NEOPURITAN

Galatians 3:1-6

 

There is a foundation and a fuel of the gospel. When we come to Reformed theology, depending on where we’re coming from, we might tend to see the foundation very well. The foundation is what we typically mean by the “doctrines of grace” or “Calvinism” and so on. It’s a foundation because, here, grace is a principle by which we “get in” and even “stay in.” It’s a front door. It’s our invitation. It’s all-important. Another way to say the same thing is that we see the principle (foundation) of the gospel, but not its power (fuel).

But the gospel also has a fuel, not just a foundation. Grace is not simply a principle by which God saves sinners, because salvation is not simply a “get out of hell free” card, but is an entire salvation of our whole lives. God is redeeming the whole show, the whole man. And so the good news is not simply that we are innocent “up there” or “one day,” but that we are also innocent, and good to go, “down here” and “right now” and “before man.” This state of innocence and fatherly pleasure in us is pictured in Scripture as a fuel. It is a power. It is a way of life that sets us free and sets others free to move.

But here’s the basic problem. We don’t really believe it. We don’t trust in the power of grace. We have two categories. Grace is how we got saved one day in the past and how we will stand before God one day in the future (so by being past-and-future oriented, its “out-there” or objective or principle oriented). Law or effort or will is how we live in between those two days (so for how to handle the present and the practical and the powerful, we turn inward). Grace is for salvation, will is for life. That’s how we think. Grace is amazing, but will is what works. But this is the world’s most dangerous false dilemma! It is dangerous because it disables the church, and sidelines Christians.

The Text

In Paul’s letter to the Galatians he asks those churches who were being seduced by the Judaizer error a double-barreled question in the third chapter:

Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? (vv. 2 – 3)

At first it may look like all Paul is doing is defending the foundation of the gospel. Only the foundation is under attack when justification by faith alone is under at attack. That’s the surface way that Galatians is usually read. But anyone who reads Paul’s exact arguments carefully will realize that he is arguing against people who know very well that you “begin by the Spirit” [3:3]. He is appealing to knowledge they already had. The issue was not how they were justified at the front door, or at the foundation, but rather how they were justified continually, in everyday life, as a motive for action. So lest we get the idea that only the foundation is under attack, Paul drives at the same thing by shifting his question from the beginning of the Spirit’s work (at the foundation) to the whole of the Spirit’s work (the whole fuel of life):

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…? (v. 5)

Notice that the two things that Paul pits against each other in these two rhetorical questions is actually more specific than “law” and “grace,” but he wants them to adjust the microscope of law versus grace even further in, to pit “works of the law” against “hearing with faith.” The power of grace, or the fuel of the gospel, in other words, comes through the “gas nozzle” of the intellect. Obviously “hearing with faith” doesn’t just mean an audible experience alone. It means the power of the word of God operating upon the mind. If you’re wondering what the content is, or the material, of the word that Paul focuses on, move back to verse 1: “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publically portrayed as crucified.” So where does all spiritual life after the initial spiritual birth come from? By the Spirit, through the word, to the intellect, about Christ crucified—that’s the formula for the Christian life! The power of the Christian life is no different than the principle of the Christian life: the fuel comes from the same foundation—the gospel of grace!

Correcting Our False Doctrine with this True Doctrine

It’s too easy to apply this doctrine to the acts of preaching, teaching, or evangelizing. Those are the “glamour positions” of Christian communication, so let’s leave that for another day. Instead let’s talk about the concept of extending grace in everyday acts of communication. Remember the claim of Paul in Galatians. Paul’s claim is not that grace is opposed to law or that law is opposed to grace: that was part of what the Judaizers misunderstood. Paul’s claim was that legalism doesn’t work, grace does. Extending grace is the power of the Christian life rather than commending will power, comparisons to others or unintelligible imperatives from the Law. The Law is good and it works for what it works for—namely, informing and convicting to bring the hardened heart back to the cross. But when it comes to motive, “works of the law” move nothing but sinking the heart straight to hell.

Now of course no one’s “against” extending grace. It’s just that we’re not desperate enough to extend the concept, to see all that it really means.

Extending grace is usually left to mean “being gracious” as in a tone of voice or a tolerance level. But to extend grace is literally to extend the power of grace, to remove every obstacle and ignore every pretense that this person has to answer to me. God, who alone is their judge, has declared Himself no longer their judge. And so my only job is to get my “less-than-God” expectations out of their way, and “in humility count others more significant than yourselves” [Phi. 2:3]. So extending grace is not just a matter of cooling your jets on the outside toward someone else; it’s about removing anything in you that needs anything from them! It is unconditional acceptance of God’s unconditional, ever-present clean start for the other person.

Extending grace actually means communicating the power of grace as the next step at every point of every situation in life. Law and grace both work to move people. But law moves people like guards move prisoners, from one solitary confinement cell to another. It moves from the outside in, which is why it can only move for a moment—usually a movement of fear or hypocrisy. But grace moves in the heart by surprising it, which awakens the mind to make the most of the new life it didn’t deserve. It grows them as a person; it doesn’t bend them as a plant or beat them as a beast.

Those who pit law against grace in the gospel-centered church still have the notion from their old worldview that law works—in other words, that one of the purposes of the law is as a fuel to Christian living—which comes from a misreading of the “third use of the law” in the Reformed tradition. But here’s the thing: this is fundamentally a worldview difference. It is sub-theistic to believe that a part of nature can contribute to the power of grace. That is fundamentally a shift toward atheism and death in the church, however subtle. And this naturalistic shift is at work anytime we withhold forgiveness, anytime we operate in any area of life by reaction and prevention, rather than by taking the risk of setting people completely free.

In his book The Discipline of Grace, Jerry Bridges comments that,

We are performance-oriented by nature, and our culture, and sometimes our upbringing, reinforces this legalistic mind-set. All too often a child’s acceptance by his or her parents is based on the child’s performance, and this certainly tends to be true in our society. We carry this same type of thinking into our relationship with God. So whether it is our response to God’s discipline of us or our practice of those spiritual disciplines that are so good and helpful, we tend to think it is the “law” of God rather than the grace of God that disciplines us.[1]

Application of this Doctrine

If we’re honest, we really don’t buy this. It’s one of those things that we say we believe but it’s not our natural instinct, especially if we’re doers. We want to be in control and the idea of really extending grace looks an awful lot more like a principle of excuse. In other words, if we were to pop off the “hood” of our minds and examine our deepest assumptions, we would see that we really think that the principle of grace is a counter-balance to the power of duty or will. Everything we say about “extending grace” betrays that faulty superficial idea. When we talk about extending grace our only category is that it is the “right” or “nice” thing to do against what would otherwise be more efficient or faithful. In other words, it’s an excuse (A holy, Christ-like excuse of course! But it’s an excuse nevertheless). We are excusing the other person from getting serious or admitting their fault or doing the right thing. We are, in short, extending a pass, enabling them, but for a good cause, we tell ourselves.

It doesn’t occur to us that grace acts immediately, even if secretly. And the information that grace communicates is infinitely more effective than our best attempts to affect other people on the spot.  Our minds can’t even hear that it’s not just a principle: hearing the gospel is the only thing that moves the real thing that a man is—an invisible, intellectual soul. That’s what Paul means by pitting “hearing with faith” against “works of the law.” He’s not against works of the law. He’s saying, if you ever want to see works of the law out of that person, the Holy Spirit only ever moves the heart by hearing with faith. And that person can’t hear God through your trying to get him to hear you. Your wife and kids (and my wife and kids) can’t hear God through our obsession with them hearing us. Extending grace to others equals annihilating expectations in myself! If I expect from them (and they see my sweat or my indignation) they cannot hear the gospel in my pleas.

Let’s look at a few verses that speak of the supernatural, every-day, activity of grace. What Paul says comes by “hearing with faith” is a message from outside of us. It is a message of unapologetic, unadulterated, unqualified, undeserved (but unstoppable) favor from God. God is saying—in the death and resurrection of his Son—You are forgiven, and if forgiven, then free, and if free, then get back in the game right now! No excuses—which, of course, gives us a clue that legalism is actually the fountain of excuses (but you’ll have to come to my Lectures on Galatians to see that). Grace is this infinite, effective power in every different area of life! But I will just close by mentioning three areas.

1)      Grace is the power of self-denial!

“For the grace of God has appeared…training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” [Ti. 2:11-12].

“Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them” [Heb. 13:9].

2)     Grace is the power of shepherding your spouse!

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word” [Eph. 5:25-26].

“Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct” [1 Pet. 3:1-2].

3)     Grace is the power of the mission of the local church!

“and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” [1 Cor. 2:4-5].

“(the gospel) is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes {to the believing ones}” [Rom. 1:16].

There is more good news in the gospel! The good news today is that the grace of God in the gospel is not just a principle, but a power; not just the foundation, but the fuel to all of our motion. Extend it to everything and watch everyone start to move.