Receiving the Spirit by Faith — Galatians 3:1–18

The reading this evening is taken from Galatians chapter three verses one to eighteen.

O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?

This only would I learn of you received ye the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith?

Are ye so foolish, having begun in the spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?

Have ye suffered so many things in vain if it be yet in vain?

He therefore that ministreth to you the spirit and worketh miracles among you, doth he it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith.

Even as Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness, know ye therefore that they which are of faith the same are the children of Abraham, and the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preach before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.

So they then which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham, for as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them, but that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident, for the just shall live by faith, and the Lord is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live in them.

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a case for us, for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree, that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

Brethren, I speak after the manner of men, though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannuleth or addeth thereto.

Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made, he said not and to thieves as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed which is Christ.

And this I say, that the covenant that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law which was four hundred and thirty years after cannot disanul, that it should make the promise of none effect.

For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise, for God gave it to Abraham by promise.

Chapters and sorry, chap yeah, chapters and verse numbers on you in the life of the Bible, then you think they don't come about a couple of hundred years ago.

So when you hear Paul shout, Oh foolish Galatians, you've got to actually take into account what's been said previously.

My dear brethren and sisters in Christ, and I pray you are in Christ.

We come to one of the most hard-hitting portions of Paul's letter to the Galatian church.

Chapter 3 and chapter 4 form the doctrinal heart of the epistle.

And they will take us in a few weeks to work through carefully and safely, I hope.

But in verses 3.1 to 318, we naturally divide it into three movements.

The first is that great statement that in a way kick-started the Reformation at the time of Martin Luther, the just shall live by faith.

The second movement is the law for faith.

And the third movement is when is a promise not a promise.

And then we will close with a pastoral call, because you are all when we need to make that decision for yourselves.

In verses 1 to 11, Paul begins with a thunderclap.

Oh, you foolish Galatians! You can almost hear the pain in his voice.

This isn't anger for anger's sake, this isn't somebody having a meltdown moment.

This is the cry of a pastor watching his people drift from the gospel that he first preached to them.

Remember, the church in Galatians one of Paul's own making.

And he asks them again, Who's bewitched you?

Who has cast a spell over you?

Who has confused your minds so that you no longer obey the truth of the good news of Jesus Christ?

And Paul takes them back to their beginnings.

Having begun in the Spirit, he says, Are you now perfect by the flesh?

Verse 3.

You see, the Galatian church was a church of Gentiles.

They weren't like the other churches, or a lot of the other churches, which were started by a Jewish tradition first.

So they entered the Christian faith in the spirit, by grace, by faith, by the work of Christ.

But now they are being tempted to finish the Christian way.

They are tempted to finish with their Christian life by human effort, by rule keeping, by religious performance.

So Paul takes them back to Abraham.

Abraham, he says, believed God, and it was a counter to him for his righteousness.

Not works, not the law, not performance, but faith.

And then Paul delivers the line that would one day, in the very distant future at this time, ignite the reformation through Martin Luther.

And he says it in verse 11.

It should be tattoos on all of our hearts.

The just shall live by faith.

The just shall live by faith.

We are no longer guilty under the law.

We no longer have to perform sacrifices.

They're done, dead, and buried.

The only sacrifice and the final sacrifice was Christ Jesus on the cross.

And we need to tell ourselves that every day.

We need to remind ourselves when we get up in the morning.

And throughout the day, that we are not slaves of the Lord.

It is not by work, it's not by being circumcised or doing good deeds that we are of Christ.

It is because we believe in the living Lord Jesus.

Little, nothing less, and nothing more.

Because this is the heartbeat of the gospel.

This is the foundation of Christian assurance.

And this is the lifeline for every sinner who knows that they cannot save themselves.

And if you know somebody who says they can save themselves by works, or I am a good person, or I do this for charity, or I put that money to one side, you can turn around and go, No, you're wrong.

It is Christ and Christ alone, not Christ and Christ plus.

In verses 12 to 14, we get the question, the great question that has caused so much disturbance in the Christian world, are we of the law or are we of faith?

And Paul now draws a sharp contrast.

If you choose to live by the law, that includes the ceremonial law as well as the rest of the rules, then you have to live by all of it.

You can't pick and choose.

If you are going to live by a rule that says you can't eat poor, then you also have to live by the rule that says you will go and worship God every day.

If you are going to live by a law that says you can't wear mixed clothes of different cloth, then you must also follow the law that says you don't call people named.

It's either all of it or none.

If you break one law, you've broken the whole law.

And there is no hope for you because there is no sacrifice big enough to cover those sins.

And yet, and yet I then turn and appoint you to Christ.

You see, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming that curse for us, fulfilling Deuteronomy 21, 23.

Cursed it says, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.

Now, I want to digress a wee bit here because we know that Christ died on the cross.

But that cross was made of wood.

The Deuteronomy law just says hangs from a tree.

Hanging from a cross it's wood, it's still a tree.

People will try to argue that it had to be a stake in the ground and he hung like that.

It doesn't matter.

It really doesn't matter.

All it matters is that he died for our sins and he was a curse for us because he died hanging from a tree.

The tree may well have been dead, it may well have been shaped into a cross.

But where do you get wood from?

A tree.

It was definitely a tree.

On the cross Christ took the curse that we deserved, so that we may receive the blessing promised to Abraham.

What is that blessing?

What was Abraham promised?

He was promised a number of things.

But mostly he was promised the blessing of righteousness, the blessing of the Spirit, and the blessing of life.

And how do we receive it?

We receive it by faith.

So what is faith?

Faith is the proof of that which we have not seen.

Faith is that thing which Sir Martus dies for at the flames of Smithior.

Faith is that thing that we shall see next week, the French Huguenots died for.

Faith is that thing where your life is less important than the Lord Jesus Christ and the promotion of his story and the glory of God.

We don't receive it by the law.

It doesn't come by the law.

We don't receive it by works.

We don't receive it by any performance at all.

We only receive it by faith in Christ and Christ alone.

So I suppose the next question then is when is a promise not a promise?

Verses 15 to 18.

And Paul uses a simple illustration.

And he talks about covenants here.

When a covenant is made, it's a legal agreement.

You cannot add to it or take away from it later.

Once it's signed and sealed, it's done.

A promise is a promise.

And God made a promise to Abraham and to his seed.

And Paul is clear that the seed of the promise is Jesus Christ.

And that promise came 450 years before the law was given through Moses.

Therefore, the law cannot cancel the promise.

The law cannot replace the promise, and the law cannot undo the promise.

The promise stands.

The covenant stands.

The blessing stands.

And it is received by faith.

We believe it.

We don't have any legal documents that it's not there, and we can't have it by the law.

So Paul tells the Galatians, if you choose the law, and strangely enough he repeats this in Romans, but if you choose the law, so you want to follow the law, you lose the promise.

You can't have both.

It's either or.

If you cling to good works or works of any type, you cannot cling to Christ.

If you trust in your own performance, you cannot trust in his grace.

And that last one matters.

You see people, especially people in pulpit, they perform.

Sometimes it's like a circus.

Or you see people that go to church and they act out things, they behave in a set way.

Well, how are we saved?

We're saved by grace.

We're not saved by works.

Paul writing to Ephesians, by grace ye are saved through faith.

A gift of God.

Lest any man not of works, lest any man should hope.

I can't remember who says the next bit I want to say, but you know, I boast in nothing else but Jesus Christ.

I can't boast in that.

Can't boast in me.

I can't boast in me.

I can't boast in me, but I can boast in Jesus Christ.

I can boast of Jesus Christ, and I can boast of the eternal life that He's given me.

So you have a decision to make.

You all have a decision to make.

Some of us have made it, some of us think we've made it, some of us sometimes make it and forget about it.

It's a pastoral core.

And in our we church, I would like to think that we've all made that choice.

This choice.

The choice is for liberty in Christ or bondage in the law.

But there are many today in this world.

You read about it, if you look at social media, it's all over the place.

But there are many today who still want to try to bring the law in through the back door.

Modern day Judaizers.

Now remember the Judaizers were a group of people that followed the disciples around, and if they came across non-Jews, i.e.

Gentiles who had converted to Christianity, they said, Oh, you to be a proper Christian, you must first be a Jew, and you must first be circumcised by the Lord of Mo under the Lord of Moses.

We have modern-day Judezers.

Now I don't know whether you get these people coming around saying you've got to be circumcised.

I've not met any of my own.

But I've met many people.

Many people who want to bring bits of law back in.

Maybe it's not the law written down.

Maybe it's not even the 650 law, bad laws in the in the Mosaic Covenant.

It's not the seven laws of Noah.

It's not the laws of the First Covenant.

But they'll say things like, You've got to attend Bible class.

You've got to read your Bible every day.

That's a good thing, by the way, reading your Bible every day.

Don't don't get me wrong.

But it's not a commandment, it's a piece of work.

They'll say things like, You must give 10% of your total income to the church.

Harry's just been on holiday.

Not not linking the two together, but you know, they'll go, you've got to give 10% of your total income to the church.

Actually, in this day and age, that's hard for many people.

But what is it?

It's worth.

They're all very I love it when you get very wealthy people, and you know, I've I've been in churches where they exist, and they go, Well, I give 10% of everything I get.

They don't tell you the right off against tax.

You know, because it's a gift to the church, they can donate it as a charity thing, because it's a church, most churches are charity.

Works come in many ways.

Strictly speaking, Paul in Galatians is talking about the law as he understood it.

But I want to challenge you by going, works actually means being told you have to do something because you are, say you're a Christian, when the reality is you don't.

If you do those things, it should be because you want to do them, or you find them helpful to learn about Jesus to do them, or you want to do some good into the world, that's fine.

But don't you dare ever tie that to your salvation because it has nothing to do with it.

Salvation and salvation alone is all of Jesus Christ.

Nothing more, nothing less.

And anyone who says anything else than that is anything but a Bible believing Christian.

We know many churches that say you also have to do XYZ.

Not in this church.

It's lovely to see you on a Sunday.

Do you really need to come to church?

Well, we do come to church because we come to strengthen each other.

We come to pray for each other, we come to say hi to each other.

On days like today, we come to meditate.

But it's all about growing as a community.

It's all about being friendly with each other, it's all about knowing our problems and sharing them before God.

It's all about hearing the Lord Jesus, it's all about hearing me walk along.

Some people come, some people go, some people come back.

But everything on this point should be about Christ.

Christ alone.

misunderstand uh uh sorry who believe that salvation is any more than in Christ, that it must be earned and maintained or proven by works are so far from the gospel of hope, the gospel of salvation that they are verging on the lost.

I do my best to keep such teaching teaching out of this place.

Sometimes I get caught out and I don't discover it till later.

Because such teaching it harms those who are weak, it burdens the tender conscience of others.

But here we stand on this simple truth.

We live and we gain eternal life through the finished work of Christ nothing more, nothing less.

We are justified by faith the law cannot save us and it cannot make us righteous.

Justification by faith means this we are declared righteous before God purely by grace received through trusting in Jesus Christ not by earning not by deserving not by performing works do not make us acceptable to God neither do works open the door to heaven and works do not add to Christ's finished work.

The Jews had six hundred and thirteen commandments and none of them could save sacrifices we could not save offerings could not save even religious habits like prayers recited without understanding we cannot save.

Only Christ saves only faith receives him and only grace keeps us so how do we apply this then as living as children of the promise firstly I would say do not drift from grace the Galatians began well but drifted.

We must guard our hearts from the same danger wherever we start thinking God loves us more on our good days and less on our bad days we are drifting back to the law.

Secondly do not measure or do not measure others by the law.

The proud need warning here if we judge others by their performance their habits or their failures we are acting like the Judaism we must treat others as God has treated us with grace.

Thirdly we rest in the promise not on our performance.

Our assurances do not come from how well we are doing it comes from what Christ has done.

The promise that promise is stronger than our weaknesses and finally we walk in the spirit not in the flesh.

The Christian life begins in the spirit and continues in the spirit we do not grow by trying harder we grow by trusting deeper.

My prayer for you all is like this that you will never be caught up in works never burdened by law never bewitched by performance just that you will live every day by the grace that flows from the promise given to Abraham and fulfilled in Jesus Christ the just shall live by faith.

May that be the heartbeat of this church of our homes of our lives and of every Bible believing Christian in this land.

Amen.