Immanuel Baptist Church

Galatians 5:1

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This sermon was preached by Rev. Chris Roberts during the morning service on Sunday, July 12, 2009.

Last Sunday we looked at our liberty as believers. We noted that Jesus Christ has made us free from our sins and from the burden of the law. We also looked at what Jesus did to make us free. By his righteousness we have been made righteous, the law fulfilled for us; by his death we have been forgiven, the guilt of our sins paid for.

This answered the first two of five questions about Christian liberty. This morning we will look at the remaining three questions, 1. What does our freedom mean? 2. How do we live in this freedom? And 3. How do people stifle or kill this new liberty?

Like last week we will be drawing from several places in Scripture, starting with Galatians 5:1.

Galatians 5:1

What does our freedom mean for us? If a man is enslaved, chained to a wall, and you unlock his chains, how would you define his new freedom? Probably both in terms of what he has been freed from and what he is now free to do. We have already said we were freed from sin and the law but how exactly did these hold us in bondage, and what does it mean that we are now free?

When sin entered the world it did not just make people guilty, it made people slaves and brought about a change in humans. From generation to generation the weight of sin has been passed on and with it a corruption of humanity. In theological language this is called original sin. The sin committed by Adam has been passed on to his descendants, because of Adam we are all sinners. No one is born truly innocent or in right standing with God. In 1 Corinthians 15:22 we read For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Then in Romans 5:12, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned… Through Adam came sin and death to all humanity.

We are in bondage to death, already spiritually dead and condemned to physical death because of our sin. We are also in bondage to sin such that we are only able to desire evil. Our capacity for obedience is completely corrupted. No unsaved person can serve or desire to serve God. We have noted before Romans 3:10-11 which say, None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. Also Isaiah 64:6 that says all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. Left to ourselves, the best we can accomplish looks like a polluted garment, filthy rags before God.

Other than Jesus, Adam and Eve have been the only people in human history who from the start are capable of choosing good or choosing evil. Today, the will of fallen man is corrupt. There is still freedom to choose, but every choice will be for sin. The unsaved person will not choose to act in a way that is pleasing to God or in obedience to him. Ultimately, this is what it means to be a slave to sin. It has captured your every thought, your every action.

So what does it mean to be free? The restoration of the ability to choose good. Those who are in Christ are able to do what Adam and Eve could do: choose good or choose evil. You are no longer enemies living in constant defiance of God. You are now children capable of pleasing him. Ezekiel 36:25-27 contains an excellent picture of the change we have experienced in Christ: I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Your freedom means for the first time in your life you are able to live in obedience to God. You are free from sin, free from the chains that held you to disobedience. You are free to choose whether you will live in obedience or rebellion. Which will it be for you?

There is another meaning to our freedom. We are free from having to earn our own forgiveness or work for our own righteousness. As we saw last time, no one can make himself righteous, no one can earn his own forgiveness. These come only as gifts from Jesus Christ. You can rest in the comfort and assurance that everything necessary for your salvation comes from Christ’s merit, not your merit; his work, not your work.

Too many Christians misunderstand their liberty. The do not follow Galatians 5:1, they do not experience the full depths of their freedom in Christ. This leads to our final two questions: how should we live as those who have been set free? And how can we kill this liberty? We will answer these questions together, showing three ways we often kill this liberty. With each of these wrong ways to live I will show how we should in fact be living.

The three ways we can kill liberty are by turning liberty into law, into license, or into a stumbling block.

The Christians in Galatia did not understand the changes that have taken place through Christ. They had been born again, received the Holy Spirit, forgiven of their sins, and received the righteousness of Christ. But they made a distinction between the way justification and sanctification are accomplished. Justification is being justified, made right with God. When we talk about salvation we are usually talking about justification. This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 3:23-24: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…

The Galatians knew their justification, their salvation, was the work of Jesus. But from there they thought followers of God had to return to the law. Justification is God’s work, sanctification is accomplished through human effort and law keeping. Sanctification is the process of being made holy. When we are saved we are not suddenly made perfect and sinless. This side of Heaven we will never be sinless but by the grace of God and the work of the Holy Spirit we are made more holy every day. But the Galatians did not recognize God’s work in sanctification. They might say, “I’m saved by faith, thank you Lord! Now I’ll take it from here. I’ve got the Law and I’ve got salvation, I’ll handle my righteousness from here on.”

Having been set free, they chained themselves to the wall once more. Though the law was fulfilled they thought they had to return to the law in order to maintain a right standing with God.

Christians today continue to struggle with something very similar. Normally we do not struggle with the Mosaic law but we do sometimes feel that we must perform in order to be accepted by God. Paul is frustrated that the Galatians think anything of their continuing growth and sanctification is accomplished by their own effort, especially efforts to return to the already fulfilled Mosaic Law. In Galatians 3:2-5 he says to them: Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith…

We kill liberty when we believe we earn the ongoing favor of God by our merit. The Galatians felt themselves closer to God because they followed a particular code.

Someone might point out Philippians 2:12, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Doesn’t the Bible tell us to work out our own salvation? If it is not talking about our justification, which we receive by faith, it must be talking about sanctification! God justifies us, we must work out our sanctification! But note verse 13: for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Yes, you work – but it is not you working but God working through you. Your desire to serve God and your ability to serve God and your power to serve God and your actual serving God all come from God. Live in the liberty that realizes all of salvation, including sanctification, is in God’s hands.

That said, all believers will grow in holiness. I am not providing you an excuse to lapse into sin. “But you said sanctification is God’s work! Therefore if I go sleep around it just means God isn’t yet ready to sanctify me!” What is this but a lack of evidence of any work of the Spirit? Is the Holy Spirit content to dwell in a temple given over to sin? All Christians will grow in holiness. Work at it, work with the knowledge that God is working through you and God will accomplish your sanctification.

If some people err by turning liberty into law, others err by turning liberty into license. The first group says, “Salvation is God’s work, but I am responsible for sanctification!” The second says, “Salvation is God’s work, now I’m saved and can do what I want!”

These are the Christians who treat salvation like cosmic fire insurance. I’ve walked the aisle, I’ve got my card, now I can pretty much do what I want. After all, I am free! What use is freedom if I cannot do what I want? They misunderstand. Freedom in Christ does not mean, “I get to sin!” it means, “I no longer must sin!” Peter offers this response in 1 Peter 2:16: Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Liberty does not remove the expectation of holiness. You are not freed from God’s expectations, you are freed from sin and the law. Before salvation it was impossible for you to please God. Now you are able to! Live in this new freedom.

Finally, there are those who turn liberty into a stumbling block. They have read Galatians 5:1 and want to live free; they have read Romans 14:14 that nothing is unclean in itself, no longer kept from the unclean things of the Mosaic law; and they have grown up in modern America and are fierce about defending their personal rights.

It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. But not so you can be a jerk to everyone else or flaunt your interest in those things some regard as sinful. These days alcohol consumption is one of these issues. In the past many Christians, particularly Baptists, have thought it a sin to consume alcohol. Today that is changing and many believe it is a matter of personal conscience. For many young Christians this means they have an excuse to drink alcohol, and to broadcast their practice. “I am exercising my liberty with this beer! If someone doesn’t like it, they should get over it! If someone stumbles because of it, that is their problem! This is my right!”

This is not Christian liberty. In Romans 14:16 Paul says, do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil. But he adds in 14:20: Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. Backing up to verse 15 we find: …if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. By what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died. Whatever the issue, whether alcohol or sabbath keeping or style of dress in church or any such thing, do not be so interested in your rights. We need to talk about these issues. There are some good things too often tossed out by well meaning Christians. I will argue for these things, but I will not flaunt them. We can defend our rights without insisting that we exercise our rights. This is the balance Paul wants us to find. Do not be so interested in your own “rights” that you make someone else fall. Your brother or sister in Christ, the brother for whom Christ died, is of far greater value than any fleshly indulgence. Live in Philippians 2:3-4 which says, Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

This is liberty: that you rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ, that you cling to holiness, that you delight to please your Father, that you fight sin, that you help your brother walk with the Lord even if it means sacrificing things you might enjoy. In this freedom you will be able to truly enjoy God forever.

1 Samuel 9-31, 1 Chronicles 9:35-10:14

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This sermon was preached by Rev. Chris Roberts during the evening service on July 05, 2009.

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Galatians 5:1

Download Sermon

This sermon was preached by Rev. Chris Roberts during the morning service on Sunday, July 05, 2009.

Our nation has designated several days each year for the celebration of the events and sacrifices that have brought us where we are as a nation. Yesterday we recognized the Fourth of July, the celebration of our independence as a nation. This day gave birth to a nation shaped by the ideals of liberty, individual capability, and the freedom of people to follow their own conscience. We have not always been successful in granting these ideals to all people, but we are nonetheless grateful to live in a nation where we continue to fight for liberty.

But there is another liberty that should interest us, one that is far more important. In Scripture we learn that we are slaves to sin, in bondage and rebellion, servants of Satan. We are hopeless to get ourselves out of this condition unless someone rescues us. The good news is that someone has rescued us, that someone has removed the shackles from his people, letting loose the chains of bondage. Jesus Christ has made his people free.

The kind of liberty we enjoy in this nation is subject to political whim. There is no such thing as lasting stability in government and politics and throughout history we have seen nation after nation move between tyranny and freedom. Political liberty is not a guarantee, as billions of people around the world know all too well. Even here in the United States there are no guarantees. The freedom we take for granted could someday be stripped from us.

But the liberty in Christ is unending, unchanging, an everlasting guarantee to his people. I want to take a closer look at that liberty this morning. As I looked at this there were five questions raised about liberty. We will look at the first two questions this morning and the last three next week. The questions are: 1. What are we freed from? 2. How have we been made free? 3. What does our freedom mean? 4. How do we live in this freedom? And 5. How can people stifle or kill this new liberty?

As we answer these questions we will draw from several places in Scripture but we will start off with Galatians 5:1.

Galatians 5:1

Paul tells us that Christ has set us free for freedom. If you are set free something must have been holding you captive. What have you been set free from? In today’s climate of preaching that often focuses on prosperity seeking or self-esteem building this passage has often been explained as freedom from poverty or anger or doubt or a host of other things. But Paul has something specific in mind. In the New Testament when we read of being set free there are two things we are freed from: sin, and the requirements of the law. In the case of Galatians 5:1 Paul has the law in mind. First we will look at bondage to sin.

In John 8:31-38 Jesus has been speaking to the Pharisees about being set free by the truth found in Jesus Christ. The Pharisees protest that as sons of Abraham they have never been enslaved. They know Jesus is speaking in spiritual, not physical, terms; physically, they had been enslaved several times: to the Egyptians, to the Assyrians, to the Babylonians, now to the Romans. But Jesus was talking about a spiritual bondage and they felt their status as children of Abraham kept them spiritually free.

Jesus responds to them in John 8:34: Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. Some sins might seem harmless enough. You say to yourself, “I’ll just dip my toe in a little bit. It won’t really hurt me and I’ll back out before anything bad happens.” But like a hidden catch in a contract, as soon as the sin is committed the shackles go on. There is no such thing as a little sin, a harmless indiscretion. All sin brings bondage and death. Paul tells us in Romans 6:23 the wages of sin is death. What sin brings, the only thing we can earn from our sin, is death. Who is affected by this judgment? Who are these sinners we read about? Everyone. You and I and our neighbors and our families and our friends and our enemies. Romans 3:23 reads: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Left to ourselves, we are all subject to the bondage of sin.

That is the bondage of sin. What about our bondage to the law? Our available time this morning will not allow us to take a close look at the law, but Scripture teaches that the law holds everyone in bondage. As we have already said, we are all sinners, corrupted by our sin, enslaved to it, sentenced to die because of it. Can there be any hope for us? And what role does the law play?

In the Old Testament God revealed that he had made a way for salvation. Salvation could come to those who would live a certain way, follow certain rules, embrace certain practices. They had to obey perfectly or they had failed the requirements of the law. Through the law God revealed how he wanted his people to live. It showed people the standard of obedience God expected. If they followed the standard they would be saved. If not, they were condemned for their disobedience. The law became the visible, apparent means of salvation. But there was a problem.

The standard of the law was above any human ability to follow. No one could keep the law. As Paul says in Romans 3:20, For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. We are all sinners. The law teaches us God’s standard of righteousness. Through the law our sin is revealed. Because of our sin we cannot fulfill the law. The law provides a means of salvation, but it is out of reach. We can never follow the law. So we are bound by requirements we can never fulfill. This is what Paul speaks of as the bondage of the law.

The first question was what have we been freed from. We have been freed from sin and the law. We have just looked at what has caused us to be in bondage to these. But how are we set free? This is the second question for this morning. The short answer is through the work of Jesus Christ. In Luke 4:18-19 Jesus is visiting a synagogue and is called upon to read from the Hebrew Scriptures. He takes the scrolls and reads Isaiah 61:1-4. His words in Luke are: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. The in verse 21 he says, Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. We are free because of the work of Jesus.

So what has Jesus done to make us free? Jesus gives us part of the answer in the Sermon on the Mount. Jews knew what a burden the law was. They lived under its requirements every day. It was a burden made worse by the added requirements and expectations of the Pharisees. The people expected Jesus to declare the law null and void, lifting its requirements on their lives. But Jesus came to do something else. He said in Matthew 5:17: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. The law has never passed away but it has been fulfilled. The requirements continue to stand, the requirements we could never follow, but they have been followed and fulfilled and completed in Jesus. He did what none of us could do.

That raises two new questions. If Jesus has fulfilled the law, how does that help us? If you have aced all of your requirements in school how does that help me when I’m failing every one? Second, does the work of Jesus do anything for the sins we have already committed? Isn’t there still judgment for these sins? Our failure is not harmless. Our failure is sin and brings wrath. How can Jesus’ work help us in the face of the wrath of God?

Jesus lived a perfectly righteous and holy life. He is the only person in human history to do so. Others were made righteous by sacrifices offered but Jesus needed no sacrifice. That is why he was worthy to be the sacrifice. By his righteousness the law was perfectly fulfilled. How does that help us? In the first part of Romans Paul builds the case for salvation by faith and not by works, demonstrating that by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight. In Romans 4:3 he tells us how justification comes, as demonstrated through Abraham: Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. In Romans 5:17 he adds that we can receive the free gift of righteousness through Jesus Christ. The fancy word for this is imputation. If righteousness were a clothing, Jesus is the one who made the clothing and he has put this clothing on us. Left to ourselves we would be naked, but we are dressed in the righteousness of Christ.

Jesus lived a holy, righteous life. When we turn to him in faith we receive his righteousness. We are free because for us the law has already been fulfilled! We do not have to work for righteousness, we have received it.

Finally, that leaves the punishment due for sins already committed. How did Jesus deal with those? There are two sides to Jesus’ work on earth. By his active obedience he perfectly fulfilled the law, living a righteous life so that we can be clothed with his righteousness. By his passive obedience he submitted himself to punishment and pain on the cross. It was at the cross that he took our sins on himself. He bore the punishment all men deserve. Peter puts it like this in 1 Peter 2:24: He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.

Three questions remain about Christian liberty which we will come back to next week: What does our freedom mean? How do we live in this freedom? And how can people kill this freedom?

For today, the political freedom of our nation has come through the blood of heroes and patriots. The true freedom of all humanity comes only through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. You are slaves to sin and the law if you are not in Christ. Have faith in him and experience true liberty.