Chuck Larsen

Living under the law is indeed a curse. Paul is adamant on this and points it out frequently in several of his letters. But the curse of living under the law was lifted from us. As Christ was lifted up on the cross, He took the law with Him (so to speak). He did that so we could find the blessings of Abraham overwhelming our lives. This is what he says in Galatians 3:12-14, “But the law is not of faith, rather ‘The one who does them shall live by them.’ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”

The idea of redemption is a bit too religious for me. All it really means is the payment of a price to secure the release of a prisoner or a slave. It was used also of prisoners of war and even of criminals in jail and especially for criminals that have been placed under a death sentence. Redemption always means the payment of a price to secure a person’s release. As humans living under the curse of sin, we are all slaves to sin. We cannot set ourselves free from that slavery. It is part of who we are. I know it stinks! I do not like it. You do not like it, but liking it has nothing to do with its existence. I do not like limburger cheese! My dad loved it. My not liking it did not affect its existence or my dad eating it! Limburger cheese is still there, and sin is still there. But Christ’s death on the cross was the payment of a ransom price by which sinners are set free. Now that we are redeemed, we are free! Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last!

A.B. Simpson is reported to have said that the gospel “Tells rebellious men that God is reconciled, that justice is satisfied, that sin has been atoned for, that the judgment of the guilty may be revoked, the condemnation of the sinner canceled, the curse of the Law blotted out, the gates of hell closed, the portals of heaven opened wide, the power of sin subdued, the guilty conscience healed, the broken heart comforted, the sorrow and misery of the Fall undone.” I would add and the smell of limburger cheese eradicated! We are now a sweet-smelling savor to God through faith, not through works.

Along the way in life, we can adopt the attitude that we are either blessed or cursed. I know people who say that if anything bad can happen to them, it will. Others say that if anything good can come today, it will come to me! These represent two different attitudes towards life. The pessimistic outlook sees bad even in good things. When something good comes their way, they just wait for the other shoe to drop (so to speak.) The optimist finds the good even in the bad things. Thomas Edison was a well-known optimist.  Thomas Edison’s manufacturing facilities in West Orange, N. J., were heavily damaged by fire one night in December 1914. Edison lost almost $1 million worth of equipment and the records of much of his work. The next morning, walking about the charred embers of his hopes and dreams, the 67-year-old inventor said: “There is value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Now we can start anew.”

Paul argues in Galatians 3:9-11, that people of faith should live their lives expecting great blessings. On the other hand, those who live by the law find nothing but a curse. He writes, “So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law and do them.’ Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” God loves us! He has our best interest foremost in mind and regardless of our current situation, everything is going to work out for our good. Under the law, we know we have blown it and feel discouraged, dejected, and defeated most of the time.  It is a matter of faith and trust in a good God or a condemning God.

Those who live by faith are much happier and really are more successful in life. Psychologist Martin Segilman of the University of Pennsylvania advised the MetLife insurance company to hire a special group of job applicants who tested high on optimism, although they had failed the normal aptitude test.  Compared with salesmen who passed the aptitude test but scored high in pessimism, this group made 21 percent more sales in their first year and 57 percent more in their second.  A pessimist is likely to interpret rejection as meaning “I’m a failure; I’ll never make a sale.”  Optimists tell themselves, “I’m using the wrong approach,” or “That customer was in a bad mood.”  By blaming failure on the situation, not themselves, optimists are motivated to make that next call. It is that way with people of faith. God is not out to get us (the curse), He’s out to bless us! Now, it is our choice. We can live under the curse of the law, or we can live under the grace of God. He expressed His love and concern for us on the cross. If He loved us that much, is there anything He will not do for us?

Paul uses the example of Abraham’s faith as evidence of his gospel of salvation by grace through faith alone. It was not Abraham’s “works” that made him righteous with God. If you study Abraham’s life, you find many examples of his many failures, yet God continued to bless Abraham because of his faith. In Galatians 3:6-8 Paul writes, “Abraham ‘believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.’ Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.  And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’” Paul’s point is that the blessings promised to Abraham came through faith not works. Those blessings are ours as well and we are sons or heirs of Abraham not by blood lineage but by God’s grace through faith.

In the story of Abraham, we see God’s grace given to a man who had only one thing going for him; he believed God. He came from a pagan religion and even carried the remnants of it everywhere he went. He often took matters into his own hands rather than rest in God’s promises, but God never deserted him. Notice there was nothing about Abraham that commended him to God. There was nothing about Paul that should have commended him to God either. Actually, he was a murderer and didn’t deserve grace at all. It was only God’s grace through faith that obtained God’s blessing on his life.

I like the way Max Lucado explains this in his little devotional, “Grace for the Moment.” He says, “Grace is created by God and given to man.… On the basis of this point alone, Christianity is set apart from any other religion in the world.… Every other approach to God is a bartering system; if I do this, God will do that. I am either saved by works (what I do), emotions (what I experience), or knowledge (what I know). By contrast, Christianity has no whiff of negotiation at all. Man is not the negotiator; indeed, man has no grounds from which to negotiate.” Max is so right! Neither Abraham nor Paul had anything to commend them to God. They had nothing that God wanted or needed to negotiate with. Neither do you or I. But in all our trials, tests, temptations and turmoil, God’s grace is sufficient for us as it was for Paul and Abraham.

Paul addresses the foolishness of abandoning the grace connection with God through His Holy Spirit for a “fleshly” works relationship. It is always tempting for Christians to default to a works relationship with God. But it is indeed “foolish.” It only brought us great suffering before, why do we think it will be different now? Paul writes in Galatians 3:3-5, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” The point is that we just kill ourselves when we abandon grace and focus on works of the law as the basis of our relationship with God. Through the Spirit we are connected to God through Christ’s righteousness not our own. We are so foolish to abandon grace for law! The law fails us, and we end up starving for communion with God that we once had in the Spirit.

When we lived in Dallas some years ago, fire ants had moved into the area. At that time, they had virtually taken over the southern United States since they were accidentally transported here a few decades ago. They are amazingly adaptable, fiercely aggressive, and multiply seemingly overnight. Worst of all, insecticide sprays generally cannot destroy the mound’s inhabitants. Like a mighty army they have marched in, impervious to brute force. Scientists have now found a rather crafty way to wipe out whole colonies. Pellets of the ants’ favorite food are tainted with a special tasteless, odorless poison and sprinkled around the mound. The worker ants immediately begin gathering up the tainted treasure and take it down into the heart of the colony. There, they unwittingly feed the poisoned pellets to their queen, slowly killing her! When the queen dies, no more workers are produced and so in a couple of weeks the entire colony starves to death. How ironic. Food that looked so good caused their starvation!

That is how it is with false doctrine, especially the false doctrine of salvation by works or salvation by grace plus works. It is deadly and eats away at the heart of the Christian message until it has wiped out every semblance of the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, etc. The foolishness of the Galatians again refers to “not thinking” their way through the implications of this false doctrine. Paul says they lack discernment. Those who lack discernment import this false doctrine into their thinking until it works its way into the heart of the church, all the while thinking it is harmless and in fact quite good. If any discerning “ant” smells the poison and protests, he is ridiculed and in the end, the next generation starves to death spiritually. We will never earn God’s acceptance by being good. We can only receive God’s acceptance through faith in Christ. While filling our bellies with good deeds and holy effort we actually starve to death. Our hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness will never be filled by keeping the law, because it can only be filled by God’s grace through faith in Christ.

You can almost feel Paul’s frustration with the Galatians in his opening words of chapter 3. Galatians 3:1 says, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” You have been hoodwinked! You have been deceived! You have bought a bridge in London! You have been lied to, cheated on, and treated like dirt! The legalists want to make you somewhat less than themselves so they can trod all over you. You are letting them! They have seduced you! The actual word implies that some kind of “black magic” may have been involved. You have been hypnotized! Although Paul is standing against the warlocks of the law, he refuses to let the Galatians blame anyone but themselves for their predicament. They have allowed this to happen by not standing firm in the truth that Paul had previously preached and they had received. Paul goes on, “…it was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” Paul confronts the Galatians for allowing themselves to be hypnotized.  The false teachers had cast their black-magic spell on them. It is an old spell of Satan originally cast in the Garden of Eden when he convinced Adam and Eve that they could do it themselves. Satan continues to cast his black magic spell of salvation by works on us. We often fall prey again.

Our relationship with God is restored by His grace through our faith in Jesus. It is faith that saves and buys us back from our condemnation under the law. Why in the world would you want to return to such slavery now that you have been set free? The laws of Judaism failed to save you in the past, what makes you think reestablishing them will save you in the future? Paul works to remind them that laws can never save. The world, the flesh, and the devil want us to believe otherwise! At best laws can merely control. The cross however, manifests the love of God and the grace that saves. The Galatians heard Paul gladly when he preached this message to them then. What has happened to their faith now?

The word here for foolish is not the normal word “moroneo” from which we get the word “moron.” It is a word that means lack of discernment. We are not thinking people anymore. Many Christians today are deluded by religious systems that try to attach something to the cross as a prerequisite for salvation. We become mesmerized by works and superstitious in our beliefs. But God does not save us by His grace through faith and observance of any law. Richison observes, “It is staggering how many people today cannot recognize error. We live in a ‘foolish’ generation. The Scriptures clearly put up a poster announcing that salvation and sanctification are by grace alone, not works, yet Christians buy into legalism on a regular basis.” The cults are ever growing because people have no “discernment.” Richison goes on, “Legalists love to mesmerize us into believing that we have something to offer God for salvation or sanctification. Many people have become victims of this.” We have nothing to offer God! But God has everything to offer us. He does so on the Cross of Calvary.

As I said before, Christ died for us all – Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female.  One commentator says that Christ has set us all free from any kind of slavery “to a political or economic system, to social prejudices and barriers, to sin or habits or customs. Nor did He create us to be slaves of any religious system. From everything that would bar men and women from true fellowship with God, God in Christ has set us free.” Paul is ready to go to battle with all the other Apostles if need be. But he doesn’t have to. They agree! Freedom in Christ is for everyone! Everyone is equal in God’s eyes. I like to say that the ground at the foot of the cross is perfectly level. We all stand on sin’s ground! We are all sinners and approach God on the basis of Christ’s righteousness not our own.

Yet in Galatians 2:11-14, Paul tells of Peter’s struggle with the Jewish influencers in Antioch. Peter had slipped into the old routines of the Law and seemed to have favored the legalists at the expense of the Gentile converts. Paul confronted Peter for this error. We read, “But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.”

Legalism is powerful! We do not want to be seen as less “spiritual” than the next person. When legalists look down upon those who might eat meals not approved under Jewish law, there is pressure to conform to the legalistic standards to save face. We do not like being put down or considered somewhat less of a Christian than others for any reason. Peter’s eating with and then not eating with the Gentiles said a lot more than immediately comes to mind. A common meal says so much.  As Lawson puts it, “Through common meals, friendships are solidified, romances are ignited, and barriers are broken down. To eat together is to treat one another as an equal. That is the reason slaves have always been forbidden to eat with their masters. That is also why, in the first century, no self-respecting orthodox Jew would share a meal with Gentiles. As far as the Jew was concerned, Gentiles weren’t equal.” In the early church the same spirit existed. The “law keepers” saw themselves as better than those not refined by the same culture. They could not lower themselves to the level of the godless “dogs” that ate forbidden meats. Paul would not stand for such distinctions in the body of Christ and neither should we.

When Paul finally made his way to Jerusalem, he was welcomed with opened arms. The three pillars, (James, John, and Peter) received him completely and commended him to the ministry to the Gentiles. Galatians 2:7-10 lays that out for us. We read, “when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.”

Paul received the complete approval of the apostles and was commended to the ministry to the Gentiles. In verse 10, they added a suggestion to Paul: “Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.” Please notice that this is not a command. That means the Apostles recognized Paul as an equal. It was a request that Paul had already embraced and taught throughout the Gentile world. The Gospel that Paul preached was approved and Paul, recognized as an Apostle himself, was commended by the 12 to preach his message to the world. On the other hand, the gospel of the Judaizers was condemned at the Jerusalem Council (See Acts 15). It wasn’t just Paul’s non-authoritative opinion, like something I might say. No it was “Gospel.” It was the good news that Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins and to purchase for us a place in heaven that he offers to us all as a free gift! It is by grace we are saved, through faith. It has nothing to do with our righteousness. God leaves us with nothing but gratitude and nothing to brag about regarding our standing with God. It’s all of Grace!

Freedom is for everyone who believes, Jew and Gentile alike. They are free in Christ, just as you and I are! In his novel “Chesapeake,” Michener tells about a Reverend Buford. He’d been called to speak to rebellious slaves on the plantation. They are planning to run away but Buford tells them to forget it. “And what is running away, really?” he asks them. “Tell me, what is it? It is theft of self. Yes, you steal yourself and take it away from the rightful owner, and God considers that a sin.” For this terrible sin of wanting their freedom Buford says, “you will roast in hell.” I don’t think Buford has ever read or understood Galatians. Christ died for us all; Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female.  One commentator says that Christ has set us all free from any kind of slavery, whether “to a political or economic system, to social prejudices and barriers, to sin or habits or customs. Nor did He create us to be slaves of any religious system. From everything that would bar men and women from true fellowship with God, God in Christ has set us free.” Paul is ready to go to battle with all the other Apostles if need be. But he doesn’t have to. They agree! Freedom in Christ is for everyone who believes!