Truth Positive
(Gal. 3:1-5)
May 31, 2009
Paul continues the defensive argument of the gospel message to the Galatians. Here in Chapter 3, Paul’s reaction is still of bewilderment why they would leave the truth of the Gospel for the Judaizers’ false teachings of religious works. Today we’ll look at how Paul deals with their abandonment of the truth by him asking key rhetorical questions to make them remember the truths he had taught them.
I. Crystal Clear Picture of Christ (Gal 3:1 - “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified?")
A. “O foolish Galatians”- Paul begins speaking to the Galatians with a strong statement, “ You foolish Galatians”, it sounds as if he is claiming these believers have a mental deficit of some sort, but that is not the case. The problem was not a mental deficiency but a mental laziness, they had been careless with the truth of the Word of God. They failed to test these teachers with God’s Word. Paul wasn’t calling them stupid, he was letting them know that they were not applying the true Gospel teaching they had received from him, that they had stopped even believing it, that’s why they had fallen for the Judaizers’ lies. So, the problem was not just mental, it was spiritual. It created in them a lack of faith and severely hindered their judgment in regards to God’s truth. A good example of this is the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, when the resurrected Christ walked with them, they did not know who He was, and because of their lack of faith and knowledge about Him in the scriptures and He began to explain the scriptures about him- Lk. 24:25-27- “Then He said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! "Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?" And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” Although they had spent three years with Him, they failed to understand that Christ had to die for their sins and rise from the dead. Jesus used the same word for foolish in Greek that Paul used for mental carelessness and laziness. If they had sufficiently studied and believed the prophecies in scripture they would known that Christ’s death was not the end, that He would rise again from the dead. They believed the modern and popular teachings of some rabbis and not the truths of the word of God. It seems that the popular false teachings of the Judaizers were also taken for face value instead of believing God’s word. They had so foolishly fallen for the false teachings of the Judaizers’ legalism that they quit believing and utilizing the Gospel truths that Paul had faithfully taught them. These were Christians that had failed in staying faithful to and applying in their lives God’s Word of Truth. They willfully and sinfully neglected these God-given resources found in God’s Word and were foolishly caught into their web of lies.
B. “Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified?”- Paul continues with the questioning by asking, “who has lured you away from the foundational truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?”. Bewitch here gives the idea of being lead away by flattery or emotional persuasion. What it means is that they were enticed by the feeling of fleshly pleasing religious works righteousness. They ‘felt’ there was something else besides faith alone in Christ. They ‘felt’ that something was missing and they had to add to their salvation to make it complete, that faith alone was not enough. False religious works always appeal directly to the flesh and want you to forsake using your mind to accurately handle the Word of Truth, “2 Tim. 2:15 - “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth”. What was the truth they were “bewitched” from? The truth was of the Person and work of Jesus Christ, which means that faith alone in the fact that only Jesus Christ can save us and that He saved us through the death on the cross and resurrection from the dead. That’s the truth of the gospel and Paul is saying to them, “remember, Christ was clearly and truthfully preached and taught to you and salvation was clearly seen as being accomplished for us by Christ alone”. This tells us they were faithfully taught the word of God by Paul and the powerful gospel of Jesus Christ was believed, received, and by faith salvation was wrought out in their hearts by the Holy Spirit of God. Instead of residing and abiding and staying in that glorious truth they chose to believe a lie. One thing I learned from my instructor in the study of Cults is that it is always easier to believe a lie than the truth. This lie caused them to deny the absolute saving power of Jesus Christ and it dishonored His atoning death on the cross. It is always the truth of the Cross that “sets us free”.
II. Faith Alone (Gal. 3:2-4 - “This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? Have you suffered so many things in vain; if indeed it was in vain?") - Here Paul asks some more rhetorical questions. These were questions they should have asked of themselves from the beginning these false teachers began to assert themselves into this body of believers. To answer the first question, to receive the Spirit of God you must be saved by faith in Christ (Acts 2:38 - “Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”). We are indwelt by the Holy Spirit when we receive Christ by faith. There are many so-called Christian groups who claim that salvation is earned by religious works and faith like those who believe in baptismal regeneration. That means they falsely believe that one is saved or “regenerated” only when one is baptized (hard-line Churches of Christ, Catholics, Oneness cults [UPC, Apostolic] etc.). But the false teachers ignore more than 60 times in the New Testament where it explicitly states that our eternal salvation in Christ is through faith and/or repentance alone with no mention of water baptism or any other religious works associated. Well, Paul goes on to say, you have begun by the truth of Gospel, you were saved because of the truth of the Gospel, are you now believing that it is by your legalistic works, by your own effort, you are now trying to keep yourselves saved? They had begun in the truth and the joy of grace but now are grudgingly trying to maintain their salvation. They went from freedom to bondage. If we cannot save ourselves then we cannot keep ourselves saved.
III. Power Encounter (Gal. 3:5- “Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?”) - Paul was appealing not only from a standpoint of the scriptural revelation of Gospel truth but he was also appealing to the genuine experience of the gospel of grace. The greatest miracle, the greatest demonstration of the power of God ever seen is salvation of a sinful man. Paul was saying to them, if you remember the day your were saved by putting your faith in Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, you’ll remember it was not done by you being baptized, or you joining a church, or receiving communion, or any kind of good deeds or religious works. It was done by the power of God alone, through the Person and work of Jesus Christ alone, and through faith alone in Christ alone. It was because you heard the powerful Gospel message, the Spirit of God convicted your heart, and your were given the saving faith needed to receive Christ as Lord (Rom. 10:17- So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God) and not the human works righteousness that was powerless to save you from sin (2 Tim. 3:5 - “…having a form of godliness but denying its power").
The power of the Gospel is found in the powerful work of salvation in our powerful Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel is “the power of God unto salvation” and it is found only through faith in Christ alone.
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