Galatians 6:11-18 A Real Cause for Boasting

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.

It's hard to believe that it's November already. Is anybody with me on that? Like, it just seems like the summer flew, and oh my goodness, it's November, and we're looking to turkey time here. I plan on moving through the book of Galatians over the course of the summer, and here it is November, and we're just concluding it now.

But I hope you've enjoyed the journey through the book of Galatians. I know that it can be somewhat repetitive, in all honesty. It is Paul just slamming wave after wave against the rocks of our notions of self-sufficiency, against the notion that we can obtain salvation by works, and he's like pulling no punches.

He just wants to keep hammering away that it's by grace, it's by grace, it's by grace, and that's been enriching to me. I've grown with a deeper understanding, a deeper appreciation for the grace of God found in Jesus Christ through my personal study of Galatians, and I hope that you guys, I've been able to bring you along to some degree in that as we wrap this book up this morning.

Paul's letter to the Galatians has served as a constant reminder to me that all that I have of value comes through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Everything that really matters, everything that is truly significant in the broad scope of eternal things, of cosmic things, really centers on the cross of Jesus Christ, and that's hit me wave after wave as I've studied this book.

Through faith in that sacrifice, through faith in the cross of Christ, we have been crucified with Christ, this book has told us. And through faith, the Holy Spirit comes into our lives, and through the Spirit of God in our lives, we walk closer with God in our day-to-day and moment by moment.

And so our lives are transformed ultimately as a result of coming in contact with Jesus Christ, crucified, buried, and raised again three days later. And here in this final text in Galatians, Paul is going to wrap things up with a bunch of different kinds of summary statements of what he's already said, but he is not going to let these false teachers who have moved into Galatia off the hook.

He's going to basically, in these last few verses, he's going to use this as an opportunity to take out a nail and nail the coffin shut on the notion of works-based righteousness works-based salvation and a works-based life.

And that's really the goal in this last text. Paul is also equally, in this last text, going to give us a good cause to boast. And although he's a bit sarcastic in this, that he wants to leave us with something to boast about, it points to the only thing that truly matters in the big picture of life, the only thing that's really worthy of boasting or bragging about, and that's bragging on Jesus Christ and His sacrifice.

And so I want you to open your Bibles to Galatians 6, and we'll be looking at verses 11 through 18. The very end of this text, if you take the Bible that's in the seat back in front of you out, that's page 835.

It's easy to find there. And if you don't own a copy of the Bible, I want you to take that one with you. That's a free gift from us to you. I know it's just a paperback, but at this point, if you need a copy of the Bible, take that one.

Follow along as I read the very words of God to us as filtered through the Apostle Paul. Amen. Let's pray. Father, I thank you. I rejoice in the opportunity to talk about your grace, to talk about your goodness, to talk about the cross.

Father, even just for an opportunity to practice what this passage is saying in boasting in your cross, in talking up the work of Jesus and His great sacrifice, I am convinced that we cannot overdo our enthusiasm and our rejoicing over the cross of Jesus Christ and His great love poured out for us there.

Father, I pray that that would be the very nature of the way that we sing songs this morning, the way that we bring worship before your throne. Father, that we would see Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father, seated, exalted high and lifted up above us because of His great work, because of the nature of Him being God who came in flesh.

Father, I pray that you would be with our worship. Allow us to bring honor and glory to you through everything, through the praise that we offer in worship and through the hearing of your word and through hearts that desire obedience to you.

I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. And have your Bibles open in front of you. I want to make sure that you've got a Bible there page 835 if you came in late. We're in Galatians 6, 11 through 18 and I just need you to be checking up and making sure that what I say is accurate so you can have that Bible open there and I need that.

Paul’s Own Handwriting and the Final Bracket of Galatians

We know that verse 11 marks the final bracketed section of the book of Galatians because there's really a shift we see right away in verse 11 in the way that this is being written and really the last eight verses are written because most of Paul's letters were dictated to a scribe, to a secretary, and they would write the words down.

A technical word, your $10 word for the morning is amanuensis. That's the individual who would be the secretary, the personal scribe to Paul who would write stuff down for him. But here at the end, here in these last eight verses, he picks up the pen himself and writes in his own handwriting this conclusion.

He writes with large letters, he says. You see that right in verse 11. See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. Now why did Paul write with large letters? Well, how many of you could guess that the text doesn't tell us.

Do you agree with that? I mean, it doesn't say I write with large letters because blank. So where there's a gap in our understanding, how many of you are aware that scholars love to just debate those kinds of things to the nth degree?

So you could read pages and pages, almost volumes on why did Paul write with large letters? Now, some would assume, and I kind of wonder about this to some degree. Some would say that Paul had an eye issue, that he struggled with his eyesight.

As a matter of fact, earlier in the book of Galatians, he says, I know you would have given me your own eyes if you could pluck them out of your head and give them to me in the context of his own infirmity.

So he's talking about, I came to you with illness. When I came to Galatia, I was ill, I had some kind of infirmity, and I know you would have given me your own eyes if you could have. Well, that kind of sounds like maybe he had some struggle with his eyesight.

But there's another thing that could be happening here, and that's other scholars believe that he wrote with bigger letters here at the end for emphasis, which was common in that day and age. Now, you couldn't just click the bold or the underlined button on Word or whatever Word processor you use.

So whichever one is the case, regardless, he picked up the pen for emphasis, right? He's writing in his own script, he's writing with his own hand to emphasize this. But ask yourself, why does he tell us he's writing with large letters?

Could you see it on the page? Like, why would you ever say, while you're writing something in a letter, hey, notice that I'm writing with really big letters. Obviously, you're writing with big letters because I can read it.

Well, that highlights the cultural context in which these letters were read aloud in various congregations. Remember, this letter was written to a variety of churches that Paul had started through south central Turkey, the Roman province of Galatia.

And so he's writing to all of the churches in Galatia that he got planted and got started. And there were at least five of them that we know of from the book of Acts. So this letter would have gone to the congregation, imagine this.

So we're a congregation in Galatia. I stand up as the pastor with a new fresh letter from Paul, and I read it in its entirety to you. Now, you don't get a chance to look, you're not looking at the scroll, but I'm reading it to you, and I'm telling you, the end, these last eight verses, have Paul's very own handwriting on them.

He wrote this in large script to emphasize this to us. So imagine what it would have been like. Can you put yourself in that context? Think back to some of the things that Paul has addressed throughout the book of Galatians, those of you who have been here for a while.

Would that be, were there some awkward things stated in this letter that he would have been directly, basically addressing people in the congregations in Galatia? Hey, you false teachers, you out there who are teaching falsely, listen up.

I mean, would there be some awkward, but can you imagine sitting and listening? Like, would any of you be on the edge of your seat listening from the Apostle Paul, who's now removed from you, but was once in your midst planting a church there?

I think we would probably all be kind of listening, we'd be interested in what the dude had to say. And he pulls no punches here at the end. So we're looking at the last eight verses of this entire letter.

And in verse 12, he claims that the false teachers he's been addressing throughout this letter all along have been, have had a subversive agenda, that they've been subverting things. Now remember that Paul went to Galatia, started these churches, and then some false teachers moved in and began to tell them that they need works.

You need the Old Testament law in order to be acceptable to God, and in order to improve in your life. And he has written this entire letter to say, no, the law, you are basically dead to the law, alive to the Spirit, the Spirit of God is alive in you, and you follow the Spirit.

And it's been an intense journey, hopefully for you as it has been for me as we've studied through this book. But they've had a subversive agenda, and they've been forcing circumcision on the Gentile believers.

Now, we know that circumcision has come up, and we're not talking about a medical process or a medical procedure, we're talking about a religious ritual here. The way in which a young Jewish man was brought into the Old Covenant.

So when you hear circumcision in the New Testament, you've got to understand that it carries that notion of the starting effort towards becoming a good Jew. And if a young man was not circumcised, he was by no means considered to be a Jew until he underwent that procedure.

And so you've got to understand, I mean, we, in our culture, we think of it as primarily a medical procedure or something like that. And so you've got to remove that from your mind and distance yourself from that understanding.

And yes, I know, it might even just be awkward for many of us, I'm talking about circumcision, Paul's talking about circumcision. Just get past that for a second and understand what we're talking about is a religious ceremony of initiation into the Jewish faith.

The phrase, he says, make a good showing in the flesh, carries the meaning, a little bit of a double meaning there, obviously, you carry circumcision in your flesh if you're a man, but carries the meaning really of making the flesh more important than it is.

In other words, what he's trying to highlight is that there is a way in which we can live this life with a main primary focus on the external, the way that I look to others, the way that I act to others, to the way that I dress before others.

Are you getting what I'm saying? There is a way in which we can walk in our Christian faith. Are you guys relating to this? Are you understanding what I'm talking about? There's a way that we can act religiously on the outside being focused on the externals without a focus on the thing that matters the most, our heart.

So we can act in certain ways, but the actions and the way we're acting, and when I say act, I mean hypocrisy, play acting, and there's a way we can play act before others and try to jump through all the hoops and look right and act right when in fact our heart isn't right.

Would you agree with me on that? And Paul has been addressing that all throughout this book, and he's saying they're trying to make a good showing in the flesh. That's what he means by that. There's an external conformity, and they are most concerned.

There are some out in the church today that are most concerned that you match certain standards on the outside, but they are not as concerned with your heart, just that you look like them, that you act like them.

And that they are forcing circumcision doesn't mean they're holding men down with a knife, but how many of you know that there's a type of spiritual oppression that occurs that can honestly be called force that never needs physical hostility?

You don't need to physically arrest somebody, pull them to the ground in order to force somebody to do something in a spiritual context. Do you understand what I'm saying? It's not like it's an overstatement for Paul to call it force without there being physical force applied.

There is such a thing as spiritual force and emotional force, and that is something that can easily be abused. There is a psychological harm that can be done by churches, by religious people, even by us, that amounts to forcing people.

So imagine a church, for example, that says you can't get to heaven unless you confess to a priest before you die. Imagine that there was such a church that exists. You cannot get to heaven unless you've confessed your sins before a priest.

Now, could it be said in some sense that you are being forced to confess if you are attending that church? Would that not be fair to say that? Because in a spiritual understanding, if you're going to come under that leadership and you're going to come under that authority, then you are, I mean, you're saying, doesn't everybody want to get to heaven?

Really? I mean, in the end? So there's a force that's being applied there, even though they have not physically dragged you to the confessional, the psychological weight of that teaching forces many to go to the priest in confession.

Is that a good illustration? Are you getting that? We need to be very careful about the force of our teaching. And now you might tune out and go, well, I don't teach much, you know, Don, that's for you.

But you are teaching people. Did you know that? You are educating people around you. And as a matter of fact, I would dare say that many, many people are watching you. And some people you don't even know are watching you, are watching you.

And particularly those who know that you are a Christian, those who know that you attend a church on Sunday morning, they are curious about your lifestyle. I would guarantee that everyone in this room has someone who is watching you and learning from you, and you don't even know it.

As a matter of fact, I read a book not too long ago that contains some interviews of non-Christian neighbors who had Christian neighbors. Are you getting that? So I live next door to a Christian and I'm not a Christian.

Of course, I mean, how does the interview go with whether or not that person is a genuine Christian or not? I don't know. But one thing stuck out consistently, that they are watching and they are wondering.

They are curious. They have questions. Some even went so far in these interviews to confess disappointment that although most Sundays in the summer they are out mowing their lawn or working in their yard, obviously not going to church, that their neighbor has never invited them to their church.

That was actually going on in this survey, in these interviews, saying, I just kind of wonder why haven't they never invited me to church? Why haven't they? Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that being said of you from your next door neighbor who says, they see me.

They see me. They know that I'm not going to church. They see me out mowing. They see me out doing stuff on Sunday morning out for a jog or whatever, but they've never invited me to come to their church.

I mean, can you imagine that there's actually people out there like that? I mean, sometimes we're scared, right? We're scared to enter that conversation. We're afraid that, oh, they might think poorly of us.

And they're just going, why aren't you asking? That's pretty intense, really, if you think about it. And that's reality. So we are communicating. We're communicating all the time. We're teaching people.

But what are we teaching? It's very possible that we're teaching everybody around us that we are better than them. Is that possible that our lifestyle might be conveying that, or the way that we act, or the things that we say, and we are inadvertently, for the sake of trying to jump through some hoops or act in a certain way, we might be communicating to them that we're elite.

That you need to quit. Here's just some examples. That you need to quit smoking before you come to church. You need to clean up your mouth before you come to church. That you need to dress a certain way before you come to church.

Or are we ultimately teaching and communicating the gospel of grace that says, come as you are, because we are all messed up. All of us in the family of God are messed up. And we all just need grace. We all need to come to the foot of the cross.

Come as you are, and let God deal with you where you are at. You see, the false teachers in Galatia had one primary reason for promoting circumcision. Ultimately, they wanted to avoid persecution, Paul tells us.

Now, remember that circumcision was that initiation right for a young male into Judaism. It was a good thing under the Old Testament law. I think it's interesting that Paul uses an illustration of something that would be perceived as a good religious duty.

A good religious behavior. A good religious thing to do. And he says, they are primarily promoting that and forcing that on the Galatians because they want to avoid persecution. From who? From other religious people.

They're afraid of religious people. They knew that highly religious, zealous Jews would persecute them for skipping over the law of Moses. In essence, Paul is saying they want to force people to follow the law out of fear because they are cowards.

They are acting cowardly. Now, in reality, you see that in the text. They were not comfortable with the offense of the cross. Let me look at the text here for a second. Verse 12, the very end of verse 12.

It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised only in order that they may not be persecuted for what? For the cross of Christ. They were not comfortable with the offense of the cross.

It is offensive. The cross is offensive to our culture. Regardless of whichever direction you fall, whichever way you were raised, you were either raised primarily as a religious individual in a religious household or you were raised irreligious.

Really, one of those two probably sticks. Most of us lean in one of those directions in the way that we were brought up. For those who were more into the non-religious, the cross calls us to repent of our wickedness, of our self-centeredness.

To the self-righteous, the cross calls us to repent of our good deeds that we assume are good enough to make us righteous in God's eyes. So the cross has the potential to offend either direction. And they were acknowledging that the cross is offensive to these Jewish people who were claiming to be believers but they were saying the cross can't be enough.

You need more than the cross, right? But they were not only cowardly, these false teachers in Galatia, but they were also hypocrites according to verse 13. Because they who are circumcised outwardly, Paul goes on to say, don't even obey the entire law themselves.

Those who are attempting to fix this outside and make it look good enough for everybody else around them and most concerned with what other people think of them are still not in their heart of hearts following the law.

Now I think all of us know that to some degree. We all know to one degree or another what it means to be a hypocrite. We all know what it means to put a face out there for somebody, whether it's a one-off experience and you've done it for a boss, for a co-worker, for somebody you were dating, whatever.

You put your best foot forward, right? We all understand what that means to have that going on out here simultaneously knowing our own hearts and knowing the wickedness that's going on in here, right?

Have you experienced that? And that's what we're talking about here is this hypocrisy. And they were hypocrites because they who were circumcised outwardly did not obey the entire law that they were basically telling everybody.

They want to force others to follow the law of Moses that they themselves don't even fully follow. And ultimately the entire Old Testament exists as an awesome, huge, gigantic case study in human inability to keep the law.

Our inability to reach the righteous standard of God. But they want to boast an external conformity, particularly of others, these false teachers. In one sense they delight in exercising authority over others and forcing them into external conformity.

How many of you know there's a sense of power in getting people to dance to your tune? To get people to jump through your hoops? To get people to conform to your image? There's some power in that, isn't there?

And that's what these false teachers, there was a delight, a joy in their boasting of getting others to do what they wanted them to do. And what a caution that is to be to us as a church, the body of Christ, the people of Christ, how easy it is to slide into hypocrisy.

That we are all sinners is hopefully as clear to you as it is to me. And yet I would suggest to you that one of the ugliest of all sins is acting on the outward like we are righteous and better than others, holding them to standards that we ourselves do not keep.

As a matter of fact, Jesus reserved while he was here on this planet, reserved his most scathing reviews and critiques of people, the Pharisees primarily, who would whitewash the outside when all of the decay and crud was inside.

He even called them whitewashed tombs. You know what that image is? Scrubbing the outside of the vault when the inside is decaying bones and corruption and disgust. And that's the picture. Or he talked about, he used as an illustration, washing the outside of the cup and not the inside.

How would that look after your kids have drank a glass of milk after a couple of weeks if you just washed the outside of the cup but not the inside? Pretty gross, huh? Okay, we wash the inside too. And we need the inside cleansed, right?

Isn't that what the cross really is all about? And he's driving this home. That's why it's so important that we bring people to grace and not to law. Again, main theme here, if we lead people to a lifestyle and not to the cross, they will not get past our hypocrisy.

If we lead them to act like us, if the primary message that we convey to others is drink what I drink, watch what I watch, go to my church, give like I give, talk like I talk, serve like I serve, we will lead them to become hypocrites just like us.

They will look just like us. They will act just like us. They will be just like us. But will they be saved? Will they have connected with Christ in a meaningful way through the cross and have the heart change that they need?

Are you getting what I'm saying in this? What is the message that we are conveying? And so instead of boasting about external conformity to a list of behaviors, Paul gets, I think, hot under the collar and says, far be it for me to boast except for this.

Far be it for me to boast except in the cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Far be it for me to boast in anything except the cross. Now there is a cause for boasting, not in the power that you exert over others to look like you and act like you, not in what we have accomplished for ourselves, not in our lifestyle, not in our great works and deeds for God, not in converts who look and act like little good Christian bots, but boasting in the cross.

Let me encourage you, Recast, brag it up. You can't overdo it. If you are bragging about the glory, the forgiveness, the grace, mercy, compassion, the sacrifice, the love that we have through Jesus Christ at the cross, talk it up.

You cannot overdo talking about the cross, glorying in the cross, rejoicing in the cross, boasting in the cross. And by the way, boasting in the cross does not look like saying, yeah, I was worth it. I was worth it.

I mean, Jesus died on the cross and just for me, just for me, you know, and I really don't like that statement that some people have said, you know, if I was the only one, if I was the only one, Jesus would have died for me.

Well, he did. He died for me, but he died for us. I mean, there's a community aspect to this that he was purchasing the bride of Christ there on the cross. He was buying us all back. But there's one sense in which we can overstate it to the degree that it is only about us.

That's not what he means by boasting in the cross. Boasting in the cross is bragging up the work of Jesus Christ, that that is my only hope. That is the only place where my sin was dealt with. That's the only thing that gives me hope that one day I will stand before a holy and righteous God, not groveling saying, please don't destroy me, but I am hidden in the life of Jesus Christ, in his death, buried with him and raised again to new life.

And I will stand in that day, not groveling, not begging for clemency, but saying, father, Abba, as we saw earlier, and we will embrace our God and be embraced by him because of what? The cross. Not because we've done a great job.

No, we've done a great job making messes. That's what we do. We're like experts at that, aren't we? I mean, honestly, anybody with me on that? Nobody wants to raise their hand. Three. Okay. I understand why you don't want to raise your hand, but I am.

I make messes. I do. And yet, I mean, the grace of God. So brag it up. Paul is constantly referring to the cross as the place of his death. Go ahead and read back through Galatians. I'd encourage you to read this whole book.

It would take you 10 minutes to read through the whole thing, maybe 15 if you read it from beginning to end. I'd encourage you as we wrap this up today to go back to it and read it in its entirety again, and you will hear how many times does Paul refer to the cross as the place where Paul died.

Not just Jesus, but Paul. And the place where we died if we are in Christ as well. It is there at the cross, he says, that the world lost its hold on him, and he lost his hold on the world. In other words, at the cross, we find that the things that this world has to offer lose their grip on us.

And that's why I keep saying, recast, meditate on the cross, think on the cross, think about the reality of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Keep that foremost in your mind, and you will find that slowly but surely, things will lose their grip on you, that own you.

Things like iPhones, and nexuses, and nice cars. What's the plural of nexus? I don't even know what you mean. Nexai? Nice cars, houses, entertainment, sports, and even family. The religious fame, or religious hoops that we jump through, or status in our community.

All of those things lose hold on our lives at the foot of the cross. Paul says elsewhere that he counted all things as refuse, as garbage, as rubbish, as junk, in light of knowing Christ. And I would say this, and I know this echoes with many of you, for those who have tasted deeply of the forgiveness and grace that we find at the foot of the cross, we are immersed to the point of drowning in his love and grace and mercy for us.

And all else is cheap and paltry imitations. That's all that this world has to offer. And that begins to lose its grip on our lives as we focus on this beautiful thing that Jesus has done for us. This awesome sacrifice to be genuinely loved.

That is the only place that I have experienced that type of sacrificial, full-on love. And that's the only place it can be experienced, is at the cross. And so back to the point, Paul says, circumcision or uncircumcision, so what?

When you talk about the cross, when you get it, when you finally understand it, you embrace it and you know it, so what about circumcision or uncircumcision? In light of the cross, the external sign counts for nothing, he says, right in the text.

The only thing that really matters practically in our lives is that we are a new creation. For neither circumcision counts for anything, verse 15, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. The only thing that matters.

And in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, Galatians being the first letter, the first time that Paul ever picked up a pen and wrote to a church, the book of Galatians. Years later, later in his life, close to the end, not the very last one, but close to the last one, he picks up the pen again and writes 2 Corinthians actually, through a scribe again and all of that.

Writes 2 Corinthians and he says this in verse 5, 17. Tell me this wasn't the theme of his life, the first thing that he writes, talking about a new creation. That's the way he's going to conclude this book, is talking about a new creation.

Close to the end of his life, still talking about being made new in Christ. And he says in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, some of you haven't memorized, therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come.

We have not been made into Jews by accepting Christ. When we come to faith in Christ, we don't remain Gentiles when we embrace him by faith. We are made something completely new. And he has placed his Holy Spirit in our hearts.

We have now the very Spirit of God, God himself residing in us. And we are adopted into his family, as he said earlier in Galatians, into his family as sons, heirs to the promise given to Abraham centuries ago that he's carrying forward through Jesus Christ.

We are no longer Jews as slaves under the law, no longer Gentiles as slaves to the elementary principles of this world, but we have become sons, heirs to the promise by faith. We are not saved to obligation or duty or to law.

We are not saved to just go it alone and get it done now. It is for freedom you have been set free, Paul would say. We've been crucified with Christ, therefore it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us.

And the life we now live, we live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. My question, have you been remade? You can take that for granted. I mean, many of you have been coming to Recast for quite a while, and I could easily take that for granted that yes, and I haven't heard everybody's story in this room.

Have you been remade? Not have you believed a couple of things about Jesus. Have you been remade? External conformity, that is acting like a Christian on the outside, even doing good things, counts for nothing unless we have first and foremost been remade in Christ through faith in his cross and his sacrifice for us.

And Paul offers a blessing of peace and mercy for all who would walk by, and I think he gets tongue-in-cheek here, he calls it a rule, verse 16. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them.

Those of you who have been watching through and studying through the book of Galatians with me, is there anything humorous about his use of the word rule here? What are the two things that he's been contrasting all throughout this book?

Law versus grace, and now it's here at the end, Paul finally issues a rule. He's going to tell us a rule, and it's an ironic rule, and it's a funny rule. I think he genuinely has a sense of humor in this.

He's been talking about faith versus works, and he calls it a rule. If we could make a rule out of what he's been talking about here just prior to this, it would be something like external conformity to the character of God comes through the Spirit transforming you inside.

What we have here, in irony, is Paul issuing to all of you, to all of us, a passive rule. Let the Spirit have his way in your life. Go do that. Go let the Spirit have his way in your life and change you from the inside out.

Kind of ironic. How many of you like active rules better than passive rules? A little bit more meat on it, a little bit more room for me to give you, you know, seven things for you to go do this week about walking with God closer, right?

Wouldn't that be, I mean, how many of you are made that way? You like rules. I mean, it's just honestly the way that you're made, you're designed. And so here he says, you know, here's the rule. God will change you by Spirit from the inside out.

So follow that rule. Kind of interesting. And I lost my place in my notes, but I'll get there here in just a second. Passive rule. And that really ultimately, that ultimately, that passive understanding is the nature of faith.

Faith is trust that the one who is making me more holy will keep it up. That he is keeping up his end of the bargain, that he is working and he is powerful and he can overcome in my life. And here's the question that I think is fundamental to every believer here in this room.

Do we honestly trust that the Spirit of God can do it? Do you believe that the Spirit of God can change you? Well, certainly not without my help, right? I've grown in my conviction that the mystery of the Christian life, as I've studied the scriptures over the years, that the mystery of the Christian life is a genuine trust and belief that the Spirit will do a work in me and is doing a work in me.