The Vineyard Church of North Grand Rapids, MI

Ray Befus     Galatians 3:6-14 We’re Not Doing Law Any More!   8 November 2009

Perhaps a dozen years ago, I decided that I wanted to buy a crucifix–a necklace that had a depiction of Jesus’ suffering on the cross.  I’m not really a jewelry sort of guy. I had certainly never worn a piece of religious jewelry before.  I knew that I couldn’t get a crucifix at a “Christian bookstore” like Zondervan, Baker, or Parable.  Protestants focus on the wonder of the resurrection, so they only sell plain, empty crosses. To get a crucifix, I would have to go to a place Dutch, Protestant boys rarely go: a Catholic bookstore.  Catholics value the resurrection, of course, but they tend to focus on death of Jesus as a revelation of God’s amazing love and grace for sinners—God’s determination to go to any length to save us, heal us, and bring us home.  So, I went into this unfamiliar store and asked the nice lady if I could buy a crucifix and, she showed me this one and said that it was extra special because it had been blessed by the bishop.  Then I made a strategic mistake.  I confessed to her that I was a Protestant.  She took a audible breath, stepped back from the counter, and told me that she couldn’t sell it to me . . . not just because I was a protestant, but because, in her view, Protestants just don’t get the message of the cross.  In her experience, Protestants just look at crosses as Jesus’ Jewelry, no different than fish emblems or praying hands or God is My Co-Pilot bumper sitckers. “Protestants treat crosses like they’re no more than costume jewelry or good luck charms”, she said. To this lady at the counter, the cross was the center of faith, the precious symbol of God’s amazing grace, the guarantee of every other promise in the NT.  Wow!  After some discussion, I convinced her that I myself was seeking a deeper understanding of the cross and would treat this necklace with genuine respect. So, I do.

In the 10 or 12 years since I bought this necklace, I’ve looked around and have decided that she may have been right: many people just don’t get the cross.  We’ve heard sermons about it; we sing songs about it; and every Good Friday we give a little extra time to remember the cross. Sometimes we even tear up, if the music is good and the mood is right.  But, the cross doesn’t seem to fire up our minds and enflame our hearts.  Not like we would be turned on by winning the lottery or discovering a treasure buried in a field . . . not like the early disciples got it and literally gave up their lives for it.  We don’t get God’s amazing grace like Martin Luther got it, and risked his life to launch the Protestant Reformation.  Robert Capon, in his book Between Noon and Three, writes “The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two hundred proof grace . . . . Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; . . .”  There’s no news like the good news of God’s grace, but it’s hard to find people in church who every really get drunk with joy.

ILLUS: Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child: “Yes, you see, my Abba is very fond of me” (p. 64)

By way of review, let me show you several diagrams that highlight just how amazing God’s grace. First, this is the picture of how legalists think God manages the world.  The world is a dark and evil place.  To be on the outside of God’s family is to be unforgiven, unacceptable, excluded from friendship with God and his people. There is no grace outside the family of God, the circle of salvation; grace is reserved for good people, insiders. If a worthless sinner wants the promise of salvation and the blessings of God’s forgiveness and acceptance, he must both trust Jesus and submit to God’s laws (or the church’s laws).  Then he can enter the circe of grace and be saved and blessed with the saints—the holy ones who no longer sin in any serious ways.  There is no real grace for those outside the circle of faith and law.  In II Corinthians 5:16, Paul calls this way of looking at insiders and outsiders a ‘worldly point of view.”

In contrast, the good news, revealed in the Gospels and communicated by the Apostle Paul’s letters, is that God has used the cross, like a cosmic brush, to paint an entirely different picture.  God’s grace fills the entire universe, like sunlight.  God is equally gracious to insiders and outsiders, the saved and the lost.  He forgives and accepts outsiders, even those who rebel against him.  The Apostle John writes that Jesus died as our substitute—our atoning sacrifice—and not just for us . . . he died for the sins of the whole world (I John 2:2).  As a result God is no longer counting our sins against us; instead, he has been reconciled to us—i.e., he has opened his arms to us in unconditional acceptance (II Corinthians 5:17-6:2).  God both forgives and accepts sinners.  Does this mean that everyone everywhere is saved, that everyone everywhere is a child of God, that everyone everywhere going to spend eternity with God?  No, not at all. There is no universalism in grace.  Even though we are all forgiven and accepted just as we are, we are all born in sin, a long way from home.  Like the Prodigal Son, each of us must come to a place where we repent (turn around) and decide to trust this amazingly gracious, loving, and forgiving Father. Christians are men and women who have decided to trust him and return home . . . not to GET forgiveness or acceptance . . . but out of gratitude for the forgiveness and acceptance freely given.  And when lost sinners return home in simple trust, the forgiving and accepting God does two things that Paul can’t get over: he adopts them as his sons and daughters and fills them with his Spirit. It doesn’t get any better than that!  This is the good news, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul was radically transformed by meeting Jesus and thinking through the message of the cross.  He never got over that meeting.  The cross became his life and his life’s message.  This morning we’re picking up our study of Paul’s letter to the Christians living in a region of central Turkey called Galatia.  In chapters one and two, Paul started with a little biography, letting us know that this message of God’s grace, communicated through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, was from God himself.  Paul received his gospel by revelation, not by education or personal experience.  The Good News of God’s grace— that no one is outside the circle of God’s love . . . that God loves us just as we are, not as we should be . . . that God himself has done everything necessary to be reconciled to us . . . that we’re both saved and transformed simply by trusting in Jesus’ death and the power of the Holy Spirit—is a message that Paul received from Jesus himself. It’s a deep and wonderful revelation, so amazing, so shocking that it has always seemed to religious people, just too good to be true . . . even today, even to us  

Galatians is relevant to us today because we struggle with feelings of unworthiness, regret, shame and guilt.  We often feel that we don’t measure up, that we’re different, less than.  Some of us hate ourselves and our deeply personal weaknesses and struggles.  We wonder if God is secretly disappointed in us and may even someday give up on us in frustration.  And, we tend to be as critical of other people as we are of ourselves.  We judge them, gossip about them, slander them, and withdraw from them, either out of resentment or fear or condescension.  All of these negative feelings about ourselves and about other people are rooted in legalism—the belief that God himself is a nit-picking book-keeper who, having given us impossibly high standards to live by, is now keeping notes on us all, weighing our strengths against our weaknesses, measuring our short-comings against our strengths, and generally disappointed that we’re doing such a poor job living up to his expectations. But that is a false portrait of God, painted by men and women—even Christian men and women—who don’t know the Good News of Jesus  Christ and don’t understand the message of his cross.  They don’t get grace.  So, they inevitably return to what Paul calls “childish ways” . . . they stir the pot of their spirituality with the teachings of the OT in general and the laws revealed in the Pentateuch in particular.  They fall into legalism.

You might be a legalist if you tend to think that someone who trusts Jesus and is filled with the Holy Spirit still isn’t a good Christian (a God-honoring, God-blessed Christian) if they . . . drink alcohol, dance, or eat fatty foods . . . attend a congregational church or a catholic church . . . believe in intelligent design rather than a seven day creation . . . aren’t dispensational, pre-millenial,  or confident that national Israel is really God’s Israel . . . send their children to public schools . . . use a modern translation of the Bible . . . identify themselves as a Democrat or a political moderate of any kind . . . or believe women can be leaders–even preachers.  You can believe whatever you want about all these controversial issues (you can be pro or con) but if you think any other religious requirement can be added to trusting Jesus and being filled with the Holy Spirit . . . if you think that that there is anything we must do or stop doing to make God loves us more than he already does . . . you might be a legalist.

Paul will not put up with any legalism in churches he planted . . . not even a little.  So after introducing himself in chapters 1-2, Paul dives into his main argument, doing everything in his power to convince the new Christians in Galatia that because of the cross, men and women are now saved and transformed—i.e., become righteous—simply by trusting Jesus and opening themselves to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  The law, distilled in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), but reflected in the OT as a whole, is now irrelevant to being forgiven or accepted by God, irrelevant to being saved, irrelevant to making God happy, irrelevant to making progress on your spiritual journey, irrelevant to getting to heaven.  This is a hard pill for religious folks to swallow—then and now. So, in paragraphs we have already studied, Paul has been setting up a dramatic contrast for his readers.  There are only two spiritual paths through life: doing law or trusting Christ. There isn’t a third path.  Everyone on the planet is either trusting Christ or doing law (Jewish law, Muslim law, Buddhist law, or even standards you make up for yourself).  Notice the contrast between doing law and trusting Christ in 2:15-16; 3:2, 5.  There is no third spiritual path through life called trusting Christ AND doing law, trusting Christ’s death on a cross AND proving by your best efforts that you’re worthy of God’s forgiveness and acceptance..  Any contrived mixture of law and grace is just law; it’s not Good News.

Let’s return to Paul’s letter.  READ 3:1-14.  This morning I’m focusing on verses 6-14.  We’re picking up a third step in Paul’s argument.  First, Paul pounded his fist on the table with Peter and declared, “Even we Jews have been justified by faith in Jesus, not by keeping the law” (2:16).  How could we ever think that God would require a different standard for these Gentile outsiders.  Second, Paul challenged the Galatian Christians themselves in chapter three and pointed out that they themselves received the Holy Spirit just by trusting Christ, not by doing law. The Spirit is the sign and seal of our salvation, as well as the guidance and power behind our spiritual growth.  In our study this morning, Paul adds a third argument: even Abraham was blessed by God and justified simply because he believed God, not because he observed the law or excelled at obeying the law.  In fact, God didn’t even give the law for another 430 years after Abraham lived. Abraham was the father of the Jewish nation, the father of their ethnic heritage and the father of their religion. Whatever promises and blessings the Jewish people enjoyed as God’s people, they enjoyed because they were literally the descendants of Abraham, the friend of God.  Jewish people were Abraham’s spiritual children and his spiritual heirs.  It was a privileged position and experience. The debate between Paul and the agitators is how Gentiles (non-Jewish outsiders) can receive the promises and blessings God gave Abraham?  The agitators are arguing, “The only way Gentiles can receive the promises and blessings God gave Abraham . . . the only way the outsiders can become friends of God, like Abraham, is by becoming Jewish—that is, by being circumcised and keeping Jewish law”!  The agitators are probably using the OT to prove their case, for in Genesis 17, God did tell Abraham to circumcise himself and every male in his household, as a sign of his faith in God.

Paul’s lays out his thesis in verses 6 & 7.  Abraham, God’s friend, simply trusted God, and God credited Abraham’s faith to him as righteousness. God forgave, accepted, and transformed Abraham’s life and destiny just because Abraham decided to trust God’s instructions and promises—apart from circumcision.  Understand then, that whoever trusts God, as Abraham did, becomes a child of Abraham and inherits the promises and blessings God gave Abraham.  What is very interesting is that Paul does an end run around the agitators and outflanks them. Neither the agitators nor Paul owned Bibles.  But they had memorized large portions of the OT, particularly the account of how God called Abraham to faith and made a covenant with Abraham (Genesis 12-18). The agitators built their argument on God’s instructions in Genesis 17; Paul outflanks them by going further back in Genesis and building his argument on God’s communication with Abraham in Genesis 12 and 15.  In Genesis 15:6 we read that Abraham believed God and at that moment, God credited it to Abraham as righteousness.  Faith plus nothing else; righteousness apart from circumcision. In addition, in Genesis 12:3, God had said that through Abraham, God would bless all nations—i.e., all non-Jewish peoples (=Gentiles).  So, Paul concludes in verse 9: So, if you wonder on what grounds Gentiles can receive the blessings God promised Abraham . . . the answer is that all they have to do is trust God, like Abraham did.  Everyone who trusts God like Abraham did, becomes both a son and an heir to every promise and blessing God gave Abraham.  You may not find these verses very exciting, but trust me, Rocky Balboa just knocked out Apollo Creed . . . Luke Skywalker just took out Darth Vader . . . Frodo just brought down Sauron and the kingdom of Mordor!

Does this mean that the Ten Commandments, or the Pentateuch, or the entire OT is worthless?  Not at all!  The OT is a gift.  Take the fourth commandment: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy”.  One day in seven for rest and friendship with God.  It’s not a law; it’s a gift. It’s a helpful insight into God’s concern for our physical, emotional, and social health . . . as well as our spiritual vitality.  It’s not a law.  God isn’t looking over your shoulder, keeping notes, frowning because you haven’t kept Sabbath, making a plan to smite you when you least expect it.  Sabbath is a gift . . . a get to, not a have to.  God won’t love you more or love you less for keeping Sabbath or not.  If you keep a weekly sabbath, you’ll be glad you did.  If you don’t you’ll wear yourself out and become a cranky old man or woman who sucks the life out of the people around you.  But neither choice will make God love you more or love you less.  The OT is full of insights and invitations that are gifts to us and, we are free to do with them as we please.  To take them to heart is generally wise; to ignore them is often foolish.  But they aren’t laws and, they are irrelevant to being forgiven and accepted, adopted by the Father and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Is the sixth commandment—you shall not murder—a gift?  Yes of course.  But, it’s more like a toy from your childhood that you keep around because it has sentimental value. It reminds you of your early life with your father and his kindness to you.  But now that Jesus has come, this commandment doesn’t have a lot of value for your spiritual journey.  Jesus himself said that God’s concern was always far deeper than simple murder.  Even our thoughts can be murderous.  And our words can kill.  As those who trust and follow Jesus, we’re now responding to a much higher call: to love our neighbors as we love ourselves . . . and loving can’t be legislated by law.

So, read the OT, memorize it, talk about it, and learn from it.  It’s full of valuable gifts from beginning to end.  But never think that if you keep the OT law, that God will love you more than he already does, or bless you more than he already has. Never conclude that keeping the law makes you more righteous or not keeping the law makes you less righteous.  And, do not ever conclude that God loves you more than others because you keep the laws you find in the OT. “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.  The only thing that counts for your salvation or your spiritual growth is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6).

Having taken one side of the argument in verses 7-9 (righteousness is by faith), Paul now addresses the other side of the coin in verses 10-14: people who do law are under a curse.  Once again, Paul is making references to OT passages in both Deuteronomy and Habbakuk in debating the agitators.  In verse 10, Paul combines statements from Deuteronomy 27:26 and 29:19-20.  If you want to keep the law, then you will be living under a curse and, the curse is that you must live every single line of the law for the rest of your days.  The curse isn’t God’s anger or God’s judgment for your failure to keep the law; the curse is that if you want to be circumcised or keep a couple commandments, then you must keep the entire law—at every point—for the rest of your life.  And, there is no more enslaving life imaginable!  Your work will never be done, your failures will condemn you constantly, and your fears and angers will alienate you both from God and from other people. You will become what Paul was—a religious terrorist. And, even if you keep the law perfectly (as Paul believes he did, Philippians 3:6), you will still not be pardoned or made righteous by God . . . because justification is by faith.  Men and women made righteous by God are justified by faith, not doing law.  There is only one path to salvation and, it’s faith.  There are not two paths to God, either keeping the law perfectly or trusting Jesus.  No, even if you keep the law perfectly you will not be saved.  For, since the cross, salvation is by grace through faith.  If you do law, you must live by law (every fine point in the law, all your days) and you will still never be justified by God, because the cross has made doing law irrelevant to being pardoned and transformed. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law—which is having to live the entire law until the day you draw your last breath.  Instead of having to live by doing law, Jesus bore the curse pronounced by the law: cursed is everyone who is hung from a pole (Deuteronomy 21:23).  And in bearing the curse of the law Jesus redeemed us (bought our freedom from the law) so that blessings promised Abraham and the promise of the Holy Spirit might come to us—Gentile outsiders—by simple faith in Jesus.

Paul is passionate.  His heart rate is elevated, the veins in his neck are pulsing, and his hands might even be trembling.  Paul is as passionate about the grace of God revealed in the cross as he once was about persecuting Christians. Before Paul met Jesus, Paul believed Deuteronomy 21:23.  Anyone hung on a pole has been singled out by God for cursing, shame, and destruction.  Paul believed that if a man was killed and hung on a pole, that was more than bad luck.  That was a sign of God’s intentional displeasure and anger.  And so, the thought that anyone could possibly preach that Jesus of Nazareth, who was executed on a cross, was Israel’s Messiah or God incarnate was a violation of God’s own word and a deception beyond belief.  So, on the basis of this clear OT teaching, Paul reviled Jesus and his followers and tried, with every breath and resource he could find, to destroy Christianity.  And then Jesus met Paul, face to face on the road to Damascus (not a dream or a vision).  And, Paul was undone.  How could an ancient OT Scripture that seemed so clear have become irrelevant to God’s actual purposes?  Jesus’ resurrection revealed that God’s blessing was on Jesus, not God’s curse.  Paul was so rattled by meeting Jesus that he dropped out of life for several months, went down to Arabia (Mt Sinai) to try to sift through the broken pieces of his theology.  And there the Holy Spirit met Paul and began to reveal the Good News to Paul.  Yes, Jesus was bearing the curse of the law when he died on a cross, the curse that should have been ours to bear.  Jesus surrendered his life for ours to redeem us, not from sin, but from the curse of the law.  Because of the cross, we’re free from the law—every single line of it!  The law isn’t our motivation or path through life; the law can’t condemn us or shame us.  The law is now irrelevant to our spiritual journey. All that God asks of us is to come home, to trust him, and to open ourselves to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  Can you say, “Good News . . . Really, Really Good News!

In his book, Abba’s Child, Brennan Manning writes, “Christianity consists primarily not in what we do for God but in what God does for us—the great, wondrous things that God dreamed up and achieved for us in Christ Jesus.  When God comes streaming into our lives in the power of His Word, all He asks is that we be stunned and surprised, let our mouths hang open, and begin to breath deeply” (p. 166).

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