Now in Galatians chapter five,
the Apostle Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit, begins to
define and show some great implications of our liberty in Christ. That's
the title of this message, our liberty in Christ. And one thing
that we as believers need to understand is what this liberty
is all about. What is true Christian liberty?
And I think this is one of the best passages that you can go
to to find that. There are others, obviously.
But one of the things that Paul does here, and it's very interesting,
is, you know, the whole book of Galatians now, how he's been
exposing these false teachers who claim to be Christian and
who claim to believe salvation by grace. But we're seeking to
bring Gentile believers under the Jewish law, under the old
covenant law of circumcision and feast days and all of that.
And saying something like, yes, we're saved by Christ, yes, we're
saved by grace, but you have to be circumcised in order to
really be saved, or to really be righteous, or you must keep
this day or keep that day. And of course, that's just the
old, that's just the old natural way of thinking, the natural
man. who must have some part in his salvation, who must make
salvation conditioned on himself in order to give himself at least
a glimmer of room to boast. And that's what it's all about
for man. That's what religion, that's
what man's religion is all about. But the grace of God in Christ
is all about Christ getting all the glory, all of salvation conditioned
on him, and that he met those conditions in full. He didn't
leave anything open-ended. He didn't make us savable or
redeemable. He saved his people from their
sins. So in light of the contrast that Paul's drawing between the
legal bondage of works salvation, conditional salvation, and our
liberty in Christ, he's gonna define it. So look at verse one.
Here's the foundation. This is another way of stating
the foundation of true Christianity right here in verse one, Galatians
5 verse one. And he says, stand fast, which
means stand firm, immovable, unrelenting. Don't give in here,
don't give way here. Stand fast, therefore, in the
liberty, this liberty, this freedom, this liberation, wherewith Christ
hath made us free. We didn't make ourselves free,
we didn't free ourselves. That's why, you know, when we
talk about what people call free will, People believe in free
will because they make choices every day, and we do. The old
writers used to say man doesn't have a free will, but he's a
free moral agent. You're free to choose what you
want to choose, but the problem is your will is in bondage to
sin and self, and you won't choose the things that glorify God.
It's like I've always, I've spoken about total depravity. If you
really want to see the total depravity of man, Think of it this way, and you
can see this in Romans 3, you don't have to turn there, but
it means man has no righteousness. It means man cannot create righteousness,
he can't work one, he can't manufacture one with his best efforts. And
number three, this is the bondage of the will, he doesn't want
righteousness God's way. Now he wants it, and understand,
man wants righteousness, that's what religion is all about. That's what the Buddha's Eightfold
Path, that's about man wanting righteousness. And the Quran,
it's about man wanting righteousness, and he concocts his ways of making
himself righteous. And he wants it, but he doesn't
want it by grace through Jesus Christ, which gives him no glory,
which gives him no room to boast. And so Paul writes, stand fast
in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. Now, what is
this liberty? Well, first of all, it's freedom
from condemnation. Because in Christ, there is therefore
now no condemnation. It's freedom from the law that
condemns us because of our sin, because we cannot be charged
with our sins. Romans 6 and verse 7 says, he
that is dead is freed. And the word freed there is justified. To be dead there means to be
dead to the law. In Romans 6, 7. How am I dead
to the law? The law can no longer condemn
me. It condemns somebody else in my place. And that's what
Christ did in his substitution, in his charityship, in his satisfaction
on the cross. When he shed his blood, he drank
damnation dry. And so we're free from condemnation.
We cannot be condemned. We cannot even be charged with
our sin. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? So number one, it means freedom
from condemnation. Now right in line with that,
We can say it this way. Secondly, it's freedom from legal
obligation. Now understand what I said now.
Freedom from what? Legal obligation. An obligation
of law. Now think about it. As sinners
saved by grace, we owe God a debt of love that we cannot pay. We'll spend eternity expressing
our gratitude and our debt and our love to God. And they'll
never be paid, never be exalted. But that's not a legal debt.
A legal debt is one you owe to pay the price. But we're free
from that because Christ paid the price. We sing that hymn,
Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe, or some people
say, all the debt I owe. Either way, it's fine. But he
paid our debt in full. I love that passage over in Hebrews
2, I think it's verse 17 where it talks about Christ was indebted. It says it behooved him. That
word behooved is the Greek word for debt. My debt was charged
to him. That's what sin imputed means.
He was made sin. Christ took my debt. He was my
sin bearer, my sin offering. And in return, his righteousness
is imputed, charged to me, so that I owe no debt to God's law
and justice. My debt is fully paid. Now that
doesn't relieve my obligation to God as a sinner saved by grace,
a debt of love, a debt of grace, a debt of gratitude. Again, we'll
spend eternity saying, thank you, Lord, in various ways. And
we should be doing that now. So secondly, it's freedom from
legal obligation, freedom from debt. Thirdly, it's freedom to
enter the presence of the holiest. You know, the way was barred
into the holiest of all. Only the high priest could go
in one time a year with the blood of a lamb. But Christ opened
the way. And it says in Hebrews chapter
10, we can have boldness to enter the holiness. That word means
freedom, liberty. unlimited free access to God
in every way, to the holiest, by the blood of Jesus. And so
we ask the question, upon what ground do you approach God to
find salvation? Upon what ground do you approach
God to find acceptance? Upon what ground do you approach
God to find blessings? When you pray, upon what ground
do you come? I heard a preacher say one time
years ago, he said, it's impossible for you to pray when you've had
sin in your life. My goodness. Well, you will never
pray then. And he was talking about specific
sins, you know, when something went wrong at work and you lost
your temper. He said, you can't pray. My friend,
listen, the Bible says we come to the throne of what when we
pray? Grace. And who needs the grace? Sinners who aren't worthy. And on what basis do we come?
Because we have a great high priest, literally there in Hebrews
4, it says, who's passed through into the heavens. Christ made
the way through unto the holiest of all, so we're free to enter
the presence of God by the blood of Jesus Christ. Now, if you
come to him on any other basis, your way's barred. Cain tried
it. And God set the precedent there. There's the law of first
mention right there. Salvation. Access to God can
never be by the works of men. It's always by the blood of Jesus
Christ. And then, fourthly, this freedom is freedom to believe
and serve the Lord. It's not freedom to sin. It's
not liberty to sin. You know, somebody says, well,
if I believe what you believe, I just sin all I want to. Well,
go ahead. All that proves is you don't believe what I believe. Go ahead and do what you want
to do as far as that's concerned. Grace is not a key that unlocks
a door to sin. Grace is the key that unlocks
the door to belief in Christ, to service unto the Lord, not
motivated by that legal obligation, but motivated by grace, motivated
by love, motivated by gratitude. We're free to believe. Before
God the Holy Spirit gave us life in the new birth. We could not
believe because we were in bondage to the darkness and deception
of sin. But the scripture tells us that
we've been transformed into the kingdom of light, the kingdom
of God's dear son. The scripture says that God has
shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And that's a
freedom, that's a liberty. Now I can believe God. Whereas
before I was kept from believing him by my own deception and darkness
and self-will and self-love. So this is liberty to serve. Look down at verse 13 of Galatians
5. He says, for brethren, you have
been called unto liberty. That's Galatians 5, 13. only
use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve
one another. You see, we're in a battle against
the flesh, against our own self-desires and self-will, our own lust and
all of those things. So we fight, not in order to
be saved, but because we already are. And see, this liberty is
never free to sin. It's never freedom to sin. Now look back at verse one. Now
this is the liberty. Now understand that liberty,
that's the foundation of the Christian life, right there.
Liberty in Christ, saved by the grace of God, motivated by the
love of God in Christ. And he says, and be not entangled
again with the yoke of bondage. Now you know what a yoke is,
that's when farmers put the yoke on the oxen. and they go together,
two oxen, and that helps them. This yoke he's talking about
here is the yoke of the law of bondage. Now, there's a lot of
ways to define the yoke of bondage. One way is salvation conditioned
on the sinner. That's a yoke of bondage. That's
putting a yoke on sinners that sinners cannot, cannot bear. If I preach to you righteousness
by your works or by your will, that's putting a yoke of bondage
on you. That's all I'm doing. That's what these legalistic
Jewish preachers were doing who claimed to believe Christ. But
legalism, that's what this yoke of bondage is. It's legalism
of the law that puts the burden of salvation upon man rather
than totally upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Over in Romans 9, the
Apostle Paul described that yoke of bondage concerning his own
nation Israel in Romans 9 31. And here it is, he says, but
Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath
not attained unto the law of righteousness. They were seeking
righteousness. Now remember what I said before, man wants righteousness
now. Now granted, his standard of
righteousness is too low, and his thoughts of himself are too
high, but here's the Jews, he says, Israel, they sought after
the law of righteousness, but they didn't reach their goal.
They didn't attain it. Verse 32, why, wherefore? Because
they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of
the law. To seek it by faith is to seek it in the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's what by faith means. It's
not to seek it in ourselves. It's not to even seek it in our
faith. You know, a lot of people, what they believe is that their
believing is what makes them righteous. No, Christ is our
righteousness, we believe in him. Don't ever get the faith
and the object of faith confused. Christ is my righteousness. I
don't have any other. And so he says they didn't make
it because they didn't seek it in Christ. They stumbled at the
stumbling stone. That's Christ. In other words,
when Christ come along and taught righteousness in him by the grace
of God, that entrapped them and went against their grain so that
they went after him. But he says in Romans 10, 4,
Christ is the end, the fulfillment, the completion, the perfection
of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. So
don't be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Don't let
preachers, teachers, or friends come to you and divert your view
from Christ and get it onto yourself and onto the law. I was talking
to some people last week. about salvation. And a young
man told me, he said, he said, I just don't know if I'm saved.
And the more and more I talked to him, I found out what his
problem was. He's looking in within. What
have I experienced? What do I feel? He said, a preacher
asked him, said, well, do you feel saved? Well, I, you know,
most people will say, you know, especially as you get older,
you can say you feel saved. Am I right? Now, if you go out
and do something really bad, then you might not feel saved
at that moment, but you'll rededicate or do something. You'll get back
there. You know how it is. We used to rededicate all the
time. Then we felt saved. And I told the young man, I said,
listen, it doesn't matter how you feel. All that matters is
what God says. That's it. What is salvation? It's looking to Christ. By the
power of the Holy Spirit, looking to Christ for all salvation and
for assurance. I know whom I have believed and
I'm persuaded that what? He is able to keep that which
I've committed unto him against that day. And I asked the young
man, I said, who is your only hope of salvation? What is your
only hope? And he said, well, Christ, his blood and righteousness
alone. I said, well, that's God's word,
you see. My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness. So don't be entangled again with
that yoke of bondage. Stay away from it. I tell you
what, it'll only, listen, the yoke of bondage will do one of
two things to a sinner. It'll either drive him to despair
Like old Bunyan, John Bunyan's Slew of Despond. You remember
that in Pilgrim? The Slew of Despond. It'll either
drive you there, which is unbelief, or it'll drive you to self-righteousness,
which is unbelief. Because if it's based on what
you do or how you feel or what you experience, that's the only
two ways you can go. Either despair or pride. One of the two. Don't be entangled
again with that yoke. Now, in verses two through four,
Paul gives us the implications of legal bondage. He's saying
here, now, it's almost like he says, you that desire to be under
the law, don't you hear the law? Well now, if you claim to believe
in Christ, if you claim to be a Christian, if you claim to
be saved by grace, but you go back into that yoke of bondage,
Let me tell you what you're doing, that's what Paul's saying. Let
me tell you the implications of that. Let me tell you what
your real testimony to the world is. And here it is, look at verse
two. Behold, I, Paul, say unto you that if you be circumcised,
Christ shall profit or gain you nothing. Now, why does he say if you be
circumcised? Now we know he's talking about
their teaching, that circumcision, physical circumcision under the
law of Moses given to the males in that day, that it somehow
recommends you to God. That it somehow contributes to
your righteousness before God. That it sometimes contributes
to your salvation. And Paul's saying if you believe
that, that you have to be circumcised to be saved. Now, for our day,
I think we need to say it this way. You could put any act done
by a sinner in that place of circumcision. There's a denomination,
for example, that claims that we're saved by grace, but you
have to be baptized to be saved. I would say to them, I say unto
you that if you be baptized, Christ will profit you nothing. For that reason. Now are we commanded
to be baptized? Yes, but not for this reason. Baptism is our confession of
salvation totally by the grace of God. Were the Jewish males
required to be circumcised from the time of Abraham on up through
that time? Yes, but not to be saved. Not to be made righteous. If
you do it that way, Christ will profit you nothing. So Paul's
saying this, if you put anything as a rival to or in place of
Jesus Christ as our whole righteousness before God, he'll profit us nothing. Listen, if you can be made righteous,
over in Galatians 2, he said if righteousness come by the
law, then Christ died in vain. Why did Christ die? He died to
put away the sins of his people, God's elect, his sheep, and to
bring forth an everlasting righteousness of infinite value to enable God
to be just and justifier. Now, if all that can be accomplished
through anything we do, we don't need Christ. But my friend, it
can't be accomplished by anything we do. We can't gain anything
by circumcision, baptism, do-gooding, all of that. Should we seek to
do well, to do good? Yes, we should be obedient servants,
but not for this reason. If we do it for that reason,
Christ shall profit you nothing. Now that's a strong implication,
isn't it? I've had, years ago, there was
somebody that came here two or three times, and he asked me,
we got to discussing these things, and he asked me, He said, you're
so precise. That's what he said on this thing
of the gospel. And he says, do you really? Do
you really think we need to be that precise? And I told him,
I said, go read Galatians. Go read Galatians chapter five.
I mean, you know, and his whole attitude was like this. You know,
well, there's all kinds of Christians out here and they all believe
different things. Well, now the Bible teaches Whether
you like it or not, or whether you believe it or not, the Bible
teaches that all Christians believe the same thing when it comes
to the gospel and salvation, how God saves sinners. How God
can be just and justify the ungodly. So here's a person who comes
along and says, well, I'm a Christian, but I believe you gotta be baptized
to be saved. Well, why don't we just leave
that person alone and accept that person into our fellowship
and you know, that's what the world, right here, read the book. If you be circumcised, Christ
will profit you. That's a denial of Christ and
that person needs to know that. You understand? This is salvation
we're talking about. Look at verse three. He says,
for I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that
is for that reason now, in order to be saved, kept saved, righteous,
that he's a debtor to do the whole law. That's something. I just talked to you about how
our liberty is freedom from debt. But if you go back under the
law, the yoke of bondage, if you think salvation is conditioned
on you, well, here it is. Do it all. You remember over
in Romans chapter two, the apostle Paul described that when he was
talking about how there is no respect of persons with God. Verse 12 of Romans two, he says,
for as many as have sinned without the law shall also perish without
the law. And as many as have sinned in
the law shall be judged by the law, for not the hearers of the
law are just before God. But what? the doers of the law
shall be justified. Back over in Galatians chapter
three, in verse 10, you remember what he said there? For as many
as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it's
written, cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things
that are written in the book of the law to do. If you believe
salvation, in any way, at any stage, to any degree, is conditioned
on you, what you do, what you think, anything, you're a debtor
to do the whole law. That's what Christ was teaching
the rich young man when he approached him and said, good master, what
good thing must I do to inherit eternal life? And he said, well,
keep the law. You got it all to do. And he said, well, I've
kept him from my youth up, and then Christ showed him that he
hadn't. We're all sinners. If we're debtors to do the law,
we're condemned. But you see, if you do anything
for that reason, you're a debtor to the whole law. Look at verse
four. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of
you are justified by the law. You're fallen from grace. Look
at the implications of that. If you're justified by the law,
you don't need Christ. He's of no effect to you. Christ
came to save sinners of whom I am chief, Paul wrote. That's
who he saves. Do we have any sinners? Real
sinners. Listen, a person who believes
that salvation is conditioned on themselves and that they can
meet those conditions, they may say, well, I'm a sinner. They
may say I'm not perfect, but they don't really understand
what it is to be a sinner. according to the Bible. You see,
Christ has become of no effect unto you, and you're falling
from grace. Now, a lot of people take that statement and they
say, well, see there, that means you can lose your salvation.
No, what he's saying, put it this way. Let me read, Christ
has become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified
by the law, you're falling away from what you profess. You're
denying grace. You claim to believe in grace.
These Jewish teachers, these false teachers, they claim to
be preaching grace. Listen, everyone who calls himself
Christian claims to preach grace. If you went up to go back to
the one who believes you've got to be baptized to be saved, ask
him, well, do you believe salvation by works or salvation by grace?
Well, they'd say grace. But where's the problem? Right
here. If you, listen, if you're baptized thinking that it has
anything to do with contributing to the ground of your salvation,
Christ is becoming no effect. You're falling from, you're denying
grace. You're denying it, claiming to believe it. So he says in
verse five, now look here, that's the implications of the, now
here's the life of true Christianity right here. Righteousness by
faith and working by love. Look at verse five. He says,
for we through the Spirit, that's the work of the Holy Spirit,
wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. That waiting there
is believing. That's what, wait on the Lord.
It means believe God. Rest in Christ. No sinner is
going to rest in Christ for all righteousness apart from the
work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and conversion. Is that right?
It is, isn't it? It's the Holy Spirit in the new
birth who imparts life, spiritual life and faith that brings us
to the hope of righteousness by faith, that is by looking
to Jesus Christ. In other words, if we're truly
Christian, we're not looking to circumcision or baptism or
good works or anything to make us righteous. Our hope of righteousness
is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. If we're filled with the Spirit,
what are we doing? We're looking to Christ for all
righteousness, for all salvation. So righteousness by faith. Christ
is the end of the law. And Paul stated that in Philippians
3, oh that I may know him and be found in him and not having
my own righteousness of love. That's another way of stating
this hope of righteousness by faith. And then secondly, look
at verse six. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision
availeth anything nor uncircumcision." If I'm in Christ, my salvation
is secure and it has nothing to do with whether I'm circumcised
or uncircumcised, whether I'm baptized, it has nothing to do
with what I do. Now does that mean I'm not supposed
to do anything? No, look. But faith which worketh
by love. looking unto Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith, serving Him, worshiping Him, following
Him, motivated by what? By love. I always put it this
way, by love, by grace, by gratitude. That's the motives of a true
believer, as inspired by the filling of the Spirit. We are
to work. We're to work hard. Harder than
what we do work, but not to be saved. Not to be kept, not to
be made righteous, but because God has saved us by his grace.
He loves us in Christ and he's made us righteous in him and
by him. All right.