January 4, 2026 | Grace Isn't a Getaway Car

Grace Isn't a Getaway Car | Galatians Part 15

Galatians 5:13–15

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. (ESV)

In “Grace Isn’t a Getaway Car,” Jed Gillis explains that Galatians 5:13–15 shows how grace creates real freedom and what that freedom looks like in the church. Paul says you are free from using God’s law as a way to earn approval, safety, or life. That freedom is not self-rule or a pass to indulge the flesh. Grace is not a getaway car for selfish impulses. It is more like an ambulance that makes your soul safe so you can move toward others in love. So freedom expresses itself through serving one another, because the whole law is summed up in loving your neighbor as yourself. Without gospel rest, Christians turn into consumers who “bite and devour” each other, but a gospel-shaped community grows into patient, prayerful, generous love.

Transcript of Grace Isn't a Getaway Car | Galatians Part 15

Return to Galatians

Jed Gillis: As we return to our Galatians series, perhaps you've been with us throughout the whole book and perhaps you say this is the first Galatians sermon you've heard. So either way, it's really been six weeks since we were in the book of Galatians. So I want to take a moment and I want to go back and pick up a few key points to help us understand where we are in the book so that we can get why Paul goes where he goes here in Galatians chapter five, and we'll begin in verse 13 in just a minute.

Can You Have True Rest for your Soul?

Jed Gillis: First though, the first section of this book, really, Paul begins by writing to tell the Christians at Galatia about grace. He starts with this fairly common greeting, except he changes it a little bit. He says, grace to you and peace. He says, I want to write so that you have grace, so that you will have the fullness of peace that comes from God because they should know and what he wants them to know is what he continues to say, that Jesus gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. That's how Paul starts his book. He wants to write to them about grace and we've talked about what Grace is and, and the ways we can misunderstand it.

He's not talking about a kind of unconcerned forgiveness, or he might call it cheap grace, where God just says, yeah, do whatever you want. It's all fine. That's not the kind of grace he's writing to them about. He's not talking to them about legalism or thinking that they can manipulate or earn God's favor. He is saying that's not going to give you peace. That will never help you to have rest in your soul to depend on what you do to earn God's favor. He's not trying to get them to feel shame, which I think is really the right word for when we think God relates to us, not with true grace, but with maybe something like undeserved tolerance. We say, I'm really glad that he tolerates me, but I feel shame and I'm supposed to.

No, Paul's not trying to get the Galatians to think that way. He wants them to understand true, real, full grace. God's undeserved favor towards them. That's how he starts the book.

And as we went into chapter two, we saw Peter and some people from Jerusalem came and they were undermining the truth about grace because they acted like the people around them had to perform in a certain way in order to be accepted or approved. And so they came alongside and they fellowshiped with them until somebody else came. And then they're like, oh no, we can't be with them.

And the people in Galatia, of course, they go, what's going on? Are we accepted by God or are we not accepted by God? Are we in God's favor or does he kind of barely tolerate us? What's happening? So Paul corrected that he confronted Peter. It says to his face, he confronted Peter because Peter's actions were undermining the truth of the gospel.

He confronted him to say, Peter, you know, we are approved by God when we rest in the favor demonstrated for us through Jesus Christ. Or to say the same thing in theological terms, we're justified by grace alone through faith alone.

And so Paul concludes chapter two by saying a familiar passage to many of us, the life that I now live, I live by faith in the son of God. Or in other words, the life I now live, I live because I rest in Jesus. That verse goes on to say, who loved me and gave himself for me. Or we could say, who so vividly displayed God's favor towards me on the cross.

So in this whole first section, we could probably draw a couple different themes, but I'd take one big question.

Paul is saying to the Galatians, here's the question, can you actually have true rest for your soul? And Paul's answer, resoundingly is yes. And he says, I know this because. I did all the wrong things. I was persecuting the church. I was trying to manipulate God to get his favor. I was doing all that. And Paul says, but I have found rest through Jesus Christ, so let me tell you how. That's the first section, really two chapters which tell us you can have true rest by God's grace for your soul.

What Should It Feel Like to Relate to God Through the Cross?

Jed Gillis: So in the second section, if I were to put a big question over chapters three through the middle of chapter five is what should it feel like to relate to God through the cross? What should it feel like to rest in God's grace?

Now, that's an important question because the good news of God's grace is that the gospel is your past rescue. It's saved you from your past. It's also your future hope. You look forward to heaven because of the gospel, but there's something else, it is your present rest. Your present peace for your soul is found in the gospel as well.

But sometimes it doesn't feel like relating to God gives you rest. In fact, sometimes it feels more like a burden. Or to use, some pictures Paul uses Sometimes trying to walk with God may feel more like a curse or chains. It feels like a burden. Like you can't ever be enough and like you wish you could just put off the the burden.

So what Paul's doing, he's saying that's not how it should feel. So he does this whole deep dive into the Old Testament through chapter three, the end of chapter three and chapter four. He basically concludes if you wanna go back and hear more of that, you can always go back and listen to sermons from about two months ago.

But he basically concludes going into chapter five where he says this, for freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. He says, Jesus didn't do what he did for your relationship to God, to feel like chains or a burden. Jesus did what he did, he came, he lived, he died, and he was raised so that your life with God can feel like freedom. For freedom, Christ has set us free.

In the rest of this first section of Chapter five, Paul says, freedom and slavery don't mix. The Christian life is not a mixture of God's undeserved favor to you, and then your efforts to manipulate him so he gives you more favor.

Paul says, that doesn't work like that. Freedom and slavery don't mix. So in this big section. Paul says, what should life with God feel like if you understand the gospel, if you rest in his grace displayed at the cross, it should feel like freedom.

What Does It Look Like to Have a Community that Rests in the Gospel?

Jed Gillis: Now as we get to this third section in chapter five, verse 13, I think Paul's big question changes. He started with, can you individually have rest in your soul? And then he says, what should that experience be like? Should it feel like burden and shame and difficulty, or should it feel like freedom?

Now we're gonna transition. Here in four and a half chapters, Paul has never used the phrase one another until we get to this section, and then he, he's gonna use it seven times in the next chapter. He stops just thinking about you and saying, how can you have rest in the gospel? How can you know your soul is safe? And says, now what does it look like if we have a whole community of people who rest in the truth of the gospel?

Reading Galatians 5:13-15

Jed Gillis: So I wanna read beginning in verse 13. For you we're called to freedom, Brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another where the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, but if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

That's our text for this morning. Just those three verses. Paul is turning to say, this is what it looks like, not if you individually rest in the gospel alone, but what does it look like if we together as a body of believers, don't depend on our performance for God's favor? We don't try to desperately measure up. We say, I rest in God's favor, poured out on me at the cross. What should it look like?

Grace Calls You to Freedom

Jed Gillis: And we'll take a couple phrases. The first is this, grace calls you to freedom. Grace calls you to freedom.

I didn't know what Elijah was gonna do for communion this morning, but God did. Our world has this weird picture of what freedom is. I say it's weird. It's weird from a biblical worldview. It feels very natural to us. And we basically define freedom as something like self-rule. Now, biblically, that's not what freedom is, but that is the impulse that we see all around us. Freedom means I can do whatever I want.

A great, uh, philosopher of our time, Jack Sparrow said, you long for freedom. You long to do what you want to do because you want it to act on selfish impulse.

I wasn't completely joking, calling him a philosopher for the record, because that's exactly what he's telling you is a philosophy, and he says, look, this is what humans are all about.

Later. He says, that's why he loves the ship. He's like, a ship isn't about the hole and the sails and all that. That's what a ship has. It's what it needs, but what it is is freedom.

Our world wants that kind of self rule, like he said, to, to do what you want because you want it. We often think that's what freedom is. We do long for that in our sinful, selfish impulses, but that's not freedom.

From a scriptural standpoint, freedom is not being able to do whatever you want. Actually, it's just notice the way he ended that quote to act on selfish impulse.

So what he's describing isn't freedom. It's being chained to your selfishness. And in fact, we've all been hurt because we all try to protect ourselves because we all try to take care of ourselves and make sure we don't get hurt again. We're not only chained to our selfishness, we're chained to our pain.

Don't believe me? Ask the drug addict who thinks he's gotta take the next hit to survive life.

Ask the porn addict who hates their sin but keeps coming back. They're not only chained to the habit, they're chained to the pain and the emptiness that keeps driving them to it. You can call it freedom all you want, but it's not.

Ask the angry person who thinks they have to be angry to protect themselves because people will hurt me if I'm not angry. That's not freedom, that's slavery.

Ask the chronic worrier who believes that if you don't take care of yourself, no one will. Who believes that if you don't have this crushing anxiety, you won't be safe. That's not freedom.

Peter described this in second Peter, talking about false teachers. He said, these teachers promise the people around them. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. It sounds like freedom. Do whatever you want. Follow your selfish impulse, but it's not. Our world pushes on us to desire that kind of freedom to do whatever you want to do just because you want to do it. But if you swallow those seeds, you will choke on the fruit.

Freedom scripturally is not self-rule. It's not throwing off all limits. Even in Jack Sparrow's example of the ship. A ship might be freedom to go on the ocean. Sure it can free you from the limit of land, but it can't help you fly. It only solves one limit.

And that's the problem with everything we look to. Here's my freedom, myself rule. I'll throw off all limits. No, no you won't. You might trade one set of limits for another.

But freedom in Galatians is something very different. It's not self-rule. It's a relational kind of freedom. He's used a picture of sons and slaves in the first century, especially in like middle class farms, middle class households. You would very often have sons and servants out in the field working right alongside each other.

They're doing all the same things. If they need to get the harvest in. If they don't get the harvest in, nobody eats, and yet the son and the servant are not the same because their, their relationship to the father is different. They're not the same because the slaves work because they have to, the sons have to, in one sense, but they work to inherit the land one day.

So if you took someone in the field and you said, are they free or are they not? Well, the thing they do doesn't look any different. They're still working the field, but their experience is very different.

One of them, it feels like chains have to, I have to get up and do it. Some of you have had this experience. You say you've worked as an employee and then you've run your own business. Maybe you feel like that's still changed. That's entirely possible. But there's a difference when you say, oh, gotta clock in, clock out, clock in, clock out, gotta do it. Gotta show up. I have to. It can feel burdensome in a way that when you go, I've gotta do this because this is how I provide for my family and I'm excited about it. I get to, I get to enjoy the fruits of this feels different. One feels more like chains, one feels more like freedom.

In Galatians when he says, we're free. He's saying our, we are, our experience is not one of being a slave, but one of being a son.

Free From the Law

Jed Gillis: So we're free from many things. He describes us as free from the law.

Well think about free from the law as what does that mean? Like, well, good. I can just murder and it's all good. No, of course not. We instinctively know that. So what are we free from the law as we're free from the law, as life giving.

You don't ever as a believer in Jesus Christ, you don't ever have to think, I want real life and the way I have to do it is to like, perform well enough on this scale, if I get, you know, 90% on the godliness test, then I can have real life. No, you're, you're free from the law as what gives you life.

We're free from the law as earning our approval. You never have to think, God isn't for me right now, but if I can just do good enough, then he is for me, or God is for me now, but if I mess up too many times, now he's not for me. Because his approval comes through Jesus, not your performance.

So we're free from that. We're free from the law as what gives our souls shelter or refuge. Sit here and say, I need some way to know that my soul is safe to be able to sing. It is well with my soul, right? We, we don't sing my sin or the bliss of this glorious thought, I finally stopped doing it all, so now I'm okay. We don't sing that because it would be a useless.

The law is not what we rest in. How many times you talk with somebody about the gospel, they say something like, well, I just hope my good works outweigh my bad. All that means is I'm looking to my performance to be a shelter for my soul so that I can sing it as well, and it will feel like slavery, like you're never quite sure you've done enough, and it'll feel like a burden.

We're free from the law for those things and more. We have now the ability to relate to our Heavenly Father as a son, to know he loves me. He cares for me like the prodigal son coming back to his father to know he was watching and he wanted to celebrate me. The next day when the prodigal son goes out to the field and works alongside the servants, he's not sitting there going, oh no, dad doesn't like me. I gotta hope I do enough. No, he's remembering the feast. He's remembering the joy.

So when Paul says here, you were called to freedom, God's grace calls us to freedom. When Paul says this, he doesn't mean all limits on your selfishness are removed. That's what our modern definition of freedom would say. He means you're free from the kind of relationship to your performance that feels like a burden that feels like chains. You're free from that and free instead to enjoy with God what God enjoys. To take pleasure in the things that God takes pleasure in, and to enjoy them right alongside your Heavenly Father.

Freedom means in this context, when you see a command in scripture, especially this last half of Galatians, we'll see some. When you see a command in scripture, you don't feel like, oh, I have to do that. I never do it well enough. I don't measure up. You feel like I get to live this way. I get to love my brothers and sisters and serve them. Not I have to because my soul's not well if I don't. Not I have to because God won't look on me with favor if I don't, but I get to. That's freedom instead of slavery.

How Do You React to God's Commands?

Jed Gillis: Now, this is a great place to test how well you've been tracking with what Paul has said throughout the book, because the test is when you get to these commands, these sins, to avoid these things, you should do.

In the last section, some of them we'll hear. Avoid immorality, avoid strife, avoid envy, anger. We'll hear, we're to serve one another. Avoid pride to restore those who fall. To bear one another's burdens to be patient with one another, and we could go on and on and on. If you don't really grasp what Paul has been saying, then those things will feel like burdens. They will feel like another way you aren't good enough. They'll feel like a curse that's not going to solve your problems. And they'll feel like chains that you just want to throw away.

If you haven't really tracked the radical transforming nature of Paul's grace. That's what they'll all feel like.

And at best you'll say something like this, I can't live that way. I can't do it all pure. A good thing Jesus did it for me. Good. That's true. But that can easily lead you back to thinking grace is just undeserved tolerance. Right? I can't do it. Phew. But he tolerates me 'cause of Jesus.

Paul wants you to have something more than that. If you really grasp the grace he has taught, then you think, I am free to live like this. I'm free to avoid anger and strife. I'm free to be patient. I get to enjoy that with my Heavenly Father.

Grasping Paul's View of Grace

Jed Gillis: Now we all feel tension and challenge in that, so. You say, sometimes it feels like a burden and sometimes it feels like freedom. Join the club. I'm right there.

But if that idea of freedom sounds crazy to you, if you sit here and say, I can't even imagine looking at the commands of Galatians and feeling that way about them, then I would suggest you haven't really grasped Paul's view of grace.

So I'd encourage you, if that's what you feel, go back and read the book again and look for where he talks about grace. Just go back and ask your heavenly father to say, I don't think I've gotten it, because it still feels like chains, so God, help me to know you said you saved me for freedom. Help me to see that freedom. Go back and read Galatians more. Go back and listen. We've gone through these. You could go back and listen through the sermon series. You could go back and listen to our podcast where we dove into some more ideas and questions around what grace really is. Talk with your brothers and sisters about it.

What I, I'd beg you. Don't just get here and say, I've heard a lot of theological ideas about grace and it still feels like chain's in a burden. Oh, well, guess I'm broken. No, you're not, but you need grace. You need what Paul has said about grace because he says here, you were called to freedom. Grace calls you.

Don't zoom past that word calls just because it's familiar language. It's like the voice of God speaking to us is his undeserved favor. I've heard some of you describe the way God either saved you or kept you through your life who have said, I can't deny that God was for me. Like I tried. I tried to go all the other ways, and he's there. He loves me. He has favor. That's his grace calling you to freedom. That's the language that Paul is using here. God uses his totally undeserved favor towards you to call you, to relate to him, enjoy and wonder, not shame and burden.

Don't Use Freedom for the Flesh

Jed Gillis: So he says, you were called to freedom Brothers only. Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. So if Grace calls you to Freedom, Paul wants to guard against, uh, I said it was our modern misunderstanding, but it's really not. It's just a human misunderstanding of freedom to guard against the idea that freedom is just self-rule.

Now we all know, imagine with me like an old, uh, gangster movie. Imagine Bank robbery is going on. We know kind of the picture and the trope and what the guys look like. I think they used to rob banks in suits, which is weird, but okay. I wouldn't dress up personally. The bank robbers run in, they shoot up the place, they demand the money, then they run out. Then they jump in the getaway car, and then they ride off to freedom.

Depending on the genre, maybe there's a hero, maybe there's not, I don't know. But they jump in this getaway car, and I'm afraid, often we think of grace like it is the getaway car. We can storm in, pursue our self-centered, self exalting, self-justifying, self-protecting desires. And as long as we don't stay too long, we can run back out, jump in grace as our getaway car and get away without too much harm.

But that's exactly the kind of self-centeredness that Paul is referring to when he says don't use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. We'll talk more about that word 'cause he keeps using it next week. But the idea here is this self-absorbed self-centeredness. It's, it's yourself without reference to God. It's the I get to rule myself and do whatever I want. That's what he means by the flesh. Don't use your freedom as an opportunity for the kind of self that only serves yourself.

That's what it would mean. If we jump in and say, I'm gonna be selfish, and then I don't stay too long. I jump out into grace, I get away scot-free. That's an opportunity for the flesh. That's Paul's picture.

The word opportunity here is used. Uh, it could be translated as a beachhead. Think D-Day. World War II, they, they come and they storm the beaches and, and it was bloody and difficult, but they had to get a footing. They had to have dry land from which to operate. So you had to take the beaches. Right?

Opportunity here. Don't let it be an opportunity. Don't let it be a beach head. Don't let your freedom say, oh, good. And now the flesh is just assaulting you from every angle.

How does that happen? Well, it might be something like this. Your grace from God genuinely frees you to relate to God differently. So you genuinely have freedom and joy. You don't feel the crushing weight of shame. You don't feel the pressure that you're never good enough. All right? So how are you gonna use it?

Well, you could think I have grace with God. He has favor towards me even when I don't want to forgive somebody. Even when I hold a grudge towards someone else, well, God still has favor to me 'cause he demonstrated it on the cross. So I'll use my freedom for me, for my purposes, my self-centered purposes, and I'll just nurse that grudge that I have. Well, it's not gonna send me to hell anyway.

So I'll take the freedom I have by knowing God's grace and it becomes an opportunity, a beachhead that now instead of fighting against unforgiveness, instead of saying, no, I, God, forgive me for that grudge. Forgive me for that bitterness. We go, I'll just hang on to it. After all, I have my getaway car.

Or maybe. You think, I really love the gospel and the peace it's given me this incredible peace in my soul and the people around me keep sinning. Shock. They keep sinning and, and how dare they disturb my freedom? How they, how dare they disturb my peace.

I know if you live in a family, if you live with anybody, you know what this is like. You say, I have this great peace, this wonderful time with God, and somebody else comes in and they're a little outta sorts, and you're like, can you just let me have my spiritual peace? See, we want to grab that freedom and use it for myself only.

Or you might think, well, if I don't need to perform to earn God's approval or anybody else's approval. Good. Then I can be cynical and say whatever I want. I mean, after all, I don't need their approval, so what does it matter if I insult them?

You see, these are ways we can take grace and the freedom and the experience of relationship to God that you say, this is wonderful, but it can become something that's only for me. Then it's an opportunity for the flesh to attack me.

Grace is An Ambulance, and You're the EMT

Jed Gillis: That's because grace is not a getaway car. In a sense grace is an ambulance, but maybe not the picture you're thinking of. Because in this case, you are the EMT. You're not the hurt person, you're the EMT. So when you come to God through grace. You say, it really is. Well with my soul, I'm free. Well, what do you do with that? Don't use it as an opportunity for the flesh, but what it says, the last part of verse 13, through love, serve one another.

Grace says, your soul is perfectly safe. Now take that safety, that peace in your soul and say, now how do I go alongside this person who's hurting and help them?

Paul says, through love serve one another. Notice he doesn't just say, serve one another, like grit your teeth and bear it and serve one another. He says, through love, through love serve one another. That connects back to what he said in verse six. If you scan back up there, he ends with this phrase, faith, working through love or faith, energizing love.

As your soul rests in what you have in Jesus, that is where the strength and power comes for you to then truly love this person. And Paul says, the whole law is fulfilled in this word. Love your neighbor as yourself.

God's Law is Still Good

Jed Gillis: Now wait a minute, Paul, haven't you been saying the law was bad, like through Galatians? Not exactly. What he's been saying is the law doesn't give you life. The law doesn't give you approval. The law doesn't give you shelter. It doesn't let you negotiate with God. Hey, I did all these good things, God, you, you owe me. It doesn't let you say I have freedom from judgment because you know, I got a 90% on the Godliness test. The law doesn't do that, but that doesn't mean God's law was bad.

God's law, he tells you, this is the best way for you to live. Individually, it's the best way for us to live together. It's the things that God delights in, and he invites us to delight in them with him. God delights in truthfulness.

So he tells you, don't lie. Why? Because it's best for you to not lie. True. It's best for the community of God's people if we don't lie to one another. And because there is this immense joy that is available to us to delight in what God delights in.

I remember times I'd be sitting around in a group, like sitting around a dinner table with a good friend, a best friend sitting across the table, and I know I'm about to say a story or make a joke that he is going to love. You've been there right? Now you don't tell the joke or, or say the story to earn his friendship. That would be weird. But you sit there and you look across and you kinda catch his eye or her eye and you go, they're gonna really like this and I'm going to enjoy it, and I'm going to enjoy the fact that they enjoy it. Right? There's a kind of friendship of pleasure.

Remember when Jesus left, he said to his disciples, I call you my friends because that kind of pleasure when you say, here's this temptation to sin. I'm not going to sin in this way, and my father's going to love that. And so you catch his eye mentally spiritually. You enjoy his joy in it and you enjoy it yourself.

We're called to love because the law is fulfilled there, not because it earns us approval, but because it is the way it's best for us and it's the joy God has set before us.

So he says, grace isn't your getaway car. It's the ambulance that keeps you safe, or it's like in a snowstorm. If you try to go out in a snowstorm and help someone without the right vehicle, you won't be able to help them. But if you're the guy driving around in the truck with snow tires and the four wheel drive, you can come alongside that person in the ditch.

God gives you his grace. In many ways, it lets you move through life so you can come alongside somebody who is wounded and hurting, but your soul is safe because of the grace of God. You have the ability to move and help them.

How Can We Serve One Another?

Jed Gillis: So how do we serve? I want to throw a couple quick practical examples, but I think you could come up with a big long list. If we're gonna say through love, we serve one another, we could come up with things that we say they're practical service, which are wonderful and good. I think they're easy, easier for us to think of.

You say, well, we could pull down Christmas decorations. That helps the church. We could go over and help someone clean their house or repair a problem in their home. We could prepare a meal for someone. We could help someone who's moving and we could help them carry their stuff. We can think of all these practical service ways. Those are wonderful, and you could list long, a long enough lists there to keep you busy.

But I wanna point out a few others that maybe we don't think of as often. One, we pray for one another. That's serving when you take your time to pray for somebody else. A physical need, a spiritual need. Maybe you don't know of a need. You think, God, would you bless them? Would you encourage them? Would you strengthen them? Prayer is part of serving one another through love serve one another.

We bear with one another with the offenses of others against us. You know that's serving somebody. When they, they're struggling. They snap at you. They say something angry. You say, I know they're going through a really hard time. It's okay. I can bear with that. You're serving them. Through love, serve one another. You're directly obeying that command. We're bearing with one another.

And if your soul's not safe, you won't do that. If you don't have the grace of God so that you say, ah, it's well with my soul. God's undeserved favor is on me. Then when that person does something wrong, you're most likely gonna snap back. But if you have the grace of God where you understand what Paul's been saying, you say, I rest in God's grace. This person, I'll come alongside them and help them. You serve them.

You serve when you encourage with your words. The simplest ways that serving people, you serve others when you listen. If you don't believe me, think about the people you know who are good listeners and how much they help you.

You serve through love. We serve one another. There's all of these different ways, and then there's opportunities to serve.

Every Sunday we gather, you see people you can serve in simple ways. That might mean you're here a few minutes early, you stay a few minutes late. You have some conversations you're serving. We serve through hospitality, through greeting people to our church, through inviting people to our homes. There's ways to, to serve, to invite someone out for a cup of coffee to listen, to encourage them. That's through love serving one another.

We have these kinds of opportunities all the time and we don't always think about it. We have a men's retreat coming up that, as I said earlier, is not just an opportunity for you to go and take, but for you to go and serve others. Women's retreat is the same thing. Bible studies, they're not just there for you to get something. They're there for you to through love, serve one another, although it's also good for you.

Self-Centered Churchgoers Eat Each Other

Jed Gillis: And Paul goes to that same place in the next verse. If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

Self-centered churchgoers, eat each other.

We live in a world that's full of a consumer mindset. We have 18,000 coffee shops in Knoxville. I was just in a different one yesterday. I walked in and the first thing I think is, okay, what's this? What's this ambiance like? I didn't drink coffee, but I had a tea. Go is it good? Is it better than this other one? Is it worth me spending my money to be able to consume in this place?

That's the way we tend to think about coffee shops and Sam's Club and your grocery store of choice, and unfortunately our churches.

It can be subtle, but if we are not resting in the truth of the gospel, if we're justifying ourselves, then we come in not as a giver through love serving one another, but as a consumer.

And I want you to think about this picture, not trying to step on any toes with this picture, but I think it is thought provoking. The church is a body, right? So if there's a part of your body that doesn't contribute, doesn't help, doesn't do anything for the body, but only consumes. Medically, we have a term for that. It's called a tumor.

I would argue that when our culture approaches church merely as a consumer. We have a lot of bodies full of tumors.

That's why Paul says if you bite and devour one another, if you don't rest in the truth of the gospel of grace, if you use grace as your getaway car. Instead of using Grace to say, my soul is safe now, how can I help others? Then we're biting at each other. Be careful that you be not consumed by one another.

What Does a Commnity of People Resting in the Gospel Look Like?

Jed Gillis: As Paul continues in Galatians, it's important that all of us, not just pastors. Not just deacons, not just Sunday school teachers. All of us need to think about this question. What does it look like for a community of people to rest in the gospel? We all have to think about it because there is no such thing as Berean Bible church outside of its people.

If you think I want Berean to be a friendly community, that only happens because it's, people are friendly. The walls aren't gonna do it. If you think, I want Berean to love God's word, that only happens because it's, people love God's word. So do you love God's word and do you encourage others to love God's word? If you want Berean to carefully pursue sound doctrine, it will only do that if its people do. If you want Berean to use resources for God's glory, it will be because bean's people reflect God by giving to others to the church. If you want berean to radiate grace, which I hope you do. I hope you want this community, community to be full of grace. If you want that, it will be because the people, uh, who attend Berean Bible Church rest in God's undeserved favor.

If Berean is going to worship and treasure God, it will be because it's people worship and delight in God. If Berean is going to be hospitable to one another, it will be because its people reach out over texts, phone calls, notes, coffee, dinner.

When we come and we think, I want a church that's friendly and doctrinally sound and loves the word and worships God and it's hospitable and all of these things, and then we say, but I'm not gonna do any of that. We've soaked in this consumer mindset.

If we are going to love our community and the world around us. It's because Berean's people reach out and pray and care.

That's why all of us, as we get to the end of Galatians, we all need to think if my soul truly rests in the undeserved favor of God, what does that look like for my life? How do I use it? As an ambulance to go help others. Not a getaway car for my selfish impulses.

And Paul's answer is that, that rest in our souls fills us with energy to love. Faith energizing love in all of our actions. It fills us with joy, so that following God and loving his people does not feel like chains and a curse that's never enough, but it feels like freedom and the pleasure of our father.

So I'll invite you to take a moment, close your eyes and respond to God's truth. Thank him for the grace that he's given that calls us to freedom and ask his spirit to guide you for the way that you should live out that grace and rest in his grace.