Fallen from Grace, Part 2
Galatians 5:7-12
Galatians Chapter 5, and this is part two of our study entitled Fallen From Grace, which involves Chapter 5, verses 1 through verse 12. And as we're well aware and at the risk of repeating myself for the umpteenth time, Paul as he writes the book of Galatians is very upset. To put it mildly, he is concerned because false doctrine has penetrated into the Galatian churches. There were people who had come out of paganism. People who had been wonderfully converted to Christ, they had forsaken idolatry, they had forsaken heathen practices, they had accepted the freedom and the salvation that comes in Jesus Christ. They were, in fact, converts of the apostle himself. They had received the Holy Spirit as he indicates in Chapter 3. They had begun to see the work of the Spirit in them. They had begun to see some fruit. They had begun to make an impact on and in their community.
And then the Judaisers had arrived and the Judaisers had told them it's nice that you believe in Christ, but that alone will not save you. It is not enough just to believe in Christ, you must also obey some laws, some rules, namely the mosaic ceremonial law. And of course, throughout all of the book of Galatians Paul reacts violently. In Chapter 1, verse 6, he says "I marvel that you're so soon removed from Him that call you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel. Which is not another. That is it's not another true gospel, but there are some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. And though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you let him be a cursed."
And he's reacting violently. Chapter 3 he reacts again. "Oh foolish Galatians. Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ has been openly set forth crucified among you. This only what I learn of you. Receive you the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith." Are you so foolish having begun in the Spirit are you now made perfect by the flesh.
In Chapter 4 he reacts again in verse 9. "But now after you have known God or rather or known by God, how turn you again to the weak and beggarly elements into which ye desire again to be in bondage. You observe days and months and times and years." In other words, you're back on a Jewish ceremonial calendar. You're thinking you're pleasing God by the little things you do, not by the heart attitudes.
"I'm afraid of you lest I have bestowed upon you labor and vain." And in verse 19, he says, "My little children of whom I travail and birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire to be present with you now and changed my tone for I stand in doubt of you." And then in Chapter 5 as we begin our study for tonight, we find in verse 1 that he says "Standfast therefore in the liberty with which Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."
So Paul is violently reacting, at least in those five particular places to the information that he had received that the Judaisers had infiltrated the churches in Galatia and sown the seeds of legalism. Now just by way of quick definition, legalism is attempting to please God through works rather than faith. It is saying that if I do these religious activities, God will like me better. God will save me. God will bless me on the basis of the things that I do rather than on faith and the attitude of my heart.
Now Paul argues against salvation by works then in Galatia. He is all the way through Galatians in effect saying it isn't a question of what you do, it's a question of what you believe. It's a question of faith, not works. And in the first two chapters he started with his personal credentials, which establish the right that he had to preach this message. And in Chapters 3 and 4 he established the fact that the Old Testament even taught salvation by faith and grace. And now in Chapter 5 and 6, he shows that salvation by grace and faith also is obvious from practical living. It's not just a question of apostolic authority, Chapters 1 and 2 or Old Testament revelation Chapter 3 and 4, but it's a question of practice. The life of faith is the one that functions that works that is blessed of God and so he takes the practical argument in Chapters 5 and 6.
Now beginning at verse 1 just to review the verse says "Standfast therefore in the liberty with which Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." To give you a more literal Greek translation, it says this. "For freedom Christ has set us free." In other words, Christ set us free to be free, not to become bond slaves to a legal system. Now as I've said before, this doesn't mean that we're poopooing God's moral law, not at all.
God's moral law is still valid. God's moral law is still right. Paul said the law is holy, just and good. He said I love the law of God. I desire the law of God. God's moral law is still good, but I do not look to my ability to keep that law to be saved. And I do not look to my ability to function under certain ceremonial rituals to be saved. That is a matter of faith and grace only.
And here Paul says Christ set us free to be free. And Christian liberty is the freedom to walk in the Spirit and for the first time in your life not fulfill the lust of the flesh. When I was saved, I was free. Not free to sin whenever I wanted and get away with it, but I was free not sin for the first time. And I had an inside compulsion, the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Christian liberty is to be controlled from the inside, not to be pressured from the outside. It is freedom to do what I want to do out of love. Not bondage to do what I have to do out of fear, but freedom to do what I want to do out of love.
And so Paul says continue therefore to stand firm and don't let yourselves be oppressed by a yoke of bondage. And he's referring to legalism. I told you last week there are only two kinds of religion, right? The religion of human achievement, and the religion of divine grace, and the two cannot mix. That's very clear. And that's Paul simple appeal. All the way through, he's saying you can't mix works with grace. You can't mix works with faith. It's all of grace. It's all of faith. Or it's all of law and it's all of works and there's no mixture.
And now in the last part of Galatians, 5 and 6, he supports his argument that salvation is all of grace and faith by looking at the practical aspect. And what I mean by that is, he gives us a portrait of the Spirit filled life and shows how the Spirit filled life operates from internal control rather than external law. Now Paul, in writing to the Galatians, attacks both the false doctrine and the false teachers in verses 1-12. We saw last week that in verses 2-6 he attacks the false doctrine. He exposes the false doctrine of Judaism and then in verses 7-12, he exposes the false teachers themselves.
First of all, let's review the work of false doctrine. Verses 2-6, Paul has just appealed to them in verse 1 and said don't go back into legalism. Don't get trapped again in the false doctrine of bondage to laws. And here he shows why. Because the work of false doctrine produces these results. Result one, verse 2, "Behold, I Paul say unto you that if you be circumcised Christ shall profit you," what, "nothing." Now the issue that the Judaisers brought up was that the only way to get into the kingdom of God and the only way to come to God was through becoming a Jew first. And the only way to legitimately become a Jew was to be circumcised.
It was nice that you believed the Messiah, that's great, that's wonderful, but it doesn't get you there because you didn't become a Jew first. You've got to go through the right of circumcision. And so he says, if you're counting on your circumcision, then Christ profits you nothing. This kind of false doctrine renders Christ's work without benefit. Everything that Jesus did on the cross means absolutely nothing to the person who hopes in his works for salvation.
The second result of the work of false doctrine is you become a debtor to the whole law, verse 3. "For I testify again to every man that is circumcised that he's a debtor to do the whole law." In other words, Paul says, if you're going to put yourself under law and get circumcised, then you're going to put yourself totally under law because you can't mix the two. So it's as clear as that. There's a fork in the road, one goes this way, one goes that way, never the twain meet. You either go grace or you go law. You don't go both.
So if you choose to be circumcised, you have taken the path of legalism and law and you better be perfect because you've started that way and there's no other route. Take your choice. You become debtor to the whole law. And incidentally, you say does anybody make it? No, Galatians 3:13 says, "Anybody who subjects himself to law winds up being cursed." He winds up being cursed. The work of false doctrine then results, first of all, and Christ profits you nothing. Secondly, you become debtor to the whole law. Thirdly, you are fallen from grace, verse 4.
In verse 4 he says, "Christ is become of no effect unto you whosoever of you are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace." Now what he's saying is simply this and he says this all through Galatians in different ways, but basically what he's saying is this. Once you have entertained any allowance of legalism, you have fallen from the principle of grace. They cannot be co-equal. The cannot coexist. In verse 4, he says if you decide that you need to get circumcised to get saved, it's nice that you believe in Christ and you want to do that, but you want to add some ritual or some legalism or some works pattern. You have just disqualified yourself from grace totally. You have subjected yourself to the entire law and the only way he'll ever be redeemed is to be perfect if you want to go that route and all the work of Christ is without benefit. You might as well scratch it.
And of course, the end result of all of this comes in verse 5 and 6. You are excluded from righteousness. In Galatians 5:5, it says, "For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith." Now here Paul makes a contrast. All of the people who are looking for salvation and righteousness through works never find it. "But we," he says, "wait." Not work, but wait for the hope of righteousness by faith, not works." And notice at the beginning of the verse it comes through the Spirit.
And again I say the difference between living a legalistic life and living a Spirit controlled left is the difference between and outside pressure and an inside power. Legalism is where I'm pressured by externals to behave. The liberty I have in the Spirit is where I'm free to function in response to the indwelling Spirit. And the two cannot mix.
All of Christianity becomes summed up then in verse 6. "In Jesus Christ, neither circumcision avails anything nor uncircumcision." It doesn't matter what you've have done to you in terms of ritual. But faith which worketh by love. Faith which works, yes, faith works. It isn't works that lead to faith or works that lead to salvation. It's saving faith that issues and works.
We're not saying that Christians are antinomians, that they're lawless. They just run around ramped all over the world never behaving as they should and violating God's morality in some kind of blissful security. No legitimate faith works by love he says at the end of verse 6. "But my works are not to save me they are because I have been changed through faith." And we've covered that in such great detail.
Let me just remind you of some passages that can lend assistance in our understanding at this point. Colossians 1:10. He says, "That you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing being fruitful in every good work." God desires a Christian to be fruitful in productive good works. Good works are part of the Christian's life. They're part of his experience, but they do not earn him anything. They do not earn him his salvation. They do not earn him his favor with God. They merely indicate that he has been saved. We become new creations in Christ and the issue of that is the Holy Spirit produces good works.
Now we know as we've studied law and grace and we're still kind of rummaging through some review here, but we know as we have studied law and grace that the law has a problem. Law can't change people on the inside, right? It can't have any effect on the inside of a man and that's the problem. You know, it's kind of like prohibition in a sense. You know, we could have prohibition again and we could wipe out all the liquor picture legally. In other words, we could just say that all alcoholic beverages are illegal. Now that's nice, that would be an idea. It'll never happen. But you know what would happen if we made a big law like that, the same thing would happen that happened before. All it does is make everybody go underground and you get speak easies and, you know, backwoods stills and all that kind of stuff.
Why? Because you haven't done a thing to change the desires of the people involved. All you've done is make an external pressure that isn't going to have any effect at all. That's what the law did. The law said don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, and it all went underground. And the Spirit comes along and doesn't stand on the outside and say don't do this anymore. The Spirit comes and lives within us and gives us the capacity not to do it. That's the difference. The law never changed anybody. The law made strict your behavior, but it never changes people. But salvation through faith by grace changes people on the inside, and they have a different capacity and that's the distinction that Paul wants to make.
So he says, don't go back to legalism in Galatians 5. Don't go back and get tangled up in what Christ set us free from. And so he condemns the false doctrine of legalism. But immediately following that beginning in verse 7, and we draw your attention to that for our study tonight. Verse 7-12, having condemned the false doctrine in verses 1-6, he now condemns the false teachers themselves.
Now there aren't too many kinds of people in the Bible that the Lord Jesus really blistered up one side and down the other. Mostly He was very tolerant and some people who were even very, very immoral, He showed nothing but love. He hated the sin and loved the sinner. But in the case of those people who were false teachers, He has nothing but the most blistering kind of maledictions and condemnations.
And we leave now Paul's speaking in a sense of and about the Galatians and he begins to talk about these false teachers themselves. And from verse 7-12, he just really flattens them. And if we saw in verses 2-6 the work of false doctrine, here we're about to see the work of false teachers. And Paul shows the evil character of false teachers in six statements about them. And if you want a good outline on how to characterize a false teacher, here it is in six statements. But let me just show you a passage that gives you some idea of how Christ Himself felt about those who propagated false information.
Matthew 23:13, and this is a very potent portion of scripture. Matthew 23:13, I'm going to read through it a little bit, so you might turn to it and follow along. Those people most responsible in Israel at the time of Christ for the propagation of God's truth were the scribes and Pharisees. They had perverted it all and instead of teaching the grace of God and faith, they were teaching legalism and law and so Jesus in Matthew Chapter 23 really lets them have both barrels.
Beginning at verse 13 in Matthew 23. "But woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men." You know, whenever a scribe was ushered into the scribal office he was given a symbolic key and this was called the key of knowledge and it was symbolic of the fact that the scribe was to open up the knowledge of the holy to the people. And instead of that, He says, "woe unto you, you have shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. For ye neither go in yourselves, neither permit them that are entering in to go in." You've locked everybody out including your own selves.
"Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you devour widows houses." This is taking advantage of helpless people by illegal tactics "and for a pretense you make long prayers," piocety. "Therefore you shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you compass sea and land to make one proselyte and when he is made, you make him twofold more the child of Hell," and the word there is Gahanna, the burning place, "than yourselves."
"Woe unto you blind guides who say whosoever shall swear by the temple it is nothing, but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple he's a debtor." They had this little game. If a man swore, it was supposed to be binding. So they would swear and some guy would try to them to it and they'd say nope, nope I didn't swear by the gold, I only swore by the temple. Verse 17, my sentiments exactly. "You fools and blind, well which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? And whosoever shall swear by the altar it is nothing, but whosoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is bound." You fools and blind, which is greater the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift?
"Whosoever therefore shall swear by the altar swears by it and by all things on it, and whosoever shall swear by the temple swears by it and by him that dwelleth in it. And he that shall swear by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it." When you call God the record to establish your word, you better hold to it. "Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin." And those are little tiny things. Little puny herbs, plants, and seeds. They were so meticulously legalistic that