Two Ditches and a Path
Rev. Res Spears
Galatians: Be FREE! • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 2 viewsNotes
Transcript
You guys have heard me talk about how much I love to drive. Well, it’s come at a great cost. Crashed cars (two within my first year as a licensed driver). Speeding tickets. Sky-high insurance. All of the above were expensive and — finally — humbling.
I was thinking about the accidents I’ve had in cars over the years. I didn’t have to use my toes, but it was still a little depressing.
Anyway, it occurred to me that ditches were involved in at least three crashes I had in my teens and twenties.
I ran off Matoaka Road, caught my tire in the ditch, and flipped the car just six months after I’d received my license.
Just six months after that, I fell asleep at the wheel on Route 10 when I was driving to see my girlfriend after a long summer day pouring concrete. Wound up in the ditch in front of a started man who’d been doing lawn work.
I ran into a ditch in heavy fog late one night on my way home from work in Wakefield on the back roads.
Now, I’m going to admit right here that there are lots of valid conclusions you could draw from these stories. Maybe you’re even considering some choices about future driving arrangements based on those conclusions.
But I want you to ignore all those conclusions for the time being and focus on this one: Stay out of the ditches.
The road’s there for a reason, and it makes for a much nicer trip.
And this, of course, leads me back into our study in the Book of Galatians, where Paul’s going to talk about a couple of dangerous ditches today.
Now, let’s recall that Paul wrote this letter to the churches he and Barnabas had planted in what’s now western Turkey. After they’d left, they’d heard that men from Jerusalem had come to those churches preaching a false gospel.
These so-called Judaizers claimed that Christianity was merely a type of Judaism. They said that faith in Jesus was good, but it wasn’t enough to bring salvation.
To be truly saved, they’d said, the mostly Gentile new believers in Galatia would ALSO have to submit themselves to the restrictions and requirements of the Mosaic Law, especially concerning circumcision, diet, and the feast days.
And when Paul heard that some of the Galatians had set aside the one true gospel of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for this false gospel, he’d been perplexed.
Let’s look at the passage together. We’re reading verses 7 through 15 of chapter 5.
7 You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth?
8 This persuasion did not come from Him who calls you.
9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough.
10 I have confidence in you in the Lord that you will adopt no other view; but the one who is disturbing you will bear his judgment, whoever he is.
11 But I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? Then the stumbling block of the cross has been abolished.
12 I wish that those who are troubling you would even mutilate themselves.
13 For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
14 For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
15 But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
And here in verse 7, we see that he’s still mystified by their betrayal of the gospel.
“You were doing so well,” he says. “You were pursuing your faith with such zeal, following Jesus with such joy and enthusiasm! Who caused you to step off the path? Who caused you to turn from following the one who IS Truth and instead chase after the lie that you can somehow earn God’s favor?”
This hindrance, this persuasion — and that word suggests deception in the Greek — this argument from the Judaizers who’d turned some of the Galatians from faith in Christ alone — This had not come from God.
What HAD come from God were the words of His unique and eternal Son, Jesus, who said: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall have eternal life.”
Whoever BELIEVES. In other words, whoever trusts that He is who He said He is and that He’ll do what He said He’ll do.
That He is God Himself, in the flesh. That He lived a life of perfect obedience to His Father and yet took our sins — and their just punishment — upon Himself at the cross.
That His willing sacrifice upon the cross paid the debt we owe for our sins. That God raised Him from the dead.
That God counts our trust in Christ and His finished work as righteousness. That He justifies us before Himself through the righteousness of His Son.
And that all who place their faith in Jesus will have eternal life — life the way it was always meant to be, in fellowship with and in the presence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
He IS who He said He is. And He will DO what He said He will do. That’s the essence of faith in Jesus.
And if HE said that’s what it takes to be saved, then why would anyone add anything to it? Especially when adding to it negates it completely.
But that’s what the Judaizers were doing. And we must guard against their same legalistic spirit at work in the church today.
If we’re doing missions or giving tithes or teaching or even attending on Sundays because we’re trying to earn God’s favor, then we’re making the same mistake as the newly-circumcised Galatians.
We do these things — or we SHOULD do them — out of love for God and love for others, —a love that’s the natural and appropriate response for we who’ve been loved so radically. Paul talks about that a bit later.
So, Paul is perplexed. And he’s also perturbed at the thought that this false teaching in Galatia would spread, just like leaven.
“A little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough,” he says in verse 9.
Look, legalism flies under the radar. It pretends it’s all about piety. But it’s really about ego and self-righteousness — the belief that the filthy rags of my own righteousness somehow contribute to my salvation. That the more I do for God or the more pious I look, the more He’ll love me.
Friends, let me tell you this: God loves you right now just as much as He’s ever loved you and just as much as He ever WILL love you.
His love is unchanging. It’s not dependent upon US. He has graciously and sovereignly CHOSEN to love you and me, even though we don’t deserve it, even though we’ve rebelled against Him in our sins.
If something we did could change His love for us, then we’d all be doomed. In fact, if His love for us depended upon us, I think He’d never have created Adam and Eve in the first place.
And the false gospel of works is an assault on God’s grace, on God’s sovereignty, and God’s love.
Paul knew that if it were left unchecked, this leaven of the Judaizers — this spiritual poison — would spread throughout the churches there. So, he wrote this letter.
And in verse 10, we see he’s optimistic that the letter, alongside the convicting work of the Holy Spirit, will have the desired effect. That the Galatians will “adopt no other view” than that of the one true gospel.
And His confidence, he says, is based on God — based on God’s love for them and on the faithfulness of Jesus, who has overcome the world and in whom His followers, too, ultimately have victory.
Ultimately, it’s not just our salvation that doesn’t depend on us. Here’s how Paul put it in his letter to the Philippians:
6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
Who perfects the work begun in us? GOD! Until the day of Christ Jesus. Which means that He who BEGAN the work of saving you now continues that work in your sanctification.
And He’ll complete it in Heaven, where the character of Christ will finally be perfected in us.
But the ones who’d rejected the gospel of grace, the ones who were teaching a false gospel of self-righteousness — they will be judged, Paul says back in Galatians, no matter who they are.
It seems unlikely that Paul didn’t know who the false teacher was. After all, he’d clearly been told that one or more Judaizers was IN Galatia, teaching a false gospel of works.
Furthermore, whoever told him about these false teachers probably also would have told Paul who they were, especially since they seem to have claimed some authority before the churches.
More likely, it seems that what Paul’s saying here is something like, “I don’t care WHO they say they are; if they’re preaching a false gospel, God will judge them.”
And that’s similar to what he said back in chapter 1:
8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!
9 As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!
Look, there are STILL false gospels out there, trying to gain your attention. And many of them have their roots in the self-righteousness of legalism, the same as the Judaizers, but with less circumcision.
The false gospels tend to appeal to your ego. They say, “Send money, and God will bless you.” They say to name your blessing and God will provide it.
They make us agents of our own blessing, of our own salvation, to whatever degree they’re even concerned with that. Which is the opposite of what Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount.
Do you remember? “Blessed are the poor. in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Blessed, in other words, are we who’ve recognized that we have nothing to offer God. That our sins, great and small, have shut the gate of heaven to us.
That the only thing we can bring to Him of any value is the humility of one crying out, like the tax collector: “God, be merciful to me, the sinner!”
Blessed are we who come to Him seeking mercy and grace. Because that’s exactly what He wants to give us. It’s what He poured out for us that awful and marvelous day at Calvary, where upon His beloved Son, He poured out His righteous wrath for sin.
The cross was a stumbling block, as Paul puts it in verse 11, for many Jews. How could Jesus be the Son of God and savior of the world if He’d died such a shameful and degrading death?
They were unwilling to accept that the holy and mighty creator of the universe would allow Himself to be debased in such a way, and their disbelief kept them from Jesus.
And in their stumbling, Paul says in verse 12, some of those non-believing Jews had come to Galatia, stirring up trouble.
How were the Judaizers troubling the people of the Galatian churches?
By adding the burden of religiosity to them. By telling them they had to do something to earn God’s favor and acceptance. By telling them they had to clean themselves up before God would accept them.
These were the same kinds of heavy burdens the Pharisees of Jesus’ time had placed upon the Jews. So Jesus called out to the people, “Come unto Me, you who are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”
The Pharisees had set up extra rules to act as boundaries to ensure obedience to the Mosaic Law, which could only condemn, anyway. It had no power to save.
They were serving the Law, rather than serving God. They’d put their trust in their own obedience, their own righteousness, rather than in Him.
Serving the Law meant continually working in vain to gain gain God’s favor — a heavy burden that leads not to eternal life, but eternal separation from God.
What Jesus promises, on the other hand, is rest in Him. Eternal life through faith that He is who He said He is and that He’ll do what He said He’ll do.
Jesus was brutal in His assessment of the Pharisees who’d placed such heavy and futile burdens on the people, and Paul is no less brutal in verse 12.
In the Greek, the phrase translated here as “mutilate themselves” means “cut themselves off.”
In other words, Paul’s saying he wishes those who’ve placed so much importance on circumcision would castrate themselves.
Clearly, Paul was frustrated with these false teachers. But this wish of his would have been even more meaningful to his Galatian readers.
And that’s because one of the main towns in Galatia, Pessinus, was the center of worship for the goddess, Cybele, whose priests were castrated.
So, in effect, he’s saying the Judaizers were no better than the pagan priests of Pessinus. And he wanted them to be cut off from the company of believers so they could do no more damage than they’d already done.
He wanted the Galatians to remember the freedom they have in Christ and not submit to the legalism of the Judaizers.
OK, Pastor Res. We get it. We’re free. We don’t have to try to earn God’s favor. We’re not under the law; we’re under grace. We’re not constrained by the Law. Does that mean we don’t have any boundaries?
That’s the same question Paul anticipates in verse 13.
Yes, you have liberty in Christ Jesus, Paul says here. But let me explain the lawful way to use that liberty.
Paul seems to have seen two threats to grace at work in the Galatian church (and still at work in the church today): legalism and lawlessness. Think of them as two ditches alongside what Jesus called the narrow path that leads to life.
Don’t veer off into legalism, Paul has said so far. And he devotes most of his letter to that, because that was the biggest problem in the new Gentile churches of Western Asia.
But now, he warns them not to use their freedom in Christ as an excuse to indulge their flesh, their sinful human nature. Not to crash into the other ditch of lawlessness.
He talks about this in Romans, chapter 6, too. Remember this?
1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?
2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?
Both legalism and lawlessness are tempting. Both of them, in different ways, appeal to our desire for self-gratification, to glorify ourselves, to put ourselves ahead of everybody else.
But that’s the opposite of what Jesus followers are called to do. “Love one another, even as I have loved you.” That’s what Jesus said.
Humbly. Sacrificially. Even for the undeserving. Even if you know it your love will be met with contempt.
This kind of love caused God to give us His only begotten Son. This kind of love caused the Son of God to give up His glory in heaven to live among us as a man.
This kind of love caused the King of kings and Lord of Lords to come to us as a servant. This kind of love caused the spotless Lamb of God to give Himself as a sacrifice for our sins.
This kind of love offers forgiveness and citizenship in the kingdom of heaven to all who turn to Jesus in faith.
And I think it’s significant that Paul puts forward this kind of love — agapé, choosing love — as the opposite of lawlessness.
Love is the Law of Christ. Over and over again, He tells us, “Love one another.” Love God and love one another. He said He’d come to fulfill the Mosaic Law, and then He gave this “new” commandment.
So, does that mean the Old Testament Law has no value for Christians? Of course not.
As it did then, it still helps us understand how to express our love for God and for others. In fact, as one commentator puts it, the Mosaic Law is “a revelation of how to love.”
Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself. “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets,” Jesus said. Everything else flows out of the commandment to love.
And it’s no coincidence that this is the same commandment God gave the people of Israel way back during their wilderness wanderings, before they’d entered the Promised Land.
He’d freed them from bondage as slaves in Egypt. He called them to follow Him in faith. And He led them toward the Promised Land in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
And as people who’d been set free, they were to express their gratitude to and their love for God by loving one another — even those who were hard to love, even those who didn’t “deserve” their love.
This is a picture of our own salvation experience for we who’ve turned to Christ in faith.
By God’s grace, through faith in Jesus, we were rescued from bondage — set free from slavery to sin — emancipated from serving ourselves — liberated from the burden of trying unsuccessfully to justify ourselves before God with all our meager goodness.
God did all the work that saved the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. He brought the plagues, He sent the death angel. He parted the Red Sea. He fought their battles. He provided their food and kept their clothes from wearing out. And HE guided them to Canaan.
Similarly, salvation is entirely God’s work. There’s nothing we can do to earn it. There’s nothing we can do to help it along. As Paul put it in his letter to the Ephesians:
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.
10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
Do you see that? Saved BY God’s grace alone, through faith alone. And even your faith is a gift from God.
We’re not saved BY works, Paul says here. Indeed, what he says in verse 10 is that we’re saved FOR good works.
We’re saved so we CAN love our neighbor as ourselves. We’re saved so we CAN love one another as Jesus loves us, sacrificially and without expectation of receiving anything in return.
And as Paul puts it in verse 14, this kind of love is the fulfillment of all of the Law. It’s the entire Law, boiled down to its essence.
So, the truth is that we ARE under law. We’re under the Law of Christ, which is love.
As followers of Jesus, if we’re going to be enslaved, then let’s be enslaved to one another in love, not enslaved to works-based religion. That has no power to save. And it makes a mockery of God’s grace.
If we’re going to live under the law, then let the law we live under be the Law of Christ, that we love one another, just as He loves us.
If we’re living under THAT law, we’re not going to be biting and devouring one another, the way the world does.
We’re not going to be hindering anyone from the truth, from coming to Jesus. We’re not going to be the cause of disturbance and troubles.
And we’re not going to give ourselves over to the flesh, to lawlessness.
When love — when true, self-giving, self-denying biblical love for God and for others becomes the law we obey with absolute allegiance, then everything changes.
As we’ll see next week, this kind of love can even keep us from sin.
But in a wider sense, this kind of love changes the world. It did when Jesus poured it out upon us, and to the extent that we follow Him in faith, it can still do the same through us.
Listen, the world is tearing itself apart right now. Peace and love are no more than an old hippie slogan these days. But we’ve been sent out as agents of God’s love into this hate-filled world.
We’ve been sent not as policemen enforcing the Law, but as ambassadors of a kingdom whose law is love.
We followers of Jesus who’ve benefitted so greatly from God’s unchanging love have been charged with loving others as liberally, as graciously, as compassionately, as vulnerably, and as unselfishly as He loves us.
Can you do that? Well, no. Not on your own, at least. Thanks be to God, though, we have a helper, whom Paul begins to talk about in the passage we’ll study next week.
This week, though, I want to encourage you to ask God to reveal to you any areas of either legalism or lawlessness in your life as a follower of Jesus.
Ask Him to help you see where you might be veering off the narrow way that leads to life. And ask Him to help you come back into the light of His grace.
And if you’ve never turned your life over to Jesus in faith — if you’ve never found that path to life — if you’re still wandering in the darkness of your self-righteousness — if you’ve never humbled yourself and said, Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner — let me tell you this: The love you will experience as a child of God, forgiven and welcomed into His family, is like nothing you ever could imagine.
Who wouldn’t want to be loved this way? And that love is yours if you’ll only trust Him. Will you do that today?
