Galatians: Grace Alone (6:11-18)

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Welcome to Newsong Church.

As you may notice, this is not Sunday morning.

We had a technical issue, so we're re-recording the sermon now.

So I'm going to read the text that we're going to that I'm going to preach on, and then we'll get right into it.

So the text is Galatians 6, verses 11 to 18.

Galatians 6:11–18

See with what large letters I'm writing to you with my own hand.

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

For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh.

But far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

For neither circumcision circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.

From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters.

Amen.

And let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you that we are able to re-record the sermon.

Thank you, Lord, for technology.

Lord, we just ask now that you would pour your Holy Spirit upon us.

Lord, please touch our hearts and our minds as we gather together to be more like your Son Jesus Christ.

And I pray us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Now, if you've been following along, we've been going through the book of Galatians for the past couple weeks.

And we're now coming to the end.

This is the end.

This is the last sermon on the book of Galatians.

And the thing with ending things that end in series, you always want them to wrap up nicely.

You think about a TV series or a movie series or a book series.

If they do not wrap up nicely, they leave you confused, they leave you wanting more, or they might even leave you frustrated.

The thing with something that when you wrap up something, you want it to have a good, neat and tidy bow, neat and tidy ending.

And the thing that's going on here, Paul knows this.

He's been writing a letter to a church that's been going through a lot of inner conflict.

And now he's coming to the end of his letter, and he knows this is his last opportunity to get his point across to the people.

And he does this.

He gets his main point across with the letter.

He summarizes it quite well.

So if you haven't, just push pause and go get your Bible or look online and print off the verses.

We're going to look at Galatians 6, verses 11 to 18.

Galatians 6:11–18

And let's see how he starts his conclusion.

Verse 11.

See with what large letters I'm writing to you with my own hand.

Now, if you have the MLT translation, they put this in bold.

This whole verse is in bold.

And they do this because it is for a reason that Paul takes the pen and writes it.

One, he wants to show that it is indeed his words that have been dictated in this letter.

And now he takes it.

And it's a very common thing that when people would have their letters dictated or things of that nature dictated, they would normally take it as their signature.

We can think about when we print off forms or we receive letters, we normally sign them with our own hand because that shows more authority than just having a printed signature.

I can think of when I sold, when we and my wife sold our house, and uh we had we had to sign everything.

We didn't get to just um do the online signature thing.

We had to sign it in person because it's more, it has more weight, it carries more weight.

People would respect what's being written because they um because it carried more weight.

And another reason why he does this, he does it on purpose because he wants to write in bold letters.

Some people debate that this might be because of bad eyesight or something of that nature.

You can't see well, so he's writing really big.

But most likely he's doing this because he wants to continue the tone of his letter.

His letter has been very blunt to the church because it's a very serious matter of what's been going on.

So he wants to end in that nature.

So he does it.

He takes it, he writes in bold because it's very important about what he's about, what he's said and what he's about to say next.

So let's look.

Let's see what he's saying.

Because he's saying, pay attention to what I've written and to what I'm about to write.

It's like just one more example.

It's like when uh for the younger folk here watching, it's like when you get a text message, and uh if you want to get a point across, you read it all in bold, and people will know to look at it more.

So, what is he saying next?

With our minds set on that, let's see what he says next.

I'm gonna read verse 11 again and we're gonna stop at verse 13.

See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.

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

For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but the desire to have you circumcised, that they may boast in your flesh.

Now, what's been going on here?

Paul is talking about the false teachers who have come into the church in Galatia and have started to twist his teaching, his gospel.

Now, these false teachers, they believe, yes, you need to believe in Christ, you need to believe in Jesus.

But then they start adding the old Jewish law into it, that you must follow the law and you must be circumcised.

And they're doing this because they want to add the law into it.

They want to have their own ability to earn their salvation, and that's what's going on here in the text.

And what's going on is that it's pulling, it's pulling the Galatian church away from the gospel message, away from the message of grace, that you're saved by grace.

And Paul sees this happening, and it is a very serious thing to be pulled away from that message, because then it no longer becomes God's gospel, it becomes man's gospel, that they get to earn your salvation.

And they're also doing this, and they get to boast in it because what happens is that it creates a big following, and it makes them look super religious because they have this following now, and that they get to do the all these acts, all these visual outward acts that makes them look very religious, and they start to boast in it, and they start to think that they're better than Paul, and Paul sees this happening.

Now, what he's what really he's getting at the root at is that when we start to boast in things, what do you boast in?

We become prideful, we become self-sufficient, we think we're earning our own way, our own salvation.

And what that does, it just pulls you away from the gospel.

And then this isn't something that was just for that era, it's something that still happens today quite a lot.

And we see this when we really think about it, when we reflect on churches, we reflect on ourselves, our own personal walk, but then also in churches, we see this also in the churches that would call themselves Bible-believing churches.

How do you might be thinking, well, how do we see this?

Well, you see it all in ways that when churches start to boast about their church growth, or when they start to boast about how good their prayers sound, or how good the music sounds, they start to boast in their own works, their own ways that they're attracting people.

Then they might start, we might personally, when you think about it personally, we start to boast in how many times we've read the Bible the evening of the week, or how many chapters we've read, or how many um we might boast also in just ways that we think we've done good works and ways we've helped people, or how much money we've tithed.

We start to boast in those things and we forget about what the gospel truly is.

Or churches start to start they start boasting in how many baptisms or confirmations they've had, or how well they work with other churches.

But this isn't just a conservative or Bible-believing church issue.

It's also churches that would call themselves liberation churches, churches who say that we don't need to follow everything in the Bible.

We just need the essence of the Bible, and that's how we live our life, Jesus' teachings.

See, they start to boast about how inclusive they are, or how many um social justice issues they're a part of, trying to fight against those, or how open they are to new interpretations of scripture, or how they're not bogged down by dogma, or how they're or how much they love to look like the culture.

They start to boast in it, and it becomes another self-project, it becomes more pride.

See, the issue that's going on here is that the human heart always wants to boast in something, it always wants to go like this and say that I've done it, I've done the good work, I've earned it.

But that's not the gospel.

See, the Christian walk is like a race, but it's a long-distance race.

And there's things that we do that can either help us along the way or not help us along the way.

And what happens though is that it never gets you to cross the finish line.

It may help you in the race, but you'll never cross the finish line on your own merit.

See, it's like a runner who, you think about it, I think it actually happened in the past Olympics, that a runner did a long-distance race, and as they started to get to the finish line, before they even crossed the race, they started boasting.

And then they made a mistake and they actually ended up not winning the race because they're boasting their own effort before they even crossed the finish line.

And that's what the Christian walk is like.

And that is something that our hearts can start doing, is that we start to boast in our own effort.

See, no human effort will get you across the finish line.

Paul knows this, and he really wants the Galatian church to remember this: that it's not in their own effort that gets you to the end, that saves you.

Look what Paul says in verse 14.

But far be it from me to boast in the cross.

Sorry.

But far be it for me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

I'll say it again.

But far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

Now, what's Paul saying here?

He is saying that there is nothing in this world that I will boast in except in my Lord and Savior.

Because he knows that that's the only thing that will save you.

See, Paul, um, before becoming a Christian, he was a he was a very respected religious leader.

He was coming up in the in the Jewish faith, he was becoming the most well-renowned person, and he persecuted the Christian church, and he boasted it, and he talks about it in his other letters.

And he put a lot of weight in his own self-effort.

But he knows now that after the spirit that Jesus revealed himself to him, that there is nothing in this world that is worth boasting in except in the cross of Jesus Christ.

And that is what he's saying here.

But you might be thinking, well, isn't this just the classic Christian teaching where you can't be a part of the world, you can't do anything in the world, it's all just rule-based.

That's not what he's saying here.

He's not saying that you should go off into the distance and not be a part of society.

That's not what he's saying.

What he's saying here is that you need to put the cross of Christ first in your life.

You need to have it on your mind and let it control your decisions that you make.

Because when you apply it to your life, it frees you to enjoy the world that God has intended or that God has made that's around us.

See, the cross of Christ, when you do this, when you have it in your mind, that it flows into how we view our church.

It flows into that we need to go to church and be around other Christians and worship together and pray together.

We need to gather.

We need to be a part of Bible studies because of what Jesus did on the cross.

That's how we become more like Christ when we interact with other Christians.

Then when the cross is also on our mind, it flows into how we view family.

It flows into how we view society and how we treat the environment.

The cross flows into how we make life decisions and what we do.

That is what Paul is talking about here.

Is that we need to see the cross of Jesus in our life so that we can make the right decisions.

But it's only done through grace.

It's not done through, oh, I've made a good decision that I'm good now, I'm good of God.

It's not that.

See, the Christian walk is that we, because of what Jesus did on the cross, completely through grace, freely given, that we now live our life by obeying his commandments out of love.

But it's not because we're going to be saved by what we do, it's because we are saved.

You've been saved.

The work is done, it is finished on the cross, so we obey out of love.

That's the Christian thing.

That's the Christian life.

It's not earned, it's freely given.

Now, Paul continues and he talks about a new creation.

So let's see what he says in verses 15 to 17.

For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

See what Paul's talking about here is something he said earlier, and I'm going to read it.

It's in chapter 3, verses 28 to 29 of Galatians.

He says, There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you're all one in Christ Jesus.

And if you are Christ, then you're Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

See what he's saying is that he's saying it doesn't matter if you keep the law to its finest detail, it doesn't matter if you do everything that's written down in the law.

And he's also saying it doesn't matter if you do all these religious acts, that if you look like the most pious, most religious person out there.

He's saying that doesn't matter.

He's saying it doesn't matter if you're all accepting, all super inclusive, everyone's welcome.

He's not saying that either.

He's also not saying it doesn't matter if you're the nicest person.

What he's saying is that you must be a new creation.

And what that means is that he's saying that the spirit of grace has to enter into your heart.

And your heart has to be changed from the inside out, not from the outside in.

And that is only done when you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross.

It is not done through anything else in this world.

Nothing else will save you.

He is saying if your heart isn't changed by the Spirit of grace and you don't acknowledge how much you need grace in your life, you've missed it.

You've missed the point.

Because it doesn't matter if you follow a law, being ultra-religious, and it doesn't matter if you don't follow any law and you do whatever you want.

Nothing matters.

The only thing that matters is the cross of Jesus Christ.

Jesus must be Lord and Savior, and you must follow him.

That is what he's saying.

That is the whole message of Galatians.

But the thing is, the gospel is offensive.

It is very offensive to people because it stands against all our self-salvation schemes.

We must face the offense of the cross before embracing the mercy of the cross.

And he talks about it, he says it.

See, what he says is that all who follow, all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.

What he's saying here is that when you put your faith and trust in Jesus, there is peace and mercy over you.

That you are a child of God.

You are Abraham's offspring, as we talked about earlier in Galatians.

He's saying that yes, you're human.

We are all human.

We're all gonna make mistakes, we're all gonna fall into habitual sins.

It's impossible not for that to happen.

But what he's saying is that you are a child of God, and there is peace, and there is great mercy for you in God's love for you.

And Paul continues when he says in verse 17, because he knows that the religious teachers are also doing this because they don't want to be persecuted from their religious colleagues, the Jewish colleagues around in the culture of that time.

And Paul knows this.

He says in verse 17, From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

See, Paul's not talking about the famous Dan Brown novel where there's the stigmata marks on the hands and the feet.

He's not talking about that.

He's talking about when I preach the cross of Jesus Christ, it offends people.

And that causes persecution, that causes to be mocked, that causes for me to be beaten, that causes for me to be whipped, that causes for me to be stoned.

See what he's saying is here that because I have the cross so much in my life that I'm so focused on it that the world rejects me.

But I am branded for Jesus.

Jesus has me.

I am a child of God.

And that is what happens when you follow the cross.

Yes, the world is gonna mock you, but you have the peace and mercy of God in your life.

And you are Jesus's, you are his.

There's nothing that will take you away from that.

See, those who preach a worldly gospel, as Timothy Keller says, have no scars because the world loves to hear it.

The world loves religion, loves to follow laws, loves to follow rules and morality, outward, these outward things.

But the world hates the cross, it hates the inward change.

So those who follow the gospel will be persecuted.

There's no way to avoid it.

It will happen in some capacity.

See, Paul is so wise as he writes his letter.

He starts, look, he starts with the gospel and he ends with the gospel.

He has some hard sayings in this letter, but he does it with the mind of the gospel always at the forefront.

He's doing it because of what the gospel is saying.

That you are saved by grace, the gospel of grace.

And you might be thinking, well, Matt, what is grace?

See, the whole letter is summed up in one sentence.

That you are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the scriptures alone, to the glory of God alone.

I'll say it again.

You are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the scriptures alone, to the glory of God alone.

See, that's the summary of Galatians.

If we were to tie it all together, that is the summary.

That the gospel is a gospel of grace.

It is good news, and it's all freely given through grace.

You must be saved through the free gift of what Jesus did on the cross.

There's nothing else that will save you.

And Paul goes through all the letters, he writes in this letter, and he constantly goes at it from different angles to show them that it's only because of grace.

Jesus on the cross.

I have running on my mind because I'm going to be running a race later on in the week.

And I'm going to use another running example.

This is something I saw online.

And uh, you know, it was online, so you have no idea if it's true or not, but it's a good example, so I'm going to use it regardless if it's true or not.

There's this race happening.

In the world, and it was a big race, so there's international runners, everyone from all the world running this race.

And the race was going on, and it was a long-distance race.

And towards the end of it, there's two obvious people who were coming to the end of the finish line at the finish line.

And the one who was gonna win, he gets close to it, and then he just stops and he starts to look around all confused, not knowing if he actually crossed the finish line or not.

And then the second place runner is coming up and he sees this.

And instead of just running past him, he actually just comes up behind him and starts pushing him across the finish line because he knows that this man is clearly one.

And it wouldn't be good sportsmanship to just run past him.

What's the point of winning when I know I've been beaten?

So he pushes the guy across and the guy wins.

Now, the gospel is similar to this in a way.

See, we all make these self-projects in our life, and then we start to boast in them, thinking how good we are, how great we are, that God's gonna accept me because of these things I do.

But they only get you so far in the Christian race.

And whether they're good or bad things, we always make them ultimates.

Our heart can't help but do it.

And what happens in this Christian race is that we get confused in our life and we start to lose track of the finish line, the end goal, the future glory of Christ.

And what happens is that we will never cross the finish line.

See, but when we apply the gospel to our lives, the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, what happens is that Jesus comes into our life and he breaks all these self-projects and he pushes us across the finish line.

That is what happens, that is the gospel message that Jesus will get you to the end, nothing else will.

See, a common critique of Christianity is that it's a crush for weak people who can't handle life.

Well, I don't know about you, but I need a wheelbarrow to get across that finish line.

I need to just be carried across.

And the gospel is so sweet to the soul, so sweet to the heart.

When you truly are gripped by the gospel, when you say to God, Lord, take my life and help me to follow Jesus.

I can't do it on my own.

I can only do it if you take me and guide me.

And then you see in the end of the letter, Paul calls them brothers and sisters.

He says, The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters.

Amen.

See, this is a man who truly loves his church, of this church that he planted in Galatia.

And he still calls them brothers and sisters.

Even though they're struggling, even though it seems like they're going one way or the other, he still cares for them deeply.

And that is how we need to view our brothers and sisters in Christ in our own church families.

If we see them stumbling, we need to come up beside them and ask them how they're doing.

And we need to walk with them and remind them of the gospel of grace.

And we hope the same for ourselves.

And when we stumble, people will come up to us and say, How are you doing?

How can I pray for you?

That is the gospel of grace that is only done through the cross of Jesus.

And let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you for Paul.

Thank you for his words.

Sometimes his words are hard to hear, but thank you for the Lord.

Lord, um, as we try to run this Christian race, um, help us to always remember that the gospel message is a gospel grace.

That it is only out of your love that we are saved.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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