The Truth of
the Gospel: Sermons from Galatians
Galatians 3:1-9 How Did You Receive the Spirit? WC McCarter
READ Scripture- This is the Word of God
Introduction
One of the
most personal narratives with Jesus comes in John 3 when Nicodemus comes to
meet Jesus at night. [Let’s take a look at that passage.] The Lord is very
clear here. If you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, you must be born again.
If you want to be born again, the Spirit must do it! So, the next logical
question, then, is, how does one receive the Spirit?
Main Message: The regenerating and miraculous work of the
Holy Spirit in your life comes by faith and not by works.
Who Has Bewitched You? (1)
The apostle
begins with a natural exclamation of emotion by saying, “O foolish Galatians!” The “O” “functions to introduce a
rebuke” (Moo, 181). In 1:6, the apostle marveled that the Galatians could be
religious turncoats. Here in 3:1, the apostle marvels again that they could be
so foolish. It is as if they had not heard the Gospel in the first place. It is
as if they have lost their minds. It is as if they have been bewitched, that an
evil spell has been cast over them. Yes, maybe witchcraft would explain their
treason and foolishness! The original word that is used for “bewitched” literally
means “to bewitch with the evil eye.” “The Greeks had a great fear of a spell
cast by the evil eye” (Barclay, 24). Paul rhetorically places this in contrast
with the Gospel of Christ crucified “before your very eyes.” Paul does not
actually think that magic spells are involved, but uses the irony of such a
comparison to point to their foolishness.
It was not
simply that Christ was portrayed before them, but He was publicly portrayed
before their very eyes as crucified.
It was as if Paul and his team went through the towns putting up posters of
Christ on the cross with headings that said, “Good News! Good News! Your sins
may be forgiven! Christ has given Himself in your place!” Now, we saw last week
in 2:21 that the apostle said, “I do not set aside the grace of God; for if
righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.” What he is
saying here is that the preaching of the apostolic missionary team was to
portray Christ’s death. If they first believed that what Christ did on the
cross was enough, but now they were turning away to false teachings and
justification by works, then Christ died in vain. If Christ did not do enough
on the cross to bear the penalty for your sins, then what He did on the cross
was pointless.
Law or Faith? (2-5)
Next a
series of questions is asked of the Christians so that they can answer for
themselves, yet the answers are obvious. The letter will soon get to the answer
which is stated in 5:5 “For we
through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.” These
are questions that we can also answer for ourselves to remind us of what it
means to be a Christian.
From verse 2
to verse 3 we can see the contrasts laid out: work vs. hearing, law vs. faith,
beginning vs. ending.
How did you
become a Christian? You heard the Gospel message and you believed in your mind
and heart, truly in your soul. All you did was hear. You did not work, but you
were worked upon. James says in 1:18
“Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a
kind of firstfruits of His creatures.” The biblical principle is that all of
God’s gifts and blessings come to believers by grace through faith. Works of
the law, or any law (because Americans attempt to set up their own moral law and
traditions), do not usher in the presence of the Spirit, they do not make us
righteous, they do not make us perfect, and they do not force God into a box
that states if we do “good” then God must act a certain way in response. Only by
faith, that is purely by grace, does God favor us. When we are weak then He is
strong in and among us and not when we think we are mighty.
What does
flesh mean in verse 3? The flesh is not skin and bones. It is our own capacities
apart from the work of the Spirit in our lives. The great erroneous philosophy
of Christian growth to maturity and perfection that is so prevalent in America
says that a Christian begins a new life by faith and then that individual
completes the process on their own by working (works of the law or moral
tradition). That false teaching tells us that justification is by faith and
sanctification is by working. All this does is set aside the grace of God. It
nullifies the cross and the work of Christ for our redemption and righteousness.
“God helps
those who help themselves” is not a verse in the Bible nor is it a biblical
principle. The biblical principle is God helps those who can’t help
themselves because the fact is that none of can help ourselves. We are all
fallen, sinful, rebellious beings. The flesh can produce a very rigorous
morality, but that only nullifies what Christ has done. It thwarts the grace of
God found in Christ. So the question is, are you relying on God or yourself?
Galatians teaches that we rely on God in the beginning and we rely on Him for
eternity. This was the issue of the first sin in the Garden. What did Satan
cause Adam and Eve to do? Lust for independence. This is the first a great sin
of mankind.
(End of v3).
There is no better illustration of someone who began in the Spirit and
attempted to finish in the flesh than King Saul, Israel’s first king. When
Samuel anointed Saul as king, the Spirit of God soon came upon him, gave him
another heart, and he prophesied. Later, after he was announced as king of
Israel, the Spirit of God came upon him again, and he went out to battle and
had a major victory. After a couple glaring incidents of disobedience and
selfishness by Saul, we are told that the Spirit of the Lord departed from
Saul. He began in the Spirit, but tried to finish in the flesh. The Lord was
with him in at first, but he tried to do his own thing later. Ultimately, Saul
went down in history as a shameful man who died a humiliating death. How you
being is important, but how you finish means everything.
Let me
briefly address one last question that may be on your mind. We are told that
our working cannot save us nor complete us, but that it is the Spirit’s working
in us that does all of this.
How do we
know that the Spirit is working in us? This is an important question that I
have struggled with. Some churches and even whole denominations teach that you
must speak in tongues at least once to know that you are a Christian. Is this
the truth or is there another way to know? Well there are many evidences. I
will give you a couple of evidences now that will help you with this question.
Let’s look at Galatians 5:22-23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control. Against such there is no law.” Also, Romans 8:16 says, “The
Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. . . .”
So, here are two ways of knowing the Spirit is at work in you: (1) you are
producing the fruit of love (in ways that you could not before Christ), and (2)
you have the inner-witness of the Holy Spirit telling your spirit that you are
a child of God.
Believing Abraham (6-9)
The
Judaizers probably used Abraham as a great example too, but Paul uses him to
show that he was a man of faith. (Now, maybe the false teachers said that
Abraham did this and did that to show how he was obedient to God’s commands).
Paul wants to show how above and beyond everything, from beginning to end,
Abraham trusted God. The passage that
is referred to about Abraham’s faith is from Genesis 15:6 where God directs
Abraham out under the stars and tells him that he will have an innumerable
number of descendants (although he did not have a son yet) like the
overwhelming number of stars in the clear, night sky. Abraham believed that
promise, and it was his trusting in God that God labeled “righteous.”
The Genesis
15 narrative followed after the great promises that God made to Abraham in
Genesis 12. In chapter 12, the Lord promised Abraham that through his seed all
the nations of the earth would be blessed. The apostle calls that statement “the
Gospel.” When you get the big picture that the apostle is showing us from the
life of Abraham, you see that God’s plan is to bless all the world with
salvation by faith.
Conclusion and Christian Application
Now, let us
finish where we started, and I will remind you of the remainder of what Jesus
told Nicodemus, “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The
wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where
it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. . .
. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of
Man be lifted up, that whoever believes
in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
So, you see,
the Spirit does a wonderful and miraculous work in your life when you put your faith
in Christ, that is, when you trust Christ’s person and work. This is how
you begin the Christian life, and this is how you finish life–by faith. I think
that we can probably all agree that it is not so much how you begin as it is
how you end. It is great to begin in the Spirit; in fact, there is no other
way, but that means nothing if you try to finish by observance of the law or
any other works of religious performance.