Paul’s Letter to the Gauls (Galatians) – Summary

Brother Steve, when you realize that you really are…It’s going to be wonderful when you realize you’re free. Like the man who sat there for years in prison, and then one day he walked up and pushed on the door, and it was not locked. He had been free all his life and did not know. You are free; the door is unlocked. Can you understand that God gave us the law because of His own liberty? He gave the law to get us out of bondage; that is, to bring us to Christ. When the Lord Jesus Christ came to earth, He came to share with you His incredible liberty. There is One within you who is totally free from all things. I will even say He only does what He wishes to do and He does absolutely nothing else. There are two things about the Lord that never come across very clearly. One is that He is young, and the other is that He is free. He is free. Your Lord is young, and He is free, and He’s a lover.

Now that’s really breaking the stereotype of what God is like, does it not? A lover who’s young and free. Now that’s exciting, isn’t it? That’s the kind of person you like to be with. A young lover who’s completely free. Well, that’s great. I’m prepared to bring the most extreme message that’s ever been brought on liberty, and step on an airplane or whatever, and leave here without qualifications. I’m ready to leave here, I really am, for one simple reason. If you’re saved, I believe in the Lord. I do not believe this is going to bring license. I expect it to bring liberty and freedom.

A sister said it beautifully today. A sister said to me, “Gene, when you talk about the Lord that way and about how free I am, it just makes me love the Lord more.” Have you ever heard of the law making someone love the Lord? Man, I have heard it does everything on earth, but I’ve never heard it make you love the Lord. He has set you free. I don’t particularly trust you, but I trust the Lord. You are a new species, and you may have to train a lion not to eat a human being. You may have to put a lost man under the law, but you are a new species, and freedom…freedom from the law with your species…does something it doesn’t do to the other species. It is for freedom that you have been set free. You are free from the law.

Behold, I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you. And I will tell you something. If you go back under the stranglehold of the law, being a Christian is going to benefit you absolutely nothing. To be a believer under the law, you might as well be a Jew or a religious person who has never known the Lord. You might as well be a Muslim. The Lord will not benefit you. You can only be benefited by the Lord when you’re free. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is under obligation to keep the whole law. And I want you, brothers and sisters, to know that if you turn to the law and live under it, you’ll have to live under it to fulfill the Christian experience, because you have no hope or help from God under the law. The law nullifies the Lord in you just like the Lord in you nullifies the law. You’re going to have to choose whether you’re going to be free…or under the law. The two don’t mix. Okay, that’s wonderful. I’m glad we’re forced to do this.

Sister Judy, get ready to make it a choice. You don’t go to the Webster dictionary to find out what baptism means, and you don’t go to a Baptist interpretation of falling from grace to find out what it means to fall from grace. For a Baptist to talk about falling from grace means you were saved and are now lost. That is not what Paul said. If you go back to living under the law, you have stepped out of living under grace. If you step out of living under the law and you turn to Christ, then you have stepped into grace. That’s so obvious and so simple, I am not going to comment on it. I’m going to the next verse. Faith got to you through the love of God. The love of God is what won you to Christ. It was the love of God that stirred up faith in you to say, “Lord, I believe.”

Now, I am not here to get you so paranoid about the law that you start putting people under the law to be free, forcing them to be free in areas they don’t really have any urge to be free in. I’ve watched groups that have become legalistic, and it takes two people to make a group of Christians legalistic. It takes the youngest and the dumbest, the most immature, listening to it, reacting extremely to the message, and it takes the one who is speaking that message to allow it to take root. Saints, I’m going to say it for the umpteenth time: You ought never to put your convictions on another saint in the church. You are hard on yourself; don’t be hard on anybody else. You will destroy the Lord’s work in them; you will take away our liberty. That’s for sure, and it always began with the youngest and newest and the most immature. You’re either putting someone under the law or opening all the doors because you think someone shouldn’t be under the law.

Preaching the law is accepted in religious circles; preaching the cross will cause you to be persecuted by those who preach the law. That’s remarkable. Why is it? Would you not think that the law is a worse thing to happen to you than the cross? Would you not? But the cross that Paul refers to here is the cross that destroyed the law and made you free. And that gospel, that gospel of a cross that has annihilated the law, is persecuted. It has been from the beginning and will be until the end, that men are accepted when they preach the law, and they are persecuted when they preach the annihilation of the law. Very amazing and very true.

Then the stumbling block of the cross has been abolished. When you preach the law, you no longer stumble over this incredible thing of the cross. A lot of the Lord’s people are afraid of hearing the message that the cross has done away with the law. It is a stumbling block. Praise the Lord for that stumbling block and praise the Lord for the cross, for we would have nothing in Christ without that cross. We would just be a Moslem under another name. We would be a monk who fasts four days a week without that cross. We would be a religion instead of the Lord’s people. Christ has called all of His followers, all saints throughout all ages, to be free through the work of the cross.

Let’s just put it this way. The flesh and the law hurt other people. You have really been hurt by people serving you, is that not true? It is the natural inclination of the new man to serve others. The antidote for grace is the law. The antidote for law is to love and to serve your brothers and sisters. The way to cure the law is to love and to serve. Or to put it another way, would you like a good substitute for the law? Love one another, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself, but if you bite and devour one another, take care lest you be consumed by one another. The little church groups that meet in homes all over America end up under the law and devouring one another. That’s why they don’t exist very long.

The issue is settled between the flesh and the spirit. There is one thing they agree on. You are going to get to do what you want to do. You are neither as strong as your spirit nor your flesh. There is no way. You are number three on the totem pole. And here you all go for three or four days without talking to the Lord or losing your temper, but you’re in transition. You’re either going to be talking to the Lord or losing your temper very, very soon, because you’re going to go one way or the other. I do believe that it happens to you maybe 10 or 15 times a day. In fact, you are probably the most schizophrenic…a schizophrenic person is one who has two natures. Well, a Christian has three, and this is why a Christian is such an unstable person. And that’s why God invented the church. That is the definition of church, isn’t it?

The fruit of the Spirit is…listen, there is another realm within you, and it is your spirit. You do not go to your spirit in order to love. You do not go to your spirit so that you might rejoice and therefore fulfill all the demands God has put on you. God has demanded of you nothing. He has given you His Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit. You live in your spirit until the whole trunk is full; then the trunk is full, and, praise the Lord, the branches are full. And then the earlobes get full, and the eyeballs get full, and the tongue gets full, and the fingers get full, and the fingernails get full, and then you cannot bear it any longer. You’ve stored it everywhere it is to store, and you have to get rid of it. And you say, “Hallelujah, Praise the Lord.”

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, and self-control. Against such, there is no law. So, get the sap until it pours out in the overabundance of divine Life, and that’s all you’re obligated to do. Be in your spirit, and it will take care of the rest. Saint, you are now alive, and you have the sense that you’re alive. Is this not true? You were made alive by what? By the fact that the implanted spirit has been put in you. Then he says, “Alright, if one is true and one is true, then put one plus one together and get two. If you live by the spirit, if the spirit has made you alive, if you have been resurrected from the dead, if your sins are forgiven, if you are justified, if you are truly sanctified and the Spirit has done this and the Spirit has made you alive, if you live by the Spirit, then why not just go one little step further and live in this? Not only live by the Spirit, but live in the Spirit? Not only do you live by the spirit, but why not follow the spirit, walk in the spirit? You will live by the Spirit; you are alive by means of the Spirit. Therefore, let us go an inch further and follow the Spirit wherever He goes. Let us walk in the Spirit.