Several years ago I met with a man who was suffering from debilitating depression. He had been in the church all his life, but he was plagued by doubts about his salvation. He believed the gospel, and he knew that Jesus had paid the penalty for his sins, but when he was growing up in the church he had been taught that it was absolutely necessary to confess all his sins, and that any sins that hadn’t been confessed were unforgiven. Full, complete confession was a condition for salvation. So he was diligent about examining himself and confessing all his sins to God. He even confessed things that he wasn’t sure about, just in case. But he was plagued by the thought that maybe he had missed something; what if there were some unconfessed sins hidden somewhere? This man was genuinely concerned about his relationship with God, and the thought of being alienated from God by unconfessed sin filled him with horror. It finally reached the point where he was unable to function. He was in bondage.
Paul’s letter to the Galatians is about the gospel as a message of freedom. The Galatians were being influenced by false teachers who were bringing them into bondage, and this letter is Paul’s response to the situation. And it’s a message we need to hear today. The gospel is a message of freedom, but we too often spend our lives in a condition of bondage. Listen to these words by Eugene Peterson: “We live in a world awash in fantasies of freedom. We spend enormous sums of money and immense amounts of psychic energy on those fantasies. We fantasize a free life based variously on power, on sex, on fame, on leisure. Whole industries develop out of these fantasies. careers are shaped by them. But the world we live in is conspicuously and sadly lacking in the experience of freedom. The fantasies are barren: they give birth to nothing in word or deed. For all our elaborate and expensive fantasies, the actual lives that most people live are filled with impotence, boredom, obscurity, and hassle. Living in the land of the free has not made us free; we are a nation of addicts and complainers” (Traveling Light, p. 9).
Notice, first of all, that the gospel is primarily a message about what God has done for us. It’s not a message about what we’re supposed to do; it’s a message about what God has done. Paul has been sent to deliver this message. He’s an “apostle,” which means that he is one who has been sent out. That’s what the word “apostle” means. He’s a messenger, and he wants the Galatians to know where the message originated: “Paul an apostle – sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father.” The message itself, the gospel that Paul delivered to the Galatians, isn’t something he dreamed up. It’s not the product of his studies. It’s something he’s been given by God and sent out to deliver.
And the content of this message is that our Lord Jesus Christ “gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.” Paul’s apostleship originates in God, and the message he’s been sent to deliver is about what God has done for us. The message is that God has done for us what we were powerless to do for ourselves. That’s the good news of the gospel, that all our debts before God have been paid in full.
The problem with this message, for many people, is that it humbles us. It treats us like spiritual beggars, people in need of a handout. It’s good news, but it begins with bad news about ourselves, the bad news that there is nothing we can do to free ourselves from bondage to sin and death. That’s part of the appeal of other “gospels.” They tell us: “It’s really not so bad. Deep down, you’re really a good person. You’ve just gotten off track, but if you make a sincere effort to follow this teaching, you’ll be fine.” The gospel is good news – that’s what the word “gospel” means – but it’s humbling to our pride, because it tells us that there is nothing in ourselves that we can contribute. It tells us that we are in bondage to sin and death and that there’s nothing we can do to free ourselves. That’s the bad news, the news that humbles us in our pride and self-sufficiency. But the good news is that, although we can’t do anything to free ourselves, God “rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. He’s set us up in the kingdom of the Son he loves so much, the Son who got us out of the pit we were in, got rid of the sins we were doomed to keep repeating” (Colossians 1:13-14, The Message).
Because of this, because the message is from God Himself and is about things He’s done for us (rather than things we can do for Him), any attempt to supplement the gospel amounts to a defection from it. When we seek to improve this message that God has given, we end up turning away from it. We may think we’re just being conscientious, guarding the message against the possibility of being misinterpreted. Of course we still believe in salvation through Jesus Christ. But we want to make sure people obey the Law. The Galatians don’t think they’re turning away from the gospel; they’re just adding to it.
Here’s a good description of the process: “When men and women get their hands on religion, one of the first things they often do is turn it into an instrument for controlling others, either putting or keeping them ‘in their place.’ The history of such religious manipulation and coercion is long and tedious.... Paul of Tarsus was doing his diligent best to add yet another chapter to this dreary history when he was converted by Jesus to something radically and entirely different – a free life in God. Through Jesus, Paul learned that God was not an impersonal force to be used to make people behave in certain prescribed ways, but a personal Savior who set us free to live a free life. God did not coerce us from without, but set us free from within” (Eugene Peterson, "Introduction to Galatians" in The Message). The Galatians had experienced this same freedom, but now some teachers were telling them this freedom wasn’t a good idea, that they really needed to supplement the gospel and start following the Old Testament Law.
The basic question is this: what is the foundation of our acceptance before God? Are we accepted on the basis of God’s mercy and grace displayed in Jesus Christ, or on the basis of our performance? Are we accepted by God because Jesus gave Himself for us to set us free, or because we’ve managed, for the present moment, to remember and confess every sin? Are we accepted because of what we do, or because of what God has done?
The concern about this message of freedom is that it will lead to abuse. If people begin thinking this way, they’ll just do whatever they want. If it’s true that “where sin has abounded, grace has abounded all the more,” people will begin thinking “let’s sin more, so that grace will abound more.” That’s what Paul was accused of teaching. But that’s a misunderstanding of the gospel. Christ died to set us free from this present evil age. If we’re living in bondage to sin, we haven’t been set free. The freedom we receive in the gospel is not only a legal freedom. It includes that: we’re set free from the guilt of our sins. But the freedom of the gospel transforms every area of our lives and enables us to live in increasing freedom from the bondage of sin. And the foundation of our acceptance is not our success in learning to live as followers of Jesus Christ. The foundation of our acceptance is what God has already done for us.
We begin from a starting point of acceptance, and then, having been accepted, we learn to live in ways that please and honor Him. Here it is in Romans 5: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access into this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God” (5:1-2). That’s our position: we’ve obtained access into grace, not through anything in ourselves, but “through our Lord Jesus Christ,” and now we are standing in grace. We’re not in the precarious position of wondering whether we’ve gotten it all right, whether we’ve missed something along the way which will plunge us into destruction. We’re standing in grace, boasting in the hope of sharing God’s glory.
That’s our position. We’re resting in the certainty of what God has done to free us from our bondage to sin and death. But when we lose sight of this, when our performance becomes the thing that makes us acceptable before God, we’re in the process of defecting from the gospel. We’re no longer resting in what God has done for us; we’re trying to find acceptance through what we can do for Him. We’re trying to save ourselves, rather than accepting God’s salvation. That’s what was happening in Galatia; that’s why Paul reacts with such horror: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.” And that’s why he pronounces such a strong condemnation on the false teachers: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed!” This isn’t an issue where there’s room for disagreement. To tinker with the message of the gospel is to defect from the God of grace.
A good test of our spiritual condition is this: are we focused on ourselves – the things we’re doing for God – or are we focused on God and all He’s done for us in Christ? Are you constantly taking your spiritual pulse, wondering whether you’ve done enough, or whether you’ve neglected some area of duty. Are you weighted down with a sense of guilt, thinking maybe you’ve failed to confess all your sins or that maybe your “sinners prayer” didn’t “take?” You’ve gone through all the motions, but you’re not sure whether you’ve done it “right?” Or maybe these questions make you want to justify yourself: “of course I’ve done enough; what more does God want from me?”
Notice again Paul’s focus in these verses. Everything revolves around God. Paul’s apostleship wasn’t his idea. He had other plans for his life, then God intervened and set him apart to deliver a message. Paul had one of the most brilliant minds in the ancient world, but God sent him to deliver a message that wasn’t his own; God humbled him and said, “here’s what I want you to do with your life, and here’s the message I want you to deliver.” It’s all centered in God. But look, also, at verse 10: “Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people I would not be a servant of Christ.” We know, from reading the New Testament, that Paul displeased a lot of people. Eventually, in the early 60's under the emperor Nero, it led to his execution. Paul’s calling, his message, and even his death, were focused on God. Near the end of his life, when he was writing to Timothy, Paul referred to himself as the foremost of sinners: “But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost [of sinners], Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life” (1 Timothy 1:16). Even at the end of his life, with all that he, as an apostle, had learned and accomplished, and with all his growth in holiness and obedience, the foundation of his hope was that Jesus Christ “gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age.”
John Newton, the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” was speaking from experience when he wrote “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” In his early life he was a sailor and a slave trader. He said this about himself: “I never met a man with a more vile mouth than mine. I wasn’t even content with the common oaths everyone knew. I invented new ones everyday – some so vivid that the captain, a blasphemer himself, would bawl me out” (quoted by Frank Boreham, When Scripture Changes Lives, p. 71). He was in such bondage to sin that unbelievers began to find him intolerable. But God showed him mercy, and until the end of his life, Newton was overflowing with gratitude to God for His amazing grace. Near the end of his life, he met a friend in the street and said to him, “My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things, that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior!” (p. 78). The Galatians had forgotten what great sinners they were and what great mercy and grace God had shown them. They were beginning to think that maybe they could contribute something to the process after all. And it was leading them into bondage.
When we’re focused on ourselves, we end up in bondage. This is true whether we’re absorbed with the things we want or the things we think we have to do to become acceptable in God’s sight. That’s why Paul is writing this letter to the Galatians. They had been set free by the gospel of grace, and now they’re coming again under the bondage of the Law. Self-absorption leads to bondage, but when we become absorbed with God and with the great things He’s done for us, we experience freedom. That’s why Paul, and John Newton, didn’t gloat at the end of their lives about all the great things they’d accomplished. They were too absorbed with the great things God had done in showing them mercy and grace. They were aware that they didn’t deserve such mercy, and they never quite got over the wonder of it. Here’s what John Newton had written on his gravestone: “John Newton, Clerk, Once an Infidel and Libertine, A Servant of Slaves in Africa, was by the Mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Preserved, Restored, Pardoned, And Appointed to Preach the Faith he had so long labored to destroy” (p. 78). First he describes what he became on his own, then he says what Jesus did for him.
The Galatians were in the process of forgetting all this, so Paul begins by reminding them that the gospel is a message of deliverance, it’s the message that Jesus Christ “gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.” Writing to believers facing a similar temptation, the author of Hebrews writes, “how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” (2:2). We’re not in a position to add to this gospel; it’s been given to us. Our duty is to receive it gratefully and to hold to it firmly until the end of our lives.
indeed that the righteous shall live by faith
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