The Law Of Christ: Sowing Grace, Reaping Life

July 6, 2025 Sermon - Galatians l 6:1-16 - The Law of Christ: Sowing Grace, Reaping Life”

When you hear the word law, what comes to mind? Maybe it’s a courtroom drama, a flashing red-and-blue light in your rearview mirror, or that one time you tried to talk your way out of a parking ticket.

For some of us, law feels like a list of rules—external, rigid, and maybe even a little intimidating. For others, it’s the structure that keeps society from unraveling.

But what if I told you that in the kingdom of God, law doesn’t start with rules—it starts with relationship?

Today, we’re going to explore something called the law of Christ.

And spoiler alert: it’s not about legal codes or loopholes. It’s about a governing principle that’s not written on stone tablets, but on hearts.

It’s a law that doesn’t just tell us what not to do—it shows us how to live.

So if you’ve ever felt weighed down by religion, or confused by what it means to be a Christian and to follow Jesus, take a deep breath. This isn’t about adding burdens—it’s about lifting them.

Let’s dive in to our passage today. We're going to do a line by line study of passage:

6 Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.

What is sin? It is missing the mark. Like shooting an arrow at a target and somehow hitting your neighbor’s barbecue. Sin isn’t just a little off—it’s “GPS said turn left” and you drove into a lake. It’s aiming for love, peace, and joy… and landing squarely on rage, envy, and that third donut you swore you wouldn’t eat.

In short: sin is spiritual bad aim. How do we sin? By missing the mark you were designed for.

You were created to live free; you were born again to live as a new creation in Christ, unshackled by the sin that so easily besets us.

Sin is any action that offends God. In short: sin is when we ACT like we know better than the Creator who invented galaxies...and still somehow trip over our own shoelaces.

And it is not just actions, because what we do starts with our heads.

It’s our thought life, in our imaginations. Some say that the Old Testament law is strict in condemning things like the act of adultery. But Jesus said: Matthew 5:27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

You could say that in the Old Testament the Law sought to govern and control and contain behaviours from the outside - the things that we do that offend God identified and restricted by the Torah. The motivating factor here is fear.

In the New Testament, the law of Christ instead seeks to transform us from the inside out, so that we are not just prevented from doing evil because of the fear of the consequences of it - we learn to love doing good as a way to please God and as our expression of love and devotion to God.

This was God’s intention all along.

This is prophesied in the OT prophet Jeremiah 31:33: “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

Even earlier in Deuteronomy 30:6 it says: “The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.”

Ezekiel 36:26–27 says: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

So this theme of internal transformation by God, leading to heartfelt obedience, is clearly intended in the OT.

God by His Spirit will in the future initiate inner change to empower our obedience, not just regulate our behavior externally.

You could say that the OT Law was a kind of prison that held us in place until the Lord Jesus Christ was to come.

Kind of like spiritual house arrest—with ankle monitor included. It didn’t set you free, it just kept you from completely torching the place until Jesus arrived and we could place our faith in Him, Who alone fulfilled all the requirements of the Law.

Galatians 3:23 Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. 24 So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. 25 Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.