Sunday Sermon: Christ Who Gave Himself for Our Sins (Galatians 1:3-5)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a New Testament book.

On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit.

Here's Pastor Gabe.

Paul’s Apostolic Greeting and the Gospel of Grace and Peace

Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ. And God the Father, who raised him from the dead. And all the brothers who are with me. To the churches of Galatia, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever, amen.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we are an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one that we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one that you received, let him be accursed.

Let's pray again. God, as we come to your word today, I pray that it would speak loudly to us and that we would rejoice to hear your gospel. The good news, as that word gospel means, and as we are told in Romans 1 16, it has the power of God to save souls from death for all who believe to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

And so I pray that we rejoice to hear this once again, for we know it is our hope and our peace as we've sung about this morning. The gospel that has redeemed us from sin and delivered us into a kingdom, an inheritance that is rich and great, for it is the kingdom that the Father has given to the Son and we are fellow inheritors of that place.

I pray that you give strength to my voice today, that I am able to endure to get through to proclaim the joy and the wonder of your gospel, that we as the people of God may rejoice in it together. And we pray these things in Jesus' name and all God's people said, amen.

Thank you. You may be seated. My voice is, though you may not be able to tell, is actually barely hanging on. And I can tell where it's starting to fade, almost in the back. I'm using diaphragm and trying to push this out right now.

So my voice may go over the course of this, and I may have to cut this short. Praise God for those of you who like to get the buffet lines early. But Galatians chapter 1 verses 3, 4, and 5 are primarily going to be our focus.

Justification by Faith and the Danger of a Christ-Plus Gospel

And you can see where we're going in what Paul has said here in verses 6 through 9. Right at the beginning of the letter, he's rebuking the Galatians for believing a different gospel. We're going to be talking about that more next week.

But for the most part this morning, we're seeing the brief gospel that Paul opens his letter with. Since he's about to tell the Galatians, you're following a different gospel, how did you so easily fall into this?

As he says later on in the letter, you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? You were doing so well. And now you've come into believing this thing that is a corruption of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Remember I said to you that our theme of this letter, as I mentioned last week, is that Paul is confronting the Galatians with this, that we are justified by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the gospel.

That's the good news. By faith in Christ, you're saved. There's nothing you have to do, because you can't do it anyway. You can't get there by your works. You will never be justified before God. So the gospel that I say to you is that faith in Jesus Christ and what he's done on the cross, his resurrection from the grave, his ascension into heaven, seated at the right hand of the throne of God where he is presently our mediator.

By faith in this, we're saved before God. That is good news. And yet you believe now something that is Christ plus blank. Like whatever goes into that blank becomes the focus of the person. When a person believes, I have Jesus, but I also need this, Christ is not your emphasis anymore.

Your emphasis is on whatever would fill that blank. For the Galatians, it's going to be works. We'll talk about that some more as we go into this letter. As Paul starts to confront the specifics of the things that they have fallen into in their disbelief, their unbelief, believing in a false gospel is not actually belief in a different thing, it's unbelief.

It's not believing that Christ is sufficient, that he saves. And so I must do something else in order to find myself saved. So we'll put a blank next to Christ, Christ plus blank. And again, for the Galatians, that's works, but for us, it may be anything.

Could be some desire that you have, may not even be a religious or a spiritual thing. It's just a thing that you think that you need to have in order to get by with life and Christ is not enough. Then therefore, what we believe is a corruption of the gospel.

We don't believe in the true gospel for we do not think that Christ was enough to save. We do not think that Christ is enough to even satisfy. So we must have something else in order to think that there's meaning and purpose and something other than Christ, but there is not.

He who has made us is he who saves us and he who will deliver us from the day of judgment. And so Paul means for the Galatians to understand once again, the goodness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So very briefly at the very beginning, oftentimes Paul's greetings are longer than this, but he's very brief with the way that he starts identifying himself as an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God, the father who raised him from the dead.

And then Paul is going to come back to talking about that yet again in the next few verses. God, our father in the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins and delivers us from the present evil age.

So this very brief introduction that he offers of himself is going to come up later in the letter for what he is going to do in his own defense is proclaiming his apostleship. And that comes up as we go through chapter one.

Maybe the Galatians just do not believe that Paul is that messenger who's been sent by Christ to proclaim the word of Christ. Maybe they think the guys that bummed around with Jesus, they're the more sound apostles.

They're the guys that we need to be listening to. And indeed, they should be listening to them. But Paul, who has come delivering the gospel to the churches in Galatia, not the other apostles, he has come to them and he has proclaimed this word.

And he is every bit as authoritative as the other apostles. His role as an apostle is not something that he gave to himself. And it's not something that was given to him by men, but it was given through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead.

And with this greeting that Paul gives to the Galatians, he also says, all the brothers who are with me to the churches of Galatia, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

So our first point as we come into this is understanding the gospel that has been given from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's look at these first two words that we have in Galatians 1 .3.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father. Let's understand once again what we're talking about with the word grace, because this is a necessity of the gospel. I talked to you last week of those five solos of the Protestant Reformation, one of them being by grace alone.

We are saved by grace alone. In Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, it is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

So what is grace? Grace is unmerited favor. That's your two-word definition of grace, unmerited favor. What does unmerited mean? It means that you did not do anything to earn it, and you can't do anything to earn it.

It is by God's grace. It is by his love as a gift that he has given to us the salvation that we have in Christ. Romans 5, 8, love that God our Father has demonstrated to us is this, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

There's your definition of grace in one verse, Romans 5, 8, that God demonstrated his love for us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We did not do anything to earn this grace. In fact, we were sinners and enemies of God, as it's said there in the context of Romans 5 as well.

What we deserved was judgment, and what God has shown to us is favor, unmerited favor, unmerited. We did not do anything to earn it. You can do nothing to earn it. Favor, favor as in how? My goodness, my brothers and sisters, where do I begin and where do I end?

Favor as in, as I'd already said, we were enemies. We had committed treason against the throne of the High King of Heaven, the Creator God, and yet we blasphemed him to such a degree that we proclaimed that our ways were better than God's ways, our ways were higher than God's ways.

The Creator of time and space, and we said that we knew better than God. How absurd, right? Whenever I encounter those arguments from persons who want to believe that they're better than they actually are, and will say something like, why would God condemn to hell a person who has just committed one little, measly little sin?

Why would that be the thing that would condemn a person to hell for all eternity? There's a thousand different things that I want to say to that. First of all, you did not commit one simple little, measly little sin, no matter how much you want to think of your own goodness, but generally what I follow that up with is this.

The question should not be, why would God send anybody to hell? The question should be, why would God bother to save anyone at all, right? Because he's holy, we're not. He's deserving of all honor and glory and praise.

We're not deserving of anything, but are sure ready at the drop of a hat to give honor and glory and praise to ourselves. We're all ready to boast our own goodness and gloriousness and greatness and roll out our resume for everybody else.

Here's who I am. This is what my character is like. I'm this kind of person. How glorious am I? Here's what my morals are. Here's what my morality is. Look at how fabulous this is. You're wrong and you need to listen to me.

I'm right. Here's my morality. You need to follow it. You know, we talk about moral relativism, that idea that there is no truth and that everybody can make up their own truth, which by itself is a self-defeating argument because once you have said there's no such thing as truth, you've just asserted truth.

So you defeated your own argument. But the fact of the matter is another way that that contradicts itself is when a person starts saying that my truth is what is important and you should not impose your truth upon me or rather we should all just tolerate each other and get along.

The thing about it is they've actually just asserted absolute truth and that they are the bringer of morality and you have to follow their moral pattern that they have laid before you. I say that this is what we should do and so that is what you should follow.

And they think that they've just asserted some sort of spirit of tolerance, but actually what they've just said is extremely intolerant. They're intolerant of anybody else's view but their own. And my morality is the morality that you must follow.

There is objective truth. Everybody inherently understands this. But to understand that it is objective, it means that it comes from something that is outside of yourself, not something that is inside of yourself.

When you become the meter, the standard of all morality, then it's subjective truth. It's not objective truth. Objective is outside of ourselves. So where does that objective truth come from? It comes from God.

God's Word, the Bible, is our standard of morality. It is our guide for every matter of faith and practice. We find it in the scriptures, in the Bible. And somebody might say, but I have the Holy Spirit.

Of course you do. You have the Holy Spirit of God. If you are a follower of Christ, you have the Holy Spirit. According to Paul in Romans chapter 8, if you do not have the Spirit of Christ, you do not belong to Him, and you cannot please God without the Spirit.

So if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you have been given His Holy Spirit. Absolutely, you have. But you're still a human being. And just because you thought a thought does not mean it came from the Holy Spirit of God.

It may have come from your flesh. And so how do we continually take those thoughts that may pop into our head from our flesh and subject them to the power of the Spirit? The answer to that, my friends, is the Word of God.

We submit ourselves to this Word, and our thoughts and our ways are conformed to this, God's thoughts and God's ways, which again are much higher than ours. In Romans 12, too, where it says, do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, meaning that we must be renewed day by day.

We must continually be subjecting our thoughts and our mind unto God and what He has said in His Word. We've got 775 ,000 words right here. We've got enough to work with. There's plenty of things said that you do not yet understand and you've not even begun to comb the mysteries of.

It is our daily reading of this Word and our daily subjection to it that our thoughts and our minds be conformed to the will and the thoughts of God. And then, as it goes on in Romans 12, too, to say, then you may test and approve what is His good, pleasing, and perfect will.

So as I said, God's will is good and perfect, and He being the Creator of all things has even established time and space. And yet we, in our blasphemy, have proclaimed that our thoughts are higher than the ways of the God of the universe.

Whenever you know that the Bible has said one thing about something and you do the opposite of it, that you have proclaimed that your ways are better than God's, and it is a serious sin for which the Bible says we will be judged for such things.

Because we assert that we're greater than God, that we would try to take Him off His throne and put ourselves there, and say that we know the way that we should go. And God, you must give me this because I know what it would take for me to be happy.

So therefore, you must give me this thing if I'm going to think of you as a good God. All that you've done is you've created your own God, and that God being yourself, a God of your own imagination, rather than the God of glory that we have given for us in the Scriptures.

How will God not judge those who blaspheme so seriously that we puny little humans who have been made by God would say that we know better than the Creator? Why would we ever think that God would not judge that in His holiness and His goodness?

And this is where grace comes in. This is how we understand grace to be grace. Because you realize what you've done and what you actually deserve, but instead in Christ, God gives you something different.

You are an enemy of the kingdom. You have committed treason against the throne of God. You deserve to be destroyed, executed as one who has committed treason against the kingdom of God. And yet, what does God do for us instead?

He sends His Son to die for our sins, that all who believe in Him will not perish but have everlasting life. Those who are not in Christ, my friends, understand, are still enemies of God. Not every single person on the planet is inherently a child of God.

Jesus made that clear. In John chapter 8, when the Jews were saying, we're children of God, what was Jesus' reply to them? You're of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

Those who are in Christ will do the works of Christ. Those who have God as their father will do what Jesus did. But those who do not know Jesus Christ, His Son, whom God by His will would say that we must believe in in order to be saved, those who try to go their own way and establish their own God and find their own path of righteousness, they're children of the devil.

And Revelation chapter 21 is clear, that those who do not repent of this way are under the wrath of God and will be judged in His wrath and will be cast into eternal fire with the devil and his angels because his way was the way that they followed instead of the way of Christ.

It is only through Christ that we're adopted into the family of God and then we are the children of God, not before. Before we who were indeed made in the image of God were sinners, meaning that we've taken that image and desecrated it and what we deserve for that is destruction.

John 3, 36, he who has the Son has life, but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. As John Stott pointed out when he was exegeting that particular passage, John 3, 36, that word remains on him, speaks loudly to us that this man was in that state already.

Not that he rejected Christ and then he came under the wrath of God, he was under the wrath of God before the gospel was proclaimed to him. But then rejecting that gospel, how much worse is that judgment going to be for him in the end?

Jesus Christ came to save us from our sins, from death, from the wrath of God, so that all who believe in him will not fall into judgment on that day, but we become inheritors of his kingdom. Again, the grace of God, knowing what we deserve is death and destruction for our treason, and yet what does God make us instead?

Once his enemies, he has made us fellow heirs of the kingdom of Christ. The kingdom that we had turned away from and we had committed treason against, God by his grace makes us fellow recipients of it.

And Jesus says in Revelation 2 and 3 that those who endure to the end will sit with me on my glorious throne. We get to reign with Christ. We who sinned against God, by his grace he has shown us this mercy through his son that we would be forever with him in glory, though we know that we do not deserve it.

And my friends, and I can speak this to you from experience, this is something that you become all the more knowledgeable of as you grow in sanctification. You become more aware of exactly how great this grace is.

The more you grow in the knowledge of the word of God and who he is, who he has shown himself to be, and what it is that Jesus actually did for us. A graph that I've seen, and perhaps you've seen this picture before too, you've got a picture of a cross, and then going away from the cross there's two lines.

One is going up like this, and one is going down this way. And this is our perspective of ourselves and God. The top line represents our perspective of God. And after we come to Christ, there at the cross, and we're growing in the knowledge of God, that line's going up.

We're seeing God greater and greater every day. We see his goodness and his glory and his grace and his love for us every day is even better than the day before. Because I woke up this morning. God did not snatch the life right out of me.

And it's another day that I have to proclaim God and see his glory and his goodness and what he's delivered me from through the blood of Christ. That bottom line, it's going down. So as you're growing in sanctification, these lines are getting further and further apart.

Why? I thought the illustration was we get closer and closer together. That's a different illustration. I'm going to use that for another time. But this illustration, as we come to the cross and those lines get further and further apart, the further they go out, the more great you see God, the more you see your own sin and depravity and how unworthy you are of this grace and this goodness of God.

The more you see his holiness, the more you become aware of your own sin and how deserving you are, how undeserving you are of his grace. Make sure I get all my consonants in there. We are undeserving of the grace of God, which is what makes it grace.

The moment you think you deserve this, God, I prayed the prayer to let me into your kingdom. The moment you say something like that, you no longer believe in grace. You believe in merits. I did this, so I get this.

We do nothing. It is only by the grace of Christ that we are saved. But that's what makes the gospel so amazing, is that we know that we did not do anything to deserve it, and God gave it to us anyway.

We know, in fact, what we deserve is the opposite and worse, and yet God has given us life and treasure in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Not spending as much time on peace as with grace, but still a wonderful word as we find in its definition, something that's a little bit more than peace or relaxation that we might experience in the body.

Whenever we talk about peace, that's kind of what we think about, right? Like not conflict, peace, a peace sign, no war, no strife today, right? I don't feel any burden for today. What we might think of if we think of a good American peace, you think of being able to sit in your backyard on green grass in a lawn chair holding a lemonade.

Maybe by this point, you're even retired. No cares in the world. Nothing going on. I've got no mortgage on this house. I got no payment I have to make on the car in front of my house. Everything's good.

I'm at peace. Is that the kind of peace you think about? The kind of peace that we are given in Christ Jesus is much greater than that. For that peace, though it is wonderful and it is a blessing of God, doesn't save anybody when you have that lawn chair peace.

But the peace that we have from God is peace with God. Again, as we've already talked about in our definition of grace and our understanding of the gospel, it's knowing that the wrath of God is not against us anymore.

God is not angry with us for our sin. God loves us as his children because we believe in Jesus and we have peace with God. We know that when we die, we will sit forever with our Lord in glory, reigning on high.

And there's nothing in this world that can take that from us. And no matter what happens, no matter how bad things get, once we die and we go to be with the Lord, we have treasure forevermore, prompting the Apostle Paul to say the suffering that we are experiencing now does not even compare to the glory that awaits us in Christ Jesus.

And let me be perfectly clear, just because you came to Christ does not mean that you won't struggle, that you won't have sufferings. If you think that Jesus and believing in Jesus means that all your life problems are going to be taken care of, well, does that mean that Jesus just kind of forgot about the apostles who died horrific deaths for proclaiming the gospel, all except for one, John, and even he died in exile.

All the rest of them were murdered for the gospel. God did not forget them. You know, whenever you hear Joel Osteen say, your best life now, well, your best life now might be losing your life for the sake of the gospel.

That's still a great life because what happens for us on the other side is glory and peace beyond all comparison. This is a peace that Paul describes in Philippians chapter four as being a peace that surpasses all understanding because we can't proclaim it like we would proclaim the lawn chair peace.

It is a peace that is so great you could study it now and not come to the end of it until you are finally in that place of peace in glory forever with God. Then you'll understand, ah, here's the goodness of this peace.

But for now, as we inhabit these fleshly bodies, it surpasses all understanding. The peace that we have with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul wishes grace for the Galatians. He desires this for them.

Grace and peace to them. Grace to you. Peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father.

That's the next verse in this Galatians 1 .4. Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father. In Titus chapter 2, beginning in verse 11, we read the following.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

The Apostle Peter, when he preached at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, when the people were cut to the heart by his message, they said, good brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said, repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the forgiveness of your sins.

And then Acts goes on to say that he preached many other things. And then he says, save yourselves from this wicked and this crooked generation. In Philippians chapter 2, verse 14, the Apostle Paul says, do everything without grumbling or disputing so that you may be blameless and pure children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation in which we shine as lights in the world.

And here, Galatians 1, 4, Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father. That means, my friends, if you have been forgiven of your sins and you've been delivered from the present evil age, you are not walking in sin.

And every time I talk about this, I just had this happen to me yesterday, as a matter of fact, as I was sharing this with somebody else. Every time I talk about this, I have somebody that wants to say to me, yeah, but we're still going to sin.

Why do you try to qualify that? Because you want to believe that you can still sin and you've got permission to. Yeah, we're supposed to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. Jesus said that in Matthew chapter 5.

But realistically, there's other verses that say we're still going to sin. Look, stop. Stop sinning. Stop trying to justify what God has said that he's going to judge. Don't do it. Colossians chapter 3, put to death what's earthly in you.

Put it to death. And you can't in your flesh do it. I know that, and I've never said otherwise. That's why we have the Spirit of God. In 1 Corinthians chapter 10, Paul said, God is not ever going to allow you to be tempted beyond your ability to resist it.

We have the Holy Spirit of God that enables us, gives us the strength, the power to resist sin and do the righteous thing. So, my brothers and sisters, if you have the Spirit of God, do the righteous thing.

Stop entertaining that passion in your flesh and think, I can do this and get away with it because God is just going to save me from it. Brothers and sisters, what if he doesn't? What if your love for that sin actually leads you to the person that's described in Romans 1 that God gives over to the passions and the depravity of their flesh to be judged?

Don't flirt with such a danger. Turn from sin and walk in holiness. If we know that Christ has saved us from our sins in the present evil age and has delivered us into his kingdom of righteousness, then pursue the righteousness.

Paul said to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 6, 9, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Don't be deceived. Don't deceive yourselves into thinking, I can just do this and it will be fine.

These are sins for which Christ has died, so don't walk in them. Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, and again, any sex outside of marriage is sexual immorality. The sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves.

If you pad your time card, you're a thief. You take from someone else what does not belong to you, that makes you a thief. Nor the greedy, coveting things that are not yours, thinking that you need worldly possessions and value in order to find satisfaction in this life.

Nor drunkards, polluting your mind and making yourself a slave, physically making yourself a slave to another substance that controls you. Not just alcohol, but any kind of drug. Any kind of drug that would alter your thinking or get you to feel a certain way, that you become a slave to and cannot control that substance, but rather it controls you and leads to debauchery and leads to mindlessness and senseless behavior.

Nor revilers, those who hate other people, nor swindlers, those who cheat other people out of something that they want, lying and manipulating people to get what they want to have. These people will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But then understand the grace of 1 Corinthians 6 .11. As Paul is speaking to a body of believers, he says to them, and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Good news. But where my heart tightens when I read that is with Paul saying in 1 Corinthians 6 .11, such were some of you, meaning that there are still some in this body who've not repented of those things yet.

And as I bring this to you today, I pray that the Spirit rests hard on your hearts. And I don't mean hardening your hearts, I mean rests on you in such a way that you are uncomfortable right now, knowing that I have not asked forgiveness for this sin.

And if I were to be judged in it right now, would I hear from the Father? Well done, good and faithful servant, how great is your reward? Be convicted. Do not sin. Desire the righteousness of Christ, however much it hurts.

Friends, I've been in this place before, okay? I've been on my knees weeping to God as I felt in my flesh a desire to do the sinful thing I did not want to do. And I'm begging God, please take the temptation from me.

And it's in that moment when I'm on my knees and I'm weeping for holiness, my attention is fully on the goodness and righteousness of God and I'm not even thinking about that thing that my flesh wants me to do.

This is why James said in James chapter 4, cling to God and the devil will flee from you. He says be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your gladness be turned to mourning and your laughter to sorrow, that we may weep over our sin before God and desire repentance.

And by his grace, we will have it. Christ gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father. And it's because all of this is to God's will. Not our will be done, but God's will be done.

We have what is said in verse 5, to whom be the glory forever and ever, amen. All glory be to Christ our King and to God the Father, who by his will has given us salvation in his Son. Romans 11 verse 33, oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid. For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be glory forever, amen.

Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas. For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org. On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.

Amen.