12 When Grace Stops Being Grace (Galatians 5:1-2)

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. This is the 12th talk in my series on the Book of Galatians. Today we'll be looking at chapter 5, verses 1 through 13. Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below this podcast. You can also find them by going directly to Wednesdayintheword.com slash Galatians 1, 2. Thanks so much for joining me. Today we're starting chapter 5 of the book of Galatians, and as always, we want to remember where we are in this letter. Paul wrote this letter to churches he founded on his first missionary journey, but since he left them, they have started turning away from the gospel. The Judaizers have come to town and taught them that it's not enough to believe in Jesus. If you really want to be pleasing to God, you must also keep the law and live like Jews. And Paul is writing to correct that view. In the first two chapters, he defended his authority. He argued that his gospel is trustworthy because it came by revelation from God and was not invented by humans. Then in chapters three and four, he makes a series of five arguments for justification by faith. All five arguments make the point that the only way to receive eternal life is through faith in Jesus, and that no one who receives eternal life does so by keeping the law. We looked at the last of those five arguments last week. And in the first four chapters, Paul developed two of his three main themes in the book, his own authority and the true gospel of justification by faith. In the final two chapters, he's going to develop his third major theme, which is the freedom the gospel brings. And that's what we're beginning today. So having made his arguments for justification by faith, Paul now urges them to stand firm in the gospel. Let's start with the first six verses. For freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace, for through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. I think the main point here is fairly clear. Paul states it in his first verse. He says, For freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. So he's arguing that justification by faith, the true gospel, leads to freedom from sin and freedom from the law. And we want to talk about what that means. As we've seen, justification solves our two biggest problems. And those are one, as fallen, rebellious creatures, we are under God's wrath and we face condemnation on judgment day. But Christ's death satisfies our debt to justice and allows God to forgive us and show us mercy. So the gospel solves the problem of God's wrath and allows God to forgive us. Our second biggest problem is that we are sinful creatures and we are not able, left to ourselves, to make ourselves holy. So we can't just decide I'm not going to be sinful anymore because we are trapped in our sins. But the gospel solves that problem. Christ's death reconciles us to God, and because of Christ, not only will God show us mercy on judgment day, he will give us his spirit to free us from sin and death, and ultimately in heaven will make us completely holy and good. So the gospel of justification by faith alone leads us to freedom from sin because God will give us his spirit to change us and make us holy, and it leads us to freedom from slavery to the law because we have something better than the law now. We have the Spirit of God making us holy. As Paul argued in the earlier chapters, the law was given as a kind of tutor or a drill sergeant to teach us and fence us in and point us in the right direction, but the law couldn't do anything to make us holy. As Paul argued, the law does not nullify the promise given to us through faith in Jesus. Having come to faith, then we have graduated from the law, just like a child grows up and graduates from needing a governess. So we are free from the law in that sense. Therefore, he says, stand firm, keep standing firm, hold fast to the gospel, and don't return to the yoke of slavery to the law. Now he's going to spell that point out more clearly. Let's look at two and three. Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. So Paul says, if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. And this verse is often a great example of the necessity of understanding a verse in context. And the context of this verse is more than just the verse above and the verse below. The context is the argument that Paul has been making since chapter one. What has this whole letter been about? What is the issue that Paul has been dealing with throughout this letter? What was the problem in the Galatian churches? That's the context that frames this verse. And people have done some crazy things with Galatians 5 2. Some take it too far one direction and say this verse has no relevance today. Others go too far the other direction and say that those who are physically circumcised for any reason whatsoever can never be saved. But we have to remember this verse was not written in isolation. It's not an absolute command. It was given in a specific context. Paul has just argued five different ways that Gentile believers do not have to keep the law to be saved. He's using the term circumcision to represent this concept of keeping the law as a means to justification as opposed to seeking justification through faith in Christ. The historical context is that Paul visited these churches, he taught them the gospel, he explained the role of the law to them, they believed and they were doing great, but then the Judaizers came and taught them that belief in Jesus alone was not enough. They must also keep the law. Some of the Galatians have listened to the Judaizers and started keeping law. And what is the first step of law keeping? It was typically getting circumcised. So Paul uses circumcision to represent that historical situation. It's a shorthand for these believing Gentiles deciding to practice the Jewish religion in order to complete or finish their salvation. And Paul's point is if you Galatians start trying to keep the law, as evidenced by taking this step of circumcision, then you have abandoned the gospel. If you get circumcised for that reason, then the gospel of Jesus Christ is no longer of any benefit to you because you are rejecting that gospel. By seeking salvation through law-keeping, you're rejecting the gospel and saying you want to gain eternal life the way the Jews are trying to gain it. And Paul says that's rejecting faith in the Messiah as the basis on which you will be saved. If you reject the Messiah, then the Messiah will be of no benefit to you. 5.3. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. If you choose to follow the teaching of the Judaizers and get circumcised and begin keeping the law, then the Messiah is of no benefit to you. And if you accept one part of the law, remember you accept all of the law. You are bound to it. You are making yourself a slave to it. You can't pick and choose which laws you want to keep and which laws you don't want to keep. You are now obligated to keep them all. So he's reminding them what this decision involves. This is not like getting a tattoo. It's more than being circumcised so that you look like a Jew. It's the whole deal. You're now obligated to keep the entire law and you are making a decision to live like a Jew under the Mosaic Covenant. That's the significance of the mark. Then in 5.4, you are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace. Again, notice who he's speaking to: you who would be justified by the law. If you seek to be justified through keeping the law, that alienates you or severs you from the Messiah. And if you do that, you have fallen away from his grace. So here he spells out that getting circumcised and seeking to be justified by the law are the same thing. Making that decision means you're seeking to become right with God through lawkeeping, not through faith in the Messiah. You have rejected everything Paul taught you about the gospel and cut yourself off from the truth. Now he states the alternative in this is 5.5. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. I would rephrase that translation so it begins, but we wait for the hope of righteousness, because I think he's contrasting those who persevere in the faith with those who want to go back to the law. So in contrast to those who seek justification through the law, we who believe are eagerly waiting for justification. We hope in the promises of God. We look forward to the day when God will forgive us and free us completely from sin because we have faith in Jesus the Messiah. Now this phrase through the Spirit by faith is ambiguous. There is some question as to whether it should be translated Spirit with a capital S as in the Holy Spirit, or Spirit with a little S as in my Spirit inside me. If it's a capital S, Paul means we have been given saving faith by the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, and therefore we eagerly wait for the promised holiness to come. Well, that's certainly true. If it's a little s, Paul means, but we who have genuine saving faith in our spirits or in our inner beings, or as we might say today, in my heart, we hope for the holiness to come because of that, that is also true. I think either translation works in context, both are theologically true, so I'm not sure it matters which one you choose, and my Greek is not good enough for me to know if there is a definitive answer. So going on to 5.6, for in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. He's saying, if you have saving faith in Christ, it doesn't matter whether you are physically circumcised. In other words, you can be Jewish and believe, or you can be a Gentile and believe. Once you come to faith, it doesn't matter if prior to that time you lived like a Jew or not. We all come to Christ the same way. What matters is whether you have genuine saving faith that changes your life. I think that's what he means by faith working through love. It's not enough to make a claim to faith. Genuine saving faith makes a difference in the way you live. You want different things, you value different things, you grieve and repent over your sin, and therefore you make different choices and seek different goals. As I've taught many times in other podcasts, I summarize saving faith as having four core convictions. And if you want to know where this comes from in Scripture, listen to my series on the Gospel of Matthew and the chapters on the Beatitudes, because that's where it comes from. So the first core conviction is we know that we are sinful and we long to be made holy. The second core conviction is that we know we cannot make ourselves holy. So we cannot free ourselves from sin. Third, we know that God owes us nothing. God is not required to save us, we have no divine spark that makes him want to save us. God owes us nothing. And then four, we trust that God will forgive us and make us holy because of the blood of Jesus Christ. That kind of faith makes a difference. As we embrace those four core convictions, it changes our decisions, it changes our values, it changes how we speak and how we act. We begin to love God and love our neighbors in a profound way, and that I think is what Paul means by faith expressing itself through love. Faith is invisible, you can't see it. You can't tell if someone else has it by looking at them. Faith leaves no mark on the body, like physical circumcision leaves a mark on the body. But genuine saving faith leaves a mark on your soul. Faith is expressed in actions, choices, and values, and we can see those actions, choices, and values in the way that we love God and we treat our neighbors. I like to explain with this analogy. Suppose you're lost in the jungle and a native pops out of the bushes and he says, Hey, I am the best guide in the jungle. I can get you home. And you say, Wonderful, I believe you. I believe you're the best guide in the jungle. And he says, Great, take this narrow, rocky path uphill. And you say, you know, I'd rather take that wide, smooth path downhill. And he says, No, no, the only way home is that narrow, rocky one uphill. And you say, No, I'd rather go the other way. Well, your claim to believe that he's the best guide in the jungle is now suspect because when it came time to act on your belief, you chose something else. You said you believed he was the best guide in the jungle, but you acted as though you thought he was wrong. In the same way, saving faith expresses itself in the way we love God and the way we love our neighbors. If we say we love God and then we consistently choose the things of this world instead of the things of God, it calls our faith into question. So every day, God puts us in situations that force us to make a choice about who we're counting on, what we're seeking, what our values are. We are forced to decide how we're going to treat our friends and our families and our neighbors. And as our faith grows, we learn to respond with the kind of self-sacrificing love described in the Bible. So our faith expresses itself in those choices to love others instead of choosing to act selfishly. Now, of course, we're not all perfectly obedient in all times and all situations. All of us fail and fumble and stumble, and then our faith is expressed in our repentance and our grief over sin. Paul goes on, 5 7 through 510. You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? The persuasion is not from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty whoever he is. I kind of think Paul's a bit exasperated with them and it's showing through. He says, You were running well. What happened? And the image he uses is of a runner running a race, and the runner's going through down his lane, making good time, but all of a sudden someone else is running in his lane, trying to trip him up and make him fall. Paul's saying, You seem to get it. You seem to understand and embrace the gospel. Now what's getting in your way? I don't understand what's getting between you and the truth. And then he answers his own question. He says, The obstacle is not from the one who calls you. This is not truth from the Messiah. This is not truth from the gospel you were taught. This is a lie. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. Here I think he's using leaven as a metaphor for something contagious. If you put a little bit of yeast in one corner of your bread dough and then you start kneading it, it spreads throughout the whole dough. You can't keep that leaven in just one corner of the dough. It's contagious in that sense. It spreads throughout everything. I think this metaphor has dual application. In the church, if one person gets infected with false teaching, that infection tends to spread to the whole group. So a little bit of false teaching can go a long way and disrupt an entire church community. On the individual level, a little bit of lawkeeping negates the whole gospel, as he's already made that point. You can't just keep a little bit of the law, you have to keep the whole thing. So you can't play both sides of the game. You can't seek God through both faith and lawkeeping. A little bit of lawkeeping changes the whole picture. Either you seek God on the basis of faith in Jesus, or you seek God by keeping the law and justifying yourself through your obedience, but you can't do both. Lawkeeping is contagious. The minute anyone starts claiming, if you're a true Christian, you would do this thing that I'm doing. Well, people start thinking, well, I want to be a true Christian, so I'd better do that thing too, and then it spreads through the whole community. Then in 510, he concludes, I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. I like that Paul expresses his confidence in God. If God has truly called them, truly chosen them and given them saving faith, then they will repent and embrace the gospel. They may be temporarily confused, but if God has chosen them, he will correct that confusion in his timing, and they will come back to the true gospel. And Paul has every confidence that God is going to bring them through this difficulty. He has further confidence that the false teachers are going to be judged. God will bring justice to them in his way and in his time. So he's confident that God has a plan and a purpose for all of this struggle, all of this tension, and that God's purpose will be accomplished. Then in 511, but if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed. Paul seems to be suggesting here that someone, probably the Judaizers, have said that he actually preaches that everyone must live like Jews. So perhaps some of the false teachers have suggested that Paul agrees with them that they're preaching the same thing Paul preaches. Or maybe they suggested, well, if we just had a chance to explain our view to Paul, Paul would agree with us. He'd come around to our way of thinking. Or perhaps they've suggested that the Galatians misunderstood Paul's teaching and Paul actually agrees with the Judaizers. They may be claiming something like, well, Paul didn't tell you to keep the law because he just expects you to keep it. It's a given. Of course he wants you to keep the law. So whatever the specific situation, Paul is denying that. He is specifically denying that he agrees with the Judaizers. And his argument is, look, the Jews drive me out of every town I visit. First they kick me out of the synagogue, and then when I go to the Gentiles, they kick me out of the town. If I were still preaching that everyone must keep the law, why would the Jews get mad at me in every town I visit? Why would they kick me out of the synagogue? If I were preaching that new believers must live like Jews, then those other Jews, they wouldn't be angry with me at all. They wouldn't get upset that I was eating with Gentiles because Gentiles would be living like Jews. So of course I do not agree with the Judaizers. And then he concludes in 5.12, I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves. Now, this word emasculate simply means to cut something off. It's famously used when Jesus says, if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. I think that's in Mark 9, aroundabouts in there. We also see this word in the account when the soldiers come to arrest Jesus in the garden, and Peter pulls out a sword and he cuts off the ear of the high priest's slave, and then Jesus heals the slave's ear. So the word just means to cut off. But many scholars see a play on words here because Paul has been talking about circumcision. They translate it emasculate or castrate themselves, and they see it as a kind of pun. I would like to see the knife slip so that when those who are attempting to circumcise you, they would actually cut themselves instead. Or if they seek to cut you, I wish they would mutilate themselves. That kind of thing. Now that language sounds really harsh to us, and he may or may not be making that kind of a pun. But I think his point is I wish those who are troubling you would just leave. I wish they would cut themselves off from you. I wish they would leave you alone and just get out of town. They're doing so much damage to you and confusing you and creating such a trial that I wish they would just give up and leave. I think that's his point. Now to summarize, let me conclude with a few observations. First and most obviously, Paul is condemning a return to the Old Testament law as our rule of life. And he has claimed this is an either-or proposition. Either you seek God on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ or you seek him on the basis of your obedience to the law. You don't get to mix and match those options. You choose one or the other. While the law can teach us how a godly person should live, it was not meant as a means to justification. Now in Paul's day, circumcision represented a commitment to seeking God through obedience to the law. I think I could make a good case from this letter that that is the reason Paul is condemning the practice. Today, circumcision does not have the same kind of implications for Gentile Christians. But we do see similar issues today in which teachers would have us return to a kind of law keeping under the guise of spiritual disciplines, and I think we have to be wary of any return to the law in that sense. Christianity is unique in that it's the only major religion where the bottom line is not try harder. Christianity teaches try as hard as you want, it won't be good enough. Instead, God is offering you a free gift of grace through Jesus Christ. Now I'm not saying we should discard the Old Testament, nor am I claiming studying it has no value. Far from it. We can learn a lot from the law, but we dare not attempt to live under it as a means of justification. While Paul explained one purpose of the law in this letter, he didn't intend to give us a full exposition on the merits or the use of the law. His purpose was to refute a false gospel based on law keeping. I think everyone can benefit from a deeper study of the Old Testament, including the law. We just don't want to return to keeping the law as a means of justification. Second, and this is related, I think Paul would condemn any teaching which portrays a particular act or discipline as producing a quantum leap in spiritual status. It's really easy to substitute some other practice for circumcision and come up with a modern version of the Judaizer's gospel. It could be baptism, it could be prayer as a spiritual discipline, it could be church attendance, it could be the so-called second blessing of the Holy Spirit, or any teaching that claims that you can do this thing, whatever it is, and reach a higher spiritual status. It's really easy to slip into the mindset of trying to earn our salvation through outward obedience. We need to be very careful of that. When Peter stopped eating with the Gentiles, Paul saw that his actions were denial of the gospel and thus he rebuked them. That was back in chapter 2. We saw that the Galatians' actions, taking this step of circumcision, was a departure from the gospel, and Paul warned them not to take it. All of our decisions, all of our choices have consequences. And if our choices are sinful, we will experience the consequences of them. Now, it is true that God forgives and God can redeem any situation. He can bring something good out of even the most terrible tragedy. But I have never seen a case where someone sins and gets away with it. Sin always has consequences. Even when God forgives, there are consequences to the sin. So we need to realize we're not sneaking one past God, we're not pulling the wool over his eyes. Every decision we make has consequences. Now, of course, the biggest decision we have to make is what to do with Jesus Christ. That decision has eternal consequences. Perhaps you've never considered the eternal implications of your response to who is Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches that everyone who ever lived is a sinner. We don't love God as we should. We don't love our neighbors as we should. We human beings are self-centered, thoughtless, selfish creatures. You don't need the Bible to tell you that. Just look out the window. Everyone is chronically selfish. The Bible teaches that God hates sin and selfishness and evil and that such things are punishable by eternal death. But for some reason that concept seems foreign to the more modern generations who've been raised on self-esteem. One of the most frequent questions I get when I teach college students today is why is sin punishable by death? The implication of that question is, what's the big deal about sin? After all, everyone does it. Behind that question is the presupposition that at some level we deserve to be saved. At least in some corner of our souls we're good enough and have value such that God would be cruel not to save all of us. That is not the biblical perspective. It is true that all of us have worth because we're made in the image of God, but we rebelled against that image and corrupted ourselves with sin. Assume you're a master baker and you're making a cake fit for the king's coronation, but during the mixing process, someone pours salt into the batter instead of sugar. The cake is ruined. The salt seeps into every inch of the batter and corrupts it, and there is no way to remove the salt and save the cake. There's nothing to do but throw it out. That's what sin does to us. Maybe we started out following the master baker's recipe, and that recipe has worth, but we ruined it by adding sin to the mix. Now that's not the greatest analogy, but it'll do. Having been ruined by sin, there's nothing we can do to fix ourselves. But the Bible also teaches that God did for us what we cannot do for ourselves. God provided a solution to the problem of sin and its consequences of death. God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to earth to teach us the gospel, to live a perfect life, and to die on a Roman cross. His death pays the price for our sin so that God can forgive us and make us totally new creatures free of sin. The good news is all we have to do is recognize that. All we have to do is recognize we need a Savior and humbly accept Jesus' death in our place. To ignore, dismiss, or reject Jesus is to commit the most serious error of all. And I pray that everyone listening would stop and consider what Jesus has done for you. If you haven't yet accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, now is a great time to do it. If you'd like, you can pray this simple prayer with me, and then find a local church or a fellow Christian to help you. Here's the prayer. Pray with me if you'd like. Father, I humbly come before you admitting that I'm a sinner. I do a lot that is wrong and selfish. I cannot do anything good in my own power. I need your love and forgiveness. Lord, I'm sorry for all the sin that I have committed in my life, and that I know I will commit in the future. I need a Savior because I can never pay the debt that my sin has incurred. Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross and shedding your blood to pay the price for my sin. I accept that you did this for me, and I ask that you extend your eternal grace to me. Lord, please forgive me and grant me saving faith because of the blood of Jesus Christ. Amen. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. If you prayed that sinner's prayer with me, please find a local church or seek out a fellow believer to help you take the next steps. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means, but how we figure it out. Please follow, rate, and review this podcast on your favorite podcast app. The more people who do that, the easier it is for others to find. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. All previous episodes in this series are on my website, Wednesdayintheword.com. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates, my favorite musician and singer. You can find his music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.