The A-Z of a Christian Lifestyle

Jason prayed for us to walk as saved and not as guilty. And this morning, we are going to be reflecting on, I guess, that statement a little bit. How does our life look as saved people rather than guilty people? The author, Jerry Bridges, in a book called Transforming Grace, writes this. He says, we tend to give an unbeliever just enough of the gospel to get him or her to pray a prayer to receive Christ.

Then we immediately take the gospel, put it on a shelf, so to speak, and go on with duties to do with discipleship. But he goes on to write that the grace that brought salvation to you is the same grace that teaches or disciplines you. The grace that brought salvation to you is the same grace that teaches and disciplines you. I'm sure that most of us sitting here this morning would like to strive to be better Christians. I use that in quotes, than we currently are.

Many of us would admit that we would like to be a little bit more generous, less selfish. We'd like to be a little bit more forgiving, a little less angry, a little less obsessed with passing things, vanity. The question is, how do we get there? How do we actually get there? And the answer you might be surprised to hear is you don't get there by trying harder.

You don't get there by trying harder, but by relaxing more. Relaxing. Relaxing in the knowledge of the outworking of the gospel. Relaxing in the knowledge and the understanding of the implications of the gospel. You'll remember that last week, we did the second half of chapter two in the book of Galatians.

And then we saw that we are saved when we stop trusting in our moral efforts of ticking the boxes and obeying the law of God, but when we trust in the work of Jesus, when we trust in the work of Christ. Paul actually says in what we read last week that we die to the law. The law doesn't have any more power over us. We are dead to it, and yet we live for God. Dead to the law, alive for God.

It creates within us a whole new motivation in everything we do in life. This morning, Paul goes on with this argument and he draws out the implications of what it means to be dead to the law, but alive to God. So let's have a read of that in Galatians 3, and we're going to read the first 14 verses. Paul hits him between the eyes in Galatians 3:1.

You foolish Galatians, 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 by 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 have 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 announce the gospel in advance to Abraham. All the 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. Now in verses one to three, Paul has been building and building his argument. And then he says in verse one, in an exasperated sort of frustration, how foolish are you guys to not understand just the implications of what it means to be saved by grace through faith?

Because Paul goes on to remind the Galatian Christians how they came to Christ from their unbelieving paganism that they were in. They came to Christ from being unbelieving Gentiles. He reminds them of the moment when he himself preached the gospel to them and how Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified in verse one. Before your very eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. And what they heard, Paul wants to remind them, is that what was communicated to them was Jesus Christ and what His death really meant.

It was a message communicated and centred on the death on the cross. And the word that Paul uses there in the Greek clearly means vivid, means graphic. It had the connotations. It was probably so clearly defined what it happened there that they knew instantly what that meant. The Greek word means to give or meant that the hearers would have a moving insight of what Christ did.

And this is the crux here, that the gospel, the gospel doesn't centre on the life of Jesus, but on His death. A Christian isn't someone who knows about Jesus. A Christian isn't someone that believes even that He existed. A Christian is someone who has seen Him on the cross. And the gospel moves us with vivid imagery, with graphic emotion, when we realise not simply that He died, but that He died for us.

We see the purpose. We see the message. We see the intent of His work for us. We are saved by a clear depiction, heart moving, recounting of Christ's sacrifice on our behalf. That's where it begins for Paul.

Then Paul questions them in verses two and three by contrasting faith and observing of the law, and in contrast, having the spirit to attaining our goal by human effort. To believe the gospel, to believe the gospel, is not merely a cognitive ascent, not merely a cognitive decision that, yes, Jesus did exist, Jesus did die, Jesus did rise. Yes, Jesus is the son of God.

The gospel is not just a cognitive ascent. That's not believing in the biblical sense. Paul plays off belief and attaining our goals through human effort against each other, opposite ends of the spectrum. And he's describing the tendency of the human heart.

We all strive to attain. We all strive to tick the boxes to complete ourselves, to fulfil ourselves, to feel secure. And so what he's describing here is a tendency of the human heart to make ourselves acceptable, to make ourselves acceptable to God, to ourselves, to others. So we trust our efforts to attain completeness and perfection in our morality, in our careers, in our vocation, in our relationships. We look to those things to complete us.

But Paul says, remember. Remember. Remember how it was before Jesus Christ crucified was preached to you. Remember before you became a Christian. You trusted in a variety of ongoing projects.

Projects to look better, to be more intelligent, to be more civilised in order to feel complete. But to believe in Christ is to cling to the revolution that took place on the cross. To cling to it. It's a revolution which says that our sense of completion or perfection is a received gift, not an earned reward. Believing in Christ means we receive the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit in verse two enters our life through belief in the salvation of grace alone through faith alone. And it's as if we're born again, born anew. There's a sense of completeness. There's a sense of rejuvenation, of regeneration that takes place when the spirit enters our lives. And so that's why Paul asks the question in verse three.

So if you started as complete in the Holy Spirit, if you started with the Holy Spirit complete, why are you trying to obtain it by human effort? It doesn't make sense. The original text writes, why try to attain it through the flesh? Why are you failing to remember or believe the gospel and seek completion through trusting in yourself, in your limited capacity? Why trust in that?

Verse five, Paul makes it even clearer. He says, the spirit is working in our lives because we believe. The spirit is working in our lives because we believe, present tense. Not because we have believed or we had believed.

Because we believe the Holy Spirit is working in our lives. He works in our lives not because we no longer observe the law, but because we believe. And the spirit has entered our lives when we place our trust in the message of the gospel. And so the Holy Spirit becomes a sign and a seal of the faith. If you've been in a reformed church, you know those are technical terms.

But the Holy Spirit is a stamp of authority that this person is a believer. This person trusts and clings to the gospel of Christ Jesus crucified. Paul goes as far as saying, the spirit works in our lives when we don't rely on our own works anymore. The spirit works in our lives when we don't rely on our own works anymore, but rather by consciously and continuously resting, relaxing in Christ alone for our acceptability and for our completeness, for our perfection. And so what we see here is that the Holy Spirit, the gift of God, the divine, lives in us, but is inseparably linked with the gospel.

You cannot receive the Holy Spirit without believing in the gospel, without clinging to the gospel. The spirit works as you apply and use the gospel. And that is what sanctification is. Sanctification is also another Christianese word. It means to be made pure or clean.

In the Bible, sanctification and another word called justification go hand in hand. We talked about justification last week. You have been justified before God through Christ. It's just as if I'd never sinned. Justified.

Justification. But now, sanctification happens. And justification is a once and for all moment. It's a single moment where God says, Audrey has been made right before me. It's like a legal status next to her name.

Perfect. Sanctification, however, is a process. It's an ongoing thing. It's a process, however, that is integrally tied up with the work of the Holy Spirit, and that's why Paul mentions it here. Because the Holy Spirit is the one that is cleaning us up.

The Holy Spirit is in our hearts sweeping out all the dust, scraping off all the barnacles of sin on our hearts. Here in Galatians 3, we see however that it is tied in with the gospel, inseparably linked. And so the way we progress as a Christian doesn't come from trying harder. It doesn't come from working harder. It comes from the Holy Spirit working for us, in us.

It comes from being centred on that clear portrayal of Christ crucified. The gospel, the centre of it. The way Christians grow is to continually repent and uproot the systems of trying harder. To continually repent, turn away, uproot those systems, and to replace it with the gospel, with the cross. Sanctification happens when our hearts are more deeply gripped by the reality of what He did and who we are in Him.

Let me say that again. Sanctification happens when our hearts are more deeply gripped by the reality of what He did and who we are in Him. So if I'm timid and if I'm self conscious, and if I have a low self esteem and struggle with that, I don't simply pray, Lord, I have a problem with fear or with self doubt. Please remove it with Your power. Give me the power to be courageous.

And we've all prayed these prayers in some way or another. But rather, if we remind ourselves of the gospel, if we remind ourselves of the clear portrayal of Christ crucified, our hearts will be made more courageous by understanding the immense confidence that God has placed on us. The immense confidence God has in us. So that when God sees us and looks at us, He sees not our brokenness and our frailty, but He sees us as beautiful and complete. God sees us as beautiful and complete.

When we really believe that, it changes our self esteem. We don't doubt ourself anymore because God doesn't doubt us. If we know that we are loved and accepted by God immensely and relentlessly, who are we to not love ourselves? Who are we to be fearful of what others will think of us when the God, the God who created us, the creator of the world sees us as perfect? If I'm bitter and I struggle with anger, and I and I that's really something that I have to work with and deal with.

Rather than shooting up a prayer, father, give me patience, give me the power to forgive. If we can stop and think and ask why am I angry? Why am I bitter? And if we can apply the gospel's truth and cling to its reality, we realise that our bitterness has come as a result of placing our identity, our trust, our dependence on something or someone other than Jesus. That person or that thing has become our saviour.

It has become what defines us. So when we lose it, and it can be anything, it can be a job, it can be a relationship. When we lose it or it gets taken from us, we become bitter, we become angry. And the answer is not to simply try harder to control our anger or our bitterness. It's by repenting and turning away.

Turning away from self righteousness, turning away from thinking that we can fix this ourselves, and turning to the finished work of Jesus Christ. Because in His work, in the gospel, we see that we have been forgiven so much. We have been forgiven so much. How is it not possible for us to forgive others? Why can't we forgive someone a fraction of what we've been forgiven?

In the gospel, we see that this life is far bigger than our petty issues. In the gospel, we gain eternal perspective. A whole eternity awaits us. So why become bitter over a lost job? Why become bitter about a banged up car?

In the gospel bitterness, bitterness gets trumped by rejoicing. Fear and anger gets replaced by peace. Can you understand these implications? If we understand the gospel, if we cling to it, if we make it a part of the essence of who we are, it changes how we think and how we do things. It changes our motivations completely.

As we make our hearts look at Christ crucified, the spirit works in us to replace the idols and the fake saviors with the real saviour. And that root of the sin that makes us bitter and angry and have low self esteem and doubt, that root withers. It's not fed anymore. It dies. Susanna Wesley, who was the mother of the great evangelist John Wesley, once said that there are two things to do about the gospel.

Two things to do about 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 when Paul points to the example later of Abraham. And it's a master stroke in his argument because these Galatian Christians are being convinced by these Jews who have Abraham as their forefather, motivating them on what they do and how they live.

Paul uses the example of their patriarch and says, even Abraham was a man of faith, made complete and perfect by faith. Paul brilliantly shows how faith in Abraham is counted as righteousness. Now again, it sounds counterintuitive, counterintuitive. How can a belief trump action or behaviour? In verse six, Paul explains by quoting Genesis 15:6 saying that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

That is a quote taken directly from Genesis. A New Testament commentator Douglas Moo writes that the crediting of Abraham's faith as righteousness means to account to him a righteousness that does not necessarily, inherently belong to him. So Paul makes an astounding claim. The image here is a legal one. It's used in court settings.

And the truth is applicable to everyone, he says. When God credits righteousness to Abraham, He confers a legal status upon him. And He treats him and He sees him as someone who is actually righteous and free from condemnation. Even though he might still be unrighteous. It's the same for everyone who places their trust in God, Paul says, rather than themselves.

We can be both righteous and unrighteous at the same time. That's the amazing truth. Justified and a sinner at the same time. And again, this flies in the face of all man made religions out there. Because you're either or.

You are either living righteously and therefore pleasing to God, or you are living unrighteously and therefore are alienated from God. But Abraham's example shows that it is possible to be loved and accepted by God while we are in and of ourselves still imperfect. Paul points back to the Jews founding father Abraham and says, look, he simply trusted God at His word. He simply trusted God's promise. And God counted that.

God saw that as being right with Him. Being perfect and completed in His sight. And therefore, in verse nine, Paul says, be like him. Be like him. Believe.

Just believe. And you'll receive the blessings that he received yourself. Finally, Paul comes to explain how this righteousness can simply be declared and bestowed and imputed on someone like us. Someone who simply trusts in God. How do we escape the curse of the law that Paul quotes here as well, cursed is everyone who cannot keep the law?

How do we escape this curse and be deemed worthy of God's love? How can we enjoy the blessing promised to Abraham and his spiritual descendants? Well, of course, it all comes down to what Jesus did. Paul says that Jesus, in verse 13, became sin for us. Jesus became a sinner for us.

Paul quotes Deuteronomy 21:23, cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. And we'll have to jump back into the Old Testament times when a person was executed, usually through stoning, and they were dead, they'd be taken, and they'd be hung up against a tree or on a tree as a human billboard to show that this person has been cursed, has received divine rejection because of his sin. And then Paul draws the connection to Christ whose execution on the cross was a moment of divine rejection. There he freed us from the curse by taking it for us. Jesus was treated as though He was a sinner.

He was treated as guilty for all that a wicked person would be liable for. Legally speaking, He became sin. Two Corinthians 5:21 says, God made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us, so that in Him, we might receive the righteousness of God. This is the stunning reality of the cross.

This is the stunning flip upside down reality of the cross that Jesus became sin and we became righteous. Jesus taking the curse for you means that He was regarded by God as a sinner and we receive the blessing of forgiveness, meaning that we are regarded as perfect and righteous and complete in God's eyes. So how do we progress in our faith? How do we grow in that? How do we put aside those things that are niggling at our heart, at our souls?

How do we grow? It's by understanding this. We are already accepted. We are already righteous. Now, be righteous.

Just be. Don't begin with the spirit and end with guilt and try and go back and do it yourself. It doesn't work. It's irrational. It's unlogical.

You once realised your guilt, but now you realise your freedom. And understanding that changes everything. Changes everything. How we think, how we work through pain, how we work through suffering, how we work through disappointment. Refocus, if we remember the clear portrayal of Christ crucified, it changes everything.

Let's pray. Lord, it's amazing how much this makes sense. It's amazing the logic behind this and yet at the same time, it is so huge and so profound that we hardly can believe it. The saviour who became sin for us, who became a curse on our behalf, has given us His righteousness, His perfection, His completeness so that we don't have to struggle with our insecurities any longer, so that we don't have to wrestle with our guilt anymore, so we don't have to feel unworthy. God, we are complete as we sit here before You.

How amazing is that truth? Holy Spirit, we give You more and more of our hearts to sweep clean, to scrape off the barnacles of our previous life. Lord, we give You permission to transform us into the likeness of Your Son. We give You permission, Lord. We give You our entire hearts, our souls again this morning.

Make us and mould us. Melt our hearts more. Inform us, Lord, into the people that You desire. Thank You that we do not stand condemned, that we do not walk in guilt, but we walk in freedom. God, make that a truth and a reality for us, and give us the hints and the prodding that when we come to difficult times or we come to struggling with temptation and sin in our lives, Lord, that we can be reminded of the implications of this message.

And let us walk in that freedom. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.