Galatians Introduction Continued Galatians 1:1-5
Galatians 1:1-5 · Mike Doyle · Dec 9, 2018
Galatians (2018-20), No. 02
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261913171149

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We're doing a preamble to the Book of Galatians, and we did part of it last week. As usual, I have way more material than I need. So we stopped and we looked at what was Galatia or where is it? It's now. If we were to look at a map today, it would be Turkey, pretty much. So we're going through some questions. And the first question was, where were the Galatian churches? And that's what the map was for. Who were these Galatians? We answered that question.

And now we're talking about the Judaizers. Who are these guys and why are they such a problem? And so we had started in on talking about what did they teach? And these were we found out that these were guys that we traced their lineage all the way back to Cain.

These were very religious people, Jews. But the problem they had was that they were not men of faith. They were men of ritual and they were the kind of people that took care of being exact about how they worshipped and what they did and following the law system. But they weren't men of faith. While others within the remnant within the Jewish culture were people of faith, they were a smaller group. And Paul was one of these fellows that was a man of faith. And so because they were not believers, they were zealous for their tradition and their religion. And a guy like Paul couldn't be tolerated because he didn't teach, nor did he focus on what they thought was correct. Paul was one of these guys before he met the Lord on the road to Damascus. But now that he knows Christ, and we'll talk some more about that when we get into Galatians this morning, it made a big difference.

So the first question I have today is, can we tell from God's Word the difference between a law-based righteousness or a faith-based righteousness? Can we answer that question by looking at the Scriptures? And Paul is very careful to distinguish those two things, and he does it in Romans 10, verses 5 through 6.

He says, therefore, Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on law shall live by that righteousness. But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows. Do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down.

Is it possible to live a life that would be righteous enough for one to live by the principles of righteousness? I think it would be possible if you were a sinless person. I think we could do it. I think that perfect obedience to God would accrue to himself a righteousness. The problem with that is, is that it would be his righteousness. And he would try to stand before God and say, look, I obeyed all the rules. I'm now righteous before you.

And God says, no. Here's the problem that we have. If you look in Romans chapter one, It's what God does in that, or Paul does in Romans chapter 1. He said the real issue is not whether you're a sinner, not whether you're righteous in yourself, not whether you obey the law. The deal is, are you godless or are you godly? In other words, are you like God or aren't you? And the answer is obvious. You're not. You absolutely are not. So any attempt to produce righteousness out of yourself is an exercise in futility and only results, like Isaiah said, filthy rags. You can't do it. And add to that the fact that we're all sinners, that we couldn't do it. But the Judaizers closed themselves in these rules and thought they could do it.

So the righteousness of God is Christ alone. He is the righteousness of God. And he offers to the believing sinner in answer to his faith, an infinitely more precious righteousness and meritorious standing, which a sinless person couldn't do. It has to be offered. We were studying this morning about grace in the Sunday school class and how wonderful it is, but at the same time how difficult it is for us to understand and to grasp what grace really is.

Paul says in Philippians 3.9, he said that he wanted to be found in Christ, not having his own righteousness of his own derived from the law, but that which was brought through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God based on faith. So he says, I don't want anything to do with the righteousness that may or may not be produced by law. The only thing I care about is the righteousness of God and I want to be found there. That's what I want to have.

Why? Why does he think that way? The reason he thinks that way is that he realizes that any dependence on anything other than the righteousness of Christ actually doesn't allow him the possibility to even be saved. So he recognizes the pitfall to try to achieve your own righteousness.

It means that the Judaizers who were after him and the ones that we're talking about probably weren't saved people. So now some more information about who the Judaizers were and what do we find. is condemned by the law and the entire world is guilty before God.

Where do we find that? We find that in Romans chapter 2 verse 17 going into chapter 3 verse 8. Paul in Romans does a really interesting thing. He takes three classes of men and he makes them all guilty before God. And the last class are the religious guys. Well, who could he pick better to show why religious people aren't acceptable before God than the Jews? They're the perfect ones.

So he says he finds it necessary because he's being combated by this this Judaizing issue when he writes to the Romans and that he found that there is a real tendency that people want to have rules and the Judaizers were the guys that had the rules. And so he shows that the Jew, with all of his boasted privilege, He is still an unsaved man as shown in the fact that he does not practice what he preaches. You know, there's an old saying, you've got to walk the talk. So Paul devotes the whole chapter four of Romans to showing that salvation is not by works. It's not by ordinances following the rules. It's not by law observance.

And he uses as an example the perfect man, Abraham. And he says, Abraham was justified by faith alone. And that, 14 years or so before he ever was circumcised. If you're a Jew, circumcision is everything. If you're a believer, faith is everything. So he uses the Jewish icon, Abraham, and says, well, he was justified before God. 14 years before he was circumcised. And I told you the story about my friend the rabbi Zev Pomerantz last week when he and I had actually a one-sided discussion about this.

In Philippians 1, 14 through 18, Paul is writing from the prison in Rome and he tells the Philippians, look, he said, the result of my imprisonment has emboldened a lot of you to get out and preach the gospel and face the opposition and persecution that's all around.

The problem was that there was this other group, they had infiltrated the church, and they were of this class of Judaizers, and they would talk about the Messiah, they would talk about, there's a spirit of rivalry and envy amongst these people, and Paul was glad that at least most of the gospel was getting preached, but not sincerely. And a lot of it was mixed motives. They were secretly trying to actually subvert Paul, but they were out preaching the gospel. Now, some of the things that they were talking about was the fact that they found it necessary to prove...

Let me back up. They were saying that they would not preach the substitutional sacrifice of Christ as part of their message. And the reason that they wouldn't do that, it was because if they did, they had to acknowledge that maybe there was a substitute for them to pay the price for them so that they could be saved. Well, when you're on a law-based performance system, you're the focus of attention and you have to perform. You don't need a substitute. If Christ is your substitute, or you preach that Christ is your substitute, you're counteracting your own logic. And that's what they were teaching.

So when the book of Hebrews is written, the author is very careful to talk about that he could prove from the Old Testament scriptures that the Messiah was much better than the prophets of Israel. That the Messiah was better than the angels of God. He compared those two. That the Messiah was superior to Moses and to Joshua and to Aaron. So is the writer of Hebrews fighting a straw man? No. He would not waste time or energy nor space in his writings to redefine the argument, to refute the argument of a system of teaching that didn't really exist. He was just giving the truth.

So, is there more? Yeah, there's a little bit more. In addition to the Judaizers saying that you must be circumcised and you must obey the law, the other thing that they were talking about that And Paul went after it in chapter 4 of Galatians, and he said, look, you observe days and months and seasons and years. And their approach was that it was necessary for the Galatian Christians to keep certain holidays. Oh, that means we can forego Christmas? Tell that to your children.

So anyway, the point was is that holidays and days of worship were not the issue. The denomination that I grew up in, they were very strict about Sundays and other days of obligation and other things that you had to do in order to be accounted righteous before God. And that was the big surprise to me when I was led to Christ was the fact that Faith was the issue, it wasn't attendance. Faith was the issue, it wasn't my compliance with the rules.

And that's, you know, if you're a person who follows the rules, when you're first presented with that, it's difficult to receive it because you think, wait a minute, you have to tell me what to do so I know what to do. And when I'm told or you're told that all you need to do is believe, It's difficult. It's difficult. And so I think that right in there is where the Spirit of God will interject and say, no, this is the right way. This is the way that God has prepared for you to be saved. You just have to believe Him.

The Judaizers, to just kind of sum up with these guys, they left the part of the Mosaic law system, the sacrifice of Christ, they left it pretty much alone for the Galatians. And it shows that they considered that the temple sacrifices that they were supposed to be involved with, they just looked at them as mere forms. They didn't think there was anything really to them. And there was not an essential part of the revelation of God to Moses as far as salvation was concerned. They didn't get the substitutionary sacrifice, and so if they didn't get it, they certainly aren't going to preach it.

Their view of the Messiah was different in that they taught the acceptance with God was to be had by means of personal merit obtained through the individual's good works, A saved individual was sanctified by observance of the legal precepts of the Mosaic system, and they wouldn't accept the Savior. I want to answer this question. There are two methods that Paul's opponents used to undermine and destroy his ministry. The first one was they endeavored to depreciate Paul's apostleship, and he's going to answer that in the very first verse.

And they set up, they said that he's not one of the twelve. And he can't have the authority to interpret the scriptures or tell us about who Christ is because he didn't really know him like the other twelve did. And he doesn't have the authority to teach grace. They argued that Paul was not one of the original. They argued that he had not listened to Christ's voice. he had not seen him face to face, he had not attended to Christian ministry, and that he had not been sent out to them like they had, and he didn't have the command. And the last thing that they said is that he had not received the gospel by direct revelation of Christ, as had the other twelve. Well, have you ever thought about this? If you have twelve apostles, and then Paul, Why did God send 12 apostles to the Jews and only one to the Gentiles? Why? Because it's more difficult to unlearn something than it is to start from scratch.

The whole system that the Jews had, God gave them. The whole system. And the 12 apostles that were sent to the nation of Israel, that was what they were supposed to do, was to show them We're leaving this behind and we're moving on to the resurrected Christ.

Well, Paul didn't have any of those problems with the Gentiles because they didn't know anything about Judaism pretty much. So he could start from scratch or start from the beginning, the death, burial and resurrection of Christ and go from there, you know, or actually start with condemnation of all men and then show that the sacrifice of Christ was the thing that would save them. So that was the first the first part was to to endeavor to show Paul wasn't a real apostle. He didn't have the position. The second method that they used was to substitute a salvation by work system for the doctrine of pure grace.

Do we have that problem today? Like we talked about last week, I challenge you to, not that you want to do this, but go on a cable television and get the Christian stations. And spend five minutes with each one. Just go down. And somewhere in there, you'll hear their gospel message. And there will be a work in every single one of them.

You cannot hear the gospel of grace, of salvation from most any preachers. I work out in the mornings, a couple of mornings a week, and I have headphones that I listen to. And of course, I don't want to listen to news or anything, because that makes me nervous. So I listened to these two guys that are on. One of them is a Baptist preacher who's gone home to be with the Lord. And the other guy is, I'm not sure what he is, but he's a mega church guy. And both of these men present salvation this way.

Pray that Jesus will forgive you your sins. Did you read the Bible? Didn't he already do that? Pray to receive Jesus into your heart. Really? I've been looking in my Bible and I can't find that anywhere. And confess all your sins and God will forgive you and he will save you. Is that not a contemporary Judaizing message? Sure is. What happened to just believe in the person and work of Christ? First Corinthians 15, that I first presented unto you that Christ died for your sins according to the scripture. that he was buried and he was resurrected according to the scripture and he was seen by many.

If you just believe that, you're saved. There's no merit on your part in that. There's just trust in God that he did what he did and he accrues it to you by you just believing it. Well, it's easy for a Judaizer or a Jewish person who has become a Christian to revert back And that was what the book of Hebrews was all about, was to keep them from going that way.

So this all came to light, I think, when Paul was on his third missionary journey. And it was interesting, you know, in Corinthians, there was a letter written to Paul about some issues in the church. With this, Paul, this hadn't been a problem until the third missionary journey.

And he began to hear things and people would come and talk to him about it. And the Galatian church didn't send a delegation to him and say, hey, you know, we've got some problems here. He began to hear it and immediately it became a big issue. Now let's talk about the size of the issue. Wouldn't you think that sin would be the big issue? Why is law, the observance of law, such a huge issue to Paul?

And if you look at the epistles, this whole book of Galatians is to get Christians squared away about don't go to the law. Sunday school, we started into Romans 7. That whole chapter is stay away from the law. Hebrews, stay away from the law. Stay away from it. Yet we have built in our psyche, which comes from Adam, tell me what to do and I'll do it. Right? Tell me what to do and I need some rules. And so Paul realized that if there was just the slightest hint of rules to be kept that believers would say, oh, okay, now I know what to do and I'll do this and I will be pleasing before God.

And he said, no, no, no, that's not what grace is about. That's not what grace is about. And Courtney this morning mentioned that grace is something we grow in and the knowledge of Christ is something we grow in. We don't show up at the day of salvation with all this wonderful understanding of how grace works and operates and a lot of understanding about who the Lord Jesus is. We don't know anything about grace. We have to learn it from scratch. So there's a conflict. And so Paul realizes that he needs to combat this issue of law right away and be real aggressive about it because it takes a man away from Christ to himself. If I say to you, you must do, the first thing that hits your mind is, me? Do I have to do that? Where's my focus? Me.

What's grace about? and the Word of God about, focusing on the Lord Jesus Christ. So I can be doing that, and if I say, wait a minute, I've got to do this, I go right back to me. And the real freedom in our life as believers, we are free from me to behold the glory of the Lord Jesus. That's the real freedom. And Paul knew that, and if they in any way allowed law to come in, that's what would be the result of the people that listen to it. Now, let's start in the Galatians finally, after two weeks. We'll work on the first couple of verses.

Now, to start with, I think Acts 15.1 is really the place to start. which came down from Judea, taught the brethren and said, except you be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you cannot be saved. What if I got up here in the morning and said, except you be baptized in the water back here, according to the manner of Holly Hills Bible Church, you can't be saved.

I expect you to laugh. We know better. We know better, but there are all kinds of other things that we think that we should be doing to make ourselves acceptable to God. Very interesting subject. Unless you be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you can't be saved. Unless you're baptized by water, you can't be saved.

So the Book of Galatians is divided up into about eight sections, the greeting, and the acknowledgment of praise, the first five verses. Chapter 1, 6 through 9, Galatian departure from the true gospel. Section 3 is chapter 1, 10 through 2, 21, Paul's defense of his apostolic ministry. Section 4 is chapter 3, 1 through 24, justification is holy. W-h-o-l-o-y, by faith apart from law. The fifth is 325 to 5-1, the rule of the believer's life is grace, not law. 6, chapter 5, verse 2 through 26, the characteristics displayed in the life of who is justified by faith alone. And chapter 6, First 16 verses, the outworking of the new life in Christ, and then 17 and 18, the conclusion.

So, Paul initially starts out with the very first verse, and very carefully he says, Paul, an apostle, not sent from men, nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead." So, first thing he does is defend his apostleship. Why? Because that was the big issue the Judaizers were saying to all the people, Paul's not really an apostle. He's going to say very clearly, I am an apostle and I'm going to show you in a few words why I'm an apostle.

He says that as defending his apostleship against the efforts of the enemies, his own enemies, who would emerge under legalism and human authority? He says, in other words, it's the antidote to the Judaizing poison of many who profess the name of the Lord Jesus. In the Book of Romans, it was more the bringing out of a positive truth. The Book of Romans is I've always considered the book of Romans as Christianity 101.

If you've been to college, you realize that they have survey courses. And survey courses kind of go through the whole thing, and then you go back through the rest of your college career, and you drill down. Well, Romans is a Christian survey course. Galatians really is not a survey.

It's a recovery. against the efforts of the enemy. It's a recovery of the truth after it had already been taught to them by Paul and received. Well, what was happening there is the enemy was trying to swamp out by bringing in the law as equal and necessary means of justification. So Paul's defending against that. And the Holy Spirit sets himself by the Apostle Paul Thoroughly to nullify all the forces that are against the truth and he gives a particular tone to this epistle So it was a pretty bad state in Galatians quickly and the Galatians had Had fallen did not so much arise from ignorance because they had been taught But it was unfaithfulness The Romans were ignorant Galatians were unfaithful And there's a great difference between being ignorant and unfaithful.

God is most patient, I think, with our ignorance. He's always teaching us. But I don't think He's so tolerant when the saints like us, when we take the light that we already have and we don't trust Him about it. He's not as tolerant. He will educate us, but He wants us to believe Him.

And let me maybe give an example about why I think law is so devastating and why we don't look at it that way. Let's say there's somebody and there's a lot of them in the press. I could have picked one. But let's say some man is arrested and being prosecuted for cheating and murder. Now, our moral outrage about that would be we'd be talking about it all the time. But that very same person who are alive and outraged by a moral scandal could be totally dead to the dangers of legalism.

They wouldn't consider it as much of a problem. Most people are sure to feel that immorality, partially because it affects them or the society they live in, whereas in what touches the Lord, we're not so sensitive to. And legalism touches God because it takes His grace and moves it out of the way. So if you watch how error is brought in, usually it's a little bit at a time. which means that a little bit of a time I get off the face-based life and get back on the me and performance life.

So, Paul. Notice the greetings. Have you ever noticed that if you're in your Bible and you read Paul's epistles, in every one he's very gracious in the first few verses. And he compliments the people that he's writing to and he tells them how great they are and how their faith is notorious around the world and all these other great things. Well, he doesn't do that here. Paul, an apostle. And he expands his official title right away because he has got some pretty tough things to say to these folks. And he's going to push back on his detractors right away.

And what are the qualifications to be an apostle? What are the qualifications to be an apostle? I can remember when I was first a believer, I didn't like regular church, so I ended up through some friends working in a ministry downtown in a storefront mission. And over time, you get to know other people that are doing storefront missions.

And I remember we met this one man one time that he turned his garage He lived in Capitol Hill. He turned his garage into what he called a safe haven. And he would go around and he would recruit these homeless people to come and he'd almost incarcerate them there and force them to listen to the gospel, right? So we thought, well, we've got to get to know this guy, see what his ministry is about. So we got together one time, and so one of my cohorts in crime said, well, Sam, what sort of spiritual gifts do you have? And he starts naming them, including raising people from the dead, on and on, you know.

And so I'm thinking to myself, this doesn't sound, and he had claimed to be an apostle. So another fellow we were working with said, well, when did you see the Lord Jesus? He said, well, I see him all the time. Needless to say, we sort of discounted the guy's ministry. An apostle is one who is sent with a mission and a message. That's the first thing.

He has to be an eyewitness of Christ's resurrection. You mean he had to be standing there when the stone went back? No, an eyewitness means he had to have known Christ personally after he was resurrected. Is that true of Paul? Yeah, he met him on the road to Damascus. You know what the difference between Paul's meeting and the other 12 was? Did the other 12 meet the resurrected glorified Christ? No, they didn't. Resurrected, but not glorified. Paul meant not only the resurrected Christ, but the glorified Christ. So Paul has a heavenliness about his understanding that the other 12 don't have.

An apostle exercised doctrinal authority over the church until the completion of the New Testament. These were the people that were involved in the writing of the New Testament. They were not given to the church until the ascension of Christ. There weren't any apostles until after the ascension. They were disciples up until that point. They were specially gifted, and none of what they were was by human merit. They were endowed with signs and miracles. They were very powerful people in terms of what they could do, like healing and prophecy and that kind of thing. The word apostle is a really interesting word. It just means in Greek a sent one. Apo means from and stelo means to send. So Paul was a sent one from the resurrected glorified Christ.

And he was a messenger. He was not only well, we'd say it this way. He was similar to an ambassador, you know, an ambassador sent by his government to transmit a message. He's not entitled to his own opinion. He has to be very precise on what the message is, and Paul was. So the word Apostle, as Paul used it, does not merely refer to one who has a message to announce though, but an appointment representative with an official status who is provided with the credentials of his office. So not only Is he a messenger? But he has credentials that fit the office that he has.

Why is this important? What's the significance of Paul's claim to be an apostle? What's the significance? Which is the next question. By the addition of the title of apostle to his name, because now he's Paul an apostle, the very beginning of his letter he claims one who is divinely commissioned to preach the gospel and authorized to plant Christianity wherever he went.

He claims equality with the other 12. He and they were specially selected by God to deliver special revelation. That's what they were there to do. That's why there aren't any of them today. He had authority as to doctrine. He could establish the direction and function of an early church. And he understood his role. and his image as an apostle. He knew who he was. There was no doubt in his mind what God had called him to do and who he was. He considered his apostleship different from the other twelve, though, that his was worldwide. He was to go anywhere and everywhere.

And he was able to, he thought of Christianity as organic in the sense that it simply was for everybody. where the other 12 initially thought it was for the Jews until Cornelius's house and the Pentecost that came down on the Gentiles, Peter and the rest of the apostles thought that Christianity was just for the Jews.

It was a surprise to Peter when he went back to the others and he said, hey, fellas, guess what? God intends to save the Gentiles. They said, no. Yeah, because I just saw him do it. But Paul is the apostle strictly to the Gentiles. That was his job. Notice the word not. He was not several things. He plunges right away into controversy with his typical energy. And he says, I can say no, I can show you. Why did he go through the trouble to affirm the divine origin of the apostleship? simply because it was under attack.

He says, now this is a really interesting part right here, he says, I am an apostle not of men. What does that mean? It means that his apostleship didn't come from man or a man in its ultimate source. The translation of of is ape, which means it's from and it speaks of the ultimate source of his apostleship. And he denies that his apostleship had any human source. It's a really important point, because it gives him authority. And the word men here means an emphasis, again, that of the source of his apostleship. It wasn't human, it was divine. It was divine. Now the other 12, their apostleship was divine also.

And then he says, it sounds like he repeats himself, but he doesn't. He says, neither by man. In other words, what he means is that, well, God didn't tell somebody to tell me I was an apostle. He told me directly. There was no intermediary. I got it direct. And he uses, when he says, neither by man, we would say, not even. Not even by man. That's not who I am. Directly from God himself. That's where it came from.

And so he's making a really strong case about who he is and what he's received. And he not only declares that how he got to be an apostle, not from men, but also that God didn't use an intermediary agency to call him. We use intermediary agencies here all the time. His apostleship was not derived from human source or given through a human channel it all.

Now, but by Jesus Christ. This word but is a very strong word Allah. It means that this is the way it happened. And this is the only way it happened. He was very strong in his language. When contrasting the divine origin of his apostleship with the human origin ship, of his detractors. You notice that they would claim their apostleship came from the fact that they were Jews and they were appointed by men. And then he says, by Jesus Christ, he uses a word that is speaking not of the source of his apostleship between he and himself. There was no intermediate agent.

It was Jesus Christ glorified himself that appointed And Jesus Christ is both. When you think about it, Christ told Paul, or told Ananias when he went in to tell Paul that he was going to take the blindness away from him. He said, you know, I'm going to tell him that what he's seeing of me and what I'm going to show him in the future will be what he's all about. And he's going to represent me before all men, represent me before all men from a heavenly standpoint.

Now notice the third part here, or the other part, he says, and God the Father. Why would he, why would he say, well, Jesus Christ and then God the Father? Why wouldn't he just settle for Jesus Christ and not have to, not have to, not have to, he could just leave it go because God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ are one. And he understood that. And so the authority he has comes from the Godhead itself. There isn't any intermediary, and Jesus himself wasn't the intermediary.

He aligns himself with God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. They are the same. Their names are governed by one preposition in this whole verse, showing that Jesus Christ and God the Father weren't separated in their mind as sustaining different relationships to Paul. They both had the same relationship. So taken together, the whole expression would say directly from Jesus Christ and God the Father.

The verse I wanted to quote to you was Acts 9 when Ananias, God said to Ananias, but the Lord said to him, Go, for he's a chosen instrument of mine. I chose him to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the sons of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake." I think if God had said that to me, I would have said, can I do something else? What is this suffering thing? So, Paul offers the fact that he has seen the Lord Jesus, And he says in 1 Corinthians 9, he says, am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus, our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord?

And then he says, who raised him from the dead. He is given his commission. by the Lord Jesus Christ who has completed his whole work. He's been crucified, he's buried, he's resurrected, he ascends to heaven, and he's glorified. That's who he gets his commission from. Again, I emphasize, none of the others They got their commission from Christ, but not the glorified Christ. And it's going to make a big difference in how Paul writes his epistles and how the progression of the revelation of who Christ is. Everybody in this room today is a citizen of heaven. Well, what does that mean? That doesn't mean that you have dual citizenship. You only have one. We're heavenly people.

And Paul was the first one to know that. In Acts 9, when he is saved, this heavenly aspect starts to come into his understanding. And as he writes his epistles going forward in his life, he increasingly gets heavenly. He increasingly talks about the heaviness of the church. And it changes the perspective of what a church and body of Christ is all about. We are not an earthly group of people hanging out together. We're really heavenly. It's almost like we were born in heaven, and God said, well, I've got some work for you to do.

Why don't you go back to the earth and represent me, and then I'll bring you home as soon as I can. Understand what I'm saying? I'll bring you home as soon as I can, because heavenly home is really where I'm from and where I belong. Now, let's see. I think I'll end up in verse one and we'll pick up two next week.

Just to translate, an expanded translation of verse one, Paul, an apostle, not from man, as an ultimate source, nor even through the intermediate agency of a man, but through the direct agency of Jesus Christ and God the Father, the one who raised him out from among the dead. So I'll leave you with this thought.

For you to be, for the Lord Jesus to be raised out from among the dead, and for you and I to be party of that, united to Christ, puts a whole different perspective on why we would even live under grace and why we don't need law. Because if I'm resurrected in Christ, does Christ get up every morning and say, I've got to get out the rule book and see what I've got to do today to be pleasing to the Father? No. His life is pleasing to the Father. He lives under grace.

That's the life we have. We need to learn it. And that's why we spend a lot of time in God's Word. That's why we spend a lot of time in fellowship. We're learning this grace all the time, every single day. And it's an operating system. It's not a set of rules. And it is the most powerful motivator there is in the world. So, let's close. Father, how we thank you for your word, how we thank you for the Apostle Paul, and how we thank you for the grace that he brought to teach us that that's where we're to live. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.