Becoming an Enemy

We've been working our way down through Galatians 4 from about 12 through 20, and today we're going to talk about 14, 15, 16, and 17. Probably won't get to 18. We'll do that next week. Paul is obviously writing to the Galatians because they have been I want to say subverted by the Judaizers, which were men who probably were believers, but were sent down from Jerusalem to tell them, look, it's one thing to be saved by grace through faith, but you also must be circumcised and keep the law. And so Paul's pushing back against that. And obviously, if you've been following along, he's doing a really effective job.

So verse 15 says, Where then is that sense of blessing you had? For I bear you witness that if possible you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me. In previous verses we've talked about Paul having a problem with a malady of some sort and we never really quite know what it is. There's a reference to eyes here.

At the end of this letter, there's a reference to him writing in big letters because he can't see very well. So lots of people have assumed that, well, what he's talking about is that he had some sort of eye problem, but it was severe enough that it was noticeable to those who went up and were stood in front of him.

And I think you have to understand in that culture back then, both in the Jewish culture Must be time for me to talk. Both the Jewish culture and the Gentile culture had problems when they ran into some human being that had some sort of deformity or an illness that was permanent or they had some disfigurement. The Jews, if you remember the Lord's disciples one day back in John 9, 12 said to him, that a man went blind who had passed by, and so he was a man that was blind from birth. And the disciples said to the Lord Jesus, now listen to what they say, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind? So their viewpoint was that this man was born blind because either he had sinned or his parents sinned. So I think that mentality also played over into the Gentile community so that there was an issue of acceptance within a community if you had an infirmity of some kind.

So Paul has already said, hey, you've accepted me as though I was an angel of the Lord sent to you. And there was a great, there was a really cool experience for him. But now he says in this verse, where is that sense of blessing or that sense of blessedness that you had? For I bear you witness that if possible, back then you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me. This blessedness comes from a Greek word that is a derivative of the word grace, and it really means prosperous, or a person is in the state of prosperity. When I first got there, Paul was saying, this was really a terrific experience for us. And this blessedness, how Malloy defined it this way, it's an inner joy, peace resulting from a revelation of God's grace by the Holy Spirit and walking in God's grace by faith.

That's what Paul was doing and that's what the Galatians were doing when Paul was there. And so the blessedness had its roots in grace and it had its roots in Christ's love and compassion. So he recognized that these Galatians really did accept him, not on the basis of what he looked like, but on the basis of who he was and what he had to say. Compassion and grace ministered to them by the Holy Spirit overflowed to others. It even overflowed to Paul. It's not only enjoyed by Paul himself, but it was shared by everybody.

I'll give you a personal example. About five years ago now, I had this open heart surgery. And when I came back the first Sunday, it was very interesting. This kind of thing was what I was experiencing here, that you were were joyful for me and I was when I was in the hospital and before I went into surgery I was really aware of the fact that you were all praying for me and it was very encouraging even though none of you were there.

With that sense of blessedness was something that I experienced probably for the first time in my life and I think that's what Paul's talking about that he had this this fellowship with this group of believers that he can describe as blessedness. And so he says, what happened to all of that? Where did it go? We had it at one time. We were enjoying it and we were sharing it, but we're not doing it now.

So what motivated, do you think, the Galatians to be like this? I think it couldn't be because they had grief or sorrow about Paul's trouble, or that they were distressed, or that they, because they pitied Paul, that wasn't part of it. I think the answer was out from this blessedness, out from this understanding that the Spirit of God had put them together in terms of, as the word said, a spiritual prosperity between, among the both of them. Their spiritual lives consisted of such a state of self-sacrifice and self-denial that they were willing even to pluck their own eyes out if that's what Paul needed.

So now he says to them, look, where is that prosperous, blessed condition now? It isn't there now. The question of the nature of Paul's illness we've talked about, no one really knows what it is. And you can kind of, I think the answer to that question is you have to decide.

Whatever it was, it was an issue that was talked about. So I think it's like the joy we all experience maybe when in our communities a non-believer or somebody who's young or comes into our environment believes on the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is a joy about that amongst everybody.

I'll tell you where we saw it a couple of weeks ago, when Mike Maloof got baptized. All kinds of people came up to me after that and said, that was so cool. Why? Because we all identified with it. We all understood what was going on there, and there was a joy there. There was a blessedness about that, that every single one of us enjoyed. Why? Because we observe God's grace.

You could see it on display. A man was overjoyed with the fact that he now belonged to Christ and that he was able to be baptized. So the Galatians had observed the true blessedness that was manifested in Paul's life. It was observable. You could see it. And how God's grace was enough for Paul to function joyfully even though he had whatever this physical malady was.

So much so that they originally were willing to do whatever it took to help him. He says, you would have even gouged your eyes out and given them to me. So, in translation, an expanded translation, where is therefore your spiritual prosperous state, your joy? What happened to it? For I bear you witness that if it had been possible, you would have dug out your eyes and you'd given them to me." So, and now he begins to tell us why that joy went away.

He says, so, have I become your enemy by telling you the truth? Therefore, this word therefore or so is a word Paul uses in the sense of It's an imperative. It really isn't asking a question. He's already drawn a conclusion. So he says, so what happened? Because the answer is obvious.

He's asking them, so have I become your enemy by telling you the truth? He wants them to think about what he's saying to them and have they changed their attitude about him because he's told them the truth. So what was this change in attitude and what brought it about?

They were deserting God's grace who had called them into his grace in Christ. Those Galatians were denying the spirit that energized them and their love for the truth and their love and compassion for Paul and his physical infirmity was gone. It was gone. So as soon as they or any of us desert our grace system, what happens? We become an enemy of the one who brought us the grace.

It's a principle. So the becoming here, so have I become, the word become, really is an interesting word. It indicates a whole state and a change in being. It isn't that I just, oh, I used to think this way and I now think this way. It's a totally different Change in being. It's an essence verb that means you used to be this and now you're this. You used to have this joy about me and now I'm your enemy. The word enemy here speaks of an active enemy now. This is not in a passive sense. This is an active sense. Hostile.

They were really hostile towards him. he had become he had become in their mind the enemy of the Galatians in an active not a passive sense and it was from his point of view that they were enemies his reason is that because he had told them the truth told them the truth it was probably on occasion of his second visit which you can look at in Acts 18 that he found the danger of impending legalism and he spoke plainly to him about it. He says, look, I've observed a change in you, in your attitude towards me, one from the blessedness and love and compassion of one who is seeing me as your enemy, hated and rejected. Why? Simple, because he was saying the truth.

Have you all experienced that? Think about it in your life. You run into somebody that at some point was a friend or is a friend, and they want to talk about spiritual things, and you start telling them about the person and work of Christ, and if they're not a believer, you share the gospel with them.

Now, the interesting thing about the gospel is that it doesn't allow you to live very long in the middle, the yellow line. You've got to make a decision. You have to accept it or reject it when you hear it. And when the rejection of gospel comes, it comes with the rejection of the messenger also, a lot of times. And the other thing that you find out about this is that as we at Holly Hills teach growth truths, identification, and position, and grace, and those kinds of things, you begin to find out that, boy, you're very careful about who you're going to talk to that about, because if they are law-bound, And the law has a tendency to do this. What was one time was your friend, they don't want to talk to you anymore. And now you really are an enemy. Because your mindset is different than theirs. One of the things that makes people friends is they agree on a lot of things. The same. But if you're a grace-based person in Christ, and you're trying to explain grace to a non-believer, unless he's got a need, he's not going to listen.

And it isn't going to be passive. It's going to be active. The truth is the sense here is that it's more than just talking the truth. It's walking the truth too. What I say is what I do. These Galatians could observe Paul's behavior and it matched up or lined up with what he had to say. And that was critically important. And I always ask myself that question. Am I walking what I'm teaching?

Or am I just talking, but my walk doesn't line up with what I'm saying? I think it's really important for us as believers to depend on the Spirit of God to manifest the life of Christ through us so that what we are and what we do and how we present to other people, believers or not, matches what we say. the doctrine that we say should match. So, based on the principle that we talk about old man and new man, which man do you think was offended by the teaching of grace. Old man or new man?

Obviously it's the old man. So here these Galatians were, as soon as the law comes in, what happens to them? They begin to function out of the old man and not out of grace, because the law is for the old man. And so they become enemies right away. It's the old man. So if you find yourself, or I find myself, in this predicament, I can be pretty sure that it's my old man that's doing it.

So then, I can ask myself, have I become your enemy because I speak the truth? And then he says, they eagerly seek you And my translation says, not commendably, but they wish to shut you out so that you will seek them. Wei's translation is, these men pay court to you. Pay court is a term that we don't use anymore. Wooing would be a better word that we would use today. But not with honorable motives. They want to exclude you so that you may pay court back to them.

Interesting contrast here, because The frank truthfulness in which Paul risks incurring the displeasure of the Galatians, the Apostle tells them of the Judaizers dishonorable attempt in wooing them or courting them in order that they would win them over to themselves. And they, like Jim said, refers to the Judaizers.

The fact that Paul doesn't mention the Judaizers by name kind of is in keeping with the emotional strain and irritation he was experiencing by them. I found an interesting quote by John Calvin, of all people, in his kind of disassociated English, but you'll get the idea. He said, for those whom it disgusts and offends us to mention, we generally refer to them with a suppression of the name. So those people that discuss us, we might not mention them by name, but we'll talk about them.

This is the first reference to the Judaizers in this book since all the way back in chapter 1 verse 7. First time he's mentioned them since then. Now, a couple of things here. The word eager or eagerly has to do with the word zeal. These people were really zealous about what they were doing. and they seek, they strive after, they earnestly desire what they're going to do. Now I want you to remember what the Judaizers were trying to do. What were they trying to do?

They were soliciting the Galatians. They were teaching another gospel that was a different gospel than Paul was teaching. They troubled the Galatian believers by bewildering and subverting them. They were perverting the gospel of Christ by adding law to grace. But they were zealous about doing it.

We today think that someone is really zealous about his point of view is worth listening to. Not always. We see this today in the soliciting of voters in upcoming elections. Do you ever think about this? We're already seeing the ads. We're already starting to see the discussions about people running for office, and they fawn all over the voters. They seek them with... I have gotten probably 40 pieces of mail in the last month to donate to one candidate or another.

So what are they really trying to do? They're courting me. They are wooing me. Why? Why are they doing that? Because they know if I elect them, then now I have to seek them. It's very subtle how that works. They woo me, they woo you, we vote them in. Now what happens? We have to now woo them.

And that's a big motivation for a lot of people to become a politician. They'll do the campaigning and pay that price, but they know that once they're elected, now they don't have to listen to anybody. You have to solicit them. You have to become one of their disciples if you want a favor. And that's why we see in today's political environment so many candidates that promise everything and once they get elected they don't deliver. Why? Because they want you coming after them. Well Paul is using this exact example for the Galatians.

Their motives, he says, were their motives for the good of the believers? Were they for the good of the believers? Not really. Their motives were not to edify the Galatians at all in the knowledge of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. That isn't what they were doing.

There is a vast difference between proselytizing, if I said that right, and edifying. Proselytizing means that you have a zeal for a belief system. You're really sold in political, you're either really sold on liberalism or conservatism or somewhere in between. But you're sold. And you have a lot of zeal about that. The difference is this. That in edifying, what's the focus? It's not on you. It's not on me getting you to follow me.

It's on pointing you to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Anybody who stands up in front of you or writes anything that has to do with the Lord Jesus Christ, their sole job is to point you to Christ and you don't have to go through them. If they really know what they're doing and have the right heart for it, they're always pointing us to Christ, always to Him. They're edifying believers and non-believers to go to Christ. So Paul adds, but they're not doing this very well. not commendably, it means that they're not honorable in the way that they come after you, in an admirable way they come after you. They're very, very jealous to woo you. They were dishonorable about paying court to the Galatians.

You said they want to exclude you that they might, my translation says affect you. Exclude means to shut you out. Well, it doesn't make logical sense at first. Why would they want to shut them out? Well, they want to capture them first and then they shut them out. Do you understand what they're trying to do? They're trying to get them all in the corral and shut the door, shut the gate, keep them in there.

That form which, that from which the Judaizers wish to shut out the Galatians is stated in so many words the context suggests that the Judaizers were attempting to shut the Galatians out either from the benefits of the gospel of grace or from fellowship with Paul and his companions who maintained that the Gentiles are accepted by God on the basis of faith alone without works or both maybe they're trying to do both In either case, the result would be that the Galatians would turn to the Judaizers for guidance and fellowship and away from Paul. The Judaizers would be in a position where the roles would be reversed now and the Galatians would be paying court to them.

See that? Think about it. Where were these Judaizers from? They were from Jerusalem. What was their message? we came Jesus Christ was a Jew and he died for the sins of the world but he was a Jew and we're from the center of Judaism in Jerusalem and we've come down to give you the whole message and in order for you to to be really solid in what you're doing you must do what we tell you where Paul's message was no You're saved by grace through faith alone.

And you live under grace alone. And you don't need Judaism. You don't need any kind of legalism. However, it would be more natural, I think, if you're going to think about shutting out the Galatians, would be shut out from the benefits of the gospel.

Because that was the message. Shutting them off from the favor of grace. because the verb means to alienate or cause separation from. And it would be more natural if Paul meant that the Judaizers were attempting to separate the Galatians from Paul, from him personally. So the consequence of the idea is that the Judaizers were zealously wooing the Galatians, attempting to shut them out from the benefits of the gospel, in order that the Galatians might have to pay court back to them. since they would have no refuge in their souls any place else. Their affections had been completely alienated.

And this is always the effect from a false teacher and working on your mind, especially from a legal standpoint. Amnesty grows and every circumstance tends to swell it. I'll give you an example. Paul comes into their environment and he teaches them grace. Now grace is one of those interesting things that until you come to Christ we really don't know what grace means. We don't have a clue because everything from the time we are born to the time we come to Christ is always based on some sort of legal principle.

You must obey me in order to get favor. As a child, I must obey my parents. I must obey as I grow the law. If I'm in the military, I have to obey my superior officers. If I work, I must obey my boss. I must obey everywhere I go. And if I do obey, I get a reward for that, but I'm the one that initiates.

So here comes this grace message into our environment, and grace message says you don't have to arrive at anything anymore. God has made it appropriate that if you believe him about his son and what he did, you get from that minute on every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. You get them all right now. And that's what Ephesians teaches us. You get them all and you think that's different. That's really different.

So you exercise your faith and you believe in Christ as your Savior and you begin to grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus. Well somewhere in that path here comes somebody who says yeah that's all well and good but you need to do this too you need to do that also you need to do this I remember I was a Christian about a month and somebody came up and handed me a book and said now that you're saved here's what you do and I read about 25 pages of it and I thought Well, everything he tells me in this book that I must do to get this grace, I already have it. Why do I have to do it? See, the thing about grace is that I respond in kind because of the grace, because I've already been blessed, not in order to get blessing.

And so the poles couldn't be more opposite. And because of that, when someone comes in and begins to teach law, You can't not have an opposition that's very strong there. If you're a grace person, and you're around another believer who's a law person, they may smile and be nice to you for a while, but that's not going to last forever. Pretty soon, either they're not going to understand, or they're going to really be aggressive towards you.

And that's what's happened to Paul. He says, look, it's really good, in verse 18, it's really good to be zealous. Zealously affected always in good things, and not only when I'm present with you. It's good always to be eager, eagerly be sought after in the right way, in a commendable manner. but not only when I'm present with you." And I got to thinking, well, what does he mean that not only when I'm present with you?

It's okay for you to be solicited. It's okay for you to do soliciting. Paul refers probably to the fact that he persistently wooed and pursued the Galatians. He did it, but he did it with the right motive. The fact that someone else woos them and that they court the favor of others is not a wrong thing in itself. It's okay that that happens. The point is that he says that he himself is not insensitive to such attachments.

He remembers how warm the feelings were for the Galatians towards him, and he yearns for their continued affections. So zeal is a good thing. The problem is that Paul courted the Galatians to be attached to, well maybe Paul courted the Galatians not to be attached to himself, but that he might join them to the Lord Jesus. That's the difference. He was glad that they should be courted at all times, even by others, in his absence.

If it is not done in the right spirit and in connection with the zeal of the gospel. Zeal is a good thing if it has the right object in what is being portrayed. The wrong object in this case is self. I'm doing it for me. Which any law system would by default cause you to do that. The right object, obviously, is the person of the Lord Jesus.

Now, seeking to set saints against Paul in order to exalt themselves. Do you think these guys, these Judaizers, were that crass? Yeah, they were. Yes, they were. That's the way it is. The zeal was not for the truth. They were not seeking the truth. And they were not trying to edify the saints, but they were trying to do it for themselves. So that they could go back to Jerusalem and they could say to those back there, look how many followers I got. Look how many I got.

It's all about me. And why would I make that accusation towards them? Because that's how the flesh works. That's exactly how it works. Under the covering of zeal for the Lord's people, we can but for the grace of God belittle others and exalt ourselves. It's real easy to do. If the zeal that they had shown to the Apostle when present with them was right, it would have surely been maintained when he wasn't there.

Have we ever seen this before? We see it in Philippians. It's interesting that Paul's experience with the Philippians is exactly opposite of what he's experiencing with the Galatians. In Philippians 2, Paul even says to the Philippians, look, you obeyed or you listened under me, not as in the presence only, but much more in the absence when I wasn't there. So I asked myself, why would the Galatians not be responsive when Paul's not there, and they were responsive in Philippi. And I can't say, well, it's because the Judaizers didn't go to Philippi. Yeah, they did. They were there.

They were remarkable for their compliant spirit when he was present, and when absent, he also the spirit of grace which produces this. The law bringing in always produces fear and flattery. So what was the deal with the joyfulness of God's presence? They were united to one common object, and that was Christ himself. And so whether he's there or not, it doesn't matter. The motive that governs every affection and every action and every joyfulness and every peace and every compliance are the proper and natural use of grace, working among the children of God in their hearts. In Philippi, they had always been like-minded with Paul, whether he was there or not.

They were, you remember the verse that says, they were working out their own salvation with fear and trembling. They were conscious of the mighty conflict in which they were engaged. And all believers like us, we are engaged in a conflict. But they didn't allow foolish dreams because they were believers. The foolish dream that, well, now that I'm a believer, all the difficulties were over. I'm not going to have any pushback now.

On the contrary, Having been brought to Christ, they found themselves in the presence of a really powerful enemy. Guess what it was? Start with the sin nature, start with legalism, start with the world that they lived in. And it was very powerful. And with Paul not being there, what are they going to do about it?

They did the right thing. They threw themselves upon the Lord. they became dependent. He'd left, but instead of being cast down by his leaving, it made them look to the Lord more and more as the pressure got higher. Not in any prideful manner, but in a felt need of dependence on Him.

That's the difference between the Philippians and the Galatians. So that same feeling of having the Lord would have made them use and value the Apostle when he was there and when he was not there. it threw them directly on the Lord. And that's what the Galatians were not doing. They were, instead of throwing themselves on the Lord regarding the Judaizers, they were beginning to buy into what was being sold by the Judaizers.

So, when somebody like the Judaizers or someone like the Galatians this pride of heart comes into their life, what happens? It exposes you to self-aggrandizement, referred to probably as idolatry. And that means you're subjected to flattery of self. If I can flatter you, then I own you.

And that's a trick that Satan uses all the time. I mean, if you, on Wednesday night we're studying Genesis. It's interesting, Satan's game plan never changes. You know why? Because he knows that the object of his game plan is susceptible to the same stuff every time.

Flattery. Flattery. So, the point was, now, between the Galatians and the Philippians was, the Galatians were not taking advantage of the apostles' absence. They had soon fallen into fleshly use of the law. And with teachers who accommodated it, they were buying into it. They were fast losing all the real affection for Paul, losing it. and the blessedness that they had once enjoyed with him.

Although it would have been better that they should have looked to the Lord, because we see in Philippians that's what they did, and found strength to stand against legalism when they were left alone, yet considering the state in which they were, he could have wished he would have been with them, and he'll say that in upcoming verses. He's going to talk about, and Roger last week said that I've got this really good verse that I get to teach on, which is what we're going to talk about next week, verse 19. The point is, the reason I spent so much time on this is that I think we live in an age, we live in an era when legalism is so prevalent in our Christian society, and we are so prone to someone coming to us and saying, If you do this, you will get this. And we say, okay, I'll do this, and I can be prideful about this, and I get into that, I'm doing this so I can get this, I'm doing this so I can get this, where grace comes to us and says, look, you don't have to strive to get anything.

You already have it. God has made every provision for you to be totally acceptable to Him, to be in His presence, and you're going to be that way for all eternity. And your whole job, you only have one job, and that's to believe Him. From that, everything that God would have us do gets done, because it's going to be done by Him through us. We will never have this attitude that I've got to do this so that God will look more favorably on me tomorrow.

Especially when we have troubles in our life. We think, oh boy, if I could just figure out Why God is punishing me this way or why I'm in this circumstance or in this mess, I could fix it and then he would be happy with me again. No, Paul is very careful in talking about trials and tribulations that they are ordained of God for our own approval.

So as we go on now, Paul's going to say, I'll just give you a read the verse so we know, he's going to say next week, My children, my little children, with whom I again are in labor until Christ is formed in you." That's an amazing statement. I, Paul, who are your father, I'm the one that led you to Christ, I'm going to again travail in labor pains to have Christ formed in you. That is such a different view than anything you will hear about Somebody pointing a finger or giving you a set of rules. He is travailing in birth again. So let's close.

Our dear Father, how we thank you for the grace that we live under. We understand that you have pursued us. You have saved us. You have placed us in your Son where all blessings are. And we're so thankful for that. We thank you for every single blessing you've already given us. And we ask only one thing, that we would continue to grow in the knowledge and grace of your dear son, the Lord Jesus. And we pray in his name, Amen.