Christian Beginnings | Galatians 3:1-5
Brian Hedges | September 24, 2017
Turn in your Bibles this morning to Galatians, the third chapter. We’re going to be reading verses one through five.
Oftentimes marriage counselors, when they meet with a couple who are struggling with their marriage — maybe their hearts have begun to wander, this couple’s drifted away from one another in some way — oftentimes marriage counselors will encourage them to think back to the beginning of the relationship. What was it that first drew them to one another? How did they first come to love one another? What attracted them to one another in the first place? To help them recover something of the beginning of the relationship, to rekindle the dying embers of their love.
Scripture often does that as well. We see it, for example, in the letters of the risen Christ to the seven churches of Asia, where he rebukes especially the Ephesian church, that they have left their first love, and he calls them to remember, to go back, to remember the love that they had at first.
That’s something that all of us need to do from time to time. We need to remember how we began in the Christian faith. We need to remember why we became Christians in the first place. We need to remember the fundamentals of our faith, the essence of the gospel, and the basic features of our conversion, because really, we’re never meant to move on from that basic, initial faith. Of course we are to grow, but we don’t grow by leaving faith behind; we grow, rather, by going deeper into the gospel, deeper into faith. That’s what this passage teaches us this morning. Galatians chapter three, verses one through five.
Now, as we saw last week, Paul gives us the central thesis of his whole letter in Galatians chapter two, verses 16 through 21. The essence of his letter is that we are justified not by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. That’s how we are declared right before God. That’s how we are accepted by God through faith in Jesus Christ.
And now, in chapter three, Paul turns to personally address the Galatians and to begin arguing his case. He’s given the thesis, now he’s going to argue the thesis, and he basically does that for two chapters. He will do that by first appealing to their experience of Christ, and then by unpacking the Old Testament Scriptures for them, to show them from the Scriptures that this central Christian truth of justification by faith in Christ is indeed the truth. It is the gospel.
This morning we look at the appeal to their experience. He reminds them of how they began. He reminds them of their Christian beginnings, their beginnings in the faith, and really he rebukes them, he reminds them, and he appeals to them not to move on from the gospel. That’s what we see in the passage this morning; let’s read it.
Galatians 3:1-5: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?”
This is God’s word.
So, three things to see. This is pretty simple. There’s a rebuke in verse one, there’s a reminder in verses one through five, and then there is an implicit appeal. Okay? A rebuke, a reminder, and an appeal.
I. A Rebuke: Who Has Bewitched You?
First of all, notice the rebuke. “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?”
The first thing to notice here is that this is direct address. Paul is now moving from a description of his own background, his credentials as an apostle, his experience with the Jerusalem apostles, and his initial articulation of the gospel; he’s moving from that, he’s turning to the Galatians. He addresses them: “O Galatians!”
And he does so with great emotion. The word “O” should be there; if it’s not in your translation of the Bible, it should be there. Paul says, “O Galatians!” There’s emotion here, there’s pathos, there’s great feeling because of the deep concern he has for the Galatians. “O Galatians!”
But he doesn’t just say, “O Galatians,” he addresses them and characterizes them in two ways; first of all as foolish. “O foolish Galatians!” It’s pretty in-your-face stuff. It’s a rebuke; it’s a rebuke. “O foolish Galatians!”
Some of the other translations read like this: “O senseless Galatians!” “You thoughtless Galatians!” “You crazy Galatians!” Or here’s my favorite, from J.B. Philips, “O you dear idiots of Galatia.”
Now, understand here that Paul is not insulting them; he’s not insulting their intelligence. I mean, when you read the letter to the Galatians, this is one of the most complicated, closely reasoned, carefully argued letters that Paul ever wrote. He’s not calling them “idiots” in the sense of insulting their I.Q. He’s rather rebuking them for their lack of spiritual discernment. They are foolish; why are they foolish? They’re foolish because they are trying to add works to grace. They are foolish because they are abandoning, or at least being tempted to abandon, the basic principle of the gospel. And so he calls them foolish; he rebukes them.
But he says more than that. He also says they were bewitched. “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” This word bewitched means to give someone the evil eye. It means to cast a spell on someone. It means to fascinate, in the older sense of that word; to hold someone spellbound, to exercise a supernatural, infernal power upon someone.
Commentator F.F. Bruce says, “Their new behavior was so strange, so completely at odds with the liberating message which they had previously accepted, that it appeared as if someone had put a spell upon them.”
Now, Paul may just be using this word in a figurative sense. “Who has bewitched you? Are you under a spell?” But he may actually be saying that they have been somehow influenced by demonic power; that they are deceived. And indeed, Paul in his letters is not afraid to say that. Do you remember in [Second] Corinthians chapter 11 Paul says that he has a divine jealousy for the Corinthian believers? He says, “I’ve betrothed you to your husband, to Christ, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ, but I’m afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, so you will be led astray from a sincere, pure devotion to Christ.”
That ancient serpent that whispered those seductive lies to Eve in the morning of creation, that same serpent is at work, Paul says; the deceiver. The deceiver. “And I’m concerned that you’ve been deceived, that you’ve been led astray.”
In Second Corinthians chapter four Paul tells us that “those who do not believe,” in their case, “the god of this world has blinded their minds, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” So there is a Satanic element, in Paul’s understanding, to departures from the faith or blindness towards the gospel, and so he says, “Who has bewitched you?” This is a really stern rebuke.
What we see here is a pastor, an apostle, a father, who is going after his disciples, who is going after his flock, who is going after his children, and who is pleading with them.
Timothy George says, “This verse is a solemn warning to every congregation that gathers for worship and every preacher who stands behind a sacred desk to proclaim God’s word. However small the congregation and however powerful or ineffective the preacher, a contest of eternal moment is being waged with the souls of men and women in the balance.”
Serious issues happen when we come to church, when we hear the gospel. God, through his Spirit and through his word, pleads with men and women. “Be reconciled to God,” Second Corinthians five, and the deceiver is right there, whispering seductive lies into our ears, trying to distract us, trying to seduce us, trying to pull us away. So Paul begins with a rebuke: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?”
II. A Reminder: Back to the Beginning
And then, secondly, he gives them a reminder. He takes them back to the beginning, back to their Christian beginning, back to the original faith that they had.
I think it’s a very interesting study, here, of what Christian conversion consists of. What I want you to see as we work through the body of this text, the substance of this text, are three features of Christian conversion; three things that happen in a Christian’s initial coming to Christ.
(1) First of all, look at what Paul says in verse one, the second half of verse one: “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” So here’s the first feature of Christian conversion, the portrayal of Christ crucified.
Now, this is an interesting way of wording things. Paul says, “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified,” but he’s writing probably about [18 or 20] years after the crucifixion of Christ. He is writing to these believers who were not in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion. He’s writing to mostly Gentile believers who are in this province of Galatia. They weren’t there! They didn’t see the crucifixion.
But Paul says, “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” What does he mean? This word portrayed: it carries the idea of placarding something.
Calvin’s translation of choice is “painted.” It’s a painting. And Calvin says that Paul’s teaching was so clear that it was not so much clear teaching as the “living and expressed image of Christ.” In fact, he says, “By this he suggests that the actual sight of Christ’s death could not have affected them more than Paul’s preaching.” Paul’s talking about his preaching. He preached the cross, and he preached the cross in such a way that Christ was presented to them as crucified, and through the word of the cross, the preaching of the gospel, they saw something. They saw Christ! They saw the crucifixion of Christ.
This is how we see the cross. We don’t use a crucifix in order to see Christ; we use the proclamation of the cross of Christ in the word and at the table. That’s how we see Jesus. We see the cross when the gospel is proclaimed and, as Paul says in First Corinthians 11, when we take the bread, we take the juice, and we proclaim his death until he comes. That’s the visual aid for Christians. The cross of Christ.
This, I think, highlights for us two things about the cross: first of all, its centrality. The centrality of the cross. When Paul describes the essence of his message to the Galatians, he says, “You saw Christ publicly portrayed as crucified.”
It goes right along with things that Paul said to the Corinthians. You remember First Corinthians chapter two, verse two, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Or First Corinthians one, verse 18; he calls the gospel the word of the cross. The word of the cross. Or when he defines the gospel in First Corinthians 15:3, he says, “This is the gospel that I delivered to you. It’s also what I received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,” he goes right to the cross. The cross is central to the gospel.
There’s a story about an old church. The church on the front of its building had this statement, “We Preach Christ Crucified.” As the story goes, a vine began growing over the door of the church, and it wasn’t really tended or cared for, and eventually the vine covered up one of the words, and it just said, “We Preach Christ.” The vine kept growing, and eventually it covered up the word “Christ” and it just said, “We Preach.”
That’s kind of an analogy for what happens in a lot of churches when they lose the centrality of the cross. They start of preaching Christ crucified; lose the doctrine of the atonement, they’re still talking about Jesus. Before long they lose Jesus altogether and they’re just preaching centers. The church must always stay focused on the cross of Christ. This is the message, folks: the cross of Christ. We preach Christ crucified.
So the centrality of the cross, and then also the finality of the cross. This word “crucified” is a perfect passive participle; it stresses the finality, the once-for-all nature of the crucifixion of Christ. Remember how Jesus said in John chapter 19, verse 30, “It is finished.” It’s finished! So Paul is highlighting here the sufficiency of the cross, the finality of the cross.
And in fact, if you just go back one verse, chapter two, verse 21 (remember that the chapter breaks were not there in the original letter), Paul’s really just following what he’s already been talking about. He’s just given them his exposition, his initial explanation of justification by faith in Christ, and he says, “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law then Christ died for no purpose.” The cross is emptied of its power; the cross is of no effect if righteousness comes by the law. And Christ was portrayed to you as crucified; now don’t go back to the law. Don’t smuggle in the law. If righteousness comes through the law, the cross is emptied of its power; Christ died for no purpose.
But the converse is also true. If Christ’s death was effective, then righteousness comes not through the law, but through trusting in his triumphant achievement. If that is true, then the Christian is dead to the law, as Paul himself says in verse 19 — chapter two, verse 19: “I died to the law.” Why have we died to the law? Because we are united to Christ, who fulfilled the law! The sufficiency of the cross.
Listen to the old Puritan Stephen Charnock as he exults in this reality. He said, “The virtue of his cross must cease before the killing power of the law can revive. This crucified Christ, who disarmed the law of its thunders, defaced the obligation of it as a covenant, and as it were ground the stones upon which it was writ to powder, is worth our studious inquiry . . . Nothing of God looks terrible in Christ to a believer. The sun is risen, shadows are banished, God walks upon the battlements of love, justice hath left its sting in a Savior’s side. The law is disarmed, weapons out of its hand, his heart opened, sweetness and love is in all his carriage, and this is life eternal: to know God believingly in the glories of his mercy and justice in Jesus Christ.”
Justice is satisfied! The law - the stone tablets, as it were, ground into powder! The law has nothing against a Christian, because the Christian is in Christ, and the law is fulfilled in Christ, in the cross of Christ. So with that old hymn-writer Augustus Toplady we can therefore sing,
“A debtor to mercy alone,
Of covenant mercy I sing.
I come with your righteousness on,
My humble offering to bring.
The judgments of your holy law
With me can have nothing to do;
My Savior’s obedience and blood
Hide all my transgressions from view.”
You don’t have anything to do with the law if you’re in Christ! The law cannot condemn you. The law does not rule you.
Now, that does not mean that the Christian is free to sin, and we’re going to see why in just a moment, but the answer to the problem of the sinning Christian is not the law. You don’t add the law. The answer is the cross and all that the cross purchased for us.
So here’s the first thing: Christ portrayed as crucified; the message of the cross. And isn’t that how you became a Christian? You understood; you can probably remember that first dawning realization that Christ died for me. He died for me! The sufficiency of Christ for my sins.
Now if you’re like me, I can’t date the moment of my conversion. I don’t know exactly when it was. I don’t know for sure, because I grew up in a Christian home. I mean, I was going to church from infancy, you know, two, three times a week oftentimes. I always believed. I always believed in God, I always believed in Jesus, I could quote the Bible before I knew what the Bible meant; but I remember telling a lie and being convicted of that lie weeks later, and I remember telling my dad because I felt so guilty for the lie, and I remember he told me, “That’s why Jesus died. Confess it, and ask him to forgive you. That’s why Jesus died; that’s why he went to the cross. He died for that.” Something clicked, and for the first time I didn’t just pray, “Forgive us our sins,” I prayed, “Forgive me for my sins because of what Jesus did for me.”
You see, that’s how you become a Christian. It’s embracing the cross for you. His death for you. The sufficiency of his work for you.
(2) Here’s the second feature of our beginning in the faith, and it’s hearing the gospel with faith. Look at verse two. Paul says, “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?”
By hearing with faith. Now, there are lots of ways that little phrase can be construed, or can be interpreted. I think what he means here is hearing the message with the response of faith; so, believing the message. It is our believing response to the message.
Paul is probably here echoing Isaiah 53:1, “Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” One evidence for that is that Paul quotes that verse in a parallel passage, Romans chapter ten, verses 14 through 17. Let me read this.
In Romans chapter ten Paul is kind of working his way backward. How does a person get saved? Well, they call on the name of the Lord. But in order to do that they have to hear the gospel, they have to receive, respond to the gospel. Listen to what Paul says: “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.’ But they have not all obeyed the gospel, for Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?’ So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”
That’s the idea. Hearing with faith. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ. You hear the word, you hear the gospel of Christ crucified; you hear that proclaimed, and when you respond by faith, that’s conversion. You respond by faith. You hear and you believe.
The response of faith; this is so central in Pauline theology that you could say that faith is the only response. It is the response that contains every other response. You never graduate from faith to something else. Faith is the response, and the whole life is faith! Remember Romans chapter one: “The righteous shall live by faith,” and “from faith to faith,” faith first to last, is the idea. The whole life of the Christian is a life of faith.
Listen to the way Martin Luther put it. I think this is helpful. “God no longer requires the feet or the hands or any other member. He requires only the ears. To such an extent has everything been reduced to an easy way of life. For if you ask a Christian what the work is by which he becomes worthy of the name ‘Christian,’ he will be able to give absolutely no other answer that that it is the hearing of the Word of God, that is, faith. Therefore,” he says, “the ears alone are the organs of a Christian man, for he is justified and declared to be a Christian, not because of the works of any member, but because of faith.”
Your ears; that’s the chief organ. It’s something you hear. Something you hear, and you respond to the message that is heard. Faith.
(3) So, Christ portrayed as crucified, that’s first; the response of faith, and then here’s the third thing that happens: receiving the Spirit. You see this, actually, three times in this passage. Verse two, “Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” Verse three, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” Verse five, “Does he that supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?”
So, three different ways of saying it. You receive the Spirit, you have begun in the Spirit, and the Father has supplied the Spirit to you. Actually, that’s a present participle, so the Father supplies the Spirit. It’s an ongoing supply of the Spirit. He gave the Spirit once and for all, and now he supplies the Spirit to you, and Paul says, “God does this by faith.”
Now, why this emphasis on the Spirit? This is the first time the Spirit is mentioned in Galatians, but this is crucial for understanding this letter. Galatians has a lot to say about the Holy Spirit; a lot, especially in chapters five and six. So why does Paul put this emphasis on the Spirit? Well, let me just give you several reasons.
The promise of the Spirit was one of the great prophetic hopes in the Old Testament for the age to come. They were looking for the age to come. They were looking to the day when God would restore the fortunes of Israel, and their hope was that God would pour out his Spirit on all flesh, Joel two.
Or, as Isaiah put it, who Paul is probably channeling here as he writes Galatians, Isaiah 44, verse three, “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground. I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring and your blessing on your descendants.” God promised he would do this, he would give his Spirit to his people. And of course, on the day of Pentecost the Spirit was poured out, and in the book of Acts, when you trace the conversions through the book of Acts, one of the defining marks of people who come to faith in Christ, both Jew and Gentile, is they receive the Spirit; the Spirit is given to them.
So that’s why the Spirit is described with these very vivid metaphors in the New Testament. The Spirit is our guarantee, the Spirit is our seal, the Spirit is the firstfruits of our redemption. All of that language suggests that the Spirit is the first installment of our inheritance, the down payment. The presence of the Spirit is what guarantees future deliverance, future salvation, future resurrection.
In some ways we could even say the gift of the Spirit is the goal of salvation; that God’s whole goal, his whole purpose in saving us, is to give us the Spirit! You see this, for example, in Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel, where Ezekiel - he doesn’t use the language of the new covenant, but he’s talking about what Jeremiah meant by the new covenant. In Ezekiel 36, he says, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” God promises to give his Spirit. He’s giving himself to us, indwelling us with the Spirit.
The church father Athanasius (we think it was him) said this: “The words took bodily form so that we might receive the Holy Spirit. God became the bearer of a body so that men might be the bearers of the Spirit.” It was the whole purpose of salvation, to give us the Spirit, and all of this means that "the Spirit is the bridge between the already and the not yet," as Douglas Moo puts it. The Spirit is the connecting link between the salvation we’ve already received and the fulfillment of that in the future.
You can see this as you trace the language of the Spirit through Galatians. Let me read a couple more passages. Galatians chapter five, verse five. Paul says, “For through the Spirit by faith [see that intricate connection?] we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.” We’re waiting for something. We’re looking ahead; the age to come. How do we do it? We do it through the Spirit and by faith.
Or look at Galatians chapter six, verses seven and eight. Paul says, “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked. For whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh [mark that word] will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” The Spirit, the connecting link between now and eternal life. So our whole life is to be sowing to the Spirit; it’s to be walking in the Spirit. As Paul says in Galatians five, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.”
Now why, in this context, in this letter, why is the Spirit so important? Here’s why. The false brothers, the false teachers, are telling these Gentiles, “You have to have the law if you want to be right with God. If you want to be righteous, you need the law. You were justified by the law, you’re sanctified by the law; you need to walk in the law of the Lord.” And Paul is saying, “No, we’re not justified by the law; we’re justified by faith in Christ, and if you are united to Christ you’re given the Spirit, and the walk of the Christian is a walk in the Spirit.” The person who has the Spirit is actually above the law! Paul says, “If we have the Spirit, we’re not under the law." That means we’re over the law.
You know what Paul’s saying that? He’s saying that because the Spirit does what the law could never do. You remember that key passage, Romans chapter eight, verses one through four? You get a lot of these themes in a slightly different context, but they all kind of come together and crystallize in Romans 8:1-4. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” There’s justification! No condemnation! Not guilty. “For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” The Spirit does what the law could never do.
Christ fulfilled the law in our place, first of all; that’s the basis upon which we’re declared right before God. And then Christ gives the Spirit to us, so that we’re not only declared righteous, but the Spirit begins this process of actually turning us into righteous people; people who are characterized by love and by joy and by peace - the fruit of the Spirit, “against which there is no law,” Galatians 5:23. The Spirit fulfills what the law could never do.
Now that’s a complex theological argument. Let me give it to you really simply. This is attributed variously to John Bunyan and Ralph Erskine and various other people, but here’s the little saying:
“Run, John, run, the law demands,
But gives you neither feet nor hands.
Far better news the gospel brings;
It bids you fly and gives you wings.”
How does it do that? Because he gives you the Spirit. That’s why Paul says, when he goes back to the very beginning, he says, “Listen, Galatians - you foolish Galatians! Don’t you remember? You saw Jesus crucified; you heard the word of the cross. You responded with faith and God gave you his Spirit. You have what you need! You don’t need the law! He didn’t give you the Spirit by works of the law; he gave you the Spirit through hearing with faith. Now don’t smuggle in works. Don’t go back to the law, or go to the law,” in the case of Gentiles. “Don’t go to the law. Instead, walk in the Spirit.”
So that’s the reminder, and then all of that is written for the sake of this appeal.
III. The Appeal: Don’t Stop Believing
Okay, here’s the third brief point. There is an appeal, and the appeal we could just phrase like this: don’t stop believing. Don’t stop believing! You started that way, now don’t quit.
You notice as you read this, it’s questions. Paul’s asking questions. “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” There’s that word again, and there’s this antithesis between flesh and Spirit, just as there’s this antithesis between the works of the law and faith. You put those two things together, it means that the Spirit works in the realm of faith, but the realm of the law, that’s the realm of the flesh. Paul says, “You can’t be perfected that way! You can’t be completed that way!”
Then verse four, you see Paul’s concern. “Did you suffer so many things in vain - if indeed it was in vain?” Now, he may be talking about them suffering persecution; that may be what he means here when he says, “Did you suffer so many things in vain?” But that word suffer could have just a neutral sense; it could just mean, “Did you experience so many things in vain?” So he may just be referring to these things that he’s just described: “Did you experience all this in vain - if indeed it was in vain?”
There’s kind of a question here. “Was it in vain that all this happened to you?” Paul says that in other places in Galatians; we’ve already seen it in chapter two, verse two, when he went to the apostles in Jerusalem so that his work would not be in vain. He didn’t want his apostolic labor to come to nothing. You see it also in chapter four, verse 11, when he says, “I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.”
Now you read that and you might think, “Does Paul think that a Christian can lose their salvation? I mean, he’s questioning this, right?” He’s questioning them and the validity of this work. “Could it be that it was in vain? I don’t want it to be in vain.” What does Paul mean by that?
Well, here’s the answer. I think no, Paul is not suggesting that they can lose their salvation. In other passages such as Romans eight I think Paul lays out a theology of salvation in ways that demonstrate his confidence that those who are predestined and called and justified will also be glorified, and there’s no break in that link, those links in the chain. There’s no break in it. All who are predestined are called, all who are called are justified, all who are justified are glorified in Romans eight, verse 30. I don’t think he’s suggesting that they can actually be lost, if they’re genuinely saved.
And in fact, in another passage, Philippians chapter one, verse six, Paul uses two of the key words that are used in this passage. He uses them together to describe the security of the Philippians from the divine perspective. He says, “I am sure of this, that he who began [that’s a key word] a good work in you will be faithful to bring it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ.” God completes the work he begins.
But here his focus is a little different. Here, he’s not so much appealing to God’s work in them; he’s appealing to their initial profession of faith in Christ, and he’s reminding them, “You started that way, but you cannot complete it by works of the law.” And it underscores a basic point that runs all the way through Paul’s letters, that there is no salvation without perseverance in the gospel. It does not mean that those who fail to persevere lose their salvation, in the sense that they were justified, now they are no longer; rather, the lack of perseverance reveals a lack of genuine faith. But the nature of the faith is to persevere, but one of the means that God uses to keep us persevering are these appeals. He appeals to us.
We could go to Colossians chapter one and First Corinthians 15 to show that, but here’s the point I think we need to grasp today. The point here is not that you can lose your salvation if you’re saved; the point is that the only way to continue in the faith is not by adding works of the law, but it’s to hold onto that message of the cross, the faith with which you responded, remembering that that’s how you received the Holy Spirit.
And in fact, the way Paul words this in verse four, “Did you experience so many things in vain - if indeed it was in vain?” I mean, the very way he words that gives kind of a note of hope. He really hopes for better things of them. He hopes that it’s not vain, that this profession of faith wasn’t false; that it was real, and that the reality of that will be verified through their perseverance in the gospel.
So that’s Paul’s concern, now here’s Paul’s exhortation; we end on this. The exhortation, I think, is implicit in the questions. He is saying, essentially, “Finish the way you started. You began by the Spirit; now finish in the Spirit. You began with faith; now finish with faith. Don’t try to complete the work of Christ by works of the law, don’t supplement the work of the Spirit by works of the law, don’t try to be perfected by the flesh. You started in faith; now continue in the faith. You started in the gospel; now stay in the gospel. You believed in the gospel; now don’t stop believing.”
I think that’s the exhortation for us this morning. We’ve been reminded, just as the Galatians were reminded, how it all began.
How did it begin? You saw the cross. You heard the gospel; you responded with faith. God gave you his Spirit. Now, what’s next for the Christian? Keep on believing. Keep on believing! Don’t forsake the faith. Don’t add something to the faith. Keep believing the gospel; keep relying on the Spirit. Live in the Spirit. “If we live in the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” That’s the idea: don’t stop believing.
Let’s pray.
Father, once again we thank you for the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, the cross which is proclaimed in this word of the cross, the gospel; the cross which is proclaimed at the table, to which we now come.
As we come to eat the bread, to drink the juice, may it be a reminder to us of how we are saved. We are saved by the finality and the sufficiency of Christ’s work on the cross for us and his resurrection from the dead. We are saved, not by doing, but by hearing; not by working, but by believing; not by the flesh, but through your Spirit applying these things to our lives, to our hearts, indwelling us, and then beginning this process of change, by which we are not only justified, but we are also sanctified.
I pray this morning that the word of the cross would ring true in our hearts, and I pray that our response, even as we come to the table, would be the response of faith; that we would essentially say, “Yes, Lord. I agree. I agree that I’m a sinner, I agree that you’re a Savior; I agree that your salvation is sufficient. I put my hope, my trust, in Christ and in his cross.” May that be our heart this morning. I pray it in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
