Paul’s Letter to the Gauls (Galatians) – Chapter 5

Those of you who’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop: the closest Paul ever comes to dropping it is in chapter five. Alright, here we go. Read the first six or seven or eight words here with me, would you? It was for freedom that Christ set us free. Let’s say it that way. It was for freedom that Christ set us free. It was for freedom that Christ set us free. Do you know that I don’t know what that means? All I know is that it is almost limitless. It goes from eternity to eternity. Its implications are incredible. Therefore, keep standing firm in your freedom and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. And here he does not say to the law. He has made his case. Law, ordinances, the works of men trying to merit favor with God is bondage. It is slavery. Whether it be in salvation, and that’s not what he’s talking about here; he’s talking about the Christian walk.

Behold, I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you whatsoever. Now, when Paul made this statement, he later felt he hadn’t made it clear enough, and he brought it up again in chapter 6. I don’t want to cover this but once. So, I’m going to slip over to chapter 6 and read a little bit more. Paul sometimes forgets what he says and has to rewrite it. Let’s read verses 12, 13, and 14 of chapter 6, if we may. Those who desire to make a good showing in the flesh try to compel you to be circumcised simply so that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For those who are circumcised do not even keep the law themselves, but they desire to have you circumcised so that they may boast in your flesh. But may it never be that I should boast except in Christ. Verse 15, for neither is circumcision nor uncircumcision anything but a new creature, humanity, creation, species. That is what is reckoned as important. The rest amounts to nothing.

So, I want to come back and gather all the passages here on circumcision together. I’m in verse six of chapter 5. But in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything but faith working through love. You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? That was Blastinius, but Paul doesn’t know that. The persuasion did not come to you from the Lord Jesus Christ, who called you. A little leaves the whole lump of dump. Now, let’s see. I want to make sure I gather all of this up before I make any comment on it. I want you to understand if you…and I’m going to use the word I should use…if you become a legalist in the sight of God, that’s all right. If you choose legalism, just choose legalism. You’re free to do that, but with it you accept an obligation, and that obligation is to fulfill all standards of moral conduct. And you’re foolish if you ever take that upon yourself. How proud, my brother. How arrogant, my brother, my sister. How incredibly arrogant it is for you to turn around and take upon yourself the responsibility of all moral standards.

Why in the world would you want to do that to yourself? You Galatians have gone out there and let this guy Blastinius circumcise you. You go ahead and walk in your circumcision, and you have accepted the responsibility of fulfilling all the laws of the Jewish religion, and that, my friend, is some task. You have literally gone back to Judaism. You have stepped out of grace, and you have gone back to wrath and judgment; you have gone back to all of it. Now, the same thing is true for a Christian. You can either walk in grace and freedom. We’ll get to the only qualification Paul puts on this in a minute, but if you are a Christian and you attach a right relationship of Christ to authority, submission, prayer, Bible study, going to church, evangelism, and all of these other things, then that’s how you’re going to be judged. That’s how your conscience is going to judge you. It is better to start with freedom and know you are free and stay free and work out from there by the unction of another life: His Life.

I don’t think you will ever find a more helpful attitude of being a Christian than a little statement made by Brother Lawrence in Practicing His Presence. He just made it all so simple. He said, “I practice the Lord’s presence at all times as much as I can, but sometimes I sin. Sometimes I fail.” Read Turkeys and Eagles. And I say to the Lord, “Lord, that’s just the way I am.” End of quote. That’s really healthy. Oh, then Gene, I’m really going to go out here and pull a big one and say, “Lord, that’s the way I am.” You know, brother, I really hope you will do that. I’m going to tell you, we really need to know that you’re looking for an excuse to get into your flesh. We need to know where your heart is. I really hope you’ll go. I encourage you to go “sin a big one.” We really need to know that about you, and I want to tell you something: one or two of you in this room probably will, just fine. You got that right. Just go ahead and do it. I think I’ll just quit that sentence right there. You go ahead and do it. You have that liberty, and you have that right. You’re going to hate yourself, friend. You’re going to hate yourself when it is over, and if you don’t, it may be that the Spirit of God doesn’t even dwell in you. I’m going to get off that subject completely. That’s not where I meant to be.

Don’t be in bondage to standards of Christian living that people have told you or implied to you that if you don’t do them, you’re not a good Christian. I’m going to go through them right quickly. I wouldn’t get caught dead in the church. It is so boring. I wouldn’t subject anybody to that. It’s recorded…I don’t mind… you can quote me if you wish. I tell you, give me the choice between sitting down in front of our clothes dryer for an hour or going to church for an hour, I’ll tell you where I’ll be less bored. I mean that. I’m dead serious. I am dead serious. Put all those dirty, wet clothes in there. Turn that thing on. Pull up a chair and watch them. Oh, look. There goes a sock. Wow. There goes my best shirt. Hot dog. It looks really nice and decent there. That would be a lot more fun than sitting in church on Sunday morning gagging with a tie. Two little kids sitting over here, you know, page 91, little note, turn to page 903, little note, turn to page number 21, turn to page 44. You know, that’s the only thing they can do. Keep from going crazy.

Every once in a while, I preach in a church. I’m using their term, not mine. I preach in a church, and I’m always mortified when I stand in the pulpit, and I know that those people, and I am dead serious, are in a hypnotic trance. They have moved themselves into a gear where they’ll be blank for the next 30 minutes. They haven’t heard a message in years, and I don’t let people do that. Nobody has ever successfully stayed in a hypnotic trance with me. Maybe a few. I start speaking to these people, and they get downright hostile because I’ve broken into their nap. I’m serious. You can see the resistance. This man is forcing me to listen to him, and they’re not used to that. They’re literally not used to hearing anything from about 11:30 to 12:00. I know that you must understand what I’m talking about. I don’t feel obligated to punish myself that way. Concerning prayer, I would recommend fellowship with Jesus Christ, and let these things like praying for the president and praying for the sick and the wounded and the afflicted and the poor and our boys over in Vietnam and all those things; let that come at the end of…and I don’t mean the end of your praying but at the end of…let it be the last thing, if you must, the obligatory thing, but you don’t start there. Dear brother, you will come to despise prayer; you won’t even want to be around your Lord, because it is so boring.

I like to tell this story about an authoritarian group down in Southern California. Everything is down in Southern California. Absolutely everything. This group of people had an authoritarian young man leading them. They had to pray for an hour every day and two hours on Sunday on their knees. The elders, in turn, as I recall, had…I hope I’m quoting correctly… had to pray two hours every day and, on Sunday, three hours on their knees. This dear sister was telling me, and she said, “Gene, you don’t know how a clock can literally die and its hands refuse to move.” They had been taught spoken morality so much that she said one day she got out of the car, and the attendant came up and asked her how much gasoline she wanted in there, and, under the law she had been put under, she could not answer him. She had no business, she was told, talking to someone else who was not her husband, some other man. She stood there dumb, not knowing what to do, and I don’t remember what she said. She either found someone else to say it or she wrote it out for him. Have fun, friend. Go live that way and ask yourself, ” Is that what gives me joy?” And that kind of praying, the same way that praying doesn’t have any joy in it. Doesn’t have the promise in it. It doesn’t have the blessing in it. It doesn’t have the Lord in it. Go learn how to fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Alright, evangelism. I want to talk to you about evangelism as a former evangelist. There is no such thing as the Great Commission. I’m evangelizing. Don’t misunderstand me, but I want to give you a little relief here. There’s no such thing as the Great Commission. There was a prophecy made to 12 men, maybe 20, maybe 50. You will be going into Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and you will be going into the uttermost parts of the earth. He told them what they were going to do. He did not say go. He told them what they would be doing. You’re going to get to travel a lot, and you’re going to preach. You will find many verses in the epistles that indicate evangelism. Still, I want to remind you that those epistles were written to bodies of believers, not to you, the individual. They cannot be applied to you as an individual; they are addressed to a church. And brothers and sisters, a church that is doing evangelism, that takes the pressure off of you and the guilt off of you and puts it where it ought to be upon the church as a body.

Some of you will never be an effective personal soul winner. You know why? Because you have a weak heart. You could have a heart attack doing some of the things people demand of you. You know, I hope you can witness someone who comes to your door, bangs on it, and asks to get saved. I hope you can know how to carry them through the experience of salvation, and most Christians do not. If you have time, I’ll show you how sometime, but ask some sweet little gal who can hardly even talk to her husband to go out and witness on the streets all day long. That’s my responsibility. Responsibility of workers. Your responsibility is within the church. Whatever the church does, you can do well because the church is doing it. Furthermore, the church itself should be the greatest instrument of evangelism, and that is just people needing the body of Christ, wanting their sins forgiven, getting free, and needing the community of the fellowship of the body of Christ and the fellowship of Christ, with Christ, in a corporate gathering of people. She will always be the greatest of all evangelists. She’s beautiful. She’s beautiful.

What else have I left out? I wouldn’t study the Bible for nothing on earth. I don’t study the Bible. Every once in a while, I study it a little bit. (laughter) Use it as an instrument to fellowship with the Lord and never turn it into a legal thing. It’ll become a dead letter. Use it every day. Every day, but don’t ever get under condemnation to use it, saints. And use it for life, not for knowledge. If you miss a day, quote brother Lawrence. “Lord, that’s just the way I am.”