Grace Alone (Part 12): Relationships - How secure are you?

Well, I have a little study that sits in my house that looks out over the front yard, and across the street is the grade school bus stop.

Now, I'm in the study sometimes in the morning.

I have at least one day that I usually study from home because it's a little easier than studying in the church building.

There's so many distractions that it's a little easier to prepare for the weekend there.

And so I sit there, and when my kids were little and they would go to the bus stop, it was great because I could always keep track of what was happening.

But now my kids are older, they don't actually go to that bus stop.

But but there's two boys that I've noticed go to the bus stop almost every day, and when they go there, the first thing they do is they hug.

They give each other a big hug and they drop their backpacks and then they begin a fight.

Now, it's one of those fights where it's one of the faux fights where, like, you know, they're doing ah, and you know, the other one's falling down, and they're they're just doing the whole boy thing of kind of a fake fight with each other, and then often the fighting will turn into dancing.

And and they come to the bus stop early and carry on this little morning ritual almost every time that I seem to see it.

Well, the other day I was sitting in my study, I was uh kind of watching as they were going through their morning ritual, and all of a sudden their fight turned ugly.

What evidently happened, and I didn't have sound, so I'm I'm surmising a few things, is one of them wanted to always get the upper hand in the fake fight, and in the course of it, the other kid decided that he was going to actually hit instead of just pretend to hit, to which the other kid responded with another hit.

And I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, what am I gonna do?

Should I go out there and try to break it up?

Should I call their parents?

What should I do?

Well, they quickly kind of righted it so I didn't need to go out, and they went back to dancing.

But you know, as I watched that little interchange, I thought, how easy is it for something that's fun and good, a relationship that that's positive, to all of a sudden turn negative?

And my guess is many of us know about this, and as we get older, it's not as easy to just go back to dancing.

Maybe this year, as you have gone through Thanksgiving and are headed toward Christmas, you know full well what it is to have a broken relationship.

Because you've had a relationship that was sweet and good, and all of a sudden something just went wrong.

Maybe it was a spouse, maybe it was a boyfriend, a girlfriend, maybe it was a child, maybe it was a brother, a sister, maybe it was a coworker, somebody you used to work with.

There are all kinds of possibilities for times when our relationships become broken.

And what I'd like to do today is look at this passage that we're looking at from Galatians, Galatians chapter 5, verse 26 through 6.5.

And I'd like to point out something here, and that is this passage speaks about how God and a belief in God and his message, the gospel, actually impacts our relationships.

There are a lot of people who think that having a faith in God is just for the future, that it doesn't really impact us in the here and now and in what matters to us most, but that when we believe in God, what it will do is it will help us to one day, maybe when we die, have a have a secure future.

But what we see, and what we've seen throughout the whole fall here, as we've been studying Galatians together, is that when we believe the gospel, that Jesus Christ came to do what we could not do, he lived a perfect life, died a death, that we deserve to get, so that we, if we believe in him, would experience the substitution of Jesus.

That if we believe that, that there are all these positive implications, and that's what we've been looking at during this fall, when we've talked about grace alone in this book of Galatians.

But today what we see is that when we believe the gospel, it actually heals our relationships.

It actually gives us better relationships than if we just relate naturally.

And so the gospel isn't just something for your future, but it actually can change the quality of your life and your relationships here and now when you believe it and let it heal the way that you live.

And here's why I say this in Galatians chapter 6, verse 5, I'm sorry, verse 26, chapter 5, verse 26, here's what it says.

Galatians 6:5

It says, Let us become, let us not become conceited.

Now, when you and I read that, what we think is, okay, that's just a basic exhortation of the Bible saying, look, don't be proud, don't be conceited.

But the word that's used here in the original language is a word that the Old King James Bible translated vainglory.

And vainglory basically means the idea of being empty of glory, being empty of anything that's commendable.

And so what he's saying here is let us not become vainglorious.

In other words, that we're seeking to fill this glory, that's why modern translators translate it conceited, that we feel empty of.

And what happens for some of us is that our relational world ends up being a mess because we're always looking to have people make much of us in one way or another.

And I think in this passage we see three ways that we naturally either relate to people around us or that we experience gospel healing in our relationships.

And here's the first one.

And it's right here in chapter 5, verse 26, where he says, Let us not become conceited, or let us not basically become glory hogs.

And then he says this, provoking and envying each other.

And what this shows us is that naturally we'll either provoke or envy people in our relational world, or we'll end up with a gospel-healed sense and become settled.

If the gospel heals us, we'll become settled.

Now, provoking is a word that when you hear this, you just think of somebody being an agitator.

But but again, the word here has a connotation of one who is always trying to assert their superiority.

And then envying is a word that means obviously to envy what somebody else has, but in a way, especially in this context, it's speaking of inferiority, which are both a result of being empty of glory.

Because if we're empty of glory, what happens is we go into relationships and we say, I have to prove how good I am, and so I'm always trying to look for a comparison to say I'm better than, or if something happens that I say I'm not better than, then I become envious or I become inferior, but both are a result of a lack of glory inside ourselves.

C.S.

Lewis wrote about this years ago in his book, Mere Christianity.

Here's what he said: he said, pride is essentially competitive.

It gets no pleasure out of having something only out of having more of it than the next person.

We say that people are proud of being rich or clever or good looking, but they are not.

They are proud of being richer or cleverer or better looking than others.

It's the pleasure of being above all of the rest.

So here's what C.S.

Lewis said a generation ago.

He said, he said, here's the situation.

He said, you and I, we aren't just proud of having money or being good looking or being clever, but what we're proud of is the fact that we're richer, more clever, better looking than other people.

That we don't have pleasure just simply from having something, but from comparing ourselves in a favorable way.

This is what we do when we provoke.

What we do is we say, I'm looking around and I'm using competition to establish myself as better than other people.

Now, I'm a competitive person.

Our family's competitive, when we play games in our family, it's always competitive.

I don't think this is talking about that kind of competition as much, although it could be.

But what it's probably talking about is when you look at other people and you always want people to know where you stand and where they stand in relation to you.

And when you know that that you're above them, you make sure that they get it, and when they sense and know that they're above you, you feel inferior.

Here's what John Stott wrote about this in his commentary, and I think I have this on the screens just because this is a little wordy, but I think it's worth it if you can can stick with this.

It says what the apostle writes here is entirely true of our own experience.

Generally speaking, we adopt towards each other one of these two attitudes.

We are motivated by feelings either of inferiority or superiority.

If we regard ourselves as superior to other people, we challenge them, for we want them to feel and to know our superiority.

If, on the other hand, we regard them as superior to us, we envy them.

In both cases, our attitude is due to vainglory or conceit, to our having such a falsified opinion of ourselves or a fantasy opinion of ourselves that we cannot bear rivals.

Do you see what he's talking about?

There's some questions that one author poses where he says this he says, Do we blow up or clam up when we're confronted?

Do we pick arguments or avoid confrontation?

When we're criticized, do we counterattacked and get defensive, or do we make excuses?

Or would we would we look at somebody and say, I would never do what they do with a sense of superiority, or do we say, I could never accomplish what they've accomplished?

And you see what each of those things are is their ways of seeking glory through competition and either being inferior or superior to somebody else.

Jim Collins writes about this in his book Good to Great, talking about executives that lead organizations from being mediocre to being outstanding.

And he calls this person a level five leader.

And what he says as he tries to explain it, and I think he chose level five because he didn't know how to even describe it, he said that these people are people that are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.

Now, when we talk about business, to say that people are people who are humble, they're willing to listen, they're willing not to take all the credit and have professional will, what he's saying is there's somebody who has all the will and boldness to push forward, but all of the humility to listen.

And you know, in business, I don't know where that exactly comes from, but what I do know is that that is something that the gospel actually enables us to live out in all of our relationships.

Because what the gospel says very simply is that you and I are not better than anybody else, so we don't need to provoke or exalt ourselves.

And it also saves us from envying other people and being inferior because we can say Jesus Christ has declared over me that I am a person who is made in the image of God and who has been worth the redemption of Jesus Christ wherever I've been.

And so when you and I approach relationships, if we understand and believe the gospel, what it does is it moves us to be able to say, I'm not trying to gain something out of this relationship.

I don't need to compare myself anymore.

So that's one way that we see the gospel changing our relational world.

Here's another.

And that is in chapter 6, verse 1, we can naturally either be quick to criticize or afraid to confront.

But when the gospel works inside of us, what happens is we're willing to restore others or to challenge others along the way.

Here's what it says.

Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit, a reference to chapter 5, we looked at it last week about the fruit of the Spirit, living by the Spirit, those who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently.

But watch yourselves, or you may also be tempted.

And what this is pointing to is that there is a tendency among all of us, whether we're we're people who are Christian, spiritual churchgoers or not, to criticize or be afraid to confront.

And here's what's behind this.

When we criticize other people, what we're often doing is we're saying, the way that I live life is so much better than the way they live life.

I can't believe that they would let their kids do that.

I can't believe that he would say that.

I can't believe the way she dresses.

I can't believe that they would spend their money that way.

Do you hear it?

Or if you're maybe a little younger, you you talk about your friends and you'd say, you know what, I can't believe how they talked about so-and-so, or what they're choosing to do.

And what you're doing in every one of those instances is you're putting inside yourself a sense of superiority and saying, that person doesn't live the way that I live, and the way I live is so much better.

Do you hear the need for glory?

It comes out in our criticisms of people.

And by the way, people of faith do this all the time too.

What they do is they say, you know, my theology is the right theology, everyone else has bad theology, and I'm not saying that it doesn't matter how you think about things, it does.

But you can become so consumed with your rightness that you criticize everybody else and look down on them, or you can become so so consumed with your platform, the things that you believe in, caring for the disadvantaged or something like that, that anybody who doesn't share your passion to the same degree is seen as somehow less than.

And as a result, what that is, is it's it's critiquing from a place of saying, I need glory.

I heard about a man who went to his barber.

And we went to his barber, he told his barber about his plans to go overseas to Rome, and the barber immediately said, Oh, Rome's an awful city, you know, I can't stand that place.

That's just gonna be a horrible trip.

And then he said, Well, what airline are you flying?

And he said, Well, I'm flying such and such an airline.

He said, Oh, that airline, I I've heard people have a horrible experience on that airline.

He said, Where are you staying when you get there?

He said, Well, I'm gonna stay at this hotel.

He said, Oh, I heard somebody sit at that hotel and had a bad experience.

And he said, Well, when I'm there, I'm hoping to do some business.

He said, Oh, people always have bad experiences doing business in Rome.

And then he said, Well, I'm also gonna see the Pope.

And he said, Oh, nobody gets in to see the Pope when they want to.

So about a month later, the man comes back to get his hair cut again and he has the barber inquire.

He says, Well, how was your trip?

He said, Oh, Rome was wonderful.

It was beautiful, the the flight was great, the hotel was excellent.

I I closed my deal.

I gotta see the Pope.

It was a fantastic trip.

And he said, Well, what did the Pope say?

He said, Well, when I bent down to kiss his ring, he said, Where did you get this lousy haircut?

Now that's a goofy story, I know that, but but but it shows what happens when we become critical.

Is is we just everything becomes bad because we feel better about ourselves, even though we're not going to room, we're not experiencing anything because we can say that's just lousy.

Now, the flip side of this, naturally speaking, is when what we do is we become afraid to challenge or confront anybody because we're afraid of how they'll respond to us.

We don't want anybody to get to a point where they don't like us and so we're afraid to confront.

But here, what we're told is that what we need to do is instead seek to restore people.

And this word restore means to mend, which means that we don't just merely call somebody out.

We don't just post something on social media because mending involves personal engagement where we're willing to get our own hands dirty in order to help restore the person, not just to ourselves, but ultimately to God's best.

And here's again what is at stake relationally.

See, if you live naturally in your relationships, what you will do is you will criticize, or you'll be be the kind of person who doesn't say anything.

But but when the gospel is settled in you, what will happen is you'll be able to say, I want what's best for you, even if it means something that's hard for me.

Relationally.

And some of us that means we'll be willing to challenge and confront somebody that we're afraid to ever criticize.

Sometimes it means that we'll let some things go.

If you've been around, you've heard me say this, and that is if you aren't the worst sinner that you know, you don't know yourself very well.

And the reason that's important here is because what the gospel does is it helps us see our own need of a savior so that we don't feel the need to criticize anybody else.

But it also affirms us by telling us that we're so loved that we say, I can confront you because if I lose your affection, it's okay because what I ultimately want is what's best for you.

Do you think that that might be helpful in some of our homes?

To be able to say, I love you, but I love you too much to not say anything.

But I don't come with a sense of superiority and nitpicking critique, but I come as somebody who loves and wants your best.

Do you see how that can change us?

There's some Proverbs that appear to be contradictory.

Proverbs chapter 26, verses 4 and 5.

Proverbs 26:4

They're right next to each other.

One says, Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him.

Then verse 5 says, answer a fool according to his folly, or he'll be wise in his own eyes.

Well, which is it?

It says, answer a fool, and then it says, Don't answer a fool.

Well, what that's saying is that wisdom is actually being able to know the difference, to know when to challenge somebody and when not to challenge somebody.

And where that sense of wisdom comes from is having a sense of self that comes from what Jesus Christ has already said about you and me.

When I first graduated from college, one of the things that I did for a couple of years is I coached a high school basketball team.

And one of the things I learned very quickly was that some of the kids love to be coached, love to be told how they could be better, and some of the kids just wanted me to tell them how good they were and not to ever tell them anything that they could improve at.

And what I learned very quickly was that if I just related one way to all of the kids, some of the kids would become disenfranchised.

And isn't that true in life on a whole?

If you have a company, if you have a family, you can't just say I'm just doing one thing for everybody, but instead what you do is you say, you know what, I need to understand enough to be able to challenge, to help somebody be restored.

And when I understand and believe the message of Jesus Christ, then what happens is I won't be critical because I'll see myself as always in need of grace, and I won't be afraid to confront and challenge somebody because I know that I have a secure standing with God Himself.

And that leads to one last thing that the gospel helps us with relationally.

And this is chapter 6, verses 2 and following, and that is it naturally we'll either run to rescue people or we'll refuse to help, refuse to carry anybody's burden.

Isaiah 6:2

But when we have the gospel settled into us, what will happen is we'll begin to say, I can carry a burden.

I'll seek to carry burdens for others.

Here's what it says Verse 2 carry each other's burden.

And in this way you'll fulfill the law of Christ.

If anyone thinks he's something, when they're not, they deceive themselves.

Each one of you should test their own actions.

Then they can take pride in themselves without comparing themselves to anyone else, for each of you should carry your own load.

So what does he say?

He says that you're to carry a burden for somebody.

Now, in our day and age, again, naturally what we do is we either rescue or we refuse to be involved at all.

And by rescue, what I mean to use a modern psychological term is we become codependent.

Somebody else's problem becomes our problem, and we start to say, you know what, I'm going to fix what you can't fix.

I'm going to take care of you in a way you can't take care of yourself.

Or we get so tired of people who have needs.

Maybe you experience this over at Thanksgiving with somebody in your family who always has a need, and you just say, you know what, I'm done.

I just, I don't need to do that anymore.

But what does this say?

That if you carry one another's burdens, you fulfill the law of Christ.

And what this is referring to is when you have seen Jesus carry your burden, your sin, that you are so moved that you say, if I can carry somebody else's burden, I am willing to do that.

Now here's how it works to carry a burden.

When somebody has a burden, it means they can't fully carry it themselves.

And so this would be like maybe saying you have a sofa to move and you need to pick it up and carry it, but you can't carry it.

It's either too big, too awkward, too heavy.

And so what do you do?

You call a friend, you invite a friend over, and if, say, the sofa weighs 100 pounds and you couldn't lift it because it was awkward, maybe you could lift 100 pounds, but you couldn't lift it by yourself.

You get on one side, they get on the other side, you each carry 50 pounds, and you carry the sofa.

Now, if you bring three friends, so there's four of you, and you each get on a quarter, and then you each have 25 pounds.

In other words, the more friends you have carrying your load, the easier it is.

But here's the challenge that comes for many of us, and that is we become so desperate to be needed that what we do is we say, I'll carry that sofa for you entirely.

Or we get so annoyed at other people's demands that we say, don't ever ask me to help you carry that sofa.

Because I'm just about me and I'm about self protection.

That's what I'm about.

But you see, when you and I come to a point of understanding what Jesus Christ has done, that he sacrificed himself, that he went to a cross, then we'll be able to say, I can carry a load, I can carry a burden for other people.

Not just take care of myself.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote something in his little book, Life Together.

He wrote this little book as he was a pastor in Germany in the 1930s, and as the rise of Nazi power happened, he spoke out against it and ended up in a concentration camp where he eventually was killed, executed.

And he wrote this at one point, he says, We need the words of grace to come to us through the lips of a fellow Christian.

We can't do it alone.

You see, Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood something as he was facing imminent death.

He understood that if he said, I'm just going to carry my own load, that he would struggle, but he said, I need some other people to speak words of grace to help me be true to what I know is most important.

And what you and I need, even if we don't realize that we need it, is we need people to carry our burdens, but we need to then be willing to say, I'll help carry the burden.

And Jesus sacrificed beautifully for his people.

Not to say you must now sacrifice, but as a way of saying, when you put yourself in a place where you understand what I've done for you, then you'll say, How can I do anything but help carry somebody else's load?

So here's the challenge.

You may say, well, how do I get this kind of gospel-healed sense of self?

Well, in this passage, we see this in verses 3 and 4.

It says, if any one of you thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves.

Verse 4, each one of you then should test their own actions.

They can take pride in themselves alone without comparing themselves to anyone else.

For each one should carry their own load.

And earlier we're told in verse 1 that we should watch ourselves so that we aren't tempted.

And here's what's being said, and that is we need to observe the places where a relational world is functioning only through nature.

In other words, where we're so empty of glory that what we're doing is we're saying, I'm comparing myself either favorably or negatively, and here are the impacts.

Where we're saying, I come into a relationship and I criticize or I avoid all confrontation, or I rescue or I refuse to help at all.

Because what happens when we have glory that's been given to us from Jesus Christ, when we understand what Jesus has put into us through the work on the cross and all of his life and the Holy Spirit being poured into us, is we begin to say, I don't have to compare myself with others because Jesus Christ has declared me both a sinner and one who is worthy of love and has been loved to the point of sending Jesus to the cross.

And I can say that I don't need to criticize people or be afraid to confront because I know that any critique I make of others, that there are bigger critiques to be made of me.

But the gospel also assures me that I have standing so I can challenge others for their good, even in places that I may not feel like I have anything to say.

And I can choose to serve.

Not because I'm trying to make something true about me so that I feel good about myself, but I can serve out of a place of saying, I'll carry a load for somebody for a while.

Now, part of this verse saying they should each carry their own load if somebody's not willing to carry their end of the sofa, you know, at some point you can legitimately say, okay.

But be careful that that doesn't become your default.

Because here's what I know, and that is as easy as it was for those two little boys at the bus stop to go from their real fight back to dancing, it's that hard for adults to fix their relationships.

And if you really trust and believe what Jesus Christ has declared over you, then what will happen is you'll be able to enter your relationships and bring life to them all the time.

Even difficult people.

Now, some of you may be here and you may be saying, Well, wait a second.

Here's the way I always thought that it worked.

I thought that I would go to church, I'd learn some moral stuff, I'd maybe get a little more moral if I needed to be, and then God would one day look at me and say, You've done well enough.

Here's your eternity, here's your future.

What the book of Galatians argues, the letter of Paul to the Galatians argues, is that the gospel is that you and I can't perform well enough for God to grant us anything, but that God through Jesus Christ has done what we could never do.

And maybe for some of us here today, this is your day, just to say, God, I always thought that it was about what I did, but now I see it's about what Jesus did, and I can trust Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

Maybe you're here, maybe you say, you know, I've believed that for a long time, but if I'm honest, my relational world is still a mess.

And maybe for you it's just a moment of saying, I know that I've still been trying to get glory into my life, glory that I've already been given, but but I'm trying to get glory from people, from my relationships.

And maybe today is just a day to say, God, I don't want to live that way anymore.

I want to soak and bask in the glory that you've given through Jesus Christ and what he did that I can relate to people without comparison, without critique, and without being afraid of giving myself away too much.

And that'll change the trajectory of your relational world.

So, with that, let's pray together.

Father, as we just conclude this time together, I ask very simply that you would help each one of us to see the places where maybe our own vainglory, our own conceit has kept us from really having a healthy relational world.

And in this, God, I pray that you would give each of us a peace of mind that's truly at rest.

That you would take from us all envy of anyone else, all resentment for anything which has been withheld from us.

That you would take from us all bitterness against anyone who's hurt or wronged us, that you would take from us anger against the injustices, the apparent injustices that we've suffered.

That you would take from us the foolishness of worry about the future and the futile regret of the past, and that you would help us to be at peace with you, at peace with our human, fellow human beings, and because of this at peace with ourselves.

And we pray this all in the strong and beautiful name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thanks for being here.

May God bless you as you go today.