Galatians 5:1-15 Choosing To Be Free

Here's the thing I want to ask you: How confident are you in your foundation in the truth? Do you recognize error when it's put in front of you? I often say that there are other groups who love to show up at your house carrying one of these. Do you have a Bible quote-unquote discussion with you? But if you only know 1/3 of the Bible, you're going to lose that. You're going to be at that place, "Hello, let me call my pastor." We need to be rooted and grounded in the truth because we're being barraged constantly with misapplication and twists. And what's interesting is they're always so subtle. They don't just come up and punch you in the face; they just kind of glance past you, and we start to chase that mistruth, and we find ourselves in a very precarious place. We find ourselves back in bondage again.

Here's what's interesting. I told the group this on Wednesday night: The largest number of converts to the groups that show up at your door on Saturday morning, about 9 o'clock, come from quote-unquote "Bible teaching" churches. Which means there are people who sit in the pews, and they hear a lot of Bible being taught, but they don't spend a lot of time planting roots into the Word of God, and so they're susceptible to any teaching, any doctrinal shift in the wind.

And so, Paul says, "I'm confident that you're going to stand firm, that you're not going to take another view, and if the one who's troubling you will bear the penalty for that false teaching." But then he goes on to say, "You know, brothers, if I still preach circumcision, which he doesn't, why am I still being persecuted?" See, the real issue with Paul, and what he's getting at here, is Paul was a Jew. He was a Pharisee by training. He was from the tribe of Benjamin. He was circumcised. He was trained at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the top teachers of his day. He had the pedigree. He even had Timothy circumcised so that he could be more effective in his ministry to the Jews. And Paul is saying, "If that's who I am, then why am I being persecuted?"

"This isn't a circumcision issue; this is a negating the completed work of Christ issue. It's the cross that's offensive." Notice where he goes: "But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I being persecuted? In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed. See, the cross is the dividing line. The cross is the thing that truly separates. The cross is the thing that we stick our stake in the ground, and we say, 'This is where I'm standing. I'm not counting on works. I'm not counting on my own goodness, my own self-righteousness, to do anything for me. I'm standing on the completed work of Jesus.' And if you're saying I have to do something else in addition to be right with God, I can't move from there."

"We talk often here at Restoration about open-handed and closed-handed issues in the Christian world, especially here; we're a non-denominational church. There are many things where we have varying views of doctrinal concepts, but then there are those core concepts of the faith we don't budge off of. The completed work of Christ on the cross is one of those. We don't have a 'Jesus plus' theology here. We don't move off of that, and that's the thing that Paul is encouraging the Galatian church: 'Hey, listen, if this were all about circumcision, then everybody should be getting along with me. But it's not about circumcision; it's about the cross of Christ. It's about Jesus doing the hard work, Jesus doing the completed work, and not relying on my own strength, my own good deeds, to make it happen because they're not enough.'"