Series

Once upon a time there was a man named Abraham. Abraham lived about 1800 years before Jesus was born, in an area we now know as the Persian Gulf region. Abraham once heard God speak to him, and as a result of God’s call on his life, Abraham left his home and began a long journey to the west to a region we now know as

Israel

. When Abraham left, he left behind his home, his security, and his culture. But Abraham loved God most of all. God was more important to him than his country, his own success, and his own comfort. Abraham listened to God. Abraham obeyed God. Abraham believed God.

Today, Abraham is a shining example of a life of faith. In our text this morning, Paul refers to Abraham for the purpose of giving the Galatians a picture of the sort of life they were to aspire. “Let me give you an example from everyday affairs of the free life I’m talking about. Once a person’s will has been ratified, no one annuls it or adds to it. Now, the gospel promises were made to Abraham and his offspring”(Galatians 3:15 -16, paraphrased).

By now you are well aware of the situation in Galatia . You know that the Judaizers were trying to get the Galatian Christians to believe that they had to obey the Law of Moses—the Ten Commandments—in addition to the gospel if they were going to be found pleasing to God, if they were to be made right before God.

But you know, that Paul has been working very hard in this letter to remind the Galatians that the way to true freedom is through the gospel only, not the gospel plus. Paul has been working very hard to remind the Galatians that the only way a person can be made right before God is by believing, by faith, in the Cross of Jesus Christ, that historical event when Jesus took the sin of the world on himself and was killed in our place. And that the only way a person can live a holy life and obey God is through life in the Holy Spirit, which is poured into a person the moment they take the step of faith to follow Jesus for their life. By now you know that Paul has been preaching cross and Spirit as the way to freedom, nothing more, nothing less.

This morning in our text, Paul goes way back in history to put the free life of faith in a human context. He goes back to Abraham.

Now, why would Paul refer to Abraham? After all, the people he was speaking to were Gentiles, non-Jews. Abraham was a Jew; Jewish history flowed out of Abraham. I think there are two reasons why Paul brings up Abraham. The first is to again emphasize the universality of the Gospel; no longer restricted to Jews, the Good News of Jesus Christ was now for all people.

The second, and most important where we’re concerned today, is that Abraham was an example of what a free life in God, looks like. Faith is belief that God is whom he says he is, that he will do what he says he’ll do, and that he’ll do in you, in us, what he promises. Abraham was set as an example of great faith because Abraham believed this, and oriented his whole life to following God’s way. To Abraham, God was above all else. And as a result, he was free!

Isn’t it interesting that true freedom is found in surrendering? We think that freedom is doing what we want, looking out for ourselves. True freedom is found by giving over, surrendering to God, to doing what God wills. Abraham understood that God’s way for his life was best, and so he put himself at the mercy and leading of God.

But as we know, in

Galatia

, life by the law had become a reality. Instead of looking at Abraham as a model of faith and freedom, the people were looking to Moses and the Ten Commandments as a textbook for life. Instead of faith, it had become works. Instead of doing what God wants, people had resorted to following a rulebook. They thought that if we follow every one of Moses’ laws, surely we’d be successful.

But Paul was quick to put things in perspective: “A will, earlier ratified by God, is not annulled by an amendment that is attached 430 years later, negating the terms of the covenant”( 3:17 , paraphrase mine).

In other words, “People, the core of the issue is God’s covenant with Abraham. When God called Abraham to a life of faith and obedience, he set the standard for all of mankind, for all of history. When God makes a covenant, that covenant is never ended. Don’t forget that 430 years after God’s covenant with Abraham, Moses—also a man of great faith—received the law, the Ten Commandments. The law was never meant to change what God agreed to with Abraham; this was no replacement. The life of faith is what this is all about, the law must always be subordinate to faith!”

So what’s law got to do with it? Should we just throw out the law, get rid of the Ten Commandments? Is that what your saying, Shaun? Is that what Paul is teaching? No! What Paul does next is offer a right perspective of the law:

“What’s the point of the law then? It was a well thought out addition to guide sinful and restless people until Jesus Christ came, inheriting God’s promises and distributing them to us. God through Moses, the messenger, arranged the law. The purpose of the law was to make it very obvious that we, in ourselves, are out of right relationship with God, and therefore show us how foolish and futile it is to devise a religious system for getting on our own efforts what we can only get by waiting for God to complete his promise. For if rule keeping had the power to set us free, to create life, we’d have got it by now.

Until the time when we were mature enough to respond freely by faith to the living God, we were carefully surrounded and protected by the Mosaic Law. The Law was like a chaperone or guide, like those who escort children to make sure they arrive at school safely. But now you have arrived at your destination: by faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Your baptism in Christ was not just washing you up for a fresh start, it also involved dressing you in and adult faith wardrobe, the life of Jesus himself, the fulfillment of God’s promise”(3:19-27, paraphrase mine).

We have begun teaching Luke about street safety. At nineteen months, we don’t want him crossing the street. So we’re teaching him to stop before the grass ends and wait for mommy or daddy. As Luke gets older, and more capable of understanding, we’ll teach him the safe way to cross the street (i.e., looking both ways for traffic, not running out to chase a ball, waiting to make eye contact with the driver of the car so he knows you’re there). Now, what if we continued, as Luke got older, teaching him never to cross the street? What if Luke got to be an adult and boasted to a friend “I’ve never been across the street! I’ve obeyed my parents all these years by never going beyond the edge of the grass. Look at how good I’ve been.” The friend would be right to say, “Poor you, you don’t know what you’ve been missing.”

You see, the point of teaching Luke to not cross the street is so that he’ll be safe, not so that he’ll live to obey the rule. We want Luke to cross the street; we want him to explore the neighborhood and the wide world. We just want to make sure that he learns how it’s done safely. We don’t want him to grow up thinking that the point of our teaching is to keep him on his own side of the street for the rest of his life.

Or put another way, a master puts a treat on the floor for his dog, and then points to it with his finger. However, instead of looking where the master is pointing, and finding the treat, the dog stares at the finger, licks and sniffs the finger. Would you say the dog missed the point (no pun intended)?

This is what the Judaizers were trying to get the Galatians to believe, that the law was the end. If you obeyed the law, you’d be good. But Paul says, listen, the law was set up to guide you safely across the street, to the treat, so to speak, to freedom. Don’t worship the rule; worship the God who loved you enough to guide you safely to himself! The law was a guide to God.

What is the purpose the laws of this country? Is it so that by following it we can make the police force happy? No! One of the many reasons that

Canada

has a system of laws is so that we as a people have a sense of what is right and what is wrong. If there were no speed limit, how would we know when we’re driving too fast?

The same thing is true of the law. The law always points to God, to his desire for his people, so when Moses came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments, people were to look at them and say, “Ah so this is what God calls us to, this is the gauge of sinfulness. When I covet, or steal; when I lust after another man’s wife or work everyday of the week without rest, I’m doing what displeases God!”

Wealthy Greek families hired trusted slaves to be in charge of their children until they reached the age of sixteen. The job of the slave was to escort the children to and from school, for example, and make sure no harm came to them. The slave was not the teacher; the slave had nothing to do with the teaching of the child, nor was the slave over the child in any way. He was strictly a functional figure to guide and protect the children until they were old enough to go it alone. This is what the law was, a temporary chaperone.

So is the law important then? Yes! But, as Paul understands it, it is only useful when applied to an existing life of faith. The law is a “footnote to a life of faith”. The law is only good and useful if there is something to use it on.

Implied here then is that there is something coming afterwards, something to replace the temporary. This is the best part…

“By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God.” By faith in Christ you are in direct relationship with God. Does that mean that at some point we were in indirect relationship to God? Yes!

Go back with me for a minute, to the beginning of this series on Galatians. Do you remember what this whole book, and indeed, this whole Christianity thing is built on? The Gospel. Remember what the gospel is? The gospel is cross and spirit. What does the cross refer to? The cross refers to the person and work of Jesus Christ. What is the work of Jesus? What did Jesus do? Jesus came to earth to make a way for people to be in right relationship with God. How did he do that? By stepping into our place, a place where we stood condemned because of our sin, and dying for us.

By dying for us, he essentially fired the chaperone! Because no longer did we need someone to take us by the hand and make sure we got to school safely. We could now be free. We knew the way because he showed us the way.

But this whole freedom, this entire experience of God’s grace, the gospel, is contingent upon us living by faith. It depends on us choosing to put our faith in Jesus Christ. Remember Abraham? Why was he so revered? Because he lived recklessly abandoned to the will and guidance of God. His whole life was a statement to his faith in God. As a result he was free.

When we say yes to following Jesus, we accept that we are sinners and that we need help navigating this life. So, because he loves us so much, he fills us with himself—he shares his life in us—through his Holy Spirit. By the Holy Spirit, we live and obey God, and become more holy. When the Holy Spirit is alive in us, we become beautiful. The law doesn’t make us beautiful, the Holy Spirit leading us and shaping into the image of God make us beautiful. But this depends on our decision to put our trust in God.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “failure is not an option”. In fact, it is something of a creed in our day. Success is all that matters. If, however, we pick away at that a little to uncover what lies beneath the catchy jingle, we see that what passes for success in our world is little more than a vain attempt to impress others and validate our place in this world. Look around, who are the “successful” people in our culture? That’s right, the rich, the popular, the independently wealthy, the self-made men and women.

In Paul’s day, the Law had become a means for achieving a successful life. Success was measured by one’s ability to adhere to the law. A successful person was a law-abiding person. Translated into our experience it could be, “A good Christian is a working Christian”. In other words if a person is working, if they are doing lots, reading the Bible lots, praying lots, tithing lots, then they are “successful”.

There’s more than one problem with that way of thinking, though. People who live that way are always trying to appear righteous and good. When that becomes the focus in life, failure isn’t an option, forgiveness—by God or others—can’t happen because there’s never an admission that they need forgiveness. There’s no vulnerability because they never let anyone know that there’s trouble in the deep places, as long as the exterior is good, then everyone thinks I’m good. Community is then shattered because community is people sharing with people the journeys we’re on. And ultimately, “church” ceases to exist. Oh there’s religion, the “stuff left behind when God’s left the building”[i], but “church” is gone.

Church being the gathering of God’s fractured, flawed, yet forgiven, Spirit-filled people sharing his grace together in community for all the world to see.

Eugene Peterson says, “The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them.”[ii] Elsewhere Peterson hits a little harder by suggesting “Success is an unbiblical burden stupidly assumed by prideful persons who reject the risks and perils of faith, preferring to appear right rather than to be human.”[iii]

In Christ, and because of the gospel, we are free to fail. Failure isn’t fatal because we run free in the fresh air of God’s grace and forgiveness. When we live with that freedom, we try new things, we explore. We let go of what we’ve always known as our duties and programs and say, “Is this as good as it could be? Could it be better? Let’s try some new things, listen to other’s ideas, if they don’t work, that’s ok, at least we tried.”

When we live fearless of failure, we see things: we see one another really (and vulnerability can happen), we acknowledge sin (and forgiveness happens), and we celebrate God’s grace (and “church” happens). We try new things; we take hold of the truth that God is bigger than the failure that might come. We see who God is.

Because of the Gospel, because of who and what Jesus is, we can live free of the fear of failure. Abraham knew this (that’s why he was so important to Paul in the Galatian letter). Abraham likely looked around at his life and saw what he stood to lose if he really let loose and followed God. Abraham concluded that what he stood to lose paled in comparison to what he stood to gain by letting go and living a life of faith in this big, wonderful, gracious, holy and merciful God.

[i] Singer, Bono of the Rock and Roll band, U2, on the Oprah Winfrey Show ( September 19, 2002 )

[ii] Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1987), 2.

[iii] --Traveling Light (Colorado, USA: Helmers & Howard, 1988), 106

Galatians 3:15-27