I want to begin with a word of prayer. Lord, we sang and rejoiced this morning in the reality of Christ as our solid rock. And Lord, we also recognize that you have given us a perfect testimony to the solid rock in your word. And so would you enlighten our hearts this morning with that perfect testimony, that we would leave here with a rock-solid assurance of who Jesus Christ is and his provision for his people. Lord God, we want to know that, and we want to treasure it and cherish it, and we want to be changed by it. And so God, would you help us to see clearly and perfectly through the power of your Spirit in the preaching of your word. Jesus and the gospel in all its magnificence and the implications the gospel has for how we seek to grow into Christ-likeness. That's our hope. That's our strong desire because of the Spirit that you've implanted in our souls. That in our union with Jesus, we yearn to be made totally like him. So would you help us with that now? Empower the preaching of Your Word. In Your name, Jesus, Amen.
Well, if you recall, a few weeks ago, we began chapter 5 and we looked at verses 1-12. And it was a chapter on the freedom of faith. The message looked in those first 12 verses at the nature of freedom that faith affords us. And we specifically looked at the dangers of legalism— remember, legalism severs us from the Gospel and legalism spreads. We talked about that. And then we turned our attention to the freedom we know in faith, specifically that faith waits. Remember that faith is forward-looking. It's anticipating the return of Christ when all of our faith will become sight. But also then we concluded with this statement that faith also works. Now that's sort of a strange thing to say. It seems almost contradictory to what we've already said in Galatians, and yet it's true. And Paul points us specifically in that direction here in this passage. And I said, remember, faith working was a preview for this message. And so we're going to begin to unpack significantly in verses 13 to 15 the way in which faith works.
So if you would turn with me there right now to verses 13 and 15 of Galatians 5. We'll read together. For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed. By one another.
Well, I want us to consider 4 things this morning as we walk through this passage. And the first point is simply this: freedom shouldn't feed the flesh. Freedom shouldn't feed the flesh. And we see that in verse 13. Some of you have wondered, and some even mentioned, and I think it's been helpful, it's a helpful caution on your parts as we've been going through this series on Galatians in highlighting the gospel and highlighting grace, there's been this question. In our labor to establish those things and to establish the truth of the gospel and faith as opposed to the law and keeping of the law and works, have we diminished the call to holiness? That question's been present for some of you. Some of you have even graciously said, "You know, I just want to make sure as we emphasize the gospel, we don't lose sight of holiness." Well, if those questions are floating around, I think it's a really good thing. In part, in one sense, because if we weren't asking them, then I think it would probably mean we had undersold grace. And I say that for this reason: in Galatians and in Romans, when Paul gets done talking about the nature of grace and the nature of faith in terms of our justification, He has to clarify. And in Romans, he actually has to defend himself because the nature of his gospel leaves people saying, "So what? It's all grace and we can just go and sin and do whatever we want?" So if we're having those questions about holiness, I think it's a good thing. I think it means that we've appropriately, in a Pauline fashion, drawn out from the text just how radical, just how extravagant the grace of the Gospel is. However, Paul does then go on to clarify, and that's what we're going to do this morning. He does this because people are accusing him of promoting a religion of license. So a religion where basically everything goes. It's all grace, and so you can do whatever you want. He knows that some are mistakenly assuming that because he promotes grace, he doesn't support the pursuit of holiness. In Galatians 5:13, he tells us, "For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh." Without backing away from the liberating effects of the gospel, Paul cautions us. Our freedom in the gospel shouldn't feed the flesh. I love how Philip Graham Ryken describes this balance in a sermon he preached: Whereas legalism demands responsibility without freedom, license grants freedom without responsibility. Both are wrong. Both are falling into error on opposite sides. The reality of biblical faith is that it is always accompanied by repentance. Biblically, that's the nature of conversion. It's faith and repentance. That idea of repentance is wrapped up in the biblical concept of faith that Paul promotes in this book. So faith, that means, doesn't just love God. Faith doesn't just trust God. Faith also hates sin. Faith also flees from sin. So this concept of cheap grace is totally foreign to Paul, and it's totally foreign to true Christianity, although it is alive and well in some corners of American Christianity. Freedom in Christ should never be twisted into a theology that lowers the call and pursuit of holiness. Our freedom should snuff out the flesh. Not strengthen the flesh's sway over us. Does that make sense? That's Paul's caution here. Your freedom shouldn't be promoting the flesh. Your freedom shouldn't become a ground where the flesh feeds and finds vitality. Your freedom should be helping you to kill the flesh.
Now, what does that word mean, flesh? Well, when Paul refers to the flesh, he's acknowledging who we were in Adam. So Paul's acknowledging in the flesh our sinful nature, who we were before Christ came and redeemed. He's not talking primarily about indulging our bodies. It kind of sounds like that. You think flesh, I think skin, body, physicalness. That's not what Paul's intention is here. He's thinking in spiritual terms of the flesh, and he's talking about indulging the part of each of us that opposes God. That's what the flesh is. The flesh is the part of us that still resists, that still rebels. It's the place where the disease of sin and depravity still maintains a stronghold. That's what the flesh is biblically. It's that unspiritual part of us that's inclined towards sin and away from God. So while we are no longer in Adam, we're in Christ because of the gospel, because of faith. While sin no longer has dominion over us, we're no longer enslaved to sin like we once were because of conversion, because of the grace of God. Sin hasn't yet been completely eradicated from us. It still lurks, still exists in the shadows. So as Christians, Paul says, there's still the possibility that we can give opportunity to the flesh.
Now, what does that phrase mean, give opportunity to the flesh? There's this already-not-yet tension that's there in the New Testament. So you've been united with Christ, you have tasted grace, you have the promise of redemption, and yet you can still be tempted by this part of you that awaits the final transformation of your soul. We're of the Spirit, yet the flesh seeks to pull us back. If you've picked up on it, there's a sense here where Paul has sort of a military war mentality. There's a militaristic vocabulary he's using here. And actually, the word that gets translated "opportunity"— "so that the flesh doesn't take opportunity of your freedom"— it's used broadly in Greek literature usually to refer to a base of operations. So it talks about the way a military seeks to set up a base of operations. So this military image is actually really helpful. It helps us to get a sense of what Paul's saying here. Because if you're going to conquer a city, if you're going to go and conquer a nation, you've got to set up a base of operations. You have to have a place that you're going to operate from. You're going to send your troops out from. You have to have the beachhead. You have to have that toehold. From which you'll advance your forces.
6 · Extended historical illustration from WWII showing Britain's defensive strategy against German invasion and D-Day's Allied beachhead, mapping the military metaphor onto spiritual warfare against the flesh
It's appropriate Memorial Day weekend to consider World War II, right? It's incredible if you look and do research into the effort that was given on the part of Britain to prevent the German invasion. Now, they had the benefit of the English Channel separating continental Europe from Britain, and that was their first buffer of defense. But they knew if Hitler was to have his way, he wanted all of Europe, and he wanted Britain as well. And so to do that, he would have to cross the Channel, and he would have to establish a beachhead. He had to establish a base of operations so that he could conquer the British Isles. And so because of this, they built these emergency coastal batteries all over the southern coast of Britain, any place they thought it was likely for the German troops to land. And so they took guns off old World War I naval vessels, everything from guns with barrels that were like 4 inches in diameter all the way up to 14 inches in diameter. And they loaded these guns into these strategic emergency coastal batteries. They even built torpedo launchers into the beach. There were these barbed wire entanglements that they would set just off the shoreline. So that if the troops were trying to come and establish that sort of base of operations, they'd get entangled. And they had those pillboxes. You know what a pillbox is? It's that massive concrete box that would sit on a point with a good visual layout of land, and they would load machine guns inside of it, and they'd set these pillboxes at angles to create these deadly zones of crossfire. And the whole purpose behind all of what they were doing was they understood strategically, if we can prevent Germany from even setting foot on the soil, there's no way they can conquer. Keep them from getting a toehold. Keep them from establishing that base of operations. Now, obviously, on the flip side, we see why the Allies were so willing to endure the horrors of D-Day. The blood spilled at Utah and Omaha Beach established exactly that sort of foothold on continental Europe that allowed the war to be won. That's the sort of thing Paul's warning us against here. You don't abuse your freedom. You don't take the freedom of the gospel and then just get all willy-nilly with the way you live your life, because if you do, you're being duped into making a foothold for the flesh. You need to be like Britain. You need to be on guard. You need to be setting up these strategic defenses to make sure that there is no base of operations established in your life where the flesh can thrive. You can't be deeked like Nazi Germany was, fooled into thinking the Allies were going somewhere else when really the beaches of Normandy was their target. The flesh wants to conquer you. It refuses to admit that in Christ its dominion is gone. And the danger is that can lull us to sleep.
7 · Applies the military metaphor to show that abusing grace paradoxically results in renewed enslavement to sin rather than freedom
I love how the NIV puts this: "Do not use your freedom," in verse 13, "to indulge the sinful nature." When people interpret God's free grace as an excuse to sin as much as they please, "I can do whatever I want because there's grace," they fail to realize they're actually enslaving themselves. They're using freedom and indulging the flesh, and in so doing, entering back into slavery.
8 · Grounds the claim about re-enslavement in Jesus's teaching from John 8, establishing that practicing sin equals slavery regardless of one's professed freedom
That's what Jesus says in John 8:34. Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. If you want to live in sin and abuse grace, you enter back into slavery. So true Christian freedom doesn't feed the flesh. The gospel doesn't lead us from legalism into license.
9 · Pivots from the negative warning about license to the positive framework of love as the proper expression of gospel freedom
That makes sense. The gospel leads us from legalism into love. That's our next point. Love fulfills the law. Love fulfills the law.
10 · Exposits Galatians 5:13-14 to show that love for neighbor fulfills the law, connecting this to the earlier teaching on faith working through love and establishing that justifying faith actively expresses itself
Galatians 5:13, he goes on to say, "Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word." And then he goes on to say a bunch of words. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole idea is that those bunch of words all fall under the heading of love. Love fulfills the law. And remember, we talked a few weeks ago about the fact that faith works. In verse 6, "For Christ Jesus— in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith works." working through love. A serious godly pursuit of holiness is not legalism. When we are grounded in the indicative truths of the gospel, when we're grounded in all the things that God has done for us, we pursue the imperatives of Scripture, those commands of Scripture, those calls to holiness from a right heart. Grounded in the gospel and all that God has done for us in Jesus Christ, we pursue holiness from the heart of faith. So that while we're justified by faith alone, justifying faith is never alone. Our justification is through nothing but faith, but faith's authentic expression is always love. That's Paul's point here. Real faith is very much at work through the ministry of love. This is the very nature of Christianity. This is Christianity 101. Where a believer is, there should be evidence of love. Faith working through love. Paul's assault on works of the law should never leave us with the impression that faith is passive. Quite the opposite. Faith makes genuine work grounded in love for God and others possible. Faith makes the work of love possible.
11 · Addresses the apparent discrepancy between Jesus's two-commandment formulation and Paul's singular focus on neighbor-love, resolving it by showing that genuine faith in God inherently includes love for God, making love of neighbor the necessary outward expression
Now, does it seem seem a little weird that Paul says the whole commandment is fulfilled in loving your neighbor? It should be a little strange for two reasons. First of all, didn't Jesus answer that question and say there was two? Right? He starts with the previous commandment. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, right? And love your neighbor as yourself. What's Paul doing here? Did he have his Bible wrong? Well, I think it makes sense if we keep in mind here the context of faith. He's saying that real faith fulfills the law in love of neighbor, which makes sense if we remember that faith is certainly nothing less than loving God. You see that? Faith, if it's genuine, already expresses love for God. That's what faith is. That's what faith does. Faith is inherently the gift of God through the Spirit of having affection and renewed treasure in God. That's what faith does. It's a gift that stimulates our affections and our heart to love God. So in a way, the first commandment is already here because by its very definition, faith involves the most radical type of love for God. Total abandon, total trust in all that he has and all that he has done for us in Jesus. It's the nature of biblical faith. And if faith is real, in other words, if it's really loving God, which is what faith should do, then he says faith will also love God's image bearers. Faith will love those around it.
12 · Identifies a second theological tension — how Paul can speak of fulfilling the law after arguing believers are freed from it — and resolves it by distinguishing 'doing the law' (for justification) from 'fulfilling the law' (as a consequence of justification)
That's not the only reason it should be a little bit startling that Paul talks in this way though. It's also a bit shocking that Paul would even speak of fulfilling the Law, isn't it? We've spent months now looking and tracing Paul's arguments and seeing the lengths he's gone to to explain that believers are no longer under the Law, right? That's the nature of the Gospel. You're not justified by works of the Law. You're freed from the law's tyranny. The law shows you what sin is, leaves you unable to complete it, and then convicts you of the sin and points out you've failed. And Paul says you're not under that in terms of justification any longer. So why is he now talking about fulfilling the law? Is he contradicting himself? Well, if that's our conclusion, we need to go back and read the text again, right? He's obviously not contradicting himself. In fact, in 5:3, Paul says, He speaks to doing the law. Now he speaks of fulfilling it. I don't think that's splitting hairs. I think there's a distinction there. Doing describes an attempt at justification, while fulfilling is the consequence of justification and the Spirit's work.
13 · Introduces the hermeneutical question of which parts of the Mosaic law Christians are to fulfill, surveying the Reformers' moral/ceremonial/civil distinction as a partial answer
The question then becomes, what parts of the law does justification seek to fulfill? Does that make sense? If doing the law is saying, "I want to get right with God by the stuff that I do," Paul's wiped that off the table. But now he's saying, "Being justified by faith, if your faith is real, it will seek to fulfill the law." That's what justifying faith does. It now seeks to pursue holiness. It now seeks to put on love. So now the question becomes, "Okay, if we're supposed to fill the law, how do I know what portions of the law I'm supposed to fulfill? Obviously not circumcision. Paul's been pretty clear about that so far, right? You cut yourself and you're cut off. It's obviously not kosher food laws. Galatians dealt with both of those. They no longer apply. Well, the Reformers championed a tradition that stretched all the way back to Tertullian, one of the church fathers, that saw that the law contained moral and ceremonial and civil elements. So think moral, these are sort of eternal truths of right and wrong. Civil, these are the ways that Israel was to order their society as a theocracy ruled by God. And ceremonial, things that they were supposed to do in the rituals of being God's people and worshiping God. So 3 categories that theologians have pulled out of the law. So that helps us to understand how we know which parts to do. The ceremonial and the civil elements, those are specific to Israel. They don't apply to us anymore. However, the moral, we're still called to fulfill. Does that sound familiar to some folks this morning? Some of you, it's probably like, "Huh, never heard that before." Well, I think it's helpful, but only to an extent.
14 · Proposes a more precise biblical category for what believers fulfill: not the moral law per se, but the law of Christ — a New Covenant framework for obedience
I think we can speak more biblically to say believers So those justified by faith and not justified by law keeping will express their justification through the Spirit's power by fulfilling not the moral law, but the law of Christ.
15 · Signals structural shift to the exposition of the law of Christ concept
That's our next point, the law of Christ.
16 · Examines Paul's first use of 'law of Christ' in 1 Corinthians 9 to show how Paul understood himself as no longer under Mosaic requirements but under a new covenantal framework
Paul uses that phrase, "the law of Christ," only twice in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 9, he's describing his flexibility in keeping the law. To those outside the law, so to Gentiles, I became as one outside the law, not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ. So in other words, I didn't do the circumcision thing. I didn't keep the ceremonial things and the civil things. I ate pork. I did all those things that parts of the Mosaic law said I shouldn't do. And the reason I was able to do those is because I viewed myself as under God and under the law of Christ, not the law of Moses.
17 · Examines Paul's second use of 'law of Christ' in Galatians 6:2, showing that bearing burdens is a concrete expression of neighbor-love and thus fulfills the law of Christ
And then in Galatians 6:2, so right in our context here, Paul says, "Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ." Bear one another's burdens and fulfill the law of Christ. The connection between bearing one another's burdens and loving your neighbor should be pretty obvious. The former, bearing someone's burdens, is just a specific expression of the latter. Loving your neighbor. Loving your neighbor is a broad call. Love your neighbor. Here's a specific application. Bear burdens with them. Help them during difficulties. And Paul says that's an expression of the law of Christ. So to fulfill the law through love, it can be said, means to fulfill the law of Christ.
18 · Explains how Old Testament moral commands continue in force under the law of Christ because they reflect transcendent norms inherent to God's character, distinguishing these from ceremonial commands that were culturally specific to Israel
We're under the New Covenant. So the breadth of all the Mosaic Covenant, all those commands aren't necessarily relevant. Figure out and understand which ones of those comport to the law of Christ. So you have things that would get labeled the moral law. Don't murder. Don't steal. Don't lie. Don't commit adultery. Those are taken up and subsumed by the law of Christ. And here's why. Because all of those commands are really just different expressions of the command Love your neighbor. Don't murder your neighbor. That's not a loving thing to do. But don't steal from your neighbor. That's not loving either. Don't lie to your neighbor. Don't commit adultery. It's not loving to the one you're committing adultery with, and it's not loving to your spouse. They're all expressions of those moral aspects. This is where Luther is helpful. Why are some of these commandments still in effect? Not because they're part of the Mosaic covenant. Remember, Paul has clearly said we're not under that anymore. We're not under Sinai. They're still in effect because they're part of transcendent moral norms. That's just a way of saying they're part of broad truths about what is moral and godly behavior and what is immoral and ungodly. In other words, these transcendent moral norms are the aspects of God's law that are inherent to God's character, to who He is. Pork wasn't evil to eat, but God used pork and said, "Don't eat it," so that He could differentiate His people as different from all the peoples of the earth, right? There wasn't anything inherently in a pig or in a pork chop or in a sausage that was against the character of God. And that's why we can now eat pork. However, a concept like honoring father and mother continues. We see exhortations in the New Testament to do those things because they stress the values of God-given authority, of submission, and of the ordering of the family that are inherent to God's character. Authority and submission, order, those are things that are subsumed in who God is. So we must remember that all of these are kept through love.
19 · Uses a cultural reference to the Beatles to illustrate the relationship between love as the broad command and moral norms as the specific expressions of love
Think of the Beatles song, "All We Need Is Love." They weren't totally wrong. That's part of what Paul is saying here. That's right. What you need is love, but you also need commandments. Moral norms to give a sense to love. Does that make sense? Paul's not talking out of both sides of his mouth. He's saying Christians are not under Torah. He's arguing that Torah has been abolished and fulfilled. It's fulfilled in Christ and now in the law of Christ given to His people. And the law of Christ is love your neighbor, and in expressing love for neighbor, obey the moral norms in concert with the character of God.
20 · Employs Tom Schreiner's river analogy to clarify the relationship between love (the current) and commandments (the banks) in the law of Christ
In our Galatians class a couple months ago, Tom Schreiner had a great illustration of this. I think it's helpful. He said, if you can imagine it as love being the massive current of a river, that's what love is, that's what the call to love your neighbor is. There's a current of water flowing. And that's the power, that's the substance of the law of Christ. That's the river, right? The commandments are the banks of the river. They're the things that give the current and the power and the flow its direction. That's what the moral norms serve to do.
21 · Argues that commandments function to prevent love from degenerating into sentimental emotivism by providing objective moral content rooted in God's character
The commandments, listen to this, keep us from sentimentality. Feelings-oriented notions of love in an emotionally driven society. We live in a society that says, if I enjoy it, if I like it, if it feels good, if it doesn't seem to harm somebody else, then it's okay. And the New Testament says no, there are moral norms. And our culture says that all the time, don't they? They'll reduce Christianity to, "Jesus was about love." "What's the Bible say about judging?" If you want to point to one of those moral norms.
22 · Extended illustration using the contemporary homosexuality debate to show how love without moral norms becomes sentimental license, while also warning against Pharisaical multiplication of rules
A classic example that is a front-burner issue today for our society and for the church is the issue of homosexuality. I was reading an article in the Kansas City Star about a month ago. In the comments, there was somebody who was specifically talking about the intersection of homosexuality and sports and some of these things. And there was someone who wrote, I just don't understand, there was a coach who had been an outspoken Christian in defense of marriage between a man and woman, and just, you know, he's being called intolerant and judgmental and all those sorts of things. And this one comment said, what I don't understand is homosexuality is clearly not a sin. It's not wrong because it doesn't hurt anybody. That's just an expression of people operating in an emotionally driven society. Nobody's being— it's not like stealing. It's not like murder. It's not like lying. Why can't you just let them be free to do whatever they feel like they want to do? That's what happens when you have the current of love and you have no banks. Of moral norms. And the New Testament establishes those transcendent moral norms. However, it doesn't give us a rule book, right? A play-by-play for every single situation of life. In every circumstance, this is what love does, this is what love does not do. In every circumstance of life, this is what the law of Christ is. It gives us broad parameters. And then it calls on us to use discernment. Now, where it specifically says, "This is what love does and what love doesn't do," where it specifically gives commandments, we need to obey and listen. But this is where the Pharisees got into trouble, right? They took the broad law of God in the Old Testament, the Mosaic law, and then they realized, "You know what? There's like 613 commandments that the rabbis identified in the law." Well, those are really helpful, but we're realizing as the centuries go on that there's other circumstances where it's gray. So what do we do? Well, we better extend the law and we better increase it. And we better start writing commentaries on the law that become a law unto themselves so we can cover every single situation in life. If your son talks back, this is how many times you shall spank him, right? And that's the law. That's what God commands. That's what they were doing, that's what they were trying to create. That's not what love does. Love calls us to be discerning. In some cases it's really easy to understand what love does and doesn't do. Homosexuality is sinful because it's against God's character and it does hurt someone. It hurts the person enslaved to it. Hurts the person that the homosexual is in relationship with. There's also places where it's more difficult to tease out what is the most biblically loving thing to do. We test those. We get counsel. We get help. We seek to be wise. And this is why, as Paul shows us in Galatians, the Spirit is so crucial. We ask, God, grant Lord, grant wisdom, grant discernment, pour out your Spirit that we might know. But the broad framework remains: Love one another as you love yourself. Value your brother's reputation like you love your own. Value your brother's well-being like you love your own. Value your sister's health, her happiness, your brother's encouragement, his assurance in the faith, his perseverance, the meeting of his material needs, his holiness, his sense of belonging, his sense of being loved and cared for, his sense of shelter, his literal physical shelter. Value all of those things and more, countless more. And love him and love her and act for him and act for her and serve him and serve her as you would do for yourself. That's the law of Christ.
23 · Exposits the paradox that Christian freedom means enslavement to God and neighbor, drawing on Romans 6 to show the biblical pattern of being freed from sin unto slavery to righteousness
This is the beauty of the paradox. We're called to freedom, but we're slaves to one another. You ever seen that in Paul? The gospel calls us to live in freedom and then turns around and says, and in your freedom, You are slaves to one another. This whole phrase, serve one another, it's the same word. And if we look in Romans 6, we see this. Perfect freedom, biblically speaking, is slavery to God and to His people. That's a strange concept, but it's a liberating one. Romans 6, Paul says, right around the time he's responding to the critics that say, 'You just are all about grace and let people do whatever they want.' No, I don't. Because thanks to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart, from the heart of faith, to the standard of teaching to which you were committed. And having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity into lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. If we're gonna put that in the semantics and the language of Galatians, become a slave to love. That's what the gospel calls us to. Become a slave to love and know the freedom of Christ.
24 · Asserts that while legalism is a real danger, the opposite error of refusing to address works at all is also unbiblical
One of the dangers is that some people don't want to talk about works at all because they're so afraid of legalism. Taking works and spilling it into justification. That's an overstatement. It's unbiblical. We aren't saved by works and we've established the dangers of legalism in this series, right? If you're a guest here, go back and listen to some of those messages. We've worked our way through Paul's arguments on the dangers of works righteousness and legalism and the syncretism of taking faith and works and putting them together to find salvation. But there is a place. There is a God-ordained, biblical, inspired by the Holy Spirit place for living in accord with what you believe. And there's also warning for what happens in community when we don't.
25 · Signals transition to the final major section addressing the negative consequences of lovelessness in the church
That's the last point. Point this morning. What happens when love is lacking?
26 · Establishes the pastoral context for Paul's warning in verse 15 — the Galatian church is experiencing relational deterioration alongside their theological errors
So, freedom shouldn't feed the flesh. Freedom shouldn't give opportunity or a base of operations for the flesh. The law is fulfilled with love. Specifically, the law of Christ. What happens when that's lacking? Well, the situation in Galatia is evidently degrading quickly. Not only is their theology messed up, there's things happening relationally to the community there that are deadly. Paul doesn't just exhort them to love each other out of the blue. That's not just coming from nowhere. That's coming from his pastoral heart to recognize there's things going on that he needs to correct. There's things happening in that church that are detrimental to the people of that church and detrimental to that church's witness to the world.
27 · Exposits Galatians 5:15's vivid language of biting, devouring, and consuming to show the progressive destruction that occurs in communities where love is absent
So listen to how he describes the effects, the effect that love's absence has on people. So when love isn't present, this is what he warns them will happen. "But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another." So if you don't live by the law of Christ, if you don't fulfill the law in loving one another, watch out that you don't bite and devour and consume each other. That's some interesting language. This idea of bite suggests people cutting and lacerating and rending one another with reproaches that damage the soul. And there's this devour language and imagery that goes even further, and there's a deeper destruction of relationships that's happening. In fact, the language suggests that when God's people lack love, They act like a pack of wild animals. They're tearing and seeking to devour each other. That's what happens when love isn't present. And there's a progression from biting to tearing to devouring the victims to finally consuming them. When freedom runs unrestrained by the law of Christ love, when freedom is unrestrained by those things, it becomes a peril to the church. It's no longer freedom. It's a license to kill each other.
28 · Identifies the tongue as the primary instrument of the destruction Paul describes, making speech patterns a diagnostic indicator of whether a church understands the law of love
Now Paul probably has our words in view here. You see that from the way he talks. He's talking broadly about what happens when a church doesn't love, but he's also saying, you want to know a quick evidence of the fact that people aren't loving each other? Watch what they do with their mouths. Watch how they act with their tongues. A church that's dominated by loose speech and hurtful language and gossip and slander and hate and harshness and the like is a church with no operational understanding of the law of love.
29 · Personal story from a tulip festival illustrating how sins of the tongue manifest in adolescence and continue in more sophisticated forms in adulthood when love is absent
We spent the latter parts of last week in Iowa at the Tulip Festival in my hometown. Which is basically— unfortunately, Hannah described it as a fair, and that was offensive to me. This was not a fair. This was not a county fair. This was a tulip festival. This was a celebration of all things Dutch. So different than a fair. Then again, I saw one of the workers, a 12-year-old in one of the food stands, wearing a shirt on the back that said, "Mamas don't let their babies grow up to be carnies." So evidently it had some fairishness to it. Well, Hannah was standing in one of those lines and came back just sort of shaking her head. Yeah, I was behind a group of 3 or 4 teenage girls, and she's like, just reminded me how brutal that age can be. She went on to just describe the conversation. I mean, did you see what she was wearing? Did you hear what they were saying? The sins of the tongue, just rolling and rolling and snowballing in this group of 4 or 5 girls, just feeding off of each other. Sins of the tongue just manifesting themselves. And we all remember what that was like, right? What adolescence was like, what the middle school years were like. Horrible, because your classmates did want to devour you. They were biting you. And if you were low on the totem pole, you might have gotten consumed. Well, that's the kind of stuff that can happen. In our maturity, we make our bites seem friendlier. Maybe they're just passive-aggressive bites, right? And our devouring becomes more devious. We're not gonna devour somebody in front of everyone else like the bully in middle school might do. We'll just devour them in secluded corners behind their back. It's a dangerous, dangerous thing when love is absent.
30 · Cross-references James's teaching on the tongue to reinforce Paul's warning, showing the destructive power of unbridled speech and its inconsistency with genuine religion
James, a helpful compendium to Galatians, pushing back against this dangerous sense of license where it's just all grace and do whatever you want, says this about the tongue: If anyone thinks he is religious, if anyone thinks he's saved, and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. And in verse 5 of chapter 3, so also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. Incidentally, this language of consume in Galatians is used elsewhere in the New Testament to speak of the way a fire consumes Our God is a consuming fire. This idea of the tongue and the way that it's like a fire and consuming is in Paul's mind. The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.
31 · Generalizes from the exposition to establish that the tongue under stress reveals the true spiritual condition of the heart, serving as a test of whether love or the flesh dominates
When love is lacking, the people of God begin to resemble wild animals, and they first begin to resemble those wild animals in the ways they use their tongues. Nothing expresses the true condition of our hearts more quickly than our tongues, and our tongues are most transparent when life is most difficult. In times of peace and prosperity, even the tongue of the wicked person might drip some honey. But during difficulties like Paul saw in Galatia, during seasons of hardship or seasons of trouble or seasons of illness or disagreement, maybe seasons when there's just uncertainty, The future is just not clear. Big decisions loom. The tongue inevitably reveals the nature of our hearts as either fleshly or loving, either condemned or being transformed.
32 · Connects the current warning about biting and devouring to Paul's later catalog of works of the flesh, showing how relational sins manifest when freedom feeds the flesh rather than love
Listen to the works of the flesh Paul lists in Galatians 19:21. Here's a list. Remember works of the flesh? Freedom shouldn't feed those. Now it comes back around and says, your freedom shouldn't feed works of the flesh because you should be marked by love. And that's the law of Christ. That's the core of the passage. And he comes back around and says, and if your freedom is giving way to the flesh, you will bite and devour each other. And a few verses later he says, and this is what the works of the flesh will look like. There will be enmity and strife and jealousy and fits of anger and rivalries and dissensions and divisions. The tongue play a role in any of those things? It plays a role in almost every one.
33 · Establishes that only gospel-produced love can bridle the tongue since human strength cannot, making love the transformative power that redirects speech from destruction to edification
No one can tame their own tongue. Human strength is incapable. James says that. Nobody can do that. Even in disagreement, when the flesh— this is helpful here, think of this. The nature of the gospel, the power of grace provides the only bridle possible for for the tongue. That's love. The only thing that bridles a person's tongue is love for the one they might attack with it. Love for the one they might cut down with it. Love bridles the tongue and takes it from the cutting and biting and devouring and consuming and turns it to edifying and encouraging. Speaking words of grace, building up.
34 · Argues that believers must hold truth and love together, citing Schaeffer to show that only the Spirit enables simultaneous pursuit of holiness and love while the flesh distorts one or the other
Believers should be just as known for their sacrificial love for one another as they are for their steadfast defense of right doctrine. Even in disagreement, when the flesh can utilize truth as an opportunity for disunity, love works to uphold peace and grace. Francis Schaeffer puts it well: We must look moment by moment to the work of Christ, to the work of the Holy Spirit. Spirituality begins to have real meaning in our moment-by-moment lives as we begin to exhibit simultaneously the holiness of God and the love of God. So Paul is holding together here the gospel expressed in the love of God and the implications of the gospel in the law of Christ's calling us to pursue holiness. And the flesh has no ability to pursue both truth and love in the same situation with the same people. The flesh can't pursue truth and love simultaneously with the same people in the same situation. The flesh will express itself by overemphasizing one or the other. The flesh will overemphasize love and say, "There are no sexual norms." there are no sexual norms in the world, right? Or the flesh will overemphasize truth and end up hating those enslaved to their misunderstanding of the sexual norms that do exist. The flesh loves, it takes love and perverts the freedom of the gospel into license. Or it takes truth and perverts holiness into a weapon. For division and rivalry.
35 · Synthesizes the sermon's core argument by positioning the love command as the primary imperative flowing from the gospel, establishing its priority and foundational role
The Bible's filled with imperatives, commands to obey, but they don't overshadow the gospel. They flow from the gospel. And the first, greatest, and most natural imperative to flow from the gospel is the command of verse 13: Through love, serve one another. One another. Love your neighbor as yourself. It's the climactic commandment of Scripture.
36 · Direct application challenging the congregation to assess their assurance of salvation based on the presence of love in their lives, establishing love as the necessary fruit of genuine faith
No one gets to say they have faith if they don't have love. It's simply impossible for someone to be saved by grace through faith and fail to love. The least loving people, the least loving people, ought to have the lowest assurance of faith. You don't love. It's an extension of your faith. And there's no love there. You don't look like Jesus, like you're supposed to.
37 · Pastoral turn emphasizing the communal dimension of love as mutual encouragement toward assurance, contrasting the church's calling with the biting and devouring behavior Paul warns against
For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. Saving faith produces love through the power of the Spirit. In every believer. And this evidence of love is meant to serve as a buttress of assurance for the genuineness of our faith. And as we gather in community, we're meant to stir each other up. To what? Love and good deeds. That's what the community does. It doesn't bite and devour. It stirs each other up to love and good deeds. Why? To stir each other up to the assurance of salvation.
38 · Closing prayer synthesizing the sermon's themes, asking for Spirit-empowerment to balance grace and holiness, seek wisdom in gray areas, and obey clear commands so that love grows and Christ is made visible
Would you bow your heads? Lord, we want to balance well the incredible generosity, the radical nature of your grace as seen in the gospel, and yet implications of knowing you in all your holiness and the provision of Jesus and the way that impels us to want to look like Jesus. Lord, we want to fulfill the law of Christ, and I ask that at Providence you would send your Spirit to help us to do just that. Lord, that in the areas that are gray, the areas where the New Testament and Scripture doesn't specifically speak to what love looks like, that you would grant us graciousness, you would grant us wisdom, that the Spirit would guide us, that we would act in love towards one another. And where there's doubt, Lord, that love would cover sin. And then, Lord, where your word is clear, where the law of Christ is clearly spelled out, in the scriptures, where we'll see in the weeks to come Paul saying, "These are the clear things you must do and you must not do if you are in Christ." Would you give us the strength to obey? Send your Spirit to empower action in the fight of faith on our part. Lord, grow love at Providence. That Christ would be seen more clearly. In your name, Jesus. Amen.