Truth That Changes Lives

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled Galatians. Let's listen in as JP gives part two of Freedom Reigns.

JP Jones: Don't let people judge your spirituality based on their religious paradigm, because the real issue is Christ. Are you connected to Christ and are you experiencing the very life of Christ?

But the danger you see, because of the familiarity of religion, is that living a life like that kind of seems religious. It kind of appeals to our pride in terms of our part in the bargain. And so we're going to be pulled into thinking that's what it really means to live a religious life. It's following rules and traditions and celebrating certain holidays and ceremonies.

Paul is saying that stuff only has meaning when it connects you to Christ. And if it doesn't connect you to Christ, it's worth nothing. In fact, it's not even worth nothing; it's negative and detrimental because it gives you a false sense of having a relationship with God when, in fact, it does nothing for your relationship with God.

That's why Paul is so adamant in his letters, especially to religious people. Pagans don't even claim to have any kind of relationship with God, but religious people do. So it's its own deception around it because they think they're okay with God when, in fact, they're not.

That was the danger that the Galatians had. Paul is saying, "Hey, you've come into this relationship with God. You've stepped across the line. You're living by grace. Stay living by grace. Don't go back to some form of law. Don't go back to some form of religious deception, and don't let other people pull you back into it either."

Galatians chapter 4, verse 13 says, "You've done me no wrong. As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you. Even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself. What has happened to all your joy? I can testify that if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me."

Here's a very personal exchange that is between Paul and the Galatians, and we've got to kind of understand what was going on there. Paul comes to Galatia early in his ministry, and apparently he had some kind of physical infirmity and it was related to his eyes. There've been different theories about that. Maybe Paul had just very weak eyesight.

He says later in the book of Galatians, Galatians chapter 6, "See with what large letters I'm writing this with my own hand." We know that Paul in many of his letters used an amanuensis or a secretary, a guy named Tertius, who Paul dictated to and wrote it out, probably because Paul had a difficulty in his vision. But he wrote Galatians himself, but he wrote it in very large script.

Apparently, when he came there, he had a problem with his eyes, maybe with some kind of eye infection, maybe it was just a vision problem. Maybe it was related to what took place in Acts chapter 14, when Paul was literally stoned. He was stoned in the Jewish custom because they thought he was a false messenger, and so they dragged him out of the city.

According to the Jewish custom, those who were his accusers started chucking rocks at him. After he got hit by enough rocks, he fell down. The custom was, once the person was down, the actual accusers took large stones and dropped them on the head to ensure that the person was dead. That was what stoning was all about.

In Acts chapter 14, it says Paul was stoned. But then all of a sudden, he got back up. It's not really clear in Acts chapter 14 whether he was resurrected from the dead or he just made a miraculous recovery. What is a plausible explanation—and this is just my opinion—is later on in 2nd Corinthians chapter 12, Paul talks about a man who was caught up into the third heaven.

He saw visions and things that he wasn't even supposed to see. He saw the marvelous things of heaven that were so powerfully consuming that it transformed him. Paul is speaking about himself; he had a vision of heaven. Then he afterward says, "And then I had the thorn in the flesh. I had this heavenly vision, but I also had the thorn in the flesh, and I prayed three times that the thorn in the flesh would go away, but it didn't go away. God said, 'My grace is sufficient for you.'"

So, here's my opinion: Acts chapter 14, Paul really died and he was in heaven. He saw how awesome it was, but God said, "I want you to see how awesome it is so you'll stay motivated in serving me as my apostle." God raised him back from the dead.

But whatever took place in that stoning marred him physically, probably gave him some kind of eye problem. Who knows? Maybe he went partially blind. Maybe the sockets were crushed. And that was the thorn in the flesh that he prayed for deliverance from, but he never got deliverance from it. He just got God's grace to sustain him.

He comes to Galatia, and the Galatians saw physically this representation and understood the pain it actually took Paul to preach the gospel. They were moved with compassion. Here's a guy that's in physical pain and is dealing with this infirmity, and yet he loves us so much he wants to tell us about Jesus.

That made them all the more open to the message. Then they heard the message of grace and they received it. Paul is saying here in Galatians chapter 4, "Remember that? You would have given me your own eyes. That's how much you connected with me and my heart with you." Then he says, "What the heck has happened? Who's stolen your joy?"

It's a little throwaway line in the midst of this. Do you know what? When you try to live by the law, you've got no joy. When you live by grace, you've got an abundance of joy, because it's one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Because when you try to live by law, one of two things happen, and it's going to be true for every person.

If we're trying to live our life with God based on works, rules, ceremonies, traditions—based on what we do to try to keep the program—that's living by the law. The reason it robs us of joy is because we either try to do that and we miserably fail, and so we feel guilt and condemnation. No joy.

Or we try to do that, and because we do it based on our own standards, we succeed and we are filled with self-righteous pride. No joy. So you either come to God by grace and live by grace and have joy, or you're coming to God on your own terms and you're guilty and self-condemned—no joy—or you're full of pride and arrogant self-deception—no joy.

Paul says, "What happened?" because there was so much joy and there was this intimate personal connection. He says, "I'm asking what happened, but I actually know. You start buying into the false message of the false teachers. You start going back to what was familiar. You start going back to what was comfortable, but it's robbing you of real spiritual life."

When the Galatians turned from a grace-based relationship with God, they lost their joy. The same's going to be true for us. When we are tempted to revert back to what may seem familiar but is not based on grace, one of the results of that is going to steal the joy out of our lives.

It's going to steal the joy out of our marriage. It's going to steal the joy out of our parenting. It's going to steal the joy out of our work when we live by the law, when we live by works, when we live by our efforts.

Paul continues in Galatians 4, verse 16: "Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?" Have you noticed—and I can point the finger at me—when you're self-deceived and people speak the truth to you, it bugs you. It's the truth and the truth sets you free, but it bugs you. Paul is speaking the truth and saying, "Am I offending you? I'm just speaking the truth."

Verse 17: "Those people"—referring to these false teachers—"those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us so that you may be zealous for them. Now, it's fine to be zealous provided the purpose is good and to be so always and not just when I'm with you."

Blinded by the false teaching of the Judaizers, the Galatians were offended by the truth that Paul was speaking to them. False thinking always goes hand-in-hand with false teaching. When I talk to people who have some really wacky idea about God, it's just anecdotal, just from my experience: they never just dreamed it up themselves.

They read it in some book, they heard it at some seminar, they saw it on some weird TV program, they listened to it from some crazy teacher. False thinking comes from false teachers, and there's a lot of false teachers out there. There's a lot of false religions out there in every culture and every generation.

There has been all types of cults and isms and religious groups and secular groups and worldly philosophical groups. So there's all kinds of weird false teaching. It's like in golf: there's all kinds of weird ways you can get in the weeds, but there's just a narrow way to get it right down into the hole.

There's a narrow way in our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me." So any distortion of that in the religious direction or the secular direction is exactly that: a distortion.

There's all kinds of crazy religions and there's all kinds of crazy philosophies and they sound pretty good. That's the greatest strategy of the enemy—is to put some truth in there with the error so that you see the truth and you think, "Well, it's good. It's just kind of a little bit off."

It's like navigating a ship by sea and you have your compass and you're trying to get to a particular island out in the middle of the ocean and you think, "Well, I'm just a little bit off." But you follow the distance and you miss it completely by a mile.

That's the way it is with many people in their relationship with God. It looks like they're going in the general direction and it's a good direction, it's the right direction, but it's just a little bit off and they miss God completely.

So maybe what is familiar to you that you might be getting pulled back into isn't a total rejection of Christianity, and even maybe it's not even a total rejection of grace; it's grace plus something. But you know what? Grace plus something is not grace.

These Galatians were being kind of caught up in a spiritual fervor. Paul talks about being zealous here, which means great spiritual passion and energy. He says, "Hey, there's nothing wrong with great passion and a zealousness as long as it's for a good purpose."

In fact, in Titus chapter 2, it says that we are to be looking forward to that great appearing and the blessed hope of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, and we are to be zealous for good works. But Paul isn't talking about that kind of zealousness. He's talking about the zealousness of the dogmatist who says, "Don't confuse me with the facts; my mind's already made up." The person who is just deeply passionate without really looking at the truth.

Verse 19, Paul comes to kind of a fatherly, parental, spiritual mentoring tone: "My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you. How I wish I could be with you now and change my tone because I'm perplexed about you."

You see here in Paul a really pastoral spirit. He is passionate about the truth, he's committed to the truth about grace and that they understand grace, but he's deeply concerned for them because he understands that when you deviate from grace, it ruins your life.

When you deviate from grace, it ruins your life, because the goal as Paul lays it out here in verse 19 is that Christ be formed in us. That's God's great goal for every one of us. In fact, that's a goal that God has for us, and God began a process to get us there before we even came to know Christ.

You might be here this morning and you've been invited by a friend and maybe you're in a process of kind of checking out Christianity, which I love. It's great. It's awesome. Glad that you're here. I hope you feel comfortably uncomfortable.

I mean, I want you to feel comfortable. This is a place where you're welcome, ask questions, you're invited to be here, but I hope you feel a little bit of uncomfortability because maybe your ideas and the way your paradigm of the world is being challenged and it's maybe getting upset a little bit. That's good.

Because God's desire for you, for me, for every person, is that we come to know Jesus Christ and he wants to form Christ within us. Romans chapter 8 says this: "For God knew his people in advance and he chose them to become like his Son so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters."

God wants us to become like his Son. And in 2nd Corinthians 3:17 and 18, it says that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom, and we all with unveiled faces behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord. We're being transformed into that same image from glory to glory, even by the Lord, the Spirit.

God wants us to become like his Son, and when we cross the line and commit our lives to Jesus Christ, then a process of spiritual transformation is begun and continues throughout our lives. The end goal of that process is to make us like his Son, to transform us to become like Christ. God wants to form Christ within us.

Wrapping up this discussion, Paul comes now to the last paragraph of this chapter and he says, "Let me give you an allegory. I'm going to take an Old Testament event and I'm going to draw some spiritual principles from it."

Which made sense because he's speaking to people, writing to the Galatians who understood their Old Testament history. They understood their lineage, they understood their ancestry. Paul's going to draw upon that and draw an allegory for the truth that he's been trying to get across. What's the truth? We're new people, so we ought to live a new life.

Paul says this: "Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman, the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; a son by the free woman was born as a result of a promise. These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves. The other is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is from above is free and she is our mother. For it is written: 'Be glad, O barren woman, who bears no children. Break forth and cry aloud, you who have no labor pains, because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her that has a husband.' Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise."

If you didn't have a background in the Old Testament scriptures, you wouldn't know what the heck he's talking about. It's interesting, I've just been reading back through the book of Genesis in my personal quiet times, my daily Bible reading, and just kind of read this whole story. God chose Abraham. Abraham followed God. Abraham believed God and was reckoned as righteousness.

Abraham is old and his great desire was to have a son. God made him a promise: "You will have a son and your descendants will be like the sands of the seashore. Your descendants will be like the stars of heaven." So Abraham thought that's awesome. But it wasn't happening; it didn't happen right away.

So Abraham took matters into his own hands and, rather than trusting God and the promise, he had a sexual relationship with his slave Hagar. Hagar gave birth to a son, Ishmael. Abraham said, "There it is. There's my son Ishmael." God said, "No, that was not the son of the promise. My design to bless you and to provide a blessing to the world is not through Ishmael; it's through your wife Sarah. You need to trust me."

And so Abraham and Sarah trusted God, and God did a miracle even in their old age. Sarah had a child, Isaac. He was the child of the promise. The children grew up. God said, "I will bless Ishmael, but not in the way that you have thought. My blessing, my promise, is through Isaac. That's the seed for the blessing."

So now Paul looks back on that story and says, "Here's an allegory to draw upon it. There's Hagar; she's the slave. There's Sarah; she's the free woman. There's Ishmael; he's the child of ordinary means. There's Isaac; he's the child of the promise."

Hagar and Ishmael, they represent present-day Jerusalem—God's people but without a real relationship with them because they're trusting in their own efforts and their own power rather than trusting in God's promise. There's Sarah and Isaac and heavenly Jerusalem, which represents God's promise and the power of the Holy Spirit and the free relationship that God wants to give. And they represent two covenants: an old covenant and a new covenant.

Paul says, "That's it. You either come to God based on the old covenant or based on the new covenant. You either come to God based on your own power, your own ability, your own perception, your own works, your own trying to keep laws—that's the old covenant. Or you come to God on the new covenant: God's promise, God's work by means of his Holy Spirit, and God's freedom that he gives."

He says, "My dear brothers and sisters in Galatia, you are free. You are children of the promise. You're like Isaac. So why are you living like Ishmael? My dear brothers and sisters at Crossline, we are children of the promise. We're children of grace. It's the power of the Holy Spirit that has given us new life in Christ. So why would we live in the flesh? So why would we live a carnal, worldly life? So why would we try to revert back to religion when we've been set free in Christ?"

That's the whole argument of Galatians chapter 4. And so he says these final words: "At that time, the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born in the power of the Spirit. It's the same now. But what does the Scripture say? 'Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son.' Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman but of the free woman."

Romans chapter 7 says this: "So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God. When we were controlled by our old nature, our sinful nature, the flesh, that desire was at work within us, and the law aroused evil desires and it produced a harvest of sinful deeds.

But now we have been set free from the law, for we died to it. We're no longer captive to its power. We can serve God not in the old way of trying to obey rules, but in a new way by living in the power of the Holy Spirit."

Because we're new people, we need to live a new life. Say that with me: Because we're new people, we need to live a new life.

Guest (Male): What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP Jones provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's title, "Freedom Reigns, Part 2."