Get There by Not Trying Harder

One component of how the gospel motivates us to live a life without worry or anxiety. And after the service, one of the women, who was actually sort of the camp mother, came up to me and said, "Thank you very much for the message," and just said how astounding and how beautiful it is to recognise how the gospel has the power to break the hold of worry and fear in our lives. It's something that she hasn't thought about before. She's heard all the sayings and the clichés and perhaps all the moral teachings, the good teachings of the Bible regarding worry, but when it came down to it, she recognised perhaps for the first time how the Gospel robs the power of fear and worry. And it just made me think again, as we celebrate the working of the gospel in these young people's lives, as we remember it in the Lord's Supper this morning, it is good for us to think through the implications of the gospel, perhaps even more broadly than fear and worry, but into how it affects our lives as people called to live differently, as people called to live holy lives.

So we know, and I want to talk to these six sitting here, after you have professed your faith, the journey doesn't end. Right? It may not even have started. You may have been a Christian, been saved for a while before publicly declaring your faith this morning. But we shouldn't be surprised that we're going to struggle with issues of holiness and sin.

We shouldn't be surprised to know that temptation's going to come, and some days we'll be strong and we'll resist, and other days we may not. The question we might ask ourselves this morning is how do we continue living for the glory of God? How do we continue living lives that are different, lives that are pleasing in God's sight, once we've received His free gift of salvation? What do we do in response to this news? Perhaps more pointedly, what happens if we fall into sin?

What happens if we wrestle with habitual sin that we seemingly can't give up? If we are now called by God to live holy lives when we become Christians, how do we go about getting to that stage of holy living if we still struggle today? Does it mean we're not Christians? It's a very valid question. Does it mean we're not Christians?

I'm sure it's not just the six here that I'm talking to. All of us are striving to live better Christian lives. All of us recognise in our lives that we could be less angry, that we could be more generous, that we could be more forgiving, that we could be a little less obsessed with comfort, that we could be a little less obsessed with vanity. And the question we have to deal with this morning is how do we get there? Well, the answer, you might be surprised to hear this morning, is we get there by not trying harder.

We get there by not trying harder. This morning we're going to read in the book of Galatians how the gospel is not only the way we enter into the kingdom of God, but the gospel is how we excel in living for God as well. We are not only saved by the gospel, but we also grow by the gospel. Paul, the writer of the book of Galatians, is saying that we don't begin by faith and then proceed to grow by turning to our works or growing through our works. We are not only justified by faith in Christ, we are also sanctified by faith in Christ. And so that means the gospel never leaves you. And it means the gospel will always warm your heart.

It means that a preacher like me can do a very easy job and just come and preach the same message week after week. Well, hopefully not. That's a bit boring. But the kernel, the core of this message will never change. Let's have a look at Galatians 3, and we're going to read just the first little part of it.

Galatians 3:1-14. The apostle Paul writes this to the church in Galatia: "You foolish Galatians. Good morning to you.

Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you. Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or believing what you heard? Are you so foolish?

After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing? If it really was for nothing, does God give you His Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard? Consider Abraham. He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Understand then that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: 'All nations will be blessed through you.' So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law.'

Clearly, no one is justified before God by the law, because 'the righteous will live by faith.' The law is not based on faith. On the contrary, 'the man who does these things will live by them.' Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.'

He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit." So far, our reading this morning. What we find in the book of Galatians, the entire book, is Paul's summarised preaching ministry. This is the message that he took to Corinth, to Antioch, to Jerusalem, to wherever he went, and he preached this message. He preached Christ and Christ crucified.

In the context of chapter 3, in chapter 2, the second half, Paul writes that we are saved when we stop trusting in our moral efforts and we put our trust in Jesus Christ for His finished work on the cross. Paul actually says that we die to the moral code and we live for God now as Christians. And so it creates a whole new motivation, he says, to why you would have a relationship with God, or how, or why you would live a holy life. But then Paul gets to chapter 3, and what we see here in verses 1 to 3 is Paul reminding the Galatian Christians how they came to Christ in the first place. He reminds them of that moment when Paul came to them as the stranger, as this man with a new profound message, and he preached the gospel to them.

And he says to them in verse 1, "Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified to you. Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified to you." What they heard was a message communicated about Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for their sins. This message, Paul says, was clear. It was vivid.

I'm sure it was even graphic. They would have understood how crucifixion worked. But the gospel, Paul says, doesn't centre merely on the life of Jesus. It doesn't centre on the life of His teachings: love your enemies, pray for them. It doesn't finish on His sayings about the end times of eschatology.

What it focuses on is on His death and on His resurrection. Paul says, "I preached a vivid picture of the scope and the meaning of Jesus' death. That is what I came to you with." And so Paul is saying that a Christian becomes a Christian. A Christian is not someone who knows about Jesus and likes His teaching, but one who has seen Him on the cross.

Someone who has recognised what He has done on the cross and has been crushed by its meaning. That is what a Christian is. Someone who recognises what Jesus did on the cross and has been crushed by its meaning. And it's the gospel that moves us, he says, when we realise not simply that He died, but that He died for us. And so we see His purpose or His work on behalf of us, that we are saved, and that's what Paul was saying here: we are saved by a clear depiction, a heart-moving recounting of Christ's sacrifice on our behalf.

And then Paul questions them in verses 2 and 3, and he gives these contrasting things because that's what they were wrestling with. They were hearing what Paul says, and then they were hearing what other false teachers were saying. He contrasts these two. He says, "By believing," he contrasts with "observing the law". He says, "By having the Holy Spirit," he contrasts with "attaining by human effort".

To believe the gospel, he says, is not merely a mental recognition, a mental acceptance of the teachings of Christ. "Yep, He died. Yep, He rose again.

Yep, He is the Son of God." That's not believing in the biblical sense. Knowing that He did these things and thinking it's possible that He did all these things, that's not believing. That's falling short of the power of the gospel.

Paul plays off belief and attaining our goals through human effort as opposite ends of the spectrum, and Paul says to these Galatians, "Remember. Remember how it was before Christ crucified was preached to you. Remember how you struggled with sin. Remember that you were convicted by these things in your life, and you tried and you tried and you tried to be better, and you worked at it, and you became proud when you got it right, and you became self-righteous and looked down on people when they failed." He says, "Remember that.

That's who you were before you realised what Christ crucified means for you. You trusted in various ongoing projects of personal effort in order to feel safe, in order to feel accepted. But he says to believe in Christ is to cling to the revolution which took place on the cross. It's a revolution which says that our sense of completion or perfection has come to us not as a reward, but as a gift. Pure and simple, a gift.

And so believing in Christ means we receive another gift, which is the Spirit. Verse 2 says that the Holy Spirit enters our life through belief in salvation by grace as a gift alone, through Christ and His death alone. It is as if we are born again. We read in 2 Corinthians 5 we are new creations. The old has died.

It is gone forever. We are born anew. And so in that moment, there is a sense of completeness and restoration that takes place when the Spirit enters our lives. And that's what Paul says in verse 3: "So if you started with completeness in the Spirit, if in that moment you were filled with joy, you were filled with liberation and freedom, why are you trying to go back and earn it again for yourself?

Why are you wracked with guilt when you have been given freedom already? Why are you failing to remember or believe the gospel and seek completion by trusting again in your efforts and in yourself and in your goodness?" Verse 5, Paul makes it even clearer. He says, the Spirit is working in our lives because we believe. Present tense, ongoing tense.

The Spirit is working in our lives because we continue to believe in this fact: that Jesus died for us and has given us salvation. In other words, the Spirit entering our lives when we place our trust in the gospel shows that we've found the true way to live. The Holy Spirit working in our lives, the Holy Spirit is the one convicting us of sin, changing our attitudes towards sin, making us hate sin in our life. And friends, that is a sign that you have faith. That is a sign and a seal that you are God's children if you hate the sin in your life.

It doesn't have to be that you've conquered the sin in your life, even, but that you hate it. Paul goes as far as saying the Spirit works in our lives when Christians don't rely on their own excuses, when Christians don't rely on their own good works, but the Spirit works when they rather consciously and continuously rest in Christ alone for their acceptance and their completeness. So what Paul does is he links the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified with the Spirit inseparably. You cannot have one without the other. That's why we profess as Christians in this church, there is no second awakening of the Holy Spirit.

It comes. The Spirit, He comes to us through faith. He comes to us through faith in that moment. And so the Spirit works as you apply the gospel. And this is what theologians have later called sanctification. This is what we learnt in our professional faith classes.

This is what sanctification is. I won't ask you guys to come and give a definition of that. But to be sanctified means to be pure. It means to be clean. In the Bible, sanctification and justification go hand in hand.

Justified means it's just as if I'd never sinned, and sanctification is the process of God bringing us to that point. In chapter 2, Paul explains how the gospel justifies us. Justification is the once-and-for-all moment where we place our trust and our allegiance in Christ, where we were made right with God instantaneously once and for all, and sanctification is the process that happens afterwards. It is a process that is integrally tied up with the Holy Spirit and His work in our lives. He is the one that is busy cleaning us up.

He is the one that takes out the bucket and the mop and starts cleaning our hearts from the inside out. He's the one that gets the scraper and starts scraping off the barnacles and the baggage of sin off our hulls. Author Jerry Bridges, in his book Transforming Grace, writes this: "We tend to give an unbeliever just enough of the gospel to get him to pray or to say the sinner's prayer. And then immediately when they have done this, we put the gospel back onto the shelf, and we hope and we ask them to go on doing their duties of discipleship now as a Christian." But he goes on to write that grace that brought them to salvation is the same grace that teaches or disciplines you.

The grace that brought you to salvation is the same grace that teaches or disciplines you. The way we progress as Christians doesn't come from trying harder. It comes from remembering the cross, the clear portrayal of Jesus Christ crucified. Why? Because the cross represents the gospel.

The way we grow as Christians is to continually repent, to uproot the systems of works righteousness in our lives that will seek to try and gain us identity in these things, or seek to gain us immediate gratification in some areas without realising that there is a joy that is immeasurably great in God alone. Sanctification happens when our hearts are more deeply gripped by the reality of who God is and who we are in Him than in anything else. So if I'm timid, if I wrestle with insecurity, then we simply don't pray, "Lord, I have a problem with fear or self doubt. Please help me. Remove it with your power.

Give me the power to be courageous." As noble as this prayer is, as natural as this prayer is, and perhaps I won't say don't pray it, but rather, more powerfully, remind yourselves of the gospel: that your heart and your life has been made perfect in Christ, that there is no need to doubt your capacity anymore, that you have been accepted by the God of this universe who has given us a way to live, and He said, "You are right to do that now. You are empowered to do that now." That when this God of this universe looks at us, He says, not in our brokenness and frailty, but He sees us in our complete beauty because of Jesus Christ. He sees Jesus when He looks at us.

And so if we wrestle with insecurity and brokenness and we really come to the point of understanding this reality, it changes our self-esteem. If we know that we are loved and accepted by this God, who are we to feel insecure? Who are we to be fearful of what others may think? You are seen as perfect by the perfect Creator of the world because of the cross of Christ. To put it another way, if I wrestle with anger or bitterness, rather than shooting up a prayer, "Father, give me patience, help me, and give me the power to forgive," again, as noble as those prayers are, they don't do anything to change your thinking.

But if you apply the gospel and its truth and cling to its reality, realise that our bitterness has come as a result, perhaps, of placing our trust and our identity and our dependence on something or someone other than Jesus, and then when they haven't measured up, and when they've disappointed us, we become angry. We become bitter. That person, that thing has become our saviour. So when we lose it or it gets taken from us, we become bitter, and it can be anything. It can be comfort.

It can be approval. It can be control. All these things become false, functional saviors. The answer is not simply to try harder to control your anger or your bitterness. The answer is in repenting, turning away from your self-righteousness, and again turning to the finished work of Christ.

Because in the gospel we see that we have been forgiven so much. We have been forgiven so much. Why can't we forgive so little? In the gospel we see that this life is far bigger than our bitterness, that a whole eternity awaits us, that we have a relationship of eternal length with a God that we love. And so why become bitter over a breakup?

Why become bitter when we lose some money on an investment? Can you see, friends, how the gospel has all these implications? Can you see that understanding this, bringing your heart and your minds to it over and over again will shape how you live? It sanctifies you and purifies you. That is the power of Christianity.

So to our people that made their profession of faith this morning and declared they accept Christ as Lord and Saviour, I want to say this to you: as you make your hearts look to Christ, as you ask the Spirit to work in you, ask Him to replace false idols in your life, the fake saviors in your life, and to continuously return to the real Saviour, the one that has real power over sin. And the power of sin, when you do that, will start withering away in your life. It will start dying in your life. Susanna Wesley, who was the mother of the famous John Wesley, the evangelist.

Right? So we never hear of her. But she said this amazing quote. She said, "There are two things to do with the gospel. Only two.

Two things to do with the gospel: believe it and behave it. Believe the gospel and behave the gospel." The reason the gospel not only ensures our salvation, but also rules our behaviour is spelt out by Paul a bit later on in chapter 3 in verses 6 to 9. He points out the example of Abraham. He says Abraham was a righteous man.

He was a good man, but the way he became righteous is because he had faith in God alone. All the Galatian Christians would have understood that, but what Paul does brilliantly is to show how faith is counted as righteousness. It sounds counterintuitive: how can belief trump behaviour? But in verse 6, Paul explains by quoting Genesis 15:6, saying that Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. In the Old Testament, this theology already existed. It's not new.

Genesis 15:6, Abraham believed in God simply, and it was credited to him as righteousness. New Testament commentator Douglas Moo writes that the crediting of Abraham's faith as righteousness means to account to him, to this person who believes, a righteousness that does not inherently belong to them. And so Paul makes this astounding claim, the truth that is applicable to everyone. When God credits righteousness to Abraham, He conferred a new status on him. He treated him as actually righteous, as actually as good as Jesus Christ was, despite that he may still have wrestled with sin, despite that he was still a broken human being.

It's the same, Paul says, for everyone now that places their trust in Christ and not in themselves anymore. And this profound statement is what changed the whole history of Christianity when Martin Luther famously said, or coined the phrase, "simultaneously justified and righteous at the same time, simultaneously saint and sinner at the same time". This is what a Christian's status is: both holy and imperfect. And again, this flies in the face of all man-made religions, which tell us that we are either living righteously by doing really good things, and therefore are pleasing and acceptable to God, or we are living unrighteously and therefore alienated from God. But Abraham's example shows that it is possible to be loved and accepted by God completely while we are in and of ourselves unrighteous and unworthy.

So Paul points back to the Jews' founding father Abraham and says, "Look, he simply trusted in God at His word, and God declared him perfect and complete in His sight." Therefore, in verse 9, Paul says, "Be like Abraham, cling to God. That's all. Cling to God. Just believe, and you'll receive Abraham's blessing."

Paul explains how this righteousness can be declared, can be bestowed, can be imputed on anyone who simply trusts in God. Paul says that Jesus became a curse for us. That's how it happened. Jesus became a curse for us, he says in verse 13. And Paul quotes Deuteronomy 21:23: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."

In the Old Testament, when anyone was to be shown God's rejection, the divine rejection of God, they were to be executed for their sin, if it was a grievous sin, and they were to be thrown outside the city gates and hung up on a tree as a sign that God had rejected them. And this is what Paul draws a connection to with Christ, whose execution, as we know, was on a cross and was a divine rejection as well. So friends, how can we be freed from the curse of God's rejection because of our sin? Because Jesus took our punishment. We'll be celebrating that and be reminded of that again this morning.

He was treated as guilty for all that a wicked person should be liable for. Jesus was treated as if He were a sinner, and the amazing thing is that we are now treated as righteous as He was. Legally speaking, 2 Corinthians 5, what we read is this: legally speaking, Jesus became sin. He actually became sin. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, "God made Him who had no sin to become sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God."

The divine exchange happened. And this is the stunning reality of the cross. Jesus became sin. We became righteous. Jesus taking the curse for you means that you are regarded by God as a sinner, and yet you have received the blessing and forgiveness that Jesus Christ bought for us.

So friends, in finishing, how do we progress in our faith? Not by trying harder. As much as we want to do that, it will only leave us dissatisfied. It will only leave us frustrated. How can we mortify sin in our life as the Puritans call it?

How can we kill the sin that creeps in on us? How do we live holy lives? We have to understand that we are already accepted. We are already forgiven. We are already God's children.

We are already righteous. Let that truth break, crush, destroy that cold heart of yours. That heart that might be numb to sin, that heart that might try to ignore it or justify it. Let it humble you in the deepest recesses of your rebellious life.

You are already righteous. You are already righteous because of the clear portrayal of Christ crucified. Now simply be righteous. Now simply be righteous in gratitude. Don't begin with the Spirit and end with guilt and go back to trying to do it yourself.

You've realised your guilt, but now realise your freedom. It changes everything you do in your life. Amen. Heavenly Father, we thank You, Lord, that we can again be reminded of this, of what it means to have a holy sanctified life, Lord, and it comes back to what You've done for us on the cross. Father, we pray that in moments of temptation, in moments where the rubber hits the road, Lord, far away from church, far away from nice worship songs, far away from an open Bible.

Father, in the darkness of the night, in the clamour of friends who don't know You, Lord, in the privateness of our heart, give us the reminder to remember what it meant for Jesus Christ to have given Himself for us freely and completely. Father, that our motives will be guided by that. That the power of sin, the fleeting taste of it, Lord, will become bitter in our mouths as we recognise, as we remember, as we reflect that we are already satisfied, that we are already sanctified, that we are already justified by Jesus. And Lord, that our lives can now look different. And that we do not want to disappoint a God that loves us so much.

That we do not want to go back to a life that we know is so self-destructive, but Father, that there is joy in Your presence forevermore. So Father, by Your Spirit, remind us and guide us, we pray. Amen.