Please turn with me if you would today to the fifth chapter of Galatians. We'll be considering verses 1 through 12 of Galatians 5.
From this point forward in Paul's letter, most of his focus is on the practical application of the doctrine that he has been asserting now for four chapters. So let's hear what God has to say to us this morning as we read his word. Galatians 5 verses 1 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, 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 were 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 unsettled you would emasculate themselves. Let's pray. Lord, may we take the warnings of Scripture seriously and stop flitting about with novel doctrines that diminish Christ. Guard our hearts from thinking the sin of unbelief is not really a big deal. Lord, show us today from your Word that unbelief has eternal consequences that ruin souls. And Lord, grant us the grace to repent and return to Christ, who is our rock and our redeemer. And it's in his name we pray.
Amen. What we believe changes how we behave. What we believe shapes the way we relate to God.
What we believe has a direct connection to God's treatment of us in eternity. Now Paul has just spent four chapters explaining and illustrating and defending the doctrine of justification by grace through faith in Christ. Now he comes to the point in his letter where he must call the Galatian Christians to believe and act upon what he's told them. If they do believe and act upon the doctrine he's taught them, things will go well.
If they do not, things will go terribly and eternally bad for them. It's do or die time in Galatia, and Paul wants them to know that since the consequences of not standing firm in Christ are so dire, Christians must persevere in faith. In verses 1 through 6 he's going to exhort the Galatian believers to stand firm in Christ. And then in verses 7 through 12, Paul will warn them of the dangers of not standing firm in Christ, of rejecting Christ. So first, Paul asserts the importance of standing firm in Christ.
And there are really only two options here. We either stand firm in Christ or we are severed forever from Christ. Now it's interesting, isn't it, that after this lengthy defense of the fact that justification is not and could never be something that we earn through obeying God's commands, Paul gives a command that ought to be obeyed. Verse 1, stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of bondage. It's a command. It's an imperative.
It's a law. Is Paul just replacing one law, the law of circumcision, with another law, the law of standing firm in Christ? Is he contradicting himself? Is he being logically inconsistent?
Well, no, he's not. He's under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so what he's saying is true. I suppose we might think that he's being inconsistent if we view faith as a work that we perform. But that's a misunderstanding of the nature of faith. Faith is, in its very essence, a reliance upon something outside of self.
We might even say faith is an anti-work. I've never personally experienced this, but I've heard that if you find yourself stuck in quicksand, the way to not sink is to be perfectly still. If you struggle to get out, you're just making yourself sink faster. So don't move is a command you might give to your friend when he's stuck in quicksand. But it's not a command to do something to save yourself, is it? It's actually a command to stop doing something. It's a command to stop relying on self-effort and start trusting that the density of the quicksand will hold you up.
It's a command to stop working and start resting. Faith is the act of ceasing from the work of relying on oneself for salvation and relying entirely on another, on Jesus Christ. The work we do to get saved, it's an absolute ceasing from work. And furthermore, even our ability to cease from work is God-given. We can't even stop ourselves from struggling against the quicksand of divine judgment.
We have to be made to stop struggling. So no, faith is not an alternate work. It's not a substitute law that Christians must obey to save themselves. On the contrary, it's a total abstinence of self-reliance, self-trust, self-salvation. It's the absolute surrender of a sinner to the sufficiency and the power of Jesus Christ to save. And it's in relation to this that Paul commands us to stand firm, persevere in resting, keep on trusting, don't stop relying on Christ.
Now the reason this is so important is because the alternative is so terribly irreversible. If we fail to stand firm in Christ, we will be severed from Christ. Paul gives four descriptions of what that severing from Christ entails. Look at verse 4.
I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. John Reed of Reed Gold Mine fame over in Midland found a gold nugget in a creek on his farm. The nugget weighed 17 pounds. That's worth about half a million dollars today. Now Mr. Reed didn't know that it was gold.
And so for three years he used it as a door prop in his farmhouse. He had no idea that what he was in possession of was excessive wealth. So his gold was of no advantage to him. For a sinner to insist on relying upon his own moral goodness for salvation when he has the atoning work of Christ at his disposal is like using half a million dollars to prop the door open.
It's a waste of wealth. It makes Christ and his atoning work to be of no advantage. Secondly, Paul says, verse 3, I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision as a means of salvation that he is obligated to keep the whole law. If you're going to make law keeping your ticket to heaven, then you'd better be ready to keep all of God's law.
We don't get to pick and choose a la carte which laws appeal to us and which ones we'll just leave on the buffet. No, if obedience is the proof of our righteousness before God on judgment day, then it had better be perfect obedience. Because failure in just one point of God's standard of righteousness is failure, period. When it comes to perfection, it has to be, by definition, all or nothing. That's the thing about perfection.
It has to be perfect. Well, truth be told, no one has ever lived up to this stringent standard of perfection except Jesus Christ. But if still we insist on trying to be perfect, we're burning the only bridge that saves. Verse 4, you are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law. Now, the word severed is a bit of a play on words, I think, by Paul. He says, condemning circumcision as a means of salvation, and circumcision, of course, involved the cutting of the flesh. Now, he says that if your reliance is on that obsolete religious act of cutting, then you're actually cutting yourself off from Christ.
You're being severed from him. And if the professing Christians in Galatia were to pass this point of no return, then, verse 4, they will have fallen away from grace, and there is no recovery from that. It's permanent.
It's irreversible. It's eternally damning. Now, what does Paul mean when he says you have fallen away from grace? Is Paul saying that a person can lose their salvation?
There are those that believe that's exactly what Paul is saying. The Scripture is very clear that every soul God intends to save will be saved and will be kept saved to the end. Perhaps the clearest scriptural affirmation of this promise is found in Philippians 1-6, which says, He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Or maybe John 6-37, where Jesus says, All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. This is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given to me, but raise it up on the last day. All who are saved will be kept saved for all eternity. Nothing can or will ever snatch the redeemed out of the hand of God. So how then can Paul speak of those who have fallen away from grace? Well, let me first point out that Paul is not saying that any of the true Christians in Galatia have fallen from grace. It's hypothetical.
He's saying if they abandon Christ, they will fall from grace, and that's true. We have on occasion taken our children to the large piers at Reitzel Beach in Wilmington. These piers are easily 20 feet tall, maybe taller, and they must protrude the length of a couple of football fields out into the Atlantic Ocean. I could tell my seven-year-old daughter, If you get too close to the edge and slip, you will fall into the water.
And that statement is true. If she goes off the edge, she will fall into the water, but you better believe I will not let that happen. I will keep her contained. I will grasp her hand. I will limit her freedom. I will spoil her fun, if necessary, in order to keep her safe.
And part of my keeping her safe is instilling in her a proper sense of the fear and respect she needs to have for gravity and for the danger of falling into the ocean. Paul is doing a similar thing here with this warning about falling from grace. Thomas Schreiner, whose commentary I've been reading as I've been preaching through the book of Galatians, wrestles with the tension between Paul's warning here in verse 4 and the Bible's clear teaching on the perseverance of the saints. I just want to read his comment.
I found it very helpful. Schreiner says this, What if one were to object, but I don't need a warning like this because I am a true Christian and I will never fall away from Christ. He has promised to keep me by His grace. I agree in part, He has promised to keep you by His grace, but the warnings are one of the means God uses to keep us in the good way of trusting Christ. Warnings are not opposed to promises, but are one of the means God uses to fulfill His promises.
Just like road signs keep us from driving safely on the highway, so warnings remind us to keep putting our trust in Christ. Beloved, the truth is, if we insist on saving ourselves, Christ will not save us, and if Christ will not save us, we will be forever lost, separated from everything that is good and pleasant, everything that is beautiful and true, separated from the friend of sinners, the all-powerful Spirit of God, and from the love of the Father Himself. And all of this we forfeit for what? For the futile opportunity to declare our own righteousness?
A declaration that nobody will listen to because nobody cares and because it's not even true. Is your ego really so important to you that you would be severed from Christ in order to assert your own autonomy? I can tell you on the authority of God's Word, it is not worth it. Well, Paul has exhorted us to stand firm in Christ. He's given us a warning that if we fail to stand firm in Christ, we will be severed from Christ and from the salvation He offers.
Next, he gives the reason why a rejection of Christ results in being severed from Christ. And that is because faith is the only way to salvation. Verse 5. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.
This verse is so packed full of such rich truth, it could be an entire sermon series on its own. Let me take each statement here and just make a couple of comments, but let me also encourage you to go home and spend some focused time meditating on Galatians 5, verse 5. First Paul says that the faith which leads to salvation is through the Spirit. Through the Spirit. If saving faith in Christ is present in your heart, it's only present because the Holy Spirit of God has put it there. If you have stopped fighting the metaphorical quicksand of God's judgment against your sin and you are resting in the sufficiency of Christ alone, it is because the Holy Spirit has given you repentance unto life and saving faith. Salvation of sinners cannot happen any other way.
It's through the Spirit. Next, Paul says that this salvation comes about by faith. Faith is not the first cause of salvation. It's not the ultimate cause of salvation. That place of preeminent ultimate first cause belongs to God alone. But by all means, faith is the instrumental cause of salvation.
It's the instrument God uses to get sinners from a place of condemnation to a place of justification. There is no other instrument that will save. My dad used to say, and I think every man here this morning probably will agree, that you've got to have the right tool for the job. If you have the wrong tool, you mess up or it takes too long, things won't get fixed right. Now, there are certain jobs that can sort of be done with a less than ideal tool.
We've probably all tried to hammer a nail with the handle of a screwdriver or hold something together with duct tape that really needed some glue or a screw. But when it comes to the salvation of the sinner's soul, there is one and only one instrument that will do the job, and that is faith in Christ. Paul continues, for through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait. You know, waiting is such a passive activity, isn't it? We want to move. We want to get up and do something.
We want to make something happen. The scripture Paul uses that characterizes the sinner whose future will culminate in the hope of righteousness is this. He eagerly waits. He's expectant. He's hopeful. There's definitely eagerness in his heart, but it's an eagerness that waits on the Lord.
So this eager sinner turned saint is still. He's at peace. He's unrushed. He's unpanicked. He waits.
Why? Because his hope is entirely in God's ability to see it through, to complete that work of salvation that God has already begun. Is your life characterized by the eager patience of someone who was resting in God? Would people who know you best say, she is really confident in her Lord's ability to save?
That man is a rock of Gibraltar because he's resting in a strong, strong God. Faith knows how to wait with contentment, with peace, with eager anticipation. But what are these faithful saints waiting for? They're waiting for the hope of righteousness. Now, there's a sense in which we have already received the righteousness of Christ.
The moment the Holy Spirit regenerated us and gave us saving faith in Christ, we were made, past tense, righteous before God. But there is another sense in which we're still waiting for that righteousness to be openly declared by God before a watching world when all who have loved his appearing will be acquitted for their sins once and for all before the world. On the day of judgment, all who by faith have been looking to Christ will by sight see Christ. The hope of glory will become a visible, tangible reality. Hope will become sight. The legal declaration of righteousness will become experiential righteousness. What we have testified with our lips will become fully evident to all. We will see him and we will be like him for we will see him as he is.
This is that for which through the Holy Spirit by faith we eagerly wait. And Paul's point is this. If you are severed from Christ, you are severed from this very hope of righteousness.
If you insist on trying to save yourself through the works you perform, you lose. Verse 6, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. Now we'll address this idea of neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counting for anything when we get to chapter 6 verse 15. Paul circles back around and addresses that again there.
But let me just briefly comment on it here. Paul brings up the flip side of the coin when he mentions uncircumcision along with circumcision. Legalism won't save you, but neither will your ability to not be a legalist save you. Trusting in your obedience will not make you any more righteous than trusting in your ability to not trust in your obedience. Just because I lack one particular heresy doesn't mean I'm not guilty of a dozen different heresies.
Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything. There are plenty of ways to be lost. There's only one way to be saved.
And what is that one way? Paul says it is faith in Christ. Now Paul's way of describing this faith there at the end of verse 6 is potentially confusing to us. Paul describes saving faith as faith working through love. Here's that disturbing word for us, working through love.
Aren't we anti-works? The Roman Catholic Church rejects the Protestant doctrine of salvation through faith alone, fearing that this doctrine will lead to all sorts of lawless behavior among Christians. If all I need in order to be saved is faith in Christ, then what's stopping me from sinning all that I want to after I get saved? And so the Roman Catholic Church teaches a sort of hybrid view of faith and works. And Galatians 5-6 says in one of their proof texts, as if the love that I demonstrate produces the faith that ultimately saves me, makes love a work. And while that grammatically could be what Paul means here, it cannot mean that because it would contradict many other places in Scripture, wouldn't it? Instead, we should read the phrase faith working through love as indicating that love is the fruit, it's the expression of faith.
The NIV captures this beautifully in its translation. It says, the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Love is not the cause of the faith, it's the consequence of the faith.
It's the evidence of the faith. It is faith and not love then that does the saving. So Paul calls us to stand firm in Christ because faith in Christ is the only hope of salvation there is. If that's the case, then the opposite of standing firm in Christ will result in misery and loss and destruction. So Paul speaks next of the dangerous consequences of rejecting Christ in verses 7-12. And this rejection of Christ is what characterizes the false teachers who are misleading the Galatians. The Galatians' ability to stand firm in Christ is going to be in direct proportion to their willingness to reject the false gospel of the false teachers who had infiltrated their congregation. And so Paul begins to expose these false teachers for what they are.
And then he pronounces a very severe curse upon them. First Paul asserts that these false teachers are not from God. Verse 7, you Galatia were running well, who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion to not obey the truth is not from Him who calls you. It's not from God. In other words, it comes from someone other than God. It's evil.
It's wicked. It's untrue. If you insist on following this evil, untrue teaching, church, it will infect you.
Why? Because verse 9, a little leaven, leavens the whole lump. How many Christians have been led astray because they think that their favorite Bible teacher, their favorite TV evangelist, their favorite Christian author has been accurately teaching the truth when they've actually been hindering them from knowing and obeying the truth? I think our easy access to an abundance of self-appointed Bible teachers has made it perhaps more critical than ever that we carefully study and know Scripture and weigh what others teach by the standard of what Scripture says. If someone's teaching of Scripture does not have the effect of increasing my obedience to God's Word, I need to walk away.
No matter how likable or gifted or popular they are, they are leaven that will eventually spread like yeast throughout my entire life. I'll say this as plainly as I can. If it does not comport with the Word of God, it is not from God. If it does not agree with God's Word, it is not from God. And so these false teachers in Galatia were not from God. Next, Paul firms the true believers in Galatia and declares that these false teachers will be punished. Verse 10, 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. So in the end, God will make it very evident who belongs to him and who does not. God will round up the sheep and cast out the goats.
He'll gather the wheat and he'll burn the tares. If you stand firm in Christ, he will protect you even from the leaven of false teachers. If you do not stand firm in Christ but reject Christ and proclaim a false gospel or embrace a false gospel, you will bear the punishment that goes with that rejection. Then in verse 11, Paul makes it clear that the rejection of Christ on the part of these false teachers is so vehement, so intense that they actually hate Christ and his gospel. You see, it's not a matter of them being merely ignorant of the truth. No, they hate the truth. False teachers, Christ-rejectors don't mean well.
They mean evil. They mean for you to reject Christ with them. Okay, verse 11, Paul says, If I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed. If Paul had been agreeing with these false teachers, they would have stopped persecuting him, which implies that he was not agreeing with them and that they were still persecuting him for preaching the true gospel.
Why? Because they hated that gospel. They had an active disdain for the truth that led them to persecute Paul. This section then ends with an imprecatory prayer against false teachers. An imprecatory prayer is a prayer for God to send judgment on the enemies of Christ and the enemies of his people. Verse 12, I wish those who unsettle you, and that word means to disturb or upset the stability of a group, these false teachers were ruining what should have been the peaceful fellowship of the saints. I wish those who unsettled you would emasculate themselves. An embarrassing word in church. Emasculate means to castrate. The false teachers in Galatia were calling for professing Christians to uphold the Old Testament rule of circumcision. Castration would have taken circumcision to a whole new level, wouldn't it? So Paul, perhaps with a bit of apostolic sarcasm, is saying, Why stop at circumcision?
Why not be all in, be fully committed? Go the distance, false teachers. Now, he's not just randomly or crassly bringing up castration. He's probably alluding to a practice which was common in the first century, the practice of emasculating men in order to create eunuchs who would serve some sort of priestly role in pagan temples. Essentially, Paul is equating these false teachers' insistence on circumcision with pagan atrocities of the day. He's saying that the false gospel that was being taught in Galatia is really no different from the God-denying, Christ-rejecting paganism of unbelievers.
Maybe a modern-day comparison might be the similarities that exist between certain man-made theologies, man-centered theologies, and all-out secular humanism. If you're going to preach a social gospel that downplays the exclusivity of Christ, why not just drop the gospel part and embrace full-on socialism? Christ, plus a little bit of something else, doesn't get you the something else, nor is it Christianity.
It's the worst of both worlds. So stop being lukewarm, Paul says, and be either hot or cold. Preach Christ and Christ alone, or just go emasculate yourselves like the rest of the pagans.
It's a harsh but appropriate pronouncement of judgment. Well, this brings us to the end of our text for today, and I think the message should be crystal clear. The message of Galatians 5, 1 through 12 is this. Stand firm in Christ. Stand firm in Christ. And I suspect that most everyone in this room today understands and affirms that truth.
We get it. We know that Christ is essential, and we're fully convinced that there is salvation in no one else. But I've also been around Christians long enough to know that we are masters at keeping our tendency towards self-reliance safely hidden behind a curtain of orthodox-sounding platitudes when deep down in our hearts we doubt and worry, and we wonder if it's really such a good idea to stop fighting the quicksand. It's hard for us to stand firm in Christ because it's really hard for us to stop trusting ourselves. I want you to notice, beloved, that Paul does not say, stand firm in your standing firm in Christ. No, he says stand firm in Christ. If we come away from this passage of Scripture thinking that we've got to work harder at standing firm in Christ, we've probably missed the point.
If we come away looking to ourselves to do something or perform something better than we've been performing it, we've probably missed the point. The Gospel is never a call to look inward. It's never a call to look at yourself for salvation. The Gospel is always and forever a call to look to Christ, to stand firm in Christ, to rest upon Christ. Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer, said, this is a very important and pleasant comfort with which to bring wonderful encouragement to minds afflicted and disturbed with a sense of sin and afraid of every flaming dart of the devil. Your righteousness is not visible, and it is not conscious, but it is hoped for as something to be revealed in due time. Therefore, you must not judge on the basis of your consciousness of sin, which terrifies and troubles you, but on the basis of the promise and teaching of faith by which Christ is promised to you as your perfect and eternal righteousness.
The application is simple. Quit looking to you for salvation or even for the assurance of salvation and look to Christ. He is both the author and the finisher of the kind of faith that truly saves. So, church, stand firm in Him. Let's pray. Lord, thank You for the reassurance this morning that You are able to save us and to keep us saved.
Now, help us to believe it. We do believe, but help our unbelief. Increase our faith.
Guard us from the tendency that we know all too well of relying on ourselves for things that we have no business trying to accomplish. Lord, we are Your children. You are our Father. You are a good and gracious and aware Father, so thank You for Your love. Thank You for giving us the Holy Spirit to assure us of that love. Thank You for Jesus Christ, our Savior, in whose name we pray. Amen.
