Galatians | Don't Forget The Cross!

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Good morning and welcome.

Invite you to open your Bible to the book of Galatians as we begin a week of remembering the cross.

And you might ask, well, I thought, didn't know that we forgot the cross.

Well, no, not necessarily.

But it is possible to forget the cross, and we know that because of the book of Galatians.

We'll see in a little bit.

Before we get started in our walk through the book of Galatians this morning, I want to recommend to you a little book by an old, old writer called Stephen Sharnock.

It's a little book entitled Christ Crucified.

It's a really impressive book in that it takes the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ from all of Scripture and impresses it upon your heart.

Christ Crucified by Stephen Sharnock, a little introduction by J.I.

Packer.

Going to be using some quotes from that book this morning.

But I encourage you to get your hands on it and read through it occasionally, regularly.

It will help remind you of the cross of Jesus Christ.

It's important to remember the cross because if we forget the cross, we may depart from the good news of Jesus Christ.

A teenager recently spent a good deal of money to participate in a competitive league.

Competitive league in which he was apparently quite qualified to participate in and which he was doing quite well.

Unfortunately, he was escorted out of a particular event because he violated the league's gender-inclusive rules.

He was approached and asked which pronouns he preferred to use, and he became nervous because he started to repeat the pronouns that he preferred, and he could not remember a fourth pronoun.

He was nervous.

Understandably, we would all be nervous in that kind of a situation.

And in his nervousness, he included a nervous chuckle, a nervous laugh because he couldn't remember that fourth pronoun.

And his laughter was deemed offensive.

And he was dismissed from the competition.

To my knowledge, the young man was not a Christian, and his reaction did not have anything to do with a conviction about anything related to LGBTQI plus choices.

Nevertheless, his chuckle made someone uncomfortable, and so he was excluded from the competition.

That kind of action is sadly becoming routine.

And sooner or later, if you hold to biblical convictions, something of that sort will impact you.

Are you ready?

Will you be ready and able to stand for biblical truth?

And if so, what is it that will enable you to stand?

Because from the beginning of the church until now, there has always been something that the Lord's enemy has used to cause people to depart from standing firm.

Two thousand years ago, the first churches to ever exist were pressured to conform to the cultural pressures from Judaism.

Then the Apostle Paul comes along and asserts that they are in danger of forgetting the cross of Jesus Christ.

See, the cross is offensive.

It was offensive 2,000 years ago.

Not merely because it is a cross, although that is part of it.

We will see more of that Friday evening, but because of what it stands for and because of what those who hold to the cross hold as convictions about the cross and about the person of Jesus Christ.

And so the Apostle Paul wrote to them a letter that provided a practical theology of the cross, asserting to them, do not forget the cross.

It's a practical theology because if you are not a Christian, or if you are almost a Christian, or even if you reject Christ in his cross, the theology of the cross will call you to trust in what God says is true, no matter how you feel, and call you to trust in the person of Jesus, the Son of God, who gave his life to rescue you from your sin.

Now, if you are a Christian already, praise God, from whom all blessings flow.

You also will find that the cross and its theology is practical, for you will find Paul's letter to these early Christians challenging your life and your faith, for it calls you to abandon yourself and to pursue the cross of Jesus no matter the cost.

The early Christians in the southern region of modern Turkey were told that the cross of Jesus is a personal message, because it is a defining marker of a Christian.

They were told that it's a public message because it proclaimed to the world that the only means of salvation from sin and reconciliation with God is through this strange concept of a man crucified on a Roman cross.

It has positional significance because it identifies God's work to free us from slavery to sin and to adopt us as his children.

We have changed our position in life for all of eternity, and it is a provocative message in that it energizes the response or the reaction of faith or the scorn of rejection leading to painful persecution.

Galatians chapter 1, verse 4 encapsulates all of that truth by speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ as the one who gave himself for our sins.

Galatians 1:4

Why?

To deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.

Now that statement doesn't directly refer to the cross or to crucifixion, but it sets up the course of this letter to the Lord's church with four distinct assertions.

Number one, we presently exist in an evil age.

Whether you see that or feel that is not the point.

The point is, Scripture says, we live in an evil age.

Second assertion is that our sins bind us to this evil age.

As though we're chained to it.

We cannot escape it.

The third assertion is that our sins in this evil age are elements from which we then need deliverance.

We need to be freed from it.

And fourth, that deliverance comes through the will of God the Father to give his son to deliver us.

Now, at some point, some Jewish teachers came along and started teaching in these early churches, arguing for a continuation of some of the core elements of Judaism.

It only made sense, they argued, that if these new Christians were going to believe in a Jewish Messiah as their savior, that they needed to then bow to the cultural elements of Judaism.

The Apostle Paul responded as strongly as he could.

Verse 6 of chapter 1, he called that kind of teaching a different gospel that leads to deserting Christ.

Anyone preaching that kind of a gospel in verse 8, he says ought to be a curse, ought to be anathema.

That's why he asserts later in chapter 2 and verse 16 that justification, that acquittal from our sin and being declared right before God, only comes by faith in Jesus Christ, not by following any kind of cultural necessity.

He says it's faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.

He loved us by taking on flesh, by taking on a human body to die for our sin, and to do that by dying on a cross.

That's the message of Hebrews 2 that we looked at last week.

God's Son had to become man in order to die.

This is an important message because the Galatian problem of bending to cultural pressures was a misunderstanding of the place of the cross in the life of a Christian.

My friends, this pressure will only become greater.

The longer the Lord tarries, and the longer you live, the more the pressure will build to cave to that which is not true.

Christians then set themselves up to follow a false gospel by forgetting the cross of Jesus.

Now I don't mean that we become ignorant of the facts and the history of the cross.

What I mean is that people forget the application of the reality of the cross.

Bending to unbiblical or false cultural pressures or even unsupported religious convictions implies that the theology of the cross has been forgotten.

That's why in this short book of six chapters in the letter to the Galatians, there are seven sentences regarding the cross and crucifixion.

These early churches were set straight about the cross so that they might live holy to Christ.

Similarly, we can evaluate our church, churches in our community, and even our own lives by considering how well we remember and apply the cross.

So look with me briefly at these seven sentences and see how they help us remember the cross.

The first sentence is in Galatians chapter 2, verse 20, a familiar sentence to you.

Galatians 2:20

The Apostle Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ.

And it's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

These seven sentences fit into four categories.

The first category is a personal category.

We must apply the cross personally.

And the way we apply that is by dying.

I happen to think that the reason we hear of so many departures from the from the faith of Christianity is because people have not applied the cross personally.

That is, they have not died.

Being crucified with Christ isn't a physical death, because we keep on living.

No, it's it's an associative death.

We die with Christ.

Our individualistic, self-centered, self-sufficient identities must die on the cross with Jesus.

We live, but it's not our life.

It's Jesus' life.

But you know why that's such a problem?

It's a problem because it's not safe.

It is safe to declare that Christ lives in me.

What harm is there in adding Christ to my life, right?

Everybody would like to do that.

It's sort of like adding a superpower.

I can live otherworldly now if Christ lives in me.

And we may not comprehend everything that's in that statement, but it's a safe declaration.

What is there not to like about that?

But it is not so safe when we understand that statement as the Apostle Paul intended it.

The only way that Christ lives in me is if I have been crucified with him.

That, my friends, is not safe.

It's not safe because it implies the end of all that you are, so that Christ might be found in you.

It pictures a done deal that has continuing consequences.

If you purchase a home and you take out a mortgage on that home, you sign the papers in front of the real estate agent or the banker, and it's a done deal.

But then the reality hits you when that first payment comes, right?

It has continuing consequences.

You have to start making the payments.

You see, when a person believes in Jesus, they are crucified with him.

By faith, you put your trust in him alone.

You have been crucified.

We might even translate it as you have been co-crucified.

It's as though you are nailed to the cross.

And the continuing result of that is that you have died.

And any life that is now in you is Jesus' life.

Because you died.

Friends, we remember the cross by living a cruciform existence.

Don't forget the cross.

Instead, live out your death by Christ living in you.

We must apply the cross personally, and the way we apply that is by dying with Jesus.

Our lives are no longer our own, they are his.

The public category.

When the Galatian people believed in Jesus, it was because Paul preached a public message of a publicly crucified Jesus in a public way.

It wasn't private behind closed doors so that nobody else could hear and see what they were doing.

He painted a picture as though Jesus was crucified right in front of them.

So that they could imagine that Jesus is there and they are standing at the foot of the cross, looking up and seeing him writhe in agony and cry out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Jesus was crucified publicly, and his crucifixion was a public proclamation.

We live in a world that wants comfort, and so we we hide that ugliness.

Push it down.

Just like the Galatian Christians.

They needed this reminder.

Those early Christians were in danger of forgetting how the message of the cross was publicly proclaimed, and we risk buying into a false gospel if we misunderstand the public nature of the cross.

The reminder of this public proclamation of the cross was, as the 5th century Christian writer Jerome called them, not words, but peals of thunder.

Preach Christ crucified.

It's not mere words.

It's like God thundering across the world.

In a sermon on Galatians, the fourth century pastor Christostom asked, How is it that Paul can say that Jesus is publicly portrayed as crucified when the Galatians weren't even there?

This is not Judea, it's not Samaria, it's not anywhere near that, it's not Jerusalem, this is in southern Turkey.

So how can he say it's before your eyes that Jesus was publicly portrayed?

Here's what he says.

Paul said, publicly portrayed as crucified, to show that with eyes of faith, the Galatians saw more accurately than those that were there and witnessed the event.

He says he blames them because having seen Christ stripped, crucified, nailed, spit upon, mocked, drinking vinegar, insulted by thieves, pierced with a spear, they have forsaken this man and run back to the law, showing no awareness of Christ's sufferings.

My friends, if we bow to the pressures of life in our world and forget Christ's public crucifixion, we risk forgetting the cross.

And so we remember the cross by proclaiming the reality of the cross of Jesus.

I've sometimes been asked, why do we keep having a Good Friday service?

We need to remember the cross.

And we must proclaim it publicly.

We are to live as those crucified with Christ, always having before our eyes of faith the public crucifixion of Jesus and holding forth that crucifixion as the message of hope for a lost world.

The message of hope is not found in government.

It's not found in social conventions, it's not found in sexual or gender freedoms or conformities.

Freedom is found in a death on a cross, and that must be our public message.

Why is that to be our public message?

Because of the third sentence about the cross in verse 13 of chapter 3.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

For it's written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.

Seven sentences fit into four categories.

The personal, the public, and here we find the positional category.

The collector came knocking, and the collector was God.

Your debt of sin is due, and Jesus took that debt, Colossians says, and nailed it to the cross.

The debt is canceled.

The one who has been crucified with Christ through faith that sees him lifted up high on the cross has been declared right before God.

That means he has been redeemed.

Redeemed means to be purchased.

It's a term that's often used for freeing a slave.

The Apostle Paul pictures human beings with that ancient image of slavery.

As though we are owned by a master, and that master is sin and death.

But Christ's death on the cross purchased the believing sinner out of slavery.

To sin and death.

It's like the Christian's version of Israel's ancient exodus out of Egypt.

We existed as slaves, but a lamb was slain to cover our sin as God redeemed us out of slavery.

The Christian's lamb is Jesus, whose blood was shed to pay for our redemption, our freedom from slavery to sin.

The debt was due, but we could not pay.

That's the apostle's point.

See, Judaism's emphasis on the law didn't pay for freedom, it only reinforced the chains.

That's a curse.

Only Jesus, bearing our sin on that wretched cross, could purchase our freedom.

And he did it by becoming a curse for us.

He took our curse.

He was your substitute.

So the way to remember the cross is by resting in the provision of redemption, freedom.

We must appreciate how the cross has changed our eternal position.

A good friend Stephen Sharnock, my favorite dead guys.

He's alive with Christ, don't worry.

He said, It was the Son of God who stooped down infinitely below himself into our human nature to be a sacrifice for our redemption.

He that was greater than heaven became less than a worm to purchase our freedom.

When we bend to the evil pressures of the world, we forget our eternal redemption and we desire to go back to the chains of our old master, sin and death.

We forget that we have been crucified with Christ.

We skip a chapter and move to chapter 5.

Chapter 5, verse 11, the Apostle Paul says, If I still preach circumcision, that is, that the Jewish customs, the conformity to Jewish culture, why am I still being persecuted?

In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed.

Chapter 5, verse 11.

Seven sentences fit into four categories the personal, the public, the positional, and here we have the provocative or the inflammatory nature of the cross.

It's inflammatory, it's provocative because it energizes the reaction if someone doesn't like this message.

If someone doesn't like it, they will persecute.

Only two times in the Bible is the cross said to be offensive.

More on that Friday night.

The sentence concludes with the offense of the cross.

Right before that, the Apostle Paul says he was persecuted for proclaiming the cross.

In the middle, persecution because of the cross, because of its offense.

And he establishes his argument here by framing it in a question.

Why am I still being persecuted?

In other words, if I stop preaching the cross, I won't be persecuted.

If someone were to argue that Paul was still attached to his Jewish cultural requirements, then he would be guilty of preaching a merit-based system of salvation.

In that case, it would make no sense to proclaim the cross of Jesus.

If I can work my way to heaven, if I can be good and be kind and be generous and a go-to synagogue, if I can do all of things, those things and be right with God, then why am I preaching an offensive message?

But the fact that Paul was persecuted revealed the genuineness of his message, a message based on the offensive nature of the cross.

To rephrase it in modern terms.

We could put it this way.

You could save some pain and agony and anguish and discomfort if you proclaim an LGBTQI plus message.

You'll fit right into the conforming culture.

You proclaim a message about the freedoms and the blessings of abortion and how wonderful that is, you won't face the discomfort of the culture.

But if you proclaim the cross and what that means, you will face the offense of the gospel.

Back in chapter 6, verse 17, the Apostle Paul said he bore the marks of Jesus on his body.

We have a difficulty imagining that.

The Apostle Paul was whipped, which means his skin was torn in shreds.

Heeled over so that he had scars on his back.

He was beaten and left for dead.

He was left for dead after being pelted with stones.

See, personal faith that crucifies one's life with Jesus and proclaims that message publicly, a message that says that redemption, freedom from slavery to sin comes only through the shameful death of a crucified Savior on a cross.

That results in discomfort, in disassociation, in pain of persecution.

But if we seek to avoid all of that, to pursue our own comfort, then we have no cross.

And if we have no cross, we have no gospel.

And if we have no gospel, we have no hope.

Remembering the cross is full of hope.

And we remember the cross by embracing the offense of the cross.

Oh, my friends, the cross provokes an unbelieving world when it crucifies your sinfulness.

It provokes an unbelieving world when it's proclaimed publicly that the only hope is in a man in pain dying on a cross.

It provokes when it says, This is the only means of your redemption.

But it is that gospel that thunders.

It is that gospel that pierces the heart.

Now, if that if that piercing is ignored, if it's not believed in, the resulting action is often persecution towards those who follow the crucified.

But we must embrace that offense rather than give in to softening it for our comfort.

That's why I am hesitant so often to embrace a message that is solely about God's love for people.

Yes, God loves you.

Absolutely.

God so loves you that he wants you to come to repentance.

But you cannot proclaim God's love without proclaiming a cross.

Because the cross is the means of God's demonstration of his love.

We remember the cross by embracing its offense and not softening it.

Where are we?

Number five?

Sentence number five, Galatians five, twenty-four.

We read it earlier.

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Language of the cross returns here to the category of position.

And while that third sentence talked about our position with God in justifying terms, being made, being declared right before him, that we were brought out of slavery to sin and reconciled to God.

Here the position is more in terms of sanctification or being made holy.

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed their evil desires to the cross of Jesus so that our sin comes into submission to him.

We've said, yes, I know.

My sin desires all of the evil in the world.

So I'm going to crucify those desires.

Puritan John Owen would say, mortify them, put them to death.

I like the way that Horatius Bonar described this.

He's a 19th-century Scottish pastor and hymn writer.

He says, if we would be holy, if we would be holy, we must get to the cross and dwell there.

We must get to the cross and dwell there.

Or else, notwithstanding all of our labor, our diligence, our fasting, our praying, and all of our good works, we will be void of real sanctification, destitute of those humble, gracious attitudes which accompany a clear view of the cross.

Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh.

You see, the cross impacts our present position in life.

Those who have come to Christ and do not grasp how the cross is to crucify our sinful motivations are in danger of buying into a false gospel.

As J.I.

Packer said, the cross must shape our faith and thereby reshape our entire lives.

But if we forget the cross, guess what it is that shapes our lives?

Culture, a world, the evil world in which we live.

So we remember the cross by functioning within the transformative power of the cross of Christ.

The person, the person who by faith in the crucified Christ has been brought out of slavery to sin, has Christ living in them.

And that life is no longer enslaved to sin so that it has to obey its lusts.

But it's redeemed.

The power of sin has been severed.

Person is now different from the world, so that they are now in Christ.

But if we are freed from our old master and now with Christ, pardon the pun, we are now in the crosshairs of those who find the cross offensive.

How could we then, how could we then live in the flesh?

Could we then love that sin that appears so horrible in the doctrine of the cross?

Can we take any pleasure in that which procured so much pain to our best friend?

Can we love that which brought a curse more than him who bore the curse?

The answer is yes, you can, if you forget the cross.

But friends, it becomes so much harder to give in to that sin that so easily, easily drags us down if we see it in light of the cross.

Our sixth sentence is in chapter six, verse twelve.

It's those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised in only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.

They want comfort.

They want to fit in, not to be excluded.

They want to be accepted, not rejected.

The person who by faith has been crucified with Christ and has been bought out of slavery is in Christ.

Here that language of the cross being in Christ returns to the public category.

Those new Christians were tempted to diminish the cross of Jesus, to speak less of it, to soften the reaction to it.

Don't make a big deal about being a Christian.

Why?

Because it hurts.

Worse, they may want to kill you.

Coming to Christ is a shift from one side of the spiritual war for souls to the other side.

To join the side of the crucified is to become the enemy of those who oppose God in His word.

So it's only natural to expect to face the consequences of changing sides in the war.

My friends, we must stand firm in our faith against the onslaught of the enemy.

And the only way to do that is to remember the cross by adopting the pain of the cross.

Unfortunately, too many of us become discouraged in the battle.

It might be because we're not expecting our friends to desert us.

It might be because we forget that the cross is an agent of death.

And we resist our dying, spiritually speaking.

It's painful to bear one's cross, and sometimes you feel alone.

But my friends, if we remember the cross properly, we remember the very first sentence.

And the very first sentence reminds us I'm not alone.

For Christ lives in me.

And then we remember He's promised to never leave us or forsake us.

And we remember that the life we now live in the flesh, we live by faith, and so we can take this pain that is not our own and we adopt it as our own.

We adopt, friends, the pain of mortgages.

We adopt the pain of car payments.

Many live with the pain of frail bodies.

Can we not do the same with the pain that comes with the cross?

No, no, no.

We're not masochists who enjoy the pain.

Not what we're saying.

Instead, we adopt the pain of the cross as a pain of eternal value because it bears the marks of Jesus.

And so we come to the seventh sentence.

In verse 14.

Far be it from me to boast, except, except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

A cross by which the world and all of its desires and all of its forces have been crucified to me.

I'm dead to it.

And I to the world.

We must determine to claim the cross personally and collectively.

In order to proclaim the freeing power of the cross publicly, regardless of how provocative or painful it might be.

And it's there at the foot of the cross, at the foot of the odious, ugly, stinking cross of Christ, that we begin to strangely find comfort in the marks of Jesus.

And we strangely find that as we have been crucified with Christ, there is an unknown strength for endurance, and there is a strange boldness for the proclamation, so much that it doesn't seem like we are speaking, but somebody else is speaking through us.

And we then begin to boast.

Not in what we've done, but in a cross.

How does that make sense?

It only makes sense if you have been crucified with Christ.

In the life that you now live in the flesh.

You live by faith in the Son of God who loved you and gave himself.

Again from Sharnok.

This, this, the cross, he says, will be the foundation of all of our comfort.

Are you sick or struggling with disease?

Your comfort is in the cross.

Are you struggling because your family doesn't accept you and your faith?

Your comfort is in the cross.

Are you struggling to crucify the sinful nature of your flesh?

Where is your comfort?

Are you discouraged?

Your comfort is in the cross.

Are you down because you're struggling to make ends meet?

Your comfort is in the cross.

You say if you're never out of wallet.

Not saying it's easy.

It's the reality, the truth of the cross.

And when we forget, we begin to cave to the pressures of the world and the culture that surrounds us.

Sharnak, this will be the foundation of all our comforts.

What comfort can be lacking when we look upon Christ crucified as our assurance and look upon ourselves as crucified in him?

What comforts are lacking when we can consider our sins as punished in him, not ourselves?

And that we are accepted by virtue of his cross.

It wasn't an angel who was crucified for us.

Was the Son of God, one of an equal dignity with the Father, one that shed blood enough to blot out the demerits of all of our crimes.

Even were they more, even more than could be numbered by all the angels of heaven if all were made known to them.

He was not crucified for a few, but for all sorts of offenses.

What comfort is lacking when you remember the cross?

The answer is none.

And so then, with Paul, we remember the cross by praising the cross's personal effect.

Far be it from me to boast.

Oh, but I'll boast in this.

I'll boast in the cross of Jesus.

Because in the cross of Jesus, I was crucified.

One more time from Sharnoch.

Christ is the sum of the gospel.

Sorry.

Christ crucified is the sum of the gospel.

And Christ crucified contains all the riches.

All the riches of the gospel.

And he makes this comment.

Paul was so much taken with Christ, implying Christ crucified, that nothing sweeter than Jesus could drop from his pen and his lips.

Jesus had to be made man in order to die.

And he died a death on a cross so that we might be redeemed.

And in that redemption, to be crucified with him.

So that all of our boast and all of our praise might be in an offensive message of Christ crucified.

Let's pray, Lord Jesus, may we lift you up.

May this week, this week that comes around every year, we all know of it.

May it be a week in which we, your people, stand firm in you, and that we boldly proclaim the message of the cross of Jesus.

May you be so pleased to use us to bring others to trust in you because of that message.

Even this morning, to have heard this strange and offensive message, but to know must trust in it.

Enable your people to be strengthened and glorified in you this week as we proclaim this message, as we look to you publicly portrayed before our eyes, and to relish finally in the mercy of the cross undone through resurrection.

We give you all of praise, all of the honor, and all of the glory as we boast in the cross of Jesus.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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