The Heart of the Galatians
Roger Henderson · Dec 26, 2010
Specials, No. 01
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926222326399

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

Well, good morning. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Well, it might seem a little bit strange for some of you folks, especially visitors, and actually maybe some of the other folks that are in other classes. I'm going to do a summary of the Book of Galatians. Actually, it's not really my summary.

It's our dear brother Hal, Hal Malloy, who was here for many years. And actually, in our year-long study in Galatians, which we've done all of 2010, We went through verse by verse, but actually that was kind of the shorter version. Hal, if folks who have been here, I know like Winnie and others and Mike and Donna, Hal took eight years to cover the book of Galatians. And what's interesting is I wasn't a member of Holly Hills at that time. I wasn't attending here. I was in another church. But I knew Hal.

I knew he was going through Galatians. And he spent one year on Galatians 220. One year on Galatians 220. And I've been fortunate. Sue's been very kind to me, Sue Anderson. She's copied off Hal's entire notes for those eight years. I had the privilege of going through those eight years worth of notes. Not every page, but a few of the pages.

And I found toward the end he did a summary of the book of Galatians. And I said, wow, a summary of the book of Galatians after eight years. What can I add to that? I said, no, I'm not going to. So I basically studied Hal's summary of those eight years.

And it was four or five pages. Actually, I may get that printed off for you guys. And I'm going to make a few corrections. Sue's typed it up. So that's coming. So this morning, I'd like to go through that summary. And I tried to add parts that I thought would, you know, my little comments here and there. But mostly it's Hal's work. So it's a marvelous overview. So let's kind of just jump into it here.

Basically, two questions that you might ask in looking at the book of Galatians. You might say, well, what's the major theme of this book? That's one question you might ask. And you might, a second question, you say, what are the principles that are taught in the book of Galatians?

So those are the two areas we're going to look at. We're first going to cover the major theme. So just to kind of, but I think it's first a good look at the structure of the book. So I found this little picture and I'm not a Vern. Vern is incredible if you guys come here on a regular basis. He has hundreds of slides, hundreds of things off the internet that he finds. So I found this little thing here. So basically, so anyway, the bottom part of this represents the foundation, the rock.

So as in all of Paul's epistles, he starts with the doctrine. Doctrine first, or the positional truths, who we are in Christ, what's the foundation for the rest of the book. So he starts with that foundation, this big iceberg it looks like here, and then he builds on that. What's the practice? What's our Christian walk based upon those principles? So this structure is very much the same as you go through all of Paul's epistles. You first have the doctrine or the positional truths, then you build on that, you build on our practical Christian walk. So that's the structure of Galatians. So with that in mind, we're going to cut right to the quick here. We're not going to leave you hanging. The theme of Galatians is our liberty in Christ. And I think we'll see that as we go through.

And it's not just one verse. It's many, many verses, many, many places in there where he talks about our liberty or freedom in the Lord Jesus Christ. So here's a verse that Wayne read for us. It was for freedom that Christ set us free. Therefore, keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. So if you look at that, Before I go to the highlights here, if you look at the very first phraser, it was for freedom that Christ set us free. So this word freedom, actually there's a noun and a verb form that's presented here. After the that, that Christ set us free. So what comes across here is that Christ has set us free. He's liberated us. And what was the reason for that? It's the first part of the verse. It was for freedom or for liberty.

So Christ set us free. to liberate us, to live the Christian life. So then you have the therefore. So the therefore looks back and says, OK, Christ set us free for freedom or for liberty, and therefore is based upon what you've learned in those first four chapters. So once you've learned that, then he says, stand firm. Be entrenched in the liberty and this freedom which Christ has set us free.

So we look back to those first four chapters. So we're going to go through and look at a quick summary of some of the aspects of that in a moment here, but I first want to talk about liberty a little bit. When we speak of liberty, it's basically the idea of being liberated from something and to something. If you were in prison, you would be in the walls of that prison, and if you were had a pardon, you'd be liberated from that prison walls to the rest of the world.

So in here, the picture in Galatians is that it's from the yoke of slavery or the yoke of bondage to Christ. That's a message in Galatians there, that you've been liberated from this yoke of slavery or bondage to Christ. So the question comes up, what is this yoke of slavery?

You know, some might say, you know, you look at our world and you say, boy, there's many things that cause us bondage, many things that kind of ensnare us. And you could say, well, some people are sports fanatics. You know, they just go crazy on this. And some are, you know, they like gardening and they like bridge. They like hundreds of things could ensnare you, could put you in bondage. Maybe even doing good deeds could ensnare you. Maybe you think, well, you know, I'll do good deeds. That could ensnare you.

But the message, I think, here in Galatians is that it would be anything that would cause you to be occupied with something other than Christ. The focus of the Christian life is our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. So something that would detract from that could be a yoke of bondage or a yoke of slavery. OK, so now we've got a question here. I borrowed this from Vern, this little picture here.

So one of the main things that occupied, what put the Galatians in bondage? And if you haven't been reading the book, you're probably going to say, boy, I don't have a clue at the moment. But there are really two things that caused them to become ensnared. The first thing was the law or any legal system. This was the Mosaic law. The Galatians were saying, you know, salvation is wonderful. These are Jewish believers in Galatia. They said, salvation is wonderful, Paul, but hey, We've got the holy and righteous standard of God.

We've got to do some of that. That's going to add to our salvation. And Paul says, no, that's not going to add to your salvation. That's going to put you in bondage. Because then you're going to be, on a performance basis, you're going to be saying, wow, I've got to do A, B, C, D, in addition to trying to know Christ. And Paul says, that's not going to work. That's just not going to work. You're going to be in bondage to that system.

Even the most holy and righteous system there is, God's holy standards. It's by faith through grace. And then part two that comes out in Galatians, towards chapters 5 and 6, 4, 5, and 6, is the self-life, the flesh, or the sin nature. That's going to put you in bondage, because the self wants to puff, wants to do something. Hey, I'm pretty good. I'm a Jew. I'm Abraham's offspring. So those are the two things that cause the Galatians to be in bondage. Now I'd like to go back to chapter 1. Let's look at this first verse, 3b through 4.

The Lord Jesus, who gave himself for our sins, so he might rescue us from this present evil age according to the will of God and our Father. So the foundation of the Christian life is that God rescued us. He took us out. He rescued us and he took us to his own. He made us his own. And if you notice toward the bottom part, the reason he did that, he did that to liberate us, to set us free, to liberate us from ourselves to him.

Okay, so let's go on to the next part. Now more to the point about the two aspects of what Christ has done for us in terms of the law and in terms of the self-life. The law. But God, in Galatians chapter 2, verses 3 and 4, but not even Titus, who was with me, though he was a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised.

But it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in who have sneaked in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage. So he speaks here about how these people snuck in to spy on our liberty. So he talks about liberty in there.

And first he says, we didn't compel Titus, our brother. We didn't compel him. We didn't force him to basically to be circumcised, as it says here in the passage. He didn't need to be circumcised, because circumcision was not part of a system of faith. It was part of the Mosaic Law. So right off the bat, he says, no, circumcision is not part of the Christian life.

And Paul mentions that we have liberty, and we possess it. It's a possession of our own. And that's kind of seen in the very last part, which we have in Christ. Despite our liberty, which we have in Christ, we own it. We possess it. It's a very person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then the second part here is the self-life.

And we're going to talk about this verse a little bit more in Galatians 2.19 through 20. But basically, it's the idea that the two parts of salvation, if you think about it, the two parts of salvation, you can divide salvation up into a past aspect, a present aspect, and a future aspect. Or better, we've been saved from the penalty of sin, and the power of sin, and the very presence of sin. So Paul really talks about that in terms of our liberty from this self-life.

The self-life that Christ died on our behalf. He died for the sins of the whole world. That's his substitutionary death. And he died unto the sin nature. And we have his very life. We have the very life of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we died to the law. And on top of that, there's one additional bullet, which I didn't put on there. We are no longer slaves to sin. We're no longer empowered by the sin nature. So Christ died. Until we go to be with him in glory, we died for the penalty of sin and for the power of sin over us. So that was the second aspect that enslaved the Galatians, that the self-life was in view. So we've looked at basically our liberty in Christ. So now, what's the major principles that can be drawn out of the Book of Galatians?

And there's actually quite a few. I have five positive and five negative. We have grace, faith, the Spirit, and liberty. We have law, flesh, the works, death, and bondage. And they're in tension with one another. Each one of those. So in these major principles, each principle in one group is in opposition to the other group. Grace stands in opposition to law. Faith stands in opposition to works. So there's a tension or opposition between those two principles. You can't be in one camp or the other. The believer, at any one moment of time, he's either under grace by faith or under law by works. They're never simultaneous.

And actually, I have a little picture here for you train buffs here. I know Wayne is a train. When you go to the station, there are many tracks there. Some trains are leaving north, some trains are leaving south, right? Have you ever tried to get on two trains at the same time? That would be kind of difficult, to be on both trains at the same time. So if you're on the Grace train, why in the world would you want to leave that train and jump over to the Law train. They're diametrically opposed. And actually, this is an example that J. Vernon McGee gave, and I probably destroyed it terribly, but that was the idea. Two trains at one time is impossible. So hopefully that comes through.

OK, so now I'd like to kind of narrow down the list and just look at these law versus grace, faith versus works, and the spirit versus flesh. So those, I think, are the key. tensions in the book of Galatians and he really, through almost every verse in there, this always seems to come up, grace versus law, faith versus works, the spirit versus flesh. Over and over again he works at those three contrary aspects. Okay, grace versus law. And in Galatians 1 and verse 6, I'll just read it.

It says, I'm amazed you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ. So first of all, by the grace of Christ, we were called or invited into God's grace. It was an invitation. It says, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We didn't seek God. He sought us. We were invited into His grace. And we accepted it by faith.

And actually three aspects, the last bullet there, by His grace we are sons of God, We've been baptized into Christ, and we have put on Christ. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. We have a class that we do where we look at the riches of God's grace. And there's at least 33 or maybe more.

And it's a marvelous study to see what we have in our Savior. And that's the foundation of knowing what grace is about. If you don't know who you are and what you have, you can't live in accordance with that. So that's grace. Actually, I have a couple other charts. Grace is our position. It's immutable. It's an operating system.

People like computers. Some like Macs. Some like PCs. Well, I'm not sure which is the Mac or the PC. Maybe the Grace guys who like Macs will say it's a Mac, and the guys who like the PC will say it's a PC. But it's an operating system. It's an environment.

This is where we belong on a moment-by-moment basis as we walk in Christ. Now, Law. Part of this verse is, you are so quickly deserting him. The idea of deserting him is the idea to change sides, to turn away someone else. It's like if you're in the military. It would be like you being in the service in Afghanistan and all of a sudden you go to the enemy's side and you start serving on the enemy's side. That's not a light decision or not a wise decision probably.

So law is the idea that you're deserting him. You're deserting the one that saved you for another operating system. Living the Christian life by any law system or any form, even the Mosaic law, is another gospel. So when Paul refers to another gospel, he's referring to the gospel of the law. They brought the law in saying, The gospel of grace is fine, but I'm going to have the law too.

I'm going to have both together. And Paul's saying it's never going to work. It's never going to work. You're going to be enslaved to that law system. And if we walk by grace, we fall from grace. And there's a passage that seems rather harsh. In Galatians 5, in verse 4, it says, You have been severed from Christ. You are seeking to be justified by the law. You have fallen from grace. Boy, some have taken that passage and said, I can lose my salvation from that passage. No, you can't.

If you look carefully here, first of all, it says you have been severed. That word severed is the idea of it to be rendered inoperative, put in idle. If you guys know Roman six and Roman six six, you'll recognize that word. That's the same word that's translated there, rendered inoperative.

So it's it means that you're out of fellowship with the Lord and you're seeking to justify yourself by the law and you have fallen from grace means that you have fallen from grace to law. Now you're operating in the law system, not in the grace system. You've changed computers, right? I've gone from my Mac to my PC or vice versa, whichever one you like best. So now faith versus works. So I'm going to ask you a question about these people down at the bottom. The question about these folks, just watch these guys here.

So there are works under a law system or works under a grace system? So works under a law system, they come out of ourselves. It's something that we deem acceptable to God. Maybe it's serving another person. Maybe it's helping people. But the source of those works are not from God. They're from ourselves. Works under a grace system, God has a plan for works.

Ruth Smith was sharing this morning about her Good News Club, talking about good works. There were children in the room with her, and she was trying to encourage them to listen to the speaker. Well, one child didn't want to listen. He went over in the corner, and she was able to share Christ with this little child in the corner, whereas the child wouldn't listen to the speaker. So man has an idea. He has a plan.

Even presenting the gospel, we're all supposed to listen. Maybe a person comes here to listen, and doesn't understand but goes outside the church and somebody shares Christ with him and he believes. So many times we do not know the good works that we're performing, but God has prepared them beforehand. So the question is, are they preparing good works? Not bad works, but works of self-righteousness. We don't know. The answer is we don't know. Hopefully I'm not confusing you there. All right.

So this kind of summarizes Ephesians 2.10.

And Ephesians 2.10 is what I was referring to earlier.

Basically that, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has foreordained that you should walk in them. So every believer is God's workmanship, created for good works. He performs the good works through us as we walk by faith and live by the Spirit.

So we must distinguish between the works of the flesh and the works of the Spirit. So that was my little allusion to that little picture. Our job is sort of sorted out. And I don't personally think that we need to agonize over this. I think that the Lord provides the good works for us as we carry out a Christian life, as we walk by faith in our Christian life, the good works will be obvious that we should be performing. So now the faith part of that. And let's just read before I start here.

Galatians 2.16 says, nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus, Even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ, not by the works of the law, since by the works of the law no flesh will be justified. So the bullets kind of summarize that passage. We are justified by faith in Christ and his person and his work. We couldn't be justified by the works of the law. If works could not justify us, then they cannot sanctify us, set us apart in our Christian walk.

So if we begin in faith, we continue in faith. And so the Judaizers in Galatians were trying to do a game changer, if you will. They were trying to say, okay, you started in faith, but now this Christian life has to be led by a set of rules, a set of works. So you'll see that these works and law kind of go together.

If only faith can justify us, then only faith can sanctify us. Galatians 5, 6b says, but faith working through love, or energizing us. Faith is the energizing force in our Christian life, and it's through love, it says. As we walk by faith, and the Holy Spirit forms Christ in us, his love, joy, peace, long-suffering, and as we grow in him, his love, And it energizes our faith. So essentially love and faith kind of go together.

They're complementary aspects of our Christian life. Now the spirit versus flesh. So let me just read a passage here. Galatians 3, chapter 3. It says, you foolish Galatians who bewitched you before whose eyes Christ Jesus was publicly portrayed as crucified. This is the only thing I want to find out from you.

Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing with faith? Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, that you now are being perfected by the flesh? So, kind of summarizing that, we did not receive the Holy Spirit by the works of the law. We received it by the Spirit, by the hearing of faith.

Romans 10 17 is is faith so faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ we receive the Holy Spirit the moment we believe won't we trusted Christ the Holy Spirit took us took up residence in us forever so we began our Christian life in the Spirit and Galatians 5 25 says if we live by the Spirit let us also walk by the Spirit so walking by the Spirit of God is a way we live the Christian life flesh so let me just read 1 Galatians 5.16, but I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.

For the flesh sets its desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. For these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. So we see this tension again between the Spirit and the flesh. The Spirit of God desires that we walk in Him and fellowship with Him.

The flesh, the sinful nature, desires that we walk in ourselves. In Galatians 6, I have the two bullets there about the, if we sow to the flesh, we will reap out of the flesh. If we sow to the Spirit, we will reap out of the Spirit. So, we reap what we sow. That's a saying that people will say, even people that aren't even believers will say that. Where we live, what we do in terms of our Christian life, where we spend our time, where our focus is, is it on our self works or is it on the works of the Lord Jesus by the Spirit of God?

Kind of in closing here, I'd like to kind of summarize a little bit of Galatians 2.20. You know, this verse kind of summarizes some wonderful aspects of our Christian life.

So if we look at the very first part of Galatians 2.20, it says, I have been crucified with Christ.

It talks about something that happened in the past. I have been crucified. Something that happened in the past with the results up into the present. And if you look carefully, that word crucified is the idea of co-crucified. I've been co-crucified with Christ. There's some wonderful passages that talk about Christ. The picture is that Christ took us to the cross with him. So one of the questions is why Several questions.

The first one, I'm sorry, is basically who is crucified? The person that was crucified is our old Adamic nature. All that we were in Adam was crucified. How was I crucified? And this is really interesting. You know, this is something that for a long time in listening to and reading this passage and studying it was confusing. And then you look in Romans. How was I crucified?

It actually happened in our baptism into Christ. And this is not talking about water baptism. This is a baptism that the Spirit of God does in each believer. We are baptized into the person and the work of Christ, into his death and burial and resurrection.

You know, Verne has this picture he shows many times. I didn't have time to put it in. It has pictures of being buried with Christ, being risen with Christ and seated in the heavenlies. It kind of goes like almost like a checkmark up and down. So that's how I was crucified. I was baptized or immersed into Christ. I loved how Hal would phrase it. I was baptized into Christ and never taken out, never removed. I had a chance to do a baptismal ceremony one time. So I explained this idea about being never taken out. And I said, well, all you have to do for this service is just to never come out of the water. And people looked at me like I was some kind of crazy person. But that's actually the picture. We were immersed into Christ. We were united with Christ.

And that union can never, never, ever change. And that's the baptism that is significant, is a meaning. The water baptism is just a picture of that, what has happened. So, real baptism, you stay in Christ for all eternity. And it's wonderful. You can't be taken out.

And the next question is, why was I crucified? And this is also another wonderful truth. I was crucified to separate me from my sin nature. And this is another wonderful truth. The believer has two natures. He has a sin nature from Adam, and he has a new nature from God. And what happens when we were baptized into Christ, we were separated.

We were severed from that sinful nature. It wasn't eradicated, but we were severed from it. And also, the second part, it was rendered inoperative. It was put in idle, taken offline. So we don't have to follow the dictates of our sin nature or our sinful flesh. We may, but we don't have to. We now have a choice. Thirdly, we're no longer slaves of sin. That kind of goes along with the other two. Since we're no longer connected to it, we no longer have to obey it.

And the question is, how do I appropriate? This is such a wonderful truth. I have been crucified with Christ. How do I accomplish that? Or how do I appropriate that in my Christian life? I definitely don't do a set of rules right like the Galatians. I don't get a checklist out. I appropriate by faith. By counting upon, or as Galatians, Romans would say, I reckon through faith. I reckon myself dead. I put it down as true. It's an accounting term. If you're an accountant, you write in your ledger, Joe Blow sent me $20. You record every single thing in your ledger. We're to be good accountants. We're to reckon ourselves dead. that we're freed from our sinful nature. So that's, I have been crucified with Christ part. And the next part, in the King James, actually I like it a little bit better. It says, nevertheless I live, or I am living.

So how am I to live in this new relationship, being baptized into Christ? First of all, who's living? It's the new creation in Christ that's living. It's the new man that's living. How was I made alive? Once again, it was by baptism, by being immersed into Christ, never taken out, in His death, burial, and resurrection.

What's the purpose of my living? To walk in newness of life, to walk in this new life that I have by faith. And then again, how do I appropriate this new life? By knowing my death to the old self and life to the new. I know that I'm dead, but I know that I'm alive in Him. So death gives forth to life, just like in anything we see in nature. I'm dead to the old, alive to the new.

And there's an intimate relationship that we have with the Lord Jesus. So I really benefited by spending this time in Galatians, looking through it this last year. It's been great. Hopefully I've tried to convey some of that to you. There's a lot of stuff I kind of went through with you. If you have more questions, I'd be happy to talk with you. I'm working on a little three or four page pamphlet of what Hal did.

And so I thank you for this morning. Thank you for listening and let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord, for the blessings we have in our Savior. We're thankful that we have his very life. We're thankful that we've come into this permanent relationship with the Lord Jesus, never to be taken out, never to be separated. And we can count upon that as we walk our daily lives, as we As we encounter one another, we can tell them of the wonderful hope we have of the Savior that loves us and died for us. We ask in His name, Amen.