Our Expensive and Fragile Freedom (Galatians Sermon 15)

We have the privilege of turning back now to the Book of Galatians and we are immediately struck by this statement in Galatians 5:1, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” What is freedom? What do you think of when you think of freedom? Many people, I think, mis-define this in our culture. They don’t really fully understand it. People think of it as the ability to do anything that you want to do whenever you want to do it. They see it as a complete severing of all shackles, and chains, and requirements, and boundaries. I’m thinking right now of the Australian Outback restaurant. “No rules,” right? Have you ever seen that? I actually said to a waitress, “Would it be okay if I go back in the kitchen and make myself a sandwich? Would that be alright?” They looked surprised. Apparently, there are rules at the Australian Outback that you need to follow. But there’s this sense of a yearning for freedom, a yearning to go wherever you want to go, and eat whatever you want to eat, and say whatever comes into your mind to say. That’s how they define freedom. People define it as a yearning to win a lottery ticket, and be able to give your resignation the very next day from a job that you don’t like, and then you just be independently wealthy the rest of your life.

Or think about students on the last day of school. I never forget that, fifth grade, just counting down the seconds until, at last, I could be free. Or think about, let’s say, somebody that’s graduated from college and has a whole summer to do whatever they want. Maybe they buy a EuroRail Pass, and they go and stay in youth hostels, and go wherever they want to go, and do whatever they want to do all summer long. They define freedom that way. Or perhaps a single person, who’s free from marriage, and can pursue romantic entanglements with whoever they choose of the opposite sex. Or maybe a married couple, that both of them making a hefty income, but they’re not bound down by kids. They have double income, but no kids. They’re free in that regard. Or perhaps it’s the individual standing on the north face of the Eiger in one of those aerodynamic squirrel suits. You ever seen those things? And they jump off, and they soar for four and a half minutes, until, hopefully, safely landing on the valley floor below. They’re defining freedom that way.

Others define it perhaps more politically. They identify the 4th of July, 1776, with the Declaration of Independence and a new birth of freedom of a new nation, that then had to be earned on the battlefield. And five years later it was earned at the Battle of Yorktown. Or they define it with the freeing of the slaves after the Civil War, or the fall of the Berlin wall, or the peace demonstrations, and the freedom demonstrations in Tiananmen Square around that same time. People have all kinds of definitions of freedom. Now, the Bible has a lot to say about freedom. And as we come now, into a new phase of the Book of Galatians, we’re going to be staring at this topic full on, and try to understand the freedom that Christ gave his life to buy for us.

What is that freedom? What is the nature of that freedom? Jesus defined it differently than all of the things I’ve been saying, because in order to understand freedom, we have to understand the bondage, the slavery that we were in before Christ came. And Jesus said it in John chapter 8, “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin. So, if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Truly, truly free. To me, a real picture of freedom is Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail. They’re actually prisoners, they’re in chains, but they’re singing at midnight with hearts that are set free by the grace of God, and they were more free than anyone, perhaps on the face of the Earth, at that moment. It has nothing to do with earthly circumstances or any of those things. It has to do with the relationship with Jesus Christ, the freedom that Christ alone can give, because the real bondage in this world is the bondage of sin, and Jesus alone has the power to break the chains of sin, and to set us free. But we need to understand the nature of that freedom. Is it freedom from all boundaries, and all constraints, and all restrictions, and all obligations? No rules no restrictions, no limitations? To be able to be, and do, and say, and own, and eat, and drink whatever we will, whenever we will? Is that it? I think not. If that’s the definition of freedom, absolutely no boundaries, really, the freedom for self-definition, I would contend only Almighty God is free.

He (Almighty God) alone is self-existent. Everything else in the universe derives its existence from him. There can be no freedom that leaves God out of the equation. At the dedication of the temple, King Solomon was talking with a supernatural wisdom that the Spirit gave him, and he realized the limitations of the little, golden building that he had made for God, Almighty God, to dwell in. And as he was dedicating that, and as he was praying for that temple…I just loved this moment of reflection that comes on him. In 1 Kings 8:27, he said, “But will God really dwell on Earth? Heaven, even the highest Heavens cannot contain you. How much less this temple that I have built?” There is no container for God, no boundaries for God. There’s no place you put Him and that’s where he has to stay.

All of the universe depends on God, and God alone is free to define himself, and to be what he will be. All creatures have their boundaries, all of them, and that’s why we have that language Jesus used in the Sermon on the Mount. Perhaps you’ve never thought of it before, but these little phrases He puts in there, He speaks of the birds of the air. Birds of the air. That’s their realm. That’s where they fly. Birds of the air. He speaks of fish of the sea. He speaks of the beasts of the earth. He speaks of the lilies of the field. Those little phrases talk about where they were placed by the Creator and what they are to do. An eagle soars through the air, because that’s its proper domain. It feels its freedom by soaring through the air as it was designed by God to do. The dolphin swims through the sea and it feels its freedom there. A cheetah races across the field 70 miles an hour. It runs in freedom, because that’s what it was made by God to do. A lily grows stationary in its place. It doesn’t move, but it has a root system that sucks nutrients and moisture from the soil, and it grows up, and it’s beautiful, and that’s what it’s free do by God. And so man also has boundaries. We are created to operate in a set of constraints. Salvation doesn’t change that.

“All of the universe depends on God, and God alone is free to define himself, and to be what he will be.”

Now, Satan, when he fell, challenged his position. He challenged his boundaries, and he didn’t want to stay there, and he said in Isaiah 14, “I will ascend to Heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of God. I will sit in throne on the Mount of Assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds. I will make myself like the most high,” but God cast him down to the Earth for his arrogance and his pride. Also, angels that fell with him did not keep, it says in Jude 6, their proper places, their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, and so God consigned them to a pit, to be kept in eternal bonds, in darkness until Judgment Day.

Now, in the Garden of Eden, the serpent tempted man, male and female, with the same discontent of boundaries, “You will be like God,” and we transgressed. I picture this like we jumped the fence. We went across the fence that God had set up. God had given us freedom. It says in Genesis 2:16 and 17, God said to Adam, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden.” There’s the scope of your freedom. “You’re free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for on the day you eat of it, you will surely die.” Now, some have asked, “Why did God give any prohibition at all?” It’s because he’s God, and we’re not, and he wanted us to know that. He has the right to limit us. He alone is unlimited as the sovereign King of the universe.

Well, the moment that we transgress, the moment that we jumped the fence, and went where we should not go, and ate what we should not eat, at that moment, we became slaves with invisible spiritual chains on us. The essence of our bondage was in our hearts and minds. We hated God and we hated God’s will for us. We chafed, and yearned, and lusted, and coveted, and hated each other, and we murmured, and we were churningly restless in our assigned place. Christ came to set us free from all that. He came to liberate us from that churning, and chafing, and lusting, and coveting. He came to set us free by enabling us to delight in our limitations, and our boundaries, and find joy within those boundary lines. As David said in Psalm 16:6, “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Surely, I have a delightful inheritance.”

The Word of God describes our boundaries. The freedom that Christ gives is to allow us to run freely within those boundaries. As it says beautifully in Psalm 119:32, “I run in the path of your commandments, for you have set my heart free.” God’s law defines freedom for us and He enables us to run by the Spirit in the path of those boundaries. Now, we are a nation that delights in liberty and freedom. We celebrate it as part of our national ethos. It’s part of our heritage, and we delight in that, and we should. But America, I believe, is full of people who define freedom wrongly. They define freedom as the ability to do whatever you want to do, whatever your heart drive is, whatever your heart desires. I think I would define freedom differently.

Biblically, the definition of freedom is the God-given heart inclination and power to do what is right according to God’s Word. Simply put, to delight in God’s law and fulfill it. That’s freedom. That’s true freedom and that’s the freedom that Christ came to give. Now, as we come to Galatians 5, we come to a turning point in the epistle. We’ve had four chapters, Galatians 1-4, in which the apostle Paul is taking on and destroying a false gospel, the false gospel of the Judaizers. These were Jewish professors of faith in Christ, people who had… They claimed to be Christians, but they came to Galatia to these churches that the Apostle Paul had planted, and after he had left, they came in, and they brought a different gospel, which was no gospel at all. It worked like this: You have to believe in Jesus, plus obey the laws of Moses, in order to be saved, in order to be justified. It’s a combination, but it was poisonous.

“Biblically, the definition of freedom is the God-given heart inclination and power to do what is right according to God’s Word. Simply put, to delight in God’s law and fulfill it. That’s freedom.”

Paul, in Galatians 1 and on into Chapter 2, establishes his authority to address the issue, says that he got his apostleship from Almighty God. And he says he also got his Gospel from God. And then he declares in Chapter 2, what that Gospel is, and what the heart of the Gospel is, which is Justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law, found in Galatians 2:16. And then in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Now, that’s the Gospel, and he defines it very plainly. And then he establishes the Gospel in Galatians 3-4, in both experience, and in Scripture. And he proves that this idea, this doctrine of justification by faith alone, apart from works, is not something he made up, it’s nothing new. It’s exactly what saved the believers in the Old Testament. And he proves that, and he goes through all of this biblical proof.

Now, in Galatians 5-6, he turns a corner to address this probing question, “How shall we now live? What kind of lives shall we live, now that we have been justified by faith?” And he raises… As always, people raise this question, “If we’re completely forgiven by grace, apart from works of the law, doesn’t that mean that we can just live a dissolute life of sin, and you’ll be forgiven, and go to heaven? Is that what it means, that there’s total immorality and it’s going to be covered by grace? Does this mean we can sin as much as we want and get away with it?” And centuries of Christians have struggled with this question, and many church leaders have responded by instituting systems of morality, laws which have put boundaries around the church, and around the people of God. And they sought to restrain total exercise of Christian freedom.

But many of those approaches have resulted in a poisonous legalism, not much different from the Judaizers. That makes the next two chapters we’re going to look at, pretty vital, to understand in the Christian life, “How shall we live as justified sinners? What kind of freedom shall we live out?” In Galatians 5-6, he’s going to answer, “We live as free people, justified by faith in Christ, and who also live by the Spirit, a righteous, and holy, and upright life.” This is the beauty of a true Christian life, but we don’t live that life as slaves, who are trying constantly to earn God’s favor by our obedience. We live it as adopted sons and daughters. We live the life of the Spirit, a life of freedom, yes, freedom from legalism, freedom from boundaries, and constraints, and laws that characterize the law of Moses. But freedom, also, to live a holy life, just as Jesus did, to delight in righteousness.

In Galatians 5, we are going to unfold the glories of the Spirit-filled life, and the answer to the fears that the doctrine of justification by faith leads to an immoral life of freedom from all constraint. We’re going to see that there are twin dangers and we’ve talked about this before in the true Christian life. You’ve got a third rail on both sides of the road. And you’ve got legalism on one side, and that’s one kind of bondage. And you’ve got license on the other side, and that’s another kind of bondage. And both of them are found to be bondage in the New Testament. We either can be enslaved to a system of rules and regulations by which you’re continually earning God’s favor, legalism, or you’re going to be enslaved to your own passions, and lusts, and desires, and unable to break free. And that’s license, but they’re both bondage. The truth is right down the middle.

I was with a relatively new driver some time ago, (I’m not going to say who or whatever the circumstances), but we were in one of those turn lanes where you’re waiting, and it was a very heavy traffic, and we needed to be exactly right. Do you know what I’m saying? You couldn’t be halves into the thing and you couldn’t be too far over, that would be head-on collision. We had to be exactly right. And so it is here. We need to be right down the middle of a Spirit-filled freedom that leads to holiness, and a delight in God’s moral law, because there’s danger on both sides.

I. Our Blood-Bought Freedom

Let’s look at it carefully now. We begin at verse 1, powerful opening statement, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. We’re set free by Christ. He set us free.” What an awesome thought. Christ delights in making slaves free. He loves to set the captive free. It is his joy to set you free from sin and that’s what he came to do. He yearns to hear the cry of freedom, just as Yahweh, in Exodus 3, heard the cries of his people in bondage in Egypt and he came to set them free. And so also, Jesus has come. Now, we, in Adam, we are an enslaved race. If you’re just in Adam, and not in Christ, you’re a slave to sin, and to Satan. The Bible says this in First John 5:19, “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” He is an evil dictator, a tyrant, a dominator, Satan, I mean. As we’ve already seen in John 8:34, sin itself is a tyrant, “Everyone who sins [said Jesus] is a slave to sin.” Paul says in Romans 6:20, “When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.” We were slaves.

And the essence of slavery is compulsion, chains you cannot see, and chains you cannot escape. They’re invisible spiritual chains, you can’t see them, you can’t escape from them. We felt the lash of the task master, just as the Jewish slaves did in Egypt, and we were dominated by Satan’s clever and vicious poisonous temptations, and by our own fleshly nature that delighted in evil things. And we could resist some temptations, occasionally, but we couldn’t be set free. We couldn’t set ourselves free. And Paul uses the language of tyranny in Romans 5:21, “Sin reigned in death.” Sin was a vicious tyrant.

Now, part of the bondage in the mind was the arrogance of independence. We had declared our independence from God, “We’re going to live our own lives.” And legalism came in, and connected with some categories of people, not everybody, but there’s some people that know that they want to do better morally, but they’re just every bit as much independent from God as they ever were. They are climbing a moral ladder up to heaven by their own efforts in keeping the law. It was still independence. They’re lifting themselves up, and it’s very devil-like. Like we saw in Isaiah 14, “I will, I will, I will ascend,” and that’s that moralistic legalism. But the depth, and power, and complexity, and sinister nature of Satan’s bondage was hidden from our eyes, we couldn’t see it. He had ensnared the human race in unbreakable cords of compulsion, we had no choice but to sin. And the essence of it was in the mind, and in the heart, as it says in Romans 8:7-8, “For the mindset of the flesh is hostile to God, because it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot do so.” We couldn’t keep the law, we hated it.

We were wrapped up in invisible chains and we could not break them. We needed a savior, and so Christ has set us free. It is for freedom that Christ came into the world. It was for freedom that Christ was incarnated by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. It was for freedom that Christ never sinned, so that he could give us righteousness. It was for freedom that he did these miracles of grace. It was for freedom he died on the cross and for freedom that he rose from the dead. For freedom, he did all of these things.

In Luke 11, Jesus was defending his miraculous ministry of driving out demons by the Word of his sovereign power. And they said, “It’s by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that He’s driving out demons.” Jesus basically said, “This makes no sense. How can Satan drive out Satan?” Actually, what’s going on here, is Satan is like a strong, powerful man, fully armed, who’s guarding his house, and all his possessions (that means people), and he’s not letting anyone out. But suddenly, someone more powerful comes, and overpowers that strong man, and strips his armor in which he trusted, takes it away, throws it on the ground, and goes, and plunders his house. We are the plunder. He rescued us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of the Son he loves. We have been rescued by Jesus. He set us free.

Jesus said in Luke 4, at the beginning of his ministry, reading from Isaiah’s scroll, He said, “I came to proclaim freedom for the captives.” A couple of chapters later, in Luke 13, there was a woman. You remember her? She had been hunched over for 18 years by a spirit, it says, by a demon. And Jesus said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” And she straightens up immediately for the first time in 18 years. And then they criticize him for doing it on the Sabbath. I think He did most of his miracles on the Sabbath. What do you think? “Is it Sabbath? Okay, time to get to work.” I think he just loved doing that. But he loved setting this woman free from her bondage, to just set her free. And he says this, “Should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for 18 long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”

Well, friends, I believe that Jesus’ miracles literally, physically happened in space and time. But they also give us a picture of the spiritual work He came to do, right? We can say, “I once was blind, and now, I see.” “I was starving, but now, I eat.” “I was thirsty, but now, I drink.” Those are all not only physical, but they’re metaphors for the spiritual work that Christ came to do. We were hunched over and bound up in sin by Satan. And Jesus came, and set us free. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. And he set us free, ultimately, by His substitutionary death.

“We were hunched over and bound up in sin by Satan. And Jesus came, and set us free.”

We are set free from the condemnation of the law. We are set free from the terrors of hell and death. We are set free from Satan’s temptations. You know what? As a Christian filled with the Spirit, you never, ever need to sin again, ever. No temptation will ever come to you, with compulsion, with power, with authority to command you. You can tell them all to go away. You can resist them all by the power of God. You are no longer a slave to sin. Amen? That’s your emancipation proclamation from Jesus. That’s your Magna Carta of freedom. You are set free. You never, ever need to sin again, ever. Every temptation that comes your way can die. Now, they won’t all die, because Romans 7 says that the flesh is powerful, and you’re going to struggle, and you’re going to need to confess your sins. We’ll talk about that. But Christ has set you free, and we are free now, with hearts set free to delight in righteousness, and hate wickedness, and to run in the path of God’s commands. And we have the freedom to love righteousness.

Look ahead at verse 6, “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith working through love.” That’s the freedom of a Christian. Our faith now, working through love to obey the commands of God. Christ died to give us this freedom, the most expensive substance, the most precious substance that has ever been, the precious blood of Christ, the lamb without blemish or defect was shed for sinners like you and me. But the second point I want to make is that this freedom is fragile and needs to be defended. It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Stand firm then, and do not allow yourselves, again, to be burdened by a yoke of slavery. You’ve got to defend this freedom. You have to protect it.

II. Our Fragile Freedom

You get a picture… I get a picture in my mind here, of needing to just get a good footing under me, because it’s like gale force wind. Picture yourself like a mountaineer going along a knife edge, going up to the summit, and there are these crosswinds blowing, and every step you take, if it’s not rooted, you’re going to get blown off the mountain to your death. Satan is just going to be blowing on you the whole time, one way or the other, toward license, or legalism, but you’ve got to stand firm on this issue of freedom, constantly. Like someone once said famously, “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.” We’ve got to be constantly vigilant, or we’ll lose this freedom, one way or the other. Legalism and license, they beckon, like grand chasms on the left and right, and we must stand firm.

Now, here I think, especially, he’s having in mind the yoke of legalism. The Judaizers want these Gentile converts to bow their necks to their interpretation of the Christian life, with circumcision being the start of it. We’ll talk about that in just a moment. But he says, “Stand firm and don’t submit, again, to a yoke of slavery.” Peter called it, in Acts 15, in the Jerusalem Council, “A yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear.” Why are you trying to put that on the necks of the disciples? We couldn’t bear it. It’s a form of bondage, this legalism.

I want you to notice in verse 1, and this is an important point for you now to keep this in mind. If the Lord tarries, if we go on, perhaps generations from here, (this is true in every local church), every local church is responsible for the doctrine they’re getting from the pulpit. You’re responsible. If it’s bad doctrine, throw the guy out. He’s not talking to the Judaizers here, he’s talking to the Galatians. Throw them out, don’t listen to them anymore. Get them out of there. Say, “You have no right to teach us these things anymore.” But like in 2 Corinthians 11, you’re putting up with anyone who pushes themselves forward, or slaps you in the face, or puts you in some kind of bondage. He’s talking about false teachers there. Don’t put up with them. This is a vital principle of congregationalism. Local congregations are responsible for the teachers that they get. And if they’re not teaching rightly, you need to be like a Berean, and take everything that is said back to the Scriptures, and be sure it’s scriptural. And it’s up to the church to get rid of false teachers. It’s up to you.

“Local congregations are responsible for the teachers that they get. … And it’s up to the church to get rid of false teachers.”

III. How Christ Can Become Worthless and Alien to Us

My responsibility is, during the time I have, is to get you ready to recognize false teaching from true, and to embrace and delight in true teaching, and to stand firm against legalism and license. How can Christ become worthless to you? And how can he become alien to you? Look at verses 2-4. There’s a threat that, if you don’t stand firm, that Christ would become worthless to us. Look at verse 2, “Take note, I, Paul, tell you that if you get circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you at all.” He’s saying, “Take note, sit up, notice. This is a severe warning. Galatians, if you walk under that door that says ‘circumcision,’ you walk through that door, you go ahead and let yourself be circumcised, you’re going to go into a whole world of legalism. It’s just the beginning. Circumcision’s just the start. You’re going to be walking into a whole world. You’ll have to keep the dietary regulations. You’ll have to keep the laws for special days, and months, and seasons, and years, and festivals, and all of those things. You’ll have to uphold the animal sacrificial system. You’ll have to go to Jerusalem three times a year and other things besides. You’ll have to follow the Sabbath regulations according to the priests and what they say.

But even worse than all that, the whole time you’re doing that, you’ll be thinking like a slave, and not like a son or daughter. That’s the worst part of all. You’ll be thinking the whole time,  you’ve got to earn God’s smile, you’ve got to earn his affection, you’ve got to earn his love, or he’s going to kick you out. You’ll be thinking of him wrongly the whole time.

Now, I want to remind you, Paul says in verse 3 what the law was. We’ve already been through this, but I want to remind you. Look at verse 3, “I declare, again, I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised, that he’s obligated to keep or obey the whole law.” He already said this, remember back in Galatians 3:10? He says, “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written, cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law.” As we said back then, “All the law, all the time, or you’re cursed by God.” Well, no one wants to be under that. This is a terrible, a terrible slavery. It’s actually a form of debt. Verse 3 in the KJV, I love this, it says, “For I testify, again, to every man that is circumcised, that he is a, [listen to this,]“a debtor to the whole law.” You owe the law, whole law. And Christ would be of no profit, but rather, the person has a debt they have to pay off. More on that in a moment. And he says in verse 4, “You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ, you’ve fallen away from grace.”

Now, once this legalism takes root, we no longer stay close to Christ. There has come a separation from us and Christ. Remember that Christ said, “I am the vine and you are the branches, if you remain in me, and I in you, you’ll bear much fruit. Apart from me now, you can do nothing.” Grace is the life-giving sap that flows from our union with Christ, to enable us to flourish and bear fruit for the Glory of God. There’s an ongoing sap that needs to flow, a life through the Spirit, through Christ’s death and resurrection, and by his Spirit. He is moving in us to obey God’s moral law, to love God with all of our heart, and love our neighbor as ourselves. He’s moving in us to do that.

He didn’t remain high and aloof up on his judgment seat, his arms crossed…Always picturing him like, “Here’s the law, do it. Here it is, do it. It’s up to you and you’re on your own.” You have a sense that you’re on your own. That’s the whole legalism thing. He’s not going to lift a finger to help you. That’s not the Gospel. Jesus became incarnate to help us, and then gave the Holy Spirit to live within us, to help us, because apart from him, we could do nothing. The legalism thing, it’s like an expert athlete telling a bunch of young people to do what he did. Picture Michael Jordan, coaching a middle school basketball team, sitting the team down. He’s so frustrated with the way they played in their last game, and he puts on videos of himself, “Come Fly with Me,” or something like that. He says, “Do that!” I’m thinking, “I can’t do that!”  And all he is just angry, and yelling at them all the time, because they’re not doing what he did. This… It’s not a good analogy… life of a great basketball player.  Jesus did live a perfect life, but he does not stand and say, “Now, I did it. Now, you do it and its up to you.” That’s not it, that’s legalism.

Rather, picture a father and a son playing with Legos, and the father says, “Okay, it’s time to clean up.” Now, he can go one of two ways. He can say, “Son, you’re capable of cleaning these Legos up. I’m going to give you 10 minutes or you’re going to get the biggest spanking you’ve ever gotten. I’m going to sit there and watch you.” Well, look, I’ll tell you, that son may do it or may not, but what is he feeling the whole time that he’s putting all those Lego blocks away? He’s living in fear. But suppose, instead, the son looks up and says, “Daddy, will you help me?” He says, “Sure,” and he gets down, and sits cross-legged, and he says, “Tell you what, I’ll do the red ones and the blue ones. You do the yellow ones and the white ones. And we’ll have a race,” is a whole different feel. It’s a great illustration from John Piper, and ever since I heard it, I love that, the picture of God, in Christ, in the Holy Spirit, getting down with us and obeying his own law, fulfilling it in us.

Now, in verse 4, we have a phrase that’s caused a lot of people trouble, “Fallen from grace.” Have you ever heard that before? “Fallen from grace.” I was raised in the Catholic church, and in Catholic theology, there’s this idea that if you commit a mortal sin, you’ll fall from grace. And if you die outside of grace, you go to hell. That’s what they teach. Arminian theology, like John Wesley, and all the Methodists, teach that you can lose your salvation, and they’ll point to this expression of “fallen from grace.” Both systems employ this phrase to describe falling from grace and the implication is, you can lose your salvation. That’s not what this verse is teaching, not at all.

Can I say straight out, that if you have received the gift of God’s sovereign grace, and as a result of that, have been born again, and are justified by faith, that will never change. No one who’s born again ever dies spiritually, and no one who is justified, and declared not guilty by the judge of all the earth, will ever have that reversed. That’s not what’s happening. Either you’re in God’s grace or you’re not. Either you’re light or you’re darkness. But the question is your own thinking about your Christian life, and if you have been justified by God’s grace, by his mercy, by simple faith, and then later, you think you now need to hold on, or make progress on your own, by yourself, you have, in your own mind, stopped thinking about grace. You’re not dependent on Christ anymore. You’re relying on yourself, just like he said in chapter 3, “You, having begun by the Spirit, are you now perfected by the flesh?” You’re trying to work it out by yourself, you’ve fallen from grace, alienated from Christ.

No, no, no, you’re a branch and he’s the vine. Stay close to him, depend on him, pray to him, ask him every moment for help. That’s what he’s talking about. It doesn’t mean you can lose your salvation. I love the verse in John 6, “This is the will of him who sent me. I’ve come down from Heaven, not to do my own will, [Jesus said] but to do the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that He has given me, but raised them up at the last day.” He’s not going to lose anybody. You can’t fall from grace, if that’s what that means, it can never happen. But the grace of God actually has transformative power and you need understand that. It isn’t just to get you justified. The same grace sanctifies you day by day. God’s grace is powerful in a Christian. Remember, how Paul said, “By the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace, to me, was not without effect.” That’s a great understatement, isn’t it? “Oh, his grace, to me, was not without effect. No, no, no, I worked harder than all of them, yet, not I, but the grace of God in me.” God’s grace is powerful inside a Christian.

IV. Eagerly Awaiting Righteousness through the Spirit

John Piper talks about something called the debtor’s ethic, I don’t have time to go into all of this, but here’s the idea. Right now, right here, where you stand in your Christian life, you can spend your life looking back at what Jesus has done and say, “He has paid a huge price for me. I owe him everything. Now, as I look forward, I got to spend the rest of my life paying it off.” Have you ever felt that pressure? Somebody invites you over to eat and you feel the pressure to invite them back? Somebody gives you a gift and feel a pressure to give them a gift, as much, or maybe, even a little more than the one they gave you. You know what that is? That’s just pride. In effect, you’re saying, “Alright, Jesus, thank you for all that you did. I realize I couldn’t have done it without you, but okay, I got it now, and I’m going to try to pay that back. I’m going to try to pay it back.” Then salvation becomes like a mortgage and you got to make daily payments off it, you know what I’m saying? Payments of thanksgiving, payments of evangelism, and payments of good works, and all that. You got to pay it down and you’ll never pay it down. And you’re just going to keep being, it’s debt bondage, is what it is. You know what debt bondage is? It’s where, after slavery became illegal, the owners of the plantations, like sugar plantations, got real clever, and they gave big chunks of money to poor people to come and work on the plantation, and they couldn’t leave until that money was paid off. Well, those poor people, maybe never had so much money in their lives, would use it to pay off other things or whatever, they didn’t have the money. They were just no different than slaves from then on. They’re paying off a debt they can never pay.

That is not the Christian life. We don’t live with a constant “thank you” debt we have to pay. I’m saying we should say, “Thank you,” but that’s not how we live. What we need to do is say, “Lord, you have been gracious to me. Up ’til now, I have feasted on that grace. Now, give me more. Every day, I want to go deeper in debt to grace.” You’re going to anyway, because apart from him, you can do nothing, right? Just acknowledge it and say, “Give me more. I need more grace. I need more and more grace. I’ve got challenges I’m going to face today, challenges of my flesh, challenges of Satan in the world. I’ve got your law and I want to live up to it. I want to follow. God, give me more grace, more and more grace.” I’m not paying off a mortgage here. It’s a whole different way of looking at it. Instead, verse 5, “By faith, we eagerly await through the Spirit, [look at this] The righteousness for which we hope.” Isn’t that beautiful? That’s the Christian life. By faith, not by works, but by faith. We, through the Spirit, relying on the Spirit, we are eagerly awaiting for a hoped for perfection, righteousness. And we’re yearning after, aiming for perfection through the Spirit by faith. That’s the Christian life. That’s not legalism or license. That’s Christianity, is what that is.

V. Applications

What application can we take for this? Well, first of all, just ask, “Do you know this freedom? Are you a free man, free woman, free boy, free girl, are you? Have you come to Christ? Do you know that your sins are forgiven through faith in Jesus?” You’ve heard the Gospel here today. I’ll say it again, God sent his son, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died a substitutionary death, rose from the dead on the third day, and if you trust in him, repent, and believe in him, you’ll have eternal life. You don’t have to leave here a slave. You can be as free as any veteran Christian, somebody who’s been a Christian for 20, 30 years, equally free to them right now. Trust in him, ask him to save you, call on him. You don’t have to move, just in your heart say, “I know I’m a slave to sin, free me Jesus,” and he will, absolutely.

And secondly, as Christians, are you living a life of freedom, or have you slipped in one bondage, or another? Are you legalistic? Do you feel like every time you sin, you have to do something to earn God’s favor again? Or do you say, “I need more grace. Forgive me, again, I need more grace.” As you face the challenges of life, are you doing it on your own, like you’re paying off a mortgage, or are you looking to him, and saying, “Give me more grace. I’ve feasted at your table of grace. I need another meal. I need to feast again. Jesus, give me more grace,” and embrace your responsibility to fight for freedom. You’ve got to fight for this freedom. You’re going to drift toward legalism or license at every moment. Satan’s going to be pulling you. There’s a crosswind blowing left to right, or right to left, but it’s going to try to blow you one direction, or the other. You have tendencies in one direction or the other. You probably have legalistic tendencies or you may have license tendencies, but there’s going to be that crosswind. You need to embrace the fight to be free from both, through the Spirit.

And embrace your responsibility, to be sure you’re getting good teaching from the pulpit, and from the teachers here. Take everything back to the scriptures, like Bereans. Now, there’s a right way to do that and a wrong way to do that. Okay, it could be that you’re wrong. Bring it up and ask respectfully, but just know that this church is responsible for the preaching ministry and the teaching ministry. Embrace your responsibility and fight the debtor’s ethic. Don’t ever think, “I have to do this to pay back Jesus.” You’ll never pay him back, and everything you’re doing, this you’re doing, he’s giving it to you anyways, as a gift by grace.

Everything you do puts you deeper in debt to Jesus into grace. And he’s fine with that, because he is infinitely wealthy. Fight the debtor’s ethic and learn how to obey, step-by-step, by the Spirit. Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the beginning of Galatians Five. There’s so many things to learn in this incredible chapter. I pray that you would be working right now in this sanctuary by the Spirit, setting people free, maybe for the first time through the Gospel, or maybe they needed to hear this message. They’ve been drifting toward legalism, or drifting toward license, and they needed to be set free again, to get back to a life of holiness by faith through the Spirit. I pray it would happen, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

These are only preliminary, unedited outlines and may differ from Andy’s final message.

What is “freedom”?

Many people think of it as the ability to do anything you want to do whenever you want to do it. They see it as a complete severing of all the shackles and chains and boundaries and requirements that could restrict your ability to do whatever you want to do. If you want to go there, you go there. If you want to eat this, you eat it. If you want to jump off a cliff and soar like a bird, you do it. If you want to have this possession, you have it. If you want to say these words, you say them. No boundaries. No rules. No restrictions.

The Bible has a great deal to say about freedom. Our text this morning asserts plainly that Jesus Christ shed His blood to set you free.

Galatians 5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

In another very memorable place in Scripture, Jesus talked about His mission to set us free:

John 8:34-36 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

The real bondage is SIN… Jesus alone has the power to break the chains of sin and set us FREE… “free indeed”… truly free.

But what does that mean? Is it freedom from all restraints, all boundaries?? No rules, no restrictions, no limitations… able to be and do and say and own and eat and drink WHATEVER WE WILL WHENEVER WE WILL?

I think not. If that is the definition of freedom—absolutely no boundaries—only Almighty God is truly free. At the dedication of the Temple, King Solomon said with great wisdom and humility about the little golden building he built for God to dwell in:

1 Kings 8:27 “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!”

There is no “CONTAINER” for God! No boundary line across which He cannot travel.

Only God has the freedom of self-existence… all creation depends on God for continued existence. And only God has the freedom of absolute sovereignty… all creatures derive their positions from God.

Creatures have boundaries… “the birds of the air”

“the fish of the sea” “the beasts of the earth” “the lilies of the field”

All of these speak of the proper boundaries in which these created things live and move and have their being.

An eagle soars through the air… winging its way through its assigned place… it is free to fly.

A dolphin swims through the sea… gliding its way through its assigned place… it is free to swim.

A cheetah races across the surface of the earth… leaping its way through its assigned place… it is free to run.

A lily grows up stationery in the field… its roots make it stable and suck nutrients from the soil… it is free to grow beautiful and stay in one place.

So also man has boundaries… we were created to operate in a set of constraints… salvation does not change that.

Satan, when he fell, did so because he was not content to stay within his boundaries… he coveted God’s throne and sought to soar to the heights of rulership over all creation:

Isaiah 14:13-14 You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. 14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”
But God threw Satan down to the earth to be judged.

So also the angels that rebelled with him did not accept their boundaries:

Jude 6 And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day

In the Garden of Eden, the Serpent tempted the human race with the same discontent of boundaries… “You will be like God…” We TRANSGRESSED… we sought to leap our boundaries. God had given us freedom, but He LIMITED IT by a prohibition:

Genesis 2:16-17 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

Man did not stay within boundaries, but TRANSGRESSED… we “hopped the fence” and ran into a field that was OFF LIMITS for us.

At that moment, we became slaves… with spiritual chains on us. The essence of our bondage was in our hearts and minds… we HATED GOD and we HATED GOD’S WILL FOR US. We chafed and yearned and lusted and coveted and hated others and murmured and were churningly restless in our assigned place.

Christ came to SET US FREE by enabling us to accept the limitations and delight in what is INSIDE those boundaries:

Psalm 16:6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

The Word of God describes our boundaries… the freedom Christ gives is to allow us to run freely within those boundaries:

Psalm 119:32  I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.

America: the land of the free and the home of the brave! Our “freedom” is one of our most cherished national treasures. Much of the American history and civics taught in schools centers around the precious value of freedom.

Declaration of Independence (Thomas Jefferson):

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Preamble to the Constitution:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Bill of Rights:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

During WWII, Norman Rockwell painted the “Four Freedoms”

1)     Freedom of speech

2)     Freedom of worship

3)     Freedom from want

4)     Freedom from fear

What IS freedom?

Webster’s Dictionary:

the quality or state of being free: as

a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action

b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another

: INDEPENDENCE

c : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous <freedom from care>

d : EASE, FACILITY <spoke the language with freedom>

Biblically, the definition of freedom is different: it is the God-given heart inclination and power to do what is right according to God’s word.

Galatians 5:-5 speaks very powerfully about FREEDOM and BONDAGE… of a spiritual kind! It makes a soaring assertion—that it is for freedom that Christ set us free; but this freedom is FRAGILE… it must be defended at every moment!

Transition in the Letter:

Galatians 1-2: Paul defended the heavenly origin of his apostolic call and the gospel he preached

Galatians 2:16, 20: Paul specifically establishes the doctrine of justification by faith alone on the basis of Christ’s death on the cross

Galatians 3-4: Paul proves the doctrine of justification by faith from experience and scripture.

Galatians 5-6: Paul now turns to the probing question: “How shall we now live?” If we are truly justified by faith in Christ, doesn’t that mean we can live any kind of life we want?

Doesn’t it mean we can sin and get away with it?

Centuries of Christians have struggled with this question, and many church leaders have responded by instituting systems of morality (laws) which sought to restrain the bad exercise of Christian freedom… but that form of legalism is the wrong answer…

That makes the next two chapters really key to understanding the full Christian life that Paul is teaching here

HOW SHALL WE LIVE???

In Galatians 5-6, he will answer: we live as free people, justified by faith in Christ… but we also live a righteous life by the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul is going to describe the BEAUTY OF A TRUE CHRISTIAN LIFE here… free from the accusations of the Law, free from the bondage of sin itself, free to live as God wants us to live… free to be like Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The life of the flesh is a life of slavery… the life of the Spirit is the life of freedom.

In Galatians 5, we’re going to unfold the glories of the Spirit-filled life, the answer to the fears that the doctrine of justification by faith leads to an immoral life of freedom from all constraint.

I.   Our Blood-Bought Freedom (vs. 1)

A.  Powerful Opening Statement

Galatians 5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

1.   The whole reason Christ died was to SET US FREE!!

2.   Awesome thought! Christ wants to see us completely free from the chains that have robbed us of joy and delight and power to do what God has designed us to do

3.   He hears the cries of His people as they are groaning in the chains of slavery as Yahweh did when the Jews were in bondage in Egypt

Exodus 3:7-8 The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey

B.  Our Natural Bondage

1.   We are part of an ENSLAVED RACE… as sons and daughters of Adam, we were born in slavery to sin

1 John 5:19 …the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

John 8:34 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”

Romans 6:20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.

2.   The essence of the slavery is COMPLUSION… chains… you can’t escape

Romans 6:16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey– whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death…

3.   We felt the lash of the task-master as much as the Jewish slaves did in Egypt

4.   We were dominated by Satan’s clever temptations, and by our own fleshly nature… we could resist certain temptations occasionally, but we had no power to escape Satan’s dark Kingdom

5.   Thus Paul uses the language of TYRANNY… of sin REIGNING

Romans 5:21 sin reigned in death

6.   Part of the bondage was the ARROGANCE of INDEPENDENCE from God

7.   Part of the bondage was arrogantly thinking we could be our own saviors from sin!! We were enslaved to an independent path of self-righteousness, of ladder-climbing to heaven from the lowliness of our sin and our creaturely nature

8.   And that’s very DEVIL-LIKE:

Isaiah 14:13-14 You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. 14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”

9.   The depth and power and complexity and sinister nature of Satan’s bondage is hidden from us… He has ensnared the human race in unbreakable cords of compulsion… we had NO CHOICE but to sin in this way or that

10.   Essentially, it was a matter of the MIND

Romans 8:7-8 For the mind-set of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit itself to God’s law, for it is unable to do so. 8 Those whose lives are in the flesh are unable to please God.
Ephesians 4:17-19 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

11.   We were wrapped up in invisible chains, unbreakable by our power… even our best works were displays of our independent pride

a.  To break an average steel chain, you would have to exert over 10,000 pounds of force… = at least 2 pickup trucks!

b.  You can’t!!

c.  Satan’s chains of sin are unbreakable!!!

d.  We could not set ourselves free

C.  Christ Has Set Us Free!!

1.   Christ is the great liberator!

2.   His miracles as portrayed as liberation from Satan’s chains… Satan’s powerful HOLD on human beings

In Luke 11, Jesus was defending His ministry of driving out demons from those who said it was by the power of Satan that he drove them out

1)     Jesus said that MAKES NO SENSE!!! How can Satan drive out Satan? If Satan drives out Satan, his kingdom is divided

2)     The Jesus explained what is ACTUALLY HAPPENING… He said, in effect, this is a rescue mission, an ACT OF WAR, a liberation of captives

Luke 11:20-22 if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you. 21 “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. 22 But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up the spoils.

3.   Therefore many verses speak of the liberating work

Luke 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed…

Luke 13:11-13 a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” 13 Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

Luke 13:16 Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”

D.  Jesus Set Us Free Ultimately by His Death

1.   Debt Americans feel to those who sacrificed their lives for our political freedom

a.  “Freedom isn’t free!!!”

b.  “Home of the free because of the brave!!!”

2.   How much MORE TRUE is it of our spiritual freedom in Christ!!

a.  “Freedom isn’t free… it was INFINITELY EXPENSIVE… the blood of Jesus Christ was shed to set us free from sin and death and guilt and the condemnation of the Law and the power of Satan

b.  “Home of the free BECAUSE OF the brave…” no one has ever been braver than Jesus… the ultimate display of courage was Jesus on the cross

3.   Our spiritual freedom is BLOOD-BOUGHT… it was Jesus who set us free

4.   BUT He did it so that we WOULD BE free!!!

E.  It was FOR OUR FREEDOM that Christ Shed His Blood

1.   Freedom from the condemnation of the Law

2.   Freedom from the terrors of Hell

3.   Freedom from Satan’s dark realm and it’s awesome power

4.   Freedom from sin’s dark magnetic attraction

5.   Freedom from the sting of death—the accusations of a guilty conscience

6.   BUT CERTAINLY NOT freedom do whatever we want in whatever self- definition of a so-called “good life”

7.   It is will be freedom to love to do everything God wants us to do

8.   Freedom from the minutiae of the law and from the bondage of legalism… constant attention to tiny details (tithing mint, dill, and cumin) to please God… BUT ALSO:

9.   Freedom to run as Christ did in the path of God’s perfect moral law

Psalm 119:32 I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.

10.   Freedom to LOVE RIGHTEOUSNESS and live a life of love

Galatians 5:6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

Christ died to give us this freedom! It was extremely expensive… the most precious substance on earth given to set us free—

1 Peter 1:18-19 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

II.   Our Fragile Freedom (vs. 1)

A.  BUT… this Freedom is Clearly Fragile! It must be DEFENDED

Galatians 5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

1.   The clear command: “Stand firm!!”

2.   The idea is of a determination against a force pulling you down… like a mountaineer walking up a knife-edge ridge with a howling cross-wind which threatens to blow him off the mountain to his death below. He needs to STAND FIRM with a strong footing or he will die

3.   Or like a soldier fighting in hand-to-hand combat before gunpowder changed the nature of warfare; the soldiers would line up in a shield wall and crash against their enemies, pushing and grunting and striving; if you slipped and fell, you would almost certainly die

4.   STAND FIRM in your freedom!

The Most Famous fake Thomas Jefferson quote: “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom”

He never said it…

Irish orator and politician John Philpot Curran said in Dublin in 1790. “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance”.

5.   Either way: your blood-bought spiritual freedom must be defended by constant vigilance against its enemies

6.   And what are the enemies?

a.  Legalism on the one side

b.  License on the other

c.  Legalism: a yoke of bondage to the idea that we have to earn God’s favor by our obedience to the law

d.  License: a yoke of bondage to the lusts of our corrupt hearts

B.  Here Especially: the Yoke of Legalism

1.   The Judaizers wanted to get these Gentile converts to bow their necks to their interpretation of the Christian life

2.   They wanted to fit an iron yoke for them and put it on them… to make them submit to a series of rules and regulations, the Pharisaic interpretations, the whole system of laws based on the Law of Moses stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

3.   The logic: because Christ shed His holy blood to buy you freedom, don’t GO BACK UNDER the slavery of false religion

4.   The essential legalism: a right relationship with God must be earned by constant obedience to the law

5.   The Apostle Peter has the strongest word on this to the legalistic Judaizers at the Jerusalem Council on circumcision:

Acts 15:10-11 Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? 11 No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”

C.  Key Concept: Local Churches are Responsible for the Teaching They Get

1.   Paul is holding the Galatian churches responsible to kick these Judaizers out

2.   It is THEIR RESPONSIBILITY not to put up with false teaching!!

3.   They are to be the noble-minded Bereans who take everything back to Scripture and assess it; Paul is not writing to the Judaizers here, but to the churches who are listening to them

4.   DON’T STAND FOR THIS FALSE GOSPEL!! It’s up to you!!!

5.   Same thing in Corinthians with the so-called “super-apostles”

2 Corinthians 11:19-20 You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise! 20 In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or pushes himself forward or slaps you in the face.

D.  Bottom Line: We Must Continually Defend Both our Souls and our Local Church from the Yoke of Legalism

1.   There is a relentless Satanic attack, trying to draw us into slavery

2.   Satan wants us either in slavery to legalism, acting like slaves rather than sons

III.   How Christ Can Become Worthless and Alien to Us (vs. 2-4)

A.  The Threat: Christ Will Become Worthless to Us

CSB Galatians 5:2 Take note! I, Paul, tell you that if you get circumcised, Christ will not benefit you at all.

1.   Paul wants the Galatians to sit up and take notice! This is really vital!!

2.   This is a severe warning to them… if they walk under the door entitled “Circumcision”, they’ll be walking into a whole lifestyle and mentality in which Christ’s death is basically meaningless

3.   Similar to this verse:

Galatians 2:21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

4.   If you begin down this road, the death of Christ will have been worthless

5.   Circumcision will just be the start

a.  They’ll have to keep the dietary laws

b.  They’ll have to observe special days and months and seasonal festivals

c.  They’ll have to keep the Sabbath regulations as the chief priests determine

d.  They’ll have to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem three times a year

6.   Even worse than that… they will be continually thinking like slaves rather than sons!!

a.  Every moment, the legalist is laboring under the scowl of God… God with His holy arms crossed, glowering down across a perfect standard, not lifting a finger to help

b.  Every moment, the legalist has to prove his love for God, and God stands aloof, wanting to be impressed

7.   All the time, the blood Christ shed on the cross shrinks into insignificance… what REALLY MATTERS is independent obedience to the perfect standard

B.  The Impossible Standard: The Law

Galatians 5:3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.

1.   Clear reminder of what the legalist is dealing with

2.   Paul repeating this earlier statement again, in case they missed it:

Galatians 3:10 All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.”

a.  “ALL THE LAW… ALL THE TIME… OR YOU’RE CURSED!!”

b.  The legalist is IN DEBT… this is debt language

KJV Galatians 5:3 For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.

c.  Christ was of NO PROFIT; but rather the person has a DEBT to pay

d.  More on that in a moment!

C.  Alienated from Christ

Galatians 5:4 You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.

1.   Once this legalism takes root, we no longer stay close to Christ… there has come a separation from us and Christ

2.   Christ said

John 15:5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

3.   Grace is the life-giving sap that flows through us to produce the fruit of the Christian life by the Spirit

4.   Christ by His incarnation and by His Spirit has invaded not only our sinful world but our sinful hearts

5.   He is moving in us to obey God’s moral law and to do good works (fruit) that will glorify Him

6.   He did not remain aloof, high and holy, up in heaven, with His arms crossed, commanding us to obey all the law or else, and telling us we’re on our own

7.   Rather, He came down to save us from WITHIN… He has promised to never leave us or forsake us

8.   He is working from within us by His Spirit to obey God’s law: to love Him, and to love our neighbor

9.   If we step off independently, saying to Christ, “I don’t need you, I will do this on my own”, you have become ALIENATED (separated) from Christ

10.   Christ is distant from you, judging you… He set a perfect example, and He is a perfect judge, but He cannot make you do what He wants… that’s up to you

Illus. #1: Like an expert athlete who becomes a hard-driving coach; think about Michael Jordan… trying to coach a college team; he puts on videos of his exploits on the court, he yells at you to do the same things he used to do… but he cannot and will not MAKE YOU do what he wants you to do

Illus #2: a father playing Legos with his six-year-old son; at the end of the time, he can rightly COMMAND the son to pick them all up and put them away in a certain amount of time, OR ELSE. The son then with a sense of burden and fear labors to do the job he is capable of doing; OR the son asks the father, “Daddy, will you help me?” The daddy gets down off his chair, sits down on the floor, Indian-style, and says, “Sure… let’s have a race… I’ll put away all the blue and red ones, and you put away all the white and yellow ones.

Ready, go!” The son is doing the same work, but the feeling is one of joy and delight.

Christ by His Spirit enables us to fulfill the law… He is WITH US, and IN US… not apart from us, judging us. We are not slaves burdened by a crushing obligation, but sons doing a delightful work in FELLOWSHIP WITH God!

D.  Fallen from Grace

Galatians 5:4 You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.

1.   So often this expression is taken out of context

2.   Some people use this to teach that, at every moment, human free will can trump grace… that grace is not IRRESISTABLE…

3.   The logical extension of this doctrine is that you CAN LOSE YOUR SALVATION!! You can “fall away from grace”

a.  Roman Catholic theology said that if you committed a “mortal sin” (like murder) you had “fallen from grace” and would end up in hell

b.  Arminian theology (including Wesley and the Methodists) taught that a genuine Christian could later “fall from grace” through sin and later end up in hell

c.  Both systems employed this phrase to describe it… “fallen from grace”

4.   Let’s settle this right now… A JUSTFIED PERSON CANNOT LOSE THEIR JUSTFICATION

John 6:39-40 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”

5.   BUT Paul is just continuing his overall presentation of the deadly dangers of legalism… people who are trying to save themselves by lawkeeping have been ALIENATED FROM CHRIST… alienated from His cleansing blood and alienated from HIS ONGOING WORK in their souls by the Holy Spirit

6.   God’s grace is a powerful force that overcomes the hardness of our hearts

7.   God’s grace is EFFECTUAL… it sovereignly produces what it seeks to produce

1 Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them– yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

8.   That is the whole point here… by trying independently to live a legalistic life of law-keeping, you have turned your back on Christ crucified and resurrected, and the Holy Spirit imparted and indwelling

9.   You have day by day become severed from the ongoing work of God in the soul… you have become a slave serving a distant and aloof God; you are no longer living like a son who is moment-by-moment empowered by the Spirit to serve

E.  The “Debtor’s Ethic”

1.   1994: John Piper wrote an award-winning book Future Grace

2.   In it he uncovered a problem in the way many think about the Christian life… being in constant debt to Christ, especially through thanksgiving

Piper: The debtor’s ethic says, “Because you have done something good for me, I feel indebted to do something good for you.”

3.   This especially comes through the matter of THANKFULNESS: I just want to say thank you to Christ for all He’s done for me!

Piper: Here is the legalistic twist which can happen to gratitude. When grace if offered to us we slyly try to pay it back by doing works of “gratitude.” We see the grace offered to us through the work of Christ, receive it, but then immediately move pay it back. The legalistic habit starts living again. But the habit hides itself under a cloak of “holy gratitude.” We begin telling ourselves that we have to work so much harder in doing good works because Christ gave us so much. Christ’s death becomes a legalistic law which we place ourselves under.

The very reversal to what Christ’s death was meant to be!

4.   Soon we are acting like SLAVES and not like SONS

5.   We are acting like our salvation was really a vast MORTGAGE which we must pay back through daily installments… setting up a payment plan of thanksgiving

6.   We know that the value of Christ’s work on the cross was infinite, so we’ll be in debt the rest of our lives

7.   But we have to do what we can every day to PAY IT BACK… especially by being THANKFUL

Piper: Is gratitude a bad motivation for obeying God?

It can be a bad thing if we conceive of acting out of gratitude as returning favors, like when somebody invites you over for dinner and out of gratitude you feel the need to invite them over to dinner. If that’s the way we’re thinking about our relationship and obedience to God, it’s bad.

It’s going to be legalistic and devastating. And it’s going to dishonor God, because it says, “OK, God made a deposit in my life of some good and some kindness. Now, as I face the future and ponder what my motivation is for pleasing God or for doing good things that he commands, I must now do something good for him because of what he has done for me in the past.”

8.   This whole approach is WRONG!! Instead, the work of Christ on the cross PAYS debts; it doesn’t make us even more indebted

9.   It was for FREEDOM that Christ died for us… it was for FREEDOM that Christ sent His Spirit…

10.   It was not to make us slaves on the plantation

F.  An End to Debt Bondage

1.   After slavery was abolished in the British Empire through the efforts of William Wilberforce; a new form of slavery arose: DEBT BONDAGE

2.   What is “debt bondage”? It occurs when a wealthy employer gives a large sum of money to a laborer before the work is done… so the laborer OWES WORK because of the sum of money… but in the way things work out, the laborer can never pay it back; their wages are never enough… they become slaves

3.   Poor laborers were transported (mostly from India) all over the world to work on sugar plantations, making a pittance every day

4.   They were legally bound by their debt… they worked every day under the broiling sun to repay a debt they could never repay

5.   So it can be with the DEBTOR’S ETHIC in Christianity

Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf: Nicolas visited an art museum in Dusseldorf where he saw a Domenico Feti painting titled Ecce Homo, “Behold the Man.” It portrayed the crucified Christ with the legend, “This have I done for you – Now what will you do for me?”

Francis Ridley Havergal: Hymn “I Gave My Life for Thee,”

Christ says, “I gave, I gave My life for thee, what hast thou given for me?” And: “I bring, I bring rich gifts to thee, what hast thou brought to Me?”

What God want is for us to say not, “You did all this for me in the past, now I must do something now or in the future to PAY IT BACK”

Rather: “God, you’ve helped me so much in the past; I am counting on you to help me now and in the future!”

The second is far more glorifying to God!! That is the power of GRACE!!

Actually, every second of the true Christian life, we are going DEEPER AND DEEPER into debt to God! We can do nothing apart from Him!

IV.   Eagerly Awaiting Righteousness through the Spirit (vs. 5)

Galatians 5:5 But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.

ESV Galatians 5:5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.

A.  Looking Ahead by Faith to Future Grace

1.   More and more expectantly looking forward

2.   Trusting by faith that the same God

who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6)

3.   Not looking ahead to paying off a spiritual mortgage by good works and expressions of thanks

4.   Rather looking ahead to receiving more and more grace from God to finish your salvation journey

B.  Looking Ahead to What?

1.   A future righteousness

2.   The final declaration by God on Judgment Day that we are righteous

3.   The final transformation of our whole selves to glory

Romans 8:30 those he justified, he also glorified.

Matthew 13:43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

C.  Looking Ahead How? EAGERLY… through the Spirit

1.   Not like cowering slaves but confident, joy-filled sons and daughters!!

2.   Some day we will be PERFECTLY RIGHTEOUS!!!

3.   Not trusting in our own powers, but relying on the ongoing power of the Holy Spirit

4.   And what does the Spirit produce?

Galatians 5:6 The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

V.   Applications

A.  Do You Know this Freedom?

1.   Are you still in bondage to lusts and sins and rebellion?

2.   Are you still in chains to a guilty conscience?

3.   Are you still in bondage to fear of death?

4.   Are you still in chains to terror and fear of wrath?

5.   IT IS FOR FREEDOM THAT CHRIST SETS YOU FREE!!

6.   Trust in Christ!!

B.  Embrace the Fight to Stay Free

1.   You have to be eternally vigilant to stay free from bondage to sin on the one hand and to legalism on the other

2.   Understand Satan is always dragging you to one or other extreme… but BOTH are forms of bondage

3.   The bondage addressed here is legalism

C.  Fight the “Debtor’s Ethic”

1.   Salvation is not a mortgage

2.   Every moment we genuinely obey God, we do it by faith and by the power of the Spirit

3.   We are even deeper in debt (if we look at it that way!)

4.   We dare not look back continually with thanksgiving as if to get a sense of our debt and try to pay it off

D.  Learn How to Obey by the Spirit

E.  Learn How to Wait Expectantly for Righteousness by the Spirit