When you think of a solid mature Christian, what kind of a person do you think of? When you think of a solid mature Christian, what kind of a person do you think of?
Let’ take a poll. If your answer is one way or another is, “A solid mature Christian is a good person” please, raise your hand. Ok, thank you.
Let’s think about this a moment. Don’t you know good people who are not Christians? I do. I know plenty of folks who are very good people who are not Christians. Many times they are better people than some Christians I know. So, if that is true, if I can be a good person without being a Christian, then, why do we equate a solid Christian with a good person?
If the goal of being Christian to be a good person, why not just be a good person…. without being a Christian?
In other words, is being a good man or woman my ultimate goal in my Christian walk? If that is true, how is that different than becoming a good person day by day without Christianity?
Is Jesus Christ calling you to be a good person? Is being a good person really what it is all about?
Let’s see what Paul says in our Scripture today.
Paul presents two women before us this morning, Sarah and Hagar and he asks us to make a choice in our spiritual life– Live as the child of a slave woman, or live as a child of a free woman. Are you free, or are you enslaved? To be free, is to be spiritually free, to be enslaved is to be spiritually enslaved.
Looking at verse 22, we see that Abraham had two sons, one son that was free and one son that was a slave. According to the Code of Hammurabi, that would have been followed in the time of Abraham, the Code stated that a son of a slave woman, was a slave, even if his father was free. Because his mother was a slave, he was destined to be a slave. So even though he was Abraham’s son, he was a slave. This is the son of Hagar, Ishmael, born of a slave, destined to be a slave. But the other son, Isaac, was born of a free woman, Sarah, so he was destined to be free.
Now Paul states that this is to be taken figuratively. By saying this he is not saying that this historical event was an allegory, that it is just some story, no, he is saying that he is applying this event as an illustration of how spiritual enslavement works.
As you may remember Abraham and Sarah were promised a child by God, but since they were way, way….way past the age of the possibility of having children, they decided to do the culturally acceptable thing and use a slave as a way of producing a son. So through Abraham, the slave woman Hagar had a son, Ishmael. He was a child and a little child is a wonderful, and delightful thing – but spiritually Paul explains to us, Ishmael was not a child of the promise. Now it doesn’t matter how good, or how wonderful, or even how precious this Ishmael was, spiritually speaking, Paul tells us that Ishmael represents being born the ordinary way, and his way is not spiritually what God desires for us. Why? You and I are not born naturally, we are born spiritually. We who have committed our life to Jesus, have been born again, which means that we have been born spiritually.
Isaac by contrast, was born out of impossibility, there was no possible way this boy should have been born, clearly there was spiritual intervention by the hand of God to bring about the birth of this boy. This child, was a child of the promise, a promise made to his father Abraham, and who is the promise, Jesus Christ. For as time passed, generation after generation, the time would come when Jesus, the promise, would be born through the lineage of this child Isaac. Remember, we come to faith through the promise, we come to faith through a spiritual birth as in Isaac, not a natural birth as in Ishmael.
We, are to put away the slave in us, for the slave which is naturally born in us will never inherit what is spiritually born in us.
Understand that when Paul speaks of us being enslaved, he is speaking of us being enslaved spiritually. This is at a deeper level than any habits or addictions we may have, and this is beyond anything to do with physical slavery and this is beyond any psychological things we may be dealings with in our lives. In verse 9, what is translated as, “weak and miserable principles” in the original Greek directly refers to spiritual beings on one level and on another level, it refers to the rules, regulations, or life concepts that we as humans place ourselves under. This slavery is, perhaps at a level in our lives where we may be completely unaware of it consequences. We may be completely unaware of even the possibility to be enslaved spiritually.
We can be completely free people; we can be free politically, free economically, free socially, we can even hold no vices, we can even hold not a single bad habit – we can be free in every way possible but still be spiritually enslaved.
The reason this is so hard for us to recognize, is that it is a spiritual thing. We as Americans are quite good with the emotional, the material and the psychological, but when it comes to the spiritual – not so good. I mean, in America there are a large number of people who claim to be Christians, who don’t believe in a literal Hell, they don’t believe a being called Satan, or in demonic beings, many don’t believe in miracles happening in today’s world – something that Christians in third world countries, across the board, would be shocked at. They would call beliefs like that what they are – heathen.
We have a difficult time even recognizing the spiritual around us, why would we recognize spiritual slavery?
See, Paul has told us over and over in this book of Galatians that we are saved by faith alone. Faith alone and nothing else. What justifies us before God is one thing and one thing only – Faith in the promise, and the promise, we saw last week, is Jesus Christ.
So what justifies us before God? Faith in Jesus.
When we place our faith in Jesus and then go back and attempt to justify ourselves, we enslave ourselves. We enslave ourselves spiritually.
Hold on. Don’t assume you do have not enslaved yourself. It is easy to do, it is easy to enslave ourselves spiritually, because enslaving ourselves spiritually can, as crazy as it sounds, it can look like a good thing. We see Paul referencing this in verse 10 “You are observing special days and months and seasons and years!”
The folks who came from Jerusalem were not telling the Galatians to do bad things. They were telling the Gentiles to observe things which had been observed for generations, things that had been observed in order to honor God. They told them that by observing these additional things, they would bring them closer to God.
Now I ask you, what is wrong with doing things that are designed to honor and respect God?
This is how we enslave ourselves spiritually.
See, we strive to be good people and being good people is a good thing, but is it ultimately what God wants from us in our lives?
All of us here in America strive to be good in one way or another. Even the Mafia have a personal code of what is a good man – and they strive to be that definition of a good man. Death row inmates have a personal understanding about what it means to be good prisoner. Street gangs have their idea of what it means to be a good person, and they strive to be that person. It may not be what you or I call good, and it may ignore what state and federal laws say it good, but in their eyes it is good. And you know what, there lies one of the problems with trying to be good, everyone has their own opinion about what is good.
Look, logically, if I can achieve being a good person without Christianity, then the goal of Christianity cannot be about being good, can it? Do you see what I am saying? You know, all religions the world over ask their followers to be good people so they can know God – with the exception of Christianity. It is scandalous. How do I know God in Christianity – through faith in the promise, and the promise is Jesus Christ. What does that have to do with being good?
Do I have to be intelligent? No.
Do I have to strong? No.
Do I have to be successful? No.
Do I have to be lovable, credible, or sociable? No. No. No.
Do I have to be good. No.
I can be a rotten selfish liar, with not one redemptive quality….well, except one, I have to have faith in the promise of Jesus Christ.
Look, here is the truth. I am a rotten person. When you hired me as pastor, you may have imagined that I was a good person. You may have imagined all kinds of wonderful things about me. Well you were mistaken, I am not a good man.
Furthermore I have come too realize, and don’t take this too hard, that the people who hired me as pastor are not good people either.
But here is the good news. And I cannot emphasis this enough, God is not looking for good people, and God is not looking to create good people either. See, the reason Paul hammers over and over again his point that we are people who come to know God by faith is, that what God wants isn’t good people, what God wants is faithful people.
What God wants, is faithful people.
That may not make sense to you at first. Probably because our society values good people very highly, and our society has imposed this value of good people on top of Christianity and so in our society Christians are by definition, good people. But you know, Jesus said (matt 19:17) “there is only One who is good” and let me tell you, the one who is good isn’t you, and it isn’t me, it is God alone.
We are not good people. We are not called to be good people. God is not interested in how good you are, God is interested in how faithful you are. Now that is a very different picture of life is it not?
Being faithful. Does that mean I am perfect or that I am somehow better?
Think of this in terms of relationships. Being good, requires adherence to rules. Being faithful requires love. Now being faithful doesn’t throw out the rules, and being faithful takes sin very seriously because in faith I do not want to hurt the person I am being faithful too. Scriptures talks about having a relationship with Jesus, because a relationship is about faith, not about being good.
Look, you know that we come to know God by faith, well then, if we come to know God by faith, why is it that we think we grow spiritually by works? Where did the good works come from? Do you see what I am saying? If we come to salvation by faith alone then it follows that we grow in Christ by faith also….not by works.
I don’t grow in my faith by being good, I grow in my faith by being faithful.
Paul knows that this is hard stuff to understand and in the next chapter he will address how we grow spiritually, how we come closer to Christ by faith, rather than works. We will be exploring that concept for the next two weeks, and it is great stuff. Very helpful, very eye opening. The good news for us in this next chapter is that we find out that God has given us all the tools to grow in our faith, by faith.
But, here, this morning, let us understand this: We are a spiritually free people. We come to Jesus Christ by faith, period. But we can become spiritually enslaved. For us in America, spiritual enslavement revolves around wanting to be good people. So we work at things to become spiritual, to grow in our faith, but these things, as good as they are, may enslave us, they may enslave us to the goal of being good – and being good is not what God desires from us, no God desires faithfulness. Now don’t worry, Paul will show us what being faithful means and how to live it, Paul calls it “life in the Spirit.”
May God in His richness bless us as we discern his ways. Amen
