Freedom in Christ

I have loved the study I've been doing personally with Galatians.

And what I find as I go through it is that Galatians is a book for people who are ready to listen.

Because they feel their need.

I need to listen to this.

And what I find is one thing I hear people say a lot is, you know, Galatians talks about God saving people and rescuing people and sending Jesus to die for our sins.

Why doesn't God just do that for everybody?

I think that's a fair question.

Why doesn't God just save everybody?

And that's one I don't have an answer to.

The Bible doesn't tell us why, give us the answer to that question.

But there is something that people say that I think we do have to address, and that is when people say, if I were God, I would just save everybody.

I've heard people say that, and probably you've heard some people say that.

And as I thought about it this week, I was thinking, no, you wouldn't.

You wouldn't save everybody if you were God.

And the reason I say that is because if if people were God, they would have not just, they wouldn't just have all the power, and they wouldn't just get to do what they wanted to do, but they would have all the knowledge.

They would have all the wisdom.

And if they were God, they would have God-sized love.

And if they were God, they would have God-sized mercy, and they would have God-sized justice.

They'd have God-sized understanding of everything.

And so it reveals this kind of reality for us as one of the things that we think is the only difference between us and God is that God has all the power.

And if I were God, I would do things differently.

But the reality is if you were God, you'd also have all the knowledge and all the wisdom and God-sized love and God's-sized justice, all of those things as well.

Which means that if you were God, you would do exactly what the Bible says God does.

Uh, because he's perfect in every way.

And that's hard for us to wrap our minds around in the midst of this.

Uh, and this is one of the reasons that not just with the book of, with the Paul's letter to the Galatians, but also with any book in the Bible, anything we're reading, uh, we need to defer to God and say, there may be some things here that I don't understand, but I know you've told us these things for a reason.

And I'm wanting to listen.

So if you're able, let me invite you to stand.

And let me, and if you're willing, let me invite you to listen.

Galatians chapter 2, starting with verse 1.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

Then after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem, with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.

I went up because of a revelation and set before them, the privately, before those who seemed influential, the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain.

But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek.

Yet, because of false brothers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery, to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.

And from those who seemed to be influential, what they were makes no difference to me.

God shows no partiality.

Those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me and my message.

On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised, for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the uncircum to the circumcised, worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles.

And when James and Cephas, that's Peter, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised.

Only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.

Let me pray and ask him to bless us as we dig into it.

We're coming into part of a conversation in this, Lord Jesus.

And uh some people, this is the first time they've ever read this passage of Scripture, and there's some things that are difficult to wrap our minds around, some circumstances that are difficult for us to uh step into.

And so we pray that you, by your spirit, would show us what we need to see.

We want to listen, we want to hear, not just with ears of flesh, but uh ears of faith.

Would you bless us and be with us?

And Lord, would you be with me?

This is an unwieldy passage for me this week.

There was so much going on that it was hard to think through what I needed to focus on.

So I pray that you would keep us focused this morning on the cross of Christ.

Bless us and be with us, we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Have a seat.

What are your ifs ands buts unlesses untils?

It is kind of our tendency as Christians uh to add qualifiers to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Bible is very clear.

We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Jesus Christ alone.

Jesus has fully paid the lost penalty.

So when Jesus was on the cross 2,000 years ago, uh that was a plan.

That was something that God had set up for Jesus to go to the cross, bearing the sins for all those who call upon him throughout all of time.

And so when Jesus was dying on the cross, he was dying for our sins in our lives, past, present, and future.

His death on the cross paid for the totality of the sins of all of our lives.

He didn't just pay for the ones up until the point we believe.

He paid for all of them, all of our time on earth.

And then at the same time, Jesus lived a perfect life of obedience to the Lord.

And so what to the Father, so what Jesus did during his lifetime, that is credited to our account.

So our debt is completely gone, and Jesus' righteous life is completely credited to ours.

So that when God looks at our account, he sees that we have the merit of Jesus Christ.

And so if we say Jesus plus anything or minus anything, or instead of, then we are somehow chipping away at that reality that God has accomplished our salvation fully in Christ.

And what we call works in the Christian life is not a prerequisite for being saved.

It is a result.

It's the fruit of being saved, of a changed life, of somebody who's been restored to God in that relationship.

A little bit like when you first got married, uh, if you got married, and uh within that first year, you made a lot of changes because a new relationship has been established.

I'm still changing from the result of that moment uh 32 years ago, 30-ish years ago where we got married, I'm still going through that change process of what is it like to live with my wife and to be her husband.

And at the same time, for us, uh, we got a lifetime here of figuring out what does it mean to belong to the Lord Jesus Christ and experience his grace.

So works are a fruit of having been made right.

The problem is, people, and this is a quote from somebody, this quote says, people can be going to church for years, and all they see are the things they have to believe and the things they have to do, and they miss the point of the gospel, which is it's not what you are to do, but what Jesus has done for you.

And what that means for us is quite often we we find ourselves more frustrated, more uh weighed down, and carrying uh the Christian life as a burden instead of as stepping into the freedom that is ours in Jesus Christ.

So let's dig into this passage a little bit and find out what he's telling us about freedom in Christ.

Now I know we are, as we're reading this, it's kind of like reading, hearing one side of a telephone conversation.

You know, he Paul's having a conversation with people who've already had a conversation with him.

And so he's responding to them.

So we're gonna put it together the best we can.

So what he says in this passage is we went to Jerusalem in response to a revelation.

Uh we went up to Jerusalem again.

I went in response to a revelation, verse 2.

Now we don't know what the revelation was, but a lot of commentaries will point us to Acts chapter 11, where there was a man named Agabus who received the prophecy from the Lord that there was going to be a famine throughout the region.

Acts 11 · chapter mention

And so Paul went up to Jerusalem at that point to raise money for famine relief.

So that's probably what it was, but he just doesn't tell us in this way.

He took along with him Barnabas, who was a Jewish believer, and Titus, who was a Gentile, which means he was not circumcised, which kind of brings the action that takes place in this passage.

Then he says there were Jews who said they followed Christ, and who said that Titus needed to be circumcised to be saved.

So yes, Jesus, but Jesus plus circumcision, you have to have circumcision to be saved.

And that brings us to a phenomenon that we call legalism.

So legalism, in its simplest form, is trying to earn God's forgiveness and acceptance through my obedience rather than through the finished work of Christ.

And that is our tendency.

Christians, even, and world religions throughout, but even Christians who understand the grace of God and the Lord Jesus Christ may have legalistic tendencies or interact with people in a legal or judging demeanor.

Even very sincere Christians who understand grace and preach grace can fall into that pattern of legalistically dealing with other people, making demands and having an attitude of judging other people.

Even Christians can fall into that.

But these Judaizers are doing something different.

They're not just falling into a tone of legalism, they're actually teaching you have to do, you have to keep the Old Testament law to be saved.

To be saved, including circumcision and everything else.

And so Paul speaking about them says that they're including this as a prerequisite for salvation, and he refers to them as spies, false brothers, and he says they're up to no good.

They are, spy is a word of hostility.

So they didn't come listening, celebrating, participating, or learning.

They came to exert their influence and change the nature of the gospel in the early church.

And so what Paul does is he goes to the inner circle of apostles.

And so in verse 2, he goes to and he says, To make sure I was not running or had not run my race in vain.

And uh I looked back at some things I'd written a while back about this passage, and I realized I was wrong about that.

And the stuff that I was.

Thank you, Sharon, for pointing that out in front of everybody.

I realized I was wrong in my understanding of that.

Because when I read it, I read it like Paul was approaching it the way that I would approach it, in the sense of saying, I'm not sure I'm right on this.

I'm a little confused about this.

That's not what Paul's saying here.

What Paul is saying when he says, I was afraid I might I was not running or had run my race in vain, he doesn't mean that he got the gospel, he might have got the gospel wrong and he had to ask these other people if he got it right.

No.

He received it from a revelation directly from Jesus Christ himself at his conversion.

And his whole life, he's not confused about this.

Not at all.

The thing he's that he's dealing with here is running his race in vain, is he's just now gone to Jerusalem and he's not seeking clarity for himself about what the gospel is.

He's seeking clarity about what they're teaching as the gospel.

Because he has these people coming and saying, you have to be circumcised to be saved.

And that's not Paul's message.

And so we what we get is really two different gospels, as Paul called it in chapter 1, verses 6 and 9.

He says, you're hearing a different gospel.

So let's put it in the horses' mouths themselves, if we can.

So Paul's gospel, the way he expressed it in Acts chapter 13, verses 38 to 39.

Acts 13:38–39

This is kind of getting to the punchline of an entire sermon.

Let it be known to you, therefore, brothers, that through this man, Jesus, forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.

And by him, everyone who believes is freed from everything which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.

Never.

That was not its purpose.

The purpose was to show us that we need a better Savior to come.

We need Jesus Christ to come and bear, we need him to be the perfect sacrifice who takes away all of our sins, and we need him to be the perfect obedient son to obey on our behalf so that we would get that credit.

Now, what were the Judaizers saying?

The people who were, the Jews who were coming up and teaching a false gospel.

There's reflected in Acts chapter 15, verse 1.

Acts 15:1

But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.

Did you hear it?

If and but, unless.

And what they've done is they just removed the gospel of Jesus Christ, that we are saved by what He's done and not by what we do.

They've just said, Well, yeah, Jesus gets you going, but you have to do the obedience to be able to be saved.

Unless you do this Old Testament work, you will not be saved.

And so maybe the question comes up is, well, how do you know that you're saved if you don't do the work?

How do you know you're saved unless you do the Old Testament work required?

We know we're saved because Christ has done the work.

So what's required of me?

What's required of me is I cast off all claims to achieve salvation or righteousness through my own work and fully trust Christ alone for his finished work, for my forgiveness, freedom, and inclusion.

So when Paul is talking about running his race in vain, he's saying, I'm going throughout the region and I'm preaching the gospel that we just read.

It's like you can't save yourself by law, it's Jesus that saves.

And if you are coming in behind me, if people from Jerusalem are coming in behind me and teaching, no, you have to do the work, it's almost like pouring a concrete patio, and then a cat walks across it and completely messes up the whole thing.

It's like, oh, you just poured that.

You poured it in vain, or running in vain and not uh winning the prize.

As Paul preached to people from under slavery to law, others were putting them right back under the law as a means to be justified.

So it's undoing the message that he was proclaiming.

Paul said, You just need Jesus, and they were saying, Well, yeah, you need Jesus, but you also need Moses too to be saved.

So after meeting with the recognized leaders rather than with self-appointed spokespeople, Paul says he and the leaders of Jerusalem church were in full accord with one another.

Now, the reason this matters is because the false brothers in Galatia are saying Paul went to Jerusalem, got the message from the church leaders, and then he went and changed it.

And Paul's saying that's not what happened.

He's saying, I got the message from Jesus himself, and then I went to the leaders in Jerusalem, and they agreed that the message I've been preaching that I got from Jesus, that's the gospel, not the thing that these false brothers are teaching.

And he gives the evidence of that.

He says, one, Titus, who was not circumcised, he was a Greek Christian worker, he was not compelled to be circumcised by the Jewish, by the uh the apostles.

To them it was a non-issue.

He doesn't need to be circumcised.

He has Jesus.

Number two, Paul says, they didn't add anything to my message.

No critique, no ands, no unlesses, nothing.

They said, You've got it right.

This is the same message that we're teaching.

The leaders in Jerusalem gave Paul and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship.

So there's a oneness, a ratification, saying, Yes, we all agree this is the gospel.

And they saw Paul as entrusted with the same gospel that Peter preached.

It's just they preached to different groups and they enculturated the gospel with their language, but they kept the same message.

So Peter, who's preaching to Jews, those Jews had an understanding of the sacrificial system.

And so Peter, when he preached, used that kind of language of atonement and propitiation more than Paul did.

Paul spoke a lot about justification, which was really a Greek legal term.

So they're talking the same message, but they're talking to their cultural audience in a very different way about the same exact gospel.

So salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus alone.

And it was that way from the very, very first.

So what's at stake?

What was at stake for them?

And what's at stake for us as we read this?

It's in Galatians chapter 2, verse 4.

Galatians 2:4

Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in, who slipped into spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery.

Now, when we read the word freedom, I know you're thinking brave heart and bagpipes, you're thinking Star Spangled Banner.

That's the way we're wired, but that's not what he has in mind here.

He's talking about the gospel, the spiritual cosmic freedom that we have in Christ.

What is the freedom that we have in Christ?

Well, it's an important theme, so we need to explore it a little bit.

In Paul's letter to the Galatians, he uses that term ten times.

Throughout his writings, he mentions it about 28 times.

Freedom in Christ is this huge idea for him, and it has to be for us.

So, what is the freedom we have in Christ?

Freedom in Christ is the spiritual liberation from the penalty of the power and guilt of sin that Jesus gives to all who believe in him, along with bold access to the throne of God's grace and the power to love and obey God in the world.

So it's a freedom.

It's a freedom from the effects of sin.

Not complete and total in this life.

Once we die, we're completely free, but not yet.

But an increasing freedom.

And then a freedom to approach the throne of God's grace with boldness and confidence.

And freedom, power to live a new life in the world in Christ.

Now, we're going to talk about that a little bit more.

Sinclair Ferguson talks about it a little bit differently.

Sinclair Ferguson says that freedom in Christ, he talks about it objectively.

It's a change, not just in you, but it's a change in your status, almost like a change in your citizenship.

So this is from Sinclair Ferguson.

Sin has no authority over anyone who is in Christ.

You are no longer under its dominion.

You have received a new identity.

You have died out of that old kingdom.

You have been raised through Christ into the new kingdom where He, not sin, reigns.

From this vantage point, you can look back to your former king and his kingdom and say, You once ruled over me, but no longer.

I am a citizen of the kingdom of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

He alone reigns over me now.

You may not yet be what one day you shall be, but thank God you are no longer what you once were.

That's a great quote.

Hope you got your phones out and took that.

If you want that, I'll send it to you.

And so when we talk about freedom in Christ, it's a big topic.

Talking about if you're in Christ, you are free indeed.

But what Galatians is focusing on is one incredibly important aspect of freedom in Christ, and that is that we're free from sin's penalty.

And we're free not just from sin.

As a result of being free of sin's penalty, we're free from the Old Testament law as a means of being righteous before God because Christ has fulfilled the law.

We have freedom in Christ.

And so the result of this freedom is that Christians are not obligated to keep the entire law.

And that's from Paul's mouth, not mine, saying that.

For those who believe in Jesus Christ, there's nothing we need to do to be right with God because it's been accomplished by Jesus, not by me.

We can approach the throne of God's grace with boldness and confidence.

The path has been opened.

We are free to come into our Father's presence.

So all is forgiven, all is atoned, all is justified, all is paid in full, and our relationship with God is restored.

And there's an objective reality to this, and there is a subjective personal experience of this.

If Christ is paid for our sins, we don't have to work for our salvation, it's already paid.

And so what that means is objectively, in God's ledger for you, there's no red.

There's no debt.

Stamp the cross that is paid in full.

Jesus has paid that.

So there's no debt in your ledger because Jesus has paid for it.

So you don't have to try to pay it down.

You don't have to try to make it up to God.

It's paid for in Jesus.

You can enter completely fully in the name of Jesus.

But there's also a subjective and personal experience to this, which we may describe as guilt, and we may describe as shame.

And we may feel it, experience it as condemnation.

But the Bible says there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

It's gone, it's removed.

All's been forgiven.

And if Christ has forgiven me, if I've been forgiven in Christ, then I'm truly forgiven.

And that means you don't have to beat yourself up.

You don't have to do, go through this kind of like perma shame, perma-guilt, and carry that around all the time and hate yourself.

You don't have to try to feel bad enough as emotional penance to prove how sorry you are to God.

I remember talking to a person years ago, and after they would sin, they would go through this period of kind of like almost penance mourning, you know, just emotionally, like I'm, you know, I'm removing myself from other things.

And I asked why this person did it.

And this person said, well, you have to show God how sorry you are.

And I kind of chuckled.

I said, He's omniscient.

I think he knows exactly how sorry you are.

Do you think that the blood of Christ covers all of your sins?

And so what that means is for us is we can say, I'm saved by grace through faith in Christ if I feel bad enough about it.

And that's a thing that people, theologians, have referred to as a sincerity covenant, where if I'm sincere enough in my grief, then God has to forgive me.

And the reality is no, He forgives you for one reason and one reason only.

The blood of Christ.

Period.

Apart from how you feel.

So there are sometimes when you feel horrible about it, but the blood of Christ covers you.

There are some days when you don't feel nearly as bad as you ought to feel about something, and the blood of Christ covers over that as well.

I can remember in my life as you know just wallowing in self-loathing after I would fall into sin.

It happened.

And uh now as I understand the, because I was thinking, I'm not, I shouldn't be capable of this anymore.

But now it's what I say is, of course I did that.

I'm a sinner.

I need a savior still, and I will need that savior until I die and go, and I'm made perfect in righteousness in God's kingdom, in his presence.

So to be bound to Christ this way is to be free.

To be free.

It's to be free everywhere.

The strings are all cut.

When the gospel is cherished, preached, and lived, no one feels compelled to do anything in order to be right with God.

It's just Jesus.

He makes us right with God.

If I obey, I am loved and saved apart from my obedience.

If I disobey, I am loved and saved apart from my disobedience if I sin.

A friend, uh I had a former student, he put it this way: it's the difference between club rules and family rules.

In club rules, you may be able to come in and be in the club, but if you do something wrong, you're out.

Get out, they'll kick you out.

But in a family, you're still in the family.

He's still my father.

And you may think, well, okay, why does this matter?

Why does understanding freedom in Christ matter?

Well, it matters for joy, and it matters for assurance, and it matters for gratitude towards God that He's this radically gracious to us, but it also matters in an area where we might not think, and that's in the area of Christian obedience.

Because every motivation in the Christian life is affected by this.

You can believe in Jesus, but still be a slave in your sentiment, in the way you see yourself and the way you address other people.

You can be stuck in a kind of a slave mentality.

And you can seek to grow for the wrong reasons.

It's not growth if it's not for the right reasons.

It's just moral restraint.

I read a quote a couple of years ago.

It said this it's easy to mistake a morally restrained heart for a spiritually changed heart.

Because on the outside, they're keeping the rules and they look like somebody who's really doing it for Jesus, but inwardly, they're doing it for something different.

They can act good and look good on the outside, but their inner motivations haven't really changed.

So, question comes up.

If you're a Christian, is God going to punish you?

No.

He'll discipline you.

We'll talk about that in a second.

Is God going to punish me?

And the answer is no, because Jesus has taken it all.

There's no condemnation.

He's taken the punishment.

So then, what is the motivation of the Christian life?

And that assumes that the only motivation would be that God is a getter.

He's going to get me if I don't obey.

But let's back up.

Is God going to punish me or has Jesus taken the full brunt of did he take all of my sin on himself and pay for all of it?

Jesus paid for all of it.

There's not any punishment for me.

So then why does God still tell us not to do certain things?

Why does he still give us laws if he's not going to punish them for them?

It's because he loves us and he knows what those things do to us and to other people.

Jesus has paid the penalty, and so he's giving us the commands to keep us from things that are going to be destructive to us.

So let me tell you a story.

I probably have never said this in here, but did you know I used to do campus ministry?

None of them are here, so we can talk about them in their absence.

We did a summer conference every year, and it was for so for about 20 years I would go to the summer conference, and about my third or fourth year in, I was thought I was seeing something culturally, and I decided to do a seminar called The Monster.

And the monster was about, it was for guys, and it was about inappropriate pictures online.

There.

We'll just say it that way.

Inappropriate pictures online.

And it was just a two-day seminar.

First day was talking about sin's guilt.

Second day was talking about sin's power and presence in our lives.

And the reason I did it was because more and more as I talked to students, males, they were completely riddled with guilt.

They were so guilty.

And they were filled with shame.

I had this one student that, and it would be easy to look at these young men and young women and say, you know, it's just something dirty and they're bad.

But none of us were prepared for what the internet was going to do to our kids.

None of us.

And I had this one young man when he he found himself struggling, he went to get help from his mom.

And he told her.

And she said, Don't ever tell me that again.

I'm just ashamed of you.

And it locked him in, not just in shame, but in addiction to that for a decade.

And so I'm doing this seminar, and the it basically what I'm doing is just a two-day seminar.

One, the first day is dealing with sin's guilt.

And so we spent a lot of time talking about all the things that don't work, all the promises you've made to God, I'll never do this again.

And you failed, didn't you?

They're like, nope, I failed, I failed.

So the first, the first year I did it, there were about 40 people.

By the time I'd been doing it for five years or so, there were 120 guys in there.

Because they're just, they're eaten, they're eaten up with shame and they're eaten up with guilt.

You know, and the things that they tried didn't work.

I promise not to do it again.

Then they do it.

Or they promised sincerely to try.

I feel bad enough about it this time, God, so please forgive me, and I'm just going to live my life the way I'm supposed to.

That didn't work either.

So I spent an hour just convincing them that God's acceptance upon you is not based on your performance.

There is more grace in Jesus than there is sin in you.

And if you're if you're struggling with that, then the love of God doesn't go away.

And what he's calling you to do is to come to the feet of Jesus.

So the first day was kind of clearing the air, having somebody publicly talk about this in a way that didn't shame them and make them feel awful.

But for them, at one point, I had this, I said, look around this room.

Everybody in this room struggles with the same thing.

And they were kind of like, uh, but they did, and they recognized I'm not the only one.

This is a very common struggle for all of us.

And so by the end of the first day, they were ready for the second day.

The second day was talking about, okay, God gives the command in Scripture, gives the commands about sexual, you know, purity and morality and those kind of things.

Why would he tell us that?

Because he has a good plan for marriage, he has a good plan for your life, he's got a good, he loves us and he's given marriage as a good gift.

And so we just talked about it.

He's given uh he's given intimate relations as a good gift between a husband and wife.

So he's clearing all the everything that gets in the way of that and says, enjoy your spouse.

And so we talked about that.

And I, every time I would have about 40 or 50 kids come up, young men, come up and say, Thank you.

They couldn't look me in the eye because they were they were still embarrassed by the topic, but they would say, Thank you for talking about that.

I've never heard anybody talk about this before.

Now, second time I did it, one of my students was in the room with us.

And uh, just call him Mike.

And Mike, at the end of the first day, where I'm talking about your sin doesn't keep you from Jesus, he covers over all of these things, he covers over all the sins you're struggling with, and the throne of God's grace is open to you to go to in the name of Jesus.

And Mike said, but you have to obey.

If and but I said, or else what?

He and he knew he couldn't say you're not saved, but he just said, Well, you you you have to you have to obey.

And I said, or else what?

He said, or else you're not really a Christian.

I said, so do you believe that we're saved by faith alone in Christ and faith alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone?

He said, Yeah.

And I said, but you're adding obedience to that.

And he said, Yeah, but you have to obey.

And it was hard for him to wrap his mind around that access to the throne of God's grace comes through Jesus, and that our works are a fruit of being at the foot of Jesus.

So the first day of my seminar, what I'm trying to do is get these kids to come clean with Jesus, quit making promises, quit saying I'm gonna do better, and just come to the foot of Jesus where healing takes place.

And Michael was saying, no, you have to get cleaned up and then come to Jesus.

And I realized that's what I heard my whole life growing up, is when you're ready to get your life cleaned up and go to Jesus, then we'll help you.

And the response was, whoa, whoa, whoa, you got the order backwards.

When you see your need of Jesus and go to Jesus, he'll help you clean your life up.

It's a fruit, not a prerequisite.

And so that was radically changing, life-changing for people.

Because I'm loved and saved, you know, because I'm loved and saved.

If I obey, God doesn't love me more.

If I fail, God doesn't love me less.

He loves me in Christ Jesus, he's paid for all of my sins.

However, because I am loved and saved, my heavenly Father, my elder brother King Jesus, and the Holy Spirit will not let me continue in disobedience.

But God's love never changes, his grace never changes.

You will not be free of penalty until you go to Jesus.

But you're also not going to be free of the power of sin in your life unless you go to Jesus.

It's not going to be through your own efforts.

That's going to produce a self-righteous mentality towards other people.

I got this area of my life cleaned up on my own.

Why can't you clean up yours?

So we end up having a legal tone about things.

But we see the work of grace in this passage with Paul.

It's a little throwaway line at the end of this in verse 10.

Only they asked us to remember the poor the very thing I was eager to do.

So they're telling Paul to do something, and Paul's saying, Well, I guess I have to do it because it's a law.

That's not what he's saying.

Paul's saying, I've received grace from the God of heaven.

I've received the riches of Christ from the God of heaven.

And I look at the poor among me, and I want to give grace to them the way that God is giving grace to me.

The motivation for giving to the poor was not law and fear.

The motivation for Paul was recognizing that God has been over-generous with me and I want to be generous to others.

So the gospel of grace.

Can you believe that?

Can you believe that the look when I mention sin, you've got something that pops into your head.

Do you believe that God could forgive even that?

Do you believe that God has forgiven even that?

Do you believe that your performance tomorrow is not going to affect your relationship with God in terms of Him casting you out?

Do you believe that He will come and get you?

Not to get you, but to find you as his little lamb that's wandering away.

Let me pray first.