Turn with me please in your Bibles
to Galatians chapter six. Galatians chapter six. I want
to read the first few verses of the sixth chapter of Galatians. We do seem to have been in this
book for quite a long time but I trust you're not finding it
wearisome. It is a lovely book and it has
some wonderful lessons in it and I trust that the Lord is
giving it a liveliness to our own understanding and that perhaps
in some small way it is speaking to us at a point of need. Galatians chapter six and we'll
read from verse one. Brethren, If a man be overtaken
in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit
of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens,
and so fulfil the law of Christ. For if a man think himself to
be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let
every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing
in himself, alone and not in another. For every man shall
bear his own burden. Let him that is taught in the
word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things. Be not deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap. 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 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. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. I hope with me, as you've been
going through some of these studies in the book of Galatians, that
you have realised the burden upon the heart of the Apostle,
the Apostle Paul, as he has written these words to the churches of
Galatia. It was a region and a part of
what we now call Turkey. And he was writing to these people
because the ministry that they had received the pure gospel
that they had been taught had been subverted. It had been challenged,
and the anxiety that the apostle had was that it had, at least
in some cases, been overthrown. The purity of the gospel had
been attacked, and what had been put in its place was a mongrel
gospel. Paul says it's another gospel
which in reality isn't another gospel at all because there can
only be one good news and that has to be the good news of sovereign
grace, the good news that God has done everything necessary
for the salvation, redemption, deliverance and ultimate glorification
of his people. If any component of that overarching
umbrella term that we say is salvation. If any component of
that, be it our justification, our sanctification, our redemption,
our conversion, our living, our glory, if any component of that
great work of salvation falls to the individual to complete
in any way at all, then it's like a hole in the bottom of
a boat. Sooner or later, it is going
to sink that vessel. Because if you are leaving it
up to the flesh to do something, then ultimately the flesh is
going to let us down. And the Apostle Paul was aware
of the sheer scale of the problem that had come against these Galatian
believers. He speaks of them that troubled
the believers there in Galatia. And it is a problem, it is a
trouble. So when we come to the Book of
Galatians, As I trust we have seen, it soon becomes very clear
in the reading of it, just how explicit the apostle is endeavouring
to be in order to show the distinction between works and grace, between
law and gospel. and the superiority of the gospel
over the law, over any element of contribution by way of works
and by way of endeavor on the part of the individual and how
that detracts from the purity and the clarity of the gospel
message. This distinction between law
and gospel ought not to surprise us. And I think, unfortunately,
that in many religious circles today, there has been a failure
to grasp this distinction between law and gospel. And the trouble
with the Galatians is the trouble of our modern churches, our modern
Protestant churches, our modern Reformed churches. We find that
there is a melding, that there is a joining together of law
and gospel, works and grace, such that we find a confusion
arises in people's minds. about how they actually are saved
and what the grounds of their acceptance with God truly is. It ought not to surprise us that
the Apostle Paul is distinguishing between these two things, law
and gospel. Because we find at the very beginning
of the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the very earliest
days of the gospel revelation, when John, writing his gospel,
in the opening chapter speaks about the coming of the Lord
Jesus Christ. He describes it in these terms. He says in John 1, verse 17,
For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ. Now, I want you just to pause
for a moment and realise what that verse is saying. The law
was given by Moses. Nobody doubted that. Nobody found that particular
phrase in any way controversial. John then uses a little word,
a little conjunction, to join the two parts of his sentence. He says, the law was given by
Moses, but, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Now, if
he had said and in there, that would have changed the meaning
of that sentence completely. But he used but. He was drawing a distinction,
making a contrast between these two things. The law of Moses,
which was familiar to all of the Jews, and the grace and the
truth which is discovered in the Lord Jesus Christ. These
two things, right from the very beginning of the gospel revelation,
were held in opposites, as an opposite by the believers. And yet, and yet, despite the
clarity of the writing of the apostles, Despite the preaching
of the Apostle Paul in particular, we discover that the Galatians
were being duped. They were being conned and they
were being cheated. They were being deceived by false
teachers, teachers of false doctrine. These were lately come from Jerusalem
and their intention was to trouble the Galatian church by undermining
the purity of the gospel and overlaying it with a system of
works and obedience and law duty. which ultimately would steal
away the joy of the Lord, the peace and the comfort of a knowledge
of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the liberty which
these believers had in their Saviour. And Paul has shown these deceived
brethren Not for the first time, because it had been the essence
of his preaching, but Paul has shown these Galatians that Moses'
law can never make the flesh holy. No work, not the highest,
not the grandest, not the simplest, not the hardest, no work. could make these men and women
holy, because holiness is not to be found in fleshy obedience. Holiness is only to be found
in the Lord Jesus Christ and received by faith. No law of works, no deeds of
any form of external compliance to a set of rules or a pattern
of practice can make the flesh one bit better than it actually
is. and the flesh is fallen, the
flesh is ruined. There is no good thing in the
flesh. Everything that emanates from
it, the highest work, the best deed, the greatest good that
we can perform is ruined through, is faulted because of the sin
that is in us. No set of rules, whether it's
Moses' Ten Commandments, or any other religion's holy laws, or
simply the man in the streets, what seems right in his own eyes,
can improve the natural man's condition. And these Judaizers,
they sought to blend a mix of spiritual profession, because
they weren't denying that the Galatians had to have faith in
Christ, they weren't denying that, but they sought to mix
it with a framework of legal obedience that was designed to
bring the Galatians to a higher level of acceptance with God. If they would live holily, if
they would live well, if they would do good, if they would
follow the patterns that these Judaizers were setting for them,
then God would be more pleased with them than simply he was
on the basis of their stark naked faith. It was as if they were
saying to these Galatians, you have become a Christian Now you
must obey the law of Moses in order to live like one. God wants you to trust him. God wants you to have faith in
him. God wants you to turn to him
and be dedicated and committed to him. But here is the way that
you express that dedication. Here is the evidence of your
commitment. Here is the pattern of life,
which if you will acquiesce to this, if you will live your life
like this, you will receive the blessings of God. You will have
the pleasure of God upon you. And I've tried, as we've been
studying these passages, to show that this same teaching continues
to be prevalent in our churches today. Indeed, I'll be a little
bit explicit here, maybe provocative to some. Indeed, I think that
it often lurks under the guise of reformed doctrine in our churches
today. It says something like this,
you have been to Jesus for justification. You've been to Jesus for cleansing. You've been to Jesus for redemption. Now you must go to Moses for
sanctification. It says Jesus has saved you,
but your obedience to the law will make you holy. It says your
sins are all forgiven, but your obedience to the law will please
God, while your disobedience to the law will offend God. And so believers, having been
converted, suddenly find themselves brought once again to a pattern
of conduct, a way of life, And interestingly, it's often
a pattern of conduct which varies from place to place. It has to
do about whether or not you're in a particularly strict church,
or in a not so strict church. Whether your particular group,
your peer group, applies a certain code of conduct rigorously, or
whether they're a little bit more relaxed about it. It has
to do with the time in which we live and the culture of which
we are a part. I know, for example, because
I lived in Scotland for many years, that there were practices
and ways of living regarding, for example, the Sabbath day,
which if 50 years ago or 100 years ago, were done or people did certain
things on the Sabbath day, then they would have been condemned
by their peers, put out of the church, reprimanded for their
conduct and ostracised by the community. And those very same
things are now put up with, tolerated and allowed even by the very
ministers of the church. What's changed? Has the law of
God changed? Has Moses' law changed? Or has
our culture changed? Is it the people that have changed?
You see, the whole point is that where we endeavour to impose
a pattern of obedience, a way of living, a set of duties, then
they will always be circumvented, whether it is purposefully because
of the wickedness of man's heart, trying to do things deceptively,
or whether it's just in the course of time. The old men would never
have watched the television. Now we all have televisions in
our houses. The old men would never have
gone to the cinema. Now everybody goes to the cinema
and few people would find it to be wrong to do so. because our mores and our patterns
of doing things have changed. And it's the same in all manner
of things. So here we have a dilemma. Here
we have the question of what is it that makes us holy? What
is it that gives us this standing with God? Where am I going to
have any grounds of hoping that I have peace with God, I have
the pleasure of God, I have the approbation of God as far as
my soul is concerned. Paul, when he speaks, he tells
us that this idea of merging works with grace is an error. And it has been the burden of
his message to the Galatians in all of the chapters that we
have read. I'm going to summarize, if I can, in just three verses
from his writings where he has brought us to, to the beginning
of chapter six. In Galatians 1, verse 6, he says
to the people there, I marvel that ye are so soon removed from
him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another
gospel. Okay, now, however we're going
to read and understand the book of Galatians, The Apostle Paul
is saying in the sixth verse of the opening chapter, you guys
have made a mistake. You guys have got this wrong.
You have moved from the gospel that I preached to another gospel. In chapter two, verse 21, he
writes, I do not frustrate the grace of God. For if righteousness
come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. If righteousness
comes by the law, Christ didn't need to die. Why should Christ
die? If you can get righteousness
from the law, if you can get righteousness, Paul's not making
a distinction here between justification and sanctification. He's not
talking about the forgiveness of our sins or our growth in
holiness. after we've become Christians.
People like to think that there's this notion that once you become
a Christian, it's almost like you're lifted off of one platform,
which was the platform of the condemned, and put onto another
platform, which is the platform of the righteous, and then you're
shown a ladder upon which to climb up to greater levels of
holiness by your obedience and your works. No, Paul says, if
any righteousness whatsoever comes from the law, Christ died
in vain. Now that's emphatic. He's not pulling any punches
when he uses language like this. This must have been like a blow
to the stomach to these Galatians to hear this. Maybe not a bad thing for Christians
to get a blow to the stomach every now and again on their
doctrine, just to test them, just to make sure that they appreciate
the singleness of the gospel that we follow and how it is
not to be mixed or merged or melded with any other notion. Here's the third verse that I
had in mind with respect to the summary that Paul is giving us.
Stand fast, he says, stand fast. Galatians 5 verse 1. In the liberty
wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again
with the yoke of bondage. My, the yoke of bondage. I wonder
what that is. Surely we're beginning to understand
what it is. It was this yoke of law obedience
that these Judaizers were putting upon the shoulders of the Galatians.
Don't come under that yoke again. Realize where your standing is
and stand fast in that liberty. Now, the argument today by some
people against those of us who align ourselves with Paul's message
here is summarized like this. They say to us, this doctrine,
this doctrine which you are preaching, this separation that you are
trying to establish here between the law and the gospel, between
works and grace, that doctrine will encourage lawlessness. When
you say that a believer is free from the law of Moses, you are
giving him liberty to sin. You are allowing him to do whatever
he wants. And we know that people have
a bias to sin. Therefore, if you don't keep
that rod of rule, you don't keep that law of Moses, if you don't
keep that stick close to the back of those who are professing
Christians, then you'll discover that they're wandering everywhere
and that they are prone to sin. If you preach only grace, then
you will remove all the restraints that God has given us to keep
these people in the narrow way. Now that's the argument. That's
the argument against the position which we advocate. And I think
it's very interesting, that argument, because it's an accusation which
has a long pedigree. When the Apostle Paul was first
preaching the gospel, that was exactly the argument that the
Pharisees and the Jews, the religious people of his day, set up against
his gospel preaching. And he anticipated that argument
in his writings so that we discover in Romans chapter six that he
begins that chapter with these words, shall we continue in sin
that grace may abound? And he answers with an emphatic
no. He's telling them that the believers
are called to holy living. And in the same chapter as his
argument unfolds, he says in verse 14, sin shall not have
dominion over you. You people say that you have
to have Moses' law as well as the gospel because that's what
stops Christians, professors, from wandering and falling into
sin. Well, he says, no. He says, that
position doesn't stack up against my gospel, my argument. Because there are two natures
in the believer. There's the old man and there's
the new man. And the new man is that which
has preeminence. He's going to be attacked by
the old man, but it is Christ's rule, it is Christ reigning in
the heart of the new believer that is going to have the dominion. So he says in Romans 6, 14, sin
shall not have dominion over you. That's a fact. That's, he is
saying, it just won't. It shall not have dominion over
you. If you're born again, if you're
a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, sin has been thrown off
the throne. Christ is now on the throne.
He has dominion in our lives. The Holy Spirit indwells us. And I say it, and I've said it
many times, that doesn't mean to say that we do everything
right. That doesn't mean to say that
we're never tempted. That doesn't mean that we never
fall. The believer knows that in many
ways his battles have only begun when he comes into that experience
of grace. But the reality is nevertheless
that Christ is on the throne, and that's why his life is so
hard, because the devil doesn't want to let go easily. Sin shall
not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but
under grace. What then? Shall we sin because
we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid! God forbid! No, could Paul be
any clearer? This is the message. Paul shows
in Romans, and he repeats it here in the book of Galatians,
that the believer has liberty from the law, but that liberty
does not lead to sin. Rather, it reveals, the liberty
reveals, it gives evidence to the fact that a new reign of
Christ is in the believer's life. Christ is on the throne in a
believer's life. Sometimes when I'm driving past
some of the establishments in the town, I'll see that there's
a big sign outside and it says, under new management. And that's,
of course, to encourage you to come in and try the service because
you probably felt that the old management wasn't doing a very
good job. Well, come and give us another
try because we're under new management now and it's going to be better. Well, the believer is under new
management. When we come to Christ, Christ
enters into our life. A believer is a new creature. He's a new man with a new nature
and he's a man with a nature that is now holy. A man whose
nature, the new creation in him, is perfect. A man who's indwelt
by God the Holy Spirit. And this new rule in the heart
of the believer, in the soul of the believer, is called the
law of Christ. The law of Christ. There was the law of Moses. That
failed to bring righteousness. Now there is the rule of Christ,
the reign of Christ in the believer's soul. And here in Galatians chapter
six, verse two, the Apostle Paul says, bear ye one another's burdens
and so fulfil the law of Christ. This law of Christ has nothing
to do with the law of Moses. That's the contrast that has
been made throughout this book. Here they're fulfilling the law
of Christ because they never could fulfill the law of Moses. It was never intended to make
them righteous, give them a righteousness. Sin, we're told, is not imputed
to the new man because the new man is not any longer under law. We read that in Romans 5, verse
13. And in Romans 4, verse 8, blessed
is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Now, that must be a reality. You can argue with me all you
like, about whether or not the believer is still sinful. I don't
disagree with you, but the word of God says that there is a happiness,
there is a blessedness, there is a wonder and a privilege,
because there is such an individual as the man to whom the Lord will
not impute sin. Who is that man? He's the man
of faith. He's the man who trusts in Christ. He's a man who believes the gospel. He's a man who has Christ ruling
and reigning in his life. Not the old man of flesh, but
the new spiritual man, the new creation. And this law of Christ
is the gospel rule that is given by Christ and is taught by the
apostles, taught to the church, taught to the people of God,
completely distinct from the law of Moses. These apostles
didn't teach. They weren't Pharisees. They
weren't teaching the law of Moses. In fact, Paul had to contend
with Peter when Peter erroneously made a distinction between Jews
and Gentiles by the way in which he conducted himself. And Paul
was very emphatic about putting behind him all of the burden,
all of the yoke of the Old Testament law, and in any way mixing it
with the New Testament gospel. So the law of Christ is what
we have before us this evening. And what I want you, I'm not
going to deal with each of the verses in this passage. I wanted
to, as it were, nail this point down with us this evening. But
that law of Christ has several other names in scripture that
distinguishes it from the Old Testament law. It is called In
the Old Testament, by the prophet Micah and also by the prophet
Isaiah, it is called the Law of Zion. Now, you know what Zion
is. Zion, well, it was a fortress,
it was part, it was a physical location in the city of Jerusalem. And it is spoken of in the Old
Testament as such, but it's It's an allegory, it's a metaphor. And when we speak about Zion
in the New Testament, we understand that as being the church. The
church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this Zion and this law which
comes from Zion is the message which Zion declares. It's a picture
of the gospel. The Church of Christ in the New
Testament age sending forth the gospel as it preaches the message
of the Lord Jesus Christ and salvation by grace. Salvation
through the cleansing blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and by
the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ and the
sufficiency of the cleansing power of Christ's blood and the
righteousness which is imputed thereafter. That's all that the
believer needs. It's all that the believer has
and it is acceptable by God. So we read about this gospel
going forth from Zion in Micah chapter 4 verse 2. Here are the
words. Okay, that's talking about the
Gentiles being gathered through the preaching of the gospel.
As the gospel went out, go ye into all the world and preach
the gospel. Preach the message of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Grace and truth comes by Christ. As that message went out, so
the Holy Spirit took the message of the gospel and converted the
nations, men and women who received the grace of God. And many nations,
says Micah, shall come and say, Come and let us go up to the
mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob and
he will teach us of his ways and we will walk in his paths
for the law shall go forth of Zion and the word of the Lord
from Jerusalem. That's not talking about a city
in the Middle East. It's talking about the Church
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that law of Zion goes forth
to the gathering in of the nations, that we may walk in his paths,
that we may honour his name, that he may teach us his ways. And that law that goes forth
from Zion is not the law that came forth from Sinai. This is
from Mount Zion, the church, not Sinai, which was the old
dispensation. It's the gospel that's declared
by the church, by which many nations shall come and the Gentiles
be gathered in. It is the law of faith. It is the law of the Spirit of
Christ. And again, these are expressly
declared to be distinct and contrary from the law of Moses. In Romans 3, verse 27, where
is boasting then? It is excluded. But you see,
that was the whole point about the Pharisees. They lordied it
over the common man and woman because these poor souls weren't
obedient to the law of Moses. And that led to self-righteousness,
that led to pride, that led to boasting. Paul says, where is
boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay, but by the law
of faith. There's the contrast, the law
of works, the Moses, or the law of faith, or the law of Christ. Romans 8, verse 2. For the law
of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from
the law of sin and death. There you are, again, the contrast
that is being made, the law of faith. The law of the spirit
of life in Christ Jesus. And that is the perfect law of
liberty. And that's what James directs
us to in his little book. James chapter 1 verse 25 says,
Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, Okay, what is
it? That's the gospel. He's talking
about the gospel, the perfect law of liberty. And continueth
therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work,
this man shall be blessed in his deed. the pursuer of the
perfect law of liberty, the law of Christ. And in James chapter
two, verse 12, we have this repeated. So speak ye and so do as they
that shall be judged by the law of liberty. This is the two things,
the gospel or works. And that's what Paul is referring
to in Galatians chapter six, when he speaks of the law of
Christ. In 1 Corinthians 9, verse 21, he uses another phrase and
he says that we as Christians being not without law to God,
but under the law to Christ. Not under the Mosaic law, but
under this perfect law of liberty. I hope this is gelling with you. I hope you're appreciating the
significance of these distinctions. I wish that when I was a young
man, someone had made these distinctions clear to me, because I'm sure
that there are many, many believers go through their Christian experience
all tied up, all bound up, thinking that they need to be looking
over their shoulder to see whether this person is being critical
of them or that person is being critical of them because they're
not living up to a standard of life that they imagine is necessary
for peace with God. No, our peace is in Christ. That's
the reason for it being good news. That's the reason why we
have faith in the gospel. This is the Lord Jesus Christ's
new commandment. This is the gospel rule of love,
the rule of the new man in Christ. John chapter 13 and verse 34
says, A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another
as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. This is
the gospel. This is the rule by which we
live. This is our rule of life. We
do not look to the Old Testament law, the Moses law, as a rule
of life or the rule of life of believers. We are under the perfect
law of liberty. We are under the gospel. This
gospel, the law of Christ, it reigns in believers' hearts.
It operates by faith through the power of the Holy Ghost. The old man with his old nature
is judged and condemned by the holy law of God. But the believer
is not judged, not in the new man, because Christ has paid
every debt. There's nothing found that is
wrong in him. Every single shadow, every single
sin, every single iniquity, transgression, everything that could possibly
have built any wall of separation between us and God has been completely
taken away, laid upon the shoulders of our Saviour, carried with
Him in His own body on the tree and paid for. completely and
utterly, every single sin that you ever committed, and every
single sin that you ever will commit. We're perfectly holy
in Christ, and that is for our justification, our sanctification,
and every form of righteousness that you might want to enumerate.
Our whole righteousness is found in the Lord Jesus Christ, and
it is received by faith. We believe it to be so, and it
is. Paul says, There is therefore
now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk
not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. The Gospel's precepts,
the Gospel's ordinances are become the believer's rule of life,
not the condemning law of Moses. We are free from that. It's gone. It's been dealt with. It comes
to us and it examines us and it finds nothing there because
sin is not imputed to us. It comes and examines us and
it finds the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. It
finds a holiness that satisfies the very righteousness of God. We have been called to liberty,
says Paul to the Galatians. Stand fast in the liberty wherewith
Christ has made us free. We walk in the Spirit. We live
under the rule and the dominion and the reign of the Lord Jesus
Christ and God the Holy Spirit in our lives. And that's the
position that we are in. Brothers and sisters in Christ,
what a glorious place to be. What a wonderful possession to
have. not to fear the judgment of the
holiness of God, but to know that by faith we are accepted
in the Lord Jesus Christ and God looks upon us and sees no
sin. God looks upon us and regards
us as holy, as righteous, as perfect as Christ himself. started there a moment ago by
reading Romans chapter eight, verse one. Let's read on in Romans
eight and see what the apostle has to say. There is therefore
now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who walk
not after the flesh but after the spirit. For the law of the
spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law
of sin and death. We're free from the law of sin
and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through
the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness
of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the
flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh
do mind the things of the flesh, but they that are after the Spirit,
the things of the Spirit. So the Apostle Paul says in chapter
5 of Galatians, verse 18, if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are
not under the law. Fact. If you're led by the Spirit,
you're not under the law. Is the Holy Spirit leading us?
Is the Holy Spirit indwelling us? What is our conversion? What is our regeneration? What
is that new life, that enlivening? But the Holy Spirit coming into
our lives, that's what we believe. The Holy Spirit has indwelt us. We are led of the Spirit as newborn
men and women, and therefore we are not under the law. Galatians
5.22, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against
such there is no law, no condemning law of sin, no condemning law
of Moses. These are the qualities that
the Holy Spirit engenders, promotes, prompts in the lives of believers. And I don't need to come and
tell you to be kind. I don't need to come and tell
you to be long-suffering. I don't need to come and tell
you to be gentle with one another. Just try for a while not being
kind. Try for a while not being gentle
with one another. See how it makes you feel. See
if it makes you feel good to be impatient. She even makes
you feel good to act in a way with your fellow believer that
is condemning and judgmental. And the Holy Spirit will provoke
you. The Holy Spirit will prompt you. The Holy Spirit will say,
that's no way to act. That's no way. Why is that? Because
there's a new rule in your soul that directs you to what is good
and what is holy and what is right and what is appropriate
one to the other. And that's what we rest upon.
Christ in us. Christ in us. These blessings that we have
open to us, I think, the meaning that we find in the rest of this
passage in Galatians chapter six. We're going to go back to
it on another occasion, but evidently. what the Apostle is telling us
here, that sin is still with the believer. And that's our
experience, we know that. So he says in the opening verse
of this passage, And so even although we have the Spirit indwelling
us, we can still be tempted. Even although we have this rule
of Christ, this law of Christ prevailing in our souls, this
new man, yet we can still be overtaken in a fault. And this
teaches us that we need to be long-suffering and kind and gentle
and gracious with one another. Because we all are susceptible
to the assaults of the devil, the trials of our faith, the
challenges of this world, the temptations that come against
us. But just because the devil is kicking us doesn't mean to
say we're the devils. And just because we fall and
succumb from time to time in our lives and do things that
are inappropriate and do things that are wrong doesn't mean to
say that God has imputed that sin to us. but rather we are
to be loved, rather we are to be forgiven, we are to be encouraged,
we are to be brought back into the body of Christ, into the
sweetness of the fellowship of the body of Christ, and we are
to help one another. So these are the principles,
these are the gospel principles, the laws of liberty, the laws
of the spirit of life, that now indwell us, that we are to live
upon and we are to interact upon. Paul is directing the Lord's
people basically to be humble, to be humble and in that humility,
teaching us always to trace their standing, their position before
God, their strength, their usefulness, their service in the body of
Christ, back to Christ himself. because he is the source of all
good and all grace in our lives. We are called to bear one another's
burdens. We are called to exercise love
towards one another, to practice long-suffering with one another.
Even when we say things and do things that get on one another's
nerves or cause problems in the body, look, There but for the
grace of God go I. That's me sitting right there.
That's me doing that thing. That's me opening my mouth when
I shouldn't. That's me saying what I ought
not to say. That's me acting in a way that's
inappropriate. That's me doing what's wrong.
and we care for one another and we love one another and we endeavour
to help one another and sustain and uphold one another by our
witness and by our labours. Remembering that the best of
men stand only by the free grace of God in Christ. Perhaps it
was that the motivation of these Judaizers was to ultimately undermine
and replace the sound teachers of the gospel amongst the Galatians. In Galatians 4, verse 17, the
apostle says, they zealously affect you. That means that their
zeal is diverting you, it's distracting you, it's taking your eyes off
of the Lord and turning you away. It's causing you to look elsewhere. They zealously affect you, but
not well. Yea, they would exclude you.
that ye might affect them. They would take them out from
that body of believers that had been followers of Paul and followers
of the gospel preachers. Why? In order that these selfsame
believers might affect the Judaizers. Well, what does that affect mean?
It means that they might do them good, they might build them up,
that they might give them the allegiance, the support, maybe
even the money that they had been dedicating to the gospel
and the service of the apostle. Zealously affected that you might
affect them. And that, perhaps, is what the
apostle is directing us to hear. So Paul is saying here that those
men that remain faithful to the gospel, to the truth, They are to support the preachers
of the truth. They are to lend practical support
to the work of the gospel. Let him that is taught in the
word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things. 1 Timothy 5, verse 18, for the
scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out
the corn, and the labourer is worthy of his reward. Even so,
1 Corinthians 9, 14, hath the Lord ordained that they which
preach the gospel should live of the gospel. Galatians 6 verse
7, be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap. You think God's treasury is empty? You think God doesn't have the
wherewithal to look after his people? You think God requires
us to do one another good? No, of course he doesn't. God
could make a big pot of gold just appear, like he did the
coin in the fish's mouth. There, pay your taxes with that.
God's no man's debtor. but he calls on his people. He
calls on his people to engage together. He calls on his people
to labour together, to stand in truth together, to support
the work of the gospel, to take that message and send it out
to the world as a combined effort of dedication and commitment
on the part of his people. And if we don't, Well, don't
be deceived, because God's not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap. And he goes on to show that whatever
it is that we sow, that's what you get back. No man sows barley
and expects to get wheat, or sows sunflower seeds and expects
to get tulips. you sow and you reap of the same
kind. So the Lord's people are engaged
in this together and we walk in the spirit and we understand
the principles upon which our acceptance is made and we send
that message out into the world and we look to the Lord to be
gracious, to make that message fruitful, to bring forth out
of those things which are sown a harvest which will resonate
to his glory. as his people, out of a heart
of gratitude and thanksgiving, seek to serve him and preach
that word. The Lord knows our motivations. He feeds the ravens and he adorns
the lilies. And yet he calls his people to
kindness. He calls them to gentleness.
He calls them to goodness. He calls them to mutually support
one another and to preach the gospel with clarity. of the Lord
Jesus Christ. May he bless these words to our
heart and give us an openness to receive them, that we may
have them applied to our thoughts in ways that will alter and change
our understanding, if it be his will. Amen.