Beginning with the Spirit but Walking in the Flesh

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? (Galatians 3:2-3 ESV)

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”? (Galatians 3:5-6 ESV)

Here, at last, is the unmistakable link between the gospel and sanctification. It is easy for us to accept that the gospel is the message that leads to justification, but much harder to understand how the gospel continues to play into our sanctification.

Verses 2 and 3 are past tense. Paul asks a question; did you receive the Spirit by living in accordance with the law, or by hearing with faith? Of course you received the Spirit by hearing with faith. He addresses the fact that they were justified by faith alone, apart from works.

Verse 5 and 6 are present tense. Does God continue to supply the Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law? No, your sanctification – the means by which God supplies the Spirit and works the miracles – is by hearing with faith in the same way your justification was.

This is where we often go astray in the modern church. We assume that God has supplied the Holy Spirit to us so that we may be perfected by working the law. We believe that we begin with the Spirit but then, in the name of the Spirit, we seek to be perfected by the flesh.  We think that we earn the Spirit by and for our works.

But God supplies the Spirit and works miracles among us by continued hearing with faith. No hearing, no Spirit. According to Paul, seeking perfection through law-keeping – even as believers – does not actually lead to perfection. On the contrary, we deny God’s supply of the Spirit when we refuse to simply hear with faith.

Paul instructs the Colossians,  Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:6-7 ESV) This is the same thing; as you received Christ by hearing with faith, so walk in him by hearing with faith. Again, the gospel is no ordinary message – it is the only means to the supply of God’s grace.

Let us abandon our Galatian tendencies. We can, with Paul, cast aside our feeble attempts at perfecting ourselves by the flesh. Though we may try to attribute them to the Spirit, they are not. Let us continue to allow God to supply the Spirit and work miracles among us by hearing with faith that we might truly be perfected in spite of ourselves. That is true sanctification. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

Grace and Peace

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. (Galatians 1:3-5 ESV)

Grace and peace. Paul begins almost every one of his epistles with these two words and Galatians is no exception. It has often been said that grace is the root and peace is the fruit of faith in Christ. Without grace, there can be no peace. If we embrace God’s grace through Christ, the result will be peace.

In studying the first chapter of Galatians I am struck once again with the absolute insistence of Paul that grace is administered through the gospel. The only means by which we can procure God’s grace is through the good news; faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of [about] Christ, as Paul states in Romans 10:17. In fact, the entire book of Galatians is about the importance of the purity of the gospel message, for without the absolutely unadulterated message of grace (free from all hint of justification by law) there can be no true faith in Christ. When we mix the gospel of free grace with any other message, our hearers end up with an impure faith – they will trust Christ to the extent of their knowledge of his grace, but from that point they will rely on works of the law for their justification or sanctification. If they respond to a message of the absolute free grace of God, as I believe Paul preached, that grace will extend freely into every corner of their lives without limit.

So often when we fail to recognize the good news as the means of grace in our lives and we end up experimentally seeking grace through experiences – spiritual mountaintops – or through works. We wonder all the time if this or that is God’s will for our lives. All of these things – spiritual experiences, good works and the knowledge of God’s will – are meant to be fruit that grows out of the good soil of His grace at work in our lives.

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? (Galatians 3:2-3 ESV)

Do we often stop to think that we actually received the Spirit by hearing with faith? Do we think that we can walk in the Spirit by any other means as Christians? We set aside the gospel of grace – the means by which the Spirit is administered – and seek some experience of the Spirit through the flesh. We seek the Spirit to make us spiritual, when in fact the Spirit is evidence of the hearing with faith that truly makes us spiritual. This is why Paul is absolutely resolved to preach a pure gospel that excludes every work of the flesh, including trying to please God by means other than faith by hearing.

We concentrate on each little victory and fret over each little opportunity we encounter because we limit the work of God’s grace in our lives. We will only allow Him to save us so much before we begin to try and save ourselves. Paul, for one, allowed God to save him completely by refusing to find security in anything but the grace of God which had been revealed to him in the gospel. He never allowed himself to place limits on God’s grace, because the gospel which he had been given (by direct revelation of Christ) was a gospel of unlimited grace.

To end today, let me share this with you. God can love you unconditionally because Christ met every condition of God on your behalf. What that means is, to the extent that you believe it, you are free. Free from seeking the approval of God, yourself and others. If you hear that with faith, you will receive the Holy Spirit who will produce the fruit of God in your life. Don’t seek the fruit which grace produces as the means of grace. Seek grace (His Kingdom and righteousness) first and all of these things will be added to you. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

The Weekend Round-up 12/7/2012

Hope you had a great week in the service of the Lord. A few things of interest around the web this week:

Don't Thingamatize Christmas - Hot on the heels of thanking God for all the things in our lives comes this post by Jared Wilson. What ought we truly be thankful for?

Five Dangers of Poor Eschatology - Eschatology is the study of end time events. It is a worthy endeavor, but has some pitfalls, which Mike Leake points out in this piece.

How Faith Effects Your Work - Tim Keller gives a brief synopsis of his latest work... er, book.

The Doubly Deceitful Heart - Just in case you missed it, this is one of mine from earlier this week.

Is your church just hip, or is it 'Contemporvant'?

More Precious Than Gold

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:3-7 ESV)

I have, in times past, interpreted the words of Peter as meaning that God grieves us with trials in order to strengthen our faith; that faith is built in the crucible of pain. I thought that Peter was telling us that when we reached a time of trial in our lives we were to muster our faith so that we can prevail in the circumstances of the trial; that our response to our trials should be greater faith.

Now I see something different in these words. Knowing that faith is the gift of God, I understand that faith is not something that depends on my faithfulness. I realize that there is no way that I can build my faith by being more faithful, rather, it is the faith which God has given me that sustains me in times of trial. The trial is a test that shows me the genuineness of that gifted faith, not a means of forcing me to resign myself to some self-deluded hope that ‘everything is going to work out fine.’ To be specific, trials show us our need for the object of our faith – Jesus Christ.

This kind of approach to trials by Christians (at least in the west) is indicative of the fact that our faith is not really rooted in the savior, but is rooted in itself. We have faith in our faith rather than in Christ. As a result, when we face trials and our faith fails, we become defeated and fail the test.

The next time you face a trial, remember this scripture and think of it in terms of grace. Reading it according to the law will render it to you like this: God desires, through this test, that I prove my faithfulness to Him. Reading it according to grace renders it exactly the opposite: God desires, through this test, to show how faithful He is. In the midst of the trial, which would you rather rely upon, God’s faithfulness or your own? Test the faith He has given you, the faith that is your real connection to Him, and you will discover that it is more precious than gold because it will not perish even in the most fiery of trials. At the revelation of Jesus Christ that gift of faith, not your faith, will be found to result in praise and glory and honor. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless

The Doubly Deceitful Heart

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us. (1 John 3:19-24 ESV)

Does your heart ever condemn you? Do you let it? Sometimes we do something sinful and we let that old heart just beat us up over it. Our hearts get at us coming and going since all wickedness comes from the heart (see Mark 7:21-23) and after we have followed that wicked heart into sin (James 1:14-15) it condemns us for doing the very thing it led us to do.

The two-faced Roman god Janus

John says that we can know we are of the truth if we can recognize that God – His grace – is infinitely greater than our own hearts. Verse 21 says that if our heart does not condemn us, we can have confidence before God. It seems as if John is saying that when our conscience is clear, we can walk confidently before God. But if you look again at verse 21, you realize he is actually saying something profoundly different – namely, that God is greater than our heart. God forgives where the heart will not, and until we recognize that God has in fact forgiven us despite the condemning voice of our own hearts, we can have no assurance that we are of the truth.  

Look at what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:

But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. (Verses 3-4 ESV)

Here the tables are turned. Paul states that his heart does not condemn him, but that is not what makes him free from condemnation. The Lord is his judge, and in Christ the verdict is not guilty. He refuses to judge himself, because he knows he cannot trust his deceitful heart.

Jiminy Cricket (whose name, by the way, has become a vain euphemism of our Lord’s name – not that I think Disney is firmly under the control of demonic forces) once said “Let your conscience be your guide”. This is great advice for the world at large, where without the conscientious constraint of the human heart every outburst of anger might easily become an act of murder. But for the Christian to allow his conscience to guide him is to allow his fallen nature to guide him. This is why John ends the passage above in this way - by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us. The Spirit that reminds us, when our hearts condemn us, that for Christ’s sake God has pardoned us; that the pardon of God is infinitely greater than the condemnation of our own sinful hearts. That is the gospel truth.

God Bless