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Sons of the Free Woman (Galatians 4)

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Galatians 4

1 I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, 2but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. 3In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. 4But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. 9But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? 10 You observe days and months and seasons and years! 11I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.

12 Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong. 13You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, 14and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. 15What then has become of the blessing you felt? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me. 16Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? 17They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. 18It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you, 19 my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you! 20I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.

21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? 22For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. 23But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. 24Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. 25Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27For it is written,

“Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear;

break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor!

For the children of the desolate one will be more

than those of the one who has a husband.”

28 Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. 30But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” 31So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.

As he continues in the letter to the Churches of Galatia, Paul is defending the purity of the Gospel against Judaizing infiltrators who have convinced many Gentile believers that it is not enough to lay hold of the Cross of Christ and His perfect righteousness but that the deeds of the Law must be added to Christ’s work in order to be found acceptable before God.

He reminded them in Chapter 3 that they began in the Spirit as the Gospel was announced to their hearts and it is foolish of them to think that they will now be perfected in the flesh. He demonstrated to them that the Law announces a curse to all who do not obey it perfectly and that Christ came to become a Curse for us by hanging on a tree for all who have faith. He concluded by reminding that Abraham himself believed the Gospel beforehand and that all of Abraham’s true children and true heirs are those that have faith just like Abraham did.

Paul continues in Galatians 4 by reminding of a human analogy that we all understand. Children, while in a household, are much like slaves. They are under the guardianship and direction of the household and have to obey rules. While they are yet children, they are not in a position to inherit the estate of their parents until their time of maturity comes. This is to remind them of what Paul said the purpose of the Law was in Galatians 3. He builds upon that point in verse 3: 3In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

We all understand that slavery is not a good thing but what many men and women don’t want to acknowledge is that they are enslaved to anything. Especially modern men take pride in the fact that they are their own person and make their own decisions. Especially the religious, those who are convinced they are living lives worthy of God’s favor, recoil at the idea that they are enslaved to any principle. The Pharisees were ready to stone Jesus because He implied they were enslaved. They pointed out that their father was Abraham. Christ rebuked them in John 8 beginning in verse 39: 39They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, 40but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. 41You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” 42Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.

Ephesians 2 states the same truth about man’s bondage to sin: “1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

Paul points out to the Galatians that, just like the Pharisees, they were in bondage to these “basic principles” and would certainly have perished if God had not taking the initiative in Christ. Even though both Jew and Gentile were zealous, they were zealous for false righteousness for they pursued it in the strength of their flesh, which is precisely what the principles of this world want to keep us in bondage to.

I have to say that probably the most beautiful words in the Scripture are when Paul finishes pointing out our predicament of condemnation before the throne of God’s judgment but then says the word “but”. We read in verse 4: 4But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

But God…But God. Such a beautiful conjunction the word “but” is when it is attached to what God has done. God interferes with our plan to destroy ourselves. Do you see how it is God’s initiating love? We were lost and enslaved but God sent His Son to be born under the Law, to sacrifice for us, to bear the curse that we deserved, to be perfect righteousness for us by fulfilling the righteousness of the law that we could not perform. What is more remarkable is that we receive adoption as sons. Not merely that God’s wrath is put away by Christ but that, through His work, we place our faith in Him and He gives us the right to be called Sons of God.

Furthermore, Paul adds this: “ 6And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”

Romans 8 expresses this same idea but the setting of Romans 8 unpacks how profound it is that God sends His Spirit into us with this cry. It is noteworthy that Paul here returns to his native language of Aramaic to literally groan with utter amazement at the ability to call God Father. The Apostle John is simply beside himself in 1 John 5 when he asks: “…what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God?”

It really saddens me that this love expressed by God’s decision to adopt us is often greeted with a yawn by many people today when it should be a source of profound joy and adoration. The reason we don’t marvel at it is that modern theology in the 20 th Century taught men, women, boys, and girls that we’re all God’s children. We consider it our divine right because from the time we were in grade school the world has been preaching the message that everybody is a child of God.

But we just read Scriptures where Christ called some of God’s own chosen people, the Jews, sons of the devil and Paul reminded us that we all once walked according to the principles of this world.

Thus, we are incredibly privileged to receive the right by God to call Him Father. The marvel of this is that we don’t deserve it but that, in Christ Jesus, it has been purchased for all who place their faith in Him.

But it is also incredibly important that we understand why the Spirit cries out with our Spirit that we are sons. We need to understand why it is that our heart must redound with the Gospel and cry out “Abba! Father!” in the midst of this lost and dying world.

You see the reason why we are attracted to performance according to the deeds of the flesh is that, even though we begin in the Gospel very simply, we often become guilt-ridden and feel accused by the enemy for our failings in the flesh after we first believed. After all, did God really save a wretch like me? How can that be when sin is still abiding in me? I do the things I don’t want to do and the things I want to do I don’t do. Who will deliver me from this body of death?!

Christ Jesus. That’s who. Just as at the beginning when we believed and were, by nature, enemies of God, the Cross is ever before us and will ever be the only ground on which we can stand before a Holy God. When we look within to give us assurance of our salvation on the basis of the perfection of our obedience to the Law we will always come up short if we’re honest with ourselves. But when we look to the Cross with tears in our eyes and cry out to God “Who will deliver me from this body of death?! God, I am so unworthy of the grace you’ve shown me! I believe Lord, help my unbelief!” Suddenly, the most beautiful thing happens. Suddenly the most unexpected thing happens. His Spirit comes into our hearts and consolation and strength come to us and we cry out “Abba! Father! Yes Father you have redeemed me to be your son and you don’t cast out those you have placed your favor upon.

I must remind you again of the beauty of the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 because it is very appropriate here and illustrates the picture of our redemption beautifully. Every time I recount this story to myself I am overwhelmed by the profound love that we should be called sons of God.

The younger of two sons walks up to his father one day and asks for his share of the estate. In the economy of the ancient Near East, a family would inherit the sweat and toil of generations and centuries of labor as father passed down property to son and each built a bit more on it. Inheritance was so important to the Jew and Jesus uses this illustration to get their attention. The shocking part of the tale is that this young man, in asking for his inheritance now is telling his father that he wishes him dead!

The father, amazingly, divides his estate early and gives centuries of labor and puts it in the hand of this ungrateful young man. You know the story. The boy squanders this money in a short time by partying with drunkards and prostitutes. He squanders his whole inheritance, centuries of the ancestors’ work, in just a few short weeks. He’s left destitute and so poor that he can only get a job feeding pigs, so hungry that he envies the pigs for the slop they eat. Indeed, the boy is walking according to the principles of the world.

But then he comes to his senses and realizes that his father’s slaves are treated really well. He decides that he had better go home and repent to his father. He understands he doesn’t deserve to be a son anymore so he’ll just ask to be a slave in the house. This was the way of the Jews at the time. The son would be expected to earn back everything he had squandered. It was appropriate to the mind of the listening Pharisees that the young man prove his seriousness by working off his reproach for the rest of his life.

Further, when he returned, he would be expected to wait for days at the edge of town so the townspeople could heap contempt on the boy for dishonoring his father. This was the manner of men when an offense was given in families of the Near East where honor is everything.

But then the most unexpected and embarrassing thing happens. The most graphic and disturbing thing happens in the minds of religious men. The father has long since been looking for the boy and sees the walk of his ragged boy from afar off. Moved by compassion, the father does the most undignified thing you could do in that culture, he RUNS to the boy. He tackles him. He begins to bathe him in his tears of joy and kisses his neck.

But the boy is still convinced that he must complete his plan. He is going to repent to the father and then ask his father if he can be a slave. So he begins: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

But the plan ends there. He can’t even finish the thought. He’s about to ask to be made a slave in the Father’s house but the Father squeezes the breath out of the boy and shouts “Bring my best robe! Bring the ring! Bring sandals for his feet! This is MY SON who was dead and is now alive!”

You see the son had squandered his inheritance and brought nothing to his father worthy of acceptance. His plan to please his father with slavery, with showing his father that he was serious about obedience so he could earn acceptance was not the way of salvation. You see, beloved, in God’s Kingdom, there are no slaves, there are only sons!

Can you imagine the son’s reaction to all of this? What? Grace?! What manner of love is this that I should be called your son?! “Abba! Father!” That is what John marveled at. That is what Paul calls the Galatians to remember. He wants believers to remember that they have received the inheritance of sonship from God by earning nothing from His hand. This is what impels a believer to rejoice and then to redound back with love to his Savior for all the wonderful things He has done.

And so Paul asks with renewed wonder in Galatians 4:9 as he asks them: “ 9But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world” Do you see why Paul keeps expressing amazement that men would forget the life and the inheritance they have in Christ by wanting to go back to the principles that enslaved them? This is what righteousness by the deeds of the law represents – an abandonment of the inheritance given freely in the Gospel.

Paul concludes Galatians 4 with the most insulting thing of all for the Judaizers. He reminds everyone that Abraham had two sons and not one. One was born by natural means. Abraham took Sarah’s maid, Hagar, at her bidding to take matters into his own hands and produce offspring by the strength of the flesh. His name was Ishmael. But God wanted the Promised Seed to come by His power. So He caused a 100 year old man and 99 year old woman to be raised from death into life and gave Sarah the ability to conceive a child – Isaac through whom the promised Seed would come.

Ishmael, remember, was circumcised. But when Isaac was 3 years old, they had a big party to celebrate his weaning and Ishmael mocked the boy. Ishmael was the oldest. Ishmael was the first just like the Judaizers were “older” than the Galatians. Ishmael gloried in being Abraham’s seed just like the Judaizers did.

But the greatest shock is that the child of natural descent has no part in Abraham and is sent away because he has no faith. Those still looking to the Law delivered on Mount Sinai are living again in the Desert of Sin in Arabia outside the land of promised rest. The Judaizers trust in the Law and will not enter the rest. But all of us who trust in Christ are in the New Jerusalem, and have received the promise of rest in Christ. We are Isaac – sons and true heirs by faith.

Friends, God knows your weakness. He knows that men will try to approach Him on their own strength and men with great moral character will become proud in their own status and convince others that trusting in Christ’s righteousness isn’t enough. If you listen to them long enough and look at them long enough, you begin to be convinced of how morally upright they are. You begin to become convinced that they are the free ones – they are the good people – they are the blessed people.

But God reminds you again that those who trust in the deeds done in the flesh for their salvation will come up short on the perfect measure of His righteousness for cursed is every man that does not continue to perform everything written in it. He reminds us that even those that are set apart, like Ishmael, have lost their inheritance when they turn away from the promise inherited by faith and begin looking to performance in the strength of the flesh.

Come to your senses. Remember Christ. He did not die in vain for He knew that only He could accomplish righteousness for His people. You are a child of God saved from the principles of this world. Don’t look back but continue to ever look to the Cross of Christ – the only place where God’s righteousness on our behalf is found – the only place were freedom and the perfect rest in Christ is found.

Let us pray.

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Epistles Scripture

Abraham Believed the Gospel (Galatians 3)

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Galatians 3

1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. 2Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? 3Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? 4 Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? 5Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— 6just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

7 Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. 8And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” 9So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

10 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” 11Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” 12But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” 13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— 14so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

15 To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. 16Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. 17This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. 18For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.

19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. 20Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.

21Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. 22But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

23Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

As we continue in our series through the Book of Galatians we come to Chapter 3. Paul is defending the Gospel of God’s Grace against Jews who have infiltrated the Church and are teaching the Gentiles in Galatia that one must not only believe in Jesus Christ to be saved but must also become circumcised and obey the Law of Moses.

I wonder, these days, if many have become so unconcerned about the Gospel that they don’t really understand why Paul is so upset about this. He’s beside himself wondering why someone would ever be attracted to the teaching of these false brothers when they started out being taught the true Gospel. He asks, in verse 1, “…who bewitched you…?” He doesn’t literally think that there is magic that is compelling the Galatians to believe this but it’s meant to shock them to realize that their turning away from the true Gospel is completely out of character for a Christian.

It struck me yesterday at men’s Bible Study that many of us take for granted that sin and hard-heartedness is always happening to the other guy. We let our guard down to false teaching because we never really think that we’re in danger. It’s really important that we hear what Paul tells the Galatians here: “ 2Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? 3Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”

It seems so obvious, doesn’t it? How could they possibly do this? What would attract them into thinking that their salvation would depend upon and be perfected by works of the Law? Paul points out, clearly, that their salvation (and our salvation) began with the Spirit of God announcing the Good News to our hearts. We heard in the Gospel a message that said to us that we deserve nothing out of the hand of God but condemnation but that the benefits of Christ are held out to us if we simply believe upon what Christ has done for sinners. So, very simply, with nothing to offer God, we fell at the feet of Christ and called out for Him to save us.

But we began this way. The Galatians did too. But then they started hearing these Jewish Christians who were really serious about their Christian walk (or so it seemed to them). These Jewish Christians had it together. They were blessed. They had a purpose. They not only believed in Jesus but they were committed to the Law of Moses to show God that they were really serious about honoring Christ.

It’s not as if the Galatians woke up one day and forgot where they began but, over time they lost sight of where they began. We’re just like them. Our hearts are prone to forget the Gospel. We are prone to forget that God offered salvation freely on the basis of our clinging to Christ and His righteousness. How often, after you’ve sinned, do you return to the Cross of Christ and remind yourself that, in the beginning, God justified you because you trusted in the Cross of Christ? Or, instead, do you tell yourself that God is angry with you right now and that you’ll do better next time and show God that you are really serious about obeying Him? Stop it! God didn’t save you because you’re serious about obeying Him. You are not capable of being serious enough. Only Christ is. Remember where you started. Stay there. Don’t leave the hope you had in Christ then. Yes, Christ matures you. Yes, He is conforming you to His image. But this is all because, just like at the beginning, you are clinging to the Cross. You will never be perfected by any deeds and, when we forget that, we are forgetting the Gospel we heard in the first place. We are forgetting our first love.

We might be tempted to tell ourselves this though: “Well, I guess that must be true for me because I’m so weak. But there were people like Abraham who were strong enough to obey God. I’ll have to just be happy that God saved poor old sinful me but I wish I could have been more like Abraham.” In fact, the Galatians not only wanted to be just like Abraham but they were envious of the Judaizers because they were physical descendants and heirs of Abraham. “Poor old me, I’m just a Gentile Christian. Boo hoo!”

Are you ready for a shock. I’m going to read something that some of you might notice for the first time in your Christian lives. Make sure you have your Bibles ready so you don’t think that I’m making this stuff up. Verse 6 completes a thought that began before about the fact that we are perfected by the Spirit just as at the first. Guess what verse 6 says? Abraham was saved the exact same way as we are! “— 6just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”? 7Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. 8And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” 9So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.”

Why was Abraham accounted as righteous? Because of his faith and not his works. Who are the real sons of Abraham? Those who have faith just like Abraham did. Hold on to your seats for this next bit. What did Abraham believe in? The Gospel! That’s right the Scripture foresaw that God would justify us by faith and preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham. Abraham believed the Gospel! Christ stated that Abraham saw His day and rejoiced and the Pharisees wanted to stone Him. I wonder, though, if some of you are still doubting that Abraham was saved by Christ. How can that be? Christ hadn’t even been born yet. True, but God had promised Christ and God’s promises are yes and amen. Abraham believed the Gospel because God had promised the work of Christ to Him. Abraham believed afar off but we have the blessing of living on the other side of the Cross and the revelation of the Christ. And, to make it even sweeter, Paul proclaims to the Galatians: “YOU are Abraham’s heir because you believe just like he did. Take THAT you Judaizers! You’re not even an heir. Real heirs believe in Jesus and it doesn’t matter whose father is on their birth certificate!”

Furthermore, Paul adds: “ 10For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Do you remember this? Why do the Galatians and why do we keep going to the Law and telling God that we’re going to perform for Him so that He’ll accept us? The Law tells us that a person is cursed if a man does not keep it completely and perfectly. There is no hope there. There is no good news. This is the good news found in Christ: “ 13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” He who knew know sin actually became Sin for us. He took the curse for all of our lawbreaking and sacrificed Himself to take away the curse that separated us from God. The curse was taken away in verse 14: “ 14so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”

This idea of promise is very important here. It keeps being said over and over that we receive the promise or that we inherit the promise or to believe the promise. This is so important because the promise that was made to Abraham was made by God to Him and it was not made by God with any conditions of obedience on Abraham’s part. In other words, God told Abraham He would bless Him and Abraham believed it but no additional conditions were added to that promise. It was a gracious promise of blessing. Paul points out an important truth. Please try to listen very carefully because Paul is going to basically say that God cannot break His word to Abraham: “ 15 To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. 16Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. 17This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. 18For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.”

What Paul is saying is that if you and I make an agreement together and sign a piece of paper, we’re bound to that agreement. I can’t take that paper later on and add something to it and hold you to that promise. You didn’t sign for that promise. I also can’t take away something I don’t like. You didn’t sign that promise. Paul is saying that God promised to bless Abraham and his seed and the seed was Christ. He was giving Abraham a promise of salvation by Christ and His righteousness. The Law came hundreds of years after this promise was made to Abraham’s descendants. The Law could not be added to the promise or God would be breaking His word. In other words, the Law could not possibly be for salvation the way the Judaizers are teaching the Galatians because that would mean that God broke His word and, beloved, you might break your word and I might break my word but God never, ever, ever breaks His word. He sword to Abraham that He would be torn asunder before He ever broke the promise to bless Abraham and the world with salvation by faith in Christ.

It’s sort of an obvious question then: why would God add all these rules and regulations if they are not meant to save us? It seems to me like God is saying to keep them in order to be saved. If He never intended to save men and women by them then why did He punish them for not obeying them? It almost seems like the Law is against the Gospel itself. Paul anticipates this: “ 21Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. 22But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. 23Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.”

The Law was actually added for a gracious purpose. It was given to hold forth and demonstrate the perfect righteousness of God. By doing this it was meant to show how Holy God is and how sinful we are. We were supposed to come to the Law and see in it our very real need for Christ. It was a guardian to conduct us to Christ, a sign to point us to Christ, a schoolmaster to teach us of our need for Christ. We were meant to feel imprisoned by it, caught up by it, bogged down by it so that we would cry out: “Who will deliver me from this body of death?!” Paul even notes that if a law could be given that would lead to righteousness then righteousness would be by the Law but the Law itself proves that righteousness by the Law is impossible – except through Christ.

Right before you believed the Gospel, did you not feel the prison of the Law? Did you not sense its judgment? Did you not feel the need to escape the wrath that you knew you needed to escape? Praise God! Do you remember as the Gospel burst forth and said to you that Christ took that curse away, that Christ had fulfilled its righteous demand? Were not our hearts burning within us as we said: “Thank you Jesus! I believe. What Good News! I believe because I have no other hope. You alone have words of eternal life.”

Verse 25: “ 25But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The time of immaturity is over. The time for our guardian is past. The time of the judgment of the Law is over for those of us in Christ. Why would anyone ever want to go back into the prison of the Law? Why would anyone go back into the curse of the Law? Do you understand why Paul is asking if they’ve been bewitched? What utter foolishness to turn away from Christ and back into the deeds of the Law.

What could ever possess someone to think this is a good idea? So he can be a Jew? So he can be a better Christian because he’s a Jew? There’s no distinction. Jews are saved by Christ just like Gentiles. So are all men. So are all women. So are all slaves and so are all free men. All are saved by the same Lord. All are saved by the same perfect work. All are united to Christ in the same way: by faith, by laying hold of His feet and trusting in His righteousness and not our own.

As Paul stated, so he reminds them again: “ 29And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”

Christian, you have everything you could possibly ever ask for from God’s hand and it has been given to you freely. You’ve been given an inheritance you didn’t deserve. You lay hold of it simply by trusting in Christ and what He has done. You begin that way and you will finish to the end that way. You don’t begin by trusting in Christ and then change to a new stage where you begin to trust in the works and actions that you’re doing to please God so that He’ll bless you.

Stop believing the illusion that your dedication to God is what saves you. You are not saved by the purity of your works or even the perfection of your faith but your salvation rests on your trust in Christ’s work alone. Whoever bewitched you into looking within and convincing yourself that God is saving you on the basis of your behavior lied to you. The Gospel tells you to stop looking within for your salvation and to look to the Cross. That’s where your righteousness is, that’s where the curse of the Law was nailed. That is what will transform your thoughts and renew your minds. That is what will provide the fruit of love toward your neighbor. That, beloved, is the only hope you must have now and forevermore.

Let us pray.

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Epistles Scripture

Justified by Faith (Galatians 2)

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Galatians 2

2:1 Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. 2 I went up because of a revelation and set before them (though privately before those who seemed influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. 3 But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. 4 Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery— 5 to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. 6 And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. 7 On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised 8 (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), 9 and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. 10 Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.

11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. 13 And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. 14 But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

15 We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; 16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

17 But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! 18 For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. 19 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

We’re continuing in our study through the Book of Galatians and come to Chapter 2. As a reminder, Paul is defending the Gospel of Grace against what he calls false brothers or troublemakers who have come to the Churches of Galatia to convince them that, in order to be saved, the Gentiles must not only believe in Jesus Christ but also must become circumcised and keep the Law of Moses. We learned last week that Paul not only calls this another Gospel but he condemns it as no Gospel at all and that he eternally condemned any man or angel that taught a Gospel contrary to the Gospel taught by Paul and the Apostles.

As we learned, this was not merely Paul’s Gospel but it was the Gospel that was taught by all of the Apostles. The Judaizers had been spreading rumors that Paul’s apostleship was not only inferior to the “pillars of the Church” – Peter, James, and John – but that he was teaching a Gospel contrary to theirs. The false teachers were dropping the names of these “pillars” to lend authority to their false doctrines.

As Paul continues in Galatians 2, he picks up where he left off in telling the “real story” of his Apostleship. He had taught as an Apostle for many years and then after seeing Peter only once before, he journeys to Jerusalem again after fourteen years and even brings a Gentile named Titus with him. When Paul and the other Apostles spoke to one another, they shared the exact same Gospel in common – salvation in Christ alone by grace alone through faith alone. It became immediately apparent to all the Apostles that Paul had received a commission directly from Jesus Christ to be the Apostle to the Gentiles even as Peter was the Apostle to the Jews. By this it means that Paul was the prime worker or the one whose teaching would establish the Gospel among the Gentiles even though other Apostles would also work among the Gentiles (and Peter had been the first to preach among them in Cornelius’ house). Paul brought Titus into the presence and fellowship of the Apostles and didn’t suggest, for a moment, that Titus be circumcised. It was only the Judaizers in the Jerusalem Church that ever suggested this thing.

You need to note Paul’s firm resolve in this: “ 5 to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. ” What fellowship does light have with darkness? None. You see, Paul could not permit, even for a moment, the idea that Titus was even just a little less united to Christ in His death and resurrection because of his uncircumcision. He had the same Spirit, the same Baptism, the same Lord and Savior. To add works to the Gospel is to destroy the grace of the Gospel. It is to destroy the necessity of the Cross and the necessity of Christ.

But notice, also, how Paul also criticizes the attitude that the Judaizers had about his apostleship and that he is less important than the others. Christ is the one who had given Paul his apostleship. It was good that Peter and James and John recognized Christ’s commission of Paul but they added no authority to his work by agreeing with it. Paul’s authority had come from God and God is no respecter of persons. Paul’s words have authority for us because He is the spokesperson for Christ through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

In order to shock the Galatians out of their respect for the Judaizers he has to take a drastic step here and show that even someone as respectable as Peter was not perfect and that Paul himself had to rebuke him for a huge sin in front of the whole Church. I’m not sure many of you realize how ugly this episode really was and why Paul had to embarrass Peter in front of the whole Church. The fact of the matter was, though, that it was a very public sin and public sin has to be rebuked publicly or it can cause massive destruction.

Peter visited the Church at Antioch where Paul and Barnabas ministered and led the Church. Peter was eating with and having fellowship with the Gentile believers there until, one day, Judaizers from the Church at Jerusalem arrived. These love feasts were fellowship times in the early Church and it seems that the Lord’s Supper might even have been celebrated during these times. To participate in a love feast together was like saying: “We’re all part of one another – you and I have the same savior in Christ and are all adopted by the same Father.” Members would greet each other with a holy kiss of the affection that we’re supposed to share in Christ Jesus.

But then the Judaizers came along and Peter was afraid of their disapproval and so he withdrew from the Gentile believers. His hypocrisy was so great that he even tempted the great encourager, Barnabas, to withdraw from the Gentiles that he had labored among and loved.

Now, imagine for a moment that some men have come along that were saying that you have to believe in Jesus and be circumcised in order to be saved. You’re a Gentile that has been hanging out with the mighty Peter – he walked with Jesus and was a pillar in the Church. You see him withdraw from you and you see the great encourager, Barnabas, recoil from you as well. Don’t you think you’d begin to say to yourself: “Maybe if I was circumcised too then I could be like them. Maybe I’m not really serious enough about Jesus. I believe in him but, if I become circumcised like them, then I’ll really have fellowship with all of God’s saints. I have fellowship with the Gentile believers now but I want fellowship with Peter and Barnabas too….”

No! No! No! A thousand time No! This breaks my heart to think of what Peter did and I know, for a fact, that he appreciated Paul for rebuking him here. He had promised Christ three times that he would feed His lambs and care for His sheep and here he was, by his very actions, tearing down their faith!

Paul did the only thing that a man who loves Christ and loves the brethren would do. He openly rebuked Peter for his sin. Had he not done so then he might have caused some of the Gentiles to forsake Christ for they would have been forsaking the surety of their salvation that is built on nothing more than faith in Jesus Christ.

Paul uses this episode to remind Peter, all the brethren there, and us of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: “, I said to Cephas before them all, 14’If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?’ 15 We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; 16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”

Peter knew this all too well. He knew that Christ had not come to round out the Law or to simply show us how to obey so that we could obey the Law like Him. This truth is expanded upon and repeated in Romans 3. Paul demonstrates, conclusively, that the keeping of the Law for salvation is impossible. Nobody, no one, not a person, not a soul has ever, is now, or will be justified by the Law. What does this mean? This means that, before God, we can never earn a reward from His hand by doing good, by obeying His word. If we stand on our own strength, before the Law, the only thing we can earn from Him is condemnation because the Law brings a curse to transgressors of the Law. You don’t get graded on a curve before God. You’re either perfect in keeping the Law or you are condemned as a lawbreaker. Peter, like James, like John, and like Paul were all saved by somebody else’s righteousness. They were saved by Christ’s righteousness. They were saved by His blood on the Cross and they were saved by His obedience to the Law. They were saved by faith in His work.

Hear me again though. They were not saved by faith but they were saved by faith in Christ’s work. Their faith was directed at something that had been accomplished by Christ. You see the truth is that we are saved by works but they are not our works but Christ’s perfect work accomplished for us by His life, death, and resurrection. Our faith is as a beggar coming with nothing in our hand and saying to Christ that we know we deserve nothing but are simply relying on the promise that Christ will save all who put their trust in His finished work.

Inevitably, when somebody starts preaching the Gospel clearly, without the addition of human works, a charge always arises from people that want to object and say that God does His part but we have to add our part to be saved: “17 But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin?” Do you understand what the objector to Paul is saying in verse 17 that he’s about to answer? People always want to say that God cannot call a person righteous unless they are really righteous. Some call this a “legal fiction” when we preach the true Gospel that Christ justifies the un-Godly.

You see the Gospel is not that God is saving you because you are righteous and good. No. Christ justifies the un-Godly. He justifies not because all sin has left you but because that sin has been paid for in Christ. Some say the difference between Christians and non-Christians is that Christians are transformed so that sin no longer abides in them but the Gospel says that we are both justified by God and still sinners. We cling to the Cross in faith and are saved by the Cross but we are saved while sin still remains in us. We are not saved, in the end, by God looking at how much good we’ve filled up in our heart or how much we’ve done for God’s Kingdom but are saved by falling at the feet of Christ to save us.

How can God do this? Because Christ has taken away the reproach of our sin. Because we are covered by Christ. Yes, we are being transformed by Christ. Yes He is putting to death the body of sin that remains but God is pleased to save you even though He knows what a wretched sinner you are. He is pleased to save you even though He knows you don’t deserve it. That’s right – you don’t deserve to be saved. That’s the Gospel – that God saves those who don’t deserve it! Stop trying to earn your salvation because in trying to earn it you’re not trusting in Christ’s righteousness that is alone the ground for your salvation.

Paul makes it very clear, though, that we aren’t just saved so that we can be covered by Christ and then sin all we want because we’ve got a “Get out of Hell Free” card. Absolutely not! As Paul says: “19 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.”

This is the profound truth that those who do not pursue the Gospel of Christ by faith will never understand. The truth of the matter is that if you don’t cling to Christ by faith because you cannot keep the Law then you are not pursuing righteousness at all.

What are you saying Paul? Don’t you see the Jews trying really hard to be good people? Don’t you see them with the phylacteries on their foreheads with the list of all the commands of God? Don’t you see them attempting to obey every jot and tittle of God’s Law line by line?

Of course he knew that! He used to be one of them. But he concludes they aren’t pursuing righteousness at all because they’re trying to obey a sham. They’re obeying a fake. They’re obeying what they think the Law says. They’re obeying a list that is doable by man. But the Law of God is perfect and it condemns a man, it curses a man the very moment he breaks even the smallest part of it. Man isn’t content to believe this though so he lowers the bar to something he can do and then tells himself that God is pleased with this lower standard. After all, he’s a better person than his neighbor who doesn’t tithe his mint and cumin.

But the man who has been awakened by the Gospel sees the Law for what it is. He sees in it the perfect righteousness of God and it brings about the terror of judgment: “I can’t possibly be perfect. I can’t possibly obey with all my heart, soul, and mind.” The Law condemns us and makes us cry out: “Jesus, save me! Jesus, I know I’m condemned. Jesus, I know only you fulfilled the perfect righteousness of the Law!”

By laying hold of Christ’s feet in faith, the Christian is the only one on this earth that pursues righteousness because He is laying hold of the only One that could ever obey perfectly. The legalists of this world with all their “taste not and touch not” have all the appearance of righteousness but they are stone cold dead and are rotting flesh on the inside.

But the man who lays hold of Christ dies to the Law in Christ and is raised up in newness of life with Him. It is only after we have been freed from the burden and condemnation of the Law that we turn to our Savior and have new eyes to see Him no longer as the Judge but as our Righteousness and our very great Reward. We are now freed to obey out of love and out of gratitude for inheriting all righteousness. It is only with renewed hearts and minds that we begin to actually pursue the end of the Law which is love for each other that is an answer to the love that Christ has lavished upon us.

Indeed, as Paul notes very clearly, if we could have pursued righteousness at all apart from Christ then Christ died in vain. If all it took was for you and me to try harder at obeying the rules then Christ didn’t need to come. In fact, if God saves those who obey the best, if God justifies those who have earned it by their works, then Christ didn’t need to come for that. We didn’t need Christ to show us that God was serious about obedience. We needed Christ because we couldn’t be obedient. We needed Christ because by the deeds of the Law no flesh would ever be justified.

Are you convinced of this? Do you trust in the righteousness of Christ to save you? Do you seriously believe that God saves you not for anything He sees in you but only because you have fallen at the feet of Christ as a beggar?

Or are you holding on to the illusion that really the reason God saved you is because you’re better than the person across the street? Are you holding on to the illusion that God is weighing your good deeds against your bad deeds and sees that you’re doing your best? Are you holding on to the illusion that you dedicated yourself to God and that He’s only going to bless you as long as you continue to show Him how serious you are?

Rest Christian, rest. Take off the yoke of the Law and run to the Cross. Christ has accomplished all righteousness. Stop listening to the Judaizers of this world telling you that you aren’t going to be blessed until you sweat for God. Stop listening to their lies about grades of Christians. Look only to the Cross of Christ and what He accomplished perfectly in His life, death, and resurrection. Christ is present before you. Cry out to Him and say: “I am a lawbreaker and I deserve nothing from your Hand but I believe that You have accomplished all righteousness.”

Pursue Christ. Don’t let go of His feet until He blesses you. Believe the Gospel. Believe it and be saved!

Let us pray.

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Epistles Scripture

Anathema…Anathema! (Galatians 1)

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Galatians 1

1Paul, an apostle— not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— 2and all the brothers who are with me, To the churches of Galatia: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. 6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. 10For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant[b] of Christ. 11For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. 12 For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 13For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. 14And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. 15But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, 16was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone; 17nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. 18Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days. 19But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother. 20(In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!) 21 Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. 22And I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. 23They only were hearing it said, “He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24And they glorified God because of me.

For the next several weeks, we will be covering the Book of Galatians.  Martin Luther, the man who started the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century, called this his favorite book of the Bible.  In it, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is so clearly portrayed and explained that it is one of my favorite Books as well.

We live in a society today that considers truth claims about religion to be a personal matter.  A pastor was once telling a woman about Christ and the need to repent of her sins and she replied:  “Well, that’s good that you believe in God and Jesus.  If He helps you then that’s good that it’s true for you but I don’t really need God to make me happy and He’s not true for me.”
Imagine, for a moment, that I ran into someone who didn’t believe in the State of California.  What if I told him that I actually owned a house there and worked and lived there for several years?  What if he replied:  “Well, it’s good that you believe in a State of California but I don’t need to believe in California.  California is true for you but not for me….”
A true thing is true whether or not I believe it.  The Gospel, which testifies of the work of Christ, is either true or it is not.  In Galatians, it is the very Gospel of Christ at stake and the Apostle Paul really cares about whether or not his readers believe the Gospel or not.  If it’s not true, then who cares?
The funny thing is that most of us, when we think of a Church with problems will immediately think of all the bad behavior we find in First Corinthians:  men living in adultery, disorder in the Church, and selfishness running rampant.  But it is the Book of Galatians that Paul comes down with the hardest hammer.  He expresses confusion, anger and wonder about what people believe.  You see, to the Scriptures, what is primary, what comes first, is that we believe the Gospel and then our actions follow.  It’s not that how we behave is not important but behavior is a fruit of what God has done.  Paul is about to teach, in fact, that attempts at good behavior will utterly fail if we do not believe what God has done in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
What was going on in the Churches of Galatia that caused this letter to be written?
The problem is commonly called the Judaizing heresy and is quickly summarized by quoting Acts 15:1.
1 some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”
You need to remember that the first Christians were Jews that had embraced the Messiah.  The Church first spread around Jerusalem and Judea before it spread to Samaria and to the Gentiles.  Many former Pharisees had believed in Jesus because the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead and knew the Scriptures well.  Many of them, however, were never really converted and did not properly understand what the Gospel was all about.
Remember, when Peter went to Cornelius’ house in Acts, he had to be prodded repeatedly by God to enter a Gentile home.  When he finally did and preached the Gospel, the Spirit came upon Cornelius and his household and they believed.  When Peter returned from this visit, many of the Jews were challenging Peter and asking him why he had gone to the home of a Gentile.  Peter defends himself in front of the Church at Jerusalem and ends his explanation beginning in Acts 11:15
15As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. 16And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said,  ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 17If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” 18When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”
It is very telling in this episode that Peter and the Church understand that the Gentiles are truly of the Church and just like them.  They have not been circumcised but, instead, they have received the same gift:  the Holy Spirit.  They believed in Jesus Christ, just like the Jews, and God shows there is no unclean people group by placing His Holy Spirit within uncircumcised men.
But some of the Jewish believers were not content to let God decide who He had really accepted.  They taught, as we already noted, that a person could not be saved unless he believed in Jesus Christ and he became circumcised.  It is that small word AND that causes the problem because now what is happening is that something is being added to the Gospel of Grace.  It is Christ AND something else.
But it wasn’t merely that men had to have surgery performed on them to become physically circumcised.  We will learn that what the Judaizers were saying is that:  “You need to believe in Jesus Christ and then live a life of obedience to the Law of Moses in order to be saved.”  Another way of saying this is:  “Believe in Jesus and then show Him that you’re serious about believing in Him or you won’t be saved.”  It’s a message of believing and then behaving in order to be saved.
Now, because Paul was the Apostle to the Gentiles and the Gentiles were outside of Jerusalem and Judea, Paul had to deal with most of these troublemakers.
You’ll also notice some things that characterize Paul’s defense of the Gospel in Galatians – some of them we already read and you might have wondered why he’s dropping names and emphasizing that he’s an Apostle.  These are responses to charges that are coming from the false teachers – the Judaizers.  If you want to tear down another’s work then one way of attacking it is by attacking the person – it’s called mudslinging in politics.  There were apparently charges that Paul wasn’t really an Apostle.  There were charges that he was teaching differently than Peter, James, and John.  There were charges that his teaching was not only different but less authoritative than theirs.  There were charges that Paul had once taught the true Gospel but had changed it in order to be a “man pleaser” because circumcision and the Law would be too hard for Gentiles.  Paul clearly demonstrates that all of these charges are absolutely false.
This letter from the Galatians opens with storm clouds on the horizon.  Normally, these ancient letters would take a long form of introduction with greetings and introductions.  Paul has a very short greeting before the clouds fully form and the storm is upon the Galatian Church.  Paul is all business.  But before he gets to business, he does take a moment to introduce what believers are supposed to be about:  3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
This is what Paul will be defending and reinforcing.  He is going to take the enemies of this idea, examine their arguments, and then kill their idea.  He’s going take that dead idea, and in case we still thought adding to the Gospel was a good one, he’s going to beat the idea to a pulp.  He’s then going to take that idea that’s been beaten to a pulp and is going to grind it into tiny bits.  At the end of Galatians, it is my prayer that you will have no desire left within you to ever question what the true Gospel is.  It is my prayer that you will have no desire to add to the Gospel.   At the end of Galatians, I hope you are left in wonder at how glorious the true Gospel is and how wicked false gospels are.
Notice, though, in verses 3-5 how it is God our Father and Jesus Christ that is praised for saving us.  Christ gave Himself for our sins to save us.  It is God working.  It is God doing.  It is God saving.  That’s the Gospel.  But man always wants to interrupt God and say:  “But let me show you why you should save me!”  He’s not content to let God save Him, he wants to contribute.
So Paul continues:  6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel- 7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
The storm is upon us.  Paul is literally shocked that the Church is so quickly deserting God.  How is the Church deserting God?  By not giving to the poor?  By not being nice?  By not acting properly?  No, they are deserting God because they are leaving the grace that God has given them by turning to a different gospel.  They are literally turning to different “news”, different “truth”.
Chill out Paul!  As long as they’re sincere, can’t we just say that it’s a gospel for them?  Can’t you just hear the world telling Paul to quit being so close-minded?
No!  Paul says there is no other gospel!  This false gospel is no gospel at all!  These men are are distorting the only gospel that there really is and that is the gospel of Christ.
Now, I want to warn you that Paul is about to commit the only sin that you can possibly commit in a world that doesn’t believe in sin.  He is about to be close-minded.  He is about to be intolerant.  If you ate a large breakfast today then I don’t want you to become sick as we listen to Paul use the most shocking words:  8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
The word here is literally anathema.  Let the angel or any man that teaches you a false Gospel be eternally condemned to hell.  I do hope you’re beginning to sense how serious it is that the true Gospel be taught.  But Paul is not satisfied with saying it once.  I’ve taught you guys this before.  If I want to emphasize something in the English I might underline it or put it in bold print.  The Jews, when they wanted to make sure you knew they were serious, would repeat something.  Paul is dead serious and so he says:  “9As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.”
Is it any wonder that James warns men that not all should be teachers because they will be held in stricter judgment?  Beloved, I hope you realize how seriously I take the Word of God and that that very same curse rests upon me today if I preach to you a false Gospel.  We live by sight so much that we don’t take stock of the power and holiness of God that exists beyond our sight.  I believe in God and so I’m trying to convey to you how serious this is.  It is good that we live in societies that permit us to worship without the government interfering but please never believe, even for a moment, that God is pleased with all worship and with every gospel.  The state doesn’t judge what is right and we don’t judge what is right but all things will be brought under the judgment of God and the very worst judgment, throughout the Scriptures, is upon those that corrupt the gospel.
Why?  Because in your presence today I am supposed to be giving you words of life.  We have all been created in Adam and, apart from God saving us, we are all running to hell as fast as our legs can carry us.  Apart from God, we would be content to worship Him falsely and be condemned in our sins for doing so.  But God sent His Son, in the person and work of Jesus Christ, to save us from our sins.  He was despised and rejected of men and lived a life of sorrow.  We didn’t deserve a single day of the life that He lived among men.  He came to save us from our sins and mankind spit in His face and put Him to death as a blasphemer.  The night before He died, He prayed to God to learn if there was any way other than the Cross to save men from their sins.
Now, I’m sorry but I just can’t please men at this point.  Today, men would say:  “Sure there’s another way Jesus!  As long as someone is sincere then it doesn’t matter what they believe.”  Such men spit in my Savior’s face because on that night He prayed with such distress at the thought of facing God’s wrath for His people’s sins that drops of blood poured out of Him like sweat.  The Father answered and said:  “There is no other way!  Your death is the only thing that will take away the sin of men!”
And so He went to the punishment that I deserve and that you deserve and He took all of God’s hot, holy wrath upon Himself so we don’t have to be eternally condemned.
Do you believe this?  Do you really?  Are you willing to stand with Paul against those who teach a false Gospel?  Are you willing to stand against a false Gospel and receive the disapproval of men who look at you strangely in this world because believing in absolutes is so close-minded?
Is Christ the only hope, the only chance you have or do you have other options as long as you’re sincere?
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Epistles Scripture

Contend for the Faith! (Jude)

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Jude 1-25

1 Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James,To those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ: 2May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.

3 Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. 4For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

5 Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. 6And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, 7just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. 8. Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.

9 But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” 10But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed. 11Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. 12These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; 13wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.

14 It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, 15to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” 16These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage.

17 But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, 18that they were saying to you, “In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.” 19These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.

20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, 21keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. 22And have mercy on some, who are doubting; 23save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.

24 Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, 25to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

As we come near the end of the year, we arrive at the second to the last book of the Bible, the Epistle of Jude. Jude identifies himself as the brother of James at the beginning of the Epistle. Like his brother James, Jude is not proud in the flesh. He identifies himself as a bondservant of Jesus Christ when, in fact, he could have identified himself as the earthly brother of Jesus.

Jude greets us and reminds us that God has called us out of a world of sin and will keep us until the day that all creation longs for: the revelation of the sons of God when Christ returns in glory. In the meantime, however, he writes a very ominous warning: “ 3Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.”

Notice that he starts out saying that he planned on writing a letter to encourage everyone about the common salvation that they all share but then something has alarmed him. Something has him greatly concerned. He is so concerned that he has to warn the readers that they need to “…contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.”

I’m not sure you really can feel the sense of what he means when he’s telling us to contend earnestly for the faith. In boxing, the person trying to capture the belt from the champion is called the contender. The idea is that we literally have to fight for the faith. That we are supposed to be humble and tender-hearted toward one another is very clear from the Scriptures but just as clear is how we are supposed to fight for the faith and, especially, to protect the flock of God. Paul, when talking about the Christian life, uses regular military and sports analogies. He compares the Christian life to training for battle, putting on armor, fighting the good fight, running the race, and disciplining the body. Why? Because what we’re about here is extremely dangerous stuff. We, who are in the military, train to steel our bodies and minds because warfare is very dangerous to the body. Christian, you need to be aware that you are in the middle of a spiritual battle and, everywhere around you, are people whose eternal souls are in peril. It’s one thing to have your body destroyed but, worse yet, to have your soul destroyed. This is serious, serious stuff.

Now, there are some people that believe I’m wound too tight about certain things. There is some truth to that. Sometimes I’m not as gentle and humble in heart as I should be. Yet, I fear, that I take Christianity so seriously only seems strange in light of a culture that does not take spiritual things seriously at all. When you read Jude or Peter or James or John or Paul or Jesus, you can’t help take things seriously if you take them seriously. Do you know who preached about Hell more than anyone in the entire Scriptures? It’s not an Old Testament prophet. It’s not even an Apostle. It is Jesus, the Son of God, Himself. He obviously knew better than all how serious God is and how much spiritual battle has to be given; for He had come to do battle to the death.

Jude, however, doesn’t tell us to just contend for faith in general. He didn’t tell us to contend for the faith of the Mormon or the Jehovah’s Witness or the Muslim. He commanded us to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the Saints. Paul identifies the Gospel as “…the righteousness of God is revealed faith to faith….” The New Testament reveals, over and over, that men have only ever been justified before God by faith and men will only ever be justified before God by faith. Once for all literally means that faith in Christ has been, is, and always will be the way in which wicked men can be cleansed from their sins and be able to stand before a Holy God.

Why would we have to fight for such a truth? Because even though there should be nothing shameful to us about the fact that God has sent His Son into the world to die for the sins of everyone who believes in Him, the world does not love that news and is ashamed of it. As we discussed last week, the world does not know Him. It does not know the Love of God. That also means that when we are contending for the faith, we are contending for the Love of God. We are contending for the truth that only Christ saves from sin.

The world hates that idea. It says it is unloving. It says it is intolerant. We start to hear the world’s song and we begin to waiver. Maybe claiming Jesus as the only way isn’t loving, maybe tolerance is the key…. No. Jude tells us to contend, to fight for the faith.

What makes matters worse, as Jude continues, is that there are deceivers who have crept into the Church. He reminds us all that we have been warned that such men have always existed and will always exist among us. He reminds us of the stories of Cain, Balaam, Korah, Sodom & Gomorrah. He reminds us of the people who were delivered out of Egypt with great power; who had seen a lamb slain and put blood over the doorposts so the wrath of God passed over them. In spite of seeing God’s power and hearing His promise to save all who trusted in the blood of the lamb, many died in the desert in unbelief. Throughout the history of God’s people, all saw the same wonders and tasted the same heavenly gift but then men like Korah would lead many astray.

As we mentioned previously, men like Korah don’t seem evil. To their followers, it appears that God is on their side. “We’re all following the same God anyway,” I’m sure they thought to themselves, “why can’t Korah lead? Why does Moses get to hog the power?” So Moses stepped away humbly and warned everyone else to move away as well. All who listened to Moses were saved but those who left the Truth and stood next to Korah were swallowed up by the ground.

This happens so often in the Scriptures that we read it and we think: “Oh, I’d never side with Korah” or “I’d never have sided with all of Israel against Joshua and Caleb” or “I’d never have rejected Jeremiah’s prophecy” but many of us don’t realize that it wasn’t so obvious to the people who died in sin. It was just common sense after all.

Jude calls such false teachers: “…clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; 13wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever….” They look like just like regular clouds but they don’t bring any rain to relieve the dry and parched ground of men’s souls. Christ asked: “Is anyone thirsty” for He satisfies the thirst of men’s hearts but these men are simply empty clouds. Men chase after these false teachers, these moving clouds, waiting to be satisfied but they die of thirst. Have you ever noticed that every 3 years a new “Christian” bestseller comes out with the latest prayer formula or purpose formula or best life formula? These books are clouds without rain and they blow with the winds of the world’s culture.

These men also look like regular Christians – they look like every other tree except they are not rooted in Christ and they bear no fruit. They also seem to be stars bringing light into the darkness. They seem to be bearing truth. The truth is that they are not fixed in the heavens like stars useful to find your way. The traveler navigating by such a star will follow it foolishly not knowing it is leading him nowhere. They are unreliable guides for life.

But I hope for better things for you, things that accompany the salvation that was purchased for you by Christ: “ 20But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, 21keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. 22And have mercy on some, who are doubting; 23save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.”

Build yourselves up in the holy faith that has been revealed in the Word. Remember that the Word is fixed and the faith has been delivered once and for all. Learn it. Take comfort from it. Build yourselves up by it. Build each other up by it. Keep yourselves in the love of God.

And what is the love of God? Remember John. Not that we loved Him but that He loved us and sent His one and only Son to live for us and to die for us and to pay the penalty for sin that we deserved. Be established in the truth that God will only accept those that are found in His Son. Remember that you bring nothing in your hands to God but sin and, in the acknowledgment of sin and shame, you have the Cross of Christ to lay hold of by faith and say: “Christ, you are my only hope in this life.” Fight for it. Fight for it. Fight for it! You have no hope if you give that up even when men around you are trying to tell you that to hold on to Christ alone is to be close-minded. Hold on to the perfect Love of Christ even when men around you are tempting you to turn aside to the love of the world.

And remember your brothers and sister around you. Have mercy on those who are weak among us. Have mercy on those who are doubting. Are they weak in the faith and listening to the wrong people? Are they tempted to turn aside from the truth? Gently bring them to the Word and show them the perfect and only Way. Save them from the fire for that is all the false teachers have to offer and that is the sure reward for those that lead Christ’s sheep away. Protect the weak from such wolves. Put on your armor and, even as you are gentle toward the sheep, you stand up to false teachers and say: “You can’t have this one. This one is of us! This one is Christ’s! You may not have him!” This is the burden of love that we in leadership have for all of you.

But my confidence is not in men, in the end, but it is in the power of God to save and in the power of God to finish the good work He began in you all: “ 24Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy…”

Indeed, God has loved you with an everlasting love. God has brought you from death to life and has put you on your feet. He is powerful enough to make you stand and powerful enough to keep you from stumbling. He has clothed you with Christ and intends to present you blameless with great joy on that great Day.

25 to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”

Categories
Epistles Scripture

Not That We Loved Him… (1 John 4)

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1 John 4:1-21

1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. 4 You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. 5 They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.

13 By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. 14 We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. 19 We love, because He first loved us. 20 If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.

As I was preparing for this message, I realized that I was going to be teaching on probably the most famous portion of the Bible that says “…God is love…” in 1 John 4:8. Of course, the reason it is famous is not because people actually understand what love means. It’s famous with many men and women who actually hate Christianity because they have their own ideas about what love is. Love seems like an idea that anyone can define personally and, so, the idea that God is love makes them very happy because it fits exactly with their idea of who He should be. What they don’t want from God, however, is the love that He has offered. They also only want love if it’s how they’ve defined it and not necessarily how God has defined it. They want love on their own terms and they want God on their own terms.

I’ve told a number of you a story about something that happened on the Oprah Winfrey show a number of years ago. There was a discussion about God. Of course nobody in the room, including Oprah, seemed to know much about who God is. One woman said this: “I don’t think I believe in God.” Oprah responded by asking: “Do you believe in love?” The woman stated that she did. Oprah replied, with all the wisdom of the world: “Then you believe in God.” Is this true? By saying God is love are the Scriptures really saying that love is God? Is anything that we decide is love is what God is?

Well to answer this, we should listen to John at the beginning of this chapter again: 1Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.

John is warning Christians of something we need to be careful to listen to. The plain fact is that there are many false prophets and teachers in the world that are claiming to represent the truth. We are commanded by the word of God to test every spirit. We are commanded to take captive every thought to the Word of God and measure it against the Word to determine if it is true.

Life would be much easier if false teachers had red horns, sharp teeth, tails, and looked really mean and evil. In classic American films, the bad guys always wear black and have evil eyebrows. But in the real world, false teachers often sound very convincing, look really nice, and smell really good. They might even have a huge following and be on TV claiming to teach the Gospel. They tug at our heart strings. They seem to be saying things that must be true because so many people follow them, listen to them, and even proclaim how their lives have been changed.

Now, I love the Internet and e-mail as much as anyone but one thing that I really do not like are those e-mails you get with stories created to make you cry or feel good. A few years ago, I received an e-mail from a close female friend of the family. The story was designed to make everyone feel really warm by telling a tale that Jesus one time found Satan with a world full of sinners and asked Satan how much he wanted from Jesus so that Jesus could “buy” them from him. It seemed like such a beautiful tale of how much Jesus loved these wretched creatures that Satan owned and that Jesus would be willing, in fact, to give His life to Satan for them.

The problem with the story is that it was a lie. Jesus didn’t save men from Satan ultimately but He redeemed them from the wrath of God. Jesus didn’t give His life to Satan, He offered Himself to His Father. I lovingly responded to the friend instructing her that this was not the Gospel and that central to the Gospel was that we know what Christ has actually done. She responded in a way I’ll never forget because it is the spirit of our age: “I know, Rich, but it’s just a good reminder of how much God loves us.”

What? It’s not a reminder at all if it’s not what happened. Love rejoices with the truth. Right?! But, you have to understand that many of us are not really testing the spirits that are making us feel good against the Truth. Many of us are led astray by many false ideas because we’re not testing the things we hear or read. Just because it feels good doesn’t mean it is.

John gives us a very basic test in verse 2 by declaring: “ 2…every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God….” At first, it might seem like everyone you meet could be trusted because, after all, who denies that Christ has come in the flesh? This is the season, after all, when the whole world is celebrating the birth of Jesus. All over are trees and Christmas lights and people are giving each other “seasons greetings”. The reality is much different though.

When John wrote this, there was a heretical group called the Gnostics. They were named after the Greek word for knowledge, which is gnosis. The difficult thing for Greeks to believe, due to their philosophers, was that Christ could have come in the flesh. Death was, to them, an escape from physical things. Flesh was evil. God could not take on human flesh because that would corrupt Him. Many believed Jesus was God but they taught that Christ only seemed to come in the flesh. This is why John, in his Gospel and his epistles, makes such constant reference to Jesus’ real humanity. You see, to John and to all Christians, we must testify to the truth that Christ was fully God and fully man in one person. Those who deny his humanity are false teachers and we know they are false because they deny this.

But the sense of what John is saying is not merely that we believe that God once took on human flesh in a manger two thousand years ago. The verse literally says that Christ has come in the flesh meaning that He still is in the flesh. The divine nature and the human nature of Christ are still united in the one person of Christ as He reigns on high. False teachers always deny one or both of these very central truths.

Modern liberal scholarship about Jesus can best be summed up in a single word: unbelief. It is so common that it pervades the Churches and many of us today are infected in very subtle ways. There is a tendency in the Church today to think of God and our relationship to Him as completely spiritual and something that the mind or flesh does not participate in. But God redeems us in the whole person when we are born again and is redeeming our flesh as well as our mind. Our flesh was created good in the Garden but it was our hearts from within that defiled from the inside out.

An Anglican bishop was recently asked what would happen to his faith if conclusive proof was found that Christ was not raised from the dead. He responded, foolishly, that his faith did not depend upon the physical resurrection of Christ. Now, I’m not suggesting we should expect evidence to be coming out that disproves the resurrection but, beloved, the physical resurrection means everything to our faith. That Christ’s physical body was raised from the grave means the difference between being alive with Him or still dead in your sins! Christ’s humanity is central to our salvation.

John continues by exhorting us with great affection: 4 You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. 5 They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Paul notes in Ephesians that we all used to walk according to the pattern of this world. John is saying the same thing here. We are those who, at one time, thought just like the world thinks but, when God saves us from the world, He saves our minds too. Our minds are not instantly transformed, however, which is what Paul notes in Romans 12 as we are commanded to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. God transforms our thinking as we grow. We were once fools but He gives us wisdom as we grow.

I described it to the Wednesday night class this way. Our minds are like a tuning fork. If you’ve ever picked up a tuning fork, you can actually hum at the correct note and the tuning fork will start to vibrate in your hand. The fallen mind is like a tuning fork that resonates with the spirit of the world. We still have sin that abides within us and God is working in us to make us more like Him. In the meantime, however, we need to recognize that this sin nature is within us and clouds our thinking. Sometimes the world will send us really nice e-mails that make us cry and respond or make us say: “Why, that’s just common sense.” We need to be on our guard, however. Christ told us that out of our hearts proceed all manner of things including blasphemy. Hollywood tells you to listen to your heart while God tells you that’s the last place you ought to rely upon for truth.

We’ve been redeemed to overcome the world and its upside-down thinking about reality. We have been redeemed and the other tuning fork resonates with the things of God. We recognize that they are the things of God not by first testing with our heart but by going to His Word. Those that belong to God listen to His Word because their hearts respond as His Word resonates within them.

John says very simply: “ 6 We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”

Do you want to tell truth from error? Read God’s Word. Do you want to know who belongs to God? They are those that listen to His Word. If you get a story from someone and they say “…this means so much to me…” but you point out that God’s Word says this is wrong but they don’t care about what God has to say then they do not know God and you should not be deceived. Now, you should certainly pray for them but don’t let your emotions carry you away in agreeing with those who disagree with the Word of God. Trust God’s Word first and last in all things. Don’t change the Word because your heart is commanding it but let your hearts be changed by the Word.

We are all prepared now, I hope, to learn anew from God on what He means by love rather than what we think it is. We are prepared to hear: “ 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

I hope you have been really paying attention the last few weeks because this theme keeps coming forward like the refrain to a song. We love one another because we are born of God. We love because love is from God and we are from God. If we do not love then we do not know God. Notice that it doesn’t say this: “If you love then you will learn to know God.” No, we love because we know God, because we are born of Him. We love because we have life. If we do not love, we have no life and we do not know Him.

But what is love? What does it mean that God is love? John answers that question very directly: “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.”

Oh! Do not miss the profound love found in this statement. What love is this! What love is it that God sent His one and only Son. His Son whom He loved from eternity and had perfect, unbroken fellowship along with the Holy Spirit. You see the profound truth is that if God had never created man He would have been perfectly content in Himself. He did not need us to express love. Love has existed forever within the community of the Godhead as Father, Son, and Spirit love each other with a perfect love.

But God sent His one and only Son, whom He loved, to a world that hated Him – to a world of men who were dead in their sins and trespasses. There was nothing that God gained by sending His Son to die for us other than a love that He decided to lavish upon us. This is a love that we cannot comprehend. A love that we will never grow tired of praising when we are in glory with Him as we contemplate the great grace of our God toward us.

He continues “ 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Do you see this? God did not love us because we loved Him but it says that God loved us even though we did not love Him. His Son came to pay for the sins of a people who only had incurred wrath and judgment. He came because God cannot look upon sin. Every single one of our sins was added to Christ on the Cross and, before we even knew Him, before we loved Him, our sins were put on Christ and He who knew no sin became Sin for us. He who had never displeased His father took on the wrath for sin that we deserved. You see, that when God commands us to love our enemies it is because God loved us while we were His enemies and, by His love, we were redeemed to Him!

How can the following ever be read as a burden once we have really fallen at the foot of the Cross in gratitude: “ 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.”

This isn’t Law, it’s the response of the Gospel. Of course I love those who you love God. How could I not love them for you have shown much more love and much more forbearance toward me.

It is very telling to me that the world right now is very content to proclaim “Peace on Earth and good will to men” because they think they know what it means. But, like most things, this is a spirit that needs to be brought captive to the Word of God where Christ states in John 14:27 – “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.”

That same Apostle who recorded those words of Christ tells us even more in 1 John 4:18-19: “ 18There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. 19 We love, because He first loved us.”

There is no fear now. There is no condemnation. There is no judgment. There is peace. The world seems to constantly be seeking peace and to offer peace but the most important kind of peace is the kind that only Christ can give. That peace is peace with God Himself. The world believes in every kind of love except the love that God gives. That’s because the world thinks that what love is begins with us, but perfect love begins with God.

Because God first loved us, He sent His one and only Son to die for us. Because God first loved us, our dead hearts heard the Gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection heralded to the world and our dead hearts of stone began beating with life. Because God first loved us, our feet ran to the Cross and answered: “Yes Lord! I believe that you are the sacrifice for my sins and have satisfied the judgment of God that I deserved. I have peace with God through You, Lord!” Because God first loved us, we behold the wondrous salvation we have received and our hearts burst forth in joy. Because God first loved us our hearts answer back in love as God’s love resonates within us. We love God and we love others because God first loved us. Beloved, we know what love is because God first loved us.

Let us pray.

Categories
Epistles Scripture

A Ready Hope (1 Peter 3:13-17)

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1 Peter 3:13-17

Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. AND DO NOT FEAR THEIR INTIMIDATION, AND DO NOT BE TROUBLED, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong.

As we continue in our expositional series through the Books of the Bible, we come to the First Peter. Many times in the Epistles, the authors will tell their audience why they are writing the letter. When Peter begins, however, he doesn’t explain why he’s writing to the Saints scattered around Asia Minor. As the letter develops, though, it becomes much clearer that the Epistle was written to encourage believers in their faith and to persevere in it. I pray that you may find that encouragement, as well, today.

More than a mere nice encouragement, though, Peter is giving the encouragement to readers who are facing real trials and real persecution ““ including death ““ and he is giving them words that are supposed to give them hope and strength and the ability to stand firm in the midst of persecution. The word hope occurs five times in First Peter and occurs in the passage we just read from 1 Peter Chapter 3.

It is interesting, as you read through this book, that the need for this hope is set against the suffering that Christians not only experience but are bound to experience in this life. Christians endure suffering in a world that is not their own. They are strangers in the world and, because of this, they are rejected by it. They are scorned by the world and experience suffering because they bear Christ’s name.

From the first to the last portions of the letter, Peter instructs believers to be holy and to avoid evil He wants believers to understand that there is something more to suffering than merely putting up with it but, more importantly, he wants to remind people that suffering is an expected part of the Christian life. In business, it is illegal to perform what is called “bait and switch”, that is to say that you cannot lure people to your business promising them a car for $10,000 and then, when they’re ready to by, you reveal that the price is really $20,000. It’s illegal and we know why because it is dishonest. But the promise of the Christian life is that we will suffer. It’s not a matter of if we will suffer but whether we are prepared for it. One thing is for sure and that is that we should not be surprised by suffering. Also, if there was no hope beyond it then suffering would just be pointless.

Hope is what makes suffering worthwhile. The Apostle Paul compares the suffering in the creation to the pains of a woman in labor. Look, ladies, the only reason that labor is exciting is that there’s a baby at the end of it. Imagine if you just experienced the incredible pain of labor constantly and you had no expectation that it would never end and that there would be no joy, no baby, at the end of it. Probably the saddest stories I’ve heard are of women that go through labor to give birth to stillborn children. All that pain and, at the end, only grief.

So the question for you, Christian, is this: what hope is it that you are supposed to be ready to give a defense of? After all, the apostle Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit has given us each a command and it is this: “”¦always be ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence”¦.” Well, I’m asking you Christian: what is your hope?

This is a really serious question because, when sorrow comes, when persecution comes and when suffering more painful than child labor comes along, what hope are you clinging to that will sustain you? It is very sad to me, indeed, but it does not surprise me to hear more and more of people whose faith is shipwrecked because of the death of a child or a loved one or some other horror that awaits in this wicked world. I’m saddened but the reason I’m not surprised is how weak and pitiful the message of hope that I hear out of the mouths of Christians these days. Beloved, our hope is powerful but you have to have that hope in your bloodstream or the house of your belief is built on sand. The waves of sorrow in this life will crash against that house and wash it all away. I truly believe that when great persecution begins against the Christian Church in the United States that many people’s houses will crumble because they do not hear enough of the glorious hope that has to be the bedrock of their souls to withstand the suffering that the world will bring. In fact, the very way many of us have been trained to express our hope to others shows how poor our hope really is. I believe our hope can be much stronger and that is the goal of this passage.

What do I mean? Have you ever heard somebody witness Christ this way: Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Have you ever been taught that a personal testimony is supposed to be something like: I used to beat up my wife and my kids but then I accepted Jesus into my heart and now I don’t do that anymore.

Is our hope really about how much our lives have been improved since Jesus came into our hearts? Is it really? I know you might want to say it is but please stop and think about it for a second. What happens when the storm of sin and misery comes and our life falls apart around us? Then how are we supposed to “testify” of the wonderful things that God has done? What if our hope is nothing more than how good our life is going and our joy and hope is that things will be just like today but only better? Americans are particularly prone to this because we have such happy lives with very little poverty and want. It’s easy to mistake our material happiness with real hope.

Also, let me ask you another question: just because Jesus makes you happy, what difference does that make to me? I have Muslim friends that tell me how fulfilled their life is since they began reading Muhammad. I have Mormon friends that are convinced that their heart is most happy because they prayed a prayer in the Book of Mormon and received a burning in the bosom. Buddhists will “testify” of the inner peace that comes from within when you meditate on the sound of “one hand clapping”.

So the question for the “shopper” of meaning in life is: which one should I choose for happiness and hope? After all, aren’t we told that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you’re sincere? Aren’t we told that we have to have faith in something?

Beloved, our hope is not that we have hope. Our hope is not that we have faith. Our hope is not that we once we were sad but now we’re glad. Our hope is much more meaningful. The hope that we’re commanded to share points to something beyond ourselves. Our hope makes a claim on men’s lives that they have to pay attention to. If Christianity is just something that made my life nice then that’s good for Rich Leino but what difference does that make to Steve Jones? Works for Rich, he might say. But, what if our hope was not in ourselves but was fixed upon something else?

But wait, Rich, this is what we’ve grown up with. You can’t be serious. I mean, come on, who doesn’t love stories of men who were heroin addicts and they prayed to God for deliverance and, Presto!, they never craved the drug again? What about the alcoholic that prayed to God and, Glory!, they instantly hated alcohol and never craved a drink again in their lives? We love those stories. We want to parade them out as our Gospel “superstars”. Look how powerful the Gospel is because they’re happy now and delivered from sin and misery!

What about those stories, though? What about the thousands of others that have prayed to God for instant delivery from addiction after becoming a Christian and the delivery isn’t instant? What about the man that struggles with the same sin regularly and cannot conquer it and cries out to God that he doesn’t want to sin that way anymore? I thought the Gospel was supposed to be about how happy I am so why isn’t this working for me?! Why do I still struggle with my sin? But the majority of Christians have left such men in their misery and passed them by and run to these “superstars” and say: “This is the Gospel. Happiness. Health. Victory.”

But, oh, what about the poor sinner? Nobody goes to the Scriptures any more and hears Paul crying out in agony:

Romans 7:18-24

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Paul had a Gospel answer to that question. Paul had a hope that didn’t point to himself. Paul didn’t answer that question by thinking of Peter or Elijah or some other hero who lived a good life and got good things that came. Paul, one of the greatest evangelists that ever lived, knew that his hope was fixed on something more firm. Remember, beloved, that Paul prayed three times to be delivered from an affliction of the flesh and the answer from the Lord was “my grace is sufficient for you.” Do we have a hope that can trust in that answer?

Years ago there was a prominent man that was brought to all the typical large Evangelical meetings. His testimony was all about how perfect his life was now. He had once been a practicing homosexual. He was miserable in that life but, one day, he “found Christ” and prayed that he would be delivered from his sin. Now he was a happy man with a beautiful wife and children. As usual, he was brought around like a display of what Christianity offers.

The only problem is that men make for bad objects of faith. Because they’re not God, they end up disappointing those that place their trust in their lives. The man ended up falling greatly, left his wife, and went back into his homosexual lifestyle. The Evangelical community didn’t have much use for him then. Their object of hope had failed so they had to find another superstar to place on a pedestal.

Why is it we need to hear from sports figures or from the Power Team how happy Christ makes them? Maybe, just maybe, some of that will rub off on us and we can be super-successful too. Maybe our hope is that we’ll get everything good in life.

But, beloved, this is not the hope that Peter is talking about. Life is not going to give you everything you want and when you go placing your hope in how you or others have been changed then you will always be disappointed and you will never have any real testimony to share.

Well, I’m tired of talking about what our hope isn’t and you’re probably tired of hearing it so let’s just get to it. This, and this alone, is our hope. This is what can stand the trial. This is what another man cannot ignore when you share. This is what should make you be able to withstand the shame and persecution of the world. This is what should set you apart and make you blameless before the world for your conduct:

1 Peter 1: 3-12

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven–things into which angels long to look.

I don’t mean to sound like a grade school teacher when I remind you of this but our hope is Christ. Our hope is Christ. Our hope is Christ. Our hope is not how we feel about what Christ has done. Our hope is what Christ has done. Our hope is in a God that saw us in our great need, our death in sin and misery, our hatred of Him. He saw us in our despair and sent His Son into the world.

Beloved, the prophets of old used to pore over the Word of God longing, longing, longing to understand the mystery that was going to be revealed. What is this Messiah being spoken of? Who is this? The Rabbis were absolutely baffled. This Messiah is sometimes referred to as a man and sometimes referred to as God. Oh, how they longed to see what has been revealed in Christ Jesus.

Glory! It has burst upon the scenes of human history. There is no mystery remaining. There is no more wondering about what Messiah would do. There is no more anticipation of the saving work of a gracious God. All has been fully revealed in the person and work of Christ Jesus.

Our hope is that a real man named Jesus Christ came as the Son of God come down from heaven ““ God and man. Fully God so that He could obey the demands of the Law that no man could obey and so God obeyed it for us. And He came as fully man so He could represent us as our Priest who took the wrath of God upon Himself.

You see, beloved, our feelings can change. Our circumstances can become painful. We can be experiencing human suffering on a level that would make the birth of a child seem easy by comparison. But Christ’s work has been accomplished. It is fact. He died a death on a Cross to put away the curse of sin and death for everyone who believes. By placing my faith in Him, I am united to Him in His death and resurrection and I know that my victory over the grave is assured.

And so I have hope. I have hope when things are going well around me. But when suffering has come, I’ve had the Cross of Christ to look to for hope. When Anna was born, she had suffered multiple strokes and was severely anemic. I watched as my helpless little child gasped for every breath. Life has a way of coming into laser sharp focus when you think you’re about to lose a child just moments after the unspeakable joy of their birth. But I knew then how Job could say: though He slay me will I trust in Him! I had faith in a God that, through the tears of horror, I knew was my great Savior and would trust Him no matter the outcome. Glory be to God that Anna is well but that result was not certain from the beginning and we have no guarantees in this life that more profound suffering might await. Are we firm in our hope to withstand it when it comes?

We also have the Cross of Christ to look to in order that we may be empowered to obey our Savior out of gratitude. That Cross ought to transform our lives in a way that makes us different from the world. We can put up with the shame for Christ’s sake and live a life that honors the Savior who purchased us.

And so, because of that life, someone is bound to ask you or me, what is it that makes your life different?

Please, please after all of this, I hope that your answer isn’t merely that Jesus makes you happy and He can make somebody else happy too. I pray that you will learn to testify of what Christ has done to save sinners. I pray that you will testify of His life, of His work, and of His sacrifice for sin. Don’t have them look to your life, but at the life of Christ. Then turn to the man who is asking and tell him of his need for a Savior that takes away sins and testify of Christ as the only remedy for their sin. That is a hope that can never fade away or tarnish. That is a hope that demands a response from everyone. That is a hope that can sustain. Our hope is either in Christ or it is worth nothing at all.

Let us pray.

Categories
Epistles Scripture

True Religion (James 1:1-27, 2:14-17)

James 1:1-27
James 2:14-17

As we continue in our series through the Word of God we come to the Epistle of James. Scholars agree that the writer is the brother of Jesus (Matt 13:55). James became the leader of the Church at Jerusalem after the departure of Peter in Acts 12:17. He was the spokesman at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:13-21), and was a “pillar” to whom Paul reported his missionary experience (Gal 2:2,9, Acts 21:18-19)

Notice is verse 1 how James introduces himself as a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. Never in this epistle does James “drop names”. What do I mean? Well, James grew up with Jesus. He was His brother. If there was anyone who could rightfully call Jesus his brother and be proud of it, it was James. He could say, “Yeah, I remember when I was growing up with Jesus”¦.” Isn’t that the way of the world? James is a humble man ““ a bondservant of Christ. No confidence in the flesh but simply confidence in Christ.

In verse 2, James begins with a very strange command: “Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials”¦.” Another way of stating that is to consider it pure joy. Perhaps some of his readers thought that James was some guy out of touch with reality living safely in Jerusalem but, surely, James was not unaware of the trials around him. He had witnessed the death of Stephen and the persecution that followed. There is something more behind these words.

The Christian does not have a command to pretend like everything is OK and pretend there is no grief or suffering in the world. Yet, we understand that God stands behind every trial and test. We keep our trust in our heavenly father for we know that he sends us trials to test our faith and we know He is in complete control of every situation.

The joy spoken of is pure because it looks beyond the present circumstances that might cause some real grief even as Christ wept with those who wept. Yet behind that grief is the knowledge that God is working together all things together for the good for His saints. We also understand that the trials are a refining process.

And so, in verse 4, we are instructed to persevere so that our faith will be mature and complete. This is not something that can be rushed. It’s not something that can be produced by simple steps or 40 days of purpose. It’s something that is lived out in the day-to-day life of the believer who trusts and rests in the work of the Cross. It is laying hold of that truth at 5 in the morning when our mind is groggy and we’re in a bad mood. It’s found in these times and not merely our times of ecstasy or things that we enjoy in our worship experiences. True Christianity is lived out on the ground as we mature in the faith.

Another way of saying “mature” is the word “complete”. In the name of Jesus, Peter healed the lame man who sat begging at Solomon’s Colomnade. The account in Acts 3:16 notes that the beggar was given complete healing. The man’s feet and ankles became strong so he could function as a complete human being with no handicap.

And so we’re supposed to mature and James continues naturally by noting: “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him”¦.” For God is a generous God. What are we to be asking for? Wisdom. God always grants that request. James is saying: “I know some of you won’t admit it but you need wisdom.” Beloved, you and I need wisdom for wisdom is what we’re after. This is not about being proud. Men and women never want to admit they lack anything but we need wisdom for it is a treasure. Wisdom is not mere knowledge though it surely must include knowledge. Wisdom is the ability to have eyes to see things as the Scriptures see them ““ to have a heart that rightly interprets everything around us and not as the world does.

But, as verse 6, notes many of us are double-minded in the Church. We’re “hedging our bets”. We’ll try on religion as long as it helps us out. We’ll add Christianity and Scriptural principles to our lives to complement the other parts that we have all worked out. We’ll go to God when it suits us and we can’t work things out on our own. James reminds us all that this will not work. You receive nothing from the Lord in such cases. You receive no wisdom because you have not begun with the fear of the Lord. In fact, if Christ is just an option for you then you have not even received salvation for faith requires a recognition that we are utterly lost without Christ as our only hope. In fact, Paul states that, if Christ be not raised then your religion is vain. The Scriptures say that there are two options here: Either Christ is raised or He isn’t. If He is raised then believe upon Him but if He is not raised then the Word of God commands you this in 1 Cor 15:32 ““ “If the dead are not raised, LET US EAT AND DRINK, FOR TOMORROW WE DIE.” If you don’t believe that Christ is raised then you’re wasting time that could be better spent on a Sunday morning.

But don’t fear, double-mindedness does not mean that we never doubt or suffer unbelief. Our faith in Christ need not be perfect ““ that’s the reason we have a Savior to begin with. One of my favorite stories is when the father of the epileptic pleads with Christ to heal his son in Mark 9. Christ asks him if he believes. The father answers with emotion: “Lord I do believe: help me overcome my unbelief!” That is my daily cry. I know that if I hold on to the feet of Christ as a beggar then my faith never needs to be perfect as long as I am always looking to Christ for my hope and salvation. But I can never view that as simply an option. It is the only way or it is no way at all.

And so, throughout the rest of Chapter 1, James encourages us all to trust, to believe, to persevere in believing throughout trials. We need to understand that God brings us these trials to cause us to grow even as a son is disciplined by his father so that he’ll mature as a man. Paul notes that a man, in fact, hates his son if he doesn’t discipline him and reminds us that God’s refinement of us is proof that He loves us. We need to stop being convinced that we’re mature to begin with so we can view the trials and the suffering that He sends our way as a sign that God is not with us or doesn’t care.

In fact, as James notes in verse 13, many will even blame their sin upon God. You see, the sinful human heart will always reason like this: “God is in control of everything, He knew this would tempt me to sin, He allowed the temptation to occur, I sinned, and so it’s God’s fault.”

Remember Adam and Eve in the Garden when God asks them who told them they were naked. Adam says to God: “The woman YOU GAVE ME brought some fruit”¦.” Yeah, that’s right God, I was fine, I had all my ribs and I was asleep when you made her. It’s her fault but, really God, it’s YOUR fault.

This attitude is as old as mankind and it still doesn’t work. We’re responsible for our own sin. We need to look to God for strength to endure temptation and, in fact, that He would make us wise so that we don’t walk into temptations.

Faith that is born from above must persevere to the end because God has born it within us but we must exercise the faith given us. We must be those who are never content to trust in ourselves or consider ourselves too strong for temptation. We must be learning to hate our sin and fleeing from situations that lead to sin. Our hope is to be eternally blessed as our perseverance perfects our faith until, to the end, we reach the goal. The goal isn’t that we’ve ever clung to Christ and never let go of His life.

But James warns us not to deceive ourselves and think that we can just be playing around with sin and that it won’t affect us. Our problem is that we don’t consider, enough, how horrible sin is and we even deceive ourselves that we deserve the occasional sin because we’ve been good for a while. Beloved, you haven’t been good enough for the last minute to deserve heaven. We need to realize that if not for Christ we have no hope. And so, we should not be deceived that we can just start leaving the things that Christ loves and embrace all the things that God hates in this world. If we do so then eventually we prove to everyone that Christ does not abide with us, for if He did, then we would bear His fruit. So James warns us all that we stay away from sin ““ this is something the true believer will always do because true believers fear the things that God tells them to fear.

James reminds us all where this is all flowing from in verse 18: “In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.”

Everything we’re talking about here is something that we’ve been born to do. We’ve been re-created by God for this work. It is a fruit of the Christian life. It comes naturally from a Christian. It is only because sin yet abides that we are conflicted and sometimes view what ought to be natural as un-natural but a Gospel-transformed life, a born again life, ought to be seeking this type of transformation.

And so it should never be a burden for us to live according to this Word. It should be sweet to us. So I have to ask myself why it is that I don’t view these next verses as sweet sometimes: “This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.”

Over the past couple of weeks, after everything that has been going on in this Church, I prepared this message and then I started studying these verses and knew, right away, that I had come up short. I’ll always come up short but my problem is that I sometimes don’t even pursue these things. I am too quick to speak and too slow to listen. I am quick to anger.

But this is not a recipe for self-improvement. It drove me to Christ to beg of Him for wisdom ““ to beg of humility. You see, I believe in this Christ, I believe that He will give me the very thing that He is demanding of me because I’m united to Him by faith in His finished work. I begged of Christ that I would love this kind of demand on my life and be transformed by it. I need to live this out too but it will only be lived out when it is a fruit of my heart. And so I trust and in my trusting, I strive.

I hope after all that, we can understand better how James is able to sum up everything so far by saying this: “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

At first this may seem strange but, when you understand why widows and orphans are mentioned, then you’ll understand this.

There is a regular pattern that jumps out at you in the Old Testament. It got to be such a regular theme as I taught through the Old Testament this year that I sometimes felt like saying to the class: “Remember what we talked about last week? Here’s another Prophet that is reminding the people of the same thing.”

The pattern is this: Men abandon God in their hearts and God gives them over to idolatry. Because men become idol-worshippers they lose the knowledge of God in their hearts. Because they lose the knowledge of God then they lose the value of the men and women that are created in God’s image. Because men and women no longer have any value, they are things to be used and thrown away when they no longer serve any purpose.

Widows and orphans can’t do anything for us. They were the downtrodden and had no political power. They were destitute among all people because they had nobody to care for them in society. You’re not going to become rich or famous our get any political power from them or by helping them. And so, is it any wonder that those who have the least power in our society, the unborn, can be killed wantonly and without mercy. Society views them as a mere collection of cells. There is no image of God to consider. There is nothing sacred that makes them valuable.

But recreated hearts love the things that God loves and true worshippers of God, people who truly have faith in God, have hearts that are tender to the things that God is tender toward. I read into James 2 because this is completely about what true religion is and what the nature of faith is. It demonstrates whether or not you have the kind of faith that just says you love God and trust God on the one hand but, when the flesh and blood people are around you that God loves, do you love them? If you do not, then you do not love God and you have no faith in God no matter how much you say you love God. This convicts my hearts too brothers and sisters.

James, in fact, warns us all that a faith that just says it loves our brothers but then refuses to do anything to help them proves we have no love for them at all and we have no faith in God and we will not be saved. It’s not the helping of them that saves us. It’s faith in Christ that saves us. BUT, LISTEN, faith in Christ transforms human hearts to love the things that God loves! If you don’t love the things that God loves then you DON’T HAVE FAITH!

Three weeks ago, before everything happened in the Church, I was a mess. It wasn’t because of the situation in the Church though that has been painful for me. It was because my wife and children were away. They were only following me by a week but I missed in the strangest ways. I couldn’t sleep well at night because it was quiet. I woke up sad because there was nobody to hug or hold.

Then Sonya and the kids returned on a Thursday night. I had to get up at 5 am the next morning to get to work but at 4 am I heard James crying out from the next room sweet words: “Daddy!” I got out of bed to find James holding his nose from a nose bleed. Blood dripping on the floor. I took him to the bathroom to clean him up. I was exhausted but what if I had merely said to James: “God bless you little brother, be at peace, I’m sorry you have a nose bleed but I really do love you.” What kind of love would it be if I went back to sleep and left a 5 year old to fend for himself and a bloody nose? Would anyone say that I loved my child? It was not a burden at all, beloved, to clean up that blood. I did it with joy for I had ached for my family and now I had an opportunity to clean up my son. I had an opportunity to love him. It was natural for me to do so because a father loves his son. I didn’t become a loving father because I cleaned up the blood on James’ face. No, beloved, I cleaned up the blood because I was a loving father.

And so we should be toward one another ““ everyone in this Church. If it is hard for you to love the other Saints in the congregation then pray for true trust in Christ. You’re not going to become a Christian because you do things for others. You’re not going to buy God’s favor because you sacrifice for Him. You need birth from above my friends. You need faith in Christ that transforms your hearts and your minds so that loving your brothers and sisters, forgiving them their failings, serving them with joy, is something that flows from you like the love that a father has for His son.

For we are born from above to be like our heavenly Father who was willing to come to those who hated Him and said: “Not because you deserve it, not because you love me, not because you’re nice, and not because of anything that you will ever do for me but BECAUSE I WANT TO BLESS YOU, I am sending my Son into the world to die for the sins of the ungodly. I am sending Him to die for the sins of the ungrateful. I am sending Him to die for the downtrodden that can give me nothing in return.”

And the words of that Gospel penetrated our heart. The words of that Gospel overcame our hate and caused us to love God. And as we continue to trust in that Gospel, even as beggars struggling with unbelief, we can be confident that He will perfect us to the very end if we put our trust in Him.

Let us pray.

Giving Honor to our Rulers (Romans 13)

I recently taught on Romans 13 and it gave me a fresh perspective on the passage.

Romans 13 certainly teaches us about how we ought to honor and respect those who govern us and that, in fact, their authority comes from God. I don’t believe, however, that it says everything about our relationship to the civil sphere and it could even lead one to some erroneous conclusions.

For instance, it does not permit us to simply do everything the governing authorities tell us to do. We are not permitted to disobey God in the obedience to government and civil government is to be honored “where it is due” – that is to say that it has no authority beyond the sphere it has been given authority by God. In some cases, then, we would be permitted to resist or disobey civil authority if their actions are un-Lawful – that is to say that they commanded us to do something that God’s Law forbids. On this point, even the light of nature reveals this to man and everybody intuitively understands that “…I was just obeying orders…” was not an appropriate defense by the Germans or the Japanese following WWII.

If you notice, however, in Romans 13 Paul focuses on something that many of us need to take notice of. In fact, given the attitude that many here exhibit regarding the civil authorities they would do well to pay attention to what Paul is teaching.

Fundamentally, the issue is that Christians are to seek to be at peace with all men and, by extension, aren’t to be seditious as a general rule. That doesn’t mean they just put up with anything but some men have the wicked idea that no man, ever, will ever tell them what to do. They are rebellious and seditious to the core. Christians ought not to be so.

It is telling that the Romans 13 passage focuses on the fact that authority derives from the Almighty and even more telling that the “rubber meets the road” when Paul teaches the Romans about taxes. It’s fascinating, in fact, that the Pharisees tried to trap Christ by asking whether they should have to pay taxes. Some commentators believe that Paul might be addressing many of the Jewish believers at Romans who have this same sort of spirit concerning the authorities that rule over them – “They’re not my leaders.” The Jews couldn’t stomach that these Romans ruled them.

Paul reminds them, however, that rebellious attitude toward authority is indicative of rebellion against God in general. Part of the Christian “transformation” (Romans 12:2) is a renewal of our minds concerning authority. Christians submit to authority because they know God stands behind it. They honor authority because God is behind it. Paul also reminds them that “…if you’re a knucklehead and are seditious then you’ll get exactly what you deserve…” because, as a general rule, people who do evil get punished for doing evil. We’re not permitted to violate the speed limit just because we’re citizens of heaven any more than I’m permitted to drive as fast as in America because I’m an American in Japan.

In fact, it is very revealing that many despise the institutions that God has given to bless them. What some Christians wear as a badge that they are so inclined to speak of their rulers and institutions with disdain, is a form of the ingratitude that Paul speaks about in Romans 1 as being a mark of depravity. As Durham rightly noted, the command to honor your father and mother is a general command to render honor to due authority. Those who are never trained to honor father and mother never learn how to honor other authority and, in fact, their biggest problem is that the folly in their heart causes them to despise Authority in general. It is no mistake that disrespect to parents is listed among the sins of a depraved society. If I don’t train my child to respect authority then I’m setting him up to disrespect God in the long run.

I also believe that pacifism is a form of a denial of the faith. It not only selfishly lets the pagan do all the protection and “ministerial work” in a society to make life tolerable but it turns around and calls the very thing God has ordained for our general good an evil thing. I have no patience for such men. They may believe they are honoring God in their convictions but they are not honoring the God of the Bible by calling His very authority a wicked thing and something they are forbidden to participate in. I’m not a blind patriot but I thank God for police officers and soldiers who, when they perform it honorably, are God’s ministers for good in judging evil and keeping the sinful heart from bringing anarchy to a society.

Thus, I believe the general principle is to be those who try to live at peace and, as much as is in us, to be agreeable and obedient to our rulers. Disobedience to their rule ought to be the exception when we are forced to do so because they have decreed something God forbid but it doesn’t automatically give us a badge to badmouth or despise the authority. Daniel and his friends were willing to die for their convictions and would not obey the laws that would have caused them to disobey God but, when released, they continued to serve the same men with submission obeying the rules that did not. They didn’t sinfully say: “Not my leader” in the seditious way that Christians believe they are warranted in saying: “Not my President”.

That’s because Daniel was Godly enough to know Who had vested that authority in the Kings and by denying their authority he would have been saying: “You’re not my God.” It’s a reminder that Daniel was unlike the world while many “Christians” are very much like the world with their rebellious spirit. We would do well to wonder how much we’re like the world when it comes to our attitude toward authority as well.

Categories
Sacraments

Who Deceives Whom with Baptism?

A discussion recently ensued when a Baptist brother claimed the following:

Another point I want to make is that every parent eveywhere is responsible for raising their children up in the LORD. It matters not if they are regenerate or not. We are all going to be held accountable for how we all discipled our children. It doesn’t take some kind of doctrinal Covenant inclusion to do this. In fact I think it is rather deceptive to teach a child they are in a New Covenant relationship with God when they may be strangers to the covenant. It neglects the nature of what the new Covenant is. A Covenant made based upon the forgiveness of sin and knowing the Lord. Not like the one that the early church fathers could break. It is an unbreakable Covenant.

I addressed my response to Baptists:

1. Baptists keep talking about an overarching presumption that, in telling children they are in the New Covenant, they can “rest on their laurels”. It’s like we’re saying: “Son, presume you are Elect and you have nothing to go to God for and say: ‘Save Me!'”

In so doing, Baptists are actually projecting the problem with their own presumption. Dr. Clark called it confusing decree and administration. As I noted before, what are you telling someone if you say:
a. The New Covenant is with the elect alone.
b. We only baptize those we have “maximal confidence” are elect
c. We are baptizing YOU, the man who just confessed Christ.

In essence, you are giving him an unwarranted presumption. In fact, I was just listening to Gene Cook and John Goundry say the other day that Preachers only have to tell those outside the NC to “…know the Lord” (i.e. repent and be baptized) because we don’t tell those in the NC that because that’s been fulfilled. Notice the presumption – they are baptized = they are in the New Covenant = they are elect.

This gets very confusing because I know if I press Gene on this he’s going to admit that he doesn’t know who’s in the NC so the exercise of who you can and can’t say “know the Lord” to becomes quite impossible. Do you see how Baptists can tie themselves into knots on this point if they actually thought about it? Yet, if you go back and read even portions of this thread we have people arguing that we should have people telling the Church: “Oh, I’m elect, the Holy Spirit told me so”.

Thus, I think the presumptive problem lies with the nature of Baptistic baptism and trying to find a nexus in the perfection of the New Covenant. It is not really fair for you to ascribe the presumption you have for the people you baptize with the hope and promise that we have for those we baptize.

2. Sadly, I feel a sense in which you are missing the very power and weight of the Gospel to convert. Romans 6 is part of the Gospel by the way. Notice what you guys keep saying about “presuming” on the part of sinners. Why do you think a reprobate man is going to presume any less for a Law passage (do this and live) than He is about a Gospel passage. If a man is dead in His sins and trespasses then he presumes upon everything. The Pharisees had presumption of the Law down pat as well as the threat of hell. They just deceived themselves that it didn’t apply to them.

Check out my teaching on Romans 6 at our website if you get a chance – http://www.baptistchurch.jp/teaching.html

It is my conviction that passages like Romans 6 can actually convert the soul. They feed hungry Christian souls. I think you guys worry too much about the reprobate presuming upon Grace and not enough about feeding Grace to the elect you have in your midst. Even as we sneer at Roman Catholics who say: “Don’t teach that kind of stuff because it’s a license for liberty”, we don’t preach it openly because we’re afraid (like them) that the wrong people are going to get the wrong idea. Worry about the right people getting the right idea more! Feed them this stuff. Stuff them with it! One-third of Romans is this stuff. It’s not merely doctrinally interesting but it is the basis for the ethics.

3. I love this point that Dr. Clark cited:

74. Are infants also to be baptized?

Yes, for since they belong to the covenant and people of God as well as their parents, and since redemption from sin through the blood of Christ, and the Holy Spirit who works faith, are promised to them no less than to their parents, they are also by Baptism, as the sign of the Covenant, to be ingrafted into the Christian Church, and distinguished from the children of unbelievers, as was done in the Old Testament by Circumcision, in place of which in the New Testament Baptism is instituted.

See, again, the problem I see is that it is the Baptists who presume too much. You guys presume, by your profession, that you’re elect and so you turn a wary eye toward the young’uns who haven’t. First, you shouldn’t be presuming upon your profession. Second, you should be seeing that everyone visible in your midst needs the kind of Grace I was just talking about.

You worry too much about the bad apples and you punish the whole crowd. You can’t figure out who to punish so you punish every child calling him unregenerate while claiming regeneracy for the adults. Where does such presumption come from? I’m not saying not to tell kids to repent but tell adults to repent too. Tell everyone to repent where Paul does. The Gospel is bouncing off the walls of your Church as you proclaim it to man, woman, and child. Stop worrying about who is elect among you and deal with the visible assembly in your midst. Let the Holy Spirit do its work but don’t preach with one arm tied behind your back. Preach the whole counsel of God and where it says “repent” tell everyone and where it says “rejoice” then proclaim it as the Word does. And let God sort out the rest.

Don’t even destroy the simplicity of the Gospel by demanding that solid, intellectual assurance that you want all adults to express. If a brother is struggling with assurance don’t impoverish him with “try harder” to determine if you’re elect. Focus him upon the Cross. Tell him that it’s as simple as believing. Do you believe Christ died for sin? Do you believe Christ raised Him from the dead? Believe! Proclaim Romans 8 to him. If he’s reprobate then that’s his problem but if he’s elect then let it feed him and establish him!

But stop impoverishing the flock by playing to the fear of the lowest common denominator.

***UPDATE***

After I posted this I got a response from a dear brother in the Lord who is a Baptist elder. He felt my words were intende to deny the fact that Baptists understand that Romans 6 is part of the Gospel. My extended remarks are as follows:

I think you need to take the position as a whole and not parse the issue and take it personally. I had to sum up a lot of people’s thoughts. I was unspecific because I wasn’t aiming it at a Baptist but a line of thinking that begins with the assumption that NC=elect -> Profession which necessarily excludes those who are too young to profess in a mature fashion.

There is then an underlying assumption that if you treat the immature as if they are spiritually minded that it will lead to presumption and that it is deceptive to teach them anything other than the condemnation of the Law. I repeatedly hear from Baptists (in general) that the only status that children have is that they are in Adam and unregenerate. They claim this on the basis of the child’s profession. Conversely, those that are professors are presumed (too much I think) to be regenerate on the basis of profession. There is an unhealthy mix of presumption about regeneration for professors and unregeneration for non-professing (young) members).

I wasn’t denying you believed all about Romans 6 and the Gospel in general. Please forgive me as I can understand how some of it came off as patronizing. I’m sorry to you and other Baptists if I sounded pejorative or condescending. I was trying to connect to the underlying concern in the OP, pull together some disparate posts, and draw it all out. I wanted to move from our common base of understanding regarding the Gospel and move to how the manner of Baptism and the way you talk about visible members actually undermines the program of the Gospel. In some aspects it is meant to sting (in a loving way) to get some to understand why the Reformed paedo baptizes into discipleship and not to declare of a person – this one is elect and this one is not.

The shoe fits for some or all aspects better than others, but credo-Baptism as an overarching system, in the way it treats the young – presuming them to be unregenerate – witholds an aspect of the Gospel from them. That witholding of the Gospel to the young is of the nature of Romans 6. It assumes that the only thing a child needs to hear is that they need to repent of their sins. On the other hand, it might see that adult professors don’t need to hear as much about repentance of sins (because after all they’ve professed). My view is that ALL in the visible Church need the full orbed presentation – professors or too immature to profess. The full presentation will mature and convert babes and the full presentation will mature and convert adults.

In the end, where the shoe fits, wear it. Your frustration is mine. As I stated in another thread, the Baptist view is very eclectic (even though you guys are all supposed to be 1689 LBCF) and some argue in different ways. I’m sorry that you feel slighted when I have to refer to a strain of Baptist thinking that is, in the main, representative of the issue. Conversely, Reformed paedobaptists are pretty monlithic in the understanding of the issue. Regardless of the aspects that you believe fit tightly or not, you have to answer for the reasons why you don’t baptize the young and why you believe profession alone is the arbiter of when discipleship begins. The difficulty in nailing down where Baptists fall on these issues communicates to confusion in the pews and why, when a Baptist calls up Pastor Gene Cook on the Narrow Mind he has no idea how he can possibly train his child in the fear and admonition of the Lord without training the child to obey the Law as a Pharisee might vice a motivation that focuses on love for God (Romans 6).