What does, Fallen from Grace, mean?

Well, today we're going to continue on in Galatians chapter 5. We're going to focus on 3 and 4, but we're actually going to go back and look at 1 and 2 again. I just can't get away from 1 and 2. It's pretty amazing. And the more I looked at it, the more I said, there's just some more gems there, and we just got to go back and take a look.

So here's the outline from Macaulay. He titles it The Freedom of the Christian Life, verses 1 through 12 in chapter 5. So the first part in, you know, I mentioned last week in verse one is this wonderful verse that declares that we're free in Christ. And then the second half talks about an appeal to stand firm based upon the fact that we're free in Christ. And that's, you know, Paul makes a big deal of that.

If you're free, if you're truly free, why would you want to go back? There's so many examples in this world. If you've escaped communism, if you've escaped whatever it might be, and you're free, why would you go back to that less situation? Well, I think it's because you just don't understand how God operates. God doesn't operate on man's effort. He operates on His grace.

And so we're going to see that. So this this section is labeled the tragedy of legalism, which is two through four the three points are Legalism sidelines Jesus Christ. It's always inconsistent and it ruins grace The text uses a little bit different words, but that's certainly a good and then Mike's going to follow up this on Next week with verses five and six, which are just even more juicy. They're just just fantastic So let's I'm going to use last week's charts partially and then we'll get into the new stuff here So let's look at it was for freedom that Christ set us free. So I like the inner linear version putting the subject first Christ freed us that's an incredible statement and the depths of that I You know, I I'm going to tell you some of the things but it's it is really amazing and I don't think we actually grasp how free we are and the freedom we give up when we don't do it God's way.

The subject is Christ. He freed us to make free as a verb. It could be free from sin, the law, or bondage. And it's a reality. It's a reality of every single Christian from the weakest in the faith to the strongest in the faith, irrespective. If you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, you're free.

So you're going to ask me, well, what am I free from? I thought as an American, I'm always free as an American, right? It's in the Constitution. I got to be free. Well, that's actually, if you read your Bible, you can be an American and not be free. Okay. I'm waxing political here. Okay.

And it is us, Galatian believers, and Paul and us, every single believer, And this statement is what we call a positional truth. It's true of you, irrespective of how you feel about it. It's true because God's declared it. He declared it in His Word, which cannot lie. It's an absolute fact. You're free. So let's kind of delve into a little bit more than last week. What does it mean to be free? What's the extent of our freedom? Christ's purpose was to free us from all bondage. And this is from our brother Hal, these next couple of bullets.

There is there is not one thing in this universe. He did not free us from we said boy Roger you're building free us from Our sin nature a really big a huge deal and maybe you don't really say sin nature sounds on what's in nature It's all that we are an atom all that we got from our ancestor Adam every every aspect everything that even even good things Adam has nothing to contribute to the life in Christ. So we're free from all the manifestations of the sin nature.

We're free from any law system. Boy, Galatians just tells us over and over about how we're free from a law system. Makes a big deal. In fact, we're going to find if we count upon a law system, it actually hurts us tremendously in our relationship with our Savior. We're free from the world. We're free from the devil.

The verse that I like that talks about that is in Hebrews 2.14b. It says that through death he, Christ, might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is the devil. The devil has the power of death. The devil holds it over all man because Christ has freed you.

You're free in the truest sense. And you might ask, well what does that freedom look like? You know, the Son had freedom. God the Son, this might sound kind of strange, God the Son had freedom, but in that freedom He says, I always do what I see my Father doing. I do nothing except what I see my Father doing. That freedom is to live the life that God has for you. It's not just do whatever you want to do, it's to live the life that God has for you.

So let's go on. Christ freed us for the freedom. Sounds kind of rhetorical. Freedom modifies the verb freed, and it's a noun in this case. It could be translated liberty, and I kind of wish the translators had used that more, because it would read easier. Christ freed us for the liberty. So what liberty are we talking about? So what's the extent of our liberty? Here's another wonderful set of points. Christ has brought us into his eternal liberty.

I was kind of thinking about what we were talking about in Sunday School here, the operating system of grace. Every believer should operate in a system of grace if he understands it. And a lot do. A lot understand that we're to operate by grace. But actually, I found that liberty is kind of a corollary to that. It's a detail in that. So let me see if I can explain that. We enter into his liberty, Christ's liberty, to love and to serve, to have mercy and compassion, to forgive and comfort, to fellowship, to be of the same mind as Christ and the Father are. And you see that really? Later on we get to verse 22 in Galatians.

It talks about the fruit of the Spirit. It talks about these wonderful liberties we have. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and so on. That liberty is living in that by the power of the Holy Spirit. You know, we can't love, it's God's love. We can't be joyous, it's God's joy. We can't have peace, it's God's peace. Everything we have in the Christian life comes on the result of Christ working through our lives. It's not I, but Christ's life.

It may sound kind of lofty, and it is lofty. It's beyond our ability. We can't do it by memorizing verses necessarily, even though it's wonderful to know the verses. It's by trusting and resting in the truth that what Christ has done for us. So that's that first part. Then this is the part where it talks about based upon that freedom, based upon that liberty in this marvelous operating system of grace, keep standing firm and not be subject again to the yoke of slavery. Our standing relates to our condition.

If you think about it, if we know that we're free, we should act We should act in concert with that. You know, you could say, if I know I'm a Coloradian, I should act like a Coloradan. I should act like a person. If I know I'm whatever, you should act in accordance. If I know I'm an ambassador, I should act as an ambassador, and so on. So we should act in line with who we are. We're free.

Remember our position that we share in Christ's liberties I mentioned before, our position Is immutable in his liberty our position is an eternal possession But we may not stand firm in our condition our Christian walk So Paul's going to follow this and that's what's going to be the verses 2 3 & 4 going to talk about they assume They assume that the Christian is not walking in the freedom that he has he's decided to go in on his own and And this is not a new problem.

That's why the whole book of Galatians is written. This is no new problem, and it's no new problem today. It's a problem the Galatians had. They were depending upon their works and their efforts rather than Christ's work. Okay. So, verse 2. Behold, I say to you, that if you are circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. Pretty stark statement. So it says, in this day, in the time of Paul, in the time of the Galatians, circumcision was a big deal.

It was a badge. It was a badge of their religion. Just like you might say, and I was trying to think of parallels, what's a badge of today, of Christianity? You could say a cross, conceivably, a symbol of a cross. One thing you could say, and I mentioned last week, you could say baptism. People will hold baptism up and they say, I'm baptized. I'm good to go. And it's hard in their denomination to turn that around. They believe that and they, you know, baptism, water baptism does it for me. Once I'm done that, I'm good to go. So that's the parallel.

They believe circumcision was a badge of their relationship with God. And it's in the present tense, so, as I mentioned last week, it's not the fact that they had to, only could be circumcised one time, but the fact is they're counting upon that circumcision as a daily reminder, if you will, that they're okay with God. And that's not the case. They're not okay with God. And actually, Weiss translates it, if you go on being circumcised, with the idea that they're continually trusting in that.

But the results of this action Impacts or Christian walk as the last half of the verse tells us Christ shall profit you nothing Boy, that's so does that mean that his the salvation you might have they lose that salvation by being circumcised No, it's it's a conditional Thing okay, so basically it's the idea the word profit is to increase and nothing is a Not even one thing so you could render that life in Christ shall not increase crease your relationship with him not one bit So what does it mean? We will not increase in the things of Christ. We won't grow and Scripture tells us But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior. So this verse is telling us that that in the Galatian time period, if they were circumcised, they put their trust in circumcision rather than their faith in Christ.

By doing that, they impacted their relationship, their fellowship, as we would call it, with Jesus Christ. I had a couple of statements here that occurred to me. Counting on circumcision stops spiritual growth. Counting on baptism stops spiritual growth. I was kind of thinking about, so you might say, well, why would God operate that way?

I was kind of trying to put it down to our level, like with our children. We love our children. Most parents love their children dearly. They would give their lives for their children. They do everything they can. Most children are good parents. They really try to do their best. And they may not do the best, you know, on the big scale, but they try to do their best. They give it all. But if their child rejects that and says, no, I don't want that, They push them away.

That's just like what's happening here. We're pushing God away and say, I want to be circumcised. I want to have this badge over relationship with you. And that's the picture. That's the picture we see that conditionally, the Galatians were pushing away Christ by saying, I'm circumcised. And we're going to see that circumcision was given as a good thing to the nation of Israel. And baptism is a good thing, too.

But if you make baptism What you hang your hat on and make that your acceptance for a holy God, that's just not, that's going to break fellowship with him. And that's what he's talking about. Christ shall profit you nothing. Not that you're not still saved, but your relationship suffers because of that.

So we're going to see more of this as we get into three and four. Okay, so I repeated the outline again. Now we're just going to cover the B and C and two B and C, that legalism, In verse 3, it is always inconsistent. And in 4, it ruins grace. So what does that mean?

So Paul states here, I testify. And it's this idea that, and we were noticing in the Sunday School class, we were noticing how Paul will many times validate who he is. This is Paul speaking, this is me, it's definitely me. Don't forget, this is Paul the Apostle. I think he's doing it here again, he's saying, Testify to you. This is This is the truth. Listen to what I'm going to have to say and testify is to affirm what is said is true He's saying this is really the truth.

I'm going to tell you some truth about circumcision what the here's another impact of circumcision on the believer the Galatian believer an Example he used the other word testify another case. He said in Acts 26. He said I I stand to this day testifying both to the small and the great, stating nothing but what the prophets and Moses said was going to take place." And this is in the context of presenting the gospel, the good news. He was saying to them, I testify to you that I'm bringing to you the good news. Just like he's testifying here, he's going to bring us news about the detrimental effect of circumcision.

Paul and think about this Paul could Paul had first-hand knowledge and you guys who did it in the Romans class I don't know how long you spent in Romans 7, but it gets to be tiresome You know Paul. This is not an easy go for Paul Romans 7 says man. I know I tried I I gave it my best I gave you know I'm trying to think of it Paul Paul testified about the law could not deliver him from sin in Romans 7 and The law could not produce goodness in Paul. He could not find anything good coming out from the law.

So he finally came to a conclusion in Romans 7, in 7.24. And if you're in the Romans class, you should be able to quote this verse, right? Okay. Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of death. He realized that he could not do it. His efforts, he could not please God through even his holy law. He could not please God. That would not do it.

It needs to be by faith. The second part of the verse, the middle part, is, to every man who receives circumcision. So it's every man. So once again, I think it's the same kind of idea. It's every man. He's not talking about circumcision as a one-time event, but the person counting upon circumcision to be their badge before God. So the last part of the verse is, let me just read the verse again. I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole law.

So this is an interesting fact, and I actually didn't realize, actually you become a debtor, you know, if you spend too much money, you know, if you spend all the money you have and your credit card bill gets this high, eventually you become a debtor.

Now, in today's world, you declare bankruptcy. But in past times, they'd put you in jail, put you in debtor's prison. I can remember the English stories about this, and that was an awful place. I think Dickens wrote about that, being in debtor's prison. You had to be bought out of desert. It was a pretty sad thing. You got in debtor's prison. You were in bad straits.

So Paul's saying here that if you receive circumcision and trust in circumcision, he's a debtor to do the whole law. He connects this badge of circumcision with the whole law, all the 613 commandments that God gave through Moses. He's counting upon circumcision. He's a debtor, a person under an obligation.

So here's a verse that talks about being under obligation. I was thinking about that. So you put yourself in a situation where you have to be circumcised and you have to keep the entire law. And so let's see this part, develop this. He is a debtor to do the whole law. And the whole law here is every single bit, none excluded. You have to obey all 613 laws. Not just the Ten Commandments, all 613. And the bad news is, you don't get, let's see what's the right, have you guys watched, is it Jeopardy? What's the one where you get to throw one out?

Who wants to be a millionaire? Who wants to be a millionaire? You get three lifelines or whatever. Somebody can come and help you. You can throw one out. Anyway, I'm losing it here a little bit. But you can exclude one. You don't get to exclude one of the law. You don't get to do that. Under the law system, You don't get to exclude any law. You have to keep them all. And if you mess up in law, you mess them all up. So it's a pretty all or nothing. No partial credit. Okay, so other verses that speak to this.

James 2.10. For whoever keeps the whole law, yet stumbles in one point, has been guilty of all. 613. Next verse says and it's the same kind of idea. It's going to kind of rephrase it a little bit He who for he who said do not commit adultery also said do not commit murder Now if you do not commit adultery But do commit murder you become a transgressor of the law only takes one one mistake and you're done Isn't it wonderful that we live under grace? and not the law. But what's amazing is the Jews signed up to this. They said, we'll do it. We'll do this. We'll do all this.

I don't get it. Of course, I probably would have done the same thing. I'm not going to say I'm any better. I'd probably march down the same road. OK. All right. So we got through here. So let's see here. Kind of wrapping up here. So something occurred to me.

What's the connection between circumcision and the law of Moses so circumcision was given the covenant of circumcision was given to Abraham in Genesis 17 and God graciously gave it to him and he told him this this is a covenant it's going to identify you as my people it's to be for Abraham his whole household and I even think it went to the to the His servants had to be circumcised as well. So it was pervasive. Everyone in Abraham's household. So that's some time period before the law was given. The law was given to Moses in Exodus in 24, 31, and 34. It was given all the laws that Moses was told they should obey. But the point is, OK, this was given. So let's read this verse here.

For indeed, circumcision is of value if you practice the law. Interesting. Circumcision is of value if you practice the law. So they're kind of coupled there together. Circumcision is of value if you practice the law. But if you're a transgressor of the law, circumcision has become uncircumcision.

Mike's going to get more into this. It gets to be like a word game here, at least it seems to my mind. He's going to get us through that, hopefully. Okay, so now, let's see, so I mentioned, and I got that from Brother Hal, circumcision was a badge of those who embraced the law system. And I believe baptism is that kind of badge today in our world.

Okay, so now let's get down to the last verse, which is, to some people, it's pretty earth-shattering. You have been severed from Christ. You who are seeking to be justified by the law, you have fallen from grace. So you could ask all kinds of questions. And people have. People have taken some of this and said, boy, if you fall from grace, you've lost your salvation. Can a believer fall from grace? Can they really lose their salvation? To understand this, this verse has three parts. Three you statements.

So I'm going to reorder the statements just for clarity, I think. So the first one I'd like to have go first is, you are seeking to be justified by the law. In the previous couple of verses, we saw circumcision was in view. They were seeking to be justified by circumcision. Now he kind of switches. They have the two problems, circumcision and the law. You're seeking to be justified by law. You have been severed from Christ. Sounds pretty bad. you have fallen from grace.

So let's see if we can understand this. So I actually, I like the inner linear a little bit better. It says, you are, you who are severed, I'm sorry, you who are seeking to be justified by the law. Whoever by the law are being justified. So I like the King James, whosoever of you are being justified by the law or any law system. So, again, this is contrary to what scripture teaches. Law is not to make a man righteous before God, not to declare him righteous before God.

What scripture teaches is that, and we had it earlier, Galatians 3.11, but no one, underscore no one, no one is justified by the law before God. It's evident. For the righteous man shall live by faith. There are many other verses that you could bring to show this. It's by faith that you're justified. By faith in the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Not by the law. So, once again, he's pointing out, you people are trying to be justified by performing these set of laws, which you can't do. You're going to mess up in one of them for sure. And so here are the consequences. The last two parts of this verse are the consequences. You are severed from Christ. So it sounds pretty severe. But actually, we're on friendly territory here.

Most of you are familiar with Romans 6.6.

Well, this word shows up in Romans 6.6. So the core word here for this verb is, you have been severed, is ketergeo.

It's to reduce in activity. to render inoperative, to take offline, it's a fact, it's a fact that this will happen if you are seeking to be justified by the law. And it shows up in Romans 6 where it says, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with or taken offline so that you would no longer serve sin. So what happens here is two things happen, a couple of things happen. This word talks about being, you have been severed from Christ, but the idea is really you stopped interacting with him. You stopped, and I like the two phrases that I kind of deduce from this, you were rendered useless, or even better, inactive. Because the word is to reduce inactivity.

So you were active, if you think about this, before trusting in the law, so to speak, if you're a believer, then you had activity with our Savior. And you had activity in terms of service, and you had activity in terms of fellowship. But once you trust in something like the law or baptism as your justifying means before God, that has the effect of shutting down your relationship with our Savior. You haven't lost your salvation, but you impacted your fellowship with our Savior.

And this shows up in the last part of this verse too. You have fallen from grace. Sounds pretty bad. You have fallen. It's to fall from a state or condition, to lose one's part or interest in something. So, is this positional or conditional? You certainly hope it's conditional, right? And it is. I don't think there's any way, and actually, do I have the tense in here? Thought I had the anyway So and we're to remember so if to answer that question You have fallen from grace.

We need it. We need to step back and look Well, what does God say about the believer in grace in Romans 5 2? He says through whom our Lord Jesus Christ also obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand and And it's the idea that we stand, we're immersed, we're immersed in God's grace, we're permanently in God's grace.

Once we've accepted Him as our Savior, we are permanently, they cannot be changed. So based upon that, we know it can't be positional. It has to be talking about our condition. And so we can't undo what God has done. God operates, it's our faith and His, you know, we put our faith in Him and He does the work.

It's our condition or walk he's talking about here. So Paul says, but conditionally is saying that we are counting upon the law system to be justified. We have fallen from grace conditionally. We have fallen from grace to law. I believe that's what Hal would say many times. We have fallen from grace to law. At least that's my memory. So what does this look like?

We're rendered useless for Christ. We can't be of service, as we showed before. Put in idle, put offline. Christ is no longer the driving force you are because you're saying, I'm going to keep these laws. I'm going to, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. And I'm going to do this, this goes on and on and on rather than saying, no, I'm going to trust Christ. And he's the one that's going to perform through me. In Paul's day, it was circumcision, the mosaic law. Today, baptism can be what you might be counting upon to be justified.

So, you know, I like to use the... I've kind of jokingly said there's a bunch of people that I really like and their first initials are M. We have Malloy, Merriman, McCauley. I have another one of the M group here today. Okay, so the sum up chart, the last few thoughts here. Final thoughts.

It is impossible for a believer to fall out of grace. You're not going to lose your salvation, because who's maintaining your salvation? If you're maintaining it, yes, but God is maintaining it. So not to worry. If we put our faith and trust in Him, and we truly have done that, then we can't lose our salvation.

But it is possible for him to fall away from the grace provision for a successful Christian living. Christ becomes profitless. It's all based on those words, those verbs we looked through. It's all based on those verbs, these statements here. Christ becomes profitless. I'm not sure I can say that too well. We become a debtor to a system that defeats and enslaves. That's the law, right? That totally enslaves a person. Remember the yoke of slavery?

Last week with the yoke, you had the Galatians and the law. The debtor is out of business with Christ. You think about I do business with you know where what firm well you're in a sense in your life You're doing business with our Savior. You're inner you're praying you're interacting. You're you're trusting him. You're resting and you're learning from him Well, that's totally impacted by by taking up a law system He has fallen from grace from the grace way of living and that's from our brother Merriman.

I So let's just pray. We thank you, Father. Thank you so much, Lord, for your marvelous word, Father. Thank you for your care for us, Lord. Thank you that we operate in your marvelous grace, that you ask us simply to put our faith and trust in your Savior, what he did on Calvary. And that's our entrance into your grace, and that you are a loving and heavenly Father, and you keep us securely in you.

We pray that we would not Count upon things that you've told us not to count upon. And you've told us not to count upon the law. The law is ended for the believer. And obviously not in circumcision. And not in water baptism, even though that's a wonderful thing to do. But we're not to count upon that for our justification with you. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.