Free for download, using a program which is called e-sword, along with many other freebies, and premiums if one desired to get a certain brand of product concerning your perference.
David Guzik - Galatians 5
Galatians 5:1-26
Galatians 5 - Standing Fast In the Liberty of Jesus
A. A final appeal to walk in the liberty of Jesus.
(1) A summary statement: in light of all that Paul has previously said, he now challenges the Galatians to walk in the truth he has presented.
Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.
a. Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free: The fact is that Jesus has made us free. If we live in bondage to a legal relationship with God, it isn’t because God wills it. God pleads with us to take His strength and walk in that freedom, and to not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.
a. If you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing: When we embrace the law as our rule of walking with God, we must let go of Jesus. He is no longer our righteousness; we attempt to earn it ourselves. For the Galatians in this context, to receive circumcision – the ritual that testified that a Gentile was coming under the law – meant that he no longer trusted in Jesus as His righteousness, but trusted in himself instead. So Paul could say “Christ will profit you nothing.”
David Guzik - Galatians 5
Galatians 5:1-26
Galatians 5 - Standing Fast In the Liberty of Jesus
A. A final appeal to walk in the liberty of Jesus.
(1) A summary statement: in light of all that Paul has previously said, he now challenges the Galatians to walk in the truth he has presented.
Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.
a. Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free: The fact is that Jesus has made us free. If we live in bondage to a legal relationship with God, it isn’t because God wills it. God pleads with us to take His strength and walk in that freedom, and to not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.
- i. Significantly, it is Christ who has made us free. We don’t make ourselves free. Freedom is a gift of Jesus, given to us and received by faith. When we struggle to free ourselves, we just become more entangled again with a yoke of bondange.
- ii. Paul also made it emphatic: the liberty. Today, people live in the headlong pursuit of “freedom,” which they think of as doing whatever they want to do, and never denying any desire. This is a kind of liberty, a false liberty; but it is not the liberty. The liberty is our freedom from the tyranny of having to earn our own way to God, the freedom from sin and guilt and condemnation, freedom from the penalty and the power and eventually freedom from the presence of sin.
- i. The great evangelist D. L. Moody illustrated this point by quoting an old former slave woman in the South following the Civil War. Being a former slave, she was confused about her status and asked: Now is I free, or been I not? When I go to my old master he says I ain’t free, and when I go to my own people they say I is, and I don’t know whether I’m free or not. Some people told me that Abraham Lincoln signed a proclamation, but master says he didn’t; he didn’t have any right to. Many Christians are confused on the same point. Jesus Christ has given them an “Emancipation Proclamation,” but their “old master” tells them they are still slaves to a legal relationship with God. They live in bondage because their “old master” has deceived them.
- i. Certain Jewish teachers of that day spoke of the Law of Moses as a yoke, but they used the term in a favorable light. Paul saw a legal relationship as a yoke, but as a yoke of bondage. It is related to slavery, not liberty. This yoke of bondage does nothing but entangle us. We try hard to pull God’s plow, but the yoke of bondage leaves us tangled, restricted, and frustrated.
- ii. It certainly was bondage. Jewish teachers counted up 613 commandments to keep in the Law of Moses. “Even to remember them all was a burden, and to keep them bordered on the impossible. Small wonder that Paul referred to subjecting oneself to them all as entering into slavery.” (Morris)
- 2. (2-4) The danger of embracing the law as a way to walk with God.
a. If you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing: When we embrace the law as our rule of walking with God, we must let go of Jesus. He is no longer our righteousness; we attempt to earn it ourselves. For the Galatians in this context, to receive circumcision – the ritual that testified that a Gentile was coming under the law – meant that he no longer trusted in Jesus as His righteousness, but trusted in himself instead. So Paul could say “Christ will profit you nothing.”
- i. The legalists among the Galatians wanted them to think that they could have both Jesus and a law-relationship with God. Paul tells them that this is not an option open to them - the system of grace and the system of law are incompatible. “Whoever wants to have a half-Christ loses the whole.” (Calvin)
- ii. “Circumcision is the seal of the law. He who willingly and deliberately undergoes circumcision, enters upon a compact to fulfill the law. To fulfill it therefore he is bound, and he cannot plead the grace of Christ; for he has entered on another mode of justification.” (Lightfoot)
- iii. How tragic! Jesus, dying on the cross, pouring out His blood, His life, His soul, His agony, His love for us – and it will profit you nothing! Two men died with Jesus; for the one who put his trust in Jesus, it was eternal life. For the one who trusted in himself, it profited him nothing.
- iv. This point was so important to Paul that he mustered all the strength he could in a personal appeal: he began with Indeed I, Paul. When he continues on and wrote I testify, Paul remembered his former training as a lawyer - and was deadly serious. “Tongue cannot express, nor heart conceive what a terrible thing it is to make Christ worthless.” (Luther)
- i. Again, the legalists among the Galatians wanted them to think they could observe some aspects of the law without coming under the entire law. But when we choose to walk by law, we must walk by the whole law.
- ii. If we come to God on the basis of our own law keeping we must keep the whole law and our law-keeping must be perfect. No amount of obedience makes up for one act of disobedience; if you are pulled over for speeding, it will do no good to protest that you are a faithful husband, a good taxpayer, and have obeyed the speed limit many times. All of that is irrelevant. You have still broken the speeding law and are guilty under it.
- iii. This does not mean that the mere act of being circumcised means that someone is under a legal relationship with God, and must keep the whole law for salvation. Paul spoke to the Gentile Christians among the Galatians, who were being drawn to circumcision as adults, as evidence that they had come under the Law of Moses as the “first step” to salvation. We will later see that Paul didn’t care one way or another about circumcision (Gal_5:6). What he detested was the theology of circumcision as presented by the legalists.
- i. The danger of falling from grace is real, but it is often misunderstood. Most people think of “falling away” in terms of immoral conduct, but we are not saved by our conduct. However, we are saved by our continuing reliance by faith on the grace of God. Someone may fall from grace and be damned without ever falling into grossly immoral conduct.
- ii. Boice on you have fallen from grace: “The phrase does not mean that if a Christian sins, he falls from grace and thereby loses his salvation. There is a sense in which to sin is to fall into grace, if one is repentant. But to fall from grace, as seen by this context, is to fall into legalism... Or to put it another way, to choose legalism is to relinquish grace as the principle by which one desires to be related to God.”
- iii. Literally, Paul wrote, “you have fallen out of grace,” which is not the same as the colloquial English phrase “you have fallen from grace.”
Last edited: