Sunday, January 26, 2014

The Community of Faith, Galatians 2:1-10

When I was a new Christian, still living in Northern California, I used to pick up hitchhikers, because it was a good opportunity to witness to the gospel. I had a lot of good conversations with people that way, but one response came up again and again. People would tell me things like: “I believe in Jesus, but not in organized religion. I believe in Jesus, but not in the Church; the Church is full of hypocrites.” I remember being startled at how regularly that objection came up. People seemed to have a vague sense of goodwill toward Jesus, but wanted nothing to do with His Church.

I still notice a similar tendency. People want to have a spiritual relationship with Jesus, but they see the Church as more-or-less optional. And, of course, if the Church is optional, as soon as something happens that they don’t like, they stop going. I’ve met people like this, who haven’t attended church in years but who still profess to have some sort of relationship with Jesus Christ.

Here’s something I came across a few years ago. It’s a list of the 10 top reasons one preacher gave for no longer attending sporting events:

10. My father took me to a game every weekend when I was growing up and it was awful.

9. I don’t want to take my children to a sporting event because I want them to choose for themselves what sport they like best when they get older.

8. Every time I go to a sporting event they ask for money.

7. The bleacher seats are too hard and uncomfortable.

6. The people sitting around me on the bleacher seats aren’t very friendly.

5. The games are scheduled at times when I want to do something else.

4. Every now and then a game goes into overtime and I’m late getting home.

3. The pep band plays songs that I don’t recognize and I can’t sing along with them.

2. The coach never comes to visit me in my home between games.

1. And the number one reason that this preacher no longer goes to sporting events: the referees make decisions with which I disagree (taken from a printed sermon by Dr. Robert Ives, “My Heart, Jesus’s Home,” at Elizabethtown BIC Church, May 12, 2002).

I used to use the same excuses that I’ve heard others use. I remember saying, before I was a Christian, “the Church is full of hypocrites.” I’d heard others say it, and it sounded like it must be true. Of course, I didn’t know many Christians at the time, so I really didn’t know what I was talking about. The thing I’ve noticed over the past 29 years is that there are lots of hypocrites around, and some of them are Christians. There are lots of people who pretend to be something that they’re not. People in sales, or politics, or advertising are especially tempted in this way; people in leadership often feel like they need to present a certain “image” to be successful, and often that image is a lie. People who do that habitually are hypocrites; they’re phony’s, pretenders, people who are pretending to be something they’re not. The thing that hasn’t been clear to me is that these kinds of people are more plentiful in the Church than they are anywhere else.

We saw, last week, that Paul is concerned about more than his individual relationship with Jesus. He’s part of something bigger than himself; he’s involved in more than just his own spiritual journey. St. Cyprian, writing in the early 200's, said that “Without the church as mother one cannot have God as father” and “Outside of the church there is no salvation” (quoted by Roger Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, p. 114). That sounds strange to us in the early 21st century, because we’re so used to thinking of salvation in individualistic terms. But the truth is that God does not deal with us individualistically. He graciously calls in the context of our daily lives, and then as we turn to Him we find that we are part of His Church, the bride He’s preparing for His Son. God is building His Church, and He mercifully and graciously includes us.

Paul is demonstrating to the Galatians that he is a true apostle. The churches there have been under the influence of false teachers, and one of the areas these teachers have been attacking is Paul’s apostleship. They want to undermine his message, and one way to do that is by saying that he is not a genuine apostle at all. Paul is at a disadvantage, in many ways, because he came along after all the other apostles and began his relationship with the Church as a persecutor.

The whole reason Paul has written this letter to the Galatians is to defend the true gospel and to undermine the influence of these false teachers. But part of that task is defending his own calling as an apostle, because the authority of his message is tied to that calling. That’s why he stresses so strongly that he wasn’t taught the message by another person but received it directly from Jesus Christ. The message he preached at Galatia was a message from God Himself, because Paul is a true apostle, one set apart by God and sent out to deliver a message.

So he’s demonstrating to the Galatians that he is a true apostle, but his purpose is not to denigrate the other apostles. Paul isn’t asserting his independence. He’s not saying, “these people have no right to tell me what to do or say.” He’s showing the Galatians that he is part of the group, that he and the original 12 apostles preach the same message. Peter was the apostle to the Jews, and it’s likely that the Galatians thought they were aligning themselves with Peter. They wanted to follow the teaching of those who said it was necessary for salvation to put themselves under the ceremonial law of the Old Testament. And, no doubt, they thought they were in good company. Surely Peter, the apostle to the Jews, would be in agreement with them.

Paul’s point is that this is simply not true. It’s not that the Galatians are aligning themselves with Peter. The Galatians are departing from the apostolic message. If they keep going in this direction, they’ll be cutting themselves off from the Church, the Church founded by the apostles. They’ll become a cult, a heretical sect cut off from the body of Christ. Paul wants the Galatians to see, not his independence from the other apostles, but that he and the other apostles preach an identical message. Paul wasn’t taught by them, but Jesus gave him the same message that He’d given to the original twelve. When Paul met with them and told them the message he was preaching to the Gentiles, he says “those men added nothing to my message.” They saw that his message was the same as theirs, that there was nothing missing. So he goes on: “On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews.... James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go the the Gentiles, and they to the Jews.” They’re part of the same One Church, preaching the same gospel; if the Galatians follow these false teachers, they’ll be putting themselves out of the Church, and it’s the Church that has the message of salvation.

We need the help of the Church to stay on track spiritually. The Bible is our only infallible authority, but people often misread the Bible. Most false teachers claim to be getting their messages out of Scripture. And not everyone has the time or the gifts to examine and refute every false teaching that comes along. That’s why we’re part of a larger body; and it’s as we all make use of our gifts that together we make up the body of Christ. But that body includes many who are now in the Lord’s presence. Charles Hodge was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary in the 19th century who had some helpful things to say about the importance of listening to these people who went before us in the Church: "Protestants, in rejecting the doctrine of tradition, and in asserting that the Word of God as contained in the Scriptures... is the only infallible rule of faith and practice, do not reject the authority of the Church as a teacher. They do not isolate themselves from the great company of the faithful in all ages, and set up a new faith. They hold that Christ promised the Holy Spirit to lead his people into the knowledge of the truth; that the Spirit does dwell as a teacher in all the children of God, and that those who are born of God are thus led to the knowledge and belief of the truth.... Any doctrine, therefore, which can be proved to be a part of the faith... in all ages of the world, must be true. It is to be received not because it is thus universally believed, but because its being universally believed by true Christians is a proof that it is taught by the Spirit both in his Word and in the hearts of his people.... From the faith of God's people no man can separate himself without forfeiting the communion of the saints, and placing himself outside the pale of true believers" (Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, pp. 249‑250). Paul wants the Galatians to know that the gospel he preached to them is the same message they would hear in the churches of Judea, the same message they would hear from the apostle Peter.

Paul wants the Galatians to know that “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:4-6). They can’t abandon the gospel without also putting themselves outside the Church. Are there hypocrites in the Church? Yes. Will people in the Church let us down? Yes. Paul goes on to show, a little later, that even Peter, the leader of the original 12 apostles, continued to fail in significant ways. The Church is made up of people who believe the gospel, who are in the process of being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. But the process isn’t complete, so the people of the Church are imperfect. But here’s the important thing: we don’t have the right to leave the Church because of that imperfection. And if we do leave, we’re cutting ourselves off from the body that Paul calls the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). We’re cutting ourselves off from the body of Christ. Leaving the Church because of the failings of others is like jumping out of the ark because you’re sick and tired of dealing with Noah and his family. You’re abandoning the only safe place because you’re irritated with some of the other people who’ve found refuge there.

The Galatians were on the verge of abandoning the Church by believing a different message. But people leave the Church for all different kinds of reasons then try to persuade themselves that they’re still on track spiritually (I'm not talking about leaving one particular church and going to another, I'm talking about abandoning the church altogether). Paul had one of the most brilliant minds in the ancient world, and he also had an exceptionally strong personality. I suspect he had his share of personality conflicts in the Church (we know that he and Barnabas split up their missionary team over a conflict). He was a great thinker. But he didn’t set out on his own. He preached the message he’d been given as a part of the one true Church, the body of Christ. And his commitment to the Church is a model for us. The Church of Jesus Christ is the ark of salvation. It’s the only safe place of refuge in this fallen world.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

The Transforming Power of the Gospel, Galatians 1:11-24

I've been thinking about some of the friends I had in elementary school. The first one that comes to mind is Rudy. He and I were friends for awhile, but two memories stand out when I think of him. One day, when he and I were sitting together, a teacher asked him a lot of questions because he had so many bruises and scrapes. She was clearly concerned that he was being abused (though I didn’t realize that at the time). Rudy said he got the bruises from wrestling with his brothers, but I‘ve often wondered, since then, whether that was true. The other memory I have of Rudy is that he and I were sitting together at lunch when the principle came in and announced that president Kennedy had been assassinated.

I don’t remember much about him after that. His family moved out of the area shortly afterward and I didn’t see him again until high school. He appeared at our school in my junior or senior year, and everyone was afraid of him. He didn’t seem to care about anything; we got the impression that he would, without hesitation, kill anyone who got in his way. He got expelled from school within less than a week, so I didn’t see much of him. Shortly after this, he left town. After I got out of high school, I heard that he was in prison.

About 15 or 20 years ago, another friend, Marc, called me. Marc and I had grown up together but hadn’t been in contact since high school. We had been best friends for a long time, but his home situation was really unstable, and after high school he had left the area and was wandering around the west coast doing drugs. Anyway, he had contacted my mom, who gave him my phone number, and was calling to tell me what had happened with his life. When he left Sonoma, his whole life was wrapped up in drugs, but after awhile he had come to the end of himself and had gone to Teen Challenge looking for help. And through that ministry he had become a Christian.

He told me about another friend of ours. Dwayne had been a good friend all through elementary school and into high school, but he became disillusioned with life after his parents’ divorce and during high school had immersed himself in the drug culture. While we were still in school, he had dropped out and left home. But Dwayne had also come into contact with Teen Challenge and had committed his life to Jesus Christ. He had then received a high school diploma, gone to Bible College, and is now a pastor.

But Marc also had news about Rudy. Marc and Dwayne were messed up and confused, but Rudy was a hardened criminal. Marc told me that Rudy had become a Christian while he was in prison and is now a prison chaplain. God has completely turned his life around. All four of us, Marc, Dwayne, Rudy and me, were friends in elementary school. None of us had any involvement in church as kids. All of us were headed in one direction, then God intervened and turned us around, all independently of each other.

How do you explain these kinds of changes? These stories could be multiplied millions of times, because the gospel is, as Paul says in Romans 1, “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” The gospel is a message that has power to transform our lives. In this passage in Galatians 1, Paul points to the complete change of direction in his own life, but he’s not just telling the story. He’s saying that this change needs to be explained, that it didn’t just happen in the natural course of events. He’s saying that this change is evidence of the divine origin of the gospel. The gospel that he preached, and that the Galatians believed, is not of human origin. It’s not something he came up with in his studies. It’s something he received from God. It’s a message from God that has the power to transform, because it is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.”

Notice, first of all, how Paul describes what has happened in his life. He doesn’t say: “I came to the end of my rope, so I sat down and weighed my options and decided the best course of action was to become a Christian.” He hasn’t embarked on a program of self-improvement in an effort to get his life on track. It’s not, primarily, that Paul has made a decision. It’s that God has intervened in Paul’s life: “But when God, who had set me apart before I was born....” Before it ever entered Paul’s mind that he might be fighting on the wrong side, God was there. God had set him apart from before his birth. God had an interest in Paul’s life, even though Paul was bent on destroying God’s people.

Paul wasn’t at the end of himself. God calls us all in different ways and at different points in our lives. People like Marc, Dwayne, and Rudy came to the end of themselves, and then they were willing to listen attentively to the message of the gospel. But it doesn’t always happen like that. Paul was doing well, humanly speaking. He says “I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.” Among his peers, Paul was someone to be reckoned with. His life was on track. But then something unexpected happened. This God, who had set him apart from before his birth, called him: “But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles.” Jesus met him on the road to Damascus, when he was on his way to arrest and kill more Christians. Paul was rushing headlong in one direction, and Jesus stopped him in mid course and turned him around. But the explanation for that change of direction is God. It’s not that Paul did something to get himself on track. It’s that God stopped him and called him to turn around.

The second thing is that Paul was not completely passive in this process. I’ve noticed a contrast in the way people look at their spiritual lives. They make a lot of the fact that following Christ is their decision. The primary way they describe their conversion is in these terms: they heard an invitation and made a decision to follow Jesus. But after that initial decision, they wait for God to do something extraordinary to make them grow. They go forward in revival meetings, and they spend year after year praying and waiting for God to do something, to make them more spiritually engaged, to cause them to begin following more diligently. They were very active at the beginning: they took charge and received the gift that was being offered; but now they’re passive, just waiting for God to do something apart from any effort on their part.

Paul is just the opposite. God took hold of him in the beginning and did something that was no part of his intention. And then he responded by actively following. The first thing he did, according to this passage in Galatians, is go away into Arabia. He says that he didn’t consult with other people. Paul had no one to turn to at this point, so he went away into Arabia, to give himself time to assimilate and adjust to the things he’d just learned.

Eugene Peterson has a good description of what Paul was doing: “Paul was in no hurry to get back to work. He didn’t have to be in a hurry for he knew that God was at work. God didn’t need him; he needed God. Arabia was his place and time for the leisurely, contemplative training in which he got used to this new way of life in which God was at the center, in which he himself was accepted, and in which he could travel light” (Traveling Light, p. 52).

I’m convinced that the reason many people don’t grow in their Christian lives is that they don’t give themselves time to assimilate the message. They make a “decision for Christ,” then they rush back into their frenzied lives and the Word never sinks in. If we want to grow as Christians, we need to be ruthless in this area. We need to give ourselves time in God’s presence, in prayer and in His Word and in corporate worship. And anything that keeps us from doing these things is harming us, whether it’s excessive work to maintain our lifestyle or excessive time in recreational activities. If we don’t give ourselves time to cultivate this new way of life with God at the center, we’ll spend our lives floundering.

Thomas Merton says our modern, fast-paced life dehumanizes us: “The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude which is necessary, to some extent, for the fulness of human living.... If man is constantly exiled from his own home, locked out of his own spiritual solitude, he ceases to be a true person. He no longer lives as a man. He is not even a healthy animal. He becomes a kind of automaton, living without joy because he has lost all spontaneity. He is no longer moved from within, but only from outside himself. He no longer makes decisions for himself, he lets them be made for him. He no longer acts upon the outside world, but lets it act upon him. He is propelled through life by a series of collisions with outside forces. His is no longer the life of a human being, but the existence of a sentient billiard ball, a being without purpose and without any deeply valid response to reality” (quoted by Peterson, in Traveling Light, p. 52). What he is saying is really not much different than what Jesus said in the Parable of the Sower: “As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing” (Matthew 13:22). Jesus is describing people who are so wrapped up in the things of this world that they don’t have time to cultivate this new way of life with God at the center. So the Word ends up being choked, and their spiritual life dwindles into nothing. The condition Merton is describing has the same effect.

The third thing to notice is that Paul’s conversion was part of a larger work of God. Jesus confronted him individually, and he went into a time of solitude to give himself time to assimilate the change that had taken place. But when he responded to the message, Paul found that he was part of a larger body. Paul is emphasizing, in this passage, that he didn’t learn the gospel from one of the other apostles. It’s important for him to do this, because the Galatians were questioning the legitimacy of his claim to be an apostle. Paul shows that he is truly an apostle, that he has received the message directly from Jesus Christ. But then, having received the message, he doesn’t remain in isolation. We see him, in these verses and into the next chapter, recognizing that he is part of the Church.

He tells us that he eventually went to Jerusalem and spent 10 days with Peter: not enough time to have been discipled by him, but enough time to establish a friendship, enough time to recognize their common bond in Christ. The churches in Judea didn’t know him, but they were hearing reports about his ministry and they glorified God because of him (v. 24). And Paul was called to use his gifts in the church, proclaiming Jesus among the Gentiles (v. 16). It’s not just Jesus and Paul. Jesus calls Paul to be part of the Church. God is building His Church, and He’s called Paul to be part of it.

St. Cyprian, writing in the early 200's, said that “Without the church as mother one cannot have God as father” (Roger Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, p. 114). That sounds strange to us as American Evangelicals in the early 21st century, because we’re so used to thinking of salvation in individualistic terms. But the truth is that God does not deal with us individualistically. He graciously calls in the context of our daily lives, and then as we turn to Him we find that we are part of His Church, the bride He’s preparing for His Son. I said earlier that many people don’t grow spiritually because they don’t give themselves time to assimilate the message. Many others don’t grow because they don’t see the importance of the Church. It’s through the ongoing ministry of the Church that we first hear the message, and it’s within the context of the Church that we are nurtured spiritually. When we’re negligent about corporate worship, we’re sabotaging our own spiritual lives. It’s not just us and Jesus. Jesus calls us to grow as part of His Church by entering into corporate worship, receiving the sacraments, hearing the Word preached, and using our gifts to serve one another in His name.

The gospel is the “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” But responding to the gospel involves every area of our lives. God graciously calls us to Himself, and then He says to us: “You were bought with a price; your life is no longer your own to do whatever you want.” So, when He calls us to Himself, He’s also calling us to order our lives in ways that enable us to grow. When we, over an extended period of time, allow our spiritual lives to be crowded out by the cares and pleasures of this life, we’re being disobedient. And when God calls us to Himself, He calls us to enter into the life of the Church, to be faithful in worship and to be diligent in exercising our gifts in service to one another. When God calls us to Himself, He lays claim to our lives in every area. It’s as we accept and respond to this claim that we are transformed into His image.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

The Sufficiency of the Gospel, Galatians 1:1-10

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.