What is the issue Paul is speaking to when he starts talking about freedom and standing firm in that freedom? The issue is -- Salvation is by grace thru faith alone. You cannot earn it. You cannot deserve it. You cannot accomplish it in the flesh. It is a work of the Spirit. That is all. Any adding of the flesh. Any adding of your works to that process, will negate it. No one would argue with that. Now, Paul takes another step into an arena where people might disagree and certainly where many people misunderstand.
He says, the way you came to faith. The same way you came to freedom. . . that is the way you have to live. "It was for freedom" = that's how you came and "keep standing firm" = that's how you're going to have to live. Galatians 3:2 & 3 says, "Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. 3 How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?" Answer that. Was it by your striving that you were born again? NO. What happened? The Spirit of God "blasted" you. You received Jesus Christ. There was a sense of freedom and joy. "Are you so foolish that having begun by the Spirit . . .are you now being perfected by the flesh?" THAT'S THE DOUBLE MESSAGE! They had received the Spirit by faith thru grace, and now they were working like crazy in their flesh to be perfected . . . to receive their sanctification with their own effort. Guess what? This explains frustrated Christians!
Whenever freedom is discussed . . . whenever we talk about it . . . the discussion that it is not being up to you, the question always comes, "This freedom from the law is great. What? I can do anything I want to do? And I can be free to sin and get into all sorts of garbage?" THAT ISN'T TRUE! That isn't true. We are not set free to ignore God's moral law. God's moral law is still the standard. That isn't what we are talking about. The law we are speaking of is the law that we would use to try to get me to be holy. God's moral law is still the standard, e.g. "love one another." "Love the Lord . . . and love your neighbor as yourself." That moral standard is the standard that we would move to. The question is not do I keep God's moral law or not. The question is this -- what is the dynamic in some one's life that would move him into obedience to God's moral law? What is the dynamic in some one's life that would really produce holy, godly living? There's two answers to that question: 1) Put him in prison. Put him under the law. I can get people to behave a certain way by putting him in prison. By putting walls around him. Give him rules to follow. Tell him what to do and what not to do. . . how to act, and how not to act. . . what to care about and what not to care about. Put him in prison. Put little walls around him. And I can get him to "act" just exactly the way I want him to act. That's called EXTERNAL CONTROL. There's another way. It's a bizarre way. It's God's idea and it's really great! But, it's very, very hard to grasp sometimes. And many of us even after coming to know Jesus as our Savior, reject it. It's this -- 2) The other way to get people to live a holy life is to set them free.
But first, before you set someone free, if I set someone free who hasn't ever been changed INSIDE, I'm just going to have ANARCHY. He's going to go off and do whatever he wants to do. And it won't be anything about the Spirit of God. What I'm gonna do first, Jesus said, before the foundations of the world, is I'm gonna take these people and I'm gonna make them brand new people. Ill give them a new heart. I'm gonna make a brand new creature in Christ. I'm gonna implant the Holy Spirit of God in them. And then, I'm going to set them free. Think on this. . . How do I get people to live a holy life? Put 'em in prison? That's one way. Keep the rules there. Keep all the little boundaries there. Another way is to implant in him the Holy Spirit. Give him a new heart. Give him a new life. Make him a new creature in Christ and set him free. (Free to respond himself to the promptings of the Holy Spirit within him by grace, thru faith.)
Do you think that someone in whom the Spirit of God is dwelling is just going to go off and do whatever it is he feels like doing? I don't believe it. Unless the Spirit of God is NOT in him. And the problem for us is that most churches do not function that way. Most of the time we are not committed to setting people free, we are committed to putting them in prison. Because we are so scared (and unbelieving) that if we set them free, they're just going to go off and "run-a-muck."
And so, we tell them the rules and tell them how to act and we tell what to care about and what not to care about (the "build-a-Christian" factory) . . .we tell them when to do it and when not to do it. We put them under a legalistic bondage and we just put them back in prison.
Basically, there's two reasons why we do that -- 1) I don't think we (pastors) really trust the Spirit. Not enough to believe that He's really "at work" within you. Paul said, "it's God Who is at work within you (Philippians 2:13); both to will and to work to His good pleasure."
Philippians 1:6 -- "And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns."
I (Pastor Dave) have NO confidence that God is going to continue in you a good work if you are an "Ishmael" (a natural born son-of-God). If the Spirit of God is NOT born in you, I have no confidence that anything holy is going to come from your life. However, I have every confidence that if the Spirit of God is in your life, having set you free, it will lead to holiness. Absolutely! I've gotta believe that.
But we take people and we put them back in prison and Paul says "don't you dare do that!" If you do that, you will have DEFILED the Gospel. It is no longer the Gospel. It is no longer the Good News! We don't trust the Spirit. We take over His job by putting people back in prison.
Who is Paul speaking to in Galatians? This is vital. From here on in . . . he is speaking to "Isaac's" (these are Dave's buzz words -- an "Isaac" is someone who is supernaturally born of the Spirit of God. . . they are re-born. . . new creature in Christ. An "Ishmael" is someone who is naturally born. . . talks like a Christian. . . acts like a Christian. . . joined a church. . . has been in alliance all their life . . .maybe been on the Board. . . .probably taught Sunday school. . . but they are naturally-born, illegitimate sons of Abraham. . . there never was the implanting of the Holy Spirit (a false convert). Who Paul is speaking to here (in Galatians) are only those to whom the Spirit of God has been implanted -- supernaturally born. Ishmael's, no matter how religious they are or how spiritual they sound, Ishmael's are absolutely incapable of the freedom we are speaking of. They are absolutely incapable of having freedom produce holiness. For an Ishmael, freedom will produce godlessness. . . every time. . . guaranteed. Why? There's nothing left to control them.
Ishmael's get terrified when you start talking about setting people free. Why? An Ishmael wouldn't even understand that there can be another control, because they don't have one! No internal control. . . no presence of the Holy Spirit.
But now in Galatians, Paul is speaking to the dimension that this life inside of us is the work of the Spirit. Internally, indwelling, the life of a true "Isaac."
Here is the "theme" of Galatians: Your striving did not bring salvation. Your striving will not bring sanctification. It is all a work of the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:5, "For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith." Galatians 5:15, (amp) "But I say, walk and live [habitually] in the [Holy] Spirit [responsive to and controlled and guided by the Spirit]; then you will certainly not gratify the cravings and desires of the flesh (of human nature without God)." It DOES NOT say, "Try hard not to carry out the desires of the flesh. It says, "If you walk by the Spirit, you won't. . . " Galatians 5:18, "But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law." You are no longer in prison. You don't need the rules. You don't need the external control. You've got internal control (unless you are an "Ishmael"). Galatians 5:25, "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." And all God's people say, "Amen!" And some of God's people say, "What does that mean?"
Control of the Spirit . . .Spirit-Control . . . has to do with internal transformation. Law, rules, flesh have to do with external pressure. Both of them are designed to produce the same thing. The laws, rules everybody coming down on everybody is designed to produce holy living. Every body's got a good motive. Right? The most legalistic church you could possibly imagine has a good motive and that's holy living. That's what they want. They have opted for external control, tho. A controlling pastor says, "If I can make them feel guilty enough, (and put the fear of God in them) I can get them to do whatever I want them to do or think they should be doing." I can motivate them to do right by external pressure.
Internal transformation requires a work of the Spirit that produces Holy living. When a person is full of the Holy Spirit, wrapped around in Christ, he is set free from that prison. He is set free from the law. If you are led by the Spirit, you are free from the flesh.
In our society, when people break the law, we put them in prison. right? The reason we put them in prison is because the ones who have broken the law, for one reason or another, do not have enough internal control to keep the law on their own. So what they need, in order for them to keep the law, I've go to give them an external control. What we do is "institutionalize" them. We put them in an institution. What does that mean? It means that we need to put that guy in a box that he cannot get out of, so that he keeps the rules or holds to the moral law. Again, everybody wants the same thing. They want to have holy living. This guy has no internal control. So I gotta put him in prison. I gotta give him structure. I've gotta give him walls. I've gotta give him restrictions. I've gotta dump a lot of guilt on him to keep him in line. That's exactly what the law does. It give you external control.
As a believer, having been given internal control, having been given the transformation work of the Spirit of God, what I did when I got saved was I walked out of that prison. Do you remember the day you got saved? The joy? Do you remember the joy, the exhilaration of knowing that you were saved and it wasn't up to you? Knowing that you were accepted and all you had to do was receive it by faith? Knowing that the Spirit of God had come and taken His residence in you and you couldn't explain it, but, you could "feel it?" How long has it been since you "felt it?" And you walked out of prison a free man. Free to break the law, right? No. When we think that it just betrays that we don't have any idea what we're talking about. You are not free to break the law. You're not free to just go and do any thing you want. You are free to fulfill it. Not because some body's pounding on your head. Not because your mommy and your daddy are on your case if you don't. Not because your pastor is yelling and screaming at you. (Not so you can get your pastor's approval!) Not cuz your church pressures you too. But because you've got a NEW HEART from Jesus and you hunger and thirst for His righteousness.
Now, if you take an "Isaac" and you put him back in a legal system to control his behavior, you have just put him back into prison. You have put him back into his cell. When you do that, you have absolutely eliminated the need for the Holy Spirit in his life! As an externally-controlled believer, you've got all this external control . . .what do you need God for? You've got all the rules (spoken and non-spoken), telling you how to behave. . . why would you even be prompted to seek out what it means to be led of the Spirit? Why would you even consider that? You've got all these external things and your pastor telling you what to think, telling you what not to think . . . what to do and what not to do. . . what God likes and what God doesn't like.
I could give you the testimony of Christian after Christian who describes their salvation experience in glowing terms and then they got involved in a controlling church. And all of a sudden it became "external control." (How you looked and how you dressed and how you talked, whether you could date or not date, what college you could go to or not got to, what job you should do, whether you should have 3 children or 5 children . . homeschool or not homeschool. No longer are you Spirit-led but rather "pastor-led.") Whether or not you are circumcised. In a controlling church this is what really matters. You have been "incarcerated" by man. . . not transformed by God. '
By the way, it is much easier to live in a cell than it is to make the right use of my freedom! Isn't that right? That's another reason why Christians just prefer to live under control and a legalistic structure. It's easier. "I don't have to learn to be sensitive to the Spirit. I just obey the rules. Just do it. I don't ever have to DISCERN. I don't ever have to think. I don't ever have to pray. It's all cut and dried. It's all real clear. I don't have to learn to hear the Spirit. SOMEONE ELSE DOES ALL THAT FOR ME. Call the pastor, or elder board, mother or father or someone else does all that praying and that deciding for me. . . ALL THAT DISCERNING FOR ME and they tell me how much to serve, where I should serve, how much is too much and how much is too little. They'll even come to my house and tell me how to raise my children and how to keep my home. They'll tell me what I should be involved in and what I shouldn't be involved in. It's all wonderful! And we'll make these the marks of what a true Christian is. They'll tell me what I should do and what I shouldn't do. They'll tell me what is right and what is wrong. And I'll just keep following along, and if they say give 10% to the Lord then I'll give 10%. And if they say 12%, then I'll give 12% and if they say give it all, then fine, here's the whole bank account. That's fine, BUT DON'T CALL THIS "SPIRIT CONTROL." DON'T CALL THAT THE CONTROL OF THE SPIRIT.
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