Galatians chapter six. Look at verse nine. Galatians
chapter six and verse nine. Let us not be weary in well-doing,
for in due season we shall reap if we faint not. As we have therefore
opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them
who are of the household of faith. You see how large a letter I
have written unto you with mine own hand. As many as desire to
make a fair show in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised. only lest they should suffer
persecution for the cross of Christ. For neither they themselves
who are circumcised keep the law, but desire to have you circumcised,
that they may glory in your flesh. But God forbid that I should
glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the
world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. For in Christ
Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision,
but a new creature. And as many as walk according
to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel
of God. From henceforth let no man trouble
me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Brethren,
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. This evening, the thoughts that
I have can be listed under this phrase by way of a title, The
Believer's Rule of Life. The Believer's Rule of Life.
Now whether you appreciate it or not that is a pregnant phrase
and if this sermon ever gets on to sermon audio I suspect
that there will be a number of people who will click on it just
because they think that this is going to be controversial.
Well, that depends what their views are, of course, because
if they don't believe that the believer's rule of life is the
gospel, that the believer's rule of life is faith, that the believers'
rule in life is whence their peace with God and mercy is derived,
then they may well find what I have to say this evening controversial. But we're coming to the conclusion
of our studies in the Book of Galatians, and I wholeheartedly
believe that a proper understanding of the Book of Galatians can
lead you to no other conclusion but that we are free from the
law of Moses, the Ten Commandments, and all of that regulation of
the old dispensation, and we have entered into a new relationship
with God through the spirit of promise, the law of liberty,
and our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ in whom we
trust for all our righteousness and our every sufficiency. As we round, as it were, the
final bend in these, our studies in the book of Galatians. I think
it is a delight for us to see the apostle Paul extolling his
saviour. This is what Paul would have
us understand. He wants to lift up the Lord
Jesus Christ. He wants to turn men's eyes to
the Lord. And this is what he writes in
this book to the Galatians. He has sent this letter off.
He has written this epistle. He has dispatched this to his
audience there amongst the churches of Galatia, a place where he
had preached, and now a place Whence he hears troublemakers
have entered into the churches and are endeavouring to usurp
the gospel which he has declared and to take these believers back
under the law of Moses as a rule of their Christian life. And he feels adamant against
that. He has been stirred in his spirit. We'll touch upon that a little
later. But let us first look at what
Paul does here. He points the Galatians to the
Lord. He points the Galatians to the
Lord Jesus Christ and that's a wonderful thing for a minister
of the gospel to do. In fact, it's the only thing
that a minister of the gospel ought to be doing. Woe is me
if I fail in my task and my duty towards you and my responsibility
as a preacher of the Gospel to point you to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that is why, like the Apostle, I always want to be thinking
about the Saviour. Because no matter what else we
settle upon as far as our doctrine and our theology and our patterns
of life and our practices are concerned. If we have Christ
front and foremost, if we properly understand the significance of
what happened upon the cross, then all these other things will
fall into their proper place. And so Paul exalts his Saviour. He extols his Saviour. He lifts
up his Lord and he lifts up his King. And Paul says, God forbid
that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. God forbid that I should glory
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. You know, we could
probably take that little phrase and spend the whole of our allotted
time this evening and still not feel that we have satisfied what
it has to say to us tonight. God forbid that I should glory.
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's an emphatic
statement. It is a strong statement. That introduction there, God
forbid it, is a strong statement. The apostle is calling on God
to forbid that Paul should take any glory should take any credit,
should take any praise to himself as far as his role is concerned,
as far as his ministry is concerned. He wants, as it were, almost
to become invisible. He would rather, it seems, not
be seen at all, be completely transparent, that anyone who
looks towards him would see right through him and see to the Lord,
see to the Saviour. God forbid that I should glory
save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the cross that
he is talking about here is not the wooden structure upon which
the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. but he's talking about the suffering
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's talking about the death
of the Lord. He's speaking about the sacrifice. He's speaking about the fact
that this ransom that was paid, the blood that was shed, the
body that was broken, the redemption that was accomplished, All of
these elements of the salvation of the Lord's people by which
the Lord Jesus Christ substituted himself in their place, took
upon himself their sin and provided for them an atonement that was
absolute and complete and which satisfied God in every degree
and to every extent. that that is what the apostle
desires to glory in. The very act that declared the
Lord Jesus Christ cursed secured Paul's glory. And that's all
he wants to concentrate upon. That's the message, as it were,
that he wants to leave with these Galatians. He has been firm and
strong with them. There are times in this letter
in which he has berated them. There are times, as it were,
where it almost appears that he's getting ready to speak so
strongly against them as to have doubts about their very salvation. such as the seriousness with
which he views the interlopers who have come in and disrupted
and deceived the people there in Galatia. Paul would have us look to the
Lord Jesus Christ. He would have us look to the
cross of Christ and to focus upon that. And of course, that
would be a fine sentiment at any time for us to concentrate
on the cross of Christ. That's good for us to do at any
time. But undoubtedly it is of a special
significance in the context of this Galatian argument. He's
taking, as it were, the believer's eyes off themselves. He's emphasising
the need not to be looking at what we're doing, not to be looking
at our obligations, not to be looking at our fleshy works,
but rather to transcend all of those things and glory in the
cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. The troublers of the Galatians
The apostle says, there are some that trouble you. The troublers
of the Galatians were urging these saints to be circumcised. Now we've spoken at some length,
I think, on a previous study about this circumcision, and
we have realised that while it physically was a cutting of the
flesh, and a cutting of the flesh that you couldn't go back upon,
While it had a physical manifestation, it was symbolic of a much bigger
and a much greater thing. It had to do with going under
the law as far as your religion was concerned, as far as your
spiritual well-being was concerned, as far as the traditions of the
Jews were concerned, and it was to do with Moses, it was to do
with the Jews, it was to do with the form of worship that they
followed, and it was to do with understanding what pleased God. what pleases God. As the people
of God, we ought all to be desirous of knowing what pleases God. And upon discovery of that knowledge,
to seek to please our God. And these Jews were coming along
to the Galatians, coming along to these Gentiles, predominantly,
and saying to them, if you want to please God, then you need
to get circumcised. But that is a one-off event.
That wasn't going to please God forever. No, they knew, and Paul
knew, and the Galatians knew that what was happening here
was that these people were being brought again into the Jewish
approach to God. being brought under the law and
saying that this was a way by which they could please God,
this was a way by which they could obtain righteousness with
God, this was a way that they could be holy before God by the
outworking of these obligations. Now what Paul is saying is that
that circumcision lifts up the law. It lifts up man's works. It lifts up these old traditions. It lifts up that old way of thinking,
when in fact the Lord Jesus Christ had come in order to do away
with that. He is saying that this circumcision
actually honours the flesh. It honours the flesh by, as it
were, cutting away a piece of the flesh. It was designed to
honour the flesh because the flesh would then be pleasing
to God. These men wanted to glory in
the externals and they wanted thereby to undermine the uniqueness
of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I believe that
that is still true today. I believe that any preacher,
call them a gospel preacher or not, because everybody takes
the name that they want to be identified by, but any preacher
who tries to bring you under the law in any way to make the
Ten Commandments a measure of righteousness, a measure of holiness,
a measure of sanctification, or to gauge by those laws and
your obedience to them, your duty under them, your standing
before God is a fraud and a liar. Now that's pretty tough talk. But Paul is emphasising here
that all our glory must be in the cross of Christ. He is taking
the Galatians to the cross, he is taking the Galatians to Christ,
and he is saying that that's sufficient, that's enough. And
anybody that wants to add something to that must of necessity detract
from the work of Christ. They are glorifying in the works. Do you know what I think Paul
is also saying here? He is saying, Not only were these
circumcisors, these troublers of the Galatians, coming down
and bringing these Galatians, or going up, and bringing these
Galatians under the law by their cutting of the flesh. But these
individuals were themselves glorifying in the flesh of the Galatians.
They were being promoted. They were getting kudos. They
were getting esteem and respect and the recognition of men because
they were bringing others under their own false teaching and
deceit. Did you realise that that happens
a lot around about us? You know, these ministers of
churches that say they get people up to the front or they talk
about the big projects that their church is involved in and they
speak about the accomplishments of their fellowship and the extent
of their evangelism and the number of baptisms that they're getting
and their growth. What are these ministers doing?
in talking about all of these things, they are puffing themselves
up. Because all of these things that
they praise and acknowledge and honour are all happening under
their watch. And if these things are being
accomplished under their leadership, then that lifts them up in the
eyes of their peers and in the eyes of those who follow after
them. They glorify in your flesh. Don't
let people glorify in your flesh. You are free. You have been called
to liberty. These things are your privilege.
we will not allow ourselves to be brought back under the bondage
of the entanglements of the law. Paul recoils from such a notion
and he says, God forbid, God forbid it that I should glory,
not in you Galatians, not in your obedience, not in anything
that I can do, not in any accomplishments that I have, not in establishing
churches here or establishing churches there or setting up
pastorates there and enlarging my sphere of activity and responsibility
and accomplishments, nothing of it. There is nothing in which
a believer is to glory except that which the Lord Jesus Christ
has done for us. Our only glory is Christ's disgrace. His cursing, his shame, his humiliation
is the sole ground of our hope and our acceptance with God. His life was given for us. His blood for ours. And he is sufficient in the courts
of heaven to make every one of those chosen, elect, predestinated,
sanctified, set apart, covenant people, joined together with
the Lord Jesus Christ in eternity, sufficient for all their needs. and to bestow upon them such
a righteousness of God, such a perfection and a holiness that
nothing else needs to be added and nothing can be taken away.
So shame on you if you imagine that you can add anything to
the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. and shame on you if you preach
any addition to the substitutionary redemption of the Lord Jesus
Christ and the righteousness of God that is thereby secured. There's a lovely little verse.
It's almost incidental in the passage that we've got before
us this evening, and it's personal. And it's there in verse 11. Look at verse 11, chapter six
of Galatians, verse 11. You see how large a letter I
have written unto you with mine own hand. Paul mentions the large
letter that he has written. The book of Galatians is not
by any means the largest letter that the apostle Paul has written.
Romans, Corinthians are all bigger than that. But what is he talking
about? Not the number of words, I don't
think, that's in this letter. But I take this to mean that
the apostle has written this epistle in his own handwriting. Often the apostle, it seems,
dictated his letters and on several of his letters we find that he
speaks about those who would write out the things that he
said. He uttered, he spoke them and we can almost imagine him
wandering around in his tent dictating and someone is writing
down this letter and then the apostle takes it at its conclusion
and he says, right, that's it, give it to me now. And he puts
on a final greeting to the brothers at the end and he signs his name
to it and off it goes to the appropriate church. That seems
to have been his usual practice and he would sign and give this
personal salutation at the end of his letter. But this is different. He's telling us at the end of
Galatians that I wrote this myself. It's almost as if he couldn't
take time to find the scribe. He couldn't take time to find
somebody that was going to sit down with him for the time that
he needed. It's as if there's a passion in his heart. There's
an urgency about this message. And he sits down and he gets
his pen and he gets his materials and he writes it out. And at
the end of it he says, you see the big letter I've written to
you? Such is the passion, such is
the dedication, such is the commitment. It's a proof, I believe, and
we should take it as such, of the affection with which, or
in which, he held these Galatians. He wrote with his own hand. It's
a lovely thing to get a handwritten letter. It doesn't happen very
often these days. Normally it's a text, usually
badly spelled, or an email that has run through a spell checker. And what was it I said to you,
Mitch, last week, that I'll meet you at Scholastic? I didn't mean Scholastic. I meant
Shields. And my spellchecker didn't know
Shields so it wrote Scholastic. But you get a personal letter.
You overlook the spelling mistakes. I before E except after C. It doesn't matter that they've
got receive wrong. Because they've sat down and
they've written that letter themselves. and it shows a sympathy, an affection. This is for you, this is from
me, this is what was on my heart and I've written it to you. And
of course the other thing about texts and emails is that you
can cut and paste so you can say the same thing to half a
dozen people. Or you can get to the end of
the paragraph and think, you know what, that's not right and
just delete it. But with a handwritten letter,
you've invested something in that. And that's what the Apostle
Paul did to the Galatians. He was investing in them. He
was writing to these people that he had a love and an affection
for and that he wanted to reclaim his friends. He wanted to expose
the errors of the false teachers. Absolutely. Absolutely. But these were his people. These
were his friends. And I dare say that he was more
greatly burdened for the well-being of his friends than he was for
the foolishness of these false teachers. He wasn't writing to
the Galatians to expose the false teachers. He was writing to the
Galatians to win his friends back. because they were being
deceived by these false teachers. And Paul continues in these verses
and perhaps by way of summary or perhaps to conclude his argument,
he writes in verse 15. For in Christ Jesus, neither
circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but a new
creature. Listen, all this stuff that these
people are talking about, all this circumcising thing that
they're bringing to you and insisting upon you and telling you that
you need to subject yourself to in order that they might glory
in your flesh, all of that, it doesn't mean a thing. Not when
we have Christ. Not when we have the glory of
the cross, not when we have all these things which Christ has
won for us and done for us. These things are, they're meaningless. And I think that what the apostle
Paul is saying here is that it's a way of him describing, it's
an explanation, if you like, of why he considers the world
to be crucified to him and him to the world. The grace of God,
the love of Christ, the privileged position that that has placed
him in has meant that all these other things, they just fall
away. They fade into insignificance. This isn't a religion that he's
establishing here. This isn't a code of practice
or a set of doctrines. This is Christ. This is the cross
of Christ and we have been so blessed, we have been so privileged
because of what we have in Christ that why would we begin to think
about anything else at all? These things are all dead to
me. The world is dead to me and I to the world because of what
Christ has done for me. These people are coming along
and saying, do this, do that, do the next thing. Live like
this, believe these things, follow after this practice, do these
things, and they've missed Christ. Paul talks about the world. He is crucified to the world
and the world is crucified to him. What is he saying? He is
saying, My life is hid in Christ, in
what Christ has done and what Christ has given me. He talks
about the world and elsewhere. If you look back in chapter four,
verse nine, he speaks there about the weak and beggarly elements. The world, these weak and beggarly
elements of the world, they have no hold upon, no hold upon the
new man. Or as the apostle writes here,
the new creation. Nor has the new man any obligation
to the world. In Christ, the law is satisfied. In the Lord Jesus Christ, our
debt is paid. The law comes looking, searching,
examining, but it finds no outstanding obligations upon those who are
in Christ Jesus. So the old distinctions of circumcised
and uncircumcised, which separated the Jew and the Gentile by some
code of outward duty, That has been renounced. It's redundant. And in the Lord Jesus Christ,
it has been removed. That's the implications of the
cross of Jesus Christ. The flesh, the old creation,
is heading for the grave. It profits us nothing. It gains
nothing good from slavish obedience to law. The new man, on the other
hand, the new creature, is holy in Christ, is accepted in Christ,
and in Christ stands complete and perfect before God. The just shall live by faith. We live our life, our walk, our
conversation, we live in the Lord Jesus Christ. We live by
faith in Christ. And our lives are hid with Christ
in God. Paul says that in Colossians
chapter three, verse three. Hid with Christ in God. Would it be disrespectful to
say that God cannot tell apart his own son and the church? This is the bride of Christ. This is the bride that has been
joined together with Christ. And just as God established in
the garden that Adam and Eve would be joined together and
make one flesh, so we are joined together. A man shall leave his
parents and join together and the two become one flesh. And this is who the Son of God
is united to. United to the elect of God, the
chosen ones, those who have been set aside as the bride of the
Son. And we are married to Christ. We are joined with Christ. And we are hid together in Christ
the Son. And we are one with Him. The Jews never did keep the law,
and Christians never can keep the law. If we foolishly bring
ourselves back under its rule, we shall rob ourselves of peace. We shall stir up and strengthen
sin in our lives, and we will jeopardise our soul by denying
the unique role that faith has in a believer's experience of
grace. Our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
is that which brings us into this relationship with God. It is the ground of our standing
before God as we place our trust in the completed work of the
Lord Jesus Christ alone. Let me offer you a piece of theological
jargon. Some Reformed teachers speak
of the threefold use of the law. They say that the law has three
uses for us today. The first use that they give
us is that it reveals the holiness of God and the sinfulness of
man. Now I don't have too much trouble
with that idea at all. And indeed it is true that the
law of God reveals the holiness of God. It is a holy law and
it reveals the holiness of the one who declared it and revealed
it and gave it to this world, gave it to Moses for the Jews. And it shows the sinfulness of
man also because it measures how far short of the holiness
and the perfection of God men are in their actions and in their
conduct. That's the first use of the law. The second use of the law that
is sometimes spoken of is the idea that the law restrains evil
in the world. and provides a limited measure
of justice. And again, we don't have any
trouble with that idea. It does restrain evil in the
world because it shows that there will be repercussions, there
will be condemnation for those who break these laws. So when
the law says thou shalt not kill, or the law says thou shalt not
steal, or the law says thou shalt not commit adultery, these things
truly do have consequences and repercussions to those who commit
sin, and if they withhold a man from sinning because of fear
of those repercussions, then we may legitimately say that
the law has restrained evil and given a measure of justice. We don't have too much trouble
with the second use of the law. But it is this third use that
we struggle with. We are told that the law reveals
what pleases God and thereby guides a believer's obedience. Now this third use, we deny. The old Reformed confessions
say the law is a believer's rule of life, by which they mean it
shows us how to live and it measures how well we are doing. But I
say that this rule of life is in fact a chain of death. It's a ball and chain around
the ankle of every saint. And it is what the Apostle Paul
is warning against when he says that we are not to be entangled
again with this law. In Galatians chapter 5, the Apostle
Paul says as clearly as it is possible to declare, verse 1,
He goes on in the chapter, verse 18 to say, But if ye be led of
the Spirit, ye are not under the law. And in verse 25, if we live in
the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. The beginning
of chapter six, he says, verse eight, for he that soweth to
his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that
soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And now the apostle is concluding
in verse 16 of chapter 6 as he says, As many as walk according
to this rule, peace be on them and mercy and upon the Israel
of God. So we were told that the rule
of life for a believer was to be the Old Testament law, the
law of Moses, the Ten Commandments, if you like. But that's not the
rule that the apostle is speaking about in Galatians 6, verse 16. He is saying, as many as walk
according to this rule. What rule is that, Paul? What
rule is it that you're talking about? The law as our rule of
life? The Ten Commandments as our rule
of life? That rule, is that the rule you're
talking about? No, he is talking about the rule
of faith. He is talking about the rule
of sowing to the Spirit and reaping life everlasting. The rule of
the spirit of life in the soul of man. That rule that leads
us into all truth. The rule that comforts our hearts. The rule that illuminates our
minds and brings us to the experience of peace and mercy with God. Peace. because we understand
by faith that every demand against us is settled and every debt
is paid and that gives us peace. We understand that we have been
reconciled to God and mercy because we have been granted God's favour. God has looked upon us and in
our guilt he has declared us to be free. He has looked upon
us in our sin and he has said that there is a way of deliverance. He has taken that sin from off
our shoulders and laid it to the charge of his Son. He has
looked upon us and because a substitute was found, He has allowed us
to go free, and that is mercy. We have been granted mercy, gifted
mercy, and we have been given a perfect righteousness in the
Lord Jesus Christ. Read the verse again, Galatians
6, 16. As many as walk according to this rule peace beyond them
and mercy and upon the Israel of God. You have to have a very
good reason for substituting this rule of the Apostle Paul
for that rule, which is the Old Testament law and the Ten Commandments. Because here we see the true
Israel of God. Do you remember who Israel was
in the Old Testament? Do you remember that man Jacob? Jacob and Esau? The one of whom
the Lord God could say, Jacob have I loved? Jacob was a supplanter. Jacob was a liar and a cheat. But this man Jacob met with God. He wrestled with God, we are
told. and he prevailed as he wrestled. His name is changed from Jacob
to Israel. Now we know that that people
that came from him, the children of Israel, they took his name,
his seed adopted his name and became the children of Israel.
But here we learn that there is a true Israel of God, as it
were, to distinguish them from that Jewish nation, the children
of Israel. Here we find the true Israel
of God being identified. Who are they? They are those
who walk according to this rule. They are those upon whom the
peace of God rests and to whom the mercy of God has been given. Do you remember what happened
to Jacob at Penial? We're told that he saw God face
to face. I say he saw God in the person
of the Lord Jesus Christ, because it is Christ who reveals God
to men. And we might think of this as
a pre-incarnation manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ, what
some people call a theophany. But here is a meeting between
a man and God, between Jacob and Christ, and the man lived
through this experience. He saw God face to face and he
lived. But we're told that he went away
from that encounter as a changed man. He went away changed forever. His walk was literally changed. And his life and his walk and
his conversation now revealed a man who had been with Christ
and a man who had been blessed by Christ. And that is the definition
of the true Israel of God. In Genesis chapter 32, we read
this account. And in verse 31, we're told that
as he passed over Penua, The sun rose upon him. This is speaking
of Jacob. As he passed over Penuel, the
sun rose upon him and he halted upon his thigh. That word halt
there means to limp. He limped. because his thigh
had been touched by God. His thigh had been touched by
the Lord Jesus Christ, and as a consequence of that, he halted
upon his thigh. He limped, and it was a limp
that he carried for the rest of his day. His walk was changed
because he met with Christ, and the Israel of God was established. when the Son of Righteousness
rises in a believer's heart as it rose upon Jacob that day at
Peniel. As he halted upon his thigh as
the sun rose up, so the Son of Righteousness comes into a believer's
heart and changes him, converts him. The soul of such a one is
changed. His walk is changed. And now
he lives in Christ, and he lives for Christ. And Christ lives
in him. We bear in our bodies the marks
of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Ephesians chapter 2, verse
10, we read, We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto
good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk
in them. Look at verse 18 in conclusion. The Apostle writes, Brethren, Paul retained a good hope for
these troubled saints. His closing request to his Lord
and his Saviour could not be sweeter. He says, The grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. May his prayer be
our portion also. And as many of us have been directed
over the years of our training and tuition and teaching in Christian
churches to imagine that we have something to contribute towards
our own sanctification and towards our own righteousness and towards
our life pleasing God, may we rather With these Galatians,
hear this conclusion, this salutation from the Apostle Paul. The grace
of the Lord Jesus Christ be with our spirit. Grace, it's all we
have before God. It's all that we can ever boast
before a holy God. May his prayer be our portion.
The works of the law do our spirits no good, but grace gives life
and peace and mercy. Amen.