SERMON SUMMARY  

The Gospel tells us that our relationship with God depends 100% on what Jesus has done for us, not on what we do for Him. We are made right and kept right with God by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. But that raises a question. “If your relationship with God is not based, at least in part, on what you do, then what keeps people from doing whatever they want to do? …That’s the question we will be answering today.

SERMON SCREENSHOTS & KEY POINTS

It’s possible to believe the Gospel and be set free in Christ, but then fall back into the slavery of trying hard to keep God’s rules in order to keep God on your good side. But, that’s not authentic New Testament Christianity and it’s not the Gospel. Many of us began the Christian life by trusting Jesus and only Jesus to make us right with God. We knew we could never do enough good things to earn or deserve God’s love. But then, after trusting Christ, many of us were taught that faith had to be supplemented with obedience in order to be a “good” Christian—and even, to prove we were really “saved to start with.” We were taught a “try hard to keep the rules” kind of Christianity. This put many of us back into slavery—slavery to performance-based religion, slavery to guilt and shame for not measuring up, and/or the slavery of pride and self-righteousness when we felt we were measuring up.

In Galatians 5, Paul is setting forth the idea that: Gospel transformation is not the same as moral reformation. He attacks the idea of “balance”—of a faith plus obedience, both/and way to living the Christian life because this “false gospel” enslaves us—It does not set us free. Paul says, “For freedom Christ has set us free so do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” …

He goes on to say that any form of rule-keeping renders the Gospel of Jesus ineffective in your life. He says, to go back to a rule-keeping relationship with God is to “sever yourself from Christ”—it is to “fall from grace.” …These shocking statements are not referring to losing our salvation. They are warning us that, having entered into a grace-based relationship with God, if we go back into a rule-keeping relationship with God, then we cut ourselves off from the life-giving flow of Christ’s Spirit, and we fall from God’s ‘grace-way’ of salvation. (Grace is not a synonym for salvation. Grace is the way into salvation). So, when Paul says, in v9, “a little leaven leavens the whole lump” what he means is that a little bit of this false teaching can work its way through a whole church. Even a little bit of mixing faith and obedience will undo the grace that has come to us in the saving work of Christ.

Paul calls us to (1) Reject balance; (2) Rest in future grace; and (3) Rely on the Spirit.

*We are a church located in Greenville, South Carolina. Our vision is to see God transform us into a community of grace passionately pursuing life and mission with Jesus.