We Need His Grace

It’s December 8, so, whether or not you like it or have taken appropriate action, we are now in the Christmas season which I understand to be a season of joy and peace and hope and love.

I can imagine that in most of your homes the Christmas lights are neatly hung and the fireplace is warmly glowing each night as your entire family sits around the table each night for a peaceful, uplifting, and delicious dinner. Children happily share what they learned and enjoyed that day, while Mom and Dad contribute their own insights.

Once dinner is over, the kids put their dishes in the sink while Dad goes to get the family Bible for the evening devotion, which, I imagine, is everyone’s favorite part of the day.

The family sits quietly, eagerly, and attentively as God’s word is read. And the sweetness of Scripture is accompanied by the sweet aroma of cookies baking. After the Bible reading and the lesson, the family sings a hymn together, and then everyone takes turns confessing sin and expressing how they intend to apply that evening’s lesson.

Once that has ended, I can imagine your family enjoying freshly baked cookies, and there’s always that funny moment when nobody wants to be the first to get one, and nobody wants to grab the largest cookie. Everybody keeps saying, “No, you pick first.”

But eventually every has a cookie, and then the kids dutifully head off to prepare everything they need for the next, then they shower, brush their teeth, and change into pajamas. Meanwhile, Dad washed the dishes. Then he dries them and puts them all away.

Mom and Dad kiss the kids good night, and the children promptly fall asleep all snug in their beds while Mom and Dad go off to make their own preparations for the following day, and it all ends with a warm, loving embrace as they, too, fall asleep in their bed.

Does that sound like an accurate description of an average night in your home? Is your family living up to the Christmas magic?

We all have some image of an ideal Christmas and an ideal family, but, in reality, none of us live up to it. That’s part of the irony and the frustration of the Christmas season. It’s labelled as a season of joy, but a lot of people don’t have joy because the season, along with the rest of life, comes with tremendous pressure and stress.

You might feel burdened or overwhelmed, or totally inadequate. You might have a distinct awareness of the problems in your relationship with Christ and in your own relationship with others. You might even feel hopeless, like things will never get any better?

Do you know how to deal with that? Do you know the hope that God offers us in His word?

The Apostle Paul understood that every church he was connected with had its own set of problems. Some had more severe problems than others, but no church was perfect. No church lived up to the ideal.

What is true about your own family is also true for the family of God. And if we can identify the problems and start working toward a solution in the church, we can also do the same for our own homes and in our own lives.

Our families are messy and sinful. And so is our church. There are rebellious hearts. There are broken and strained relationships. There are frustrations and flaws and friction. But God shows us how to move forward.

One of the churches Paul ministered to that was more characterized by its problems than its blessings was the church of the Galatians. I’d like you to turn there with me. Turn to Galatians chapter 1, verse 6. Galatians chapter 1, verse 6. It’s the beginning of the main body of the letter.

Listen to Paul’s tone regarding how serious the situation is for this church. Galatians 1:6—I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

Spiritually and eternally speaking, this church is on the brink of catastrophe. They are abandoning Christ. They are turning toward a false message. This is a church about to take the off-ramp to eternal judgment in hell.

This morning, I want to help you understand the two major threats this church was facing, and then I want to talk about how Paul intended to confront that. The two major threats to the Galatians are the same threats to our own Christian lives, and to our own families. Those threats are, number one, legalism, and, number two, lawlessness. Legalism and lawlessness.

Legalism, as the term implies, is connected to God’s law. Legalism is the belief that there is some outward or external act or pattern of behavior that must happen in order to gain or maintain salvation. You need to perform some kind of work either to gain or to maintain your salvation. That’s legalism. It is an elevation of God’s law. It’s a form of adding works to salvation, and it is a denial that salvation comes by grace alone through faith alone.

Legalism is not the same as faithful obedience, or even as tradition. If you have built in habits or patterns into your Christian life, that’s not necessarily legalism. Legalism is when believe that those things are absolutely necessary to be saved or to stay saved.

The second danger to churches and to Christians is lawlessness. Legalism is adding works to salvation. Lawlessness is taking works away from salvation. It is a disregard for God’s law.

If works don’t save you, then why should we obey God? Well, we obey Him because He’s God and because we love Him. The works don’t save us, but if we have been genuinely saved, we’ve also been transformed. So, if there’s no transformation, and if there’s no visible desire or effort to honor Christ, it means that a person isn’t actually saved, even though they say and think they believe in Jesus.

If you think that faith plus works leads to salvation, that’s legalism. But if you think that faith alone produces salvation, with nothing else being part of the question, that’s lawlessness. The biblical formula, to put it that way, is that faith alone will produce salvation plus works. As many have said before, the works of righteousness are the fruit of salvation, not the root.

How would legalism and lawlessness cause problems in a church or in a Christian’s life? Let’s start with legalism. If someone believes that some external works are necessary to be saved, they will begin to either elevate themselves over others, or they will feel burdened by some standard they have not attained. Legalism produces jealousy, division, and despair.

On the other hand, if someone believes that it’s simply enough to claim to believe in Jesus, without any change in his life, he is going to be self-deceived, and he is going to corrupt the purity and the testimony of Jesus Christ. It’s a life that won’t have any power for God. It’s a life that goes off on it own direction but isn’t truly surrendered to the Lord Jesus. And it will create even more false converts.

Some people have called it “easy belief-ism.” They say, “Just believe in Jesus, and that’s all you need.” There’s no call to repentance, which is a vital part of the gospel of Jesus and of a life that serves Christ’s purposes.

The message of legalism, and the message of lawlessness were the two great dangers for the Galatian church, and that is what Paul focuses on addressing in his letter to the church.

In chapters 1 and 2, Paul talks about his own credentials as a true apostle of Jesus Christ. Then, in chapters 3 and 4, he explains that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone. No one is going to be justified, no one is going to be declared righteous by God on the basis of their obedience to the Law. The law condemns us, but salvation comes through the grace and the promise of God. Chapters 3 and 4 are Paul arguing against the legalism that had crept into the church. He talks about our freedom in Christ.

Now, after that explanation, someone might conclude that since faith is what matters, let’s just believe in Jesus and live however we want. That would be the response of lawlessness. And so Paul continues by saying that the freedom we have in Christ is not a freedom to do whatever we want; it’s a freedom from the penalty and power of sin. It’s a freedom to live for the glory of God. Chapters 5 and 6 are Paul’s response to lawlessness.

Paul’s instruction is that Christians need to walk by the Spirit. They need to keep fighting against the flesh, not giving themselves over to it. Those whose lives are characterized by the works of the flesh will not enter the kingdom of God. But those who belong to God will be marked by the fruit of the Spirit. There will be love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and gentleness and self-control. That’s what we need to be working toward in our lives, and that’s what the Spirit of God will produce.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians reminds us that in order to guard ourselves from legalism and lawlessness, and in order to undo the damage they’ve already caused, we need biblical instruction and faithful exhortation. This is what Paul did. He taught them the truth, and he exhorted them in the truth.

But over and above those two human factors, there is something divine that Paul knew was necessary. And this what I’ll be focusing on in the rest of our time.

If you’ve been waiting around for me to get to the sermon, here it is. The rest was all introduction.

In the body of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, I couldn’t find a single prayer. But we do find one brief prayer in the introduction of the letter, and one even shorter prayer at the very end. Those are the only prayers I could find.

These prayers are reminders of simple, yet foundational truths. This is what we need from God to fix the problems we’re going through or caught up in. This is where it all begins.

Look with me at Galatians chapter 1, verses 3-5. Paul has nothing good to say about the Galatian church. He has no praise for them, but he does have this prayer. Galatians 1:3-5—Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, [4] who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, [5] to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Now jump with me to the final verse of the book. Galatians chapter 6, verse 18. Galatians 6:18. Here’s how Paul concludes—The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.

Both Paul’s “hello-prayer” and his “goodbye-prayer” make a reference to grace. Maybe you noticed that already. Paul’s desire and prayer for this church was that they have, and understand, the grace of God.

What is grace? Biblically, the word “grace” comes from the verb “to rejoice.” Grace is tied to joy and pleasure and delight because that’s what it produces. The grace of God toward you is something He does for your good and for your joy. It’s not something we earn. It’s something He gives. Grace is an undeserved blessing. Every single one of you should want the grace of God in your life because He is the only One who can truly bless you and give you joy.

Paul’s emphasis on grace in his prayers helps us understand the real problem with the Galatian churches. They don’t truly understand grace. Legalism and lawlessness are perversions of God’s grace.

Legalism turns salvation into something you can earn, which means that’s it’s no longer a gift. It’s not by grace. It’s not an undeserved blessing.

Lawlessness, on the other hand, cheapens and weakens the grace of God. Lawlessness says that God saves from sin, but denies that His grace will actually transform our hearts and our desires. Lawlessness is cheap grace. It’s incomplete grace. It’s powerless grace.

When you and I truly receive the grace of God, what is the result? Go back to Paul’s opening prayer in chapter 1, verse 3. Again, what does Paul want for them? He wants grace, and he wants peace.

When we truly receive and understand God’s grace, the result is peace. There is a legal peace between us and God. We are reconciled to Him eternally. We are made His children. But there’s also an experiential peace. We feel at peace with God and with one another. Church and marriage and family is no longer a competition. We don’t need to be fighting. We don’t have to be trying to prove anything. We have peace by the grace of God.

And what is that grace? It’s the grace that we focus on at Christmas. It’s the grace we should be focusing on every single day. It’s the grace of our heavenly Father through the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus has given us infinite grace.

Look with me at verse 4. This is Paul unpacking what Christ has done. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve heard this a thousand times before; we need to go back to it every, single day.

Verse 4—[Jesus] gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father

You and I deserve to be judged forever in hell because of our sin. That’s where our life was heading. That was the result of our own decisions and desires. You were going to die physically, and then face eternal spiritual death by being separated from the blessed presence of God. There would only be His judgment and wrath.

But Jesus, the perfect Son of God, stepped in to take our place. Jesus came to rescue sinners like you by taking upon Himself the punishment that sin deserved. He gave Himself for our sins to deliver us from the judgment of God coming upon this world.

He didn’t do this as a counter to God’s plan. It wasn’t as if God wanted to destroy the world, and Jesus said, “No. I’ll save some of them. Don’t do it.” That’s not what happened. The end of verse 4 says, Jesus died on the cross under the wrath of His Father according to the will of our heavenly Father. Jesus came to fulfill God’s eternal plan of salvation.

He died and He rose again to prove the victory He has over sin and death and judgment. Jesus died to give us peace with God. And in that peace, and in the transformation He gives by His Spirit, we can also have peace with one another.

In chapter 6 of Galatians, Paul talks about people biting and devouring another. He’s using those words figuratively, and it’s a graphic image. It’s like a church full of piranhas in a feeding frenzy.

Maybe that’s how your home feels sometimes. Maybe that’s how your marriage feels right now. Yes, you need biblical instruction, and, yes, you need faithful exhortation from a brother or sister in the Lord. But in all of that, what you need is the grace of God in Jesus Christ that can bring true peace.

What churches and marriages and homes need most is not a list of tips and tricks to avoid conflict. They need the grace and the peace of God. And that starts with you embracing the gospel of Christ. This applies to all of us.

If you’re not a Christian, embracing the gospel means surrendering your life to Jesus. You need to go to God in humble prayer and call out for salvation. Beg Him for mercy on the basis of the grace of Jesus Christ. God commands you to do that.

But if you’re already a Christian, that command doesn’t go away. You and I need to embrace the gospel every day. Nobody owes us anything. What we deserve is judgment. But the Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself for our sins to rescue us forever.

And in meditating on that, what’s our response going to be? It should be to show grace and mercy to others. Our response should be to serve God with all that we are.

The grace of Jesus Christ, the gift of salvation, is for the glory of God forever and ever. That’s what verse 5 says. We live for Him now, not for ourselves. The grace of God saves us, but it also teaches us and empowers us for the work God wants us to do.

You and I are going to fail in that. Sometimes, we’ll fail for just a short time. Sometimes, it could even be for a longer season. But even in our failures or our indifference, we can repent and go to God, because He is a God of grace.

Paul’s short prayers for the Galatians, even though the church seemed like it was about to be lost, are a reminder of the grace of Christ and the restoration He can bring. Paul has some stern words for this church, but they are fueled by the hope that restoration will come, if they respond correctly. They are not too far gone for the grace of Christ.

God can turn a church around, and God can turn a life around. God can turn a marriage around. It probably won’t happen all at once from a human perspective, but His Spirit wants to work in and through us, if we will surrender to Christ.

Speaking of Jesus the Messiah, Isaiah 42 says: a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.

Even when our faith and our hope and our love seems to be barely hanging on, Jesus doesn’t cut us loose, and neither should any church.

None of us is ideal; we should all know that. Life is a mess. Church is a mess. There’s sin. There’s hypocrisy. There’s laziness and indifference. There’s isolation.

But the grace of God in Jesus Christ can bring genuine restoration and true peace.

Let’s pray for this grace to show itself in our own lives, and in the lives of those around us, for the glory of our heavenly Father.