Galatians chapter 5 and verse
4. Christ is become of no effect
unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, ye are
fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit wait
for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ
neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision,
but faith which worketh by love. Amen. May the Lord bless this
short reading to us. Let me repeat the central message
of our gospel and the heart of our faith in this next comment. It is this, the Lord Jesus Christ
by his obedience and death has satisfied every demand of God
for his people. And by giving his life for theirs,
He redeemed the people that he loved and has secured their salvation
in time and for eternity. And these great truths, these
facts are our enduring gospel themes. They are the essence
of our hope in this life and for the life hereafter. that
Christ was the worthy sacrifice who died in our place and stead,
and that we have life in him. Now, we say a lot, we use a lot
of words, well, I do, I do anyway, trying to convey this message,
to communicate and in some small way, perhaps, to educate men
and women and boys and girls concerning what the Bible teaches
regarding the Lord Jesus Christ and his obedience and his death. We preach Christ the way. We preach Christ the truth. We
preach Christ the life. And most of us here have heard
thousands of sermons, maybe 10,000 sermons. And that's a lot of
time and a lot of words. But in the end, it comes down
to just this. Salvation is of the Lord and
it is all of grace. The work of Christ is in itself
sufficient for the redemption of sinners and for the justification
of the elect. And this is what the Apostle
Paul is endeavouring to convey to the Galatians here in this
letter. These troublemakers in Galatia,
the Judaizers as we call them, were preaching Christ and circumcision. Now, we spoke about this last
time, how that circumcision was a kind of shorthand for Christ
and the obligations of the law, or Christ and the obligations
of Jewish tradition. And I'm sure that if the Judaizers
in the churches in Galatia had been confronted with their error,
with their teaching and its implications. They would deny that they were
against Christ. But Paul shows that is effectively
what they were teaching. And let me just bring that, if
I can, into a more modern sphere, modern application. Today, some
will say, Christ and duty, or Christ and good works, or Christ
and church membership, or Christ and baptism, or Christ and personal
commitment. And actually, just about every
church has its rules and its laws and its requirements, and
doubtless they too would insist that these were not for salvation. And yet, To be in their church
in some way or another, you have to show yourself worthy by satisfying
the conditions that they impose. And of course, once in, they
have ways to discipline those that don't keep up with their
expectations and their standards. But Paul's burden here for the
Galatians was that they had become disconnected from the purity
and the simplicity of the Gospel message. And we can only assume
that the reason for the Holy Spirit leaving this book initiating,
originating, inspiring and leaving this book in Holy Scripture is
because it is a lesson that we need to be reminded of throughout
the history and experience of the Apostolic Church. The gospel
that Paul had preached among them, which they had embraced,
which they had believed, which they had understood, now seemed
to be slipping out of their grasp. And the Apostle Paul, knowing
that the injection of any element of human contribution, any kind
of human involvement in the work of salvation will pollute it
and ultimately destroy the liberty of free grace. He is fighting
in this letter to win them back to the truth. He knows that works
righteousness will detract from the sufficiency of Christ. He knows that it will. He knows
that works righteousness will elevate man in his own eyes. He knows that it will be a source
of pride. He knows that it will be a way
for one group to judge another group and one person to think
that he is better than another. And Paul knows that sooner or
later, when works get added to grace, Christ gets diminished
and man gets promoted. And when that happens, Christ
becomes of no effect. Christ becomes of no value to
us. Men and women begin to imagine
that it's not his death that is effectual to save, but their
own efforts and their own contributions. And we fall from the true gospel
and from all legitimate profession of trusting in the sufficiency
of Christ to save. So Paul says, whosoever of you
are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace. If we begin to introduce any
form of human contribution and involvement into our acceptance
with God, we can no longer testify of grace because the two are
incompatible and exclusive. Paul says in Romans 11 and 6,
11 verse 6, if by grace, then it is no more of works, if it
be of works, then it is no more grace. And many of the free will
and duty faith and legally bound churches of our day are where
the Galatians were. They talk, they make a profession
of grace, maybe on the back of some historical confession of
faith or some heritage and history that they have in the past. They
talk about grace to an extent, but it is tied in with so much
else. The phrase that Paul uses here,
fallen from grace, it doesn't mean that they once had grace
and now they don't have it. It either means that having professed
grace, they've now gone back to rely on their own works without
realising what they're doing. And this is possibly the nature
of the way these Judaizers had influenced having infiltrated
the churches, influenced the believers. They had said, now
you've started off well, now you need to move into something
deeper. You need to move into something more involved. And
that's often the way these things happen. And we lose the simplicity
of the gospel and the work of Christ. Or else maybe these Galatians
have genuinely changed their doctrine. They've cast their
lot in with these false teachers. In which case Paul is waiting
to see whether they were in fact false professors all along. True believers cannot lose their
salvation. and they cannot actually fall
from grace, though they may for a time be confused in their doctrine
and have, like these Galatians, to be recovered by the apostles'
rebuke. In verse 5, The Apostle says,
we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by
faith. Paul is confirming here that
those who are truly saved by the Holy Ghost's calling and
quickening, they hold fast and they persevere in the hope or
the confidence of righteousness and justification by faith. And this is what he's been preaching
all along. It's what he preached in the
churches in Galatia. It's what he has been recording
in this letter in his approach to them on his awareness of the
rise of the problems that they're having. This is always his ministry. We seek our righteousness in
Christ. That is what he is saying. We
seek our righteousness in Christ. We wait and we trust upon the
promise of God for all our acceptance. Who's the we that he's talking
about? Well he's talking about himself. He's talking about Barnabas. He's talking about Timothy. He's
talking about the other apostles. He's talking about the Jews who
were converted and brought into a knowledge of the truth by the
gospel of Jesus Christ. They knew that the Old Testament
law was for its time, it had its place, it had its symbolism,
it had its significance, it had its purposes. But now their eye
had to be on the sufficiency of Christ. And those Jews who
had been truly converted Faithful Jews did not look back to the
law for righteousness and neither should the Galatians, despite
what these Judaizers were offering them. Our righteousness is God's
gift by promise because of Christ's sacrifice and death. This we
believe, this we receive and hold fast by faith. And many
who claim faith today err here as well by imagining that it
is their faith that gains righteousness with God. As if God's pleased
that they've trusted in Him and as a result of their trust He
gives them the blessings and the benefits of salvation. As
though faith in some way merits God's pleasure. So let's not
get this wrong either. Righteousness is God's promise
to his elect people whom he has loved from eternity. And we enjoy
the benefits of his grace and his goodness by faith. That is the vehicle, that is
the channel, that is the medium by which all God's grace and
goodness is experienced by us. And something else, let's not
be confused by the word hope as though it means something
uncertain. That's kind of how we use it
today in normal language. But a believer's hope is sure
and sound because our hope is in Christ, who is faithful and
true. In fact, Jeremiah, the Old Testament
prophet's come to our rescue once again. Jeremiah, just as
Isaiah has been doing for some months now. Jeremiah calls the
Lord Jesus Christ the hope of Israel and the saviour thereof. Our hope will only fail when
Christ fails. The hope of the elect of God
and the hope of the faithful is Christ himself. So when we
think of Christ, we think of his divinity, we think of his
omnipotence, we think of his omniscience, we think of his
love, his sovereignty, we think of the faithfulness of God in
Christ. And this is what gives the church
the only well-grounded confidence that we shall ever require. Can
you imagine having to hope in our own ability to maintain a
sufficiently good standard of life in order to earn heaven. That would be hopeless. We would
be up and down like a yo-yo on a string. We would have confidence
one day and no confidence the next day. Within the space of
a few minutes we could go from a mountaintop experience to a
rock bottom experience just because of the vagaries of the circumstances
of the situation that we were in. But our hope is in Christ
who does not change. And we would be foolish to hope
in our own strength. Hope is for future glory based
upon the promises of Christ. We are sure and confident that
we are going to heaven, not because it is a present reality for us,
not because we've been there and we've seen it with our own
eyes, or we've got some physical, tangible evidence given to us.
But because we trust the God who has promised, who has spoken
and who cannot lie, Christ was raised again for our justification. We are accepted by God and we
hope in the promises that he has made. Paul tells the Romans
in Romans 5 verse 5, hope maketh not ashamed. because the love
of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost. We will not be ashamed at the
hope and the confidence that we have in Christ. We will not
get to the end of our life and be disappointed. Hope maketh
not ashamed because the love of God is shed abroad in the
heart by the Holy Ghost. We have this testimony, we have
this witness. It is founded in and upon Christ
because Christ is formed in the heart and it is by his promise. Christ in you, the hope of glory. And let me just take time to
touch on verse 6. In Jesus Christ, says the Apostle,
neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision. And again we're talking here
about this circumcision, just as Isaiah used Sabbath observance,
so here circumcision is shorthand for the whole of the law. which worketh by love. That is
what avails, faith which worketh by love. And this is what Paul
has been emphasising and what we endeavour to stress in our
own preaching. Works of any kind do nothing
for those who are God's elect. who are in Christ by divine fear,
who are redeemed by blood and quickened by the Spirit. All our righteousness, all our
justification, every blessing and every grace is ours freely
by the unconditional grace of God and gifted and granted and
given to us out of his love. God's love for his people. God's love gives to us all the
blessings that he has in store. All the good and perfect gifts
are given for his own name's sake. Not because of what we
do or what we don't do. Not for our obedience or our
lack of obedience. Not for our good, our bad, or
our indifference. It is God for his own namesake
that does good to his people. And the only thing needed to
enjoy the blessings of God is faith. And even faith is his
gift and is in no sense meritorious to gain what it enjoys. We are
saved by grace, we enjoy it by faith and it couldn't be any
simpler than that. The Lord Jesus Christ satisfied
the whole of God's law. He died substitutionally and
effectually for us. And having given us faith through
the preaching of that very gospel message, we are able to rest
in Christ, enjoy the peace he gives, for his yoke is light
and the hope of glory he has given to us. And what's this
got to do with love? When we have faith, We love the
Lord who first loved us. We love the gospel which reveals
our happy condition. We love the brethren who are
Christ's blood-bought people with us. We love the evidences
of grace in our lives and the opportunities that are given
to us to return thanks to the Lord for the great things that
he has done. The great things that he is doing
and the great things that he yet shall do for us. May the
Lord bless these thoughts to us today. Amen.