Well, good morning to everyone. For those of you coming from our way, the drive across Jay's getting pretty. Should be all changed over pretty soon. Seems like it's a little early to me, but the leaves are starting to display some glory out in the woods, which is nice. It's just a problem that comes next, right? 

Well, we come back to our study this morning of the book of Galatians to a vital section of scripture for our understanding of the Christian life. We looked at verses 1 to 6 about three weeks ago in the liberty that we have in Christ. Remember, the issue in the churches of Galatia was that the false teachers had come in after Paul and began to undermine the truth of the Christian life, sanctification by grace through faith. The real heart of this letter is to address not only the false gospel itself and the means of God for justification, Paul does that, but the real concern is the impact that this law and works teaching was having on the Christian's understanding of sanctification and the Christian life. 

And that's what Paul's addressing specifically here in chapter 5. He's been explaining throughout this letter our freedom from the law covenant in Christ, that we are no longer under the law, having come to faith in Jesus Christ, that we now live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. We've been crucified with Christ, we've been regenerated and indwelt with the Holy Spirit, and now we live not by the letter, but by the Spirit. We began in the Spirit, Paul says in Galatians 3, saved by grace through faith, and we now live by the Spirit, not by the works of the flesh, not by the law, as God continually conforms us by His grace to the likeness of Christ.

The freedom, the liberty that Paul exhorts us to stand fast in, the freedom we have in Christ, is a freedom from sin and law and the fear of death. It is not a freedom from holiness, from righteousness and some sort of licentious heresy. It's not a freedom from circumstances and suffering and trials and tribulation in this life, as if Jesus came to make our earthly temporal circumstances better or meet our carnal needs. It is a freedom to love, to live a life of righteousness that brings glory to God, but it is only by grace through faith that we can so live. 

And if we begin to build again those things which we destroyed in coming to Christ, if we bring ourselves back under the law as a way, as a rule of life, then we will not see holiness, we will not see the fruit that can only come from an abiding relationship with Jesus Christ by his grace and power through faith. 

I want to go back and look at those first six verses of chapter five, if you look with me in Galatians 5.1. Paul says, stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. Indeed, I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing. And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law. You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law, you have fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but faith working through love.

Paul says, stand fast in the liberty by which Christ has made us free and do not become entangled again with the law as a rule, a way of life, a yoke of bondage. If we choose to incorporate law into our means of living the Christian life, then he says Christ will profit us nothing. In seeking law as a means of living, we fall away from the principle of the grace life through faith. Rather, we must eagerly anticipate. We must live with constant expectation of righteousness in our lives consistently, continually by faith. Law is not the answer to a fruitful Christian life, but rather walking in the Spirit by faith, faith working through love. 

This is the message of Paul in the book of Galatians for you and for me, for the church. And in our text this morning, he's going to warn us against false teaching and highlight the danger of it before coming back to these same truths down in verses 16 to 26, closing out this chapter in the exhortation to live not by law, but by the Spirit, by God's grace through faith. 

So let's look at our text together, Galatians 5, 7. He says, you ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in you, in the Lord, that you will have no other mind, but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is. And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased. I could wish that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off. 

For you, brethren, have been called to liberty. Only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word. Even in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, beware, lest you be consumed by one another. 

I've given you five points on your outline this morning. First, false teaching hinders. Second, false teaching is not from God. Third, false teaching is dangerous. Fourth, false teachers will be judged. And fifth, through love, serve one another. 

Well, first we see in our text that false teaching hinders the church, that believers, the believers in their living the Christian life. Paul says, you ran well. You were doing great. You're running well in this race of the Christian life, looking unto Jesus, focused on him, trusting in his grace, believing him and his word, his truth. They were living by faith. They were running well. And there was great fruit and growth. The churches were strengthened by good teaching and Paul came back in order to spend time with them and encourage and strengthen them through the word. They were a thriving community of churches and understood grace. They understood living by the spirit through faith, and it was wonderful.

But after Paul's departure, false teachers came in, men claiming to come from James in Jerusalem. They came in by stealth to spy out their liberty and to ensnare them with error, with a little leaven, with a suggestion that they needed something more than Christ, something more than grace in a life of faith. They needed law. They needed some external commands and standards to live by in order to be holy, to measure and examine themselves by so they could gauge their performance and be assured of their faith by their works. Paul says, this is a tragic and damning heresy. It hindered them, their walk of faith, their Christian life and fruit. 

The word hinder here is graphic. It means to cut in on or to check. In this imagery of a race, a foot race, as Paul often uses, running toward the goal, the finish, you can imagine a man running well, keeping his focus on Jesus, living by grace. And the law message was like a man coming out of the crowd and running across the track and slamming into this runner, cutting in, checking him, throwing him off course. Or perhaps for us, it's easier to imagine a hockey game, a skater flying down the ice with the puck toward the goal, smooth as silk, beautiful. And the defenseman comes out of nowhere with a perfect angle, full steam into this man, checking him hard against the boards as the puck trickles down into the corner and is taken in the opposite direction. This is the idea of the word. It's not just that their pace is slowed a little bit or they get a little hitch in their get along, as my mom used to say. This word hinder means to totally break the momentum, to knock off course, to prevent the running of the race. 

And this is what living by law does. Because you see, the Christian life is prescribed by God to be lived by his grace through faith, abiding in Jesus with our eyes on him, seeking, needing, depending on him and his grace and power in us through the Holy Spirit. And adding one ounce of law to that equation destroys the walk of faith. It is by grace, and if it is by grace, it is no longer by the works of the law. 

So we see that false teaching, a wrong way of thinking, a false premise of living hinders, checks, prohibits holy living. And this is just as true today, my friends, but even more widespread and accepted in the church than it was in Paul's day. You see, there was the church in Jerusalem then, and now due to the persecution of Acts 8, the believers have been scattered out into the Gentile regions. Paul has traveled on his missionary journeys as the apostle to the Gentiles and founded churches. But every church is in agreement up to this point, all founded by the apostle's doctrine and very new, very fresh of one accord. It's much different today. 

We have a myriad of churches, denominations, different and varied doctrines and tremendous confusion. I was thinking about that today because I'm seeing on social media and so forth this sort of revival mood right now, and people preaching the gospel everywhere, and people talking about going to church and I've just bought my first Bible and all these different things. And I thought, boy, if I was a lost man right now in the United States and I was moved to go to church today, what would be the chances that I could land in a place that was gonna tell me the truth? Where I was gonna get good, solid gospel preaching. Wow. 

In Paul's day, the danger was really going back to Judaism as we see like in the book of Hebrews. They could either stay with the apostle's doctrine, with Jesus, the true church, or they could go back to Judaism, to the temple and the sacrifices. Because this was still taking place, the priests were still ministering at the altar in Jerusalem. So it was literally a grace versus law scenario in a very clear and graphic sense. Law or grace, Judaism or the new covenant church. 

But in our day, the choices are endless. And the law teaching has so infiltrated the churches in varying ways that it is nearly impossible to sort it all out. Some have gone full false gospel teaching what the Judaizers did, a grace plus work salvation through sacraments and religious rites and rituals plus faith in Christ. These are false churches. But many others have suffered what Paul was so concerned about, a leavening of true doctrine by law teaching for Christian living. 

I'm not sure why, but lately my phone has been showing me clips of pastors and preachers saying all kinds of crazy things from the pulpit. And the majority of these have been independent fundamental Baptists ranting and raving and pounding the pulpit about wearing suits and dresses and having a proper haircut. I saw one that went on and on about how the young girls in his church don't need a boyfriend, but what they need is pots and pans 101. I don't quite understand how people sit in these churches. But the essence of these messages is that holiness is equal to conformity to some set of external standards. We don't drink, we don't chew, and we don't date girls that do, right? 

I was in one of these churches one time, and the elders all sat on an elevated platform in front of the church, and they each had a very large red leather chair with great big gold buttons running down the arms of the chair. It's quite a visual. Lots of ranting and raving about everything, except the true message of the text that they ripped out of context for the purpose of bearing down on the people in legalism. 

And we also see legalism in the academic, ostensibly deep teaching of so many churches who bind the believers with the old covenant law as a rule or way of life. And those of us who recoil at the licentious, carnal-focused seeker movement in the modern evangelical churches are often drawn to these deeper, winsome academic teachers who seem to plumb the depths of the word, but so often miss the point that Paul's making here in our text. They have a misunderstanding of the truths of the new covenant, of our death to sin and to the law, and the new life we have in Christ. They confuse the old and the new, Israel and the church, and see no distinction between the law life and the Christ life, rather incorporating the two. 

And they teach openly that so-called moral law is binding on the believers and necessary as a part of sanctification or a rule of life. We have reiterated the truths of Galatians 2 and 3, of 2 Corinthians 3, of Romans 7, and so many scriptures through our studies in this book that the law was given to show us our sin, to lead us to faith in Christ. And after faith has come, we are no longer under the law. 

The truth that Paul states so clearly in passages like Romans 6 and 7, or Philippians 3, is that holy living, righteousness comes not by the law, not by the letter, but by the spirit. That in sanctification, just as much as justification, it is the righteousness of Christ, his life in us by grace through faith, not by the works of the law. Law teaching for living hinders. False doctrine hinders the believer. And I'm afraid that Paul's fears have been realized in the vast majority of the church today, false and true. And believers are greatly confused about these things. 

Because false teaching confuses, it hinders. And false teaching is not from God. Now this is perhaps a much more difficult point than we might realize at first, particularly in application. But false teaching is not from God. Turn over to 1 Corinthians 10 with me, 1 Corinthians 10 at 19. Paul writes, what am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? Rather that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. And I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the Lord's table and the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He? Do we know better than He? 

Paul says in our text, you ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. The truth comes from God. Lies come from Satan and the demonic realm. All false teaching, all false religion has at its source demonic, satanic roots. This is a very difficult thing for us to accept, but it's true. The false denominations that call themselves Christian, that claim faith in Christ, just as the Judaizers did, do not come from God, are not associated with God, but their source is demonic. 

So Paul makes a bold statement here because these Judaizers professed faith in Christ. They were called believers in Acts 15. They agreed that we must have faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But to this faith, they added law and works as necessary for salvation. Now in our day, we would say that we have some minor or secondary doctrinal differences. Paul says, let them be cursed to hell. I mean, look at all the things we agree on with each other. So many truths concerning Christ. But Paul says, anyone who adds law to grace, religious rite or ritual, any work to faith for salvation should be anathema, should not be listened to, should not be tolerated, should be warned against, called out by name, Romans 16:17, to warn the brethren. 

And the source of such false teachings is Satan himself. These things do not come from him who called you. My friends, they preach another Jesus. Let's look at 2 Corinthians 11, at verse 3, 2 Corinthians 11, verse 3. Paul says, I fear, I'm concerned, I'm worried, I fear, lest somehow as the serpent deceived by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you may well put up with it. 

Go down to verse 12. Paul says, for what I do, I will also continue to do that I may cut off the opportunity from those who desire an opportunity to be regarded just as we are in the things of which they boast. For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light, therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness whose end will be according to their works. 

You see, if it is a lie, if it is error, if it is contrary to the doctrines of Christ from the word of God, it is not from God. This exists in the false churches who claim to be Christian. But it also infiltrates, by way of influence in doctrine, even the true churches and true believing preachers and teachers and saints can be taken captive by these hollow and deceptive philosophies of men not according to Christ. And they can render us useless to the cause of Christ, unable to bear fruit, forgetting our true purpose. 

False teaching is dangerous. John says don't even welcome them, don't even let them in your house. When our Christianity becomes academic, when we're drawn into the law as a rule of life, focusing on ourselves and our performance according to that law's standard, when bad theology affects our thinking about who God is and who man is, we're drawn away from Christ. We fall away from this principle of grace. We lose our first love, and the love of Christ for men and the power of the Spirit to produce holiness as a witness is hindered. 

And we forget the whole reason we're here, to speak the truth in love, to sing the praises of Christ, to glorify His name, His gospel, His transforming power, to love, to love God and love men, to love them enough to tell them the truth about Jesus. We are primarily here to be His ambassadors, His witnesses. 

I remember talking to a man in one of these churches where the law was paramount, where the teaching was academic, where the theology was involved in the doctrines of grace, as they call them, and I was talking to him about witnessing, about the need for him to reach those whom God had put in his sphere of influence, his life. And he, like the vast majority in this church, did not witness, did not preach and proclaim the gospel in his life and relationships, and he said this to me. He said, well, you know, God has to open their eyes. If they're going to be saved, then God will open their eyes. That's what he said. 

Well, I pointed him to Acts 26, in Paul's testimony before Agrippa, where Jesus said this to Paul. He said, but rise and stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness, both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you. I will deliver you from the Jewish people as well as from the Gentiles to whom I now send you, listen, to open their eyes in order to turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in me. 

We see that this is true for every believer in the Great Commission. We see it in 2 Corinthians 5. We are ambassadors for Christ. He has given to us the words of reconciliation. God has sent us to be his witnesses. He has left us in this world, John 17, so that men may know that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Faith comes by hearing. It is the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation. If there's something in your theology that hinders your witness, that keeps you from being a witness, that confuses the truth of the need of man to hear and his will to believe, then this persuasion does not come from him who called you. Called you to be his witness. Called you to be his ambassador, to bring men to faith in Christ through the preaching of the word. 

I just want to try to show you that error, false teaching, can infiltrate, can permeate even true churches with true believers and get them off track, knock them off course, and result in fruitlessness and confusion. False teaching is dangerous. This persuasion does not come from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. Paul makes this very point we've been discussing. Leaven is used most often in the Scriptures as a warning against false teaching. It comes in by stealth, Jude said, under the guise of truth. It poisoned and permeates the whole. There can be a lot of truth. But the false doctrine is like the leaven, the yeast in a lump of dough, it infiltrates and permeates the whole. 

Turn to Matthew 16, let's see what Jesus had to say about this to his disciples. Matthew 16 at verse 6, then Jesus said to them, take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, it's because we have taken no bread. But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? Do you not understand or remember the five loaves of the 5,000 and how many baskets you took up? Nor the seven loaves of the 4,000 and how many large baskets you took up? How is it you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread? 

But to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The doctrine of the Pharisees, what was that? Righteousness by law. Paul uses this term the same way in Corinthians, here in Galatians, speaking of false doctrine and infiltrating and permeating the whole truth of the word of God in the churches. We must beware of the leaven of false teaching. It's not from God, it's from the enemy. 

Well, next we see in our text that false teachers will be judged, verse 10. He says, I have confidence in you in the Lord that you will have no other mind, but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is. And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased. I could wish that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off. 

Verse 10 is interesting, Paul says, I have confidence in you in the Lord that you will have no other mind. His trust was in the Lord that the believers would come to the same conclusion, would realize that the doctrine of the Judaizers was not from God. Weist comments saying, the words no other mind tell us that Paul expected the Galatians to take no other view of the source of the Judaizers' message than he took, namely that it did not come from God but from an evil source, and that the leaven of the Judaizers was false doctrine. 

Now we have a hard time getting Baptists and Christians to understand that today, that the leaven of the mainline denomination, so-called Christian churches who teach faith plus works, is from the enemy, is false, is not from God, is a false gospel. Paul says false teachers will be judged. We see this in 2 Peter, in chapter 2, we see it in the book of Jude. Really harsh words. He says in 2 Peter 2.9, then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority. They are presumptuous, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries. They're like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed, they speak evil of the things they don't understand. They will receive the wages of unrighteousness as those who count it pleasure to carouse in the daytime. They have eyes full of adultery, they cannot cease from sin. They're doing it for the money. False teachers are in it for the money, and sexual immorality is always indicative of a false teacher. 

At the end of that passage, he says, for if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than having known it to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them, but it has happened to them according to the true proverb, this is what he says about the false teachers, a dog returns to his own vomit, and a sow having washed to her wallowing in the mire. 

We see this same harsh language in Jude, we see it from Jesus. Please notice, my friends, they are all talking about people who are in the church, who are participating in the love feast, who appear to be part of the fellowship, appear to be godly men, leaders, teachers, but they are not, they are dogs, they are pigs, they are dangerous and deceptive, and they lead the believers astray with false doctrine. Peter's illustration of sows and dogs returning to the mire in their own vomit makes clear that these people never were of us, as John says. They escaped the pollution in the world, they came into the church, and they escaped the pollution of the world, that's an external thing, I used to use that illustration when I thought to, through 2 Peter, that's like going into the bathroom when my wife sprang that hairspray, that's pollution. And you have to run out of the bathroom to escape that pollution. 

They escaped the pollution of the world by coming into the church, but they did not escape the inner corruption of sin and bondage to the law. They weren't born again. They weren't regenerated. They weren't saved. They will perish. It says the latter end for them is worse than if they'd never known the truth at all. God will judge false teachers as he always has. Paul's words about these men are very strong in our text, culminating in verse 12. He's alluding to the doctrine of salvation by surgery, the doctrine that they taught that circumcision saves you, just as false churches teach today that baptism saves you. And Paul says something almost unbelievable. He says if circumcision is so good, the cutting off of the foreskin, why not mutilate yourselves as the pagans did? He uses the same language of Philippians 3 where he writes, beware of the mutilation. Those who taught salvation through circumcision and law keeping were an offense, a blasphemy to God, to Christ and the cross. 

And Paul says literally, they may as well emasculate themselves like the pagans, attacking this false teaching. Strong words for the most serious matter, the truth of the gospel. But Paul is confident in the Lord that the believers in Galatia will come to understand who these men are, and the evil from which they come and the lies that they teach will turn from law back to grace, back to Jesus alone. The believers continue, my friends. They're kept by the power of God, Peter says. The work he began in us, he will carry to completion to the day of Christ. We have that confidence, not in ourselves, we have that confidence in Him. 

Well finally, we see in our text that what they must do is turn from law, turn back to grace, turn back to Christ, see their sufficiency in Jesus, and through love, serve one another. Verse 13, for you, brethren, have been called to liberty, only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word. Even in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, beware, lest you be consumed by one another. 

Well, this is a key phrase, you have been called to liberty, freedom in Christ. What does it mean that we're free in Christ? Well, some teach today that Jesus wants to fix your life. He wants to make you happy, healthy, and wealthy in this world, trouble-free. We see variations of this in charismatic movements in a modern evangelical church, but our freedom in Christ is not from trouble or circumstances in this world. Paul said we have a guarantee. If we desire to live godly in this ungodly age, we will suffer persecution. He tells us there will be trials. James tells us, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing God is working through that. 

Some also teach that grace is a license, that sin does not matter in almost a Gnostic, dualistic kind of sense. They use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, and this, of course, is a gross misunderstanding, a misapplication of grace in the gospel. Our freedom in Christ is not from holiness or righteous living in some sort of licentious way. In Romans 6.1, Paul said, what shall we say then, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not. No way. No way. Certainly not, he says. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? The one who thinks he can live in sin because of God's grace fundamentally misunderstands salvation. 

Fundamentally misunderstands the believer's death to sin and the law, and the regeneration of the spirit, as well as the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and Jesus' life in us. Paul says in Ephesians 1.19, the very power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in you. So what is our freedom, our liberty in Christ? Well, first we must understand who we were, if we are now to understand who we are. The man in Adam is described in many places, consistently he is characterized as being a slave, a slave to indwelling sin, in bondage to the law, living constantly in fear of death. He and his inner man, and his spirit is dead, is dominated and controlled by the sin that lives in him. And no amount of religion, no amount of works, no amount of ceremonies can change who he is, can change his condition. He must be born again. Completely changed on the inside, made a new creation, and this through faith in Jesus Christ alone. 

And this is exactly what God does when a man turns to Jesus alone in faith, he kills that old man in Adam, and he raises him a new man. Our freedom is from sin and law in order that we might love, that we might live to God. Paul said, I through the law died to the law in order that I might live to God. Romans 6.3, do you not know that as many of us as were placed into Christ Jesus were placed into his death? We were buried with him into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead, do you hear that? Just as. Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so, just as, even so, we also should walk in newness of life. 

For if we've been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly, I love that word, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man, that old man dominated, controlled by indwelling sin, in bondage to the law and fear of death, that old man was crucified with him. Why was he crucified with Jesus? That the body of sin, that is, this physical body controlled by indwelling sin, might be rendered powerless in order that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. 

Verse 6 is so key, it explains what we'll focus on next time when we study verses 16 and 17, the word flesh here in Galatians 5, 16 and 17, and I really want you to understand this, I know we're getting to the end of the sermon, everybody's thoughts are wandering and some people are dozing, so just pay attention now because it's going to be important for next week, okay? 

The term flesh, what does it mean? It's a loaded term, all kinds of misunderstandings. It can refer simply to the body, to flesh and bone, but it is often used in a negative connotation as it is in Galatians 5, 16 and 17. And this term flesh here refers to the physical body controlled by indwelling sin. Now the truth that we must know and believe is found in Romans 6, 6, that we just looked at, that our old man, that man in Adam, controlled and dominated by indwelling sin, was crucified, died, for the express purpose that the body of sin, that's the key term, the body of sin, this is the exact same meaning as the term flesh, it's the physical body controlled by indwelling sin, the old man was crucified, buried, and raised a new man with Christ, so that the body of sin would be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 

Sin did not die. Indwelling sin is still in the believer, until glorification. But the greatest transformation, listen to this, the greatest transformation has already occurred. We have been born again, we have been recreated, we are in Christ, we are new and alive to God in our nature, we are dead to sin and the bondage of the law, no longer in fear of death. Death is just a transition. It's a small matter compared to what's already happened to us when we believe Jesus. 

The greatest work was done in our union with Jesus in his death, burial, and resurrection when I died, when that old man was crucified, and if you knew that old man, if you knew that old John Noose, you'd know that he died. Was transformed on the inside. I died so that this physical body, my members, would no longer be controlled by indwelling sin. And now I present my members, my mind, my tongue, my eyes, my hands, I present my members not to sin, right? I yield not to sin, but to God. These are weapons for his warfare. 

And what I can do now that I never could do in Adam is love. And this is my motive. He died for me, grace, grace that I did not deserve. And now my life is a life of thank you, of praise Jesus for his marvelous grace. He died for me and now my greatest desire is to live for him and to love him and to love others as he does. My motive is love. And I want my life to be agape. I want it to be self-sacrificial service to God and to men. 

I want to speak the truth in love. I want to learn more and more about the love of Christ which passes knowledge. And I want the fruit of the Spirit, love, to be continually manifest out through my members this body as I am filled that is controlled by the Spirit. In Adam I was filled with sin. I was controlled by indwelling sin. In Christ I am filled with the Spirit as I walk through faith in Jesus. My friends, Paul's message is this cannot come through law. The law is holy and righteous and good. It's a reflection of God's character and nature. Our life will conform to the law in that sense if we're walking in the Spirit. 

But the law is not a means, it's not a way, it's not a rule of life. It can't produce holiness in us. Only walking by the Spirit, only walking by faith can do that. These are the disciplines of the Christian life. Not law, not legalism, not trying to live up to some standard, but knowing, believing, and by the power of the Spirit obeying the Word, the truth, looking unto Jesus as we run this race. 

That was what the Galatians needed. They needed to get away from these Judaizers and these law teachers, these false teachers, and kick them out of the church. They needed to get back focused on Christ and grace and living by faith. The life that I now live, I have been crucified with Christ, Paul says. The life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. It's not I who live this life, it's Jesus who lives this life. The answer to the Christian life is Jesus. 

Let's close in prayer. Father, we thank You for the Gospel. We thank You for the message of Your grace. We thank You for Your love for us. And we thank You for what You've done in us, for Your purposes, for Your glory, what You've done in us at salvation, that You have regenerated us, that You have given us a new heart and a new spirit, and the Holy Spirit has come to live in us. And Jesus Himself lives in and through us as we abide in Him. Help us to understand what this means. Help us to apply it in our lives so that we might be fruitful, that we might see the fruit of the Spirit, love, in our lives. All for Your glory, in Jesus' name, amen.