Sermon Tone Analysis

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*1 *For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

*2 *Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.

*3 *I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.

*4 *You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.

*5 *For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.

*6 *For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

*7 *You were running well.

Who hindered you from obeying the truth?

*8 *This persuasion is not from him who calls you.

*9 *A little leaven leavens the whole lump.

*10 *I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is.

*11 *But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted?

In that case the offense of the cross has been removed.

*12 *I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!

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“Christianity is a strait jacket—all those rules!”

This is a common complaint heard from those who reject Christianity.

Because they understand the message of the gospel to be a set of moral imperatives to live by, they believe that freedom lies outside of the Christian faith.

But such a view is completely the wrong.

The exact opposite is true.

Real freedom is found only in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is not an idealistic way of looking at things.

This is not a cute way of explaining Christian ideals.

This is objective reality.

And it is a serious reality.

As Christians, we are called to live in liberty, to never return to bondage, or else we die.

The Apostle Paul describes this important quest to live in the freedom of Christ by showing us the struggle to be free, the difficulty of living free, and the necessity of living free.

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THE STRUGGLE TO BE FREE

The first thing we see in this text is that freedom in Christ and bondage to the law are just as exclusive as they sound.

You cannot be both.

It is all or nothing.

There is no middle ground between the gospel of liberty and the guilt of legalism.

You are either free in Christ today or you are enslaved to the law.

But for those who are free, the draw back to the prison from whence you came is very strong, and so Paul urges his audience to “stand firm” in the freedom Christ has given them.

!! Trust me! You’re free!

Verse 2 begins with an exclamation intended to capture our attention.

“Mark my words,” (NIV) Paul says.

“Listen carefully to what I am telling you!” It’s as if he is standing in front of the prison cell, blocking the door in an attempt to keep us from going back in.

He reminds us also who is talking: “I, Paul, say to you.”

This is not a charlatan standing in our way, lying to us.

These are the words of an apostle.

He is the one calling us away from the slavery of the law and back toward the freedom we have in Jesus.

Listen to what he is saying.

“You don’t want to go back inside this prison.

Trust me! You’re free!

This is no joke; it is a great reality.

And it is yours to enjoy.”

!! Turning God’s gifts into works

The prison to which these believers in Galatia are being tempted to return is described in Paul’s conditional warning in verse 2: “if you accept circumcision.”

It was not the physical act itself that Paul was concerned about.

He himself was a circumcised Jew and he had no objection to getting Timothy circumcised in order to further his missionary cause (Acts 16:3).

But by “accepting circumcision” he meant viewing it as a requirement for salvation.

Paul knew that the ritual itself never was, and never could be, the basis for God’s approval of an individual.

Even when the sign of circumcision was first instituted, Paul pointed out that it was not the basis of Abraham’s righteous standing before God but only a seal of the righteousness he already had through faith (Rom 4:9-11).

In the same way baptism, which has replaced circumcision as a sign of the new covenant and is to be received by all Christians, is not something we have to submit to in order to be justified before God.

Do not make the same mistake about baptism that the Judaizers made about circumcision.

I don’t think it is helpful to encourage people to be baptized mainly because our Lord commanded it (though he did).

We are to be baptized because in it we receive the seal of justification.

In other words, we should encourage people to be baptized because of what God wants to give them through it.

Baptism is a gift to be received, not a work to be done.

!! The lure of legalism

But here is an important question to ask at this point.

Why would the non-Jewish believers in Galatia be tempted to embrace circumcision?

It’s not like this is a particularly enjoyable procedure to undergo, especially for adult males in those days!

What was the lure of this legalism for these Gentile Christians, and why does legalism still have such an appeal on people to this day?

One commentator points out that conversion to Christianity would have stripped Gentile believers of all the social benefits they had within society, since they would have broken all ties with the cult of the pagan deities they once worshipped.

By accepting circumcision the Galatian Christians would have found acceptance with the Jewish Christians, giving them back some semblance of a social standing.

And on top of that, the Judaizers had Scripture to back up their viewpoint![1]

It is not hard to imagine that given this environment, the Galatian Christians would have felt that the lure of legalism was compelling.

I think this is the ultimate appeal of legalism, the desire to be accepted by others.

Legalism compels people to submit to even extreme practices all for the sake of pleasing other people.

And as we’ve said before, everything is legalism outside of the gospel of Jesus because legalism is about finding your identity in what you do rather than in what has been done for you by Christ.

So I submit that even the irreligious are drawn toward legalism because it promises them a justification that they can see, namely, the acceptance of other people.

It is much more difficult to embrace the gospel, as we will see in a moment.

!! Christ or the Law, take your pick

But the main point of verses 2-3 is that there is no middle ground between the gospel of liberty and the guilt of legalism.

As Paul says in verse 2, “if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.”

None.

As Paul wrote earlier in this book, “if righteousness were though the law, then Christ died for no purpose” (Gal 2:21).

On this the Scripture is quite clear.

Jesus is of no value to you whatsoever if you seek any righteousness apart from him.

The flip side of this is verse 3.

For those who “accept circumcision,” that is, those who trust in their obedience or their good deeds or their good behavior as the basis for God’s acceptance of them, they are “obligated to keep the whole law.”

They cannot pick and choose which laws they want to obey.

The Scripture states it this way elsewhere, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it” (James 2:10).

So your good deeds get you nowhere with God if you fail to obey his commands at any point and at any time.

God does not grade on a curve.

You must ask and answer this question for yourself.

What is your hope and confidence before a holy God?

The religious and the irreligious alike are prone to find confidence in what they’ve done: faithful church attendance, Bible reading, commitment to family, voting Republican (or Democrat), trying to be good, recycling, eating organic, reducing their carbon footprint, being more authentic, loving their neighbor, being better than the “Christians,” or simply living to make the world a better place.

All of it is legalism.

And if you find confidence before God because of any of these things, Christ will profit it you absolutely nothing.

The default of the human heart is to incline toward legalism.

It’s the easiest way to live whether it looks like religion or irreligion.

The gospel is an invitation to a “third way,” and it is the hardest way to live.

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THE DIFFICULTY OF LIVING FREE

In the movie /The Shawshank Redemption/, Brooks is a convicted criminal who has been imprisoned at Shawshank for 50 years.

Though he is well-liked by his fellow inmates, one day they find him holding a knife to the throat of another prisoner named Heywood.

After they successfully talk Brooks out of killing the terrified Heywood, the other prisoners ask Heywood what he did to make Brooks so angry at him.

“I didn’t do nothin’!”

Heywood replies.