Are You Now Being Perfected by the Flesh?
Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Galatians 3:3
Galatians 3:1–22 – Book of Galatians
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost – August 13, 2023 (am)
Irony - “happening in the opposite way to what is expected”.
Paul writes of an ironic, and quite difficult situation at the end of Romans 9 when he says that Israel, who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness, did not succeed in reaching that law and that, Further, and in contrast, the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained a righteousness that is by faith (Rom. 9:30-31). He goes on to say that Israel has a zeal for God but is ignorant of the righteousness of God because they seek to establish their own righteousness, as if it were based on works, rather than pursuing it by faith.
Do you hear the irony? Something tragic has happened to Israel that is the exact opposite of the intended result. Possessing the law of our Creator, Israel believed that by pursuing their own righteousness through the law they would reach, or obtain, the righteousness of God. It makes sense, yes? A moral code, or rules to live by, were delivered to Israel, written by the hand of God, telling them how they were to live amongst the pagan nations, how they were to conduct themselves amongst heathen people. Surely by following these rules, they would find themselves forever included as part of the family of God. And yet somehow along the way, they missed the very thing they were after.
Even more ironic, as if Israel’s wasn’t enough, Paul writes that the Gentiles found the very thing Israel was after, and they found it via a means entirely separate from the law!
Do you hear the tragedy in these words? Do you feel the irony? As we gathered in this room several weeks ago and heard this passage preached my heart was gripped with this question - am I seeking to establish my own righteousness? Am I pursuing righteousness as if it were based on works?
My prayer is that God’s Word would be a help to us this morning, a help in both our understanding of the gospel and in convicting us of ways we might be pursuing a law that would lead to righteousness, rather than trusting in Christ, who, Paul writes in Romans, is the end of the law for righteousness to each one of us who believes.
After both Todd and Kipp chose Romans 9 during our thematic break from the expositional series, he said he’d leave it up to you all as to whether this fell into the category of ‘great minds think alike’, or lemmings following each other over a cliff. I never heard a conclusive reaction, and so I stand here this morning as either another great mind, or merely another lemming about to jump off a cliff.
Galatians 3
That said, we’re going to use Romans 9 as a springboard into the book of Galatians. Before we get into chapter 3, where we’ll focus this morning, a brief word on the situation in Galatia to give us some helpful backdrop. The churches in Galatia found themselves falling prey to the influence of the Judaizers. The Judaizers were individuals who, while acknowledging the work of Christ and the grace offered in His death and resurrection, held to the belief that following the law of Moses, particularly circumcision, was necessary for salvation. Theirs was a grace + works theology.
Having spent time with these churches and seeing the work of the Spirit amongst them, Paul is understandably angry at the reports he’s hearing about the influence of the Judaizers and comes out of the gates charging with strong words. He’s astonished at how quickly they are deserting…the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. The belief system they were facing was not merely a different shade of the same color but was a distortion of and a contradiction to the true gospel. Paul wishes that these “influencers” would be accursed.
Paul then uses some ink to remind these churches of his background and the source of the gospel he’s preaching. Paul writes how he was an exemplary and devoted religious person, as we might say it today. Paul was extremely zealous…for the traditions of [his] fathers. Yet, despite the road he was on, Paul recounts the revelation of Jesus Christ and the message of grace that was given to him. And this message, along with its many implications, wasn’t always easily trusted and followed, as is evidenced by the hypocrisy that Peter and many of the Jews with him showed towards the Gentiles in their midst, and this springs Paul into reminding these churches that justification is not by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. He writes that by works of the law no one will be justified. And at this point pens perhaps one of the most quoted verses in Galatians - I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. The love of Christ, and the giving of himself through his death, enable us to die to ourselves - stop living by our own means - and to put our faith and trust in Jesus, the Son of God.
So, it is with that ever-so-brief summary of the first two chapters of Galatians that we now land in chapter three. And please know - we are not aiming to cover this chapter like we might if we were working through Galatians, but rather, our aim is to get a broader grasp of what Paul’s saying and connect it back with Romans.
And as we read the first 22 verses, you’ll see an outline in your bulletin: four questions, three in the text followed by one that takes us into some reflection and our conclusion.
I. By Works or By Hearing? (1-6)
II. By the Law or by Promise? (7-18)
III. Why Then the Law? (19-22)
IV. Am I Being Perfected by the Flesh?
By Works or By Hearing? (1-6)
Paul picks up his harsh and direct tone by calling these Galatians foolish and asking who’s bewitched them! They are without understanding as those cast under a spell! He then points to their own experience as the first evidence of their foolishness: First, their very eyes saw the message of Jesus Christ crucified. The word publicly portrayed here, prographo, means literally “to write before”. Pro- “before”, grapho - “to write”. This was often used in the context of a public sign or a public proclamation. Thus, Paul is not saying these Galatians saw Jesus on the cross, but rather that the message of him crucified was delivered to their very eyes. They heard the gospel.
He then asks a series of rhetorical questions - Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?
We can almost hear the Galatians’, and likely our own, sheepish responses to these questions. And in our answers, the irony of our actions is exposed. These Galatians were born again believers - they’d received the Spirit through ears of faith. They’d begun this new life trusting in the work of Christ and His Spirit. They’d endured hardships and suffered for this gospel. They’d experienced miracle work in their midst. And yet, despite all of this, they were prone to believing a different gospel. A gospel that says the Spirit is received through obedience, that we are perfected, or completed at least in part, through our own efforts, and that the work of the Spirit comes through adherence to the law!
I picture the Galatians reading this and responding like a child who’s just been shown the folly of his actions and knows exactly what the answers are to his father’s questions. How foolish!
And notice to whom Paul connects the idea of hearing with faith–Abraham, the very one to whom the call to circumcision was given! And likely the one to whom the Judaizers were pointing, saying, “To be a son of Abraham, you must also be circumcised.” Even Abraham’s righteousness was credited to him due to his belief, or his faith. And so these Galatian Christians are not sons of Abraham due to their observance of circumcision, but due to their faith.
The power of Paul’s rhetorical questions lies in their clear answers, and I believe we need to hear them ourselves. For those of us who have trusted Christ, we can answer these questions like this - we have received the Spirit by hearing with faith; we started in the power of the Spirit and we must finish by the power of the Spirit; we have not persevered in this life and suffered many things in vain; and we have not seen God at work in our lives and amongst us due to our own obedience and observance of the law.
By the Law or By Promise? (7-18)
Paul now moves to defend the gospel with arguments from Scripture, keeping on the theme of Abraham’s lineage, the man the Jews pointed to as the father of their faith, and rightfully so.
It is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. Paul goes back to Genesis 12, saying that this very same gospel he’s preaching was preached to Abraham; this isn’t a new gospel. When God promised Abraham that all the nations would be blessed in you, God was giving the promise that men, women, and children from all kinds of peoples (the nations) would, like Abraham, have faith in the promise of God and, by that faith, like Abraham, be blessed. We’ll return to this promise to Abraham shortly, but for now Paul is stressing that it is those who follow the man of faith, Abraham, who are blessed along with Abraham.
The alternative is a reliance on works of the law and Paul moves on to quote, of all places, the law when he writes from Deuteronomy, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them,” and Habakkuk, “The righteous shall live by faith.” Paul cuts to the point - the law states that the one who can’t keep it all is under a curse and the righteous one won’t live by rule-following, or won’t live by obedience, but by faith. And thus, the law is not of faith.
Now hear the good news - according to the law, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. In ancient Israel, often the law breaker, after being killed, was put up on a pole or a tree, representing God’s curse on that individual for their breaking of the law. The good news is that Christ, the perfect law-abider, the sinless one, redeemed us from the curse of the law, how?, by becoming a curse for us. As he hung there on the cross, on that tree, he was the one rejected by God and under the curse of the law, so that all who trust in His work on their behalf will never face the rejection of God and the curse they deserve.[1] And so, Paul concludes, in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
We could put it like this - Christ, who perfectly followed the law, took on the curse for the one who broke the law, all of us, so that by putting our faith, or our trust, in Him, we might receive the promises of God, just like our father Abraham.
Paul now comes back to Genesis, citing God’s words to Abraham in chapter 15. And here he uncovers a misunderstanding in the promise to Abraham by the Jews. Paul writes that when the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring, it does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many [meaning, this wasn’t a biological promise, that all the physical descendants of Abraham would be blessed], but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who, Paul says, is Christ.
So, the promise given to father Abraham, that the childless man would become a great nation through whom all the nations would be blessed, was a promise that there would be a Son, from the line of Abraham, a Son in whom all who believe, from any nation, will be saved. This was the promise.
And the law? The law came 430 years later. 430 years after the promise given to Abraham. So, Paul rightly sums up - if the inheritance, the promise, comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. The inheritance, the blessing, cannot be both from law and promise - they are mutually exclusive.
Why then the law? (19-22)
If at this point, you’re asking, why then the law? you’re following Paul and asking a good question! One helpful translation translates verse 19 - It was given alongside the promise to show people their sins. But the law was designed to last only until the coming of the child who was promised (NLT). In essence, the law was given to show us our sin and our very need for the Promised One! The law, rightly understood, must drive us to the Son of Abraham, Jesus Christ.
This is what Paul’s getting at in vs. 21-22. The law is not contrary to the promises of God. It was not given in order to impart life (if so, then righteousness would…be by the law). Instead, it was given to imprison everything under sin SO THAT the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
One commentator helpfully observed, “Rightly understood, then, the Law prevents any attempt on man’s part to secure righteousness before God in any other way than…that promised to Abraham. There is no essential contradiction of the promise by the law, because, simply, the law is intended to serve the purposes of the promise, which has to do with justification by faith”. (Fung)
So, brothers and sisters, I confess to you that I’ve been gripped by the gospel recently, convicted of my own tendency towards, like the Galatians, being perfected by the flesh, relying on works, the things I do, to define my identify, to drive my feelings, and to merit the Lord’s favor. And I’m confident there are some in this room this morning who have either never trusted in Christ, or who have trusted, but are caught up in doing rather than in receiving and being.
Am I being perfected by the flesh?
So, I’d like to finish our time this morning asking the question, Am I being perfected by the flesh? Am I falling prey, like the Galatians, to thinking I need to do something in order to prove my worth or earn my stripes? My prayer is that by the end of our time this morning, we might all joyously affirm the good news of the gospel and echo the song lyrics, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.”
Why the pull towards works-based righteousness?
We can struggle with gifts.
Several years ago, Sara and I went out on a date. We were in a season of tight finances, having just been shown how little our spending patterns were matching our income. As any good steward would then do, we chose a restaurant for a location to which we had a gift card. Unfortunately for us, we failed to make reservations and were staring at an unreasonably long wait. So, we opted for a fast-foodish pizza place nearby. As we sat down to eat, a complete stranger came up to us and handed us a $20 gift card for the simple reason of wanting to be kind and seeing we were out on a date.
Guess how this made me feel? Appreciative, grateful, humbled… Nope. I was uncomfortable. How could we repay this person? Why would they give this to us? Do we look like we’re under a tight budget? What do we do with this gift?
Friends, we can be like this with our salvation. Instead of having the prideful response I had in receiving the gift card, our response to God’s grace must only be one of humble gratitude.
We can struggle with gifts, and we love to take credit whenever possible.
This past May, as the Los Angeles Lakers were steamrolling their way through the Western Conference Playoffs, two former members of the team, who’d been traded away with nearly a third of the season remaining, made the news when they declared that, should the Lakers win the NBA Championship, they wanted rings. Now, this analogy isn’t perfect, as these players were part of the team and one could argue they did make contributions, but I chuckled as I read the headlines - here are two players who want a piece of something to which they really don’t deserve any credit.
Are we that different? Don’t we often want the token, the emblem, that shows we did something, we accomplished something?
We can struggle with gifts, we love to take credit, and we operate in a tit-for-tat world.
During a recent family road trip, we listened to L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. There may be some spoilers here, but the book was first published in the US in 1900 and I believe 123 years has left each one of you without an excuse for not knowing the plot.
As Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion all approach the “wonderful” and “great” Wizard of Oz to make their requests for his help, I was struck by the ugliness in his answers. He says to Dorothy, after her request to send her back to Kansas, “You have no right to expect me to send you back to Kansas unless you do something for me in return. In this country everyone must pay for everything he gets. If you wish me to use my magic power to send you home again you must do something for me first. Help me and I will help you.”
My blood boiled a bit as we listened - what an ugly, selfish response this was! How unlike our heavenly Father! We don’t do something for Him to “earn” His help…and then it hit me: while we see the ugliness of this response, the irony is that we simultaneously want to operate this way when it comes to our salvation. We’d love to think of our being saved because God knew that we would be smarter, we would be more receptive to His gift, we would have a longer doctrinal statement, we would __________ and thus His grace, while certainly generous, is in part merited by what we’ve done.
We love the law because we can touch it, control it, choose our own destiny. When we view the law as a partial means to salvation, it enables us to diminish the gift, it enables us to “get our ring”, and it enables us to operate in a tit-for-tat, help-me-and-I’ll-help-you model.
The problem is that, as Paul says to the Galatians, a salvation that’s accomplished by anything in addition to grace, is a gospel contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel is Jesus Christ crucified. Jesus Christ hung on a tree. Jesus Christ bearing the curse and rejection of God. If there were any ounce of work we could do to justify ourselves or earn God’s favor, then Christ died for naught. If the law was given in order to give us the calculus, or the formula, for salvation, Christ didn’t need to come. The moment we move away from Christ crucified and its many, many implications, is the moment we lose the gospel. In fact, Paul will later write, in chapter 5, that the one who would be justified by the law is severed from Christ and has fallen away from grace.
But mustn’t we obey God’s law?
Those asking that question right now, I hear you! Obedience is certainly important, and I hope no one walks away this morning thinking otherwise. But let me stress two things:
1. We can pursue obedience as a source of salvation or we can obey as a response to salvation, and the difference is eternal.
An author I’ve come to appreciate has done a lot of work on the topic of habits, ordering our time and our days to enable fruitful living. He has a quote that’s stuck with me that I believe applies to obedience, just as it does to habits. When asked if having intentional habits is really just a form of legalism, he responds with this:
…if we were to try to pursue habits to earn God’s love, they would be [legalistic]. But when we’re so enamored with the love of God that we decide to order every bit of our lives accordingly—that’s simply responding to the beauty of our Savior. Habits before love is legalism. But love before habits is the logic of grace. - Justin Whitmel Earley
I think we could easily substitute the word ‘obedience’ for the word ‘habit’ here and conclude that when we obey in order to earn God’s love, we are pursuing, like Israel did, a justification that comes through the law. But, when obedience follows love, or, we could say when a relationship exists first, obedience, like habits, is the logical and appropriate response to God’s grace (cf. John 14:15). So we must ask ourselves - am I obeying in order to establish or secure something? Or am I obeying in order to respond to something that’s been done?
2. We can pursue obedience through our own strength (flesh) or pursue obedience through the power of the Spirit.
In this very same letter, Paul will conclude with a call to keep in step with the Spirit - namely, to be careful that our lives, our ongoing sanctification, are attuned to, bound by, and in sync with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. He warns that we can do many of the same things, but out of two different sources of strength - the flesh or the Spirit. God is not mocked, writes Paul, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. While this certainly applies to the carnal sins we might think of when we hear ‘sowing to our flesh’, I think this also applies to those who live a life sowing good deeds out of their own strength, or sowing them thinking God will surely be impressed with them, impressed with us, more than He is with other people. Sadly, like Israel, the end is corruption.
Signs I Might Be Attempting to Perfect Myself by the Flesh
I feel better about myself, or more confident of my salvation, on good days. Does your identity alter based on the type of day or week you find yourself in? Does your ‘spiritual performance’ dictate the surety of your salvation? Or is your identity so rooted in Christ’s love that you know you can’t do a single thing to make Him love you more and that even on your worst days He doesn’t love you less? Now of course, may we all grow in sanctification, but if we subtly confuse the order and think that our standing before God will be based on our progress, or that we’re somehow easier to love because of our progress, we’re aiming to be perfected by the flesh and not resting on His grace.
My confidence lies in what I’ve done rather than in what Christ did. If we’re honest with ourselves, we might find confidence in the fact that we’ve never _________, or that we have ________. Instead of viewing those things we’ve done (or not done) as pure expressions of His grace, we can quickly add those items to our resume, if you will. How easily our confidence can lie in our church attendance, our dress attire on a Sunday, the frequent flier miles we accrue serving week in and week out. All of these things can be good, but the moment they creep into the realm of merit, we’ve lost the gospel. Our salvation rests on the merit of Christ, and Christ alone. Those things can only be done in response to His grace, not as means to obtain His grace.
I’m always comparing myself with others, promoting or demoting myself in the process. My sense of accomplishment, or my sense of “being a good Christian”, increases as I see others around me who clearly were harder for Christ to save than I was. They were really the ones who needed to be saved. Or conversely, we see those who simply “have it all together” and are in a place that we “could never be” and we give up all hope. In both situations, our eyes are on works, others or our own, and not on Christ. A heart of comparison, a heart of envy, and a heart of pride are all born out of a work-based righteousness and are contrary to the gospel.
Finally, perhaps the most practical one, while I was saved by grace, my children will be saved through obeying my rules. If my children would just obey the kind, benevolent, and gracious laws I’ve put before them, if they would just be kind and courteous, if they would just remember what I’ve told them, they’ll be saved. It’s perhaps been in parenting that I’ve realized how little of the gospel I’ve truly grasped, as I am so prone to lean on the law for what only grace can do. Parents, having been saved by grace, will your children be saved by the law?
Irony - “happening in the opposite way to what is expected”. I believe the real irony may lie with those who have been saved by grace, but who now think they’ll be perfected by the flesh.
May our eyes be on Christ alone, trusting in His death and resurrection alone, and relying on His Spirit alone for strength.
NEXT SUNDAY: There Is a Remnant, Romans 11:1–10