FREEDOM OF THE GOSPEL

Galatians Chapter 5:1-18

This chapter starts a new division in the epistle to the Galatians.  Paul has been talking about Justification by faith and now he talks about Sanctification by the Spirit.

The final two chapters of Galatians are a portrait of the Spirit-filled life, of the believer’s implementing the life of faith under the control and in the energy of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit-filled life thereby becomes in itself a powerful testimony to the power of justification by faith.

The Judiazers promoted a ‘Do it Yourself’ Christianity by works.  Paul says you need someone else to do it thru you – the Spirit.

The basic doctrinal error of the Judaizers was works righteousness, the same error that is the heart of every other man-made religious system.

Rather than looking on circumcision as God had given it—as a symbol of His covenant of promise (Gen. 17:9-10)—most Jews looked on it as having spiritual value in itself. To them it was not a reminder of God’s gracious and sovereign blessing but a means of humanly guaranteeing His favor.  The Judaizers were saying, in effect, that faith in Jesus Christ, although important, was not sufficient for complete salvation. They taught that what Moses began in the Old Covenant and Christ added to in the New Covenant had to be finished and perfected by one’s own efforts—the centerpiece of which was circumcision.

You were saved by grace, but you live by the law; you fall from Grace.

Freedom in Christ

5:1 - It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

² Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.   

The atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, perfect and complete though it was, cannot benefit a person who trusts in anything else, because that something else, whether circumcision or any other human act or effort, then stands between him and Christ.

³ Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.

“Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point,” James says, “he has become guilty of all” (James 2:10). Because God’s standard is perfect righteousness, fulfillment of only part of the law falls short of His standard. Even if a person were somehow able to keep all of the law for all of his life, if he broke a commandment during his last minute on earth, he would forfeit salvation.

⁴ You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.

A consequence of seeking to be justified by circumcision or any other form of the law, is that it causes a person to become severed from Christ and thereby become fallen from grace. Fallen is from ehpipt, which means to lose one’s grasp on something. 

Paul is not dealing with the security of the believer but with the contrasting ways of grace and law, works and faith, as means of salvation. He is not teaching that a person who has once been justified can lose his righteous standing before God and become lost again by being circumcised or otherwise legalistic. The Bible knows nothing of becoming unjustified. Those “whom [God] predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Rom. 8:30).

Paul’s primary point in this passage, as throughout the letter, is that law and grace cannot be mixed. As a means to salvation they are totally incompatible and mutually exclusive. To mix law with grace is to obliterate grace. For a believer to start living again under the law to merit salvation is, in fact, to reject salvation by grace. Contrary to the teaching of the Judaizers, to add circumcision and other works of the law to what Christ accomplished by grace is not to raise one’s spiritual level but to severely lower it. Legalism does not please God but offends Him. It does not bring a person closer to God but rather drives him away. 

Applied to a believer, the principle of falling from grace has to do with a person who genuinely trusts in Christ for salvation but then outwardly reverts to a life of legalism, of living under external rituals, ceremonies, and traditions that he carries out in his own strength, instead of living with a spirit of obedience to Christ. He exchanges life by grace for life back under law, life by faith for life again by works, life in freedom for life back in bondage, life in the Spirit for life back in the flesh. It is a major matter of concern to God whether we live in outward obedience and submission to the externals of religion or in heart obedience and submission to the internals of righteousness.

Obviously true Christians will not reject the true way of salvation, but they confuse themselves and others when they try to live by works, because the mark of true discipleship is continuing obedience to Christ (John 8:31). The security of salvation from the divine side is guaranteed by God to His own (cf. v 10; Rom. 8:28-39; 11:29), 

Romans 11:29  ²⁹ for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.

but from the human side it is manifested by perseverance in grace (see John 8:31; 15:4-9; Acts 11:23; 13:43; 14:21-22; Rom. 2:7; Heb. 2:1; 3:14; 4:14; 10:23; 1 John 2:19).

Paul is here calling for such perseverance in grace by the genuine believer. Contrary to justifying grace, sanctifying grace is interruptible. Living by the flesh interferes with living by the Spirit, and living by the flesh may even involve doing the right things for the wrong reasons or in the wrong way. For example, to worship God from the heart and for His own sake is to live by the Spirit. But to worship Him only outwardly or to impress others with our supposed spirituality is to live by the flesh. To witness to a person while trusting in God to convict and convert him is to live by the Spirit.  Commentary by John McArthur

⁵ For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. ⁶ For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

ANOTHER consequence of trusting in works is to be excluded from the righteousness for which the believer has hope, to forsake the true life of blessing God desires for His children. The Judaizers’ hope of righteousness was based on adding imperfect and worthless works of law in a vain attempt to complete the perfect and priceless work of Christ, which they assumed to be incomplete and imperfect. 

In evangelizing to the Hindu’s in India, especially the Dalit’s, or lower caste, the non-people as it were, you could see it instantly in their eyes when you mentioned living with no hope for righteousness on their own or by living a ‘spotless’ life.  For if they were to sin (a certainty) they know they would be bound to another life as the lowest of humans or possibly come back as an animal or insect. 

 We, that is, true believers, Paul says, through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness that is based on God’s grace.

Believers already possess the imputed righteousness of justification, but the yet-incomplete righteousness of total sanctification and glorification still awaits them. “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. . . . The creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:18, 21). In this life, believers are still waiting for the completed and perfected righteousness that is yet to come.

Nothing that is either done or not done in the flesh, not even religious ceremony, makes any difference in one’s relationship to God. In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything. The outward is totally unimportant and worthless, except as it genuinely reflects inner righteousness.

Life in the Spirit is not static and inactive, but it is faith working through love, not the flesh working through self-effort. Believers are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). But their working is the product of their faith, not a substitute for it. They do not work for righteousness but out of righteousness, through the motivating power of love. In so doing they “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might” (Col. 1:10-11).

The person who lives by faith works under the internal compulsion of love and does not need the outward compulsion of law.  Commentary by John McArthur

⁷ You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? ⁸ That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. ⁹ “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.”

Paul warns that “the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron” (1 Tim. 4:1-2).

Legalism is never from God, because He chose believers “from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. And it was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 2:13-14).

Just as a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough, so a small amount of falsehood can corrupt the thinking and living of a large group of people.

“For want of a nail the shoe was lost,” wrote Benjamin Franklin; “for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost; and for want of a rider the battle was lost.”  Commentary by John McArthur

¹⁰ I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion, whoever that may be, will have to pay the penalty.

The apostle had a similar word of encouragement for the Philippian church: “I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. For . . . you all are partakers of grace with me” (Phil. 1:6-7). The destiny of believers is secure. “They shall never perish,” Jesus said; “and no one shall snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (John 10:28-29). They will not reject their true salvation for a false one (John 10:4-5,14). They will both persevere and be preserved.

But that is not the destiny of ungodly teachers who lead the Lord’s people astray. “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble,” Jesus said, “it is better for him that a heavy millstone be hung around his neck, and that he be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt. 18:6).

¹¹ Brothers and sisters, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. ¹² As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!

False religion has always been and will continue to be the most aggressive and dominant persecutor of the church (cf. John 16:1-3; Rev 17:5-6). Satan fights God, and satanic religion fights the true faith.

The cross was a stumbling block to the Jews partly because they could not accept the idea of a suffering, much less crucified, Messiah. But it was even more an offense to them because it robbed them of their most distinctive outward signs of Jewishness, the Mosaic law and circumcision.

The cross is an offense to all man prides himself in;

·         His morality – because it tells him his works cannot justify

·         His Philosophy – because it’s appeal to faith and not reason

·         To the culture – because it’s truths are revealed to babes

·         To his sense of caste – because God chooses the poor and humble

·         To his will – because it calls for an unconditional surrender

·         To his pride = because it shows the exceeding sinfulness of a human heart

·         AND, it is an offense to himself – because it tells me I must be born again

J. Vernon McGee

Life by the Spirit

13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh[a]; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[b] 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

When people choose to persist in a sin, they develop less and less control over it until eventually they forfeit any choice entirely.  “Truly, truly,” Jesus said, “everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34).

In the passage just quoted, Jesus gives the prescription for true freedom: “If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (v. 36). That is the great manifesto of Christianity and the theme of the Galatian letter: freedom in Jesus Christ. Christianity is liberation.

The apostle makes clear again (see 5:1) that freedom is at the very heart of the gospel and of godly living. It is not a side benefit or an adjunct to the Christian life. God has called all believers to freedom.

For Christians to submit to Old Testament rituals and regulations, represented for the Jews by circumcision, was to go back to spiritual bondage

Because the traditions and the revering of God’s law ran so deep in their minds, Paul’s relentless proclamation of Christian freedom was a stumbling block even to some sincere believing Jews. And it was total scandal to the hypocritical Judaizers who merely professed to believe in Christ. Jews believed the law was the only restraint that kept sin from running rampant and bringing God’s destruction of the earth. And apart from divine provision that was true. In light of man’s natural inclination to sin, the only way to prevent him from totally unleashing his worst passions was to establish a system of laws that set boundaries on behavior and that carried penalties severe enough to promote conformity out of fear.  Commentary by John McArthur

16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever[c] you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Just as Jesus Christ is the primary Person behind justification, the Holy Spirit is the primary Person behind sanctification.  A believer can no more sanctify himself than he could have saved himself in the first place.  He cannot live the Christian life by his own resources any more than he could have saved himself by his own resources.

It was given by God to reveal God’s holy standards and to make men despair of their own failing human efforts at pleasing Him, thus driving them to Jesus Christ, who alone by grace can make them acceptable to the Father.

Through the law, “the Scripture has shut up all men under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe” (Gal. 3:22). The law was never meant to be a savior, but only a tutor to lead men to the Savior (v. 24).

Although Bible study, prayer, worship, witnessing, and certain behavior standards are commanded of believers and are essential to faithful Christian living, spirituality cannot be measured by how often or how intensely we are involved in such things. To use them as measures of spirituality is to become entrapped in legalism, whose only significance is in the outward, the visible, the humanly measurable.

To live solely by a set of laws is to live by the flesh in self-righteousness and hypocrisy and to suppress the Spirit, who alone is able inwardly to produce works of true righteousness. Holiness comes only from the Holy Spirit. Holy living does not come from our performance for God but from His performance through us by His own Spirit.

The power for Christian living is entirely from the Holy Spirit, just as the power of salvation is entirely in Jesus Christ. But both in the justifying work of Christ and in the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, man’s will is active and commitment is called for.

The believer who is led by the Holy Spirit must be willing to go where the Spirit guides him and do what the Spirit leads him to do. To claim surrender to the Holy Spirit but not be personally involved in God’s work is to call Jesus, “Lord, Lord,” and not do what He says (Luke 6:46).

The life walked by the Spirit is the Christlike life, the saturation of a believer’s thoughts with the truth, love, and glory of His Lord and the desire to be like Him in every way. It is to live in continual consciousness of His presence and will, letting “the word of Christ richly dwell within you” (Col. 3:16).

The flesh is that part of a believer that functions apart from and against the Spirit. It stands against the work of the Spirit in the believer’s new heart. The unsaved person often regrets the sinful things he does because of guilt and/or painful consequences, but he has no spiritual warfare going on within him, because he has only a fleshly nature and is devoid of the Spirit. The sinful things he does, though often disappointing and disgusting to him, are nevertheless consistent with his basic nature as an enemy of God (Rom. 5:10) and a child of His wrath (Eph. 2:3). He therefore has no real internal conflict beyond whatever conscience may remain in his sinful state.

It is only in the lives of believers that the Spirit can fight against the flesh, because it is only in believers that the Spirit dwells.

Only a believer can truthfully say, “I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind” (Rom. 7:22-23).

Believers do not always do what they wish to do. There are those moments in every Christian’s experience when the wishing is present but the doing is not. The Spirit often halts what our flesh desires, and the flesh often overrides the will that comes from the Spirit. It is no surprise that this frustrating conflict led Paul to exclaim, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24).

As sons of God and servants of Jesus Christ, believers “are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if [they] are living according to the flesh, [they] must die; but if by the Spirit [they] are putting to death the deeds of the body, [they] will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Rom. 8:12-14). “The Spirit also helps our weakness” when praying, Paul assures us; “for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (v. 26).

It is not a matter of “All of Him and none of us,” as the popular saying has it; and it is certainly not a matter of all of us and none of Him. It is the balance of our yieldedness and commitment with the Spirit’s guidance and power. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” Paul says; “for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12). The mystery of this perfect and paradoxical balance cannot be fully understood or explained, but it can be fully experienced.

In his Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan describes Interpreter’s house, which Pilgrim entered during the course of his journey to the Celestial City. The parlor of the house was completely covered with dust, and when a man took a broom and started to sweep, he and the others in the room began to choke from the great clouds of dust that were stirred up. The more vigorously he swept, the more suffocating the dust became. Then Interpreter ordered a maid to sprinkle the room with water, with which the dust was quickly washed away. Interpreter explained to Pilgrim that the parlor represented the heart of an unsaved man, that the dust was original sin, the man with the broom was the law, and the maid with the water was the gospel. His point was that all the law can do with sin is to stir it up. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ can wash it away.

To be led by the Spirit is the same as walking by Him (w. 16, 25) but carries additional emphasis on His leadership. We do not walk along with Him as an equal, but follow His leading as our sovereign, divine Guide. “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God,” Paul says (Rom. 8:14).

No wonder Paul rejoiced that “what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3-4).  Commentary by John McArthur

 NIV Life Application Bible – Being led by the Holy Spirit involves the desire to hear, the readiness to obey God’s Word, and the sensitivity to discern between your feelings and his promptings,  Live each day controlled and guided by the Holy Spirit.  Then the words of Christ will be in your mind, the love of Christ will be behind your actions, and the power of Christ will help you control your selfish desires.

TABLE TALK QUESTIONS

1.     How/when have you felt the relief of the freedom in Christ?  Have you felt a time when that was a stumbling block to others?

2.     What examples have you seen in others that are work oriented?  What examples have you seen that are love oriented? 

3.     What is your evidence you’re being led by the Spirit?

No Other Gospel

GALATIANS 1:6-24

⁶ I am astonished (I marvel, I’m amazed!) that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— ⁷ which is really no gospel at all…

Paul could hardly comprehend that the Galatian believers were already abandoning his apostolic teaching. He was especially surprised that the defection had come so quickly.  The believers apparently offered little and ineffective resistance to the false teachers and therefore were fickle in their allegiance to Paul and his teaching. They quickly and easily came under the influence of heretical doctrines.

..Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.

•     (The facts were not challenged by the Judaizers, but they sought to add law to grace (faith + law). There is only one gospel — one in fact and interpretation.
•     “Pervert” (Greek: metastrepho) is a strong word, as in “sun…turned into darkness” (Acts 2:20); “laughter…turned to mourning” (James 4:9). Attempting to change the gospel has the effect of making it the very opposite of what it really is.

These Galatians were true believers who had come to salvation in the power of the Holy Spirit (3:3, 5; 4:6, 8-9). They were Christian brothers (1:2,11; 3:15; 4:12, 31; 5:13) who had become seriously confused. The Galatian Christians not only were being confused and weakened in their confidence to live by grace but were actually deserting. The term behind deserting (metatithmi) was used of military desertion, which was punishable by death during time of war, much as in modern times.

The false teachers were accountable for their corruption of God’s truth, but the Galatian Christians were also accountable for being so easily misled by it to pursue legalism.

MacArthur, John F  - The only gospel of God is the gospel of grace, which is the gospel of divine redemption totally apart from any work or merit of man. “For by grace you have been saved through faith,” Paul declared to the Ephesians, “and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast. For we are His workmanship” (Eph. 2:8-10). And it is continually that “grace in which we stand” (Rom. 5:2). We live in grace from the moment of salvation, and if grace ever stopped, we would lose our undeserved salvation and perish in sin. The grace of Christ is God’s free and sovereign act of love and mercy in granting salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus, apart from anything men are or can do, and of His sustaining that salvation to glorification. It is absurd to accept a gracious salvation and then endeavor to maintain righteousness through human efforts, ceremonies, and ritual. The Judaizers who plagued the early church claimed to be Christians, and much of their doctrine was orthodox. They must have recognized Jesus as the promised Messiah and even acknowledged the value of His sacrificial death on the cross—-otherwise they would never have gotten a hearing in the church. They claimed to believe all the truths that other Christians believed. They did not purport to overtly deny the gospel but to improve it by adding the requirements, ceremonies, and standards of the Old Covenant to the New But anything added to grace destroys it just as surely as does anything taken from it. When law—even God’s own law—is added to His grace, His grace ceases to be grace

Rom. 11:6  ⁶ And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.

To turn away from any part of the grace of Christ is to turn away from the power of God to that of human effort. Those who seek to sustain their justification in any degree by law have “fallen from grace” and “have been severed from Christ” (Gal. 5:4). Paul is not speaking of losing salvation that is already received but of polluting the pure stream of living grace by putting a barrier between oneself and Christ and therefore of being severed, or separated, from His power and from fellowship with Him.

The Judaizers were promoting a different gospel, a completely contrary and ineffective means of being right with God. Law does not moderately pollute grace but reverses and destroys it. As a means of salvation, the two are diametrically opposite and cannot coexist. Grace can be destroyed, but it cannot be modified. It can be rejected, but it cannot be changed.

 Martin Luther

Galatians 1:6. I marvel.

How patiently Paul deals with his seduced Galatians! He does not pounce on them but, like a father, he fairly excuses their error. With motherly affection he talks to them yet he does it in a way that at the same time he also reproves them. On the other hand, he is highly indignant at the seducers whom he blames for the apostasy of the Galatians. His anger bursts forth in elemental fury at the beginning of his epistle. "If any may," he cries, "preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed." Later on, in the fifth chapter, he threatens the false apostles with damnation. "He that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be." He pronounces a curse upon them. "I would they were even cut off which trouble you."

He might have addressed the Galatians after this fashion: "I am ashamed of you. Your ingratitude grieves me. I am angry with you." But his purpose was to call them back to the Gospel. With this purpose in his mind he speaks very gently to them. He could not have chosen a milder expression than this, "I marvel." It indicates his sorrow and his displeasure.

Paul minds the rule which he himself lays down in a later chapter where he says: "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted." Toward those who have been misled we are to show ourselves parentally affectionate, so that they may perceive that we seek not their destruction but their salvation. Over against the devil and his missionaries, the authors of false doctrines and sects, we ought to be like the Apostle, impatient, and rigorously condemnatory, as parents are with the dog that bites their little one, but the weeping child itself they soothe.

The right spirit in Paul supplies him with an extraordinary facility in handling the afflicted consciences of the fallen. The Pope and his bishops, inspired by the desire to lord it over men's souls, crack out thunders and curses upon miserable consciences. They have no care for the saving of men's souls. They are interested only in maintaining their position.

And later he writes:                                                                                                

The church is a tender plant. It must be watched. People hear a couple of sermons, scan a few pages of Holy Writ, and think they know it all. They are bold because they have never gone through any trials of faith. Void of the Holy Spirit, they teach what they please as long as it sounds good to the common people who are ever ready to join something new.

We have to watch out for the devil lest he sow tares among the wheat while we sleep. No sooner had Paul turned his back on the churches of Galatia, than the false apostles went to work. Therefore, let us watch over ourselves and over the whole church.

Why does the world abhor the glad tidings of the Gospel and the blessings that go with it? Because the world is the devil's. Under his direction the world persecutes the Gospel and would if it could nail again Christ, the Son of God, to the Cross although He gave Himself into death for the sins of the world. The world dwells in darkness. The world is darkness.

⁸ But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! “Accursed”  ⁹ As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!

·         “Accursed” (Greek: anathema) is “be damned.” The gospel shuts out all works.

Romans 4:5 ⁵ However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.

The Judaizers who were misleading the Galatian churches probably had impressive credentials and may have been among those who claimed to be from the Jerusalem church and to be authorized by James, the leader of that church (see Acts 15:24).  The truth outranks anyone’s credentials!

·         The Jews believed that the divine law came through angels (cf. Heb. 2:2), and the Judaizers may have made the point that this made the Old Covenant and its attendant ceremonies and traditions binding.

J Vernon McGee

God saves only one class of humanity — the ungodly. The reason is that this is the only class — even the righteousness of man is as filthy rags in God’s sight. Law condemns us and it must make us speechless before grace can save us.

Now we know that whatever things the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.

Romans 3:19 ¹⁹ Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.

The real difficulty is not that people should be “good enough” to be saved, but that they are not “bad enough” to be saved. Humanity refuses to recognize its lost condition before God. This is the human predicament.

The Judaizers did not deny the facts of the gospel; they perverted it and therefore were anathema. The “gospel” of law plus grace is a mixture that has no power, no growth, no victory.

It robs grace of its blessing, beauty and glory;

It robs the Law of its majesty and authority

Martin Luther writes: - In spite of this emphatic denunciation so many accept the pope as the supreme judge of the Scriptures. "The Church," they say, "chose only four gospels. The Church might have chosen more. Ergo the Church is above the Gospel." With equal force one might argue: "I approve the Scriptures. Ergo I am above the Scriptures. John the Baptist confessed Christ. Hence he is above Christ." Paul subordinates himself, all preachers, all the angels of heaven, everybody to the Sacred Scriptures. We are not the masters, judges, or arbiters, but witnesses, disciples, and confessors of the Scriptures, whether we be pope, Luther, Augustine, Paul, or an angel from heaven.

¹⁰ Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a (bond)servant of Christ.

To this day you will find many who seek to please men in order that they may live in peace and security. They teach whatever is agreeable to men, no matter whether it is contrary to God's Word or their own conscience.

John 5:43-44  ⁴³ I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. ⁴⁴ How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?

Paul Called by God

¹¹ I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up.

It’s Man’s sinful pride that is offended by the idea that only God’s mercy and grace can save him from sin, and he therefore insists on having a part in his own salvation. The very fact that Paul preached a message of salvation in which works play absolutely no part was itself evidence that his message was from God and not . . . man.

 ¹² I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

In the eyes of many Jews of that day—just as in the eyes of many professing Christians today—Scripture was a religious relic that deserved superficial reverence but not serious study or obedience. Many of the traditions not only were not taught in Scripture but contradicted Scripture. With few exceptions, Jews “invalidated the word of God for the sake of [their] tradition”
Matt. 15:4-6  ⁴ For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ ⁵ But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’ ⁶ he is not to ‘honor his father’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.

One of the primary objectives of the Judaizers who were stirring up so much controversy and confusion in the Galatian churches was to discredit Paul’s apostolic authority.  They accused him of putting aside the Mosaic ceremonies, standards, and practices in order to make the gospel more appealing to Gentiles by removing its Jewish associations.

Although in humility he saw himself as “the least of the apostles” (1 Cor. 15:9), he knew that, as far as his calling and authority were concerned, he was “in no respect. . . inferior to the most eminent apostles, even though I am a nobody” (2 Cor. 12:11).

¹³ For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. ¹⁴ I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.

Here Paul describes his former standing and activities while he was in Judaism, offering them as a kind of negative proof that his message of grace had no foundation in the beliefs, circumstances, or events of his former life.

Paul had been a Jew of the first order, “circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless” (Phil. 3:5-6).

Living as a devout Pharisee, Paul was outdone by few John R. W Stott writes: “Now a man in that mental and emotional state is in no mood to change his mind, or even to have it changed for him by men. . . . Only God could reach him—and God did!” (The Message of Galatians [London: Inter-Varsity, 1968], p. 32).

¹⁵ But when God, who set me apart from birth (This is a Hebrew expression, meaning to sanctify, ordain, prepare.) and called me by his grace, was pleased ¹⁶ to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man, ¹⁷ nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus.

Paul speaks of how Jesus was revealed to him (the revelation of Jesus Christ). But here is something different, and perhaps more glorious: Jesus revealed in Paul. God wants to do more than reveal Jesus to us; He wants to reveal Jesus in us.

The Lord set apart Paul to salvation and apostleship not because Paul developed great leadership ability and writing skill or was a determined and hard worker. He had been set apart and consecrated by God even from his mother’s womb, long before he could have demonstrated the least potential for anything. Paul was chosen to be an apostle before he was born.  Paul’s Jewish readers knew immediately that he was comparing his call to apostleship to the calls of those great men of God. He was not trying to rank himself with them but to establish unequivocally that, like theirs, his call was entirely God’s doing.

¹⁸ Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days. ¹⁹ I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother.

Paul makes a point of noting that he went solely for the purpose of becoming acquainted with Cephas, who was the personal companion of the Lord Jesus and the most powerful spokesman in the early years of the Jerusalem church, from Pentecost on.  He only stayed with him fifteen days, obviously far too short a time to have been fully transformed from all his Jewish theology and tradition and fully instructed in the gospel.  Paul’s visit to Jerusalem was not to learn more about the gospel message but to meet and get acquainted with (the verb means “to visit with the purpose of getting to know someone”) these two men who had been so close to Jesus and perhaps to learn from them some of their intimate experiences with the incarnate Lord, whom he had come to love and serve, and with whom he had spent those three years getting acquainted.

No time frame is given for his going to Jerusalem, but when he arrived there and tried to see the apostles, he was rebuffed because of fear that he was not a true believer

Acts 9:26  26 When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple.

 Without the help of Barnabas, Paul would not have been able visit even Peter and James. He met none of the other apostles at all, who may have been too afraid or may have been away from Jerusalem at the time. It could be surmised that, though the apostles did not scatter under Paul’s persecution (Acts 8:1), they may have done so by now.

²⁰ I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie. (I certify)

Paul’s point in this part of the letter was to affirm that he had received his gospel directly from the Lord, not from the other apostles. He only visited two of them for two weeks, and only after three years had elapsed since his conversion. Any accusation that he was a second-hand apostle, receiving his message from the Jerusalem apostles, was false.

²¹ Later I went to Syria and Cilicia.  (the latter of which included his home town of Tarsus)

 ²² I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. ²³ They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” ²⁴ And they praised God because of me.

He and Barnabas only made two visits to Jerusalem, one to bring famine relief from Antioch

Acts 11:30  ³⁰ This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.

and another to discuss the relation of the Mosaic law to the gospel of grace (Acts 15). Since Paul’s presence there was so scarce for fourteen years

Gal. 2:1 Fourteen years later I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also.

Most of the people did not know him except by reputation. And though his gospel had not come from Jerusalem nor been refined there, still the believers there affirmed both it and the power of his apostleship as being cause for glorifying God. The fact that the people were praising God for the very same gospel they knew shows it was identical to that taught by the Jerusalem apostles and was truly from the Lord.  Remember, NONE of the New Testament was written for them to compare!

David Guzik writes:

There isn’t any shortage of people who claim that they have a revelation from God. But we have to be careful to not regard a message as being from God if it isn’t. How can we know that the Bible is really from God and not man?

iv. First, we know that the Bible is reliable, accurate and trustworthy as an ancient document. We know this because the text itself is reliable (we know this from the study and comparison of ancient manuscripts). And we know this because archaeology has consistently confirmed and supported the Biblical record, and has never contradicted the Bible. People, places, and events in the Bible are repeatedly verified by archaeology.

v. Second, we know that the Bible is unique, and special among all books ever written. It is unique in its continuity, being written over 1600 years, over 60 generations, by more than 40 authors, on three different continents, in different circumstances and places, in different times, different moods, in three languages, concerning scores of controversial subjects, but it speaks with one united voice. It is unique in its circulation, being the most published and popular book ever. It is unique in its translation, being the first book translated, and having been translated into more languages than any other book. It is unique in its survival, having survived the ravages of time, manual transcription, persecution, and criticism. It is unique in its honesty, dealing with the sins and failures of its heroes in a manner quite unknown among ancient literature. It is unique in its influence, having far and away a greater influence on culture and literature than any other book in existence.

vi. Third, the Bible is a book of predictive prophecy, literally fulfilled. For example, there are some 300 prophecies concerning the Messiah that were exactly and literally fulfilled by Jesus, such as His birth at Bethlehem, His manner of death and burial, and so forth. Another example is that the Bible describes the rise of four successive world empires (Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Rome) with such accuracy that all critics can do is claim that the passage was actually written after the events happened.

vii. Fourth, the Bible is a book that has profoundly changed the lives of millions, irrespective of their race, class, era, sex, locale, age, or social status.

viii. One might look at all this evidence and still say, “It doesn’t prove that the Bible came from God.” The point is granted; but it does give us a reason to believe that it did. In the end, believing the Bible is from God is a step of faith. But it is a step of intelligent and informed faith, not a leap of blind faith.

Questions:
How do you see God’s grace active in your life?           

How do you perceive/receive evangelists from cults like Mormons or Jehovah Witnesses?