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ALTERING THE GOSPEL OF GOD'S GRACE LEADS TO CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCESGalatians 5:7-12INTRODUCTION On February 1, 2003 the space shuttle Columbia was torn to shreds as it reentered Earth’s atmosphere instantly killing all eight of the astronauts on board. In the lengthy investigation that followed, NASA discovered that a 1.5 pound piece of insulating foam from the tank of liquid fuel fell off during liftoff and punctured a hole in the right wing of the shuttle about the size of a piece of paper. So when the hot gases caused by the friction of the shuttle as it entered the atmosphere flowed into that small hole the interior structure of the wing melted and it fell apart sending the whole craft tumbling through the atmosphere being ripped apart by the enormous pressures. A very small defect in the structure of the shuttle led to the catastrophic destruction of the entire vehicle, killing all aboard and putting the entire space shuttle program on hold for the past two years. The apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians has been arguing against what appears to most men as a very small defect in the faith of the Christians at Galatia. There are many who might wonder at his passion and his strident language when the false teachers do not seem to be saying much different from what he himself says. They do not deny that men are sinful and deserve God’s judgment. They affirm that Christ is the Son of God and Son of Man. They affirm the doctrine of the Trinity. They teach that all men must believe in Christ and his death on the cross. They merely teach that in addition to faith in Christ, people must also obey God’s law in order for God to accept them. They must be circumcised and eat kosher food and worship God by observing the Sabbath and they must obey the 10 commandments in order to be justified, to be declared not guilty of sin but perfectly righteous before God. I think especially in our day and in our culture, Paul’s vehement opposition and his graphic language, such as we see in v. 12 are almost incomprehensible. We live in a day that is exceptionally tolerant of doctrinal divergences. We regularly hear the mantra that doctrine divides and we, the church are better off without making such a big deal out of such inconsequential distinctions. We are told what really matters is loving the poor and sharing the gospel and opposing abortion or opposing the war in Iraq or getting conservative Supreme Court Justices approved or keeping conservative justices off the Supreme Court. These important things will not happen if we go around saying that those who disagree with us on these fine points of doctrine but who agree with us on these other important things are going to go to hell. If we emphasize doctrine, then we will divide the church. Paul does not have such a pragmatic or tolerant view of doctrinal diversity, at least when it comes to the doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith in Christ alone. By way of reminder the doctrine of justification that Paul has defended in Galatians is this: Every human being is guilty of breaking God’s laws and has no ability to obey God’s laws. All humans are rightly under God’s condemnation and deserve to be punished forever in hell for our many sins. God has made a way for guilty sinners to be justified, that is, to be declared not guilty of their sins but perfectly righteous. He has made a way for guilty sinners to be treated by him as if they had never sinned but always obeyed. That way is Jesus Christ. He obeyed all of God’s law every moment of his life and he suffered death on the cross for everyone who trusts in him and not in his or her own goodness or performance or decisions or sincerity. We saw in v. 1 of this chapter that the first order of business is to make sure you stand firm in the freedom of justification. Paul believes that it is always necessary for the church and every Christian to make sure we do not alter in any way this most basic of doctrines. The great reformer, Martin Luther, had it right when he said that it is by the doctrine of justification that the church stands or falls. “For if the article of justification is lost, then all true Christian doctrine is lost.” The other great reformer, John Calvin agrees, stating that justification is “the main hinge on which religion turns.” In vv. 7-12 Paul is setting forth the catastrophic consequences of altering the doctrine of justification. If you believe that your standing with God is determined or affected by what you do or don’t do, no matter how small you might make your contribution, you will bring great harm to yourself, your family and your church. A very small error in what you believe about what it takes to gain eternal life will tear your life to shreds when you enter the presence of the God who is a consuming fire. MAIN POINT A small defect in the doctrine of justification will bring catastrophic consequences because…I. Any defection from the gospel of grace is disobedience to God (vv. 7-8) Paul begins this section by comparing the Christian life to running in a race. According to v. 8 we enter this race by God’s call. This doesn’t simply mean he invites us to join in the race but that he calls us by his word and causes us to willingly trust in Christ and join in the life of Christ. Just as God called forth light out of darkness by saying “Let there be light” so God calls forth faith in Christ through the announcement of the gospel by the work of the Holy Spirit. It is by this effectual call that God places us in the Christian race. In the case of the Galatians when Paul was with them he proclaimed the gospel of God’s free salvation given by Christ. By the work of the Spirit they believed what Paul said and were filled with the hope of righteousness and began to serve one another through love. They did not depend upon their own efforts or their performance of any religious duties but trusted that they were made righteous by the perfect righteousness of Christ. Their lives were filled with joy and hope and love for others. Thus they were running well the race that God called them into. However, when the false teachers came along and told them that they also needed to obey the OT law and they began to keep the Sabbath and eat kosher food and get circumcised they began at that time to disobey the truth of the gospel. The false teachers were knocking them out of the race by changing the doctrine of justification and they were in the process of getting out of the race by their obedience to the false teachers, which is disobedience to the truth of the gospel. It is significant that Paul says they are “ disobeying the truth.” He doesn’t say they are “disbelieving the truth”. The false teachers are saying that they must obey God by obeying the law. Paul says that by obeying the law they are disobeying the truth that God has called them to obey. How do you obey the truth of the gospel which says that you cannot obey any law to be made right with God but are made right by the obedience of Christ? Jesus was asked this exact question in John 6:28, the crowd asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus replied, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” The way you obey the truth is to believe in Christ as the one who obeyed God’s law for you and suffered the death you deserve. The persuasion that you must obey God’s law to be made right with God does not come from God. So where does this teaching come from? The implication is that if you believe that God accepts you based on your sincerity, your performance of some moral or religious act, then you are following the teaching of Satan. God does not command you to obey his law in order to gain eternal life. That form of teaching is always demonically inspired as Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:1-4, “The Spirit clearly says that in the last times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars…They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth.” Like every good counterfeiter, Satan is out to mix a lot of truth with a little bit of error so that you won’t realize that you are not obeying the truth. Every false teacher and everyone who follows false teachers believe they are obeying God. But the only “obedience” that God is looking for is the obedience of not obeying but believing in the obedience of Christ. A small defect in the doctrine of justification will bring catastrophic consequences because…
II. Small errors affect whole lives and churches (v.9) Paul quotes a proverbial saying in v. 9 that he uses in one other place in his letters but in a different context. In 1 Corinthians 5 the church in Corinth has embraced a false teaching that is almost the opposite of the one that we find in Galatia. One of the members of the church is involved in an incestuous relationship; he is having sexual relations with his stepmother. The church as a whole knows that this is going on and they know that God views this as sin. However, because they believe that we are forgiven by what Christ has done and not by what we do they welcome this openly sinning man into their fellowship. Paul tells the church that they must confront this man and tell him to repent and if he refuses to do so they must exclude him from their church. He says to the church, “Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast, as you really are.” Paul’s point in 1 Cor. 5 is that if they permit this man to say he is a Christian and treat him like he is a Christian while he is living in open, public defiance of God’s law then wicked behavior is going to overrun the church. While no one is saved by his or her performance of any duty or law, yet everyone who is justified is a changed person. As Paul says in Gal 5:5-6, all justified people are living in hope of righteousness and their faith is working through love. The mind of every justified person is set on what the Holy Spirit desires and not set on what his or her sinful nature desires. So Paul tells the church in Corinth to not allow the yeast of sin to get into the “dough” of their church. In the Galatian churches it isn’t wicked behavior that will destroy the church but wicked doctrine that will gradually influence and take over the entire church and the lives of all who embrace this false doctrine. He teaches here that if you admit that God’s acceptance of you is based upon something you do then that doctrine will affect your whole life and the whole life of your church. Let’s think about some ways that this small error might affect your life and the life of our church. If you believe that God’s justifying you is based, at least in part upon what you do or don’t do, then either you will become a proud, self-righteous person or you will become a very discouraged, disheartened person. You either will view yourself as having done what God requires and thus be proud of your accomplishments and contemptuous of those who don’t live like you or you will view yourself as regularly failing to do what God requires and thus have no hope of ever pleasing God or of being justified. You will either be a critical, judgmental person or you will be a despondent, discouraged person who eventually gives up on religion. A church of people who believe it is their performance that gains them favor with God will either be judgmental, cold, and unsympathetic towards those who are struggling. Or it will be made up of lots of very sad and discouraged people who are ruled over by a few truly “godly people”. Or it will be a complacent, self-satisfied collection of nice people and take on the characteristics of a social club. When a church abandons the man humbling, God exalting gospel of God’s free grace in Christ, then it becomes either a social club or a harsh, condemning, abusive community. In addition, when human effort becomes part or all of the ground of obtaining divine favor then all other Christian doctrines are up for grabs. The necessity of God being a Trinity is diminished if we are able to justify ourselves. We don’t need a divine Savior, nor do we need the help of the divine, life-giving Spirit. The freedom of God and the self-sufficiency and omnipotence of God is called into question if we are able to save ourselves, if God needs us and our assistance. The necessity of Christ dying in our place or of his sinless life is lessened if human beings contribute to their salvation. The Bible cannot be taken seriously and so the traditions and writings of men take precedence over the Bible in the life of the church. Prayer becomes less necessary if it is my work that matters and not God’s work. When you remove justification by grace alone through faith in Christ alone it is as if you have pulled out a thread from a knitted scarf and pretty soon the scarf is gone and you are left with a pile of yarn. A small defect in the doctrine of justification will bring catastrophic consequences because…
III. God always judges those who trouble his church (v. 10) Verse 10 is both a very hopeful verse and a very troubling verse. First, notice Paul’s optimism concerning the Galatian Christians. He is confident in the Lord that they are not going to follow the false teachers but that they, in response to his letter are going to turn and obey the truth of the one who called them. How can he be so confident? He is confident, not in them but in the Lord. He knows they will respond positively to his letter by rejecting the false teachers and embracing the truth he teaches because he knows that God is the one who saves people. He knows that God graciously overcomes all resistance to the truth by the Spirit and so sinners repent and believe. Paul knows that repentance and faith are both the work of God, not the work of man. I know that not all of you agree with me that God is the one who decides who is going to go to heaven or, to say it another way, that God predestined before the world was made whom he was going to save. You have a hard time buying that God chooses whom he will save. It doesn’t fit with your idea of human freedom and accountability and of God’s justice. However, this first sentence in v. 10 can only be spoken by a man who believes that God is in charge of who will be saved and not men. If the salvation of the Galatians depends upon their ability, their choice, then there is no way that Paul could ever say that he is confident that they will agree with him and not the false teachers. Here is the practical benefit for believing that we are saved by sovereign grace, by God’s choosing us according to the pleasure of his own will and effectually calling us out of sin and death and by the Spirit giving us new hearts that willingly believe. It is only the doctrine of God’s free and sovereign grace that can give us assurance that we are going to make it to the end of the race. When you know that God chose you and gave Christ to die for you and sent his Holy Spirit to regenerate you, only then can you be secure. However, this is not only a hopeful verse but also a very troubling verse. Paul calls those who teach and believe that humans contribute to their own salvation as those who bring trouble into the church. Then he says that those who teach that humans contribute to their salvation and, by implication, those who believe them, are all going to bear the judgment of God. God’s anger rests upon them. As Paul says in Romans 2:8, “…for those who are self-seeking and disobey the truth and obey evil there will be wrath and anger.” What Paul is expressing here is God’s loyalty to his people. We are his bride. We are the sheep of his pasture. We are his children and heirs. As he says in Isaiah, “I have engraved you (plural, the church) on the palms of my hands.” It is not surprising that he is angry with and determined to punish those who attack and seek to harm his church. This is a reality that all of us need to take to heart. We live in an individualistic culture that delights to scorn institutions and cynically disregard loyalty to the group while extolling the virtue of “being true to yourself”. However, God calls us to be loyal to his church and to seek the welfare of the church as a community. We are to be careful to not do anything that will bring harm to the church. In this context the thing we are to be most wary of is false doctrine. We must work to preserve the doctrinal purity of the church and make sure that we do not promote error that will trouble and confuse the church. Those who do so can be certain that God is taking note and he will trouble those who trouble his church. This doesn’t mean that you cannot question the pastor or the elders. In fact, it is your right and your duty to press your leaders to demonstrate that what they are teaching is from the Scriptures and in accord with the historical teaching of the church. Some time ago a member of our congregation took me to task for what he considered a dangerous mixing of faith and obedience in my teaching. We had many long and sometimes heated discussions about the nature and relationship of faith and obedience. Yet he did it privately, motivated by his concern for the church. These discussions were very helpful to me and I trust to him and I know they have born fruit for you as I have been more careful in my distinguishing between these two things. A small defect in the doctrine of justification will bring catastrophic consequences because…
IV. Defection from the gospel of grace is driven by pride and fear (v. 11) We discover in v. 11 that the false teachers are accusing Paul of preaching that people must be circumcised. How could they have ever gotten away with this kind of accusation? This is a perfect example of taking statements out of context in order to make a point. Paul did not tell Jewish Christians to not circumcise their sons. He permitted those who were racially Jewish to observe the Jewish feast days. In fact, the book of Acts records Paul’s having Timothy, whose mother was Jewish and thus he was considered Jewish circumcised so he wouldn’t be kept out of Jewish synagogues as an apostate Jew. He himself performed Jewish ceremonies regarding vows, which included making sacrifices in the temple. He had Timothy circumcised and he fulfilled the vows so that he could be more effective in preaching the gospel, not because he believed God required obedience to these laws. However, the false teachers, knowing his position, told the Galatians that Paul was two-faced. When he was with Jews he preached a gospel that included circumcision in order to get the Jews to like him but when he was with Gentiles he left out circumcision in order to get the Gentiles to like him. Paul refutes this rumor by simply asking why it was he was still being persecuted by the Jews if it was true that he was telling people they had to be circumcised and keep the law in order to please God. The Galatians would have known that this was the case because Paul was stoned and left for dead outside one of their cities due to Jewish persecution. Jewish people would have no trouble with preaching the gospel if that message included the command to be a good, law abiding Jew. Then notice how he turns the table on the false teachers. He says that if he were to preach that law keeping was necessary to salvation then he would be nullifying the offensiveness of the cross. He is saying that the reason the false teachers say that you must obey the law to be saved is to avoid offending men and to gain the approval of men. They are driven by pride in themselves and by fear of what man might do or say. As long as you leave room for man to do something to merit God’s approval, then you leave room for human pride and for humans to impress one another. However, the cross of Jesus leaves no room for human pride. The cross of Jesus Christ is highly offensive to human beings. The death of Christ on the cross shows that humans are helpless sinners. It communicates that there is nothing that any human can do to gain God’s approval. We are thoroughly enslaved by sin and have no ability to free ourselves from its power or the judgment of God upon our sins. If we could justify ourselves or overcome our sins in some way then Christ would not have needed to die. The cross of Christ does not show that we are valuable as so many preach in our day. God giving his son for our sins does not show how valuable we are but how offensive we are to God. God cannot love us without our sins being placed upon Christ and Christ’s righteousness being given to us. God does not love us because of us but because of Christ and what he did on that cross. Apart from Christ we are completely and utterly contemptible creatures. We have offended infinite kindness by taking all the gifts God has given and used them in the service of our own pleasures and passions. When the death of Christ as the only ground of God’s acceptance of human beings is preached, people are offended, as they ought to be. Even those who are trusting in Christ ought to feel the offensiveness of the cross to their own self-righteousness. To trust in that cross means admitting that you are no better than the worst criminal you can imagine. There is no difference before God between you and the BTK serial killer who was recently caught in Wichita, KS. To trust in that cross means admitting that God has no reason to save you other than the pleasure of his own will. God is not drawn to you by anything in you. You have never provoked his love but only his wrath. To trust in that cross means to confess that you deserve hell. To trust in that cross is to abandon all confidence in yourself and cast yourself upon the mercy of your judge. To trust in that cross is to declare that you care not what men think of you but only what God thinks of you. It is to willingly abase yourself and to exalt God as infinitely high above you. The cross of Christ is an offense to the pride of men and thus those who add human performance as necessary for salvation do so to promote their own goodness and to gain the approval of others. A small defect in the doctrine of justification will bring catastrophic consequences because…
V. Defective doctrine makes you defective (v. 12) How is it right for the apostle of God’s grace to utter such a harsh and cruel wish as that in v. 12? How can one who has been commanded to love his enemies and pray for those who persecute him speak with such cruel desire? There are three things going on here. First, Paul is reflecting the attitude of God and of his Christ towards his enemies. It is without question that God hates all who do wrong. He laughs at his enemies who speak as if they are going to overthrow him. While God saves sinners yet he also is storing up wrath for all those whom he does not save and Paul is expressing that determination, just as the psalmists and the prophets in the OT and Jesus in the gospels with his “woes” does. Second, Paul is speaking as a shepherd of the flock of God. What other kind of language ought a shepherd to use about the wolves who are intent upon devouring the flock? What kind of shepherd would he be if he did not fiercely oppose those who would rob the sheep of eternal life? Again, this is exactly the same kind of language that Jesus used in his denunciation of the Jewish religious leaders. Good shepherds are fiercely opposed to those who would harm the flock. Finally, this language is the language of irony. The false teachers are saying that if the male Gentile Christians will have the foreskin of their genitalia cut away, then God will accept them into his presence. They are teaching that this circumcision will gain access to God. What Paul is implying by this strong statement is that rather than this cutting making them acceptable to God they are actually making themselves unacceptable. What he is referring to is Deuteronomy 23:1, which says, “No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord.” In other words, no castrated men were allowed to come near to God. They were defective and were thus excluded from the people of God as they drew near to worship God in the temple. Paul is saying that these men by teaching that human obedience to the Law makes you acceptable to God actually make themselves defective and thus unacceptable to God, according to the Law. They are shut out of the assembly, out of the church and will never enjoy that eternal fellowship that Christ has won. I don’t want you to be shut out of the “assembly of the Lord” now and forever. That is why when you join our church or when you come to be baptized you are going to be asked to explain the gospel. When we require that you explain how it is that you know that you are going to heaven we are not being intolerant or condescending. We are seeking to help you gain heaven. It only takes a small error in what you believe about being made right with God to send you to hell. Christ has appointed the leadership of this church to do all we can to make sure you hold fast to the truth. This is why a group of us are working hard to begin offering a series of classes that examine the foundations of the faith beginning in January. Our aim is to expose everyone in the congregation to the foundational doctrines of the church through these 60 classes. This is why we are so eager to have everyone in the congregation involved in a small group, so that you have regular opportunities to talk about your questions and to be involved in that encouragement that is necessary to keep from having a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. I don’t mean to be melodramatic but you are in grave danger if you think that you can remain indifferent or only mildly interested in the doctrines of the church and yet finish the race. What you believe matters, eternally. A small defect in the doctrine of justification will bring catastrophic consequences because…
© Copyright
2005 John Swanson.
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