Message: Resolved to Do as We Are | Scripture: Galatians 5:25-6:5, 11-15 | Speaker: Pastor Stephen Choy
Worship Songs: Before the Throne of God Above | Here Is Love | All Glory Be to Christ
Full Manuscript
Introduction
If able, please stand as I read to you from Galatians 5:25-6:5, 11-15. TWoL: 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. 1 Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. 2 Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. 3 For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4 But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. 5 For each will have to bear his own load. 11 See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. 12 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. 13 For 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. 14 But 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. 15 For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.
The book of Galatians was written really to answer two problems that were a result of these Judaizers who had come into the Galatian church, preaching that in order to be saved, you needed something more than Christ. Gentiles might now be accepted, but you still needed to be circumcised, observant of Jewish festivals and sacrifices, obedient to the tenants of the law. And this was creating obvious issues where, in the first place, it was polluting the doctrine and identity of the church.
So, Paul responds, in Galatians 1-4, “You’re to listen to me—not them! Why? Because my words are God’s words. I am the chosen mouthpiece through whom God has revealed his divine will. And what was it that I revealed to you in God’s will? That salvation and right standing before God comes by grace alone through faith alone in Christ Jesus alone.”
But the second problem that these false teachers were stirring up is what Galatians 5 till the end of the book deals with. These Galatians haven’t only forgotten their doctrine, but because they’ve forgotten their doctrine, they’ve also forgotten what it means to be Christian. Since they’d allowed themselves to be led away from Christ as their singular source of faith, they’d also turned their hearts away from the Spirit who was given to help them live out that faith, and they’d begun to place their hope and trust inward upon themselves, rather than outward towards others. This crisis of doctrine and identity had led to a secondary crisis of action—how to live out who they were supposed to be.
In other words, they’d forgotten how to be holy, and this is what Paul seeks to rectify—to remind them that as God has oriented them to himself, they are called to orient themselves to one another. And this serves as the lesson we’re meant to learn this morning—and really for the rest of our lives. May we make it our resolution for this year—that as God has oriented us to him—given us a living identity in and with him, we are to be holy—to ground our action in sacrificial love for others—to orient ourselves to one another. We’re to display the work of the Spirit in us as we turn our attention to his work outside of us. And the question is: how are we to do that (acc. to Paul)? Well, the first step that he gives us—and our first point—is to …
1) Be Resolved to Forget Ourselves
Let’s get more specific about this second problem facing the Galatians. Paul has told them, they’re lacking in their doctrine, and he’s just given his greatest defense and argument for why justification/salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone is the only hope and truth that can free sinners from the curse of their sin. But then, in Galatians 5:13, after Paul has clarified what true salvation is, he reminds them that the purpose of their freedom isn’t to live however they want, rather they’ve been freed to serve one another in love.
And this goes precisely against what the Galatians were actually doing, according to Gal 5:15, namely, they were doing fleshly things (sinful) rather than loving things (holy). They were biting, devouring, and trying to consume one another. In other words, the problem that these Galatians are dealing with, as their doctrine is being corrupted from salvation by grace alone to salvation by grace and works is that they start to compete and compare themselves to each other.
In fact, they start to compare themselves to one another with such zeal that as those within the church begin to suffer—those who are in need of true gospel ministry—the church begins not merely ignoring them, but they begin to chastise—devour—them because, given what the Judaizers were teaching, suffering would have been a result of not doing enough—of not following the law enough.
This is what leads Paul to writing Gal 5:16-24. Paul is saying, “if you’re so focused on what you do to earn your way into heaven, let’s take a real inventory of your actions. Are you ever impure? Do you get jealous? Do you have fits of anger? Etc. Because if you do, all of you stand condemned under the law—no matter how good your other works are. All of you—healthy or not—haven’t done enough, and no measure of your doing will ever be enough.”
What you need isn’t to do more but to mortify—to put to death—your sin—this competitiveness and selfishness, which you wrongfully call holiness. It’s not holiness. What you need is to surrender to the fact that only God makes you right with him. Only God can turn a naturally sinful heart into a heart that supernaturally loves, has joy, knows peace, displays kindness, exemplifies goodness, is faithful, gentle, self-controlled—a transformed heart in the truth of sovereign grace is what brings about holy actions that are loving, joyful, peace-making, etc. Doing more without a heart for what you’re doing simply leads to greater condemnation and evidence of your hypocrisy.
Stated differently, even in our, so-called, “good” actions, we are evil because we’re thinking about how those actions benefit or satisfy us. And this is what Paul is getting at in Gal 5:26. Paul, in our text, is driving home what the problem for the Galatians is. He tells them that their competitiveness with each other—their biting, devouring, and their striving to outdo others in order to earn their salvation—is a problem rooted in the heart: “Let us not become conceited,” he says.
These Galatians were becoming conceited, but that word, ‘conceited’, isn’t the best word to use—it’s one we’re familiar with in our day, but it doesn’t convey fully what the problem was. The word is κενόδοχος, which directly translated means, ‘empty glory or praise.’ Martin Luther uses the word vainglorious. It’s finding, requiring, and looking for your sense of worth from something that is meaningless.
F. F. Bruce puts it this way, “to be conceited or empty of glory means to be desperate for recognition and affirmation in things that are inglorious themselves.” All of us have this innate desire in our hearts to be seen and understood—to be known and to prove ourselves. This is what it means to be human—to find validation and to be dignified—to be loved.
But in Paul’s other writings, like in Romans 1 and 2, we’re told two things. The first is that we were made to serve God—made to receive the affirmation and recognition of God—made to hear the words, “well done good and faithful servant” from God—made to be loved by him. Yet, the second thing it tells us is that instead of looking to God for love, we looked to our own flesh, lusts, and passion, and we zealously pursue other ways—other things—other people—in order to receive that recognition and affirmation.
In fact, we tend to seek that recognition and affirmations from others at their expense. We tend to use people and ask, “how can I benefit from this relationship or make myself feel and look better compared to them?” This is what Paul says is happening in Galatia, “Let us not become conceited. How? By provoking one another, envying one another.”
John Stott helpfully puts it this way, “provoking implies a superiority complex that assumes the person you’re comparing yourself to is someone you can beat,” whereas envying implies an inferiority complex, where you become angry and resentful towards someone because you think they are or have something that you deserve.
Yet, whether you’re going into a relationship as one who provokes or one who envies, the point is this: you’re looking to take advantage. You’re looking to satisfy your sense of entitlement. You’re thinking, “how can this person help me either in how I beat them down or take from them what I think should be mine? Because it’s all about me.”
And see, this is what sin is. This is what a heart inclined to sin looks like. Just consider that list of sins in Gal 5:19-21 again. They’re all actions that we think will make us feel better about ourselves by using others. But Paul wants to tell us that they won’t make you feel better about yourself because all they make you do is think about yourself, and the more you think about yourself, the more you’ll look for your own solutions to find the affirmation and recognition—to find salvation—from people other than God.
And Paul is saying this stands in direct contrast to a person who has been made alive in the Spirit. If you’ve been made alive in the Spirit, then you keep in step with the Spirit (Gal 5:25), but a man or woman who chases after vainglory—who takes advantage of others for their own gain and sport, is someone who doesn’t know or have the Spirit because the glory of the Spirit is enough to fill and feed you. He gives you fruit that satisfies your deepest longings.
But the recognition of man, all he gives you is empty glory. Why? Because what is the glory of man? Our glory is that all of us have sinned and fallen short of God’s standard, God’s holiness, God’s perfect righteousness, and all of us are guilty and liable to everlasting death before him. To pursue the glory of man is to pursue, in no uncertain terms, hell itself.
Living and walking in step with the Spirit—being one who is saved through the gospel of grace—is contrary to thinking about ourselves and trying to find our meaning and our value in what others can give us or in what we can take from them. What I mean is that living and walking in step with the Spirit is having the desire to forget about ourselves—to forget about making so much of ourselves because when we make it about ourselves, we tend not only to condemn ourselves and rob ourselves of God’s love, but we tempt others into that same fate, as well.
This is how we might explain what it means to walk in step with the Spirit negatively—don’t think about yourself so much—care deeply about possessing a self-forgetfulness—but the way that we do that isn’t simply by trying to avoid thinking of ourselves. No, the way we do that is in our second point, and we might say it this way: it’s by reorienting yourself; being resolved to turn your eyes to look beyond yourself.
2) Resolved to Look Beyond Ourselves
This is what Gal 6:1-5 is getting at—looking beyond ourselves. The negative way of keeping in step with the Spirit is to avoid becoming vainglorious—pursuers of empty recognition and affirmation. But the positive way to do that is to turn your focus and attention outside of yourself—to give of ourselves to others. Here’s how you resist the sin of vainglory—here’s how you don’t gratify the desires of the flesh—you stop looking at yourself, but you also start considering how you might offer yourself to those who need you.
“Brothers and sisters, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual—you who have been made alive through the saving work of grace through faith in Christ alone—restore that sinner in a spirit of gentleness.” See, what Paul is saying is intimately connected to verses 25 and 26—that if a person is caught in sin, that is, he’s constantly showing some character flaw and isn’t repentant of it—you can’t be helpful to them if you’re vainglorious. You’ll look at that person, and you won’t think about what they need.
Rather, you’ll be thinking about how the person benefits you—what you can get from that person if you “help” them. How they can make you feel better about yourself. Or worse than all of this, you’ll try to save them not for their sake but so that you might enslave them—make them feel like they owe you—make them feel like they need to praise you. This is our tendency—to use people and help them only so long as they can make us feel the value that we think we deserve.
But then, look at verses 2 and 3: Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Let’s start with that ground in verse 3 to help us understand verse 2. What does verse 3 say we are? Does it say we’re something? Does it affirm that we are deserving and worthy of praise? No. It says we are nothing, and if we try and act like we’re something—if we vaingloriously seek the praise of others to make us feel better about ourselves, and to make them feel worse about themselves—we’re not just vainglorious—it says we’re evil. It says we’re liars. Worse yet, we’re liars to ourselves. We play ourselves for the fool (Muhammed Ali).
It’s like this time a young lady asked to sing on my worship team. So, I asked her to sing with me, but when she sang, she couldn’t hold a note nor sing the harmony. So, I told her in all gentleness that I loved her exuberance for singing. I loved seeing her participate in our congregational worship, but her gifts likely weren’t in musical worship, and I didn’t want her to distract others in their singing. And she resented me for it. In fact, I think she ended up leaving our church because of it—because I told her the truth about herself.
I imagine this is what we’re seeing on a generational level these days—people who think they’re something and believe they deserve to be affirmed in it, rather than being humble and willing to hear the truth. People who are vainglorious to the degree that if their vainglory isn’t recognized, they’ll cut you out of their lives.
And the reason why Christians are called to be so different in our attitudes to one another is because we know the truth, and we aren’t offended by it when others speak it to us because the ultimate offence hasn’t been born by us. The ultimate offence was born by another, on our behalf, for our sake, out of an undeserved grace.
This is why verse 3 serves as the ground to verse 2. In our nothingness—in our contentment as those who deserve nothing, we’re able to give everything that we are to those who need us, even if it’s burdensome to us. We can bear one another’s burdens. We can look beyond ourselves because when we look at ourselves, we see that there’s nothing to be vainglorious about.
Tim Keller in his video series on the Prodigal Son—called Prodigal God—explains what it means to take on the burden of another person. It means actually sacrificing yourself to some degree. If your neighbour has a heavy table, and he can’t lift the whole thing on his own, when he asks you to take one end, you can only be helpful if you actually lift the other end—if you take 50% of the load. In other words, you can’t help someone unless part of that person’s burden actually falls upon you—unless you actually suffer, in part, what they’re suffering.
To help is to reject expectations for vainglory. You’ve actually got to carry the burden, and in carrying it, there may not be any benefit in it for you—rather, the benefit really is for the person whom you’re serving. This, dear Christian, is called sacrifice. This, dear Christian, is called love—in the truest sense of the word. This is called fulfilling the law of Christ—not that you work for your salvation—approval—recognition—not that you’re thinking about what you might get back for your effort. No, the law of Christ doesn’t think, “your life for me,” it thinks, “my life for you.” My joy for your suffering. My righteousness for your sin. My everything for your nothing.
But, and here’s the warning, just in case you let sin creep back in—just in case you let your heart become a little bit envious or competitive—letting your flesh feel entitled to having others bear your burdens for you when you very well could bear them on your own, Paul gives us verses 4 and 5. Verses that are meant to say, “don’t go making yourself a burden to others on purpose. Don’t provoke others to feel sorry for you. Don’t be envious when others don’t feel sorry for you. Don’t use them for your vainglory.”
You’ve got to carry your own load—and the word load here in verse 5 is different from the word burden in verse 2. ‘Burden’ refers to a crushing weight—one that must be shared. One that we as Christians have an obligation to observe and respond to in one another’s lives. But the word ‘load’ in verse 5 is referring to something like luggage—or a weight that every person in this life must carry and be responsible for. You are to carry that weight—not in a competitive sense, but in a sense where you will be judged by the one who bore a far greater weight upon his shoulders—not his alone, but ours as well. To bear your own load isn’t sacrifice. It isn’t suffering. It isn’t something to use or compare yourself to others with.
The sacrifice comes when, while you’re bearing your own load, you go out of your way, without the need to compare, and take on some of your neighbours burden as well, knowing it’ll cost you. This is what it means to keep in step with the Spirit who has made us alive. This is how you flee from gratifying the desires of the flesh. This is how the whole law is fulfilled: you love others more than you love yourself—just like the Spirit does for us—just like the Christ whom the Spirit is constantly pointing us to does for us.
And as we do this—as we reflect the Spirit’s work in us outwardly, the promise of Scripture isn’t that you get the praise of other vainglorious, sinful, hell-pursuing men. No, the Bible says that’s not enough! Instead, it says you get the praise of God. You get the glory of his pleasure. You get the joy of eternity with him.
3) Resolved to Boast Despite Ourselves
And how is it, you might ask, that we can do this? How do we avoid vainglory and bear the burdens of others who are stuck in grievous, spiritual sin without expecting anything else in return? Paul says it’s by boasting: 11 See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. 12 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. 13 For 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. 14 But 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. 15 For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.
Said again, dear brothers and sisters, how do we avoid vainglory? How do we bear the burdens of others without feeling entitled to something in return? We boast—not in our works, not in the fact that we are better than others, but in the cross of Christ—in the fact that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, alone. We need to get the doctrine right. We need to get the cross right.
You were made to boast—everyone has to—no one is a god unto themselves, something has to be your god/God (Isaiah 43 and the whole Bible). But if you boast in the wrong thing, you will do the wrong thing! If you boast in your flesh, you will live by the flesh. If you boast in your sinfulness, you will reap only that which sin deserves. But if you boast in the Spirit who testifies of Jesus, you will walk with the Spirit who does all things for Jesus.
And just so you know, this word for boast is a word used in the context of war. It’s speaking of what soldiers were meant to do as they went out into battle. What would they look to as they faced uncertainty? In what would they place their identity in order to march towards death and do battle with it—to have confidence that they could defeat it? For them it would be glory, safety, and victory of their kingdom—the honour of their king or queen—the protection of their cities and towns—the life of family and friends. They would boast in these things to themselves, and they would find vigour for the fight.
And Paul takes this word and brings it into our context, and asks, when things become difficult—or when people facing hell need your help—when the devil surrounds you and threatens to destroy you—where do you place your identity? Where does your help come from? Is it in your accomplishments, your attractiveness, your talents and hard work, the fact that you’re a good mom, dad, son, or daughter? Is it that you’re liked by your neighbours or coworkers? Or is it in the fact that you have the cross? Because if it’s in anything else—anyone else other than Christ, none of it will matter. Satan will destroy you.
But praise be to God that we are saved not by what we have and not by what we do, but by who he’s made us to be by grace alone through faith alone in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, alone. He orients us to Jesus, so that we might orient ourselves to one another—so that we might be holy like our Saviour. And this is keeping in step with his Spirit who has made us alive together with him. Don’t do as you did in your flesh. Rather, do as you are in Jesus and give your life in love for others as a pleasing sacrifice for his sake. And yours, he says through Paul—yours shall be a glory that is beyond all comparison—a glory that shall bear itself forth in the love of our Almighty and Infinite God from now and forevermore.
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