Faith Working Through Love

The Title of today’s message is “Faith Working Through Love.” To understand how we arrived at today’s message, let me recap for you. Two weeks ago, when we were visiting chapter 4 of the letter to the Galatian Churches, we concluded three things: 1. We need to invite people into our lives that will speak truth into it, no matter how painful it may be. 2. We need to be loving, full of justice and righteous every single day and not compartmentalize our faith. 3. We cannot lose hope when we fail. The idea was that we’re never going to be perfect or reach the godliness we need to reach in order to be truly holy. But because of that we keep loving everybody, and we keep working to BE the fullness of Christ in a fluid motion that keeps moving. We’ll keep doing the same dumb things over and over again because we’re human no matter how hard we try, but at the same time, we are redeemed and justified to get better and make those mistakes less and less each time as long as we strive to rely on God. Therefore, we have “faith working through love” which counts for everything in this life. Let’s start, Galatians 5. Just so you know, I’m skipping around in between chapter 5 and 6 because I think when Paul wrote this, he wasn’t that organized, and so I’m going to organize his thoughts together, and at some point, just because I skipped a part of the passage, doesn’t mean I’m not going to address it, I’m just going to hit that part next week, when we conclude our study of the book of Galatians. Galatians 5:2-6. We’re going to read it in the NIV instead of the ESV today. 2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. So this has been an idea that we’ve been talking about every single week in this series: there is nothing that we can do that will ever make us perfect. We can’t earn our salvation, we can’t earn our justification, and we can’t earn our sanctification. There is no way we can live life and come to the conclusion that we will somehow come out of this life unscathed. You see, in verse 2, Paul is saying that he needs all Christians to stop themselves from becoming legalistic Christians. A lot of us have become legalistic Christians. That is to say that we choose to decide in between black and white. It’s either something right or something wrong. Which there is no problem in doing, but herein lies the problem: we choose what is black and white or right and wrong really arbitrarily. WHAT! Yes, there is no standard of judgment where we say doing such and such is moral and doing another such and such is immoral, so we decide to interpret and choose which are right and wrong and in doing so legalistically, we become and allow ourselves to be “circumcised.” Let me give you an example of what Paul is talking about because this is really profound. We’re not going to look at murder or lying or stealing, but we’re going to look at cultural mores and norms that were at one time found to be “wrong” and now it’s “wrong” not to accept them because our interpretation of things is different. We have back until 60s an idea that was very horrible: the idea of interracial marriage. You couldn’t do it. God forbid if you did! Because why? Because the Christians said that the Bible, in the law of Moses there was a small provision in there that says you shall not intermarry with other nations. They used this as the precipice for banning interracial marriage and throwing you in jail or out casting you into leper communities. Yeah, true story. You see, legalistic Christians argued that it was wrong, for some reason it was wrong, and they decided to interpret this piece of the law to fit their needs and it was an arbitrary usage of the law but they try to get everybody to conform to that, it was an act of “circumcision.” For those of you who do know what this context of this law is from, it actually says do not intermarry between nations because your religion is different and you might start worshipping idols which is against the Ten Commandments. Maybe, you don’t understand that because it’s a different cultural context from us. But let’s be honest, this is just one example, and I can sit here and tell you twenty others without breaking a sweat about how Christians, in their legality to become perfect saints try so hard to follow the law, but only the way they interpret the law. Some examples: slavery, loans, church worship times, hymns and singing, wearing clothes of more than one fabric, people with flat noses can’t worship, kill anybody with a different religion, etc. At the end of the day, nothing is black and white. And if it is to you, the Apostle here says, “no.” You can’t pick and choose. If you’re going to live by the law, you have to live by the entirety of all 613 laws in the Torah. In fact, he says something very interesting, he says, if we’re trying to justify ourselves this way, even after we’re saved by the grace and mercy of God through the death and resurrection of Christ, then we are alienated from Christ. You see, Paul’s point is not that we don’t try to live and adhere to some type of decency or moral standard. Rather, his point is that we don’t condemn ourselves and others while trying to create our own moral standard, which is arbitrary and lame. Ultimately this is what church people do. I don’t know if it’s because they’re snooty or because they’re self-righteous, or if they’re just too dumb to be open minded about the realities of life, but regardless, whatever it is, this is our human tendency and this keeps our church and many other churches from becoming catalysts in our society. The Bible says that the only way we can become catalysts, or that is, to make Christ’s death something more than saving our own pathetic souls, is to understand that “faith expressing itself through love” is the only thing that matters. Let’s skip six verses and go to verse 13. 13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. In Paul’s mind, this is the beauty of this: “the freedom to indulge the flesh” is really the arbitrary law choosing and forced compliance by others to our own whims that is error and contrast with Jesus. I’m not saying here that we’re allowed to do whatever we want as long as we don’t offend anybody, because that’ll never happen, but what I am saying here is that believing in Christ as our savior means that we learn to serve one another out of love. This is what we suck at doing. We suck at telling other people sorry. We suck at being wrong, even though we’re right. We suck at allowing other people come before our own comforts. Some of us are guilty of this and we don’t even know it, and others want others to know it and those people don’t get it, but that’s wrong, too; that’s indulging in the flesh. It’s not loving people as we would love ourselves. Here’s what I’m saying, if we were to surrender to each other, and I mean everybody surrender to each other in this church, the dynamic of this church would be different. The relationships in this church would be different. The relationships we have with other people would dramatically change. There would be a genuine love and mercy and not a forced endurance of patience. For people who believe in salvation and love and unjustified grace, we surely do not extend any of that to people around us, and especially not to the people at church. This is the shame of it all. Verse 15 is interesting here because it’s going to set up the rest of this sermon. It says don’t bite or devour each other—that is to say that when our patience is up, then it’s time for more patience. Paul gives us an example of how life, a justified one is faith working itself out in love. Galatians chapter 6, verse 1. 1Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. 2 Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3 If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. 4 Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, 5 for each one should carry their own load. This is a loaded paragraph and I need to start wrapping things up. First thing we do when we live as a Christ follower and find ourselves trying be justified through faith in Christ working out in love: we need to restore people who are sinning. I’m saying that when people around us are just messing up their lives—that is the consequence of sin, not the arbitrary rules and regulations from the laws we decide to follow, but messing up their lives and the lives of others—we are told to gently restore that person. Restoration here means that we bring people to the place where they need to be to get their life on track. The key word is gently. We are not gentle. Hardly are we gentle with anybody. We’re good at the restoration part because we’ll drag them by the ears if we have to, but we are not gentle at all. WE need to be gentle. Paul understood that being gentle however comes with its own set of problems, we ourselves may start finding ourselves spiraling down sin because of our “gentle” approach. Second thing we do is “carry each other’s burdens.” This means, helping people in their messy lives. We are generally good at this because our EQ is pretty high here. But really, carrying each other’s burdens sometimes means taking on more burdens for ourselves. At the same time we need to make sure our own lives aren’t a burden to others as we carry each other’s burdens. Burdens encompass everything from financial, familial, emotional and mental stresses. We carry them for people differently. Carrying burdens means that we, ourselves are more burdened. Jesus, in faith, carried the burden of the cross – the sins of all generations past, present and future. The law of Christ, to love one another like we love our own self is to carry the burdens you wish other people carry for you. Some of us live too unburdened by other people. Some of us are the burden people carry—we need to stop and be aware what our true selves are like—wretched and undeserving at best. It is because of Jesus that we have any chance at all, the question is how in the world we get off thinking arrogantly like we normally do that pits ourselves as better than others? Honestly? Let’s read Galatians 6:7-10 and wrap it up here. 7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. When we live by the principle of faith working through love as a means of living out our salvation in Christ, we change the trajectory of our lives. Verse 8 says that faith working through love is sowing in the spirit and that is eternal life. More than that, if we live fluidly in faith and through love to accept people and love people for who they are and their sins and their problems and their souls, we will not be headed to destruction—but justified by God’s spirit. It’s not an easy thing to do “good” in this way, but it’s better than rules and laws. Don’t give up. Don’t lose hope. This is what following Christ was really meant to be. Let’s pray.