Formed
Galatians 4:19-20 · Mike Doyle · Sep 15, 2019
Galatians (2018-20), No. 38
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261916154292

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

Okay, so we've worked our way down to verse 19. Verse 19 is a really interesting verse because it really does, when you delve into it a little bit, talk about spiritual growth. So the verse is, my children, or my little children, with whom I again am again in labor until Christ is formed in you."

Crucial truth here that we don't often talk about, but notice he refers to these folks as little children, my little children. The language is one of real affection to the Galatians, but he also inserts a right to hold the love of the Galatians by using this term.

How come? Why does he use little children? Because we've talked about in chapter 3 and parts of chapter 4 where he referred to the Galatians as sons of God. Why the difference? Why were at some point he refers to believers as sons of God and now he refers to them as little children?

Sons of God represents a term that shows a little bit of spiritual maturity. It's relative to those who are growing in their condition. They're growing up a little bit. They're trying to, and we talk a lot about in the past, and we'll talk a lot about it today, what we term position and condition, and we defined those a few weeks ago. My position and your position in Christ is permanent. And we spend an awful lot of time studying the verses that have to do with position, who I am in Christ. What does the Word of God say about me as a believer? What's true of me? And then there's the other side of the coin, which is the condition that I operate in, and that's my everyday walking around existence and where it's not so permanent, I'm waffling I'm trying, I'm doing whatever, I'm sinning.

But here he's talking to them about their condition, and that's why he calls them little children. He uses this term to represent to them. Little children, we're talking about your condition, Galatians. So, position again, just so we hopefully get it clear.

God never changes, and so when he makes a pronouncement about someone, about them being a son of God or positioned in Christ somehow, it can't ever change because God made the pronouncement. And it is the source of our Christian life. It's what we believe in. It's the information that God tells us about who we are. It's perfect. It can't be modified. It can't be changed.

And our faith is based on our position. But our condition is different. It's our experiential existence in the Christian life, and it changes all the time, like I said. It's not the same for every believer. Our position is the same for every single one of us, but our condition, however many people in this room, is however many conditions there are in the Christian life. The problem we have is that we try to get our faith sometimes to rest in our condition. We try to get it to be solid on how we're behaving rather than what God's Word says. So we're experientially focused rather than truth-focused. If you look over in 1 John chapter 2, he talks about three different classes of believers. He talks about little children, fathers, and young men. So he says, I'm writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven, you, for His name's sake. Little children, salvation, they're saved.

I'm writing to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. You have a personal intimacy with the Lord. And I'm writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. Three classes, three groups of believers. I'm writing to you children because you know the Father. You understand what His message was about His Son. I have written to you fathers because you know Him who was from the beginning. In other words, intimate fellowship with the Lord. And I've written to you young men because you're strong and the Word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one.

Classes of believers. Now, notice this is the second time Paul is dealing or thinking about the Galatians in terms of his converts being, he birthed them. There's lots of places in the Bible that talks about how when Paul leads somebody to the Lord Jesus or starts a church someplace, he uses this metaphor of being, of birthing them, of being their father. And now he uses it a second time, not only, not talking about their salvation, but he's talking about their spiritual growth. Christ is formed in you.

First Corinthians 4.15 says, For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would have not have many fathers. For in Christ I became your father, through the gospel. And when he writes this letter to Philemon about Onesimus, he says, I appeal to you for my child Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my imprisonment. So he views people that he has led to Christ as he has birthed them. And it's a painful process. I don't have to say that to any of you mothers, you already know.

But in the Jewish culture of things it was really interesting. They had a thought process that if I were to teach my neighbor next door the law, the Mosaic law, then scripture would reckon to me that I might have begotten my neighbor. That's what their mindset was. Now, the real critical part of this is the formed in you. And notice here it says from the word formed, refers to, pay attention to this definition because I think it's really a good one, the act of giving outward expression to one's inner nature.

I laugh sometimes because those of you who have little children who aren't saved yet, I notice that you never send them to sinning academy. They know how to do this. It comes with what's inside of them. Well, a believer, a born-again believer has a resurrected life of Christ in them and Paul's focus is to get that life to function through them without a lot of stress. Without a lot of stress.

So, maybe an example like this. Those of you who are tennis fans probably watched the US Open women's final yesterday with Serena Williams and I forget the lady that beat her. But what's interesting is You watched probably the best women's tennis form there is in that match. Really, really good players. We could say that what we were watching, she gave us what she already had in her inward ability. It came out in this match. And she won. She won. She's a really excellent tennis player. I'm a believer.

What I am internally needs to come out. And it isn't going to come out, as Paul says in the whole book of Galatians, by giving me a set of rules. Because if you ever watch a sporting event, if you ever have to stop and look at the rule book, you lose. It has to be spontaneous. You have to already have it, and it has to work.

When Paul refers to an outward expression of the Lord Jesus exhibited in the believer's life, he's talking about spiritual growth. So how does the Holy Spirit bring about this inward expression of the Lord Jesus in the lives of the believer? The first thing that we need to learn is the fact that we have been conceived in God's heart before He ever created anything. And that verse in Ephesians says, Accordingly, He has chosen us in Him, Christ, before the foundation of the world, purpose, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love, having predestinated us, predestinated after we were saved, to what?

To the adoption of sons? by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his own will. His own will. He decided about this and he purposed to put us in Christ so that we could, when we are before him in love, we would behave like the sons of God. That's his purpose. So he, now that I'm a believer, Now that I'm a believer, what does he do? I think I went too far. Yeah, I did. God took us and placed us and identified us with Adam. Sinful Adam. And we show up in this world attached to, identified with Adam. Adam's a wonderful character. He's a sinner.

We've been studying on Wednesday night the Old Testament, and we're up to Noah. We're up to Noah and the flood. You know, I've said this before, in Genesis chapter 9, it says God looked over the whole entire earth, and we calculated that there were probably 2.5 billion people on the earth at that point, before the flood. How many righteous people did God find? One. Of all those people, God found one righteous man. And so what does he say? I'm done with these guys. All they do is sin continually. They're evil. I'm going to get rid of them all.

But because he finds one righteous man, he saves him, his wife, his three sons, and their wives, and all of the animals, and puts them in an ark and saves them. Because he found one righteous man. Every one of those men are offsprings of Adam. Guess what?

So were we. So were we. We were not righteous at all. So we could say in other terms, I'm in the flesh. I have an Adamic nature. I have an old nature. I have an indwelling sin, old life. The principle of sin operates in me all the time. And I'm not going to read Romans 3. 19 through 18, but they're kind of condemning verses for one. When he says in verse 10, there's none righteous, not even one. Wow, I thought I was a pretty good guy until I read that.

All have turned aside. Together they have all become useless. From whose frame of reference? From God's frame of reference. They're useless. There is none who does good. There is none, not even one. How many times do you have to express that and repeat it to get the message across? There's not a single one. You know, there were 2.399 billion people at Noah's time, and he was the only one that was righteous.

And then he goes on and he expands a little bit. He says, well, here's how wonderful they are. Their throat is an open grave. Oh, gee, that's nice. Their tongues, they keep deceiving. The poison of ass, and ass was a poisonous snake, is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their path, the path of peace they haven't known, and there isn't any fear of God before their eyes. Every unrighteous man, that definition fits them.

It fit me before I was saved. It fits you if you're not saved. And it also fits your Adamic nature. That's what it's really like, no matter how much holy water you put on it. That's what it's really like. But now I'm a believer. Now I have become a son of God. Somebody brought the gospel message to me, and I believed it. And now I'm beginning to understand a little bit about what's the difference. I'm exactly the same person that I was before, but now I have a different nature.

And I read in 1 Corinthians 15.22 that in Adam, every single person identified with Adam dies. Also, every single one of us who are in Christ will be made alive. What a verse. I have been crucified with Christ. I'm a new creation. So what happens?

From my position in Christ, the Lord has stripped off of me and separated me from that entire sinful Adamic life. Totally separated me from it, from His perspective. And he did it by identifying me or putting me in Christ when Christ died. Death means separation. Christ was made sin for me. What happens when he dies? He separates from sin. If I'm in him, what happens to me? I separate from sin.

Sin nature is still alive in me, but now it doesn't control me. I'm not identified with it. I'm now identified with the resurrected Christ. The death of Calvary was, in terms of freedom, was the most important event. It was the most important event to take care of the one big issue that God had, and that was the issue of sin. I still have the same identity as I had when I was conceived in eternity by the Father. But now I have been relieved judicially from that whole entire life of Adam.

That's my position. Now it may or may not be, you may or may not even know that, That information may or may not operate in your life. But that's what the Word of God says, and that's what your position is. I am a totally new creation. 2 Corinthians 5-17 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, and as I look around, I think most of you are, here's what's true of you.

You're a new creation. You're not a renovation project. You're not a fix and flip. You're a brand new creation. Old things have passed away, behold, new things have come. New kynos, brand new and kind in quality. Never been those kind of creations before.

Until Christ rose from the dead, other than Adam, there was not a man on the earth that was without sin. And now, we have a resurrected man who has paid the penalty for sin, and he's an entirely new kind of a man. And I am in living union with him. You are in living union with the resurrected, glorified Christ.

The divine human life has become your life. Now the handout that I gave you, what I want you to do with those, you can take notes on them, fine, but I want you to take that home and look up all those verses. And everything that you see there is true of you as a believer. Every single one of those verses is true of you as a believer.

So look them up. We'll have a quiz. No, we won't. So, the other thing is that I'm now a new spirit in Christ. In other words, I'm one with Him. He is my head. I'm a member of His body. The Lord Jesus is the true vine. What does that make me? I'm a living branch who's in the vine. My Heavenly Father is the vine dresser. All of these things are true of me.

Colossians 3.3 says, since you have died, for you have died and your life is now hid with Christ in God. Interesting that the life that we have resurrected is hidden with Christ in God. It's there, because that's where we live and have our being. Now, here's the problem we've got.

If we don't see this clearly, if we don't understand Romans 6.6, let's say, that I've been cut off from the old Adamic life in my death unto sin on the cross, I will not fully realize that I'm a new creation in Christ. Because if I haven't died, What has happened? What has happened? Romans 6 says, knowing this, that my old man was crucified with him. For what reason? In order that the body of sin, the whole thing of sin, all of it, might be done away, or put out of business, or how I used to say, taken offline. So that we would no longer serve sin. I don't care how you dance it.

If you're not in Christ, you're a servant and a slave to sin. Always. That's all you ever think about, is sinning. And you're a slave to it. Because Christ died on the cross and paid the penalty for your sins, you still can be a slave to sin. But when you find out this information, guess what? You have a chance, by faith, to be free from the slavery of sin. By just believing what God has said to you.

This is your position. My old man was crucified. Or Galatians 2.20 that we studied a couple of months ago. I have been crucified with Christ. I have been. And it's no longer I, the old Adam guy who lives, but Christ lives in me now.

Permanently. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by how? Here's how it functions. Here's how it works every second. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. That's how I live now. That's how you live now. From what the Word of God tells me. What's interesting is that I've got to understand this. I have to be presented with this information.

And when I'm presented with it, I can remember the very first time a man came up to me and said, I was having lunch with him, pulls out his Bible and he goes to Romans 6.6, he says, read this. And I'm looking at the menu.

So I read it. He said, what does that say to you? I said, well, it kind of looks like I might have died. He said, yeah, you did. Well, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking this guy's paying for lunch. He's crazy. Because I'm sitting here in front of him, I didn't die. What does he mean die?

That was my first exposure to this, but it hooked me and I began to investigate and find out and try to get as clear a vision as I possibly could about this fact. Because I saw in my mind that in the denomination I grew up in, I really tried to be good at it as a young man, and I failed and failed. And finally in college somewhere, I just passed.

I remember saying to God, you know, I hope things work out better for me than they have been, but I'll see you later. Because I couldn't stop sinning. And I knew that sinning was a big problem between me and God. This verse, for the first time in my life, I thought, God has given the answer for me not to sin so much. I could actually, if this is true, sin less. Maybe even not sin at all. Wow, that was a big revelation to me. Because it was so important to see this now that I was a believer and I was a pretty young believer. So, understanding.

The thing about this is that I know that it is no more I as a new creation that do it, but it's sin that dwells in me. Paul says this in Romans 7, and it sounds like at first blush, well, he's fluffing it off and he's not taking responsibility. The problem was that his sin nature was his and he knew it. So he knew from investigation and from understanding That he had a sin nature that was responsible, was the source of that sin, and that new life in Christ that he had wasn't.

That's the whole point here. He knew, for I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. I know that now. I understand what he's talking about. Because the mind set on the flesh is hostile towards God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God. I don't care how hard you try. You can be...

I'll give you an example. Growing up, I used to admire these guys called monks. My dad took me one time to a monastery, and I went into this place in Iowa someplace, and it was really kind of an austere place. I didn't find out until after I learned about two natures that when a person decides to become a monk and he goes in a monastery, guess what goes in with him? Sin nature. If he doesn't know this information, he's just putting, like I said, he's putting holy water on his sin nature.

You can't function like that spiritually and be righteous before God. So, I'm not responsible, you're not responsible anymore for the presence of sin in your life. Because it's there. But you are responsible for what you do about it. We can't do anything about indwelling sin. It's there. That was God's problem and He took care of it on the cross. But I'm very much responsible to reject sin. I'm very much responsible not to yield to it. I'm very responsible not to yield to the demands of that Adamic life. I'm responsible for that.

Romans 6.13 tells me that.

My further responsibility is to abide in the Lord Jesus so that I can grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus. I am not responsible for the presence of sin, but I am responsible for what is to be done about it, because God has given me every provision to deal with it by crucifying me, burying me, and resurrecting me. Because either God is telling me the truth, and I no longer have to sin, or this is all a fantasy. And I'm going to sin anyway. No, it's not the way it is. So, responsibility. As a new creation, I just said this, but look at these verses.

However, Romans 8 and 9 says you're not in the flesh but in the spirit. Why? if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of God, he does not belong to Him. You have to have the life of the resurrected life of the Lord Jesus in you to just belong to Him. You know, we don't belong to Him just because we showed up on the planet.

I'm responsible 613. Do not go about presenting your members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness. Paul says because you've been crucified with Christ, don't do this anymore. Because you don't have to. Before you had to. But present yourself to God as those that are what? Most important phrase. You're alive from the dead. He wouldn't say this if you weren't alive from the dead. Because it wouldn't make any sense. Only if you're alive from the dead can you even entertain such a thought as this.

And you're members as instruments of righteousness. And so then what am I supposed to do? I'm supposed to grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, who is now my new life. You think about it. You have spent your entire life before you were saved, what? Growing in the knowledge and grace of sin. Right? Isn't that what you've been doing?

One of the things we're discovering in studying Genesis is that sin expands faster than God can deal with it. I mean, it's going crazy. And it's there everywhere. And the other thing we've discovered is that God's grace and His love for man, He's always looking for a way to bless them. And sin is rampant. Sin is rampant. And how He deals with that are all just temporary fixes until He gets to Christ. And He deals with the entire problem in Him.

So, what's He going to do? Now that I'm saved, now that I'm resurrected with Christ, I have this wonderful position. So what is the work of the Spirit to do? What's He going to do? He's going to conform me. We talk about this all the time. We've been talking about this verse in Sunday School. I am to be conformed to what? To the very image of Christ.

And we know that God causes all things to work together to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. I can't tell you how many times over my life, especially here, that I'll get a call from somebody and they're really upset about some sin in their life that they can't overcome. Or that whatever they did just messed their whole life up.

And, you know, you can talk to him nicely and you can go on and on and on, but finally you come to a point where you have to go to this verse and you say, you see this verse here? It said, God works all things together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Is that true of you? Does He work all things? This incident or this event that's going on in your life, is He working that or did somehow He miss that one? or your sin, He got all the other sins from creation except for your one sin. Right? Did the job Christ do on the cross, was it complete or was it 99.7%? And did this circumstance resulting from your sinfulness, isn't one of these all things? Logically you have to say, well it is one of those all things. Well that starts to change the viewpoint.

Those he foreknew he predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son." Think about that. You and I, from a conditional standpoint now, God takes every single circumstance in our life, and even orchestrates a lot of them, to do what? To do this. He starts out with a tennis player, and now He wants you to live and act like a tennis player. You start out as a son of God and now He wants you to live and act like a son of God. But He knows you can't do that yourself, so He works all things together so that this can happen. He does it because He knows and He understands.

I have a faith responsibility. I have the responsibility to walk by faith, which means really I have to depend on what He tells me. And I have to understand that the Holy Spirit is the one who's ministering this. And I have to let Him do it. And the only way to let Him do it is to believe Him.

So, where am I now? Where am I? I'm positioned in Christ Jesus. That's where I live. He's in my spirit. I know that I am united to Him in newness of life. I am positionally separated from the sinful Adamic life, and my faith in these truths is governed by reckoning.

Really interesting in Romans 6.11, it says, even so, the even so refers back to all this information that went before about my being crucified, buried and resurrected. He says, reckon, count on this. that you're dead to sin and alive to God. Just count on that because it's true.

At the end of the year, if you've made enough money and you haven't got the skill, you go see an accountant. And he puts together your tax return, right? And he brings it to you and he says, here, write a check and sign this and send it to the IRS. And you in your mind, without ever thinking about it, say, I reckon that he put the numbers in there right. He better have put him in there, right? Because the IRS is going to check him. And you're going to get one of those letters from him that aren't too pleasant when you get them, if you've ever been audited. You reckon that he's right.

Well, why don't we reckon that God's right? Why don't we take him at his word? Why don't we consider that I am dead to sin and I'm alive to God? Only because he said so. You can't go to God and say, look, if you give me a feeling, or if I have an experience, or this or that or the other thing, then I'll believe you. He says, no, you just trust me in what I tell you. You just trust me. So, no need to struggle.

If I go back, if I go back and let sin reign, And by going back, it's a sin itself. What happens? I can do that. I can trust my Adamic nature, or I can be tempted and think, oh, this is something I really need to have. Sinful like those apples in the garden, something I really need to have, one of those. I can do that. I can obey the desires of the sin nature.

So what happens? When you do that, what happens to you? Your position can't change because God is the one who gave it to you. But your condition certainly does. The fellowship that you've enjoyed with the Lord Jesus goes away. And so the issue is, how do you restore that fellowship? You restore it with confession. 1 John 1 9.

And the word confession is a really cool word. It means just to say the same thing. Well, based on what I've been talking about the last 20 minutes, how would you confess your sins? If confession means to say the same thing God is saying, how would you confess your sins? Well, you'd have to go down this line and say, well, gee, Father, I confess that you're right and I'm wrong. I have to confess that everything you've taught me about who I am in Christ, what you did about my sin nature, the fact that I'm seated and I have this position, you're right.

And my sinning, and here's the sins, is really spiritual insanity. This is not what you had in mind. I'm confessing to you, you're right, I'm wrong, and you clenched me from all unrighteousness, right? back to fellowship. It never touched my position, not one time, but it sure did affect my condition. So I must depend on the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 1.30 says, but by His doing, His doing are you in Christ Jesus, who has become unto us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

This is what the Spirit of God does. He is the witness to us and persuades us that everything that God has told us in His Word is true. We don't need a bunch of laws and rules to live that way. All we need to do is to understand what they are and to trust Him and live by faith. And He will minister. This is what He ministers to us, my position.

Now, the last thing I want to talk about is you don't need to struggle. This is not a struggling thing. The Word of God tells us, and on Tuesday we were talking about this in Ephesians 4, put off the old man and put on the new. That's a totally effortless exercise. Why? Because it already is off, and you already have the new man on. You may not have known it, but now that you do, it's like a code. Oh, it's off, and the new one's on. I think I'll just stay there. I'll just rest in what's already true.

I am to exercise faith in the finished fact of the cross. Finished. As well as the complete fact of my resurrection, ascension, and the Lord Jesus at the Father's right hand. That's where I sit right now. And I'm to abide. In other words, I'm supposed to stay where God has put me. Accepted in the Father. The same acceptance Christ has. I have access. The Lord Jesus is my very life. I'm there in Him. I rest and there I have fellowship with Him. He lives in me and He serves in me. One last statement and I'll close. This is from an old brother and man named Charles Coates. And I just noticed the time so I'll cut it off here.

He said, it's not only that all our unsuitability as belonging to Adam's race has been removed in the Lord Jesus' death unto sin, but we are now in association with the One who has removed it. We are of Him. We derive from Him. We are all of one with Him. It's not that the flesh has been sanctified. It's not that the Lord Jesus has made all of one with our flesh. It is not our flesh made all of one with Him. It is a new creation in which we all together are all together apart from the flesh associated with the Lord Jesus Christ above.

This is the Christian life. Let's close. Father, how we thank you. How we thank you for the work that you've done to position us in your Son. I pray that each one of us may continue to grow in the knowledge and grace of your dear Son, the Lord Jesus, that we may begin to manifest externally what we already are internally. We pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.