MESSAGE FOR FEBRUARY 1, 2009 FROM GALATIANS 6:11-18

This week, we come to the end of our trek through Paul’s letter to the Galatians. This book teaches that our salvation is through Christ alone by faith alone and not through anything we could ever do to try to be acceptable to God. We have seen this truth repeatedly in Galatians as Paul refutes the false teaching of the Judaizers who, in Paul’s absence, had infiltrated the Galatians churches and worked to convince these Gentile believers that in order to be right with God, they must not only believe in Jesus, but also be circumcised. In other words, they must become Jews before they become Christians. Paul teaches that we are justified—made acceptable to God, by faith alone in Christ alone. Out of our justification—our new legal right standing before God, flows a transformed life that is increasingly marked by the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

This morning, we want to focus on the conclusion of this letter in verses 11-18. Unlike the conclusion of Paul’s other letters, in Galatians he gives a summary of his major arguments in this letter. He does that by highlighting a set of contrasts between the false teachers’ life and doctrine and his own life and doctrine. If we know anything from Galatians, we know that BOTH our life—how we live, AND our doctrine—what we believe, are crucial to being a follower of Christ. Paul tells Timothy in First Timothy 4:16. “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.” It’s not enough just to monitor yourself--your conduct and attitudes. You must also be vigilant over your doctrine—what you believe. As Paul concludes Galatians with the dramatic contrasts between himself and the false teachers, he gives us some very practical truth. First, he helps us tell the difference between false teachers and the real thing based on what they teach and how they live. Second, these contrasts help us see the difference between a false believer (or, at least a very immature one) and a mature believer in Christ, based on their life and their doctrine.

Paul does an interesting thing in this last section, not unlike what Jesus sometimes does in the gospels. As many of you know, when Jesus was about to say something of profound importance, he would often introduce it with the words, “Truly, truly I say to you…” That was the Ancient Near Eastern equivalent to writing something in bold print. Paul does much the same thing in 6:11 as he begins this last section of the letter. He says in verse 11, “See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.” Like many in his day, Paul dictated his letters to someone called an “amanuensis” but the final greeting, he always penned with his own hand. Here he begins to write long before the final greeting and he wrote using letters at least twice the size of what had been used up to that point. This is almost certainly because he was trying to underscore the importance of this final section. It’s his way of saying, “What I am about to say to you is of special importance—pay careful attention.”

He begins his contrast between himself and the false teachers by saying in verse 12 of the false teachers, “It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. ¹³For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. ¹⁴But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. ¹⁵For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. ¹⁶And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. ¹⁷From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. ¹⁸The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.”

Paul contrasts himself with these false teachers and the overriding truth he teaches about those who are false is: Those who are false are ultimately SELF-centered in their life and doctrine. To help us see their self-centeredness, we need to understand some of their context. The false teachers were Jews who had in some way believed that Jesus was their Savior. However, they were careful not to jeopardize their relationships with other non-believing Jews, particularly the Jewish leaders. They stayed away from teaching what Paul did--that Gentiles could come into a covenant relationship with God through Christ without being circumcised. As we have seen, Paul taught it was believing the message of the gospel alone that saves people and circumcision was irrelevant--Christ alone. That’s why the Jewish leaders hated him so and violently persecuted him. They saw him attacking what they considered the very heart of Judaism—the Law of God.

These Jewish false teachers who had misled the Galatians sought to preach the gospel of Christ, while at the same time keep on good terms with the other Jews who believed that a person must be circumcised in order to be rightly related to God. Their self-centered desire to stay on good terms with the Jews doomed both their doctrine and their life. Paul shows us two ways in which their self-centered lives were revealed. First, the false teachers were self-centered because they were motivated by self-preservation. We see this in verse 12 where Paul says, “It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.” By the Holy Spirit, Paul exposes the corrupt motives driving the false teachers. It wasn’t a simple difference in theology that separated Paul from the false teachers; it went much deeper than that. It was a different motive—it was a different heart. The false teachers were willing to change their message because their main goal wasn’t faithfulness to the message of the gospel, it was self-preservation—they wanted to avoid persecution. Many of their fellow Jews could evidently tolerate the fact that they believed in Jesus. But if you believed that Jesus’ cursed, criminal’s death on the cross enabled people to know God apart from the obeying the law—apart from circumcision—apart from being a Jew—then they got nasty.

The false teachers made sure their message wouldn’t get them into trouble with the Jews. It’s in that sense that they were, “making a good showing in the flesh” by teaching that Gentiles must become Jews before they can become followers of Christ. The false teachers altered the message of the gospel in order to conform to the wishes of their fellow Jews. Don’t misunderstand; they probably believed what they were teaching. They were self-deceived. They believed they were genuinely concerned about the salvation of these poor pagan Gentiles. They doubtless believed they were genuinely honoring Christ in some way—they were preaching Christ! What ultimately prevented them from believing and teaching the true gospel was that if they had done so, it would have brought them persecution. Those false teachers remind me of many of us—they remind me of me. They were fine with sharing those parts of the gospel that did not offend, but stopped short of giving the whole message because the whole message brought persecution.

Beloved, it’s no coincidence that the part of the gospel message that actually brings salvation to people is also the part that brings persecution. The false gospel of the Judaizers didn’t save anyone and the devil and this fallen world will let you preach a non-saving, false gospel till the cows come home. It’s the full-orbed Biblical gospel that is the power of salvation that will cause lost people to draw their swords and start hacking at you. If you tell someone you go to church—no problem. If you tell them you believe in Jesus—no problem. If you tell most people, THEY need to believe in Jesus—as long as you are ambiguous about what it means to believe in him—no problem. If you tell them Jesus has changed your life—no problem—good for you! None of those messages will save anyone and therefore they will find little opposition.

Where you will get resistance is when you start talking about Christ alone, by faith alone. If you tell someone that Christ is the only way to salvation--problem. If you tell someone that they need Jesus because they are a sinner at war with God and under his judgment--problem. If you tell someone that believing in Jesus means showing the kind of saving faith that involves repenting of their sin and an increasingly transformed life—problem. That’s when the persecution can begin because THAT’S the life changing, God-exalting message of the gospel. If you share that, you’ll eventually get persecuted in some way. And the reason so many of us don’t share that whole gospel is because, like the false teachers, we can be motivated by self-preservation—we don’t want to make people angry with us. We don’t want to lose treasured relationships. We don’t want to say anything that might compel our neighbor to have his kids stop playing with our kids—they’re friends. We must allow the Holy Spirit to use the self-centeredness of the false teachers to expose our own sin in this area.

Their self-centeredness is also seen in a second selfish motive Paul reveals in the last part of verse 13. He says of the false teachers, “…they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh.” As in verse 12, when Paul mentions “flesh” here, he is not talking about the flesh vs. Spirit kind of flesh. He is talking about literal flesh, specifically, Gentile foreskins. The false teachers were self-centered because they were motivated by self-promotion. They boasted in how many Gentiles they could compel to be circumcised. They were not content to simply pacify their fellow Jews by altering the message of the gospel, they wanted to go further and actually impress the Jews with how productive and fruitful their ministry was. This is not unlike the pastors who boast in how large their church has grown, or how large their budget is, or how many missionaries they have sent out, or how many pastors they have raised up from their fellowship—self-promotion.

Do you see at this point that even though their ministry was filled with teaching about God and the Law of God and was probably chocked full of citations from the word of God, at its heart, their ministry actually had nothing whatsoever to do with God? It was about them. The fact that they talked so much about God reveals, not their piety, but their wickedness. They were really all about themselves and looking good before their Jewish peers. That was their heart and that meant that their ministry was blasphemous--first, because they were lying about God, but also because they were actually using God and their ministry as a means to impress other people. Some people use their intellect to impress people; others use their appearance, others, their cleverness or their material wealth or possessions. The false teachers were using their ministry to impress others. God was just a means to an end for them. God wasn’t the end—the end was that other Jews would accept them and be impressed by them—that’s what ultimately mattered to them and their twisted doctrine flowed out of their self-centered lives.

Again, the false teachers were probably oblivious to this. They doubtless believed they were in the ministry out of their deep love for God and those poor, lost Gentiles. They were self-deceived. They were among those who will hear from Jesus—“…I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”[Matt. 7:23] Again, this judgment on the motives of the false teachers doesn’t just apply to the false teachers; it can easily apply to people who minister today whether we minister for pay or not. Our pride tempts us to want to be impressive to others. We all battle that self-centered compulsion. Ministry can be used as a means to impress others under the guise of humbly serving God. We must all pray that God would expose whatever self-centeredness we have in our ministries and deal with it through the gospel.

The false teacher’s self-centered lives were consistent with their self-centered doctrine. Their doctrine was marked by the fact that they believed in self-justification through works of the Law like circumcision. We see this in verse 13. Paul writes, “For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law…” The implication is--they believed that they could be justified by God by obeying the law. That’s self-justification because ultimately they believed their performance of the law justified them or made them acceptable to God. They were circumcised law-keepers and therefore in good standing with God. Don’t miss the relationship between their lives, which were motivated by self-preservation and self-promotion, and their doctrine which was self-justification. There is an iron-clad connection between the two. The degree to which we are self-centered in our life, is the degree to which our doctrine of salvation is self-centered. I’m not talking about the truth that is in our heads, but the truth that has made it into our hearts. If you struggle with your life being all about you, that’s God’s merciful way of revealing to you that you either don’t have the real gospel, or you are not very much influenced by it. It hasn’t penetrated very deeply into your heart, because as we’ll see in Paul—a person who had been saturated with the radically God-centered gospel will have a radically God-centered life.

We’ve seen the facts about those who are false; now let’s discover what Paul’s life and doctrine teach us about those who are true. Those who are true are increasingly GOD-centered in their life and doctrine. Let’s look first at Paul’s God-centered life. In verse 14, he begins contrasting himself with the false teachers and says, “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…” That word translated “boast” is difficult to translate in one word. It means to glory in, to exult in. Those like Paul who are true are God-centered and not self-centered because they increasingly glory not in themselves, but only in the cross of Christ. The false teachers gloried in themselves—Paul gloried in the cross for at least two reasons. First, because the cross had accomplished for Paul everything that ultimately mattered to him. The cross had cleansed him from his wretched, rebellious sin by the blood of Jesus who died on it. The cross had redeemed him out of the self-deception of a self-centered life and religion. The cross and the atoning death it represents enabled him to possess the perfect righteousness of God for which he had so long strived in futility as a Pharisee. The cross had enabled him to know God personally as an adopted son of God—that’s better than David or Moses or Abraham. The cross had given him power over sin, death and the grave. The cross had given him a certain hope for eternal life—sealed him with the Spirit and guaranteed him an inheritance in glory. Those are the things that mattered to Paul most and the cross accomplished all of them.

Paul was God-centered and not self-centered because everything he valued most of all had been given him by God without any contribution from himself. How can you boast in yourself if everything you value is all from God and none from yourself? “What do you have that you have not received? And if you received it, how can you boast as though you had not?”[1cor4:7] The cross, more than anything in the universe drains us of our pride because God did it ALL—we contributed nothing! Yet, we receive the manifold blessings from it that abound from here to eternity. When the Spirit of God makes that real to you—when you truly get that—in those moments, boasting, glorying in yourself simply does not occur to you. Why should it—it’s not about YOU!—It’s about God!

A second reason Paul gloried in the cross is in the second half of verse 14 where Paul explains how the cross did its sanctifying work in him. He says of the cross, “by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” This hearkens back to 2:19 where Paul said, “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ.” Because Paul had been crucified with Christ, that meant separation from this world. When we think about the cross, we should think of separation. When we are united with Christ in his death on the cross, that separates us from the penalty of sin. The cross separates us from the power of sin. It separates us from condemnation. It separates us from having to try to please God on our own. It separates us from self-righteousness. It separates us from the destroying power of the devil. It also separates us from what this world treasures because when we were placed in Christ and crucified with him, we were also separated from this world’s fallen, self-centered value system. When Paul says, “…the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world,” what he is saying in the context is, I have been separated from everything outside of Christ in which man seeks to glory in and put their trust.[1] There was nothing left for Paul to glory in except the cross because his faith in the cross separated him from everything this world values. Paul didn’t have to try to find satisfaction in the things this world glories in—reputation, wealth, sex, power, influence, self-righteousness. Paul was united with CHRIST in his death on the cross and that separated him from glorying in his own efforts to obey the law and the pride that brings. Now he was free to revel in the truth that because of what GOD had done for him through Christ and his atoning work on the cross, he was pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ.

Paul radically trusted in that truth about his separation from this world through his crucifixion with Christ and the more you believe that—the more you place your trust in that, the less you look to the self-centered world and the things in it for satisfaction. The false teachers were motivated by self-preservation because this earthly life was the only one they were living for. Of course, they didn’t want to preach a message that would bring pain and perhaps even death to them because they were part of this world and this world’s highest value is placed on survival—self-preservation. If you have not been separated from this world by dying to it in Christ—this life is all you got. Naturally, they were motivated by self-promotion because this world for which they lived—all it has to offer is the praise of men. When we live for self-preservation and self-promotion, we are showing that we don’t believe—or at least don’t believe very deeply that we have been crucified with Christ and separated from those temporary and empty pleasures.

A second reason those (like Paul) who are true are God-centered and not self-centered is because their lives are increasingly marked not by self-promotion, but by self-sacrifice for Christ that yields peace and mercy. Notice the contrast between the false teachers who were all about self-preservation and Paul who says in verse 17, “From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” Paul is warning these false teachers about any future distortion of his message by citing his undeniable credentials as an apostle…his scars—physical and emotional--he bore as a result of his faithful preaching of the gospel. The identifying marks that distinguished the apostle from false teachers were the scars they bore from the persecution they suffered for preaching the whole, Biblical gospel. Scars were the marks of authenticity for an apostle. The false teachers were all about self-preservation, the apostles; about self sacrifice, because the apostle had been crucified to this world where our survival is our highest need. He didn’t NEED to physically survive—he didn’t NEED to have people like or admire him because those NEEDS are native to this world and he had been separated from this world through his crucifixion with Jesus on the cross.

In his cross-glorying, God-centeredness Paul was free to sacrifice himself. This life of self-sacrifice makes no sense to this world. They conclude that kind of life brings nothing but misery and fear. That kind of life produces bitterness and hatred toward others. Paul says, “No, just the opposite.” He says in verse 16, “And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.” Self-sacrifice and persecution don’t yield the fruit of misery and fear, but instead, peace. Nothing in this world can worry you because you are not living for this world any longer. Self-sacrifice doesn’t bring hatred and bitterness. It brings mercy—as you suffer for Christ; your heart becomes tender, not calloused toward others.

What’s very humbling about this is that this isn’t just true for apostles—these scars are not just the marks of a true apostle, but for anyone who is true. The reason we can say that is because the scars come from being God-centered. When you are God-centered and not self centered—when you have been separated from having to chase after the peace and safety and comfort this world values through your co-crucifixion with Christ, then you are free to tell people things they will bring you persecution. And that’s not just for apostles—that’s for anyone who is in Christ. When you hear that, you may be thinking, “Whoa, that’s not where I am. I’m one of those people who are afraid to share my faith because of what others might think of me. I’m much more into self-preservation than self-sacrifice.” If that’s you, you may not be in Christ, or you need very much to grow in your faith—you need to believe the gospel. No one here is where Paul was. But, we can by God’s grace be increasingly be more God-centered and if we have the Holy Spirit, we will want to be freed from the slavery to the fear of death and persecution and from the obsessive desire to please and impress others. We will want to be free from the self-centeredness that tells us we must be safe and popular. A Christian by definition is one who is willing to bear his cross and die for Jesus. There is no other kind of Christian.

The reason Paul was able to live as he did was the grace of God through the gospel. By God’s grace, he really believed he had been crucified with Christ. He meditated on that, savored it, internalized it. He genuinely believed he had been separated from this twisted, self-centered world that breeds a need for self-preservation and self-promotion. Paul’s God-centered life flowed directly out of his God-centered doctrine which he summarizes in verse 15. He says, “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” Being circumcised or not being circumcised isn’t God-centered; it’s self-centered because it’s something we do to try to get right with God. Paul says--they count for nothing. Paul’s sums up his radically God-centered doctrine of salvation in two words, “new creation.”

Paul points to something only God can do—only God can create. Believers aren’t made by following the law, they are created by God through faith in Christ—new creatures in Christ. This is totally, absolutely, completely the work of God. Believers are not improved versions of their old selves—they are NEW IN CHRIST—created in Christ Jesus for good works—created in Christ Jesus for self-sacrifice—created in Christ Jesus for glorying in the cross. You can’t live like Paul unless you are a new creation. You can’t be God-centered unless you are created new in Christ because our old self is hopelessly self-centered and compulsively marches to the drum beat of self-preservation and self-promotion. That old self has to die with Christ and be separated from the self-centeredness of this world.

Beloved, as we come to the Lord’s Table this morning, do you glory in the cross? Has the cross purchased for you everything of ultimate importance to you? Are you experiencing the increasing separation from the self-centeredness of this world—the pull of self-preservation that keeps you from telling others the hard truth of the gospel and the self-promotion that causes you to compulsively work to be impressive others? Do you bear the scars of following Christ? Has God made you a new creation with a new heart to radically love him? May God give us the grace to live God-centered lives that glory in the cross of Christ and sacrifice ourselves for the cause of Christ. This is the impact that Paul intended Galatians to have on his readers. May it be so with us.