Sermon Supplement, Lord’s Day, July 16, 2006
Kihei Baptist, Kihei, Maui, Hawaii
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE, Galatians 1:1-17
Glenn Armstrong D.D. Pastor
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LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE, Galatians 1:1-17
I. INTRODUCTION: Liberty of conscience has been a major issue with all believers through the whole of church history. It was an issue with the first generation Christians in their struggle against the legalism of Judaism, the paganism of Rome, the philosophical mysticism of the Greek religions, the dualism of the Persians, the rationalism of the skeptics, the self-imposed superiority and heresies of the Gnostics and Hellenistic Judaism.
These and other religious/philosophical trends found the growth of Christianity a major threat to their established strongholds. Christians were considered people to be persecuted, their possessions confiscated and their freedom restricted. There has been no time since Calvary when this has not been the battle believers face somewhere in the world. To silence the witness of people converted to Christ is a primary task of many leading individuals who display a depraved unregenerate nature in their relationship to believers and who see them as a force that must be limited and controlled.
While many believers would not bend to error even under persecution, others found it easy to compromise their Christian convictions for convenience. It was to this group and for this purpose that Paul wrote the letter to the Galatian believers telling them not to let anyone put them under any restriction other than the freedom of God's grace.
II. HISTORICAL SETTING FOR THE BOOK OF GALATIANS
The book of Galatians is a general epistle from the Apostle Paul to the churches of the area. He visited the churches on all three of his missionary journeys. The area was named after the Gauls, a tribe from France that invaded the Roman Empire in the 4th century BC and established themselves in Asia Minor. Their stability as a people may be seen in their desire to worship Paul as a God and then wanted to stone him a day later, Acts 13,14. The believers were inconsistent and wanted any advantage possible-- even to the perversion of the gospel.
The form of Christianity that caused Paul to write such a stern book was the concept that faith obtained salvation but it would best be maintained by human conditions (legalism). They needed to be free of any system of Christianity that would enslave them, control their freedom of worship and personal service to the Lord. Christianity is made to be free worship based on our love for the Lord and loyalty to His Holy Word. It is not to be a "second hand" experience controlled by others. Gromacki calls the book of Galatians the Christian Declaration of Independence. The theme of the book is "Freed in Christ". The account of the establishment of the churches in the Galatians area may be read in Acts 13:14-14:26.
The error of imposed control of the believers in the Galatian churches was considered greater than all the moral and doctrinal problems addressed by Paul in the other epistles he wrote. Taking away the freedom of believers is alone sufficient to strangle the whole work of God through the church. This was serious to Paul and called for his strongest language! He confronted this problem with apostolic vengeance! One wonders what he would write if he could counter the conditions that control the churches and believers today--conditions which enslave believers and destroy the God given Freedom of Conscience.
III. OUR FREEDOM IS LOST WHEN THE CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION IS QUESTIONED, Galatians 1:1-3.
A. Doubt is all that is required to devastate faith.
B. Doubt brought sin into the world.
C. Doubt is questioning God’s trustworthiness. Christian faith is based on the reliability of revelation.
D. This text questions God’s structure of the church.
1. Christ is the cornerstone.
2. The apostles are foundational.
3. The church is to build on the foundation.
4. Care must be given to build with quality according to divine design.
E. Paul’s apostleship: 1:1
1. Paul’s apostleship was a direct appointment from Christ without human engineering, cf. I Corinthians 9:1.
2. Apostleship is regulated by Acts 1:20, 22
a. must have been alive in the time of Christ.
b. must have been eyewitness to ministry of Christ beginning with John’s baptism of Jesus.
c. must have personal acquaintance with Christ.
d. must have been a witness to Christ’s resurrection. 3. Apostleship cannot be replicated. There are no apostles today. We do have their inspired writings to be our guide.
F. Paul’s instruction to the Galatians was also agreed on by other early church leaders, 1:2.
G. Paul’s standard greeting includes grace (undeserved favor from God) and peace (disjointed objects brought back into harmony). Grace and peace are cooperative ministries from the Father and the Son working in the lives of believers.
IV. OUR FREEDOM IS LOST WHEN THE CHRISTIAN SEPARATION IS CHALLENGED, Galatians 1:4, 5.
A. Separation of the believer has two aspects, one is positive and directed to God while the other is negative and directed to the world system that is anti-god. These two reactions are mutual. It is impossible to do one without the other resulting.
B. Even early believers wanted to be close to God and the world at the same time. This was one problem of the Galatians believers. They wanted to please the very religious system that opposed the character and conduct of Christ.
C. They wanted to mix God’s grace with human regulations (religious laws) in an effort to partially earn their redemption by personal achievement.
D. When believers confuse doctrine and reject the Biblical teaching concerning separation from theological error as well as from the world, the result will always end in the believer’s loss of freedom and enslavement to the very items God delivers us from by His grace.
E. Christ’s substitutionary death is efficient to deliver us from sin and from the world of sin. The results of salvation are directed toward the penalty, the power and eventually the presence of sin.
V. OUR FREEDOM IS LOST WHEN THE CHRISTIAN GOSPEL IS PERVERTED, Galatians 1:6-9.
A. Any "gospel" message that does not offer deliverance and freedom is a perverted message that will still leave the individual in enslavement.
B. Deliverance is "eseletai" meaning to "lift one up and out of" this present world/age, "aionoa".
C. The Galatians believers moved from freedom by deliverance through the grace from God back to a religion of works that re-enslaved them.
D. The text does not imply that more than one gospel exists, rather it teaches that any tampering with the gospel makes it powerless to protect from humanized religions, which always enslave the followers.
E. The contest and conflict in this passage is between theological legalism and liberty. Liberty is used in the sense that once a person becomes a believer they are, for the first time, in a position of worshipping, honoring and serving God.
F. The teaching of the text is that those who perverted the gospel were actually destroying it. It is not a problem of individual accidentally teaching error, but rather, it was something they were doing fully knowing they were doing so. They had an agenda from which they gained.
G. Those that change the gospel in a fashion that brings them gain while suppressing others are to be cursed, "anathema." They are not to be passed off as "good brothers in Christ." This is true even if the person dong so would be a resurrected apostle Paul or a descending angel from heaven.
VI. OUR FREEDOM IS LOST THEN THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE IS HUMANIZED, Galatians 1:10-17.
A. A false gospel will always have a false motive behind it. The major cause of heresy is changing revelation for personal acceptance and gain.
B. Paul did not get his message from man nor did he adjust it to please mankind.
C. It is also a certified impossibility to please the holy character of God and the sinful character of man at the same time.
D. Paul’s ministry (1:1), message, (1:11) and motive,(1:12) were all from Christ.
E. Paul was very concerned about the return of believers to legalism since it was part of his past. He had profited through religious persecution and humanistic religion, 1:13,14.
F. Paul once hated the church and loved religion at the same time.
He used religion to enslave believers. Religion will always seek ways to for its leaders to benefit from its followers. Christianity frees believers from religion.
G. The use of the word "traditions" is not form or even formalism. It is fabrication and false requirements.
H. The history of religion is the history of leaders, governments and churches taking away the freedom a believer has in Christ and replacing it with unbiblical restrictions.
GAA/July,2006
