Significant Passages #4: Galatians 5:2-4

This one is for all of you out there who believe that God requires you to do good works or obey His law in order for you to earn salvation.  If you trust in the hope that somehow your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds (and also hope that God is satisfied with a record of 51% obedience!), please read this carefully.

In my last post we read that salvation comes by grace through faith--and that even faith itself is a gift from God.  What do we bring to the table as our part of the transaction?  Nothing but sin!

In the passage that I've chosen from Galatians today, the Apostle Paul is admonishing believers who had at first received salvation by grace through faith, but now they were trying to complete that salvation by what they thought were meritorious works of the law.  That is, certain Jews had taught them that they needed to become circumcised in order to remain in God's pleasure.

This "circumcision" was a shorthand way of saying that to continue in God's favor, they must obey the Old Testament law.  We don't stumble over that too much in America today, but we do stumble over other laws, of our own creating.  Our form of legalism takes shape kind of like this: "Don't drink, don't smoke, don't dance, don't chew, and don't hang out with them that do."  A thousand tiny laws to bow the backs of the ones who trust in their own righteousness, instead of that which is freely found in Jesus Christ.

And what's the purpose?  To earn by our own works a righteousness that makes God indebted to us.  This is perhaps a subtle point, but here it is nonetheless: We trust in a righteousness of our own efforts, in order to force the hand of God.  "I have fulfilled Your law; now You must let me enter Heaven."

That's a rather long preamble for this series, but finally we arrive at Galatians 5:

Indeed I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing.  And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law.  You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.

 In trying to earn their own salvation, the Galatians found themselves in the position not of somebody to whom God owed a debt; instead, they find themselves in debt to a harsher master yet: the whole law!  In trying to earn their own favor before God, they found themselves fallen from the only place of favor that exists before God: His grace.

Please don't make this critical mistake; it's a matter of life and death.  Please don't let Christ "profit you nothing."  Jesus is the way--the only way--to Heaven.  Repent from your sin-stained acts of self-righteousness, and take upon you the perfect righteousness of Jesus that is the clothing of all the saints.  Don't try to hide your sins from the eyes of the Holy One; let Him take them from you and bear them Himself upon His Cross.

Significant Passages #3: Ephesians 2:8-10

This significant passage has become to me the bedrock of my hope for salvation--the place where my hope for eternity stands or falls.  And like the other significant passages I have listed so far, I didn't discover it until many years after I first expressed faith in Jesus Christ ... but it was active in me unawares.

Ephesians 2:8-9 reads thus:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

We have been saved by the grace of God--the mercy, the unearned favor of God.  It is His mercy, completely undeserved by you or me, that saves us.

But what about works?  Works of righteousness, offered to God as a form of obedient sacrifice--isn't that what God requires?  In a word, no.

As the reformers would say, we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.  Then what about faith?  Isn't that the meritorious work that God demands?  Again, no.

We are saved through faith indeed--but see the verse again: We are saved through faith, but "that not of yourselves ... it is the gift of God," and the verse specifically declares, "not of works."

So where do works come in? See verse 10:

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Good works are not the cause of our salvation, they are the result of our salvation.

Significant Passages #2: John 6:28-29

Another one of my favorite passages of scripture—one that I discovered relatively late in my life—is John 6:28-29.  When I say "discovered," I really mean "was uncovered for me by the Holy Spirit," because I had certainly read that passage several times previously, without it having made the least impression on me.  Here it is:

Then they said to Him, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?"  Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent."

Let me set the stage for you.  Earlier in John chapter six, Jesus had fed five thousand men (and their families, presumably) with five loaves of barley bread, and two small fish—a notable miracle.  Later that same evening, He had walked upon the sea—another notable miracle.  The next day, those who had been miraculously fed sought Him.  When they found Him, they asked, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?"

It's not totally clear to me exactly what they were asking.  Were they saying, "What can we do, so that we can work miracles like You do?"  It seems to be a faint possibility—that they thought that Jesus was just a man like them, and the "works of God" were something to which they could aspire.  But it seems much more likely to me that they were asking Him how they could satisfactorily obey the Law—a noble question, worthy to be asked: "What works can we do that will make us pleasing and acceptable to God?" (The famous Bible commentator Matthew Henry says that they were asking what works they could do to make them worthy to receive "the food which endures to everlasting life," which Jesus had just told them about (John 6:27 NKJV); this is of essentially the same substance as my conjecture.)

Jesus' answer is the answer to any and all who have tried to satisfy the holiness of God by a strenuous obedience to His Law.  "This is the work of God," He says.  "This is what you must do to satisfy the requirements of God Almighty: believe."  Not tithe; not give to the poor; not be patient with your wife or be a good father—believe.  Now, we understand that anyone who truly does believe in Jesus will want to tithe and give to the poor and be patient and everything else that he thinks will please the Father; but that's not where his salvation lies.  His salvation lies in his faith—in his belief in the Gospel, that Jesus died on the cross for his sins (1 Corinthians 15:3-4) and was raised for our justification (Romans 4:25).  Believe the Gospel—not trust in your own works.  Believe in Jesus—not believe in yourself.

There is another sense that can be given to the words, "This is the work of God," with which I once again find agreement with Matthew Henry: "This is the work that God must do; this is the work which Man cannot do."

The work of faith is the work of God. They enquire after the works of God (in the plural number), being careful about many things; but Christ directs them to one work, which includes all, the one thing needful: that you believe, which supersedes all the works of the ceremonial law; the work which is necessary to the acceptance of all the other works, and which produces them, for without faith you cannot please God. It is God's work, for it is of his working in us, it subjects the soul to his working on us, and quickens the soul in working for him (Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible).

I'm not sure which of the petals of Calvinism's tulip this would fall under: unconditional election or irresistible grace, but it informs us regarding both.  We do not work to obtain salvation; it is God Who provides.  And when God creates in us the faith of His working, we do believe indeed.  In any case, the glory belongs to Him.

A Kiss from Rachel

O Lord, satisfy me with Your goodness!
Turn my heart away from pursuing worthless things!

I love trinkets, I love doodads, I love gewgaws.
Wood, hay, and stubble?
I have an entire kingdom made of cardboard.

"When I became a man, I put away childish things."
—so spoke Saint Paul.  Was he younger then than I am now,
looking backward at the time when he became a man?
And here I sit, surrounded by—engulfed, overwhelmed by—
my childish things.
Old fool that I am!
Will the day ever come, the day when I will be a man?
Or am I fated to be forever ensnared
by the twisted bands of my iniquity?
Must it take some colossal effort of the will,
some titanic throwing off of the old man?
—something I don't have the energy to muster.
Or shall I sit here, feigning patience,
while the imps prick and poke me?

While I writhe and moan in the
uncomfortably plain view of all my sins,
still my heart finds its rest in these words:

"My grace is sufficient for thee."