SERIES SUMMARY
As strange as it is, from the earliest days, the church struggled with understanding the Gospel—what the gospel is and how the gospel is lived out in daily life. In Paul’s day, there was a group called the Judaizers who taught that for Gentiles to become Christians, they first had to become Jews. It wasn’t enough to simply put your faith in Jesus; it was faith plus adherence to the Mosaic Law. However, the Good News of the gospel is that we are made right with God by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Anytime you add “plus anything,” you destroy the gospel. Galatians, “the letter that saved the church,” is all about clarifying the gospel and calling us to abandon any form of rule-based Christianity. It’s about how to live in and live out grace by the power of the Spirit. It’s about bearing the fruit of relating well to people so that we reflect the character of God in any circumstance.
SERMON SUMMARY
The way we became Christians is the same way we live as Christians—by faith in what Jesus has done for us on the cross and by faith in what Jesus has done in us by giving us His Spirit. Life-change, the process of growing to be more and more like Jesus, comes as the Spirit works in us from the inside out, not by our striving to complete ourselves through will-power and behavior modification.
SERMON SCREENSHOTS & KEY POINTS
Every serious follower of Jesus wrestles from time to time with the question: How do I grow in my relationship with God? How do I make progress in the Christian life? If it’s not by trying harder to obey rules and practice principles, then how does life-change happen? By “life-change” I mean the process of becoming more and more like Jesus which is the goal of spiritual formation and Christian maturity. …We began to look at an answer to this question last time as we learned how, at the moment of faith, I come to God “just as I am,” and then God chooses to see me “just as Jesus is”! That became even more clear when we unpacked the profound truth found in Gal2:20. In this one verse, Paul tells us how he lives as a follower of Jesus. Basically, he says, “I no longer live the life I live, but now, by faith, I understand that Christ lives in me to live His life through me.” In 3;1-5, Paul develops that idea further through a series of rhetorical questions meant to get his Galatians friends to wake up to the fact that they are no longer living Gospel-motivated, Spirit-empowered lives. The connection between 2:20 and 3:1-5 is this: Christ living in me = the Spirit living in me. The Holy Spirit is God most personal to us. Paul wants them to see that: “We become Christians by faith alone in Christ alone and we “be” Christians by faith alone in Christ alone.” And, it’s the Holy Spirit that is the agent of our new life with God and our ongoing life with God.
It's important that we understand who the Holy Spirit is and the power that He brings to our lives. When you trust Christ as your Savior you get all the Holy Spirit you’ll ever need (cf Rom8:9; Titus 3:5; Gal4:6). It is not true, as some teach, that sometime after you’re “saved,” you can receive a “second blessing” of the “baptism of the Holy Spirit.” That teaching contradicts the truth of the passages listed above. Jesus + a second blessing of the Spirit is not the Gospel. Again, as 2Pet1:4 says, “God has given us everything we need for life and godly living.” And here in Gal3:2-3 we see that we received the Spirit when we began the Christian life; when we heard the Gospel, and responded in faith. Just as we, by faith, depend on what Jesus did for us by dying on the cross for us, we also, by faith, depend on what Jesus did for us in sending His Spirit to live inside us.
The problem with the Galatians was that they started off, rooted in the Gospel, and filled with the Spirit. But, because of the influence of the Judaizers, they were now trying to “perfect” themselves/make themselves “complete” by rule-keeping behavior modification (3:3). The primary reason for our failure to sense the power of the Spirit of God in our lives is directly linked to our attempts to save/complete/perfect ourselves by trying harder to do better. The whole point of these five verses is that we live the Christian life the same way we began the Christian life, and that is, by faith in Christ and by looking to the Spirit to make you more and more like Jesus who lives in you to live His life through you.
Here are the two main points to help us understand how Spirit-empowered life change works out in our daily lives. First, as the agent of life-change, the Holy Spirit keeps pointing us back to the Gospel, making the Gospel more and more personal to us. Second, as the agent of life-change, the Holy Spirit works to make us more and more like Jesus from the inside out. The life-long process of life change is the result of what the Spirit does in and through you, not what you try to do through will-power and behavior modification. Spirit-empowered life-change happens as we continually apply the Gospel to the problem areas of our lives, and as we keep looking to the Spirit to make us more like Jesus in our everyday lives.
*We are a church located in Greenville, South Carolina. Our vision is to see God transform us into a community of grace passionately pursuing life and mission with Jesus.