It seems to me that changes in our lives are less like the once for all metamorphosis of a caterpillar and more akin to what happens in spring. The days get gradually warmer but are sometimes interrupted by snow – when it should be going away! Change is a difficult process, and there is always the danger that we may undo the changes that God is trying to perform in our hearts and our worldview.
This is the fourth and final article in a series considering the role of grace.
We have established that grace is where salvation begins. That our need of salvation from sin cannot be answered without God’s free gift through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. This is the only way we can be free from sin and made whole, having been washed clean before our God (Titus 3:3-7).
We then recognized that grace as a foundation does not undermine the high calling to godly character we received. Instead, it encourages us to give ourselves as living sacrifices, putting off worldly ways and embracing the transforming power of Jesus in our daily choices and actions. Grace does not give us licence to stay the same, it is the powerhouse underneath our continued desire to change – in view of God’s mercies (Romans 12:1-2).
Most recently we turned to the need for obedience in our relationship with God, even though it is underpinned by grace. Obedience to the gospel of Jesus takes the form of repentance and baptism in which we act out death to ourselves (down into the water) and are raised to walk in newness of life in Christ. Having been completely obedient to the Father, Jesus died and was buried in our place. He was raised to glory at the right hand of God, having glorified God in his life on earth. He therefore calls us to accept his grace by living in obedience to the Father, and in that way, glorifying God in our lives. (Romans 6:1-14).
In this article we’ll examine the danger of regressive change applied to the important role of grace in the life of a follower of Christ. Is grace a one time event that resets the scales and now we can only rely upon our own record? To put it another way, as Paul says in part of the passage we will examine today “After starting your new lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?”
Let’s look at Galatians 3:1-14 as we seek to understand the continuing foundation and need for grace.
A common theme explored in movies and novels is the tragedy of forgotten identity. Who are we when we have forgotten where we came from? How can we put the pieces back together? The great danger is that vice and obsession with the world may lead us to forget our good aims and actually undermine them instead. If we forget that our relationship with God is built entirely upon Christ’s saving work and begin to act as if we are good enough on our own and superior to others, we actually deny our need for salvation and distort the gospel.
It is for that reason that Paul’s language at the start of Galatians 3 is both harsh and blunt. How foolish of you Galatians! Certainly we have all felt Paul’s frustration when people should know better than they are acting! Perhaps we have all, at times, been the cause of such frustration in others. Paul’s warnings ring all too true today. Distractions from within and doctrinal distortions from without can shift our focus and bewitch us into accepting ‘another gospel’. Satan is still sowing seeds of doubt – as he did in the garden, and pretending to be our friend.
The central truth of the gospel is that Jesus was crucified for our sins. Salvation is a gift and it calls us to take up our cross and follow Jesus. This defines our relationship with God. This was the heart of the teaching that Paul delivered when he came on his first missionary journey to Psidian Antioch (in Acts 13). Sin was a problem of such weightiness, that only the death of Jesus was sufficient to remove it. So while we were lost and without God in the world, “God so loved the world”.
In Galatians chapter 2:20-21, the apostle Paul wrote:
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”
Paul explained that ‘living by faith’ ‘does not nullify the grace of God. It does not deny that Christ died for our sins or that righteousness is now ours because we are ‘in Christ’. We put Christ on when we were baptized into him. And life ‘in Christ’ is now a matter of faith expressing itself in obedience.
Paul further recognizes the greatness of what was done for us by examining the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit was received not through perfect law keeping, for we are obviously not perfect! God’s grace through the power of Jesus on the cross allows the Spirit to dwell in us as we are washed clean in Jesus’ saving blood. We are brought into a relationship with God not as junior members with restricted benefits, not as prospective projects that may be worth further investment, but full fledged and fully funded. God embraces us in grace, gives us his Son’s righteousness, comes to live within us, and brings us into the very height of relationship. There is certainly a sense in which we build upon our salvation, but we do not top what God has done and we certainly do not replace it or move past it. For us to pursue faithfulness and obedience is not to undo what God has done or to make it obsolete, but rather to honor it and respond with gratitude and devotion for the one who has loved us first.
The Galatians are wrestling with a very human and persisting struggle – the desire to be the heroes in our own story, to live by pride of success rather than by trusting God and depending on the work of Christ. Paul points back to the relationship God made with Abraham and includes us in this pattern. God responded to Abraham’s faith and credited him with righteousness. Because Abraham believed God and obeyed Him, God accepted him and made a covenant with him.
God supplied the promises and Abraham accepted. Abraham could not and did not demand anything. The initiative belonged to God who wanted to bless the whole world. So the gospel of Jesus is not a deviation from what God promised, but the very thing he had in mind in the begining. In this way Paul calls the Galatians, and those who are ‘in Christ’ – children of Abraham. Children of God by faith, who follow in the same pattern. Believing by faith (both in assent and action) and being made right by God’s gift. Jesus is the fulfillment of this pattern and we share in the same blessing that Abraham received. Pointing back and including us in this pattern makes it clear that this has always been God’s way of reaching out to rescue people from the problem of sin. All of God’s covenants are underwrit by the reality of God’s saving grace. And all call for a response of obedient faith.
The alternate pattern of dependance on the law-keeping to justify us and put God in our debt fails in a number of ways.
- It denies that we are sinners and as such are lost. We have no righteousness of our own…and no actual basis for pride or self-sufficiency at all.
- And it ignores the only actually sufficient thing that God has already done on the cross.
- Together, these fail to recognize the depth of the problem of sin and diminish the ultimate value of Jesus’ sacrifice.
God wants us to repond to his grace with humility and to yield to the work of the Holy Spirit. Paul explores this later in the letter, as he considers the ways of the flesh and the ways of the Spirit.
Those who opposed and persecuted Paul on his first missionary journey were jealous of the progress of the gospel and especially among the gentiles. Even those who accepted the gospel found it hard to treat their Gentile brethren as fellow Christians. Many wanted to impose ‘works of the law’ upon the Gentiles, threatening to destroy the unity created by the Spirit of God.
So Paul reminded them that the law (of Moses) had never had the power to save anyone. But it did have the power to convict and condemn. All law-breaking is sin. Thus the ‘law’ had condemned all who sinned. We see this played out in the biblical story time and again.
In the garden pf Eden, Adam and Eve fail to live by faith. They disobeyed God and were punished. They were cut off from God and life was defined by pain and struggle and ultimately death.
Righteousness demands perfection. Anything less is not good enough. It’s not enough to have good intentions or to do our best. So everyone who tries to earn their own righteousness by the law is cursed. No one keeps the law perfectly, and no amount of obedience after we sin, is able to remove our sin.
This is where we come back to the wonderful promise of God. That promise was offered first through Abraham and has extended to all the world. Christ has taken away the curse. Because of him we do not have to try to complete the impossible task of earning our own salvation. We have it as a free gift – grace that God gives to us when we live in faith. This is how we have the Spirit of God in us, by faith in Jesus Christ.
These might seem like fine distinctions and not worth making a fuss about. Both approaches to God seem to stress obedience and maintain a high view of morality. In both, believers might fast, and pray, and give to God (as Jesus teaches about in the sermon on the mount). But the underlying motivation and truth structures, are truly ‘different’ and Paul says that they result in very different outcomes. If we forget that we have been saved by grace, and continue to be saved…our relationship with God is fundamentally changed. God has not rescued us only to leave us on our own. The solution for sins past is the same as for sins present and future.
We did not begin by God’s grace, only to continue on our own. Salvation is not now in our hands instead of God’s. It is grace that has saved us and grace that continues to do so. We accept God’s grace by faith and obedience, and this continues to the end of our ‘Christian walk’ with God. God’s forgiveness is daily. Christ died for our sins, once for all, but we have not, once for all…quit sinning. We need God’s forgiveness – as long as we live. Any denial of this truth is ‘another gospel’ and doctrinal desertion. It is snatches defeat from the ‘jaws of victory’ and is the greatest tragedy of all.
In a works-based righteousness we will enviably swing between two radically unhealthy extremes. We will feel pride when we are doing well, look down on those who we think should be doing better, put ourselves on a higher plane and be puffed up in sinful pride. We are tempted to radically defend that which justifies our lifestyle, even to the extent of damaging others. On the other hand we will feel utter and complete defeat and hopelessness when we fail. There is after all nowhere to turn when you rely on yourself completely. How do you come to grips with your own sin? How do you forgive yourself? How do you let go of your mistake? It leads us to a desperate and dangerous corner where we are prone to lash out at those around us.
A life spent trying to earn salvation leads to a worldview that values a person no higher than their actions. How then do you love and respect a Christian whose faith is weak and who rarely seems to walk with God?
This is not the kind of love that the bible teaches nor is it like the love of Jesus. Love comes to those who don’t deserve it for it does not move on the basis of merit. Each person is a loved creation of God for whom Christ died. And every person should have a chance to know God and to accept salvation. How can we get over division and worldly attitudes toward each other if we do not love all people, all the time, because of what God has done for us?
By God’s grace, he has created us anew in Christ. Accepting this, empowers us and makes us ready for life and godly living. We don’t have to live our lives in fear and distress, or running after that which we cannot attain on our own. We never have to worry whether or not our lives are good enough to deserve to be saved. They are not good enough, and yet we are saved because the life of Jesus Christ was given on our behalf. We have the ability to both be victorious in our Christian walk, conquerors over sin, and for that very reason, remain completely humble.
Paul writes to the Corinthian church in 2nd Corinthians 2:14
“But thank God! He has made us his captives and continues to lead us along in Christ’s triumphal procession. Now he uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere, like a sweet perfume.”
What a defining and counter worldly image – that we are captivated by Christ and prisoners in his glory filled triumph parade. Not that this victory is something that we have earned, but it is something we are allowed to partake in, to share in. This doesn’t puff us up, but should guide us to share the gift we have with others. In Christ’s gift we find the definition, and motivation for what love needs to be in our lives. We love each other because of the love we have from God – we love each other after that pattern. We love each other unconditionally, even though we are sinners and even when we hurt each other. We do this because Christ loved us first. He died for us to purchase our salvation despite our rebellion and ill-treatment of Him.
As Christians, we are saved by grace through faith and obedience. We have been called to a life of obedience, motivated by faith and guided by the word of God. It remains possible however for us to become misguided so that we begin to trust in obedience and not in God. Obedience is a necessary means to an end, but ought never become the object of our trust. God’s finished work in Jesus Christ has saved us. Our trust is in God as is our faith. Obedience is how we express that trust, and only in this sense does it ‘save us’.
For us, the stakes could not be higher. How we understand our salvation and act upon it…affects our own relationship with God and our ability to love and honor each other. Jesus has paid it all for us and provided all we need. Let us continue to trust in him, to live by faith in his promises, and honor him with a life marked by gratitude, humility, obedience, and trust.
Stratford, ON