Make sure you have good directions. Last week a 16 year old boy was rescued from Crown Mountain in British Columbia Canada. He used AI to map out a hiking route but AI gave him really bad directions. He ended up way off course from where he intended and instead found himself stuck on a an advanced route called “Widowmaker.” He had to be rescued by a helicopter team and lifted off the mountain. Search Captain Paul Markey said this, which is of interest to us today, “Be cautious when getting routes and information suggested through AI. You can’t just blindly follow what AI is proposing to you. You need to question the information and just see whether it makes sense or not.”
We as Christians need to not just blindly follow routes and information that we are given when it comes to following Christ. We too need to question the direction people point us, and see if it makes sense or not from the Bible. That’s what’s called being a “Berean” – Acts 16 says that they “searched the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul was telling them was true. The Galatians were getting bad directions, and they weren’t being good Bereans. Judaizers were telling them to go in a certain direction, but Paul was warning them it was the wrong direction.
Today we have what are called Torah Keeping Christians. They are Christians who are like the Judaizers of Paul’s day – Christians who follow the Law of Moses and say all Christians should follow Moses. They follow the dietary rules, the calendar and feasts, they worship on Saturday, they segregate from others who don’t follow these rules, and more. Don’t follow them, EFC. You are not under Moses, EFC. You are free in Christ, a child of God with the Holy Spirit indwelling you, EFC.
In Chapter 5 Paul tells us we have been set free and in doing so he continues the slavery/freedom motif from chapter 4. Christ came born of a woman under the law to redeem those under the law, and then now he says Christ has set us free. It was FOR freedom that Christ has set us free. We were set free to LIVE free – to live in freedom.
Then Paul tells us in verse 1 to stand firm. And what he means is to stand firm in our freedom. Set free and living free go together when Christ sets us free. That means salvation leads to a life of freedom. Now we live free from the law (4:5), from sin (3:22), set free from elemental forces (4:3). We see in other NT passages we are set free from condemnation (Rom 8:1) which means we are supposed to live with confidence that we are not condemned for our sins because we are in Christ Jesus.
This is not a license to sin, as so many people mistakenly think. Many Christians think that by telling Christians they have freedom from the Law it will lead to moral anarchy and CHristians will start living wild in sin. But this view comes from an ignorance of Scripture’s teaching, and ignorance of God’s grace. This freedom and this grace are not a license to go load up on sin, but a license to live in righteousness. Even more so, freedom and grace are instructors in righteousness (5:13 and Titus 2:11-12). This freedom and grace are also the power to live righteously because when someone is in this freedom they have the power of the Holy Spirit, and the power of God as they live by faith. Living by the Law is not done by faith (3:12), but it is lived out by the flesh, which is weak, and unable to live up to the righteousness of the law.
So people make the mistake of thinking that being forgiven is somehow a license to go and sin all you want because they mistakenly think that what people are being taught is that there’s no standards and no consequences. But you have to start at the beginning. We were slaves to sin, but then when we put our faith in Christ we were by God’s grace and by His Spirit set free from sin. It’s not a life unto sin that grace leads to, but it is a life out of sin that grace leads us to. It is not a life away from righteousness that grace leads to, it is a life of righteousness grace leads us into. Someone living in sin “because” of grace understands neither sin, nor grace.
If you are pressing the Law on other Christians to keep them from sinning you are uninformed about the teaching of Scripture. Chapter 2 and 3 taught us that the Law actually increases sin, and so you are increasing someone’s sin by pressing them into the law.
Now, Paul’s particular point here in Galatians, 5 is that now that we are set free in Christ, we do not live as slaves by following the law. That is exactly what he is going to argue in versus 1 through 12. Verses 1-12 are the first half of the chapter, explaining the negative – how we are not supposed to live – which is under the Law. The last half of the chapter, verses 13-26 is a positive explanation of how we are supposed to live – which is in contrast to following the law. And that is living is describes as “walking in the Spirit” (16), being “led by the Spirit,” (18), “living by the Spirit” (25), and “keeping in step with the Spirit” (v25). All of this leads to the “fruit of the Spirit” (22). In other words, the love, joy, peace, forebearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control we want for ourselves and other Christians is the byproduct of Spirit-filled living, not “Law-following.”
Now, the very specific point he is bringing up is circumcision. But circumcision in and of itself is not a problem. People get circumcised because of cultural reasons or health reasons – that’s not a problem. Circumcision, however, in the Jewish context, in that day, very much was a problem. Paul was tackling that issue because to get circumcised was an act that was one of three major steps of someone coming into full submission to the Law of Moses. And submitting oneself to the law is diametrically opposed to faith in Jesus Christ. If someone gets circumcised, because they are turning to follow the law of Moses, they are entering into that covenant – the Covenant of the Law, the Mosaic Covenant, the Sinaitic covenant – and anyone who was under that covenant was categorically opposed to Jesus Christ.
Circumcision was the sign of that Mosaic covenant, it was the outward symbol of someone who has submitted themselves to the law of Moses and entered into that covenant. Just like someone who would get baptized as a sign of their salvation and a public outward symbol of their entrance into the New Covenant by their faith in Jesus, circumcision was a sign and a symbol of someone’s allegiance to Moses and their commitment to that covenant. The problem is that circumcision and Christ are mutually exclusive. You have to choose, you cannot put your faith in Christ and then get circumcised and follow the law as the lived expression of your faith.
Lets look at some specific points Paul brings out related to circumcision.
First of all, look at the choice. Paul is putting it to them that the choice is theirs and he is pressing them to make the right choice. Look at the language, he says “do not let yourselves.” It is the choice of those Galatian believers, whether they will follow false teachers or not. He is emphasizing the choice they are facing is a choice they have to make: three times in the first 3 verses – four times if you count in verse four how he says you are trying to be justified by the law, trying relates to their decision to attempt something.
Here’s the key to see: they will have to choose one or the other, but they cannot choose both. Just like Jesus said it was either money or God and you cannot worship both, here too Paul is telling them you cannot choose circumcision and Christ. You cannot choose circumcision because you are now following the Law of Moses AND follow Christ. It’s one or the other, and they have to make a choice.
APPLICATION: Following Christ will require you expend the time and energy to think through certain situations to carefully make a choice. Everything is not A,B,C’s. There is a lot of Christian “adulting” that has to happen where we think biblically through things if we are going to follow Christ faithfully.
This is why Paul is not only putting pressure on them, he is explaining everything to them. He doesn’t want them to simply give in to whoever puts more pressure on them – he wants them to own the decision they make and to do that he has spent 4 chapters explaining in great detail the “WHY” of his position. In other words, he is appealing to their understanding, their minds, to help them make the right choice. He is informing them – quite energetically – of the enormous error they would make to start following the Law because he knows the choice is theirs.
Live a thinking Christian life. Don’t merely be on autopilot on issues simply because “that’s how we’ve always done it,” or “that’s how everyone else does it,” or that’s what your favorite online influence says. If you can’t justify your views from a proper handling of Scripture than start thinking in your Christian life.
APPLICATION: Along with choice is accountability. You are accountable to God for the decisions you make and the choices that you make. A lot of people want to excuse their decisions and their behaviors. They don’t want to take responsibility for what they do or for their situations. They want someone to blame: their wives, their husbands, their parents, their circumstances, teachers, coaches, politicians, Republicans, Democrats, boomers, white people, the Jews…. everything is always someone else’s fault.
One of the most freeing things you can do as a human being is take responsibility for yourself and step into your agency, which means realize and embrace your ability to choose and to do. Paul presses the Galatians to choose Christ and to firmly choose to reject the pressure from the judaizers to get circumcised and follow the law
The rest of the points Paul makes about circumcision are the problems with circumcision.
First a man who chooses to get circumcised will make Christ be of no value to him at all. Verse 2….
What is the value of Christ? The value of Christ is because of Jesus. We are righteous because of Jesus. We have the spirit of God because of Jesus. We have eternal life because of Jesus. We are children of Abraham and the free woman and we are not slaves. Because of Jesus, we are heirs and sons of God and we have been redeemed.There’s the value of jesus right there , and a man who turns away from jesus to be circumcised , loses all of that
Secondly, he points out that circumcision will make a man obligated to obey the entire law. Look at verse 3…. It is a foolish thought that so many people have that so long as they try sincerely to follow the law (even if imperfectly), that that is what God wants. Understand this clearly: God makes no allowance for that. It’s very clear in scripture and Paul stresses it here that that is not the way. “Cursed is everyone who does not do everything written in the Book of the Law” (3:10). It’s also in James too that anyone who is under the law is obligated to fulfill the entire law, because James explains that there’s no allowance for someone to imperfectly but sincerely follow the Law. He says famously that to break the law at one point makes you guilty of breaking the entire law. If you break one rule you are guilty as though you broke all of them!
So you can’t approach the Law a La carte, picking and choosing what you will and what you won’t do. You are not the authority who gets to decide that that’s okay. It’s God’s law, it’s God’s covenant, and he is the Judge, and he says you’re required to fulfill the whole thing. The Mosaic Law is inseverable, so to reject one single part is to reject the whole thing. Someone might say, “But it’s impossible to do,” and that is the point and I would say you’re missing the point. The point is that you are supposed to see that you are not perfectly righteous. You’re supposed to see how far you fall short of God’s righteousness, when you see how much you fail to uphold the law and you are to see how by trying to follow the law how incapable you are of doing it, and how hard it is, and so then you are supposed to see that the only thing the law does is condemn you for your sin and all of your falling short, and it enslaves you to your sin, because the sin within you only reacts to the laws, righteous commands by exciting sin in you and making you sin even more, and you find that not only are you a slave to your sin, but you are therefore a slave to the law.
The law does not serve as either a means to justification or as a pathway to grow in sanctification. The only purpose for the law is to expose your sin and to condemn you for your sin SO THAT you realize the futility of the law as a means of righteousness and sanctification, and you realize that there is another way that God has offered, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ.
The law leads you to Christ. Christ does not lead you back to the law. Let me say that again: the law leads you to Christ – Christ does not lead you back to the law.
Then, thirdly, we see that those who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ, and they have fallen away from grace. Look at verse 4, “…..”
Now notice specifically, he says justified. What does that mean? It means that if a guy gets circumcised to start with the Law, then he has turned away from faith in Jesus Christ as the only way to be justified. It means that that guy has now turned to rely on works to be justified. Or he thinks that putting his faith in Jesus is not enough and now in addition to faith he has to get circumcised and start following the law of Moses so that then the combination of faith and his good works under the law of Moses will make him right with God. It’s the error that servants of God have battled from the beginning: the error that faith plus good works is what saves.
Anyone relying on faith PLUS works is condemned. Why is that? Because the work of Jesus is sufficient, and to add any works from ourselves to His is to equate what we do with what Jesus did. It is to treat the value of our works as in any degree comparable to the perfect work of Jesus. This is a gross offense to His cross. It is also to say that what He did was NOT enough, and that without my works my salvation will not be brought to completion.
Paul said in chapter 3, “cursed is anyone who relies on the law!” He said in chapter 2, “No one will be justified by following the works of the law.” From beginning to end of the new testament it is one message: that salvation is by faith, not by works. It is not faith in combination with works, it is not works without faith, but it is faith and only faith that saves.
Now, if someone did do that, were they truly Christians? Were they truly born again? What does he mean by alienated from Christ and fallen away? Is he talking about real Christians who lose their salvation? We spent a lot of time studying this topic last year. Our answer is No, this is not a lose your salvation passage. This is not even about losing salvation. It is contrasting the true way of salvation with a false way: it is contrasting faith alone in Jesus Christ over and against Law-keeping. Paul’s point here is not that a true believer could lose their salvation. Instead, he’s highlighting the contrast between following the Law as a way to be justified with simply faith in Christ.
Regarding losing your salvation: There are people who do not genuinely believe and truly are not Christians with the spirit dwelling in them, and they have not actually received new spiritual life. But they’ve been going along with this new Christian thing, and those people having been around Christ – meaning they’ve been around the message of the gospel of Christ and around Christians. You would look at a crowd at a CHristian gathering and say “Yeah, they’re with us.” But they’ve never truly believed. Outwardly they look like and are considered part of the Church. But inwardly they’ve never been born again and they have no true spiritual life. So they are the ones who do not truly belonging to Christ, and when they turn away from what they’ve been going along with and associating with and start to follow Moses, in that way they walk away from the gospel that they were walking along with. They were seed that fell along the path and believed for a moment, not with true saving faith, but with superficial faith, and then that’s what they stopped. In that way they are alienated from Christ. In that way Christ is of no value to them. When we factor in the keeping work of God of those who are truly his, and we see how people’s faith is put to the test to prove if its real or not, we see that the absence of true faith will be exposed by God using false teachers and persecution and hardships.
CONCLUSION: Get Good Directions
Make sure you get good directions in your faith. Good directions come from the Scriptures, and from faithful teachers who understand the Scriptures and teach them accurately to help lead you in the right direction. You must make sure you know the word of God personally, and you must make sure you are being taught the word of God accurately. You must get good directions.