The Impotence of Legalism
Galatians 5:5-6 · Randy Peterman · Sep 12, 2010
Galatians (2010), No. 37
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926214571108

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

We are going to continue on in Galatians chapter 5. I think Bob had the last couple weeks. We turn the corner, and sometimes chapter markers are a little awkward, but we turn the corner somewhere around the end of 4 and beginning of 5, where Paul was using the analogy of the bondwoman and Sarah and Hagar. And now Paul is bringing up yet again the issue of trying to fit the law into the Christian life.

This isn't a surprise, it's the book of Galatians, right? You're not going, oh my gosh, I can't believe he's going to do that. But in verses 1-4, He has brought up the issue of circumcision. We all technically know what a circumcision is, but what is circumcision in Judaism? What's it a sign of? It's a sign of the covenant.

And when does it happen? Technically, if you're a baby. Eight days old. Okay. And so that's always the part that kind of blew my mind is that Abraham and his family all did that as adults. If you were a convert to Judaism, you would do that at whatever age you were. And that part just blows my mind. Just because that seems like that'd be pretty excruciating.

But That aside, we have this concept of circumcision, and of course Bob has gone over the error of legalism that was part of that circumcision. We're going to wrap up that section today with verses 5 and 6. Next week we'll continue on as Paul is expressing personal relationship concerns with these believers there. So if we can't live by the law, how are we supposed to live? We've been over this at least four or five times, I'm sure. By grace, we live by faith. So let's read Galatians 5. I'm going to go ahead and read 1 through 6. We'll read all that section just because there's continuity there. It was for freedom that Christ set us free. Therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.

Behold, I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is under obligation to keep the whole law. You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law. You have fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love."

Alright, so we have this text here. I know that Bob's already covered verse 3, but I want to point out verse 3 because that's going to be restated in a different way in our text. Paul says in verse three, I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is under obligation to keep the whole law.

How many of you have heard believers say, The believers need to just follow the 10 commandments except for one. So just the nine commandments, because we don't have the Sabbath anymore. We've got Sunday. Has anybody heard that before? We bring in parts of the law and we pick and choose, but Paul is reiterating, you either get all 613 commandments or you get none of them. But what's the only way you can get none of them? grace. So we have to, because we were identified with Christ because of grace, we died to the law. We're no longer under the law, the whole law.

So he continues on, because they were trying to walk by the law, he's countering yet again with this concept that we need to be walking, I'm sorry, we need to be walking or living by the Holy Spirit. Paul has reiterated over and over, it was interesting, I don't know how many of you use Bible software for doing studying, but it was really convenient to be able to go through using Bible study software and see that there's a very strong pattern in Galatians. He talks about the Holy Spirit in contrast to the law over and over and over again. I've got it in the notes here.

Galatians 3.2, Galatians 3.3, 3.5, 3.14, He covers it here, he says it in 5.16, 5.18, 5.25, and then 6.8, that we walk by the Spirit. You'd think he had something he was trying to say about we need to walk in the Spirit. So what does it mean to walk in the Spirit? Does it mean we need to do anything to walk in the Spirit?

What do we have to do? Because we've got to do something, right? What do we do? We have to believe. We have to listen. So you mean we have to be living by faith? Yeah. Because that's what he says. He doesn't just say we walk by the Spirit. He says we walk by the Spirit, or in the Spirit, or through the Spirit, by faith, we're doing these things. And these things are part of the growth process. We learn the ways of God. Ways of God are to show us Christ. And in the process, He conforms us to Christ.

Absolutely. I think that's, to say, I believe, we need to have a focus on that. You're believing in something or someone, and in this case it's absolutely someone. Or the ways of God. We really believe that God does it this way. Not some other way. So we have this really important principle, and this is one of my favorite things, is that what Roy has pointed out.

How many of you have ever tried to study one doctrine of the Bible? Has anybody ever done that? Maybe? Like grace, for example? We studied grace before, right? How many of you have ever tried to study one doctrine and found it just bleeds into pretty much every other doctrine you've ever covered?

It's amazing how God's Word is interrelated with these things. So when we say we have, Paul says we have faith, but he's not talking about faith just inside of one little tiny area. It's faith in the breadth of the revelation of God's Word. It's faith in the character of God.

Is God limited or infinite? He's infinite. That's what's so exciting about eternity, when he's going to reveal himself to us. That's why he can have eternity and take eternity to reveal himself to us, because he's infinite. He's not going to be like, oh shoot, it's been three trillion years, I'm all out. No more God left to find out about. No, we have an infinite amount of time. Just to say three trillion years, that kind of blows my mind.

So we have this concept here, and Paul says, and I'm going to flip back to chapter three just because it's there. If I could get someone to read three two through five out loud. That would be handy. This only what I learn of you. Received ye the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish, having begun in the spirit? Are you now made perfect by the flesh? Have you suffered so many things in vain, if it be yet in vain? He therefore that ministered to you the Spirit, and work miracles among you. Doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Alright, so there's a very strong message there that our life in Christ is by faith. He's repeating it here.

Yeah. It seems to me that when I talk about, when I think of just believing and having faith, that that's kind of nebulous to me. Sure. In a sense, it seems like there's a lot of reckoning involved. Sure. That as I think on the word or read the word or hear it taught or whatever, that there's a lot of reckoning within my heart that that's true. Romans absolutely emphasizes that. And I guess in a sense you could say that's doing something, but it is indeed believing. having faith in what I'm told and reckoning that that's the absolute bottom line truth.

The reckoning aspect of our walk with Christ is growth in what is true of us in Christ. What's funny is that I find How many of you have heard the television preachers that talk about, you need to have more faith. If you send in your seed money and have faith, then God's going to give you 10 times or 100 times or some number that's usually a multiple of 10 because that's easy math. Yeah, because I always want to give you the example of if you send in $50, God will bless you with $500.

But anyways, that's a rabbit trail. Actually, last weekend, Carol Volker said to me, I speak in rabbit trails, and I said, I understand that. It was just classic. I asked her if I could put that in my blog, and I did. The thing that's interesting is that as people talk about faith like that, are they talking about having faith in the full understanding of God's Word or what are they talking about when they say you just need to have more faith? Most of them focus on themselves. Right. Okay, it's on yourself.

In their ministry or in some kind of, you know, it's rarely is it in, you know, what God has revealed in His Word. Maybe in some cases, but it seems like it. I was going to say, I think, at least partially, that's what Jesus meant. That unless you become like one of the children, the kingdom of heaven is not open to you.

And that's because children have such great faith. I mean, you know yourself that you can sit down and read a fairy tale to a child And they believe it with all their heart that this really does exist, and it's true, and that this never-never land is there. You watch TV, and it must be true because it's on TV. Just awesome faith that they have in adults. They truly believe. that this is actually real. And if we were there, and I say that from my own standpoint because my faith can be much stronger, that what Jesus says is true. The kingdom of heaven exists. That's where we need to be. That's belief. One of the things I find is difficult is that these people are speaking as though faith is merely volumetric.

You've got a five-gallon bucket of faith, but you need a ten-gallon bucket. You need to go out and procure yourself a ten-gallon bucket of faith so that God will give you your hundred-fold blessing or whatever it is that they're... Whereas Paul treats faith as a on off, as a software developer, I apologize, but I think it's Boolean or binary. It's either one or zero, it's on or it's off. Do you have faith? The things that you're having faith in, as we grow, we discover that the faith has a relationship between many things that are true, but the faith is fundamentally an on and off scenario. Do you have faith in God?

When you were saved, did you understand the fullness that you understand now? No. Clearly, the concept of spiritual growth implies that you understand the very nugget truth of the gospel. And what you have faith and believe in may grow over time, but it's not like a volumetric container where you've got more faith or less faith. That being said, Christ does say, O ye of little faith.

So we have to recognize that there is a sense there that we need to walk in faith and have faith. But reckoning is part of that. What things are part of faith? I think reckoning is probably part of it. What are other things that are elements of faith?

If I say, It's interesting that the word faith has a lot of synonyms in scripture. Trust, belief. So there's a lot of words that really cover the same concept. I think it's helpful to see that they're all interrelated. I gotta have faith plus belief plus trust. It sounds like you're maybe adding things, but you're really not. It's the same concept.

It's the richness of what we have in Christ and Christianity. Often the world accuses us of being people of faith, as though it's this amorphous thing that it's not in something that's true and factual, it's just this nice spiritual thing that you do. Ah, people of faith. It's generic. I mean, a lot of the problems that we have in the Middle East are because they just consider people to be people of faith. Well, the problem there is that it's another nebulous term.

What does that mean, people of faith? What is that faith? What is it in? What does it lead you to do? You know, obviously the people who are, you know, suicide bombers. That's the wrong way. They believe that they're operating by faith. So we need to determine what is the faith in and what does that faith lead us to and Paul wants us to understand that. And I was not going to say the suicide bombers, but think of Ireland. You have the Catholics and the Protestants. I think that's a prime example of, I mean, there's people of faith on both sides. So how does that work? Sure. And that's why Paul, of course, wants them, hey, you guys are having faith in the law. He doesn't use that term, but... Or systems, or churches, or religions, or whatever. Put your name on it. Refrigerator lists, or whatever. Sure.

But the thing is that they're having faith in the law, but they're not having faith in the Spirit. So that's the contrast. And God wants us to have a personal relationship. Yeah. Trusting Him. saves us. Sure. We're just relieving and resting in that. Yeah. Entering in, as it says in Hebrews, right? Entering in to the rest of God. Yeah. And He wants us to rest from our works and He's at rest from His working in us. I mean, He's not idle, He's working. Yeah. Gail, did you want to add to that?

Yeah, there's that one verse, this is always hard to get my head around. that says the evidence of things not seen and I think that when we say what is our faith in it's you know it's not just me whatever yeah it's things that are not seen there are certain concrete things and the word evidence there indicates that somehow there's a reality a But we can't see it. What is the evidence?

Is it the work of the Holy Spirit that convinces us that these things are real? Therefore we see these things that aren't seen, whereas other people think, well, your faith is in nothing. The interesting element of faith as revealed in creation is Romans tells us that It's evidence of God. It's seen, felt, touched, heard things that prove God's existence. But there's another aspect of it, which is the spiritual things that are true, that are real, that we have faith in as well.

I've been called much worse. You mentioned faith. What does it consist of? And it came to my mind that part of faith is mind about what we had been believing to believing the truth about Him and about whatever it is. That's the reckoning. Yeah, part of that's after we've changed our mind, then we put it down as true for us. It's not just a fact, now it's our fact that we face our life on.

And again, all of this is tying in with the concept of spiritual growth, where The Lord reveals to us truth that we can change our mind on, or repent of our position on, and turn it to a godly position, and reckon it true, and we continue to grow. And the cool thing is that doesn't stop. Where in a conditional sense, we continue to grow that way. Positionally, we're going to continue to grow, but it's going to be in a non-repentant form, and instead, an enhancing our understanding form, because we'll have been perfected in Christ. So we have this concept that Paul has talked about.

It's by the Holy Spirit, or through the Holy Spirit, by faith, we're waiting for the hope of righteousness. I really find as an American that waiting is terrible. Last night I was waiting for my daughter to make a decision at a store and that was part of the chaos I mentioned in my prayer request. I didn't know that you could wait so long for such small decisions sometimes. But this is a waiting. How long is the waiting for us as we wait in hope for righteousness? We don't know. It could be our entire life. It could be in a moment. I'd love to not be able to finish this lesson. I would be okay with that. But we have this concept of waiting that's there.

Paul doesn't mention waiting anywhere else in Galatians, and it isn't mentioned very heavily throughout the New Testament. But if there is waiting mentioned, it is waiting for one thing. It's hoping for one thing, and what is that? The return of Christ. Stan? Probably the reason he's not saying waiting that much in Scripture is because it's an expectation. There's a difference.

I think Paul, when he wrote Thessalonians, was considering that to happen. are expecting that to happen at any time. He was expecting to go up before he died. This expectation takes the place of the waiting. If you're waiting, you're putting off something, and you're expecting it in the future, down the road. And so you don't live the way that you would if you're expecting something to happen at any time. The implication in the Greek word for this one, in this case, is expectation. It is waiting, but not...

Oh, is it really? It's anticipation of something that's good that's coming, or something bad that's coming. Like immediate? There's something that's imminent, but it's coming. But the thing that's interesting is that even though the Greek word for this isn't used a lot of times in the New Testament, each time it is used, it's in anticipation of the return of the Lord. He's coming. He's coming. We're waiting. What are we waiting for? The return of the Lord. Awesome. And what's going to happen when the Lord returns? For us, as believers. We'll be like Rapture. We'll be like Him. Alright.

What does Romans 8 tell us about creation? Creation is waiting for the Lord's return. It's groaning. It's waiting for His return. So we have this concept of waiting, and as much as I hate waiting in a conditional, earthly, selfish sense, this kind of waiting is exciting. What does Paul tell us to do for one another in his letters to the Thessalonians? Encourage one another with this waiting. Hey, we're all waiting for this. Isn't this exciting? Yeah.

In this case, he uses the word hope. And I love the word hope. I don't use it often enough. How many of you use hope very often? And in so which context do you use hope? Actually, I think of it as a four-letter word. When I was a kid, I would say things like, I really hope that we get ice cream from the ice cream truck in front of my mom and the off chance that she might give us money. Because really what I hope is that she'd give me money for ice cream on the ice cream truck.

Oh, you use hope in this ambiguous sense. It's not linked to faith. It's a hope soul. Yeah. But instead, what is this hope? It's confidence. It's confidence. That's right. That's a really important word when we look at hope in a biblical context. It's confidence in what God has revealed to be true. Which is not a four-letter word. Yeah. In the future. It's like faith looking forward.

If faith is often used in Scripture looking at the present or historical things that took place in who God is, hope is looking more forward to the things that are about to come. And I want to be careful because faith has looking forward elements too, so they can be used somewhat synonymously in that regard. But we have this hope of righteousness, and that's really cool because the legalists that Paul was writing to We're looking for righteousness when? What was their chronology of righteousness?

It's an ongoing process of compliance. It's ongoing, it's present or not present, if you're living with unrighteousness. If they were honest. If they were honest, yeah. It's all the time. But we have this hope of this righteousness that our position and our condition will be unified. And that righteousness will be us. That's based on God's honesty. Yeah, His just, righteous declaration of our just righteousness, which is pretty awesome. But it's the righteousness of Christ, obviously. It's not of our own doing. What is our being declared righteous called? What's another word for that? A theological word. It starts with a J. Justification is an important concept.

Justification negates the value of legalism. Being declared righteous negates wanting to contribute works. It doesn't mean that I'm not called to live a life by the Holy Spirit that will appear righteous on the outside, but it will be righteous also on the inside because it's by relationship. It's his righteousness. It's his righteousness. Stan? And I was just thinking that Paul being a Pharisee, I'm sure when he was in that group of people, that select group, that there was a lot of boasting, like you're talking about, because of the righteousness and the self-righteousness, not real righteousness, but self-righteousness.

And you could see that when they all got together and crucified Christ. They didn't want to lose their power. They didn't want to lose their position. They didn't want to lose their tradition. They didn't want to lose all these things that they had built up for their selfish means.

And I'm sure when Paul got out of that situation and had his eyes closed and then opened by Christ, this became a horrible thing for him. And the boasting part of it, you can see that throughout Corinthians and the letters that he writes. Boasting is just a terrible thing to him because it was so predominant underneath the law.

In legalism you had the 613 laws and then you had an entire, there may be an actual Jewish name for it, but what I call buffer laws. You've got the 613 plus the extra ones you add on top of that to make sure you never reach the 613. And that's why they have elevators that stop at every floor or at random floors. They pre-rip the toilet paper because it would be work if you had to pull toilet paper off the roll. The scriptures don't say anything about toilet paper. And I don't want to be gross, but it's just one of those things where if you're pre-ripping toilet paper and paper towels so that you're not working, that's ridiculous.

That's not by faith. Third exodus. It was, I don't know Hebrew enough to say, or Latin to do Deuteronomy, the second Deuteronomy would be the third. You know, when they were beating people, it was legally bound that they never have more than 40 stripes. Oh yeah. To make sure they always did 39. And they had everybody in the room counting. Yeah. Everybody, let's all count together. It was like kindergarten.

So we have this life that we're to live, the Holy Spirit living through us by faith, and that is how we are doing the waiting. We're waiting by faith through the power of the Holy Spirit, looking forward and hoping for this righteousness that's to come.

This is going to be in stark, stark contrast to the legalists. And Paul emphasizes that in this in verse six, this next section. And that's why I drew this lovely handwritten stuff on the chalkboard here. Paul starts out with, in verse 6, in Christ. For in Christ.

And my dad and I were having a discussion recently. My dad said these two words are some of the most misunderstood or under-understood words in all of the New Testament. At Holly Hills, we get it. I think most everybody has heard in Christ or with Christ over and over again. because that's an important doctrine, but having talked to various other people, if you say, in Christ, so what?

Who cares? In Christ, well, whatever, we're Christians. What do we need to do as Christians? No, no, no, no, no. Let's stop back and let's step through in Christ. And so Paul, as he's talking to these legalistic, Judaized believers, He's saying instead of in the law, instead of in circumcision, you're in Christ. Not only are you walking in the Holy Spirit, but even outside of that, you're in Christ. Positionally, you're in Christ. So he says, for in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything.

And the funny thing with the word uncircumcision there is that was actually a predominantly Hebrew or Jewish way to say uncircumcised. The Greeks had a different term for it. It's almost nowhere else in any Greek writing that the term Paul uses shows up. Apparently. I'm trusting the people who put those notes together.

But this concept of uncircumcision here is something that would be circumcision and uncircumcision is something that's very important to the Judaizers. What is it about circumcision that is important for them? What did circumcision denote for Abraham? We almost said something similar to this earlier.

Okay, it was the covenant. It was Abraham saying this is the sign of the covenant and Stan emphasized that earlier or mentioned that earlier. You have the sign of the covenant and what is the covenant a sign of? relationship with God. That God made basically a contract with Abraham, a spiritual contract which showed a definite relationship between a higher power to a lower power who was Abraham. And Israel was then a special people. And so the circumcision was a big deal. I mean that was Here, this is my sign of, this is my outward sign of how righteous I am by my DNA, really. We're Jews. My DNA has made me good enough.

Just so I can say, so Abraham basically was the first Jew, right? No. The first, the first, well, Abraham was the forefather of The Jewish nation. But he wasn't the first Jew. Judaism as a religion didn't start until Moses. But you had the nation of Israel. But setting aside a nation This was to set aside a people. This was the very first one. To carry the covenants and the relationship with God forward. He is the forefather and that's very important. That's why Paul notes him as being our father by virtue of faith. Because he set an example that was critical. Abraham was important. He just wasn't the first Jew. He was the first Hebrew. In the sense that Hebrew means one who's crossed over the river. and come out of county and territory. I'm not familiar enough with that vocabulary to say one way or the other on that.

But the idea of Abraham being circumcised, which is what Paul, the Jews were leaning on. Here's the circumcision that started with Abraham. Moses took it as an official law. Hey, you got to do this as well. And in fact, here's a goofy thing. Circumcision with Moses, he was the one that received the law for circumcision, right? And then what did he do with his own son? he was not going to circumcise and his wife forced him to circumcise his son. Which is ridiculous. Was that Moses? I'm sorry. That's what I said, right? Oh, I'm sorry. I meant Moses.

But through the law with circumcision or uncircumcision they were holding it to be incredibly valuable. But here's what Paul says here in the In the text, it doesn't mean anything. And the word means there that we've got translated into American Standard... Who's got a King James? Does anybody mind reading that in the King James? Availeth. Okay. Availeth is actually a little bit better as a translation because the word has to do with it ability or strength to do something.

Circumcision or uncircumcision doesn't have the strength to do anything. But then he uses another synonym for strength there when he talks about the work, or by faith, working through love. He's using a synonym of vocabulary there. So the circumcision doesn't have strength to work. So we've got another thing that does have strength to work. It also shows complete obedience. Okay. The circumcision? Yeah, for Abraham. For Abraham. This is what you'll do. Sure. This is a very strong sign of obedience. It was physical and it had a very strong, severe ramification. Because it wasn't worship this. Why? No. And it wasn't because some other person told him to do that, it was because God told him to do that. The difference between the 613 laws and circumcision, because this came from God.

Under that particular covenant. The other thing to keep in account here with the New Testament context, there were pagan cultures that did have circumcision. So if a Jew was counting on circumcision to show off his righteousness, which technically I don't know how you work that out to where that becomes even remotely something.

I just take somebody's word. If you say you're circumcised, that's good enough for me. The analogy to the New Testament is Baptists and people will use, well, if you're baptized in water, then that's fine. It's like circumcision? Wow. which is why they make it part of salvation, as they tie it in. But even the pagan cultures would take on circumcision. And then, so even if I take you at your word and you say you're circumcised, it doesn't have anything to do to show the relationship with God. And really, the reason I drew this thing on here was, do you have intimacy in legalism? in the law, is there intimacy? There can be, but it's really, really strict.

How did they have intimacy in the Holy of Holies? What process did they have to go through? They had to sacrifice animals, they had to scapegoat, they had the priest went in by himself and he was super clean. And he still had a rope on his ankle. Yeah, and they still sent him in with a little bit of apprehension. Can you imagine John's father, he comes out and he can't speak. And how many people thought, oh he must have gone in with sin. It's amazing God didn't just kill him and we'd have to drag him out with the rope.

No. But you have this, this is one person having one encounter with God and he's gone through all this process and it's really not the same as intimacy like we think of when we think of intimacy with God. Certainly didn't involve boldly going before the throne of God. So intimacy within legalism wasn't there. So what Paul was saying would have really upset the Judaizers and it would have really been something to cause thinking for the believers in Galatia who were being impressed by the Judaizers. He's saying, hey, those things, they don't have any power, they don't have any effect.

Instead, we need to consider the intimacy that we have in Christ. Wait a minute. I had a circle originally around God, but I figured God doesn't have the limitations of a boundary, so I erased it. But man is within the influence of God and inside of God and in Christ. And that's a big deal versus sin separating us from God and constantly being there to keep intimacy from happening. We can still have sin cause us to break fellowship briefly, but our relationship with God has not changed.

Intimacy is still possible and it should be regular. How many of you think intimacy is part of the regular and normal Christian life? How many of you feel like that's understated in the Christian life? You need to have intimacy with Christ. Oh, well I better do my things.

I don't think most Christians even know what that means. I would agree. Because when I've said that to people, you know, you have an intimacy with Christ, it's like, it doesn't compute. I mean, they absolutely, not only have they never heard the term, but they don't even understand what that means. I have no clue. Yeah. It's a really, really big deal.

When I was about 20 and my dad was discipling me, we went through this material and he said, it should be normal for the believer to be walking in fellowship with the Lord. And I just stopped and I was like, that's the craziest thing I've ever read. How could that be normal? Because I had no idea that I was going to identify with Christ. Paul says, hey, you're identified with Christ, this should be normal.

This concept of intimacy, Gail? Yeah, it seems like, before I knew about intimacy and all that, and I see it in people, that it seems like it's more, if you think of having intimacy with Christ, the idea is that you're busy serving in some way. That you're joyful and happy and you're witnessing and button-holing people on the street corner and you're at the church every time the doors open and maybe that's to me in those days that would be the concept of intimacy probably if somebody said well you have intimacy with Christ that would be Probably the only thing I could imagine. Yeah, the outward works. Intimacy, yeah. Outwards, yeah. And that was definitely my perspective.

Coming from a more charismatic background, I had that legalism plus you got to make sure you do your thing so that you can have a second blessing or a baptism of the spirit kind of thing where you feel extra goose bumpy. But even then, what it ends up being is, under legalism, you get this brief scary encounters. Maybe it's less scary in that charismatic context, it was touchy-feely warm fuzzies, but it's brief. I want to have this emotional experiential thing happen to me, and it happens, and if I've been really good this week, and I've been righteous in my own works, then maybe God will show up and make me feel warm and fuzzy.

Rather than, I am walking moment by moment in Christ. The Holy Spirit lives through me, moment by moment, in Christ. And the other wonderful thing is we can count upon all the wonderful blessings we have. If you have that information and you believe that, the wonderful place of our position and all that goes with that, you can be at rest.

You're not, well, am I going to be accepted? What about this and what about that? Am I really his child? Yes, you are. Do I really have the Holy Spirit? Yes, you do. And this just goes on. So having that information and believing it is critical. Because if you don't have that, you're back to every moment you're wondering, well, I'm going to accept it in the next moment. Yeah, it's absolute. Well, rest is so critical as far as a concept in grace. There is no rest in legalism.

I'm erasing the board because I want to actually ask one of the questions that I've got on the handout and I thought it might be interesting to write these things down together. The question that I've got on here is, what areas of the life of the believer does the phrase, in Christ, impact? What areas? All. That's the short version, all. Everything.

There's not a part that it doesn't redefine the scenario that we were in. Because in Christ changes who we are. It changes our position. It changes how we can look at things. Trials and suffering. It changes everything. In Christ impacts everything. So I erased all of that just to write all apparently. You guys are no fun. The whole part of the life of the believer is changed and impacted by this in Christ concept.

What areas does circumcision impact besides obviously the physical area? Since Tom's not here, I know that he would say that all means all and that's all that all means. Yes, thank you. I'm so glad you brought that up. What area is this circumcision impact?

Physical. Physical. Physical, social. Okay, it's going to have a social impact. It was their ID card, if you will. Yeah. I would think that it would impact the sin nature. It does. It builds you up with pride. But the thing is, if we take in Christ, and we'll do a left and a right just because we can, if we have in Christ over here, and under law, because it's not the same thing as being in, This is temporal. You're looking at chronology and at some point in time you're going to die. It's all earthly. It's temporal. It's earthly. There's nothing spiritual about it. And so this is eternal. Heavenly. So we have a really strong contrast.

So when Paul's writing to these Galatians, he's not going to be mincing any words. How many of you have ever found yourself bound between two different logical positions and tried to wrestle through those different positions? I found in seminary that they liked to make us do that and I always found it uncomfortable because I always knew I was going to offend somebody, which isn't always a bad thing I guess. But the thing is that when you're in between these two positions and put yourself in the position of these Galatian believers, These are very, very strong arguments with very real consequences. If Paul isn't there, always reminding you of this, but these people are here always reminding you of this, it's going to be socially disruptive. But it's only going to have temporary impact.

I was thinking too, your frame of reference, your focus, in Christ you're looking at Him. Under law, you have to look back to yourself. Yeah. That's an important distinction that's there. But originally, the one on the left is Christ-centered, but the one on the right truly was intended to be God-centered. It was a supreme, sovereign God that was telling them how they could develop this relationship with Him, but it was through the ceremonial system, which was supposed to have an aspect of faith with it as well, and also relationship.

But they directed it back to themselves. And many times, in the other portion there, you have the antinomine, or however you pronounce that word, but it still comes back to the self. Man has this terrible tendency to always bring it back to himself. In either one of these cases, you can bring it back to self.

And you know there's no rest under the law. There's no rest. effort and anxiety and I'm not good enough I mean look at all of our Christian friends that are even in mainline churches that are in fact they have no rest yeah well the Judaizers snuck in they had a good book and everybody bought it That's not that there's anything wrong with books, mind you.

We shouldn't be burning books. That's not a reference to pop culture, I'm sorry. But the thing that we see is that what pop culture in Christianity means is that we've got to have the stuff that we do. We are really worried about the earth. I mean, there's a whole environmental movement within Christendom to be green and be more environmentally righteous than the world around us. It's earthly. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't have a stewardship issue, which I think exists, because we represent Christ here on the earth. But it's under legalism, it's under works, it's not under grace.

It's not in Christ. didn't they ask for the law? I mean in essence what they're looking for is they were looking for a division so they didn't have to have a relationship with God. You know, give us a law so that we can in and of ourselves. They wanted to be like every other nation. They wanted a king.

The cool thing about a theocracy, just this is totally rabbit trail and political. But the cool thing about a theocracy is that God is a benevolent dictator and when you look at earthly kings, what do the earthly kings do? Saul really screwed up bad. I mean if he's got his best warrior and he's hurtling javelins at him, And he's behaving like an egotistical maniac. He's insane. Versus a theocracy, God's like, oh, you guys want a king? Sure, we can do that.

And Saul stood out visually. He was everything that they thought. He was taller than everybody else. He ran with the prophets. That was cool. He went and won some battles. Awesome. Let's see your king do that. Oh, he's insane. Oh, he's totally disobeyed God. Now, now you've ruined things.

But, but yeah, the, the earthly nature of things with the Israel, Israelites wanted God to give them a law. They wanted these things. Now, what was the, what was one of the purposes of the law? I won't say the purpose of the law, but what was one of the purposes of the law for the nation of Israel? It separated them from the rest of the nations by culture, by food and clothing and health. There were benefits to the law, but it separated them that let them be separate from the other nations that stand out.

It also defined their God. You have to realize during that period of time when Abraham left the the Fertile Crescent and took out and went into the Promised Land. I mean, that was a polytheistic society that he came from. All the gods had different characteristics. I mean, look at the Greek theology of all the Zeus and Mars and all this other stupid stuff that you read about. It wasn't stupid back then. People actually believed in that. They had faith in that.

So this is a defining of who the Hebrew God truly was. And he was supreme, and he was sovereign, and a lot of the other things that the Ten Commandments and other laws showed about him. As Hearns always said, it's God's character. The thing that is interesting about the nation of Israel being separated is that it was God's revelation of who God was, and it separated them from the world around them.

Do believers have things that separate us from the world around us? There are things that separate us, but that's things that come by the Holy Spirit living out through us, not a rigid system. And that's a really big deal if you think about it. That means that it's hard for someone to pigeonhole me. When somebody finds out I'm a Christian, which hopefully shouldn't be too hard to find out, but when someone finds out I'm a Christian, I have found that on occasion people are surprised because I don't have a rigid personality and that hopefully is not a problem, but they're used to legalism. Oh, you go to church? Oh, are you one of those Christians?

Jessica used to work at a... we should close. That's why. Jessica worked at a video duplication business and they duplicated videos for several televangelists. And when her co-workers found out she was a believer, they immediately asked her if she was like the televangelists because the televangelists were doing bad business. The televangelists had people representing them that were totally rude to the customer service people on the phone. And so when they said, are you a Christian? Oh, you are. You're not like them, are you? Because we couldn't tell. You weren't like these people that were Christians that we've come into contact with before. It was a little disheartening, but at the same time encouraging. Hey, I married a pretty awesome wife. But all of that is reflective of the last part of this verse, and we should wind down.

But he says, but faith working through love. Not law, but love. That faith that we're living by is shown in love. And that happens between believers. And that's a pretty powerful thing. The law divided, what did the love do? covered a multitude of sins, didn't it? Like Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians.

Alright, we should close in prayer and we'll continue on next week looking at Paul's curiosity about what is drawing them away from grace. Heavenly Father, we come before you. Thank you for the fact that we are in Christ. Thank you that we walk by faith, by the direction of the Holy Spirit. And Lord, we ask that you would continue to draw these things to our minds as we walk throughout the week until your return. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.