Galatians is an epistle
of grace. But I really struggle to apply
this message to me. You see I am an
insecure people-pleaser who seeks to earn approval. So when I do something kind I struggle to keep
it a secret. I crave praise. Indeed I am floored by the slightest
criticism. Even as I open up like this I
am hoping that you will be impressed with my humility. I have wasted too much of my ministry trying
to make myself popular. I am not free. Grace calls me to be free!
Are you free? Have you been able to cast off all the
disgrace that has been heaped on your shoulders? Your mother was critical and your father
distant. You were never accepted by the
'in' crowd. Your parents only delighted
in you when you made the team or won the prize. Your first love stopped loving you. Your closest friends let you down when you
asked for help. It's all people treating
you without grace. So now you are
driven. You will earn respect. You will need no one. You’re a perfectionist. You are not free. Grace calls you to be free!
The key to living in a
graceless world is to enjoy the love of a graceful God. We need to come to a place where it is God's
verdict not people's verdict that matters most to us. As he embraces us in his love, his verdict is
'accepted', 'loved', 'secure' and 'cherished'. When one hurt Christian was told that God
delighted over her with singing she responded saying, 'if I could believe that
was true I could face anything!' Grace
can make you free! So let's dig in to
this epistle of grace.
God is more committed
to you than you realise (1-5)
Grace is so amazing and
yet we are quick to abandon it. It is
ridiculous that anyone would be so stupid to despise grace, which is why the
apostle Paul is so incensed with the Galatians.
'You foolish
('mindless') Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Christ was portrayed as
crucified.'
Do you see that their
abandoning grace is directly related to failing to see the importance of the
cross? They should not abandon grace
because, 'Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified before your very eyes.' John Stott writes, ‘If the cross is not
central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus.’
Yet one author who was
trying to make Christianity more relevant said he didn't know why Jesus had to
die, and a young leader said he thought the cross was bad public relations. How foolish!
Such cross-less Christianity soon becomes nothing more than affirming
your self-esteem and pursuing your self-fulfilment. It is all very much shaped by current trends
of thought, and is very far from the beauty of a faith that enables you to be
real about your sin and enables you to glorify God by enjoying him for ever.
‘Did you receive the
Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?' The cross makes grace possible, and the Holy
Spirit makes grace real to us. The Holy
Spirit convicted us of our sin and awoke us to our need of grace. He brought us to the place where we could see
our moral bankruptcy. He showed us that
we had no choice but to cry out for mercy. He made the message of the cross beautiful to
us. He caused us to see that life
without Jesus is empty. Then as we are
born again in grace we receive him.
Not only are we born
again in grace we are kept by grace. 'After beginning with the Spirit, are you now
trying to attain your goal by human effort?' The God who began your life in the Spirit will
keep you by the Spirit. So stop trying
to win God's acceptance. He is no longer
your judge but the dotting father you have always needed. He is your shepherd who holds you close to his
heart. He does not want you to be
insecure. He wants you to be at peace. He wants you to marvel in his love. God is more committed to you than you realise!
Salvation has always
been about grace (6-9)
This gospel of grace is
not new. It did not begin with Paul. It did not begin in the New Testament. God has always rescued his people by grace.
Central to the argument
of the false-teachers is the issue of circumcision. They said that you needed to be circumcised to
be a real Christian. Presumably they
looked to the example of Abraham. 'After
all Abraham was circumcised,' they declared.
But Abraham is actually the great
proof of the fact that in the Old Testament people were saved by grace.
When Abraham appears on
the scene he had not done anything to deserve God's favour. In fact he was from an idolatrous and pagan
people (Joshua 24:3). But God chose to
give him a wonderful promise and enabled him to trust that promised. 'He believed God, and it was credited to him
as righteousness' (Gen. 15:6). He was not
justified by obeying the Old Testament Law - he was justified hundreds of years
before the law was given to Moses. His
justification had nothing to do with circumcision - he was not circumcised at
this stage in his story. He simply heard
God's promise and trusted in his goodness.
The promise to Abraham
spoke of the blessing of people from all nations. Abraham's family line arrives at Jesus. Through faith in Jesus, people like us from
'the nations' have been blessed along with Abraham, 'the man of faith'.
The amazing thing is
that by simply taking God at his word we have become brothers and sisters with
all the wonderful and flawed people who have been saved from every age. The grace that saved the murderer Moses saves
you. Deborah is your sister in faith. Grace kept Job from abandoning his faith in
the time of suffering. Grace enabled
Samson to cry out to God one last time, even though he has spent his life
wasting his potential. It was grace that
gave Ruth such a beautiful heart. It was
their shared experience of the grace that bonded David and Jonathan together in
such rich friendship. From beginning to
end the Old Testament is a book about grace. Salvation has always been by grace through
faith.
While grace is free, it
is cost Jesus his life (10-14)
But there is a lot in
this letter about law? Why did God give
the law if he wanted to save us by grace? The Law of Moses was given from the time of
Sinai to the time of Jesus. One of its
central purposes was to show people their need of grace.
This law was not like
an exam where you could score forty percent and still pass, or a pile of rocks
where you could remove one rock and still have a pile of rocks. The law was like a delicate pain of glass
where you hit one little corner with a stone and the whole thing shatters. 'All who rely on observing the law are under a
cruse for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not do everything
written in the Book of the Law." One
of the main purposes of the law was to expose people's sin and show them their
need of grace.
If the law pronounced
God's curse upon people, what hope do we have? We have Jesus! He took that curse upon himself so that we
could go free. Again, it is all about
the cross. 'Christ redeemed us from the
curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is
everyone who is hung on a tree." In
their song 'O to see the dawn', Keith and Kirsty Getty explain, 'this is the
power of the cross, Christ became sin for us, took the blame, bore the wrath,
we stand forgiven at the cross.'
Tim Keller points out
that the Bible begins with a tree, ends with a tree, and has Jesus being placed
upon a tree. The Bible began with a
tree, the tree of life. Adam and Eve
stole from it as humankind descended into sin. We were separated from tree of life. But in the book of Revelation we see that the
tree of life is in the city of God. The
tree of life represents life and vitality, as opposed to the decay and death
working in us now. But how do we get to
the city where we can eat its fruit? By
realising that Jesus hung on another tree for us!
In his poem 'Sacrifice'
George Herbert pictures Jesus speaking from the cross. 'All ye who pass by, behold and see; Man stole
the fruit, now I must climb the tree; a tree of life for all, but only me. Was ever grief like mine?' 'Because Jesus got the tree of death, we can
have the tree of life' (Tim Keller).
Conclusion - How can we
honour this message of grace?
We can honour grace
with a simply cry. You see the Spirit
teaches us to cry 'abba, father' (Galatians 4:6). Ask the Spirit to help you see God as Abba! Crying 'abba' is how we should respond to
grace!
There is debate about
this term 'abba'. Many say that it is
the equivalent of our term 'daddy'. But
it is more basic than that. It is a
simple two-syllable expression like 'mama' or 'dada'. It is the language of utter vulnerability and
dependence. You see by the time a child
is old enough to say 'daddy' or 'mummy' they are at an age where they can
manipulate to get their way. They might
sit on your lap, look you in the eye, look as cute as possible, and say, 'daddy
can I play on your iPad because I have been good all day.' However, when a child is still at the stage of
saying 'mama' or 'dada' they are utterly dependant, they can't cut a deal, and
they have nothing to offer. They simply
want to be fed or held by someone they are totally dependent on.
God doesn't want us to
try to earn his acceptance. We are not
allowed cut a deal with him. Instead we
honour him with the sort of attitude that simply cries abba, dada. This is the grace that can set us free!
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