Paul’s Letter to the Gauls (Galatians) – Chapter 3

Please stop here for a moment and look at four of the main characters in the book of Galatians. Abraham, old and dead. Sarah, old and dead, weak, sterile, impotent, almost dead, as good as dead. Peter, wishy-washy, hypocrite, man pleaser, Paul, religious, fanatical, murderer. You are weak, impotent, totally incapable of living a decent life, even with the help of all the legalists in America. A total failure at obeying law. Absolutely true. You, it is you. It is to you that God comes with grace. Can you understand the point he’s trying to make? It’s going to be all of him and none of you. He picks the kind of people Abraham, Sarah, Paul, and Peter are—helpless, hopeless creatures to show forth His grace that no man may boast. If you don’t understand what I just said, I have a recommendation for you: that you get under more law and preach it. You believe it, and you demand it of others, and you watch them. You monitor your own heart, think up some more rules, speak on authority, speak on submission, watch people, watch dog them, make sure they do this and do that, adjust them, preach all sorts of morality, and keep monitoring your heart. You’ll find out you’re wicked, impotent, and utterly sinful, incapable of living up to your own standard, even though you press it on others. One day, you’re going to run for grace, and when you get there, will you keep on after you have received it, run in it, and not revert back to the law? Because you are as impotent now as you were before you were converted to fulfill the law of man or the law of God. Are you here?

I want to talk to you just for a moment about the child conductor. In Rome and in Italy, among the wealthy, there were slaves whose job was to take the child from the rich family, the bus driver of that day. Streets were very dangerous, and there was a schoolteacher, but that’s not what this refers to. This one takes the little children of the wealthy family through the dirty streets. He makes sure they don’t get run over by a chariot. He makes sure that those thugs down that street don’t get hold of these kids. Guard them against the mud and the dirt and the rain and the traffic and the garbage being thrown out of the windows above, which was what they did on that day. Keep their feet clean from all the filth on the ground, and bring them to school. Then, that evening comes, gets them, and conducts them back home to their father and mother.

The law’s job is to show you Abraham’s impotence, Sarah’s death, Paul’s religious fanaticism, and utter inability; as fanatical as he was driven, he could not obey that which he himself believed. Peter’s instability, and to have shown that to you say had enough. Come, I will take you home safely. That teacher you were taken to every day was saying thou shalt. Thou shalt not. Thou shalt, thou shalt not. You’d better look out. You’d better be nice. Santa Claus has come to town. He knows who’s been good and he knows who’s been bad. He’s got a list. He’s checking it twice. I’ve forgotten the words, obviously. God will love you if you do this, and God won’t love you if you don’t, and you fail and fail and fail again. You just keep making Fs. Every one of us does. And the child conductor comes and says, “Would you like to go back home and take you away from all this?” The little kid says, “Yeah, I just can’t handle this. I’m a failure.” He takes the child home to Christ, to His grace, and to His peace, and all Paul is saying is when you get there, stay there. When you get there, stay there. You’ve already gotten there. Everyone has got there. Probably, every person in this room is genuinely converted. Your problem is not that you didn’t get converted; your problem is that you went back to where you came from. Come on home to the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, that’s our child conductor.

Now I’m going to come to an end. Verse 25. But now that faith has come, we’re no longer under a child conductor. What came? Faith came, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ, have clothed yourself with Christ. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise. I’m just going to close by letting you see something. When you had faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, God did an incredible thing with you. If you can see this, please. Now, I want you to understand that this is what God sees. God picked you up and plunged you inside of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, that’s what this says. To the point that you were clothed with Christ, and then having been clothed with Christ, you got lost in there somewhere, and you became one with Him. When you were plunged into Christ and became one with Him, you lost your identity as an employer or an employee. You lost your bloodline, French, Spanish, Italian, English, Scandinavian, German, Chinese, black, white, red, or yellow. Is there something I left out? Red and yellow, black and white. Okay. You lost your gender, too. As surely as the slave and the free man became the same, and the Jew and the heathen became the same, the male and the female became the same. You were lost inside of Jesus Christ.

Now, I have to ask you a question. You are that one with Him; so much so, we have spoken of a species that’s neither male nor female, nor Jew or free, a Jew or Greek nor free, Jew or Greek nor bond or free or male nor female, but is one. That means you’re Christ’s. C H R I S T apostrophe. You’re Christ’s. You’re His, and you’re lost in Him.  You’re one with Him. I only have to ask you one question. Is Jesus Christ under the law? No. Did He come after the law or before the law? Before the law. Is He above the law or below the law? And to make sure, He also fulfilled the law. I want you all to get this. We’re going to go over this.

You’ve heard the word egotistical. Have you ever heard the word egocentric? It’s not an ugly word. It means that you’re centered… “I” centered. You have a consciousness of yourself, an awareness of yourself. Many people don’t have that. They’re very strongly other-centered and do not have an “I” centered view at all. And sometimes they have to get healthier by becoming more conscious of themselves. I want to introduce you to the most “I” centered creature that ever existed…and that’s your Lord. Yes, He was “you”- centered, “you”- conscious, but he was “I”- centered. Go read the gospels. I have come from my Father. I am before you. I am above you. I will be after you. Before Abraham was, I AM. I come from above. You are from beneath. You do not know Me. My Father knows Me. Those who have been called will know Me. The sheep will hear my voice. There is nothing wrong with that. He got here first, saints, and He is God, and He was All. But I would to God you could understand that He is the freest creature who ever lives. He is the freest creature who ever lived.

Now go ahead and be unhappy with that if you want to. Try to poke holes in it if you wish, but the fact is, He is the freest creature who ever existed. Do you understand that the living God today will do absolutely anything He wants to do? He will do absolutely anything He wishes to do. Lord, forgive me. I’m going to make a point. He will sin if He wishes to. The Lord knows I’m covered. He doesn’t want to, but that frightened you when you heard it. Gene, that’s terrible. He wouldn’t go sin. You’re trying to help God, protect God. He’s free. One of the reasons He gave the law was to show you how free He was.

There is no creature in the universe as free as He is. Utterly totally free. I wish you could marinate on that for a while and see the freedom of your God. Now, you have been placed inside of Him, plunged into Him, and been made one with Him so that He can put you in bondage and make you live under an ethical code. It doesn’t make sense, does it? He has invited you into His freedom. He has invited you into His freedom. If that’s not clear in chapter 3, it will be clear in chapters 4 and 5. You have become a son of the living God. And that is not a statement. That’s not a legalistic…a legal term, a judicial term. That is a biological fact. You have taken on His seed. You have taken on His nature. You have taken on His existence and His life. You have become a biological child of God, as biologically His child as Jesus is biologically His child, for you are in Him and of His divine seed.

When you were so given this glorious inheritance, which is God, and the promise was fulfilled in that seed that you would be so blessed, gentile, as to become His child and to become one with Him. You were invited into His freedom from the law and into His freedom. Christ has not only set you free, but given His freedom, and if you have any sense of what that means…if you don’t have, look at the Lord Jesus Christ who lives on this earth and watch Him: He never says an unkind thing toward any sinner. Did you notice that? Women were actually caught in the act of adultery…didn’t even seem to bother Him. Am I being fair here? A holy God. Child, don’t do that again. Is that not true? Wow. They were going to kill her, but the God above the law… “child, don’t do that again.” You know why? I figure she didn’t because she had met the God of all mercies. Going through the fields. It’s Saturday. He’s eating food. Hey, I am Lord of the Sabbath. I rule the Sabbath; the Sabbath does not rule Me. I will soon take the Sabbath and nail it to the cross and end it forever, and when I do, I’ll take every other law there is in existence and nail it there, too. I’ll tell you who He saved His wrath for, His insults, His denunciations, His anathemas. Not for the lady caught in adultery, to whom He said, “Don’t do that again,” but to those who came and visited you in Galatia and tried to get you to obey a human standard that would in some way cause you to merit His favor. To them, He absolutely reigned wrath and judgment on them. He’s free. You are in Him, and you are His child. Praise the Lord.