1 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. 2 Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. 3 I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. 4 You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. (Galatians 5:1–6, ESV)
Remain in Grace (2-4)
Last week, we saw how Paul urged the Galatians (and us) to protect the incredible freedom produced in us by the gospel by standing on Christ. Paul continues to encourage us to enjoy our freedom in Christ by urging us to remain in grace. To exhort us in this way, Paul pointed out the high cost of returning to works to get God’s favor. He warned us when he wrote, “Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace” (2-4). Perhaps you’re wondering why Paul is writing about something so private and awkward as circumcision. Why does Paul move into this delicate and personal subject matter? The problem was that the false teachers in Galatia told the men in the church that they needed to be circumcised to gain God’s acceptance. Their teaching is summed up in Acts: “Unless you are circumcised and keep the law, you cannot be saved” (see Acts 15:1, 5). Circumcision was the big act they used to communicate that faith in Christ was insufficient for salvation. You must do something, they said, and for them, that action was circumcision. But circumcision could be a stand-in for any practice or viewpoint someone says you must do or have to be accepted by God. But Paul warned that taking up a practice like this has terrible consequences. Christ is of no advantage when you add to the gospel. You are severed from Christ. And you become obligated to keep the whole law—something the legalists might not have told the Galatians (3). And perhaps worst of all, adding works to the gospel as a way to be approved before God means that someone has fallen away from grace (4). In context, Paul does not mean a loss of salvation. He has steadily written about the danger of adding law-keeping to the gospel. When you move towards a works-based relationship with God, you depart from a grace-oriented way of relating to God. You leave the sphere of grace. And to leave the sphere of grace might be a strong indication that you never knew true grace in the first place but merely claimed with your lips that you knew Christ. So this warning is a strong one. The word Paul used for “fall away” is also used to describe being shipwrecked or blown entirely off course. This happens today; for example, when a believer leaves a church that emphasizes salvation by grace through faith to join one that says salvation depends on the quality of your repentance, a specific confession, baptism, or church membership, they have fallen from grace! Let us remain in the sphere of grace. Let’s allow God’s grace and love to make us confident and free before him. Let’s allow his grace to melt away the ice of fear and insecurity before him.
Wait for Righteousness (5)
Paul went on to tell us that to enjoy our freedom in Christ, we should also wait for righteousness. He said, “For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness” (Gal. 5:5). Paul means that gospel-believing people, all those who have trusted in Christ’s work to make them right in God’s sight, will look forward in great anticipation to Christ’s return, for a very specific reason: because it is then that we will experience the righteousness God granted to us when we believed in his Son. This is what someone who is drawn to the gospel wants more than anything. The gospel message declares that God can fix the problem of sin within. But even after we trust Christ, we still have an ongoing battle with sin. Later in Galatians, Paul refers to a war between our flesh and the Spirit of God within us. The flesh is this body of sin we all inhabit. Conscious and experienced in the ways of sin, the flesh struggles against the newness we have in Christ. But when the new creation arrives with Jesus, so will our appearance with him as totally new creatures. As John said,
“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2, ESV) Think of it! When Jesus returns for his bride, believers will be changed into total Christlikeness—not in divinity, but in character, sinlessness, and purity. All things are new right now for the Christian, but on that day, perpetual newness will be our lived reality. Sin will never decay us ever again. We will be conformed in every facet of our character to God’s will. There will be no blind spots, no secret corners in the recesses of our hearts, and no failure of any kind. It reminds me of a phrase about music from back in the day. Before the internet gave us amazing services that provided on-demand music, we got music either on the radio or by purchasing a CD, a tape, an album, or an 8-track. Music labels often released a total jam to the radio stations, making you want to buy the whole record. But we were often disappointed to discover that the rest of the tracks weren’t nearly as good as the hit. Some bands were the exception, and when you got your hands on their albums, so many of the songs were great. And the phrase we had for CDs like that was “all killer, no filler.” The day we enter into glory with Christ, it will be all killer, no filler. There will be no gaps in our character. There will be no secret sin. Even temptation itself will be a distant memory. All hits, all day.
A Beautiful Life Is Produced
And this hope Paul mentions is a beautiful one. Please don’t misunderstand what he meant by hope—in the Bible, hope is a confident expectation and anticipation of something God has already promised (Heb. 11:1). This confident expectation that we will one day be glorified into the image of Christ is a great protection for our freedom in Christ. On the one hand, it protects us from legalism. People looking forward to becoming fully like Jesus when he returns know how silly it is to try to become perfected by legalism. Little rules cannot bring us to our final destination. On the other hand, it protects us from license. Since Jesus-like righteousness is our hope and expectation, the very thing we are on the edge of our seats to receive, continuing in sin makes absolutely no sense to us today. Why would I want to engage in that which is so unrighteous, so unlike my Lord, when the thing I am longing for more than anything is to become righteous? Paul said we, by faith, eagerly wait for this moment to come (5). I recently saw a video that depicts eager anticipation. In a parking lot, someone filmed a dog in a neighboring car. Its owner had just parked in front of a bank, gotten out, and gone inside. The dog never lost sight of that bank entrance. Sitting in the driver’s seat, it placed its paws on the car’s horn and began barking and honking for its owner to return. Eager! With an eager spirit like that within us, one that is looking forward to our final transformation, we are bound to stay free from slavery to sin and the law. Next week, we’ll look at one final way Paul encourages us to protect and enjoy gospel freedom: by responding through love.
