Intro Paul begins Galatians by burning down the barn. “What in the world is wrong with you? You’re deserting God, who called you to be His people! You turned away from the Gospel by allowing others to confuse you and lead you away from the truth!”
“All this time of teaching you the truth about Jesus, and you now follow others who took the truth of Jesus and twisted it to suit their agenda. You believed them! Are you crazy? I don’t care if an angel comes to you, telling you something different from what I preached to you. Curse him; he’s leading you astray!” “What I told you was from God. I didn’t preach to you based on my authority or some human-created mandate. No, it was from God Himself, the same God who raised Jesus from the dead, the same Jesus who gave Himself to set us free from our sins!” “Let me be clear with you: I don’t care whether you like what I´m saying or not! My job is not to please you! My job is to bring you the Truth, the Truth, who is Jesus, so you keep receiving Jesus Christ and the salvation He gives!” Main Body Burning words fly off the page. A righteous anger brews within Paul! Here’s some background. Gentiles made up most of the congregations in Galatia. Paul helped start those churches and visited them at least twice before He wrote his letter to them. A close kinship connected Paul with them, and he wanted what was best for them. After his second or third visit, some other “Christian missionaries” passed through the area. Their identity remains a mystery, but they were most likely Jewish. They claimed to be Christians—but they also demanded people to follow God’s Old-Covenant ritual Laws, if they were to be genuine Christians. Even worse, if you didn’t do those the Jewish rituals, you disqualified yourself from salvation. These Judaizers didn’t like Paul because he insisted God’s forgiving and freeing grace in Jesus was what mattered, not following Old-Covenant rituals, those which Jesus had fulfilled. Their teaching and preaching bent and twisted the Gospel into an anti-gospel. His letter to the Galatians was his hammer to straighten what was bent. He is well into straightening them out when Paul exclaims: “Jesus Christ gave Himself to set us free from our sins.” The English Standard Version translates this as “deliver us.” “Setting free” is truer to the Greek, which expresses a sense of people who are imprisoned and trapped, then being released, rescued, and set free from their prison. So, you can understand why Paul was so angry with these “missionaries” who traveled into Galatia. They told people that the death and resurrection of Jesus didn’t take you the entire way. People still needed to follow the Mosaic Law to be set free, rescued, and saved—that’s not grace! They threw the Galatian Christians into a spiritual prison, from which they would never be good enough to escape. Paul let nothing contaminate the message of God reuniting sinners to Himself by forgiving them because of His crucified and risen Son. Anything else is slavery. Paul wouldn’t even tolerate the suggestion that we could contribute, in the slightest, to our salvation. What credentials or authority the preacher claims to affirm his message doesn’t matter. If he preaches something other than Jesus Christ as the ground of our salvation, he is a liar and deceiver. If we could become righteousness through obeying the law, Paul wrote, then Christ died for nothing. You and I can’t work our way into God’s grace and favor. It wouldn’t be grace if we could, for the term “grace” means “God’s undeserved kindness.” Salvation is by grace through faith in Christ! Anything else is undoable for us. Even so, a works-righteousness lingers and lurks within each of us, even if a little. For we think what we do contributes to God saving us, at least in some small way. If it doesn’t, why do we even bother? (Ah, our sinful nature: so good at taking the Gospel and coming to a corrupted conclusion!) A works-righteousness plagues us all, even more so, when we don’t understand just how radical this Gospel of Jesus Christ is! Listen again to our Epistle reading. “Jesus Christ gave Himself to set us free from our sins.” Nothing else is in the sentence. You find no conditions, buts, or exceptions. Paul doesn’t even hint that we must do something to be set free. No, Jesus even sets us free from having to do something to be set free! Can anything be more liberating? God demands of us 100% righteousness, in thought, word, and deed. Total, flawless perfection, each day of our lives because He is perfect. Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount: “A rotten tree cannot bear good fruit” (Matthew 7:18). We are all corrupted, afflicted, and infected with sin, from our conception. So, without the righteousness Jesus gives us, we can only produce bad fruit. For our failures and flaws even infect the best we can offer. Is the Gospel now grabbing you? You can’t produce anything approaching the perfect righteousness God demands. Having one blemish or defect makes you imperfect. So, even your righteousness, the best you can offer, are filthy rags, as Scripture says (Isaiah 64:6). So, how can telling others that they need to do something to contribute to their salvation be good news? Such news is only the worst news of all! No wonder Paul warned the Galatians to accept no other Gospel than what he preached. Paul delivered his message in the harshest language imaginable. He said if anyone—even an angel from heaven—came to the Galatians with a Gospel contrary to what he preached, let him be under God’s curse. Send him to hell! No matter what the precondition is, we fail. Consider sincerity. Well, if you’re really sincere with God, then you’re saved. A heartfelt sincerity may yearn within you—and you could still be wrong. Sincerity filled Adam and Eve when they listened to the serpent’s beguiling words and ate the fruit of the forbidden tree. Judas was genuine when he betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. The false teachers in Galatia were all sincerely mistaken. They deserved damnation because they anchored their salvation in something other than Christ. Sincerity doesn’t save us—Jesus does. He saves us, forgives us, and makes us acceptable to God by His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death. Faith looks to Jesus Christ and finds in Him God’s mercy, righteousness, grace, and salvation, given to us by a loving heavenly Father. Salvation is not Jesus Christ plus my good works, or Jesus Christ plus anything I can do, add, or contribute, be it my decision, my commitment, my dedication, or sanctification. We realize and understand God’s grace, forgiveness, and salvation when we have done everything within our power—and discover our deeds still fall short and aren’t good enough to please God! What a dark place to be in—if not for the liberating light of the truth: Jesus Christ gave Himself to set us free from our sins! Once more: Jesus Christ gave Himself to set us free from our sins! Such a far-reaching liberation! He died on the executioner’s cross for us, in our place. It was we who should’ve been there! We committed those death-penalty crimes! But someone who owes you nothing comes into the death chamber, unstraps you from the chair, sets you free, and takes your place in the execution chamber! Our immediate reaction to this Gospel is: “I haven’t done anything that deserves death!” That is where you err! When we don’t realize the mountain of our sinfulness, we don’t understand how extreme this Gospel is! When we don’t see within ourselves the devastating destruction of our self-centeredness, we don’t value the revolutionary nature of God’s grace in Jesus Christ, which sets us free from such self-centeredness! But there is more yet. For even after we realize the all-consuming nature of our sinfulness, even after regretting and confessing it, we still must come to grips with this: we can do nothing about our failings, at least when it comes to our salvation! Salvation isn’t a matter of “being better,” although our Lord saving us does make us want to be better. Salvation isn’t a matter of working to “improve ourselves,” although we do try to improve ourselves, reflecting God’s love for us to others. The Gospel is recognizing we are powerless when it comes to our salvation. So, what happens after that? We stand, stunned in awe because what God did, and does, to save us. We begin to understand just how radical the Gospel is, which sets us free! After suffocating from not being good enough, Paul’s words breathe our Lord’s new life into us, once more. “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave Himself to set us free from our sins.” Paul later wrote to the Galatians: “Christ has liberated us to be free. So stand firm, and don’t submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). The gift of grace, freedom, and new life is ours through the death and resurrection of Jesus, which is a gift unlike any other ever given or received. Jesus grants us salvation in the gift of Himself. Through the Spirit, Jesus attaches Himself to the preached Word, which proclaims Him for our salvation. He also comes to us in His body and blood in Holy Communion. Jesus now invites you to receive from Him, who gave Himself for you to set you free. “Drink of it, all of you; this cup is the New Covenant in My blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” Conclusion Don’t settle for poison masquerading as the Truth. You need the medicine of immortality, which only Jesus can give you. Don’t settle for anything else than the pure, life-giving Gospel of Jesus Christ. For no other “Gospel” saves. Amen. _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list Sermons@cat41.org http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
