The Most Beautiful Girl in the World Part 2 – Freedom in Christ

We are going to do something we’ve never done before. And out of it came the most profound experience with the Lord any of us has ever known.

On several occasions, I have tried to do something new I’ve never done before, and I’m not going to say I failed, but I’m going to say that it was so far out that I had to do it over and over again until I could finally do it. I’m going to attempt to do something this weekend that I have never done before and that you have never seen done before. And I think it’s going to look real simple to you, but you get up here and try to do it and you will find it to be extraordinarily difficult.

I have been trying to put my head on backwards, and there’s virtually nothing in chapter one to write about. You are trying to take Paul’s words. He’s fussing at these people and turning Paul’s words into the words of the girl. It’s not there. When I said things that are eternal, I meant things that are eternal. Actually, the only thing in Galatians 1 that is eternal that has that eternal touch to it is verses 1, 2, 3, and 4, and verse 16, and there’s nothing else in there. The rest of it is Paul, and it’s a very temporal thing that he’s doing there.

There’s not a great deal in chapter 2 either, except one of the greatest mountains of the Christian faith. And then there’s chapter three, which is absolutely unbelievable. Except I don’t think, you know, I’m gonna make you mad so I can get your attention. I don’t think there’s a person in here who knows what chapter 3 says.

You see, this girl is a Christian, and I’m dealing with this girl in the 20th century. I’ll soon, if the Lord lets me, be dealing with her in the 21st century. Is she, in fact, having a problem with the Jewish law right at this moment? No, she is not. The principle from which this girl was delivered is far, far, far greater than the Jewish law, and in some ways, all this Jewish business is totally irrelevant to you and me, except for the fact that the law is natural to our fallen nature and really blurs the Christian gospel. We do not understand the Christian gospel. The Christian gospel is radical beyond comprehension. Its statement is so far-fetched and is really not applicable to us a great deal in our present situation.

It takes a great deal of something to understand that if we are going down to the first Baptist, whatever, forgive me for picking on the Baptist, but I am a Baptist, and I have hanging on my wall. I am licensed, honest to goodness, it says right at the top of it, licensed. I got another one that says I’m ordained. I got two of them. I am licensed to kill. I am licensed to talk about Baptists, and I do, that this gospel in this book is so radical in its extreme, it is really irrelevant. It won’t work.

Now, what’s my problem as a Christian today growing up in my present world? It’s not the Jewish religion, and it is not the 613 commandments of Moses. It is that which has been created within my faith, within the Christian faith, that is destroying me. I had not intended to do this, so I haven’t done it well, but, oh, shucks, I’ll do it with my Bible. Follow along with me. Put on your seat belts, folks. You’re not going to believe this.

Oh man, I don’t know. I don’t know where to start. Okay, I’m going to start in Galatians 2:16. I’m a girl, but please keep in mind that I am a corporate girl. Would you? This girl is not an individual, and she is not you. She is neither you nor is she an individual, and everything that is said here does not apply outside of the fact that she is a corporate girl. I’m in verse 16, but you won’t know it. I can’t please my Lord by doing what people expect me to do as a Christian.

I please the Father, and I please the Son simply because of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s not by any standard that anyone has ever pointed to and said, “This is what a Christian is supposed to do, and this is what God expects a Christian to do, that will cause me to please my Lord. There is nothing I can do that has ever been presented as a Christian demand that will ever cause my father to be pleased. If the Christian standard is what pleases God, then where is Christ?

I was a little girl living in Galatia, and I was a slave. Do you think I’m going to go back to all the demands that were put on me as a slave? I will never do that. I am dead to all Christian standards and all Christian demands. They do not exist. All of them. None of them. All of them. They have ceased to exist, anything that has ever been said a Christian ought to do or be. Jesus Christ killed me and, in killing me, set me free from the Christian life.

The only place I’m alive is where God is. Christ killed me; I don’t exist anymore. Alright, you see someone standing here, and I’m going to have to confess to someone standing here. But it is not I, it is Christ, and the life you see being lived has nothing to do with any demand anybody ever made on me. The life I live is the faith of Jesus Christ. Now, you tell me, does He love me, or does He not love me? He loves me. He took me out and crucified me so that the Christian life could not find me. And then He began living in me. You may say He lives the Christian life in me. I would simply say He lives and I do not. Does He love me? He loves me. He loved me to the point of killing me and Himself dying. If you didn’t recognize that, that was verse 20.

If living the Christian life pleases God, then Christ died in vain. Because it is the Christian living that pleases God and not Christ, and it is not the living of the Christian life that pleases God. He does not deal with me on the basis of conduct. He deals with me on the basis of Christ and nothing but Christ. Don’t just sit there. Open your mouth. You might as well enjoy this. There’s … after all, and my Lord did not die needlessly. He died and I died, and He rose, and I rose, and He is my… and you may finish the sentence in any way you wish. It is Christ.