Galatians: Freedom Through Faith – Shiny And New
Galatians 6:11-18

Time to get personal - call this my signature at the end of the letter that has been this series. I often appear as a very angry person. I appear that way often to my family, to coworkers, and most often, to myself. I have been told my many people that I am intimidating and unapproachable, and I have always mostly attributed that to my size and my general “look.” I used to joke that I had two emotions - anger and stress. I have a tendency to be very stoic in matters of deep personal feeling - I have a great poker face, as long as I am not genuinely angry.

I justify my anger in several ways. I consider myself to be an intellectual person - I love to study, to read, and to learn. I strive to understand the how of something more than I do the why, often totally missing the importance of intent. I like to use big words and sound extremely intelligent, and to be fair, God has gifted me with some of that - a gift that I am often overly proud of and even boastful about. I believe that things should be logical - and I tailor my words and actions toward logical outcomes.

When logic is not the main focus, I often cannot understand. I struggle with interpreting emotion, because emotions are seldom entirely logical. Things have to make sense for me, or I become more than uncomfortable - I become a fish out of water - gasping and flopping for that life-saving water of logic I depend on so desperately.

When I do not understand, or I am uncomfortable, or I feel I am not being understood in my lofty ideas, I get angry. I lose patience. My attitude becomes one where I am a victim of a world who refuses to see reason. Sometimes I am right, though never to the extent that I should allow myself to get angry or to withdraw. In my anger I say things that I would never tolerate if they were said to me, and I have the ability to leave destruction in my wake.

Why would I tell you this? Why does it matter?

It is important that if you are going to listen to my words, you need to understand my heart. My heart is broken in many ways - just like yours is. I can use fancy words, and I can employ good public speaking practices when I preach - I can maybe impress you with a good sermon. But do you know my heart? Do you know the ways in which I hurt, and the disastrous reactions I so often have to that hurt?

My family and I came here in view of a call from God. I didn’t come here to be a perfect preacher or perfect pastor. And I need to tell you all now that I have often tried to approach this position as if I have come to do just that. For that, I am sorry, and I pray that you will forgive me. I will be honest - much of life in northern Missouri does not make sense to me - it does not fit into my personal code of logic. I have been angry a lot, frustrated often, and incredibly impatient for things I don’t understand. I have been so impatient for understanding that I have, on occasion, taken my eyes off the real calling placed on my life and tried to shoehorn things.

I do not refer only to my time in Bevier. Change Management is what I did for a living in my IT life. However, since I have arrived here, I have learned that my purpose here is not to change everything about the church. It is not to make this a church of young people, though we do want to be a body welcoming to all people. My purpose is not to get this church over a hump or out of a slump or around the bend.

My purpose here is twofold - to love God, and love others - beginning with the body He placed in my path. I have not made those two things my sole focus all of the time, and so again, I am sorry and pray you will forgive me. God has been changing me drastically in the past six months, most especially in the last month. He is helping me to realize what it means to be a new creation. I spoke last week about tending your own house before you approach another’s - I want you to be aware of the tending I am doing personally, and ask that you pray for me as I do so. If nothing else, please just be aware that your pastor struggles mightily alongside you, and though our struggles may differ, we toil together.

Paul is now adding his signature to the letter to the Galatians. He does this through personal reflection, summation of his intent and his point, and a blessing to the people he has been called to love.

Please open your Bibles to Galatians 6:11-18. Read Passage.

During the time of Paul, the culture throughout the Roman empire was a culture largely described as Hellenistic. This culture recognized the wisdom of greek philosophers, and considered their age to be on the cutting edge - technologically and intellectually advanced. Hellenistic society was one that achieved and was thus proud of that achievement. The Jews, especially the Orthodox who rejected that Jesus was the Messiah, also rejected Hellenistic culture. However, much of how the gospel was shared and teaching was given reflected a Hellenistic world view - shown most commonly in the way people wrote letters.

Paul came from a stock that would have been resistant to Hellenistic practices, so our first verse this morning shows the change in him that had been brought about by God in a way that goes beyond his theology. We know that he abandoned his persecution of Christians when he himself was converted, so we know that the content of his preaching and teaching changed dramatically as he began to spread the gospel. Yet here, Paul demonstrates another change in himself as he follows a truly Hellenistic style to closing his letter.

In the Hellenistic style, letters were dictated to a scribe or secretary, and then the person sending the letter would sign or add a few lines in their own handwriting to assure the reader that the letter contained the sender’s words and not necessarily those of the scribe. We practice this today - most often when a lawyer draws up a document or a contract and we sign in order to state that we agree - that we personally make the statements included in the document.

Paul says, essentially, “You see these big letters? I am now writing to you in my own hand.” It is here that Paul tells them the sincerity behind the words in this letter, and by doing it in the Hellenistic fashion, he is demonstrating the point he makes in his closing - that life is and must be about the living as the new creation created through faith in Christ.

Throughout Galatians Paul has waged a steady campaign against a group of false teachers, commonly known as Judaizers, who had sown great confusion among the apostle’s recent converts by teaching that becoming Jewish was necessary for salvation. As we learn from chapter 5, a big part of what they pushed for was related to the ancient rite of circumcision. They insisted that Gentile believers submit themselves to circumcision as a necessary prerequisite for belonging to the covenant people of God. As Paul had said before and would reiterate again in this closing passage (6:15), the problem with this teaching was not circumcision itself but rather the significance the false teachers attached to this ceremony - making it more important and thus more powerful than the grace of God. Paul again revisited this debate and issued a final blistering attack against the agitators who were trying to compel the Galatians to accept circumcision.

In these two verses (12/13) Paul leveled two charges against his opponents, accusing them not only of dangerous false teaching but also of unscrupulous and unworthy motivation. Why had they tried so vigorously to “compel” the Gentile Christians to undergo circumcision? Paul answered this question by claiming that their basic motive was spiritual self-promotion: they wanted “to make a good impression outwardly”; “they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh.” In this way they could make them “their” converts, rather than God’s converts.

What a great warning this verse holds for us as Christian ministers today, a challenge not only for our message to be sound but also for our motives to be pure. No one can escape this temptation fully, because pride flares up in every believer who is not yet perfectly conformed to the image of Christ, which is to say, every Christian who lives and ministers on this side of heaven. The only antidote to the poison of pride is the daily self-crucifixion of the flesh with its passions and desires - exactly as Paul called the Galatians to do throughout the letter.

Paul also accuses them of urging circumcision to avoid persecution. It is very easy for us to forget that the persecution that occurred within the early church - the martyrdom and the terrible treatment of Christians - most of that was carried out by the Jews themselves who did not believe Jesus was Messiah, not by Roman officials. Paul is a testament to that very fact, having been a Jewish persecutor of Christians himself. In other words, he was saying in effect: Sure, I could have avoided persecution too had I been willing to compromise the message of salvation by grace alone. By insisting on the circumcision of Gentile believers, the Judaizers could make themselves look good to the local synagogue authorities: they were simply recruiting more Jewish followers for the nation of Israel, thereby opposing, in the eyes of Jewish leaders at least, the scandal of the cross with its particular emphasis on salvation through Jesus Christ alone.

Here is Paul’s purpose in his letter to the Galatians - we are saved by grace alone from God through Jesus, and as a result, we are new creations. As new creations, we cannot be what we were - because God’s grace has changed us in every way. Circumcision is not the point - the point is the new person you have become as a result of your faith. 

The entirety of the book of Galatians has been, to this point, outlining the design of the new creation in Christ. Since they have believed, this is how they should live. We learn today by following this blueprint that Paul lays out for living as a new creation, and the means by which we maintain this lifestyle is through testing the spirit by its fruit - and by doing so intentionally to all aspects of our lives - internal and external, every day, every hour, and every breath.

As a new creation, Paul vows to boast only in the cross. To the uninitiated, Paul chose something utterly despicable, contemptible, and valueless as the basis of his own boasting—the cross of Christ. Why would anyone boast of such an atrocity? The false teachers Paul confronted in Galatia, not unlike many contemporary theologians today, found the cross a matter of severe embarrassment. They could not deny that the Messiah had in fact been impaled on a Roman cross. That was too palpable and public an event for anyone to try to hide. But if they could not deny the cross, they would certainly downplay it. They would conceal the full meaning of atonement by telling people that they still had to do their part to earn salvation. Their argument might have run something like this: “Yes, of course, Jesus died on the cross, and that is a great example of God’s love. But if you want to be saved and really belong to the true Israel, then you must do something more than merely rely on that past event. Yes, Jesus was the Messiah, and he did a lot for us. But now it is up to you to complete what he began.”

It is against this kind of distorted gospel, where Paul declared that what happened on the cross was more than just a means to salvation. “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ,” for “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:19, 21). What was true in Paul’s day is no less true in ours: where the doctrine of the cross is not received, Jesus Christ is not received. And so we rightly boast in the love the Creator showed to us through this unspeakable act that people committed.

As we look back over the last 3+ months in Galatians, we can see a very clear outline of what it means to live as a new creation. This is the very thing we are to test - the very means by which we walk in the spirit and deny the flesh.

He begins in Galatians 1 by reminding them that they already know the truth:
“6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.” 

He relates to them with his own struggle and conversion:
21 Then I went to Syria and Cilicia. 22 I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. 23 They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24 And they praised God because of me. 

In Galatians 2, Paul reiterates that he is preaching the same gospel as those who walked with Jesus himself:

6 As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism—they added nothing to my message. 7 On the contrary, they recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised.

He then warns about an easy hypocrisy - division because of any difference - race, background, culture, and history. He reminds that faith is what unites them.

15 “We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles 16 know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

In Galatians 3, Paul reminds them of the promise of Abraham and that all are included in it:

14 He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

He tells them that all who have faith became children of God - it is faith that defines them:

26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 

In Galatians 4, He reminds the Galatians to remember that it is about the message, and not the messenger:

17 Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may have zeal for them. 18 It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good, and to be so always, not just when I am with you.

He explains the difference between the flesh - the law and slavery, and the new covenant - the promise and the gift of grace, speaking metaphorically a story they all knew well:

22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. 23 His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise. 

In Galatians 5 Paul teaches about the freedom that comes with faith, as well as responsibility:

1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

He explains that they are called to live according to the spirit and resist the flesh:

16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.

He lists for them the results of living such a life in the Spirit:

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

And now, in Galatians 6, Paul outlines how they should behave toward others:

2 Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

And reminds them that they must keep watch over themselves first:

4 Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, 5 for each one should carry their own load

Finally, he comes full-circle and tells them that life is to be about who they are in Christ, rather than who they were in the flesh. They are new creations:

15 Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation. 16 Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule—to the Israel of God. 

Paul has signed his name, and bared his heart for the people to whom he ministers. We know that many of those people did not agree with him, many did not like him, and many actively worked against them. Yet, in spite of it, he does all that is in his power to show them love, and does so while he himself strives to walk in the spirit.

I do not compare myself to Paul, or claim to be like him in any way other than our shared faith which unites us. I do not compare our church to the Galatians - there are lessons we can learn, but I am not standing here saying that you have fought me or disliked me. The beginning of today’s sermon was intended to show you that I am a man - no more and no less. I must practice daily taking of my cross, humble and honest self-reflection, and a choice to pursue God and not the flesh. I must struggle daily to be the shiny and new creation I have been called to be. You and I walk this path together. Our struggles may not be the same, but we struggle together - united by faith, serving in love, and saved only by grace. Let’s pray together.