Amen.
Our scripture reading this morning we turn back to Paul’s letter to the Galatians, beginning with the third chapter, the first verse. If you’ll join me, please: ‘Oh 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? Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.’
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray: Lord, help us to hear, and by hearing, help us to believe and have our faith built up in you. Let us be encouraged by the things that you have written, by the words that we hear, and the messages that you place unto our hearts. We ask that your Holy Spirit will always guide us, preserve us, and bring to mind all of these things that you have given for us. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
So now, after our brief hiatus, we now return to Paul’s letter to the Galatians. He has been writing concerning their apparent turning away from an earlier faithful trust for salvation in the finished work of Christ alone, credited to them by the sovereign grace of the Lord God alone, to now try and re-include a necessity for their absolute adherence to the entire law of Moses, particularly the covenantal right of circumcision, alongside faith in Jesus as the Messiah.
After reaffirming his own status as an apostle, the apostle to the Gentiles, after clearly restating exactly what the gospel is, reminding them that their salvation, their justification before the holy Lord, is by God’s grace applied by their faith, their trust in Jesus Christ alone, Paul begins his attack.
Actually, no, Paul is not attacking the Galatian churches or even these Gentile believers by his line of questioning here. He’s too good of a rabbi to do that. These questions are meant to be thought-provoking, not condemnatory. By questioning them, he seeks to remind them of the truth which they have already accepted. He wants them to remember and understand for themselves their error. He does not condemn them; he saves his condemnation and antipathy for those who have tried to lead them astray, those who have bewitched them.
Thus far in this letter, Paul has danced around the central question of how may a sinful man be saved. Are we saved by our own works, the good things that we have done, and our obedience to God, or are we saved by our faith in the only good man, the only one who is totally obedient to God, obedient unto death upon a Roman cross, to receive the imputation of his righteousness in the place of our sinfulness?
Now Paul plainly asks us: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Aha! We’re getting to something new now. Yes, while we’ve had this contrasting question before with contrasting works and faith, now Paul adds a requirement of evidence: the Holy Spirit. It sounds odd when we realize it, but this is the first mention of the third person of the Trinity in this epistle. The gift and presence of the Holy Spirit, our indwelling by the Spirit, is what makes the Christian truly different from everyone else. It is our identifying mark, which all the world can see. The Holy Spirit is the one who sets the elect apart from all the rest of the children of Adam. Only God’s chosen people receive the indwelling of the Spirit.
So now we are told the proof to know whether a person has been saved or not: Did you receive the Spirit? Have you received the Spirit? Have you? How or when did you? If you’re like me, you have wondered at different times in your life whether or not you really do have this gift of God. Although we will see the apparent fruit of the Spirit in our own lives, we may still wonder if we really have it when we see other people doing the same kind of things that we do but who live completely contrary to the revealed will of God.
Sometimes I think it sure would be nice if we all experienced those same extraordinary, flashy, and obvious gifts of the Holy Spirit that the apostles had, but their absence is not a detriment to us. Fortunately, Paul tells us here how we can know that God has given us his Holy Spirit, that we have been chosen as his people and are the true children of Abraham.
Paul gives two qualifiers to know whether or not we have the Spirit: Are we being perfected, coupled with how, and have we suffered or are we suffering on account of Christ because of our faith in him? First, he does not suggest that Christians have been already perfected. Christians are not perfect people. Christians do not even reach the fantastical Mary Poppins ideal of practically perfect in every way. We are being perfected; we are still works in progress. But we have the hope that one day we will be finally complete and whole people.
So what is this perfection that we are being transformed into? According to our modern Webster’s dictionary, to be perfect is being entirely without fault or defect, satisfying all requirements, corresponding to an ideal standard or abstract concept, or faithfully reproducing the original.
Or better still, according to the elder Webster’s, it means finished, complete, consummate, not defective, having all that is requisite to its nature and kind, fully informed, completely skilled, and best complete in moral excellence.
By any of those definitions, no normal, ordinary person can possibly hope to measure up. Thus the truism of ‘nobody’s perfect.’ Everybody has their faults. Nobody always meets the requirements completely or even on time. No one fits any one single absolute ideal.
Another reason why the whole idea of absolutes and ideals are denied by our modern culture is in favor of this relativistic life that people live. We human beings are not finished; we are not complete because we are still growing, learning every day. We are constantly improving ourselves and being improved, although most of us would hesitate to admit it.
As human creatures, we are each defective or deficient in some manner, especially as we do grow older. But this is often what makes us unique and oh so special. None of us are fully informed, knowing and understanding all things, nor are any of us skilled in each and every craft or artifice. Most importantly, none of us are morally excellent. Everyone is morally deficient, whether it be by a constantly changing worldly non-absolute perspective or according to God’s unchanging holy law.
We need to be perfected, but Paul only offers us this binary option of the Holy Spirit or our flesh to be the agent of our perfection.
Now I do not deny that there is some value and capacity for us to be improving ourselves by the flesh through our human efforts. We may hit the gym to improve our strength, endurance, or to help with weight loss. We may read and study new things to gain degrees to increase our understanding of the world, or just from a love of learning. We may even undergo elective surgery to replace our worn-out parts or to maintain and manage our regular biorhythms to preserve or enhance our physical well-being.
We may try to act nicer to people, treating them with kindness and respect. We can read Dr. Phil, watch Oprah Winfrey, and try out every self-help method we may find. But we may never can or will always succeed completely. Our flesh and our efforts will all fail us in some and many different degrees. While we may see some improvement, it is both physically and reasonably impossible for us to perfect ourselves.
Fortunately, Paul’s perfecting focus here is upon only our moral and spiritual state aspects, which we cannot and will not improve at all by our own initiative. Dr. Phil may be a pretty smart guy, but we require the Holy Spirit to desire or to even seek to achieve righteousness and moral excellence in this life.
Jesus told Nicodemus, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.’
Just as each person does not work to bring about their own human birth, so too we do not and cannot work to achieve our spiritual birth. But once born, it becomes our responsibility to continue to grow through our own efforts. Just as neither birth comes about by our work, so will we not receive God’s Holy Spirit through our diligent yet flawed and deficient, imperfect and failed obedience to the law.
The second proof of the Holy Spirit in us is this: Do we suffer, or are we willing to suffer in this life on account of Jesus Christ because we hold on to our faith in him? Only the elect who have been prodded, prompted, indwelt, and inspired by the Holy Spirit will do so.
Now I’m not asking if we’re willing to experience martyrdom, for it is a far easier thing to profess our willingness to experience than to do it. It is reasonably judged to be much more challenging to live for something than it is to die for something.
I do not need to wonder if we are experiencing cultural persecution, being denigrated for our beliefs or consigned to social irrelevancy because the Christian faith is obviously and increasingly so in this country. Yet it often feels easier for us to suffer in a group with others because then you feel and experience camaraderie with one another, bolstering your resolve, helping you to remain steadfast against the opposition because you know that you are not alone.
Those are not the kinds of sufferings which Paul has in mind here. He is not concerned here about us remaining steadfast before a wholesale program of hate. No, the type of suffering that he means, the enduring of which serves as good evidence of the Spirit’s work in our life, are the little things we suffer.
The things which are inconsequential in the larger scheme but which have the greatest impact upon yourself. Think back to the time before you were a Christian, or if you cannot even remember such a time, or if you’re like me and have grown up in the church and have professed the faith from the time you could speak.
Think back to before you really started to live out your faith, when your faith truly became important to you, and how you lived. Were there friends that you had before this moment who pushed you away, abandoned you, or turned completely against you because now something, someone, had made you different than you were before?
Did you suddenly find yourself without a seat at the table where you once sat? Have you let people go out of your life, people whom you once called friends, because of their decisions or way of life, decisions they made and acted upon that are contrary to the teachings of scripture or that go against the clear biblical standards of morality without any sign of repentance or remorse?
Are there places that you will no longer frequent that you did once before, where you may have acted or participated in things which you now believe and know are contrary to the revealed will of God?
These are the types of little sufferings that do not seem to matter much in the cosmic scheme of things, but which testify to a true and lasting difference being affected in our lives. Steadfastly persevering through these sorts of trials may testify to the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. But together with the presence of spiritual fruit in our lives, we may be more confident of our spiritual state.
It was once very easy to say that you were a Christian in this country because it was assumed that everyone was. Everyone was in church on Sunday morning—any church! Everybody had the ten commandments and the Lord’s prayer memorized. Wednesday evening was even a second holy time during the week when ordinary things and activities were never ever scheduled. There was no cost to being a Christian so long as everyone saw you go to church when you were supposed to, so long as you used the properly coded Christian language. A person could get away with just about anything they wanted because they gave lip service to the idea of salvation by grace alone, treating it as a license to sin as they wanted.
These are what some folks will call carnal Christians—not even Christians at all—because they demonstrate no sign of sanctification or the presence of the Spirit within them. They will go to the far opposite extreme by denying all need for good works entirely, so long as they were known to be a Christian.
And if they did these things they do with other people also known to be Christians, then it was all okay because the culture had come to believe that this is what Christians do, even when the Bible says it’s wrong. However, this is just plain old worldly living and not a Christian way of life.
Eventually, these folks—they’ve stopped calling themselves Christians. They became agnostic, spiritual but not religious, progressive or liberal, or even the more recently coined expression: the nuns.
When there was no cost to having faith, when living faithfully did not seem to matter for individuals, when everybody became a Christian in name, then fewer people were Christian in truth and spirit. When it was easy to be a Christian, then everybody was one.
But whenever it becomes challenging or difficult, when it starts to require any amount or degree of suffering, then people start to fall away. All of those who are Christian in name only immediately abandon the faith when it becomes too hard because their foundation is not built upon the rock. They do not have a faith that is rooted well enough to endure any trials.
Sure, they may spring up and walk alongside the faithful for a time, but their enthusiasm will eventually wane, and then they will return to their earlier pursuits once they feel that the worldly cost of being a Christian outweighs their worldly benefit.
Because they are not born of the Holy Spirit; because they have not received Him, He is not working to perfect them. He is not encouraging them, supporting them, or helping them to persevere through these trials. Instead, all of their hope and trust and confidence is in themselves and not in our risen Savior, Jesus Christ.
Now, we will often refer to the five solas of the Reformation, the five alones, when we remember the cause of our salvation by grace alone, the means of our salvation through faith alone, and the agent of our salvation, Jesus Christ alone, how we may know of our salvation according to the scriptures alone, and the purpose of our salvation for the glory of God alone.
However, there is a sixth sola, a sixth alone, which does not get described or remembered often in such a manner. This sixth sola perfectly describes those folks without the Holy Ghost, those people whose hope and confidence rests in themselves instead of faith in the finished work of Christ.
This is how they live instead of by faith. This sixth sola is sola bootstrappa, or by my bootstraps alone, meaning that I am the agent of my own salvation, that I may earn God’s love, favor, and blessing based entirely and solely upon the merit of all my good works, pulling myself up by my bootstraps all the way in through the pearly gates.
This is the mindset of the person which the questions from the evangelism explosion seek to expose by asking, ‘If God were to ask you, ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?’ how would you answer him?’ Any answer that is given using an operative first person pronoun, I, me, mine, my, as being the reason why, is a sola bootstrappa answer.
Unfortunately, this whole concept is embedded deeply into our American mindset, culture, and identity. But none of us, none of us have any right or reason to truly expect that we deserve or ought to even be allowed entrance into heaven. Our only cause and reason to hope is the very same as the condemned man dying beside Jesus, hanging from his own cross, who asked only to be remembered.
No one can get into heaven. No ordinary person is ever saved based upon the sum of their merits because we all suffer from that terrible disqualifier: sin. We are not perfect, much less morally perfect, and we cannot perfect ourselves. Salvation in heaven requires a spotless, pristine record, and just as one drop, one single drop of black ink into a bucket of white paint spoils the entire color, so too our tiniest sin prevents our entry and earns our eternal condemnation.
But there is good news. There is hope for sinners like us. Jesus Christ, him who we preach as crucified and then raised from the dead, he is our only hope, for he is the agent of our salvation. He is the one who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father.
All we need to do is hear and believe. We who believe, believe because the Holy Spirit is within us, and he is the one who builds us up and perfects our faith. We must believe the promises of scripture, because by doing so, we believe God.
This promise, we believe that Jesus died, giving himself to rescue us from God’s wrath as our substitute, to clothe us in his righteousness and justify us before our Father’s holy throne, is what proves us to be the sons and daughters of Abraham.
So I urge you to examine yourself carefully. What is the source of your confidence? What do you trust in to receive salvation? Do you trust in Jesus Christ alone, or do you trust in yourself and your good works?
When that time finally comes and you stand before his glorious throne, when you are asked, ‘Why should I let you in?’ will your answer begin with ‘Because I…’ or will it be ‘Because he?’
The answer I hope you will all be able to give, as Alastair Begg so pointedly put it, is: ‘I don’t know, but the man on the middle cross said I could.’ And if that is how you will answer him, possessing the Holy Ghost within you, then you will also know the answer to Paul’s question: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?
He has entered within through your hearing with faith by you believing and trusting in the gospel of Jesus Christ alone. Thus, you may know that you have been born again, born of the Spirit, and that you are a true child of Abraham because you are justified by your faith, not your works.
Amen.