October 12, 2005 | Why Your Truth Can't Set You Free
Why Your Truth Can't Set You Free | Galatians Part 9
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Galatians 3:15–22
To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.
Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. (ESV)
In Galatians 3:15–22, Paul shows that God’s covenant with Abraham stands and centers on one promised Offspring, Christ. The law came 430 years later and did not cancel that promise. If the inheritance comes by law-keeping, it stops being a promise; God gave it by promise. Why the law then? It was added because of sin to restrain and expose it, and it lasted until Christ came. The law cannot give life; it only reveals our need. Scripture therefore shuts everyone up under sin so that the promised blessing would come through faith in Jesus to those who believe. The sermon presses this point pastorally: relying on human performance empties grace of its power. God keeps his covenant, Christ secures the blessing, and we receive it by faith, not by earning.
Transcript of Why Your Truth Can't Set You Free | Galatians Part 9
What Is the Main Point of Galatians?
Jed Gillis: Galatians chapter three . As we get into this section on the book, we find some fairly thick theological ideas, and one of the things that I've tried to draw your attention to as we look at this book is that it's not just an ancient academic theological debate. Yes, it has pieces that sound like that, but that's not the point of Galatians. Paul is attempting to help the Galatians understand how Abraham and Moses and Christ relate to their experience. He is doing that, but in doing so, he is trying to show all of us how faith and human performance and Jesus connect in our experience.
So this morning before we get into maybe a little thicker section. I want us to make sure we don't lose sight of the forest for the trees. So before we start, here is the main point of this section. If you wanna grab onto one idea to say, how do I wrestle through these texts and there's some obscure sounding base, what do you grab onto?
Don't Strip The Power of Grace by Relying on Human Performance
Jed Gillis: Here's the main point Paul is making. Paul is saying, don't strip the power of grace. Don't nullify grace is one of the ways the ESV translates it. Don't strip the power out of grace by relying on human performance.
And an objection that could easily come would be what the law comes from God. So how can following the law strip the power of grace? And Paul answers that by saying God never intended the law for that purpose. So if you follow just the overall argument of this section we're going to look at today, don't strip the power of grace by relying on human performance. And if you think the law can't strip the power of grace, Paul says, no, God never intended the law like that.
Three Examples of Stripping the Power of Grace
Jed Gillis: I wanna give you three, maybe a little silly examples. But I want you to think of three pictures to start with.
First is that of a pressure washer and you know what a pressure washer does besides leak all over everything and not look when you want it to. Other than those things, you know what a pressure washer is supposed to do, right? It takes a water hose that can clean some things off, but can't really clean that the deep dirt and grime, and it accelerates the water under pressure so that it's fast enough to actually accomplish the purpose.
Now, let's imagine that I tell you I'm going to clean my driveway with a pressure washer, and you come over and you see that somehow I have added after the pressure washer, another device that slows the water back down so it comes out just like it does out of a water hose. You'd look at me rightly and say, you're crazy. Just get rid of the pressure washer and use the hose that's doing the same thing.
What have I done? I have stripped the power out of the pressure washer. I have nullified the pressure washer.
Or imagine an electrical cable. So you go in this time you've got this long strand of cable that runs your house. Now we're going to tape the copper out at the middle of it. Say, well, that's not gonna do you much good. Well, I don't see the copper anyway. It must be the outside that actually does the work, right? No, by removing the copper , what have we done? We have stripped the power from this cable. It can no longer conduct electricity.
We have nullified. Or if you imagine a really powerful engine . I had a friend in Florida who did, uh, custom car builds and he took a, uh, Hellcat engine and put it in a Dodge Challenger. If that means anything for you, it means that in this car that normally has, I don't know what the normal horsepower is for a challenger, should have looked that up. I didn't. It had 800 in something horsepower. That thing was the most powerful car I've ever sat in. It was unbelievable. It would break traction at pretty much any speed if you stepped on it. I would, I would've felt unsafe trying to dry it myself.
Now, let's imagine that my friend does all that work and then he puts a governor on the engine so that it only puts out 200 horsepower .
Like why'd you do all that if you're now going to strip the power out of that engine? Why did you put this super engine in it? If you're going to nullify the power of the engine?
I'll come back to those pictures. But what Paul is telling the Galatians is that in the grace of God, you have something that is incredibly powerful. It's transforming in its power. And if you rely on human performance, you nullify it, you strip the power from it.
So today at the beginning, if you think I can say all these great words about grace, but I don't feel the power of grace in my life, the question you need to ask is, am I doing what Paul just described here? Am I stripping the power out of God's grace? Am I nullifying the grace of God?
Reading Galatians 3:15-22
Jed Gillis: Let's read beginning verse 15 of chapter three.
Paul says, to give a human example, brothers, even with a manmade covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham through his offspring. It does not say into offsprings referring to many, but referring to one and to your offspring, who is Christ?
This is what I mean. The law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God so as to make the promise void , for if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise. but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. Well, why then the law? It was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary .
Now, an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not. For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
Don't Nullify Grace
Jed Gillis: And they'll continue that argument. And we'll look at that next week. But as we start this section, the first four verses 15 through 18 is an extended salvation history, way of saying, don't nullify grace. Don't strip the power of grace. The agitators, the false teachers have come in and they're telling the Galatians, yes, you received grace through Jesus Christ, and now after you have received it, in order to continue as true children of Abraham, in order to secure your standing with God to secure that favor, you need to obey the mosaic law. And Paul is looking at them saying, if you follow that, you would strip the power of grace. He gives this example, he says, in a manmade covenant, no one annuls it or nullifies it or adds to it once it has been ratified.
God Keeps His Covenants
Jed Gillis: Now, Paul is not naive. Paul realizes that people are treacherous sometimes and that sometimes you make a contract , you'll make a deal, and then they go back on it. Paul knows that.
Paul also knows that in the ancient world, much like in the modern world, you can have a will and then you can edit your will, right? He knows how this works. Paul's not clueless. However, there were also ancient systems of law in the Greek world, in the Roman world, in the Hebrew world, there were systems where there were certain kinds of covenants which you made, and they were not to be changed .
He knew that was a category . So he's not saying all manmade covenants get made and then never change. He is saying there is a kind of thing, if we are gonna treat covenants, God's covenant just as seriously as we treat human ones, then you can't play loose and fast with this. God can't say, oh, I promise to give you all these things. Now, by the way, here's the fine print.
God can say. I give you the grace of justification. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. And then he comes along in the fine print and says, well, as long as you keep all these rules, and if you don't, then I will crush you.
Paul is saying, look, if a human did that, we would say, that's dirty. That's treacherous, that's sneaky. That's changing.
So if a human covenant, we treat a human covenant with this kind of care. How much more does an unchanging holy God treat his promises with care. That's how Paul starts. He says even a human example, once it has been ratified, once it has been established, it's not just changed afterwards. That would be deceptive.
What Did God Promise Abraham?
Jed Gillis: So he points to the promises. Well, there are many promises made to Abraham. We could go back and we could talk about specifics of things like a land of things like descendants of blessing through his descendants. But the blessing that Paul has specifically mentioned here in Galatians is that Abraham believed God and in discounted to him as righteousness.
So the blessing of justification by faith. Is the specific blessing that Paul has just mentioned. The blessing that says, we talked about this last week, the blessing that says God is going to undo the curse ultimately and justify make righteous his people because they trust his promise. That was a blessing given to Abraham and that blessing, he says, it doesn't just come to Abraham. They were promises made to his offspring.
Who Is Abraham's Offspring?
Jed Gillis: Now again, we might think Paul are, are you naive? Like we use words as collective nouns. If I say my offspring, you don't know if I'm talking about four people or one, I could say my offspring, Judah, I could say my offspring and refer to all four kids.
So we could easily come and be like, Paul, this, what are you doing? Like were you just making this stuff up? How is that work? 'cause Paul says, it's not offsprings but offspring, but there's a reason in the text he does this. There is the first time when Abraham in Genesis 15 is told, this blessing comes through your offspring, but there's another time it's used where God says, remember Abraham had Isaac the promised son. Abraham had another son who was in one sense his offspring, Ishmael, right? There's a text where God, the Old Testament says, and to your offspring in the singular, and he defines it. Isaac. The child with promise.
In other words, Paul is not, he's not making this stuff up. He's looking and doing this pretty sophisticated look at the Old Testament and saying, the first time God says offspring, that might be a little unclear, but later he specifies and says, this is the offspring of David, not David, Abraham. Sorry. This is the offspring of Abraham. Isaac, the child of promise.
So now that Paul looks back from Christ, he says, wait. God said he was gonna bless Abraham through his offspring, but he didn't mean every child. He meant the promised one, which was Isaac then, and the greater Isaac, Jesus.
So he draws them to say. The point of saying the blessing comes through the offspring is to say that there is a promised one who ultimately earns the blessing promise to Abraham. And that's Jesus.
How Do We Receive God's Promises?
Jed Gillis: How do we receive God's promises? The New Testament says, all the promises of God find their yes and amen where? In Christ. See God when he gives us the blessings and promises of grace, we can sit here and say, but what if I mess up? What if I do all these? It's grace. That's why. How does it work?
God blesses perfectly his son, Jesus Christ, and he says, we can be connected to Jesus by faith . Through trust. We receive the blessings, the promises that only Christ could ever deserve.
So Paul, talking to the Galatians, he says, look, there were promises that were made. Those promises weren't guaranteed because Abraham obeyed. Those promises were guaranteed because Jesus obeyed. Abraham had a part in those promises because Abraham believed God and it was can as righteousness. It was faith.
He draws their attention to Christ to say even Abraham didn't earn God's blessing, only Jesus did that .
So then he specifically references. Verse 17, the mosaic claw. He says, this is what I mean. That's good. Sometimes I wanna be like, Paul, can you give me another level of, this is what I mean. Can you explain it a little more? Says this is what I mean. The law by which he means the law through Moses, not just the Old Testament, the law through Moses, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul the covenant previously ratified by God.
Can you imagine? Here's the small print. Here's this wonderful covenant blessing, and 430 years later, oh, by the way, here's the small print. That seems ridiculous to us, which is exactly what Paul is saying. It would be ridiculous for God to work that way.
Here abraham says, I trust God's promises and I receive his blessings, and 430 years later, there's the fine print that says, well, actually, if you keep the law.
Says this doesn't make any sense. He also specifically says, after the Covenant has been ratified, we don't have time to look in all of this story. But if you went back to Genesis 15 where the statement is quoted, Abraham believed God was counted to him as righteousness right afterwards. God does this weird thing to us. It was a way that they established covenants.
Abraham On God's instruction took various animals. You can go back and read which ones they were and , a little gross, he cut them in half and put them in two lines. If you could imagine a line down each of these aisles . And they would do this for serious covenants, then what would happen normally is both parties who are entering into the covenant would walk down the middle of these two things and symbolically they say, may this happen to me if I brake the covenant. I don't think we should really institute this in our context. Can you imagine a wedding where the bride and grew walk between two like, gross animals .
But the point is to say, may I be torn in half if I don't keep this covenant symbolically. But in this story, when Abraham splits the animals, Abraham doesn't walk through the animals. God does. He symbolizes himself with a smoking fire pot that walks through, and the symbolism there is God saying, I will keep my promise.
It is God saying, may I be torn in half if I don't keep this promise. It's the strongest way he could ratify to use this word that he uses in verse 17, he could ratify a covenant.
So now imagine if God says, may I be torn in half if I don't keep my promises. Oh, by the way, there's small print that if you don't keep the Mosaic law, I'm off the hook. No. Even in humans that would be considered treacherous and wrong. Of course, that's not how God did it .
If The Inheritance Comes By the Law, It No Longer Comes By Promise
Jed Gillis: So Paul comes to verse 18, which is really the underlying principle. This is what stands underneath all that he just said. If the inheritance, or we could say the blessing or we could say grace or the promise, we could ex expand on it in a lot of ways. But if the inheritance comes by the law. It no longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by promise.
Here's the principle stated for us. If you rely on human performance as the means of earning God's blessing or inheritance or favor, we can say a lot of ways if you rely on human performance, it nullifies the power of grace.
It is no longer by grace. In other words, these, these false teachers we're teaching start with grace, then add works. Paul's like if you do that, you lose grace. He's gonna say that in effect later in the book. He says, if you want to accept circumcision, you are severed from Christ. This is not something you can just add human performance to grace and still have grace. Just like you cannot add a governor to a 850 horsepower engine and still have the power of an 850 horsepower engine. You cannot strip copper out of an electric cable and still have a functional electric cable. And you cannot rely on human performance. Here stated through the Mosaic law, which is the best standard of human performance. So if it doesn't word nothing else will, you cannot rely on human performance and still have promise and still have grace.
One thing that's important for us to remember is that when God interacts with his sinful creatures, he always operates on the basis of grace. There's no other way to do it. Because God owns everything. Scripture says, what do you have that you did not receive? If I perform some good works thinking it's going to earn favor with God, I used a body that he gave me a mime, that he gave me, breath that he gave me. None of it came from me. I can't put God in my debt . It's like a child loaning money that they don't have to their parents. Like, where'd that money come from? Well, from them. That's what it's like to say, I rely on my performance to have favor from God. What could I possibly use for my performance that wasn't his grace to me to begin with?
Paul drives us to say God interacting with sinful creatures is always grace. If he shows any form of relationship to us, it is his grace. If it comes by human performance, then it is no longer grace. Therefore, we don't rely on human performance to relate to God. That's Paul's logic.
It's tight. It's thick with all kinds of historical examples. But what he drives us to is that these verses are one of the places we get phrase like We are saved by grace alone through faith alone.
Now, sometimes people will argue with these phrases. They'll say like, well, scripture doesn't always say faith alone. It doesn't always have the word alone. It doesn't always have alone after grace. True. It doesn't always use those words, but that's exactly what the false teachers were arguing here. They were saying, yes, faith, but not faith alone. Faith, and then you rely on this performance to secure your standing. They were saying it's not faith alone, and Paul says, no, actually it has to be faith alone because if it is faith plus reliance on works, it's no longer a promise. It's no longer faith. It's no longer grace.
When we point to a text like this and say We're saved by grace alone through faith alone, but we're doing is really saying, this is the only way grace and faith can work. That's Paul's argument. If you add to grace , if you add to promise, it's no longer a promise. To use a human Example.
If you're married and you say, I will be with you no matter what , in sickness and health and riches and poverty, right? You say all that. Here's the promise, and then the fine print is as long as we're rich and healthy.
Well, that promise is no longer of any good. What's the point of that promise if you add to it human performance?
That's Paul's logic. If God has promised something and then you add reliance on human performance, You are stripping the power out of grace by smuggling in your performance. No matter how creatively we try to connect faith and grace with works and human performance, no matter how creatively we try to say, I start here and then I rely on self, it never really works. That's Paul's argument. Because, verse 18, if the inheritance comes by the law or any standard of human performance, then it no longer comes by promise.
What Is the Purpose of the Law?
Jed Gillis: So don't strip the power out of the law by relying or out of grace by relying on human performance. The next section he says, and don't miss the real purpose of the law.
If the law undermines the promise which he's established, why does that even give the law in the first place? Well, he tells us. In verse 19, and it was added because of transgressions. There's several different pieces of that.
One, the law, it does restrain sin in some ways. As parents. If you give specific commands to your kids, why do you do that? You think, I really want them to be kind. That's what I actually want is a heart of kindness that overflows. So why do I say things like, don't hit your brother or your sister. Because when the heart isn't where it's supposed to be, I still want the command to restrain something.
Now, I want the heart to change, of course. But the law, the command does restrain sin sometimes. It may keep you, you may say the fact that there are cops out there who will pull me over if I go a hundred miles an hour may restrain you from going a hundred miles an hour. It doesn't change your attitude towards speed. It doesn't change what you think you can do safely. It doesn't change anything that, but it may restrain you.
The law is given because of transgressions. That's one piece. It restrains certain expression with a full expression of that sin, but the law also reveals sin. It tells you some things are sin that you might not have known were sin.
For example, especially in our modern psychological world, we can label some things as like, I just have these needs. I need this person to do this for me. Well, that could just be selfishness. And the law tells you that. There are different things that the law tells us this is in fact sin, and it shows our slavery to it.
Jesus did this when he said things like. If you hate your brother, it's like murder. So Jesus takes the first one, which would've restrained you. I shouldn't murder 'cause I might be killed in punishment . Okay, I want murder, but I hate that person. Now, Jesus comes along and uses the law to reveal something and says, Yes, but the heart attitude is what God was really after. And if you hate them in your heart it's like committing murder. . You've broken that law. The law is given because of transgressions. It restrain them and it reveals them.
It continues until that the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made. In other words, until Christ, until the Messiah came. The Mosaic law had a shelf life. It had an expiration date.
Now, does that means completely useless after Christ came? No, but that's a different sermon.
But it does mean there was a purpose of the law which had been fulfilled when the Messiah arrived. Jesus transforms the whole process because now the one who earned the promises, the ultimate offspring of Abraham has come and we participate in that by trusting in Christ.
Through an Intermediary
Jed Gillis: So we get to verse 20, which is really one of the more obscure passages. There was a, a commentator who I think jokingly , but I'm not quite sure, said that he, he counted 400 possible explanations for this idea. Surely that's exaggeration. But we get this statement in the middle where it says, this law was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary, it implies more than one, but God is one.
He's clearly referring to the giving of the law. We could go back to Mount Sinai and we could say, how did that actually get to Moses? We all know exactly, but heres this through Angels. I think most likely the intermediary in mind is Moses giving it to Israel, but I wouldn't stake my life on that one.
But the contrast that he's making is this, in grace, there's a promise given to Abraham, and there is one offspring, Jesus Christ, who fulfills that promise. He says, if I use the law like these false teachers do, now there's not just one offspring, but there's truth that came through Moses, who's an intermediary in between God and Israel.
It's not just Jesus at that point, then it's Jesus, Moses, us. He's drawing your attention, I believe, to the fact that what we've already established from the first part, there's one offspring to which the promise comes, means that the law can't be the conduit of that promise because the law came a different way.
If you wanna do more research on that one and you want to tell me what you find, go right ahead and I'd like to have more conversation about it ..
But he is saying there is a purpose for the law. That purpose was because of transgressions until Messiah came. That was the main purpose that he focuses on here.
But Didn't God Give the Law?
Jed Gillis: And so then he gets to verse 21, and I think if, if the false teachers were listening to Paul, they are licking their chops right now.
Because remember, these are Jewish teachers from Jerusalem and they're saying, oh Paul has insulted the law. We've got him, now. you're like, look, Paul has said, works of the law, can't justify. Reliance on the law is to be under an eternal curse. Also, reliance on the law feels like a curse now because it never gives you rest. The law cannot give the blessing or inheritance of the children of God. And so they're, they're licking their chops and they say, uh, but Paul, the same God gave the law and grace.
They say, how on earth can you say all of that negative stuff about the law? It came from God.
So Paul asked the question for them, if all of that is true, if the law is not of faith, then is it contrary to the promises of God? Is God inconsistent? He responds with distraught. Maybe you're familiar with, with the phrase here. Certainly not, God forbid, may it never be. It's translated different ways. It's the strongest emphatic, no way. The law is not contrary to the promises of God. We say, well, well why?
Paul is essentially arguing this way. He say, if we say grace gives life by faith alone, and we say the law gives life by human performance. They would be contrary to one another. If they give life in different means. They give life in the same way through different means. Grace gives life by faith. The law gives life through obedience. Then of course, they would be opposite each other.
But notice what he says in verse 21. If a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. He says, look, the purpose of the law, the nature of the law is that it could never give life.
The Law Cannot Give Life
Jed Gillis: Now, you might might go, seems like a contradiction. 'cause I remember verse 12 from last week. He looked back at verse 12. Paul says, the law is not of faith , whether the one who does them shall live by them. So it sounds like life could come through the law.
But Paul uses a different form of the word in verse 21, which I think draws out this meaning in verse 12, he is saying something like this. He doesn't say the law gives life. He's saying, if you live according to the law, if you rely on the law, then you live or die by it, like your life is in, it is determined to buy it. The difference is in verse 21 when he says, if a law had been given that could give life the emphasis, the different form there is could give life or could make alive.
He say there's something about the law because we are, Ephesians says, we're dead in our trespasses and sins. We don't just need rules to follow. We need something to make us alive. The law can give you all the rules. Sure. But it can't make you alive. The law cannot give life. So Paul is saying grace gives life through faith, but the law was never intended to give life through obedience.
It can't do that. If the law had been given, that could give life, then it would be by the law. So what does Paul mean when he says the law can never give life? How do we experience that?
The first thing I'm gonna say is that the law can only condemn. Think about the way the law works. Imagine we had a system where you come before a judge at 40 years old, and if you never broken the law, you get this card that says, good citizen, they will never break the law again.
You. You go, wait. That's not how law works. The law can't pronounce even in our context and in human context. The law can't pronounce that you'll never break the law again. It can't give life like that. All it does is say, here's the rules you measure up where you don't, you've kept it or you haven't. It can't say anything about tomorrow.
The law by its nature gives you a set of rules. It doesn't give life. It just says, have you broken these laws ? Should you face punishment?
In fact, attempting to follow the law to earn blessing, actually breaks the law. Romans 10 hints at this. Listen to the way Paul words this. He says, being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. If we seek to establish our own righteousness by our performance, we are not submitting to God's righteousness.
The law itself tells us that the goal is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Very familiar passage. But if I say, I'm going to have this transaction, I perform in this way now, God must bless me. I'm not really loving God. I'm really loving self. To pursue performance, to rely on performance, to earn God's blessing is actually to break the law, such if you turns grace into a wage, something you earned, and functionally makes you the savior instead of Jesus.
Paul says, by its nature, the law is not something you can rely on to get life. The law can direct your desires. It can tell you what you ought to want. It can't make you want it. Right? We know this. The law says don't drive faster than this. That doesn't make you not want to. The law says, don't steal. That doesn't make you not want to steal.
Whatever the law says, it can tell you what you should want, but it cannot give life. It cannot give you the desire to actually do it. The Old Testament speaks of as they didn't have the heart to keep the law. The law can't give that.
We said last week, the law can't give life because the law can never give rest. Human performance can never be, it is finished. Only grace through Jesus can be, it is finished. By its nature rules, whether it's God's rules or your own rules for your performance, for measuring up by its nature, they cannot give life.
Every Attempt to Come to God Through Our Performance is Insufficient
Jed Gillis: And so the law is not contrary to the promises of God. God never intended the law to do what Grace was going to do, so he concludes in verse 22. The scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
The law came to demonstrate that every attempt to come to God through your performance was insufficient. It could not give life . The law came to demonstrate that legalism was sin.
The law also came to demonstrate all the places we fall short of the glory of God. To imprison everything under sin. Why? Because God just likes imprisoning us. No. So that the promise, the blessing, the grace would come by faith, by resting in Jesus Christ alone, to everyone who believes.
The law came for its purpose so that no one could ever say, I don't measure up, so I can't get the promises back .
The law came so no one could say, I'm not good enough, so God can't have favor on me.
The law came to imprison everything on your sins so that you could say, I don't deserve it, but I have the favor of God.
Legalism or trying to earn your standing before God for your performance and our secular self-expression says I get to define myself and live however I want. They both believe the same lie. They both believe the lie that says I can give myself life. I can give my soul life through my performance in legalism, or I can give myself life by defining myself.
And we're right back to the story of the Prodigal son. We have a rule keeper who's restless and doesn't have real life, and we have a rebel who's restless and doesn't have real life. And God's answer is not to rely on your performance, but to come back to grace because God wants his children set free. Galatians five says, for freedom Christ has set us free.
Have you cut the power of grace? Have you nullified the power of grace? Have you put a governor on that engine? Have you stripped the copper out of the electric wire?
If our performance is the source of our favor from God. We can quote all kinds of ideas about grace, but you won't feel the power of it, because reliance on human performance strips the power out of grace because grace is no longer grace. That's what Paul said in chapter two, verse 2 21. I do not nullify the grace of God for if righteousness were through the law and Christ died for no purpose.
If your righteousness comes through your performance, then there's no power in grace because Jesus dying for you wasn't even really grace.
Paul says, human performance and grace cannot fit together. You cannot rely on both because then grace is no longer grace. And if God's grace feels weak to you , I want you to examine yourself , take you before your father and ask him. Ask him this week to show you any place where you may be, depending on your performance for approval or security, safety, comfort, peace, fulfillment, fruitfulness.
If Grace feels weak. Look at what you're relying on. Because Paul tells us, if we rely on human performance, then we nullify grace. We strip the power out of it. We like to hear God's promise and think, God, you actually mean that you'll show me favor if I work really hard. Right?
Might as well be that outside of an electrical cable, there's no copper in that. There's no power there. We think, God, you actually mean you'll show me favor if I just try my best. God, you actually mean if I sacrifice a lot, then you'll approve of me. God, you actually mean if I just like give up to surrender everything that then that's how I'll get favor.
He says, no, I actually mean that I have overflowing favor for you already if your trust is in Jesus. And that I demonstrated it because Jesus died on the cross to demonstrate grace. There's power in that to change your fears, to change the deepest level of your heart. But not if we nullify grace by relying on our works and our performance for God's favor
I want you to take a moment and respond to God, respond in prayer, and ask him to fill you with the power of His grace. And then I'll ask the music team to come up and we'll sing to close.