Faith & False Gospels
Pastor Marq Toombs • March 28, 2021
Sermon Overview
GALATIANS 3:6–14
In this passage we see the famous phrase "the righteous shall live by faith." What does faith in Christ look like as seek to add things to the work of Jesus and not trust in him alone for our salvation?
Sermon Transcript
Grace and peace be with you. Thank you for your prayers, your texts, and your concern for our family. It means the world to us to know that we're connected to you and that our family has become a part of your families. And that we can walk through these seasons of grief and lamentation with all of you. I do confess that I'm a little worried that some of you might start thinking of me as a pale rider with death following after me. I assure you, I am not the Grim Reaper, it only seems that way in this season of life.
In the spirit of the Book of Galatians, where the apostle Paul opens the letter by sharing a little of his personal story and tying his story to the gospel, I would like to take a risk and do the same today.
Y2K was the winter of my discontent, a time marked by doubts and despair in my own life. At the turn of the millennium, my family and I were living near the Rocky Mountains in Northern Colorado. I had just put my ministry out of its misery for various reasons. The deepest reason was the most difficult to talk about - the hardest to put into words. It was deeply spiritual and it had to do with the gospel. After all my years of being in and around churches and with a few years of ministry under my belt, it struck me along the way that I did not really and truly know the gospel, much less believe the gospel.
I was preaching and teaching words like gospel, and cross, and love, and mercy, and grace, but I was not proclaiming Jesus. I was guilty of exchanging the propositions of hardcore legalistic religion for the propositions of a kinder and gentler moralistic religion. In other words, I was fighting works with works and I was losing the battle. I was preaching from the Bible as I was taught, but I was not preaching the good news of Christ from the Bible. I was guilty of promoting a form of Christianity, of preaching my denominational brand over against the good news of Jesus.
I was preaching something like this. Maybe you've heard the gospel presented in this way, but I was preaching something like Jesus, plus your desire, plus your commitment is the gospel. I meant well, but it occurred to me that I was dangerously close to preaching a different gospel, which was no gospel at all. And so by a weak and threadbare faith, I walked away from the ministry, feeling deeply confused, condemned, and conscience-stricken.
I didn't think that through all the way. I was a young man and I made some decisions in haste. And what that did is it left me with no job, and no home, no church, no income, and no future. Some Hispanic friends that I had pastored loaned us a little pink trailer house in Dacono, Colorado. They wanted to help us get on our feet. I think they wanted to make sure we weren't living on the street.
We stayed there for several months. And as I reflect back on that from time to time, I think those were some of the hardest and yet some of the happiest times of our life. Colorado was booming and everyone was hiring. Everyone needed help. And I thought, "No problem. I'll just go get a job."
No matter how hard I tried or how many places I applied to, I learned that no one wanted to hire a former minister. Who knows what they were thinking? Maybe like scandal is following this guy. But actually what I think is they knew that ministers have no transferable skills. And so why take on someone like that.
By contrast, my wife, Shannon, who is the real MVP of our family, went out and she was offered three or four jobs in the first half day that she even looked for a job. Insult to injury. And so against my own desire and effort, I became a stay-at-home dad. But I gotta tell you it felt really good in those months to just be a husband and a father, to be a neighbor and a seeker. I spent a lot of time in the yard with the kids. They played with garden snakes, played in the fort we built. I drank a lot of coffee, read the scriptures, and prayed that God would do one of two things: that he would reveal the true gospel to me and/or release me from ministry. After all, what good is a minister who doesn't know or believe the gospel?
This went on for several weeks, day after day, going out to the stump in the yard, reading, praying, seeking. One morning in late March, about this time of the year, in fact, I went out to the tree stump, coffee in one hand, Bible in the other. And I sat down to start reading Galatians, St. Paul's first letter to the churches he planted. I desperately wanted to know the gospel, but it seemed like I was just going in circles. I felt like I was trapped at a dead end. And I actually felt like just giving up. In fact, I think that was the day I thought, this is it - this is the last time I'm doing this. I'm going to quit. I came to Galatians 3 and something changed. Something happened that I didn't quite expect. As I read the scriptures, I entered into a kind of living conversation. And as a result, I felt that I saw someone that I hadn't seen before. And I heard someone that I hadn't quite heard before. And the Voice said,
"Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes, Jesus Christ was portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you - Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?"
And I took that reading of Galatians 3 personally, but I kept listening, kept reading, and kept looking.
"The righteous shall live by faith."
"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming accursed for us."
For us, for me. And the eyes of my heart were opened. And I heard the Spirit of Christ speaking this grace and truth into my life for what felt like the first time. Jesus was cursed for me so that I would be blessed by God. It almost seemed too good to be true. And the winter of my discontent turned into the spring of my discovery, the spring of my deliverance.
How can you be approved and accepted by God? Is there something you can do to improve your credit score with the Lord? Something you can think, say, or do to please him or to make him proud of you? Like so many of you, once upon a time, I was led to believe that if you wanted to be accepted and approved by God then you needed to do this: You needed to receive Jesus as your Savior, but you also needed to add certain things to the mix in order to do your part to help Jesus save you.
That false gospel is something like Jesus plus good morals. Don't drink, smoke, cuss, or chew, or go with girls who do. Jesus plus all the right doctrines. Or Jesus plus the right brand of church, or Jesus plus daily Bible reading, or Jesus plus mission work, or Jesus plus the Westminster confession of faith and catechisms, or Jesus plus a rosary.
Or how about this one? Jesus plus patriotism, baseball, hot dogs, Apple pie, and Chevrolet, and be sure to vote Republican. Jesus plus being an all-around nice guy and good old boy, Jesus plus [fill in the Blank]. That is the gospel that many people grow up hearing and it is no gospel at all. If someone tells you that you have to think speak and do more good things than bad things in order to tip the scales of justice in your favor, they are not preaching to you the gospel of grace at that point, but something else.
The Christians who received Paul's letter were going through the same kind of thing in their context. Teachers and preachers were going around telling them that if they really wanted to be acceptable and approved by God, if they really wanted to be saved, then they needed to act more super-religious than they were acting. And they needed to keep all sorts of laws and rituals and customs. And so for them the gospel of Jesus was twisted and perverted.
The false teachers were announcing the gospel that said "Salvation is by faith in Jesus, just like the apostle Paul said. But, (and this is where the trouble comes) — but it's Jesus plus other things."
And so, in their context, salvation by faith in Jesus plus getting circumcised, a little snip snap, snip snap. No pain, no gain. And a lot of people bought into it.
Salvation was by faith in Jesus plus keeping the 10 commandments. You know the drill. Do your best to climb that stairway to heaven. Work hard, do your part to earn your salvation.
Salvation by faith in Jesus plus strict Sabbath keeping. Make sure you make every effort and work extra hard not to do any work on that day of worship and rest, and be sure to keep your eye out for others who might be breaking that law as well.
By faith in Jesus plus special diets and fasting. Show others just how devout and religious you are by avoiding certain foods and drinks - even the ones that Jesus declared to be clean. This upset Paul so much that he wrote a letter back to the church that he had planted, because he could see that the gospel that he had proclaimed to them was in jeopardy of being perverted and twisted out of truth and grace. And so he writes a letter and here in Galatians 3 we see Paul using the scriptures to prove that no one can be accepted and approved by God by performing works of Law or by keeping certain rituals and customs.
Later on in the letter, he tells this Jesus plus circumcision trouble-making group to go all the way and emasculate themselves. Yes, emasculate. That should be a fun topic of conversation at lunch today. As you have it with your children, be sure to take notes and get back with me on what that meant.
The reason Paul is so upset is because this is a matter of life and death. It's a matter of blessing and cursing.
Think about how many of you have heard something along these lines. "Grace gets you started, works get you finished." Or "God has done his part, he's done all he's going to do, now it's up to you to do your part, to go the rest of the way." "God helps those who help themselves." Or how about this one? "God wipes your slate clean but it's up to you to keep it clean."
How many of you believe those things? How many of you have tried to live up to them in your life? And you feel the crushing weight of guilt because you can't do it.
Some of you work hard no matter what. And you hope that all of the good that you do outweighs all of the bad that you've done. You hope and pray that in the end you will have done enough to sneak past the guards and get into heaven. Maybe no one will notice you there.
A few years ago, Shannon and I were visiting one of her aunts in a nursing home. The aunt felt that she didn't have long to live. And she took my hand and said, "I just hope I've done enough to make it." Then we looked down at her and I said, "You haven't...None of us have. But Jesus has done enough for all of us. And that's all that matters."
Now I know that some of you feel tempted in your own life to throw up your hands and to quit out of frustration or give up in despair.
Life is hard. And sometimes we feel that the faith makes it even harder. But, as you struggle to make yourself acceptable and approved by God, let me assure you that I know about you what you know about yourself. And that is that you'll never be good enough to make yourself acceptable and approved by God. You're reminded again and again that you are a failure and a loser before God and man, and that's a more pointed way of saying, you're a sinner, a struggler.
You keep recommitting and you keep stumbling. You keep trying and you keep failing. You keep tripping. You keep struggling. You can't seem to get ahead. Very frustrated in life.
Some of you feel like the man from the Greek myth who was condemned by the gods for all eternity to do one thing over and over and over again. His task was to push a large Boulder up to the top of a hill, but it was not able to sit up there. And so the Boulder would roll down from the top of the hill to the bottom. And when it would roll down, he would have to go down the hill, grab the Boulder, and start pushing it back up all over again. In the Myth of Sisyphus, this man was condemned to a life of utter absurdity, vanity, and futility.
And some of you feel that way about the gospel of Jesus Christ. But here's why:
Because you confuse rock pushing with cross bearing. Jesus' yoke is easy, his burden is light. And if it's not easy and light to you, the problem is not with Jesus. The problem is with you. If it's not light and easy to you, if it doesn't grant you rest, the problem is not with the promises and the power of the gospel. The problem is with your understanding, your misunderstanding of the gospel. If it's not light and easy to you, it's because you, or someone like you, has been sneaking rocks into your backpack.
Some folks we know feel like they haven't really gone to church unless they leave feeling bad about themselves. Do you know people like that? You ever met them? Maybe you shaved one this morning as you looked in the mirror. It's like they want to be flogged and left for dead. They're gluttons for punishment. They go to church to get their ears boxed, their toes stepped on, their hearts crushed week after week. They go to hear about how utterly rotten and unworthy they are, again and again. The words cursed, damned, condemned, echoing, ringing in their heart, shaping their life. And why? Well, because the Bible says book chapter verse, I'm looking at it in Galatians 3, "Cursed is everyone who does not do everything written in the Book". Every. Single. Thing.
They haven't and they don't and they can't. So what do they do? They keep pushing that rock up the hill.
They act like the good news is just too good to be true. But where in the world is the gospel in all of that?
God help us. But gospel preachers should be proclaiming that you are blessed and you are pardoned and you are saved -- not cursed, not damned, not condemned. Why? On what basis? On the basis of God's faithful promise and God's faithful performance and God's faithful presence for you. For you!
The gospel is the ultimate message of comfort for sinners and strugglers and stumblers like us. And if you doubt that, let me urge you with all your heart to please hear the gospel again for the first time.
Today, if you hear Christ's voice, do not harden your hearts. But here's the good news for people who love bad news. "The righteous shall live by faith." What does that mean?
The righteous is a sinner who is approved and accepted by God. She has a right standing before God, because of everything that Jesus has done for her, not because of anything she has done for Jesus - or not done for Jesus. The accepted and approved sinner lives by assurance and confidence before the face of God. Why? Because there is a place for you in the heart of God.
The gospel is all about the Father's faithful promise. And it's about Jesus's faithful performance and the Spirit's faithful presence for sinners, for stumblers, for strugglers like you and like me. Your acceptance and approval before God are not based on anything you do or don't do. Your acceptance and approval are not based on anything other people think, say, or do about you, or for you, or to you, or even against you. Your acceptance and approval are based on everything the triune God has done for you in his promises, his performance, and his presence in your life. Let me show you what I mean.
Let's anchor this in the text of scripture. In Galatians 3:6-9, you learn something about the faithful promise of the Father. The Father promised our father Abraham, that all the nations of the world would be blessed through him, and that this was all of grace and none of works, because, if you know the story of our father Abraham, you know that he was too old to perform - and too weak to produce - what God promised. But God's power accomplished his purpose and fulfilled his promise in the life of Abraham.
The scripture says that Abraham believed God, he trusted him, he relied upon him. He trusted the Source of the promise and not merely the details and the substance of the promise. And that was counted to him as righteousness. He trusted God. He found God to be trustworthy. Abraham was accepted and approved by God because he trusted God against all odds, against all the circumstances of his life, against the conditions of his own body, against all odds.
Everything told him there's no reason to trust God. And yet he trusted God, and God did for him much better than he could do for himself. And so, ultimately, when Jesus came into the world through Abraham and through his descendants, God kept his promise. And so that all people groups on Earth received two things: the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The Father's faithful promise was fulfilled in Jesus's faithful performance. And we find that displayed for us in Galatians 3:10-13. The faithful performance of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, shakes out like this. Paul says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law.
And in saying that, Paul is not saying the Law is evil, and the Law is bad, the Law is wrong. No! The Law is good. It's God's word to us. But the Law condemns everyone who breaks it. It has no compassion. Or as the kids like to say, "It's got no chill". It points a critical finger at sinners and it tells them that they are not approved and not acceptable to God.
If you break one of God's Law, the Law says about you, you are not approved, you are condemned, you are cursed. And yet the gospel comes in and the gospel says, well, wait a minute, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law. And how did he do that?
Well, Paul opened this section by saying "Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified before your eyes". N.T. Wright points out that the phrase 'publicly portrayed' there in Greek has the idea of Paul showing up in Galatia, and he begins to sketch out or paint or draw pictures. He begins to do something to give these people a visible representation of what Jesus accomplished for them at the cross.
All the gory details of the pain, the blood, the sweat, and tears of the cross are proof positive that God makes himself vulnerable to the vulnerable. And to echo what we heard last week, in the cross, we see God's vulnerability meeting us in our vulnerability.
If you don't know what that looks and feels like, then I want to encourage you to come to our Tenebrae service this Friday night, to see and hear and feel for yourself what it means to have Christ publicly portrayed as crucified before your very eyes.
What it means is that Jesus paid the price for our salvation with his own life, that he was condemned so that we would be delivered, that he was cursed so that we would be blessed. And how is this possible? It's because he became a curse for us. "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree."
You know that many years ago my family and I lived in Oaxaca, Mexico, which is at the bottom of the squash - in the elbow, as they say. We were living there when the movie, The Passion of the Christ came out and everyone I knew saw that movie. One day I went down to pay my rent and I was in the office of the owner of the community. And I could tell she was grief-stricken, beside herself with thoughts. And she knew that I was a minister of the gospel living in her town. And she asked me if the movie was true. Actually, what she said is, "Was the crucifixion really that bad? Would anyone really be treated like that?" And my answer to her is the answer I would give to you if you were to ask me the same question. No. It was much worse. It was far worse. And for reasons that could never be captured in a movie. Jesus became a curse for us at the cross. And that means that he experienced all the darkness and all the desertion and all the death that we deserve because of our sins. It was at the cross that Jesus descended into the hell of God's wrath with our sins and for our sake.
And so I want to urge you, the next time you see a cross, or better yet, the next time you come to the Lord's table and take communion and proclaim Jesus's death - Remember this: that we who were once cursed are now blessed because he who is blessed was once cursed for our sake.
As Karl Barth put it, "Jesus was faithful to God in our place, in the place of those who previously were unfaithful to God. And though we are still marked by our own unfaithfulness, Jesus creates in the story of each person, the beginning of a new story, the story of a person who has become faithful to God."
God calls things that are not as though they were.
Jesus's faithful performance at the cross, brought forth the faithful presence of the Spirit.
Look at Galatians 3:14. Why was Jesus cursed and condemned for us? So that in Christ Jesus, all the nations, and families, and peoples of the world would be blessed by God. But what does it mean to be blessed by God, in context of Galatians 3 and in light of the gospel? It means two things. One is that God's acceptance and approval of us come to us by faith in Jesus Christ. The second thing is that God gives us the promised Holy Spirit.
In other words, God is not simply pleased to pardon us once and for all, although he is pleased to do that, but God is pleased to dwell with us. And his Spirit is present with us always. And that is why the Father has sent the Spirit of his Son Jesus into our hearts, crying out day and night without fail, "Abba, Father, Daddy, Poppy!" reminding us that we are the sons and daughters of God, reminding God the Father, as if he needed reminded, that we are the children of the living God. And it is the Spirit that keeps us united to God in communion with Christ and the Father.
But more than that, the Spirit works in us to transform us. He doesn't leave us as we are. He conforms us to the image of Jesus by producing in us and creating in us, the virtues of Christ that come out in the form of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control - conforming us to the image and likeness of the Lord Jesus. As one theologian put it, "The reality of Christian existence is to be explained by the Spirit as the power of participation." (B. Myters)
We don't merely passively receive the grace of God. We actively participate in the life of God with the grace that we have received. And this is why Paul says to us, "Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit."
All these blessings come to you through faith, not through works. They are God's gifts to you, not the wages that you have earned.
"The righteous shall live by faith."
And if I could steal one more minute of your time, I want you to look at that word 'live' again. Don't pass it over. Don't gloss it over. The Law is about dying. The gospel is about living. The Spirit gives life, the letter kills. The gospel is not about dying, but living in the Father's faithful promise and Jesus's faithful performance and the Spirit's faithful presence.
How can you be accepted and approved by God? Only by the gracious work of the faithfulness of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
"Above the rise and fall of the waves of history, in spite of human unfaithfulness, yes, in this unfaithfulness itself, there remains the faithfulness of God." (Barth) He was faithful even if we are not faithful.
The last thing I want to say is this: If Jesus Christ crucified is good enough for God, and if he is enough to please God, if he is enough to make you acceptable and approved by God, then Grace help you, he is enough for you.
And there's nothing you need to add to his work. There's nothing you can take away from his work. He's done it all for you because he loves you.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Let us pray.
