to grant us forgiveness.

Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and you forgave iniquity. Almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto you all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended you, and justly deserved your temporal and eternal punishment.

But I am heartily sorry for them, and sincerely repent of them, and I pray you of your boundless mercy, and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful being.

Upon this, your confession, I, by virtue of my office as a called and ordained servant of the Word, I announce the grace of God unto all of you, and in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all of your sins.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Psalm Tone D. Behold our shield, O God, look on the face of your anointed. For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.

How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints, for the courts of the Lord.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house.

Keeper in your house of my God. Then dwell in the tents of wickedness. The Lord bestows favor and honor. Nothing does he withhold from those. And to the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, look on the face of your anointed.

For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. Keep your church with your perpetual mercy. And because of our frailty, we cannot but fall. Keep us ever by your help from all things hurtful.

And lead us to all things profitable to our salvation. Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

You may be seated.

The Old Testament reading for the 14th Sunday after Trinity is taken from the book of Proverbs, chapter 4. Hear, my son, and accept my words, that the years of your life may be many. I have taught you the way of wisdom.

I have led you in the paths of uprightness. When you walk, your step will not be hampered, and if you run, you will not stumble. Keep hold of instruction. Do not let go. Guard her, for she is your life.

Do not enter the path of the wicked. And do not walk in the way of the evil. Avoid it. Do not go on it. Turn away from it and pass on. For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong. They are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble.

For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until the full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness.

They do not know over what they stumble. My son, be attentive to my words. Incline your ears to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight. Keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh.

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. We'll speak the gradual together by half verse. It is good to give thanks to the Lord,.

To sing praises to your name, O Most High,.

To declare your steadfast love in the morning,.

And your faithfulness by night.

Our epistle is taken from Galatians chapter 5. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.

These are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Against such things there is no law, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and its desires. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke, the 17th chapter.

Glory be to the Lord.

On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus was passing along between Samaria and Galilee, and as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

When he saw them, he said to them, You go and you show yourselves to the priests. And as they went, they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.

He fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except for this foreigner?

And he said to him, Rise and go. Your faith has made you well. This is the Gospel of the Lord.

We confess our faith together in the words of the Nicene Creed.

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered and was buried and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father and he will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead whose kingdom will have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe in one holy, Christian and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen. You may be seated.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Sanctification is an important doctrine within the Christian Church and if you get this wrong, you jeopardize your eternal salvation. And I would note something here, that if it seems like for the past few weeks I've been writing hard against the self-righteous, well, then this week's gonna make it feel like I've just got, like, that they're obsessed, I'm obsessed with them and they're living rent-free in my mind, but they're not.

I would note, we must ride hard against the self-righteous because not only do the self-righteous falsely teach that we are justified by our works, also the self-righteous say that we are sanctified by our works.

That is baloney. A good way to put it this way, is even if somebody believes that we are justified by faith in Christ, if they then turn around and say, well, justification is God's part and sanctification is my part.

Now, I would note, you do have a role to play in sanctification, but as soon as you put it into those terms, then what happens is, is that you believe that sanctification is by your stark naked will and obedience and it's not.

In fact, the name of the sermon today is gonna be a little scandalous. I basically am saying that sanctification is kids' stuff. It's child's stuff. And until you embrace that, you'll never understand it.

And you'll note that being a Christian is difficult. This is why the self-righteous approach doesn't work. And the reason being is this. Have any of you felt like, I don't understand why God puts up with me because it does seem like I can never get my act together.

Right? Despite your best intentions, oftentimes you will find yourself falling into sin, giving into temptation. And so when you follow the self-righteous approach to sanctification, you begin to think, I can't possibly be saved because I'm such a screw-up.

This is no way to approach sanctification. So I'm gonna repurpose one of the texts that I've used a few times already in the past few weeks. And if you sit there and go, well, Pastor Rosebro, can you do that?

Aren't you afraid of redundancy? No! Okay? If you haven't been around me long enough, then you're not familiar with the fact I tell the same stories over and over again. Just the same people I've told them to.

And the older I get, the worse it gets. So that's the wonderful thing about getting old, is I can't remember everything I told you. And so if I tell you the same story again, you better laugh at the right place.

And be polite. I had to do that with my parents and my grandparents, and you'll have to do it with me. Alright? So all that being said, a little bit of a groundwork. Okay? If I said, fill in the blank, pride comes before a what?

Fall. Pride comes before a fall. The one who exalts himself will be what? The one who humbles himself will what? I would note this. This is the key to understanding Christian sanctification. The self-righteous are the arrogant.

The self-righteous are the prideful who are setting themselves up for a fall. And anybody who tries to sanctify themselves by their stark, naked will and obedience, good luck on that, by the way, because that's going to lead to a lot of delulu.

That's why I picked that today. It's the psalm tone. It's going to lead to a lot of delusion. What does John say? If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Right? We deceive ourselves when we start going down this path.

But the idea, then, is that the way of humility is to recognize that Jesus, in the gospel of John, chapter 14, when he promised the Holy Spirit, he said he was going to send a helper. Which means you must humbly accept the fact that you need help.

Not only do you need help, you need a lot of it. Like, a ton. It always annoys me, and this is a little bit of confession on my part, it always annoys me when I'm setting about to do some kind of a project, and it's clear that I've gotten in over my head.

And my wife says to me, don't you think you ought to get some help? Oooh! I hate that. Okay? Why? Because just the question itself says, you haven't got what it takes to do this, Chris. You need help.

And consider this, the Holy Spirit is the helper. Jesus said so. And you can sit there and bristle at this all you want. Oh, I hate that fact. Sanctification needs to be the thing I do. I need to get my act together.

No! You need help. And boy, do you need it badly. So, humble yourself. And understand you cannot do this by your own strength. In fact, that's kind of the point that we're going to be looking at today.

So, repurposing a text that I've preached on a few times now in the past couple of weeks. Galatians chapter 3 starting at verse 1, talking about the self-righteous. Watch the words. Oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?

It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. And I would note, I pointed out last week, this is a definitive argument. The definitive argument against self-righteousness is that Christ is crucified.

I would note that what we're about to see is that this not only applies to justification, it also applies to sanctification. You who are trying to just sanctify yourself by your stark naked obedience, Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

So, get used to it. So, let me ask you this. Did you receive the Spirit, the Holy Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? We know the answer to this. By hearing with faith. And I would note something here.

When you hear about doing things in passages like Galatians 3, Galatians 5, and Romans 8, doing it by the Holy Spirit or by the Spirit, this is not talking about your need to spend 30 minutes in your war closet praying in tongues.

That's not what this is about. To do things by the Spirit is to do things by the Spirit's power. And you'll note that in this small section of Galatians 3, by the Spirit and by faith are used synonymously.

Right? So, did you receive the Holy Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Well, by hearing with faith. Are you so foolish? Listen to the words next. Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

Does that sound like sanctification to you? It sounds like sanctification to me. Oh, Jesus got me headed down the highway in the right direction. Oh, but I've gotta now do it on my own. That is not only the religion of the flesh, it's the sanctification of the flesh and good luck sanctifying yourself by your own flesh.

It ain't gonna work. That would be like me saying, you know, I struggle with being overweight. I have a solution. I'll just suck it in. Oh, that didn't last long. So much for my weight loss. Right? It's the same thing.

Your flesh doesn't, not only doesn't have the power to sanctify you at all, your flesh is warring against the Spirit and working against what the Spirit is doing in you. So Paul says, did you suffer so many things in vain?

Indeed it was in vain. He who supplies the Spirit to you and work miracles among you, do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith, just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

So the long text on Christian sanctification and one of the most controversial in all of Scripture is found in Romans chapter 7. And I would note something here. You can spot somebody who is self-righteous and trying to sanctify and maybe justify themselves by their works by what they believe regarding this text.

So you ask the Nazarene and by the way, this is in the official Nazarene handbook which explains their core doctrines. They deny that in Romans 7 that Paul is describing himself in the present that he wrote this and he is not describing Christians at all.

He is describing himself prior to becoming a Christian. Here's your problem. When Paul gets to the point where he talks about the things I don't want to do, I do, he's writing in the present indicative active.

He's describing what is happening now and as soon as you deny that this is a description of the Christian life, you are now headed down the maze of delusion and you are being deceived because if you don't recognize this is the normal Christian life and the struggle that we all have then you are ill-equipped and incapable of producing true Christian sanctification which by the way, you're not capable of producing that at all.

You need the Holy Spirit. So Paul says in Romans 7, 7 So what shall we say talking about the law? That the law is sin? No, by no means. If it hadn't been for the law I would not have known sin for I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said you shall not covet.

But sin, and notice the way he's describing sin. A good way to think about it is that sin is a corruption of our human nature. It's like a virus in a laptop. We Macintosh users never have to worry about such things but those of you on other platforms, I feel bad for you because there's nothing worse than opening up your laptop and clicking a button and it going and then saying that your laptop is being held ransom, you need to pay $50 ,000 to some people in India.

Okay, you know what I'm talking about. Not that it's happened to any of you but the point is this sin is like that. It's like a virus in a system. The system itself, laptops are great things but as soon as the corruption of the virus, the corruption of sin gets into the system good luck getting it out.

Right? But sin, Paul says, seizing an opportunity through the commandment produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Now, Paul is describing a reality here that when you hear law, law, more law, some Coles law to go with that law, okay, that what it's going to end up doing rather than producing holiness in you, sin inside of your flesh is going to sit there and go, hmm, the commandment says thou shall not steal.

Hmm, that sounds kind of fun, right? And what's going to happen is that your sin, sinful flesh, is going to want to do the things that God's command says don't do. Don't believe me? Raise children. Tell them don't eat the cookies out of the cookie jar.

What are they going to do? They're going to eat the cookies out of the cookie jar. This is how this goes. We have this weird thing that we do. As soon as somebody tells us no, we sit there and go, well, maybe.

Right? So that's what Paul is describing here. He says this, apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive, and I died in the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.

For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment deceived me, and through it killed me. So the law is holy. Make no mistake about it. The law is holy. The commandment is holy. It's righteous and good.

But then he asks another question. Did that which is good then bring death to me? Well, by no means. It was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin. And through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh present tense, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. The things I do not want to do, I do not do what I want, but the very things that I hate.

Now, if I do not do what I want, I agree that the law is good. So it is no longer I who does it. It's sin that dwells within me. I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. I have the desire to do what is right, but I do not have the ability to carry it out.

Listen to those words. Present tense. I have the desire to do what is right, but I do not have the ability to carry it out. That's Paul describing himself at the time he wrote the Epistle of Romans. And if the Apostle Paul doesn't have the ability to carry out the good that God commands in and of himself, then I would note, neither do you.

Now, I understand that Paul was a contentious fellow and he said some things that were very upsetting to people who are all about not being offended nowadays, but that's beside the point. He was chosen by Christ.

He is the major author of the New Testament. Chosen by Christ as his Apostle. And if he said that he doesn't have the ability to do the good that God commands in and of himself, then we better just put the pause button on all efforts to carry out God's commands by our own strength.

It won't work. It doesn't work. In fact, the people who head down this road become intolerably arrogant and prideful. This is the reason why there are characters such as Church Lady. Could it be Satan?

Judgmental beyond all reason. A slanderous gossip in the church, claiming to be holier than everybody else while at the same time obviously steeped in deep sin and oblivious to it, right? Paul says, I have the desire to do what's right, but I don't have the ability to carry it out.

I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now, if I do not do what I want, it's no longer I who do it. It's sin that dwells in me. Now, here we can go Pentecostal and go, Amen!

Give me a witness. Hallelujah! That's correct. That's right. Right? Who of you doesn't know what this feels like? This is like the daily grind of being a Christian. And so, when it comes to the struggle between you, the regenerate Christian, and your sinful corrupted flesh, it becomes a stalemate.

And if you're going to fight your sinful flesh on your own, you'll never win. And you can't win. And the point is, that's kind of the point. You're not supposed to win. We are given a helper, the Holy Spirit.

So he says, I find it a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law, waging war against the law of my mind and making me captain for the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Did you note the words, waging war? Let me ask you a question. Do you think that Zelensky and Putin will be able to get together this week and maybe have a cup of coffee, maybe a couple of beers and a little bit of vodka and meal together and crack some jokes and just let bygones be bygones?

Do you think that's happening this week? No! Well, why? Because they're at war with each other. And people at war with each other, they are hell-bent on mutual destruction. The whole point of a war is you win when you defeat your enemy, and that means killing a lot of them.

Right? So Zelensky and Putin getting together this week and chatting it up ain't happening. Why are you treating your sinful flesh like you can somehow sit down with it and reason with it and negotiate with it and get along with it?

It wants the Christian to die. It wants the spirit kicked out. It wants what it wants, and it's waging war to get what it wants. Thus, it is so steeped in corruption, you can't reason with your sinful flesh.

Which means you better take up the warfare and figure out how to nail that thing to the cross and keep it there where it belongs. But you don't have the ability to do that, and neither did the Apostle Paul.

So then Paul kind of blurts out, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? I happen to know a guy who can do that. And who has done that, and that's kind of the point. So note Paul in describing this daily grind and daily struggle of being a Christian.

He's talking about sanctification here. He blurts out, who's going to deliver me from this body of death? And here's the thing. When you finally humble yourself and recognize you can't do it like the Apostle Paul confessed he can't do it, you yourself will basically cry out the same thing.

Who's going to deliver me from this body of death? You actually get to the point in your life where you sit there and go, when am I going to be done with this? It's like living with a crazy, crazy, crazy person, and the crazy person's you, right?

Oh wretched man, who will deliver me from this body of death? But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, that I myself, I serve the law of God with my mind and my flesh, I serve the law of sin.

But then come the important words. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Anybody who is a Christian, Christ does not condemn you, and those words are said in the context of the Apostle Paul saying, I'm a complete screw up, I don't have the ability to not.

Sin. Huh.

Wait. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Jesus isn't going to kick me out because I struggle with sin, and I have sinful desires. Nope. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Why? Because Christ was condemned for you. That's the whole point of the cross. You'll note that when Jesus was on trial, what sins did he commit? Zero. What crime did he commit? Not a single one. But he was found guilty.

And when the charges were brought against him, he didn't even defend himself. Why? Because God laid on Christ the iniquity of us all. And therefore as our substitute, Jesus was rightly condemned. He did suffer in your place.

He suffered God's punishment and condemnation so that you and I would experience no condemnation. Instead, we would hear the comforting words of God that your sins are forgiven. Today when we have the Lord suffer, hang on those words.

This is the true body of Christ, given for you for the forgiveness of your sins. This is the true blood of Christ, shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. You do not come here to be condemned by God today, especially since you can't seem to get your act together and experience Christian perfection when it comes to sinlessness.

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Screw-ups like the Apostle Paul, like myself and yourselves, there is no condemnation. We are in Christ. And then he says, the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but we walk according to the spirit.

And here's now where the transition begins to take place. In 7 you have the stalemate, the stalemate between your sinful flesh and the new person you are in Christ, and the inability in and of yourselves to do what God commands.

And here Paul now is saying that we are to walk not according to the flesh, but we are to walk according to the Holy Spirit. We'll talk about how one does that. Remember, this is child stuff, and you have to humble yourself to understand that.

For those who live according to the flesh, what do they do? They set their minds on the things of the flesh. Those who live according to the spirit, they set their minds on the things of the spirit. To set the mind on the flesh, that's death.

To set the mind on the spirit, that is life and peace. The mind that is set on the flesh, it is hostile to God, it doesn't submit to God's law, indeed it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

But you however, you are not in the flesh, but you are in the spirit, if in fact the spirit of God dwells in you. So let me ask you this, does the spirit of God dwell in you? I don't see you guys glowing in the dark when we turn the lights off.

So how can we know whether or not the spirit of God dwells in us? Have you been baptized? What does Peter say in Acts chapter 2? Repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

In the waters of baptism, just like Christ, we all have received the Holy Spirit. You can point back to this objective thing that has been done to you in your baptism. So that being the case, you are not in the flesh, you are in the spirit, and the spirit is in you.

Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ doesn't belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, and it is, the spirit is life because of righteousness. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, and he does, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you.

So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. And this is where we have to embrace some basic ideas. Number one, sin is slavery. It is not freedom. I've heard Christians in the past say stupid things like this.

Well, that person, well, they came to Jesus later in life, which means they got to have all that sinful fun before they became a Christian. And when somebody talks like that, that's basically revealing to me that they think that they want to go and do that too.

Right? When you talk about sin as fun, are you out of your mind? The whole thing is death. It is utter slavery. It is not freedom. There's a reason why James in his epistle describes the law, you know, the commandments as the law of perfect liberty.

Because sin is slavery. Sin is servitude. Sin is debt. And so here's the thing. We are debtors as Christians. But you're not a debtor to your flesh. So when your flesh calls up and decides it's going to put on a ruse, boop, boop, boop, boop, yeah, this is your sinful flesh.

Yeah, what do you need? You are behind on your sin payments. And you had better do something or I'm going to be taking you to court. We're going to send this off to collections. Click. Oh, no. What do I do?

How much sin do I need to give you, sir? You're not a debtor to your flesh. And here's the thing. You can only embrace this by faith. Do you believe these words or not? You are not a debtor, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh.

For if you live according to the flesh, you're going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. Again, the words. If by the Spirit, you know, the Holy Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

Well, we better start speaking in tongues and writhing on the ground like, you know, fish and stuff like that. No, that's not what this is talking about. Like I said, this is kids stuff. Now, let me take a look at our epistle text proper.

When you put these two passages together, it begins to make very good sense as to what it means to do this by the Spirit. So, let me go to our epistle text, but I'm going to back up in the context and pick it up at the beginning of chapter 5.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. And here Paul, in this context, is talking about slavery to trying to save yourself by the law.

But I would note that includes what was said earlier in chapter 3 about starting off by the Spirit and then trying to be perfected by the flesh, which again is a misunderstanding of sanctification. So, if I am free in Christ, I will not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Think of William Wallace, right? There he is having his guts taken out of him. All he had to do was admit that he was wrong, and so there he is being tortured. Rather than confess that he was wrong, he cries out, Freedom!

Right? You have to have that mentality. Sin is slavery. I refuse to submit to that yoke again. Look, I, Paul, say to you, if you accept circumcision, if you accept sanctification and justification by works, Christ will be of no advantage to you.

I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision, he is now obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law, either in your doctrine of justification or in your doctrine of sanctification, sneaking it in that way.

You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law, and you have fallen from grace. For through the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.

For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, whether you smoke, drink, or chew, doesn't count for anything. I added that part about drinking, smoking, and chewing. But only faith working then through love.

You were running well, who hindered you from obeying the truth. So this persuasion is not from him who calls you. And a little leaven leavens the whole lump. This is the leaven of self-righteousness.

So I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, 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. And I would note, when you, as a Christian, speak to the self-righteous and say, yep, there's not a thing I can do to save myself. Jesus has done it all for me.

They look at you like you are the devil. They think, uh-oh, we've got to do something about that guy. Because they believe that as soon as you start talking about Christ doing it all, and that we are justified and sanctified by faith and by the power of the Holy Spirit, they'll think that you're somehow trying to sneak antinomianism into the church.

And that's nonsense. Right? And then he says this, I wish that those who unsettle you, you know, the circumcision crowd, I wish they would emasculate themselves. Is that any way for an apostle of Jesus Christ to talk?

You know, the answer is yes. That's right. And, I mean, to kind of summarize it, it's real simple. You circumcision folks, you're not cutting deep enough. You need to do the whole lop-it-off-of-me procedure and just be done with it.

You know, that really shows how spiritual by taking it all off. Oh, that's a terrible way to talk, Pastor. You're offending people. No, this is how the Scriptures describe it. Get used to it. So you were called to freedom, the text says.

You were called to freedom. Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. But, through love, serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.