DISTINCT…YET ONE (GAL 3:26-29)

SERIES: FREE AT LAST, PART 12

GCEFC: JANUARY 24, 2010

INTRODUCTION

1. Free at last. Not very original on my part, but it captures the theme of Paul’s letter to the Galatians pretty well.

2. We’ve been studying this book together since late September. It’s about freedom.

a. Freedom from the burden of the law.

b. Freedom from the condemnation of the law.

c. Freedom in Christ through faith.

3. Jesus said that if the Son of God sets you free, you will be free indeed. Paul has said the same thing in different ways since he began this letter.

4. That salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in the finished work of Christ alone.

5. That salvation is not by good works. Not by keeping the law. Even if someone could keep the law—which they can’t—it still wouldn’t be by doing so.

6. It’s not by knowing the right people. It's not by being Jewish. Not by being circumcised. It’s not by being a physical descendant of Abraham.

7. You’d think that everyone would get it. It couldn’t be any plainer. It could hardly be said any clearer. But not everyone gets it—in fact most don’t get it.

8. You see, grace flies in the face of our humanness. Grace is an affront to human sensibilities. Most believe there’s no free ride, no free pass, no free lunch.

9. You get what you pay for. You pay for what you get. No pain/no gain.

10. I’ll earn what I get. I’ll get what I earn. Nobody’s going to pay my way. Salvation by grace is just too easy—it just can’t be that easy.

11. Nothing else in life is—so why should salvation be? It has to be a reward for performance like the rest of life is.

12. Now this all makes sense. It seems logical. Reasonable. It seems like it could be true.

13. But it’s not true. It’s a lie. It’s a distortion. It’s a perversion of God’s grace.

14. It’s rejecting what God offers freely. It’s offering to pay for what God has already purchased. It’s believing that my way is better than God’s way.

15. The Galatian false teachers believed it. Now they’ve confused Galatian believers too.

16. They needed correcting. They needed clarification. So Paul sits down and writes them a letter. And now 2,000 years later we get to read their mail—which is really our mail too.

A. SONS OF GOD THROUGH FAITH

1. V26: You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

2. Now even though the first century world was one of male dominance and it was a man’s world in every sense of the term—this was not a chauvinistic statement.

3. Paul almost certainly had a particular custom in mind when he wrote these words.

a. If you were here 2 Sundays ago, you may recall a particular word in the sermon that day. The word was paidagogos.

b. Early in this same chapter, Paul compared the Old Testament law of God to a kind of legal guardian for young male children in wealthy Roman families.

c. This guardian was called a paidagogos. Their job was to escort the boy to school, watch out for his safety, and discipline him whenever he got out of line.

d. This went on for several years until the boy reached the age of 15. Then the paidagogos was dismissed and his job was over.

e. When the boy came of age a ceremony marked his entrance into adulthood.

f. During the ceremony he was given a special toga, called the toga virilis. You know what a Roman toga was. A bed sheet that Romans wrapped around themselves.

g. It wasn’t a very practical garment—but when Romans wore the toga, they weren’t exactly doing very much, so it didn’t really matter.

h. A toga was to be worn only by men who were Roman citizens. It was considered disgraceful for a woman to wear a toga.

i. A Roman woman wore a stola, a long pleated gown. In fact, there’s a famous lady wearing a stola who’s standing out in New York Harbor.

j. So in this ceremony, the boy was given a ceremonial toga virilis—it symbolized his entrance into adulthood. He was no longer under the tutelage of the paidagogos.

4. What Paul wants us to understand is that by virtue of our faith in Christ—we’ve moved from spiritual childhood to spiritual adulthood.

5. He’s saying that the law was intended to lead us to Christ, like the paidagogos led the child to the teacher.

6. Now we’re spiritual grownups—we no longer need a guardian to lead us to Christ. We’ve already come to him and we’ve trusted him as Savior.

7. He carries the word picture further by saying that we’ve been clothed with Christ. We’ve been given the spiritual toga virilis to wear, symbolizing that we’ve now entered spiritual adulthood. We no longer need a spiritual babysitter—we’re grownups.

a. When I was a young boy, I wore a bow tie. I hated it, but nobody ever asked me if I liked it, so I didn't say anything.

b. It didn’t help that Winston Churchill and Harry Truman wore them because I didn’t know either of those guys.

c. But I’ll never forget the day I got my first real tie. The kind you actually had to tie yourself. It was a brand new day for me. I had a real tie!

d. It never occurred to me to go back to wearing bow ties after that day. I was done with those things. I was moving on.

e. Paul is saying that if you’ve spiritually grown up and put on the clothes of a redeemed believer in Christ—why on earth would you go back to wearing baby clothes?

f. The Roman boy who came of age wore the toga of the Roman man. If he reverted back to his school boy clothes—they’d think there was something wrong with him.

8. The law leads us to Christ. A road only leads you somewhere. What you do after you arrive is another matter entirely.

9. Paul then links our faith to being baptized into Christ. He says that having been baptized into Christ, we have clothed ourselves with Christ.

10. Some would now argue that we’re united to Christ through water baptism.

11. But Paul isn’t talking about water baptism—he’s talking about Spirit baptism. The invisible spiritual identification with Christ that occurs when we first believe the gospel.

12. Think about it.

a. Paul’s been arguing for 3 chapters that our salvation is by grace alone in Christ alone.

b. That circumcision does not save. That the law does not save. That being Jewish does not save. That being a physical descendant of Abraham does not save.

c. So are we now to think he’s claiming that water baptism saves? Come on—let’s give Paul a little credit.

d. Spirit baptism unites the believer to Christ. Water baptism symbolizes it. It’s like a wedding band. It doesn’t make you married—it symbolizes that you’re married.

e. Faith secures our union with Christ. Water baptism symbolizes that union.

13. So by faith, by trusting in Christ, we are now grownup sons—staying with the analogy. We’re grownup sons and grownup daughters by faith.

14. The Holy Spirit of God baptized us into union with Christ and union with other believers. This was invisible, instantaneous, and occurred at the moment of our salvation.

15. Water baptism is an important visible symbol of invisible Spirit baptism.

B. DISTINCT, YET ONE

1. In V28 Paul makes one of the most radical statements of all time: There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

2. We live in an age of women’s rights. Women are now bringing home the bacon, frying up the bacon, and are CEO’s of Oscar Mayer.

3. But in the ancient world in just about every place in that world—women were not second class citizens—they were no class citizens.

a. They were seen as inferior, weak, helpless, dumb, and dependent. They had no status. They usually weren’t allowed to speak and their testimony was inadmissible in court.

b. They were maligned and slandered and marginalized. They were literally the property of their husbands—to be used or abused however they chose.

c. Men in the ancient world used to pray: I thank Thee God, that Thou has not made me a Gentile, a slave, or a woman. And they meant it.

4. Then the New Testament comes along and gives women a status that was never imagined in the ancient world. It would have been more than shocking—it would have been scandalous. But here it is.

5. And included in the new status are Gentiles and slaves. It’s hard to know who had the least status in the ancient world among the Jews—Gentiles, slaves, or women.

6. It’s also doubtful there was ever a culture without a kind of caste system or equivalent.

a. People always manage to come up with ways of assigning rank, status, and prestige to each other.

b. One of the most time-honored ways of elevating yourself is by putting others on a lower level.

c. The British have taken this to an art form, spending huge sums of money to purchase fancy titles for themselves. So they can be duke of this or earl of that.

d. Like Baron von Uppity, Lord of the Royal Order of the Radish. And then it gets just plain silly.

e. And I don’t need to tell you about the status of slaves. A slave is by very definition one who has very few if any rights and little or no status.

f. Slaves in the ancient world were treated far better than slaves in the modern world. But it was no picnic then either.

7. But the text is saying there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. So what does this mean?

8. It means that in Christ, as believers, no one is spiritually superior to another. A believing Jew is not more privileged than a believing Gentile.

9. A believing free man not more privileged than a believing slave. A believing man not more privileged than a believing woman. We’re all on spiritually level ground.

10. In Christ, our ethnicity, our social status, our political power, our economic status, our sex or gender—they’re of no special advantage before God. Nor are they a hindrance when it comes to our relationship with Christ.

11. In Christ we’re one big family. No one has superiority. No one has inferiority. No one has special privileges. No one has special liabilities.

12. A Christian snob is an oxymoron. A high-ranking Christian is a misnomer. Christianity doesn’t have a caste system. We’re all sinners, we all stood condemned—we’re equally undeserving of God’s grace.

13. BUT…let’s not get carried away here. It’s not saying there’s no difference between people. That we lose our distinction and identity when we become a Christian.

14. When Paul became a believer on the Damascus Road, he didn’t immediately become a person with no national, ethnic, social, religious, or sexual identity.

a. Grace Church, for example, is comprised of forgiven believers in Christ, so we should be color blind, right? And not discriminate on the basis of a person’s color.

b. So if a black person, an African American enters the building, we wouldn't notice that they’re black, right? We’re color blind. We’d see them as kind of a grayish color.

c. If a woman entered the building and asked where the ladies room was, we’d say: Oh, it doesn’t matter which restroom you use—we’re neither male nor female here—we’re Christians—we’re like the Apostle Paul.

d. Of if someone came who was in dire financial straights needing assistance, we’d say: Oh, there are no economic distinctions in our church—we’re all the same financially.

15. After Paul’s conversion, he was still a freeborn, Jewish, educated, Roman citizen man. This made him different in many ways. But it didn’t make him spiritually superior.

16. This was so radical in the first century—it’s still radical today. Try it on for size in India, for example. Or tell someone in Iraq that women are spiritually equal to men.

17. They’ll laugh at you, take a swing at you, or cut off your head.

C. ABRAHAM’S SEED AND HEIRS

1. The final verse of the chapter is the clincher. V29: If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

2. The New Testament teaches no universal fatherhood of God and universal brotherhood of man. It says…if you belong to Christ…then you’re an heir.

3. Those who belong to the son are heirs. Those who don’t are not. No one belongs to the Father who doesn’t belong to the Son. Jesus made this quite clear.

4. The law cannot change the promise of God. The law doesn’t nullify the promise of God.

5. The law is not greater than the promise of God. But the law of God is not contrary to the promise of God. They had different functions, and they did their functions well.

a. The law of God showed us our utter spiritual helplessness and weakness. The law never saved anyone. It only showed that they needed saving.

b. The promise of God to Abraham was unconditional. It only required believing. That one day far down the corridor of time, one particular seed of Abraham would be born.

c. That seed of Abraham was Christ. He was the one through whom all nations of the earth would be blessed.

d. The law and promise work together to bring us to the same place—to Christ.

e. All have sinned—Jew and Gentile, Free and Slave, Male and Female. We’re all equally condemned sinners. And in Christ we’re all equally forgiven.

6. The promise of God does what the law could not do. It does what the law of God was never intended to do.

7. The promise of God is that through faith in Christ our sins are forgiven. Whether male, female, slave, free, Jew, or Gentile.

8. So that if you belong to Christ, if you are his—it means that you’re Abraham’s seed—which makes you an heir to the promise of God.