Galatians 5:1-12
You may be seated. Please turn
in your copy of the scriptures to Galatians chapter five. Here in chapter five ought to
bring joy to your hearts. We’re coming today to the end
of Paul’s long argument, a couple of chapters long, his long argument
of why faith is better than law. Why keeping the law, especially
circumcision, won’t save you, it will curse you, but by faith,
living in the works and the righteousness and the blessings of Jesus, we
will find everlasting life. So today ends that argument. And then we will begin a section
based on all Paul has said is true about Jesus, faith, righteousness,
and all the rest. He’s going to spend a good bit
of the rest of the book telling us to live by the spirit the life-giving
spirit, and not by the flesh, the cursed, soul-killing way
of the legalist, of the Judaizers. So let’s give our attention now
to God’s word, Galatians chapter five, verses one through 12.
For freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore,
and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look, I, Paul, say
to you that if you accept circumcision, then Christ will be of no advantage
to you. I testify again to every man
who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole
law. You are severed from Christ,
you who would be justified by the law. You have fallen away
from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith,
we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For
in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for
anything, but only faith working through love. You were running
well. Who hindered you from obeying
the truth? This persuasion is not from him who calls you. A
little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in the
Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling
you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. But if I, brothers, still
preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case,
the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who
unsettle you would emasculate themselves. Amen. The word of
the living God for us. You know, men, we like to flip
through the TV channels until we find something to watch and
did that last night in the Shawshank. Redemption was on, that movie
from the 90s, Morgan Freeman, prison in Alabama or somewhere,
prison reform, I guess was the idea, not exactly sure. But in
that movie, the Shawshank Redemption, there’s an old man who has been
in prison for 50 years, 1905 to 1955. His name is Brooks. He’s long the librarian of the
prison and he’s up for parole. And he tells his prison buddies,
I don’t want parole. Who wouldn’t want out of prison
after 50 years? He says, this is home. This is
my family. These are my friends. And he
says, if I get outside, I won’t know what to do. Well, Morgan
Freeman, the character Red, says to the others, he’s institutionalized. He’s only good here. He’s no
good out there. Well, he gets out of prison.
And he doesn’t know what to do with himself. And he thinks to
himself, I’ll break my parole so that I can go back. But he
couldn’t do that. And so the story continues. And I was thinking about his
predicament, his dilemma last night as I was considering Galatians. Paul says that in Christ, we
have been set free. Why would we go back to a yoke
of slavery? And I was thinking about this
a little more about the Galatian church situation. Remember, these
are the churches in Southern Galatia, a region, this is a
letter that would have been passed around and read aloud in these
various churches in this region called Galatia. And I think They
just are comfortable with the law. They’re just comfortable
with the ceremony of the Old Testament. They’re just comfortable
with circumcision. They’re comfortable with all
the things they’ve been accustomed to and used to. And so now with
the coming of Jesus and his finished work on the cross, his ending
of the ceremonial law by his once and for all offering himself
as a sacrifice that satisfied divine justice. They still can’t
fathom stopping all the ceremonies. They still can’t fathom keeping
all the rituals. They still can’t wrap their minds
in their religious life around simply resting in Jesus. And that’s what Paul is emphasizing
to the Galatians. He’s saying, it is that simple. Jesus has set you free. You are no longer encumbered
by the law. You are no longer encumbered
by the ceremonial law because Jesus has fulfilled it. All those
types, all those shadows, all those things in the old covenant,
all those sacrifices and rituals, they were pointers to Jesus. They were placeholders until
he would come and give himself as the propitiation, the sacrifice,
the satisfaction for our sins. And so now that Jesus has come,
those things are no longer needed. How hard it must have been for
them who had been institutionalized under the old covenant rights.
to find themselves free in Jesus and say, I don’t have to do that
any longer. And so it was a difficult thing
for these law-keeping, law-abiding, ceremony-keeping people to simply
drop it all and say, I’m free in Jesus. I no longer keep the
ceremonial law. It was also difficult for them
in regards to the moral law, the 10 commandments and the other
ways God revealed his holiness. and therefore our righteousness
by obedience. They no longer had to obey the
moral law to be righteous in God’s sight. Not only could they
not do it because of sin, they wouldn’t do it because their
hearts were bent on evil since Adam. But Jesus came, the sinless
one. He was conceived by the Holy
Ghost. He was born of the Virgin Mary. He became man. He lived
a righteous life. He fulfilled all righteousness.
When he was tempted and tried in the wilderness, unlike Adam,
who was tempted and tried in paradise and failed, Jesus kept
the law perfect. He didn’t listen to the voice
of Satan, but continued on the mission, the divine mission from
eternity. to be the righteous one and to
save a people for himself out of this world. And they couldn’t
accept the freedom, not only from the ceremonial law for rituals,
but from the moral law for achieving and for earning and establishing
a righteousness before God. They couldn’t simply rest. in Jesus and his perfect righteousness. They had to do something. They
had the itches, right? They had the heebie-jeebies.
And I think sometimes we get this way in the Christian life.
It can’t be that easy, we say, just to receive Jesus and rest
in him alone. We’ve got to do something. And
so we invent things like the Judaizers did. We invent things
like the legalists have done in our own culture. We invent
things and we believe that if we love Jesus, believe in Jesus,
and then keep these silly rules we make up. that everything will
be just fine. And what Paul is saying is, no,
for freedom, Christ has set you free. This was a radical, a radical
thought for them. That in Christ, they received
the forgiveness of sins, not by any works of their own, but
by his and his alone. But they also received his obedience. Remember our definition of justification. Justification is that process
or that act whereby we are made righteous in God’s sight. And that righteousness is ours
through faith. So when we come to faith in Jesus
Christ, God sees us two ways as if we’ve never sinned, all
our sins paid for by Jesus at the cross. And God sees us as
if we’ve always obeyed. And so God sees Jesus’ obedience
and credits it to our account. And this is such a radical thing.
People can’t get their minds around simple faith in Jesus,
but that’s what Paul is teaching them. That’s what we preach here.
You simply receive Jesus and rest in him alone for your salvation,
not by the works of your hands, Not by the extra rituals or rites
or man-made rules or traditions are we saved, but simply clinging
to Jesus. But we always have this itch,
don’t we, to do something, to do something extra. And it can
creep into the church. And when it creeps into the church,
someone always becomes the self-proclaimed guru or teacher of this thing.
And over off to the side, you have somebody saying and teaching
and people following and believing this. If you want to really please
God, don’t be like them who just have a simple faith. I mean,
that’s great, but if you wanna be super spiritual, if you wanna
please God with a little extra, a little oomph, you follow the
regimen that will teach you. And that’s widespread throughout
church history, across churches. It always pops up, and that’s
why it’s good to have elders, it’s good to have oversight of
the church, The things read, the things preached, the things
taught, the things commanded must be from the scriptures.
And Paul is belaboring this point to the Galatian churches as he
ends his couple chapter long argument. He’s argued it every
single way that he could, personally, biblically, by example, using
Abraham, every single way. Now he’s saying to them, for
freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand firm. Do not submit again
to the yoke of slavery. Yeah, you may have been in prison
by the law, and maybe you were in prison 50 years like Brooks
in the Shawshank Redemption, but when you’re set free, you
don’t go back. When you’re set free, you don’t look back. When
you’re set free, you don’t go back and say, chain me up, lock
me up, put me in outer darkness. No, you live. and the blessings
and the promises of Jesus. Stand firm and do not submit
again to a yoke of slavery. Now, this is an educated guess
here, not mine. It’s one that plenty of others
hold, but it’s believed that the apostle Paul, as he’s ending
his letter here, has been getting continuous and ongoing reports
from the Galatian churches. Someone has been traveling to
Damascus where Paul and Barnabas returned after that first missionary
journey. And so as they’re recouping for
about a year at the church in Damascus, these reports keep
coming, the reports keep coming. And so he’s formulating his letter
and probably he exhausted sending people back saying, tell them,
don’t do this. Tell them, don’t do that. Now
he’s sending by the power of the spirit, an apostolic letter.
In fact, when he says, I, Paul, say to you, it’s very different
than any of the rest of us writing a letter saying I so and so say
to you, this is the apostle, this is Paul, this is the sent
one, this is the one whom the risen Christ appeared to on the
road to Damascus and he has been sent to the church to proclaim
by the authority of God the message of the gospel and he’s saying
to them, don’t fall into this trap. And probably the report
now as he writes his letter is that They’re about to do this
thing. They’re about to have this ceremonial
circumcision of all the males in the church. Now you can think
back to maybe your Bible reading in the book of Genesis when in
think chapter 17, God tells Abraham, everyone born or bought in your
house needs to bear the mark of circumcision. It’s the sign
of entrance into the covenant community. And so Abraham, who
had already believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness,
put the sign of circumcision, which was the sign of the reality
of being marked out as the covenant people of God. And so Abraham
was marking the covenant community there in chapter 17 and he did
as God commanded and he circumcised his whole household. Well, you
fast forward a couple books, well, just a book or two in the
Bible to when in Joshua, it’s told to us, I believe in chapter
five, that the second generation out of Egypt had not been circumcised
in the wilderness. Their parents had been circumcised,
left Egypt, lived in the wilderness. They died because of their unbelief,
but that second generation is about to go in the promised land.
And they can’t go into a land filled with uncircumcised people
and be like them. And so that day before they enter
the promised land, the whole of the nation of Israel, every
male bought or born is circumcised. And I think that’s probably what’s
taking place or about to take place at the church at Galatia. They’re so into the Old Testament. They’re so into all the rites
and ceremonies and things that they got this thing planned.
You know, we have a baptism now, and my little joke is we have
a baptism and then we go eat chicken salad afterwards. I don’t
know what they would have done after this, but Paul is saying,
by all means, stop. In Jesus, rites and ceremonies
and circumcision are of no account to the people of faith. For freedom,
Christ has set us free. I imagine this has given some
of the people at Galatia a big relief. I’m sure some of them
had cold feet, if you know what I mean. And so Paul says to them
three things negatively and then one thing very positively. Negatively,
he says, if you accept circumcision, Christ is of no advantage to
you. And so all the things that Paul
had preached to them, Remember he had told them a couple chapters
back, when I was preaching Christ and him crucified, you had that
word picture in your mind and you believed it and came to Jesus
by faith. And if you accept circumcision,
you’re rejecting the cross. You’re rejecting the person on
the cross and you’re rejecting the work he did on your behalf. And if you accept circumcision,
Christ is of no advantage to you. And we love to say theologically
that when Jesus went to the cross, when he was cut off from the
land of the living, when he was cast off outside the camp of
Israel, there is a sense where he was circumcised in the final
circumcision of the old covenant people. And when he was cut off
and he was cast out of the land of the living, circumcision was
no longer needed. Of course, baptism would come
by the command of Jesus at the great commission after his resurrection. But if you accept circumcision,
Christ is of no advantage to you. That’s pretty clear, isn’t
it? But he gives a second negative. If you accept circumcision, you
must keep. the whole law. If you’re going
to put aside living by faith in Jesus aside, living by faith
in his finished work, his completed work, his accepted work, and
you’re going to accept circumcision, you better get yourself a checklist
and you better do the law. You better keep the law and it
better be pure. It better be whole. It better
be entire and it better be perpetual. I don’t know about you, But experientially,
I couldn’t do it. Wake up every day, and before
long, you’re off into law-breaking land. But we gotta take a step
before that. Why can’t we keep the law? Because
we’re born with Adam’s sin. We’re born with Adam’s original
corruption. We’re born with Adam’s unrighteousness. And until we are given new life
by God the Holy Spirit, until we are regenerated and enabled
by the Spirit more and more to live under righteousness, We
are an unrighteous people and we could never, ever, ever keep
the law. So he’s made it clear again.
If you accept circumcision, Christ has no advantage to you. If you
accept circumcision, you must keep the whole law. And then
he gives a third negative. If you want to accept circumcision,
you are severed from Christ. Now I know in the back of some
of your heads, you’re wondering, what’s he going to do with verse
12? That’s the verse we ended with. You probably thought you’d
never hear a verse like that in church, but aren’t you seeing
Paul’s language ramped up? He’s using the language of circumcision
because they have such a high view of it and such a high value
in it. And he’s saying, except that, which is a severing, it
will actually sever you from Jesus and his finished work.
It will sever you from Christ. And he says so clearly, you will
have fallen away from grace. He’s contrasted grace with faith. He’s contrasting law and works
with resting and receiving in Jesus alone for salvation. Now he said these three negatives,
you want to accept circumcision, bad choice. bad results. But in five and six, he says
very positively, something that he’s going to unfold more and
more in the rest of the book of Galatians. He’s going to speak
about the reality of the Christian life. He’s going to speak about
the blessings of being in Jesus. And so in verses five and six,
he says, for through the spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly
await for the hope of righteousness. Now, Paul has spent a lot of
time in Galatians saying, you need to come to Jesus. You need
to come by faith. You need to rest in his righteousness, not
your own. You need to receive his forgiveness,
his obedience. Here, he’s gonna speak of the
long future. Now, when we speak of justification,
justification is a legal verdict. When we come to faith in Jesus,
the divine a gavel is pounded on the holy desk of heaven. And God says to you who come
to him by faith, you are now justified. You have been forgiven
all your past, present and future sins. You have been given the
righteousness and the obedience of Jesus. And so when God looks
at you, he sees that finished act of justification, Jesus atoning
for your sins. Jesus obedience now yours through
faith. And we get to live out of the
blessings of justification in this life. What flows from our
justification, our forgiveness, our right standing before God
is our sanctification. God begins a work in us by his
word and spirit and grace. It’s a slow, painful process.
We know that to be biblically true and experientially true,
but until we reach heaven, God is shaping us and chiseling us
and conforming us and burning off the dross and conforming
us more and more into the image of his son, the Lord Jesus. And
when we get to heaven, that’s what Paul is speaking of here
in verse five, through the spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for
the hope of righteousness. What he’s speaking of here is
when we get to heaven, when Jesus returns and brings the dead from
the earth, And our spirits are united with our resurrected bodies. We’re brought into the heavenlies
and we are openly acknowledged and acquitted before Satan and
before every sinner and before the company of saints and righteous.
And then we are declared righteous and holy never to sin again and
brought into our wonderful, eternal and heavenly existence. And that’s
what Paul is speaking of here. He’s looking off into the future.
He’s looking into the heavens with binoculars and saying through
the spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of
righteousness. Now, what’s he saying that against? He’s saying it against the Judaizers
who say, I accept circumcision. And because I accept circumcision,
Christ is no advantage to me, so I must keep the whole law. I must put grace aside and live
through works. If I’m severed from Christ, I’m
on my own. If I’m apart from Jesus, I gotta
do it all myself and all perfectly. And brothers and sisters, aren’t
you glad to have a simple faith in Jesus, where for freedom he
has set us free. We are no longer bound to keep
the law for merit. We are no longer bound to keep
the ceremonial standards because Jesus has fulfilled them in his
high priestly work. The book of Hebrews tells us
when he finished his high priestly work, he went to heaven and sat
down. Up until that point, no priest had ever sat down. They
day after day, after day, after day, cut stuff, killed stuff,
burned stuff, and sacrificed stuff. But not so Jesus, that
great high priest, was not only the offerer, the priest, but
he was the offering, the lamb. And when he made satisfaction
for sins and he ascended into heaven, he sat down because his
work was finished. Now he’s still our high priest.
He still prays for us. He still intercedes for us. And
that’s an ongoing work until we’re safely brought home from
to heaven. But for through the spirit, by
faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.
It’s not by works. For the people of faith, it’s
by resting and receiving Jesus works. Well, it goes on in verse
six, speaking positively. For in Christ, neither circumcision
or uncircumcision count for anything. It doesn’t matter, Paul says,
if you are or if you aren’t, it doesn’t count. What counts
is faith working through love. We’re taught in the scriptures
that faith is the gift of God. It’s in our faith that we have
knowledge, knowledge of God, knowledge of sin, knowledge of
our sin, knowledge of God’s wrath and curse due to us for sin,
but also knowledge of His provision of a Redeemer in His Son, the
Lord Jesus Christ, who would live and obey and die in our
place. By faith, His obedience and His
forgiveness are now ours. And the spirit applies that redemption
to us. What Jesus accomplished on the
cross has been applied to us who are believers through faith. And so through faith, by the
power of the Holy Spirit, we get the this life blessings. We get justification. We get
sanctification. We get assurance of God’s love.
We receive peace of conscience. We have assurance. of God’s grace. We have an increase of grace
and we persevere to the end by the power of Almighty God. But
there’s also those next life blessings. We look forward to
going to court. Now, if you are accused of a
crime in the state of North Carolina and you have a court date, you
probably don’t look forward to it because you don’t know what
kind of judge you will have. You don’t know what kind of mood
he will be in. You don’t know what the jury will or won’t do.
You don’t know what kind of counsel you have and their abilities.
And so if you go to the judgment seat in a civil court, the outcome
could go either way. But here’s the wonderful assurance
that we have in Almighty God when we go to court at that last
day, when we stand before the tribunal of Almighty God, who
is a just, righteous, and holy God, and we’re told he will by
no means clear the guilty, we know that we are innocent. Because
by faith, we have received Jesus’ righteousness. And God sees us
as if we’ve never sinned. God sees us as if we’ve always
obeyed. And so we know the outcome of
that day in court. We stand already declared righteous,
and it will be acknowledged then in that day. And so there are
this life blessings to the Christian faith. There are next life blessings
to the Christian faith and circumcision doesn’t play in, whether you
are or whether you aren’t. We remember so well the story
of Abraham. He circumcised his household
years after it was said of him that he believed God and it was
counted to him as righteousness. And so Paul has reminded them
over and over, it’s not the actions of the person that save, it’s
the faith. in the power and actions of almighty
God. And so brothers and sisters,
as Paul is proclaiming to the Galatians, as he is proclaiming
to us today, we want to be sure that we are standing firm, that
we are standing firm in our faith, our belief in the person and
the work and in the value and the ongoing now and the ongoing
and eternity blessings of being in Jesus. And Paul says so well
at the end of verse six, the impact or the implication for
us as Christians, this spirit wrought faith in us that gives
us hope in the long-term righteousness in Christ is a faith working
through love. It’s not a faith working through
works. It’s a faith working through
love. So where do good works, where does obedience to God’s
law stand for the Christian? Well, it stands not in a way
to merit a salvation. Jesus accomplished that. But
if we love Jesus, if we are full of gratitude because of the grace
of God that has removed our guilt, Out of gratitude for God’s grace
to us in Jesus, we will want to obey his law. Our hearts will
beat to the tune of the kingdom. Our desire will be to please
God by loving him and loving our neighbors. And Paul has to
give a second admonition to the Galatians. First, he said, stand
firm, don’t go back to bondage. But then in verse seven, he says,
you were running well. Can you imagine the picture here?
You’re on the race course, you’re on the path, you’re keeping between
the guardrails, you’re on the way to victory through Jesus. And someone has steered you off
course. Sometime in the past months,
I went to a race and a group of people running a cross country
race veered off course. It slowed them down. It confused
them. They lost time. They made it across the finish
line, but it was only after they got back on the path. And that’s
what Paul is warning them about. You’re running well. Don’t let
anyone hinder you from obeying the truth. And then he speaks
rather harshly of the person causing confusion in the church.
This person, whoever this person is, is persuading you but it’s
not a call from the Holy Spirit. This persuasion is not from the
Word of God by the Spirit of God leading you to good things.
No, this person is leaven spoiling the lump. This person is leading
you astray. This person is telling you to
run on this path and not on the path to heaven. Think of Hebrews
chapter 12 after the long 11th chapter of living by faith as
the people of old had done. The apostle Paul says we are
to long for heaven and we are to look to Jesus as we run the
race that is set before us. And he gives an admonition there
in the book of Hebrews. The writer of Hebrews says we
should cast off everything that hinders us from running the race.
You see runners out even in this cold, they’re wearing their little
short shorts, they’re running their lightweight shirts, they’re
running in their lightweight shoes and socks. And even when
it’s cold, they shed the weight so that they can run with speed,
they can run with accuracy, they can go in the right direction.
And Paul says, you were running well, what hindered you? And
they’re becoming encumbered with false teaching. They’re becoming
encumbered with legalism and laws. But notice what Paul says
to them in verse 10, he has hope for them. And you know how when
you write a letter to somebody, you write your letter and you
say what you wanna say, and at the very end, you say something persuasive
like, I hope to see you soon. Or you say something like, I
know you’ll do the thing I asked. And that’s exactly what verse
10 is. Paul is saying in a preemptive strike, I have confidence in
the Lord that you Galatians will do the right thing. You’ll get
back on the path. You’ll stand firm and you’ll
tell the Judaizers to buzz off and quit their false teaching
and destruction of the church. And he ends with a really harsh
saying, doesn’t he? I wish those who are unsettling
you would emasculate themselves. Why the harsh language? Why even
the, I don’t know, the crass language? The gospel means so
much to Paul. He preaches the cross. He preaches
justification by faith. He preaches resting in Jesus
alone for salvation. And with those three negatives
we mentioned a few moments ago, if they accept circumcision,
Christ is of net value. If they accept circumcision,
you’ve got to take on the whole law. If you accept circumcision, you’ve
fallen away from grace. That’s what’s at stake for the
Galatian church. And brothers and sisters, that’s
what is at stake for us if we add on to the gospel. And American
Christianity is really good at that, isn’t it? We like to take
away things from the gospel, but we like to add. And Paul
is saying simply, for freedom, Christ has set you free. Do not submit again to a yoke
of slavery. Pray with me. Lord, we thank
you for the simplicity of the gospel. And we bless you that
in a moment or two, we will see the simplicity of the gospel
in the bread and in the cup. We’ll see that in your body, You bore our sins on the tree,
on the tree on which whoever was hanged on it was cursed.
And we bless you that you were cursed in our place. We see the
cup and we see your blood shed abroad for the remission of sins.
And we are reminded that our blood would not suffice to atone
for our sins. Your wrath would never be subsided
by our works. or by our own lives, but we thank
you that Jesus’ body and blood are now ours by faith. And we
trust in nothing else. We don’t trust in the works of
our hands. We don’t trust in our best efforts at righteousness.
We don’t trust in anything, but we wholly rest in Jesus name. So help us in this hour to be
renewed in the simplicity and the wonder of your gospel grace
and bless us now as we come to your table. In Jesus holy name
we pray. Amen.