Live Free Or Die - [Galatians 5:1-6]

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The title of my sermon tonight is Live Free or Die. We know it, most of us know it.
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Oh, thanks. We know it or most of us know it because it's the state motto of our neighbors to the north in New England, New Hampshire.
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It was officially adopted in 1945. It was popular partly because it gels with the independence sentiment in American political philosophy and partly because it contrasts so much with the milder sayings of other state mottos, like our
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Massachusetts one is Spirit of America or New York Empire State. It actually comes from a toast written by General John Stark in July of 1809.
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He was New Hampshire's most famous soldier of the Revolutionary War. He was invited to a reunion of the anniversary of the
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Battle of Bennington and had to turn them down because of poor health. And since he couldn't make it, he just sent them a toast by letter.
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And the full toast is, Live free or die. Death is not the worst of evils. There's a little more history to the idea, and the phrase has been used in a few other ways through the years.
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You might be familiar with Patrick Henry's favorite quote in 1775 where he says, Give me liberty or give me death.
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In other countries, we see the motto showing up in a variety of places. We see Live free or die on money in France in the late 1700s.
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In Spain during the siege of Barcelona in 1714, the Barcelona defenders used black flags with the motto
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Live free or die. Eleutheria e Thanatos, don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but liberty or death is the national motto of Greece.
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Libertad o morte, liberty or death is the national motto of Uruguay. And independencia o morte, independence or death was the national motto of the
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Brazilian Empire. Is Nayara around? Is she out there somewhere?
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This I thought was interesting. You computer types out there, and I know there's some of you. Unix adopted the motto, one, because of where they were headquartered in New Hampshire, and also because Unix users apparently cherish their independence.
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I don't really get it. If you use Unix, maybe you might. So why am
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I bringing up all these historical facts about the phrase Live free or die? Well, first,
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I thought they were interesting when I was looking them up. Second, I have your attention. And third, most importantly, after looking at the various uses and applications of this phrase,
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I thought in light of our passage for tonight, I'd add one more application or twist to the phrase.
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And my hope is that after tonight, when you see the
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New Hampshire plate, instead of thinking of all these other uses, you'll think of Galatians 5.
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And to see how they're related, if you would turn there now, and we'll read our passage for tonight, Galatians 5.
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And while you're turning there, let me give you some background on this letter so we can frame it out, some perspective, and really to understand
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Galatians, you have to do a little bit of extra introductory work.
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And first, I don't know if you ever noticed, but Galatians is an angry letter.
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What other epistle in the Bible do you find no commendation to the recipients, multiple pronouncements of anathema, and even an encouragement for the antagonists to castrate themselves?
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I mean, this is an angry letter. This is the same
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Paul, remember, that wrote 1 Corinthians 13, the famous love chapter. But when he writes to these churches in Galatia, he's mad.
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So we want to look at why. First, let's consider who he's writing to. There's some disagreement on which specific churches
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Paul's writing to, but I think more than likely it's the four churches in southern
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Galatia. You've got Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, and these are the ones that he established on his first missionary journey.
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If you look in your maps, you can see the different missionary journeys of Paul, and you can see he goes right through these four cities.
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And Tom, did you know when you read Acts 13, you planned that out, right?
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Okay, good. I was freaking out down there. I was like, I cannot believe that God hooked that up like he did. Anyway, oh well,
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I still believe in God's sovereignty, regardless of whether you plan that or not. So we don't have time to read, although you read half of it, and that was the part where Paul was preaching to the church in Pisidian Antioch.
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So when he goes through those four cities, a lot of people get saved. And needless to say, the leading
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Jews weren't happy about it, obviously, and they were pretty much spreading hate, discontent, even following him out of one of the cities and following him into the next, and eventually they got enough people to stone him in Lystra and leave him for dead, or Lystra.
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After that, you think Paul would have taken the hint and, you know, go away, but no, he moved on to Derbe, taught them for a while, and then what did he do?
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Turned right around and went right back through those four cities, and he was encouraging them, teaching them some more.
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We see later Paul returned to all four of these cities in both his second and his third missionary journeys. So we see
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Paul has put some serious effort into these people. By now he would have a deep love and concern for them.
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And our part of the story picks up right after the first missionary journey that Tom read about earlier, and here's where we see the arch -nemesis of Paul first emerge.
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And it's the reason he wrote the letter. So I know I had you turn there, but put your finger in Galatians and turn to Acts 15.
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Acts 15, verse 1. It says,
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But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.
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And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.
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So here it is. Some of you will recognize it. The first church council. This is the Jerusalem Council. And the purpose here was to address this teaching that to be saved, one not only had to have faith in Christ, but also convert to Judaism, basically, or follow the same laws as the
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Jews. And those who taught this doctrine were referred to as Judaizers. It's interesting that this term,
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Judaizer, actually only ever occurs once in the New Testament, and it's in our book in Galatians 2 .14. I'll read the verse.
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But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all,
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If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the
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Gentiles to live like Jews? And there's the word, Judaize, literally, to live like a
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Jew. So it's right around the time of the council that Paul probably wrote this letter to the
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Galatian churches. He'd heard that the Judaizers were spreading this heresy among his beloved brethren that he had put so much effort into leading to Christ and teaching the truth.
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Now his sheep were being attacked by these Judaizing wolves. Not only that, but they're falling for it.
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You can sense Paul's emotion in this situation. I imagine
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Paul must feel like a Christian parent when one of their children falls away.
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After all that teaching, they go and listen to the bad influence of their friends around them.
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I've not been on the receiving end of that. I hope I never will, but I know I was on the giving end of it at one point.
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And I remember the pain I put my own parents through when they would find out some of the stuff that I was doing after growing up in a
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Christian household all those years. So now imagine that as the parent you know the ones, you can point to the ones who are influencing them in their decisions.
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This is what Paul must feel like. So we can sense a real deep -hearted disappointment in the ones he spiritually fathered in Galatia and then a deep burning anger toward those who are hurting his children.
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So back to Galatians. Now we can see where some of this anger in Paul's letter stems from. And this is why there is no commendation for them as with other letters.
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Instead Paul starts blasting going to the beginning of Galatians. Gun blazing, rebukes, doctrinal defenses.
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In Galatians 1 verse 6 he says, I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.
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Verses 8 and 9 we see double anathemas to anyone preaching another gospel. 11 through 24
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Paul feels the need to defend his authority as an apostle. In chapter 2
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Paul writes about the Jerusalem council, the verdict regarding Gentiles and the law. Then he shares with them how he told
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Peter off to his face when Peter started to pull a Judaizer by separating from the
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Gentiles. Then again he blasts them in chapter 3. 3 verse 1,
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O foolish Galatians, who have bewitched you? Verse 3, Are you so foolish?
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In the rest of chapter 3 and 4 Paul expounds some more doctrine relating to righteousness by faith, the intent of the law and our position of sonship in Christ.
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While we were children we were stuck with the elementary things of the law. But now as grown sons we live by the spirit and don't need the tutor of the law anymore.
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So after all this rebuke and doctrine comes chapter 5. And this is where the letter hinges.
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It's hinging from doctrine to application. And our passage starts with a strong exclamation and a command.
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And here's our passage in Galatians 5. I'll read the first 6 verses.
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Starting in verse 1, For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
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Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.
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I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.
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You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace.
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For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.
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For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything but only faith working through love.
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So let's go back to verse 1. For freedom Christ has set us free.
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Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
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This could really be considered the primary theme of the book, sort of the cry of Paul to the Galatians.
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Christ has set you free. Don't go back into bondage. I think of someone that leads someone to Christ out of a really bad drug background.
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And you see lots of progress as they're in the
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Word. They're growing. It seems like that old lifestyle is behind them. And then the person moves away and finds out that they're partying again.
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They're falling back into that lifestyle. And you call back to them. Why do you want to go back to that?
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You know, I thought I taught you. I thought you got it. Why are you going back?
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Why would you want to go back to that? Don't give in. Stand firm. Paul says freedom was the very purpose that God redeemed his people.
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Think, by definition redemption is purchasing someone out, right? God has bought us from the slavery of sin and has made us free.
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We are now free from sin, free from the law, which served to magnify and highlight our sin.
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Why would anybody want to go back to that? So for the verses that follow,
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I want to kind of pull together a list. And here's what I call it. Five deadly side effects of turning to legalism.
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And you know about side effects. You hear about them on the drug commercials. Yes, this drug may cure your hair loss, and you know why
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I picked that one. But side effects may include upset stomach, dizziness, profuse vomiting, blindness, and in rare cases, painful and prolonged death.
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Okay, maybe side effects aren't always that extreme. But the ones in this list make that list seem benign.
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The list I'm talking about here is more like side effects of cyanide or side effects of drinking sulfuric acid.
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Some may think so, but there's no true good effect of legalism.
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But there are certainly some deadly side effects. As we look at these, there's really two applications here that I want to address.
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One is aimed at unbelievers or those who think they're believers.
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These are the ones that, in this case, the Judaizers may have tried to convert.
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They would be putting their very trust for salvation in both grace and the law.
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Then you have the believers who really are the primary addressees here. And these would be
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Paul's converts, and the legalism they're following would be more compared to a
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Pharisaical form of legalism. We have to remember most of these
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Judaizers were likely former Pharisees. In their case, they're saved, not these
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Judaizers, but the believers he's talking to. They're saved, but they're living like Pharisees.
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They're living their life by some extra -biblical set of rules, in this case the law.
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For most of us here tonight, this really will be our most pressing application. But we're going to look at both sides.
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So our first side effect is in verse 2. And I call it the loss of advantages of Christ.
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In verse 2 it says, Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision,
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Christ will be of no advantage to you. The NAS says,
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Behold, I, Paul. The NIV states it,
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Mark my words. This is about to be some important information, and you
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Galatians better be listening. Next, Paul more than likely invokes his authority as an apostle.
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He's defended his position and authority early in the letter, and he makes it 100 % clear that his authority trumps that of these false teaching
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Judaizers. Again, you can sense the tone, which really is consistent through the whole letter.
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If you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. The tense is important here as well.
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He's saying if you get yourself circumcised, if you're considering it, if you're going to get it,
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Paul isn't objecting to circumcision in and of itself. He's not objecting to those already in a position of circumcision, and we know that because Paul was circumcised, right?
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He didn't even think it was necessarily a sin for a Christian to be circumcised. In Acts 16, he had
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Timothy circumcised since he was half Jewish, and it was going to allow them more opportunity to witness in the
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Jewish synagogues. Paul's problem was the idea that circumcision had any spiritual benefit or merit in itself.
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The Judaizers were teaching that the new covenant was added to the old covenant, and that for a
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Gentile convert, circumcision was sort of that last piece of self -effort required to sort of perfect the plan.
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Bruce puts it this way, Christ will provide unlimited help to those who place their undivided trust in him, but no help at all to those who bypass his saving work and think to become acceptable to God by circumcision or other legal observances.
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The statement Paul makes here really should not be underestimated or minimized.
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He's making an explosive statement here. If we attempt to do something in order to gain favor before God for salvation, we've just stripped any advantage
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Christ would have been to us. We have taken his work on our behalf and nullified it.
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Calvin says this, whoever wishes to have the half of Christ loses the whole.
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Hendrickson condenses this truth in this short, I like this statement, a Christ supplemented is a
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Christ supplanted. Powerful statement. Think of the gravity of that one. A Christ supplemented is a
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Christ supplanted. If you've been at this church any period of time, you no doubt have heard the monumental doctrines of grace here.
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Our total depravity contrasted with Christ's love, his mercy, his grace to give us this unfair gift of eternal life.
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We should burn for our rebellion forever. And what does he do instead?
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He dies in our place. He takes what we rightfully deserve and he doesn't stop there.
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And he gives us everything. He makes us his children.
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We spit in his face through our sin and he turns around and adopts us as his own.
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We crucify him and he loves us. Really?
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I think the hymn says it well. And can it be? I challenge you next time you sing that or just read it sometime and meditate on the words of that song and pay attention to the punctuation, the question marks.
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If you truly meditate and internalize those words and you don't have a tear in your eye, then
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I'd start examining yourself because there may not be life in there. When we think of this verse with all the implications that it makes, it's really scary stuff.
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All that Christ has done, all the advantages that he's created become worthless as soon as we add one thing to it.
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Paul spells it out in his letter to the Romans, Romans 930. I'll just read it. What shall we say then?
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That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it. That is a righteousness that is by faith.
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But that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law.
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Why? Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith as if it were based on works.
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What an irony. The Jews tried so hard to gain righteousness and lost it because they tried in an unauthorized way.
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The Gentiles weren't even looking, but they found righteousness by faith. When I think about this concept,
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I can't help thinking. We've been reading Pilgrim's Progress. We just finished it. We might read it again.
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Pilgrim's Progress in our family Bible time by John Bunyan. And if you haven't,
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I would highly encourage reading it with your kids. It's great entertainment, but at the same time, it describes in a really unique way really poignant biblical doctrinal truths.
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And really, for no other reason, it's the second bestseller of all time, second to the
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Bible. But it's straight allegory, and every character, place, act, it's a representation of some biblical reality.
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And the main character, Christian, is on a journey. And along the way, he comes across a guy named Worldly Wise Man.
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And he tries to thwart him by convincing him to go to a man named Mr. Legality who lives in the town of Morality.
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Of course, this is off the path, and if he goes that way, he would find sure destruction.
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Later, he comes across more similar men, Formalists and Hypocrisy. And you can guess who these represent.
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So when they go down the path and they get to this hill difficulty, Christian goes straight down the path and he goes over the hill.
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And the other two choose the easier paths on either side. One is called Danger, and the other
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Destruction. I mean, as if they can't read. But these both paths, of course, are full of false religious and social philosophies.
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But anyway, you can see it's great stuff. The kids love it, and it really is great for adults too. I suggest you read it.
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But I can't help but thinking about it when I was reading for this.
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So before we turn to our next point, I think it bears mentioning, what would it mean if works did have some merit?
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What if the law could gain favor before God for salvation? And Paul actually addresses that earlier in the letter, and the answer is really, it's earth -shaking.
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I can't really leave it out of our discussion here. Galatians 2 .21, you can turn there if you want since you're close. It says,
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I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then
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Christ died for no purpose. If we can get righteousness or salvation through some other means,
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Christ died for nothing. Ponder that concept. God lowering himself, becoming a man.
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Think of the Passion Week. Think of the suffering he went through.
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And then the separation from God as the sin of the world was put on him, and the Father turned his back on him.
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For nothing. Complete waste. I heard one commentator, he said, this would be real child abuse if this were the case.
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So we've seen, if instead of grace alone you turn to circumcision, which really is the law, which really is legalism, you'll ultimately lose the benefits of Christ.
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Second deadly side effect, if you lose something as part of the first side effect, you're going to gain something as part of the second.
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But you don't want what you gain. Second side effect, gain an obligation to be perfect.
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Verse 3, I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.
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Paul carries the same tone here again, just heaping on the urgency of his appeal. The Greek here for testify implies a strong protest.
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Paul's amped up. This is a big deal. And he just keeps on using this strong emotional language.
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One of the biggest reasons people devise systems of legalism or some special works requirements in order to gain salvation, at the end of the day it seems easier.
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Just think of the legalistic religions that you know of. Doesn't it seem easier?
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Show up at church for a couple of holidays, maybe go to the confessional booth, maybe a couple of times a year, and live like hell the rest.
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Easy. Even the other more intense legalistic religions that you might be able to think of, it's like give me the steps
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I need to get to heaven, then I don't have to think about it anymore. I'll just try my best to do them. Or what about closer to home, the more evangelical legalistic churches?
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On the surface it seems much easier to just have someone tell me what to do.
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Pastor, don't bother me with doctrine. That stuff's too much to think about. Just get up there, tell me what to do, and I'll do it.
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It's too much work to actually study the Word, ponder the depths of Christ and the glory set before us because of Him, and actually discern on our own what we ought or ought not to do.
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Instead, keep it simple, just tell me what to do. It may seem easier on the surface, but let's think about that in the context of what
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Paul is saying here. If we're to take some right or accept some extra -biblical requirement to earn salvation or sanctification, we just made ourselves obligated to keep the whole law.
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Remember, we're required to be perfect. After all, it says in James, for whoever keeps the whole law yet stumbles in one point, he's become guilty of all.
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Paul's already made this point clear earlier in the letter. In Galatians 3 .10 it says, The whole point of the law, it's not to save us, but it was to show our inability to earn our way to God.
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We can't even get close. We need a Savior. Christ was that substitute.
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Not only is He taking our punishment in His death, but He's living a true, perfect life in our place, a life we couldn't live.
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Most of us know this. He did keep the whole law for us. So as soon as we move our trust from Christ to the law or some extra -biblical requirement of our own, we've just taken on ourselves the yoke of keeping the whole thing.
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Instead of letting Christ do it, now we must do it on our own, and we know that this is impossible.
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For the unbeliever, this method leads to a false security, an ultimate eternal death in hell.
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For the believer, living like this betrays the way we were saved and really puts a stranglehold on our sanctification.
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So we see legalism has now caused two deadly side effects. We've given up the eternal and priceless benefit of Christ.
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We've taken on an obligation to be perfect with regard to the law. And third, if we think we're justified in any way before God by the law, a third side effect is a cutting off from Christ and a fall from grace.
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Verse 4, it says, You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace.
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What is he saying here? Is he saying if a believer gets legalistic, he can fall away?
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Can he become unjustified? If you read much of the
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New Testament, the obvious answer is no. There's plenty of verses that say that. John 10, 28 and 29,
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And I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of My hand.
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And My Father which gave them Me is greater than all, and no man can pluck them out of My Father's hand.
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So if that's not what he means here, what's Paul getting at? Well, this word severed is from a
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Greek word that means to be separated or loosed from. And then fallen here is literally to lose one's grasp on something.
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So the idea is that if you grab at one thing, you're losing your grip on the other.
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And I guess in my mind, I envision one of those super unrealistic adventure action movies where you've got,
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I guess I could throw a name on it, Indiana Jones -y kind of person running through, gets this priceless treasure or something, is on his way out, and of course he has to fall off a cliff, but he reaches up with the other hand, or his partner's got him by the other hand, and he's got the treasure here, and the treasure's weighing him down into the abyss.
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And then he has a choice. He could either let go of the treasure and have life, or he can hold on to the treasure, let it weigh him down, go into the abyss.
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But the point is he can't grip both. He's got to get rid of one. And that's really the point here.
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The bottom line is a person can't live by both law and grace. If you pick one, you're rejecting the other.
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As soon as you go one way, you negate the other. You can't have both. Romans 11 .6,
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in the context of the elect of Israel, the remnant, Paul plainly states the logic, and he says this, he says, but if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works.
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Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. So for the unbeliever or those who think they're
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Christians, if you're putting your trust somehow in both, a work or act of any kind, and expecting that you need that along with the grace that God provided, then your combination has just made your proposed salvation worthless.
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If you are a true believer and you've put your faith in Christ, Christ alone through grace alone, but you're living in a manner that's inconsistent with the manner that you were saved by following some set of perceived rules, your sanctification has just become worthless.
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You're trusting in some extra biblical means of gaining some superficial holiness.
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You can't mix law and grace. So does this mean we're supposed to live like the devil so that grace abounds?
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Well, we know Paul said elsewhere, God forbid. We are to live a life of holiness, but it's not by establishing some set of rules or laws, putting our trust there.
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It's through trusting God to give us discernment, through the Holy Spirit and the word, to know what we ought to be doing, which brings us to our next point.
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So we've seen four deadly side effects of legalism, and I added a fifth from the negative implication of verse 5.
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I call it the loss of the hope of righteousness. The loss of the hope of righteousness.
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Verse 5, it says, "...for through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness."
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So contrasting with those who've chosen to trust in circumcision, legalism, Paul says that through the
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Spirit we have the hope of righteousness, and that established from Christ's perfect, complete work of grace.
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His work was complete with nothing else needed on our part. This is the fatal flaw of the Judaizer doctrine.
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By implication, when they added any work to Christ's work of grace, they're saying that Christ's work was not complete.
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It's not perfect. They have no true hope of righteousness. And hope here, obviously this is not like, you know,
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I hope the Red Sox win, or I hope it stops snowing or something like that. This is an eager expectation, is what hope means here.
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Bruce explains it this way. He says, in their case, which he's talking about those who have hoped in the grace of Christ, the eschatological verdict of not guilty is already realized.
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Their hope is not vague or uncertain. It is fostered and kept alive by the indwelling
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Spirit of God. We who are relying on this hope have assurance of our future.
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If we're relying on our own best efforts, we have no real hope. Imagine thinking that you have to keep a certain set of regulations to either gain or keep favor with God.
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Where's the comfort there? How is that an easy yoke or a light burden that Jesus promises?
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When we put our complete faith in Him for both our salvation and our sanctification, we can have complete confidence that He who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ, Philippians 1 .6.
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So you say, okay, I got it. No rules, no regulations. So then without the rules, how are we supposed to live?
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Paul gets into a lot more detail later on in Galatians in his application, but he does touch on it here.
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And this is the final verse that we're looking at tonight, sort of I call it a concluding summary verse really.
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Verse 6, For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything but only faith working through love.
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So at the end of our passage here, Paul sort of sums it up. For or because or in light of what we just read, at the end of the day, circumcision means nothing.
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It's not the outward acts that count, but the inward faith that matters. But what will that faith look like?
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If the Christian life isn't supposed to consist of rules to be followed or laws to be kept, what does it look like?
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It will look like love. Love for God, love for one another.
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After all, what did Jesus Himself say regarding the law? Matthew 22, 37,
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You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.
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And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.
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And what does Paul say in Romans on the matter? Romans 13, 8 to 10, he says this,
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Oh, no one anything except to love each other. For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
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For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word.
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You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
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MacArthur puts it this way. Life in the spirit is not static and inactive, but it is faith working through love, not the flesh working through self -effort.
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Believers are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
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Ephesians 2, 10. But their working is the product of their faith, not a substitute for it.
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They do not work for righteousness, but out of righteousness through the motivating power of love.
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Pink nails it when he says this. Spiritual sanctification can only rightly be apprehended from what
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God has been pleased to reveal thereon in his holy word and can only be experimentally known by the gracious operations of the
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Holy Spirit. We can arrive at no accurate conceptions of this blessed subject except as our thoughts are formed by the teaching of Scripture.
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And we can only experience the power of the same as the inspirer of those
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Scriptures is pleased to write them upon our hearts. If we study the word, meditate on it, through reading, teaching with prayer, pray for the guidance of the
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Holy Spirit, we will be able to discern what we ought to be doing.
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We don't need an external, extra -biblical list of regulations and our hearts, our inner beings will be motivated to serve such that an outflowing of love will be evident.
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We don't need to create some metric for or some cookie -cutter image that we need to work within to stay at the center of his will.
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The more we are taken by who God is, what he has done for us in Christ, and who we are in him and all that goes with it, we'll be more and more, we'll become what he wants us to be.
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Our inner man will be renewed and we'll be molded into his workmanship.
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Our internal obedience will be evident by our external acts of love. So when you're tempted to look at someone else that doesn't seem to fit your image or your metric of what you think sanctification ought to look like, before you start getting those pharisaical juices flowing, remember what you were saved with and what really counts, faith working through love.
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Their heart may be better and closer to Christ than yours. They may just see some extra -biblical issues as a little different or they may see it a little different.
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Guard your mind and your heart from the error of the Galatians. So in conclusion, we have seen here that Paul finds
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Christian freedom from the law of absolute importance. Anything less is at best a severe hindrance and opposition to grace in the believer's life.
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At worst, if someone forsakes this freedom for a yoke of the law or some kind of additional work to add to saving grace, he's cursed eternally and will find himself in torment for his error.
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This kind of teaching is certainly worth our attention and worthy of anger, really, alongside
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Paul. Spurgeon says of it, So fascinating is the doctrine of legal righteousness that the only way to deal with it is
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Paul's way. Stamp it out. Cry war to the knife against it.
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So let's come full circle back to the expression we opened with. I can almost envision Paul saying, Live free or die.
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For the unbeliever, you will accept Christ's free gifts of salvation through his death on the cross for your sins and his resurrection as validation that the
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Father did accept his payment on your behalf, or you will die for your own sins since you're unable to pay for them yourself through your own efforts.
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So you will either be saved and live free or die eternally.
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For believers, you've been saved through the free gift of Christ. You've been given life already.
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Now, in your effort to be sanctified and grow closer to God, do what
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Paul said. Stand firm. Don't live your life by a set of superficial extra -biblical rules.
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Don't kill your sanctification by living in a way that's totally inconsistent with the way you were justified.
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You must live free or your sanctification will die.
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Live free or die. So there it is. I pray you never hear that phrase or will look at a
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New Hampshire license plate the same way again. Let's pray. Dear God, you are awesome.
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You have an awesome plan for our redemption. You have an awesome plan for our justification.
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You have an awesome plan for our sanctification. I pray that you would help us to fight the tendency to pollute that.
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I pray that you would help us to fight the laziness that is legalism.
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I pray that you would give us a desire, motivate us to be diligent in your
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Word and prayer and listening to your Word preached so that through your
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Word, through the Holy Spirit, we are able to discern what we ought to do and not rely on some simple set of do's and don'ts that are extra -biblical.
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I just pray that you would help us with these things.
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We thank you for everything you've done for us. We thank you for bringing us here. And pray that you would just bless us in our efforts to serve you.