|
Author
|
Topic: The Debtor
|
MentorsRiddle
Advanced Member
Member # 2108
|
posted
Great post, thank you ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
--------------------
With you I rise,
In you I sleep,
kneeling down I kiss your feet,
Grace abounds upon me now,
I once was lost
but now I'm found.
The gift of God dwells within,
To this love I now give in.
Posts: 1337 | From: Arkansas | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged | 
|
|
Carol Swenson
Admin
Member # 6929
|
posted
The Debtor—You Lose Your Wealth (Gal. 5:2-6)
Paul uses three phrases to describe the losses the Christian incurs when he turns from grace to Law: “Christ shall profit you nothing” (Gal. 5:2); “a debtor to do the whole Law” (Gal. 5:3); “Christ is become of no effect unto you” (Gal. 5:4). This leads to the sad conclusion in Galatians 5:4: “Ye are fallen from grace.” It is bad enough that legalism robs the believer of his liberty, but it also robs him of his spiritual wealth in Christ. The believer living under Law becomes a bankrupt slave.
God’s Word teaches that when we were unsaved, we owed God a debt we could not pay. Jesus makes this clear in His Parable of the Two Debtors (Luke 7:36-50). Two men owed money to a creditor, the one owing ten times as much as the other. But neither was able to pay, so the creditor “graciously forgave them both” (literal translation). No matter how much morality a man may have, he still comes short of the glory of God. Even if his sin debt is one tenth that of others, he stands unable to pay, bankrupt at the judgment bar of God. God in His grace, because of the work of Christ on the cross, is able to forgive sinners, no matter how large their debt may be.
Thus when we trust Christ, we become spiritually rich. We now share in the riches of God’s grace (Eph. 1:7), the riches of His glory (Eph. 1:18; Phil. 4:19), the riches of His wisdom (Rom. 11:33), and the “unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8). In Christ we have “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3), and we are “complete in Him” (Col. 2:10). Once a person is “in Christ,” he has all that he needs to live the kind of Christian life God wants him to live.
The Judaizers, however, want us to believe that we are “missing something,” that we would be more “spiritual” if we practiced the Law with its demands and disciplines. But Paul makes it clear that the Law adds nothing—because nothing can be added! Instead, the Law comes in as a thief and robs the believer of the spiritual riches he has in Christ. It puts him back into bankruptcy, responsible for a debt he is unable to pay.
To live by grace means to depend on God’s abundant supply of every need. To live by Law means to depend on my own strength—the flesh—and be left to get by without God’s supply. Paul warns the Galatians that to submit to circumcision in these circumstances would rob them of all the benefits they have in Christ (though circumcision itself is an indifferent matter—Gal. 5:6; 6:15). Furthermore, to submit would put them under obligation to obey the whole Law.
It is at this point that legalists reveal their hypocrisy, for they fail to keep the whole Law. They look on the Old Testament Law the way a customer surveys the food in a cafeteria: they choose what they want and leave the rest. But this is not honest. To teach that a Christian today should, for example, keep the Sabbath but not the Passover, is to dismember God’s Law. The same Lawgiver who gave the one commandment also gave the other (James 2:9-11). Earlier, Paul had quoted Moses to prove that the curse of the Law is on everyone who fails to keep all the Law (Gal. 3:10; see Deut. 27:26).
It is one Law, and the same Law that protects the obedient man punishes the offender. To boast about keeping part of the Law while at the same time breaking another part is to confess that I am worthy of punishment.
Now we can better understand what Paul means by “fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:4). Certainly he is not suggesting that the Galatians had “lost their salvation,” because throughout this letter he deals with them as believers. At least nine times he calls them brethren, and he also uses the pronoun we (Gal. 4:28, 31). This Paul would never do if his readers were lost. He boldly states, “And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, ‘Abba, Father’” (Gal. 4:6). If his readers were unsaved, Paul could never write those words.
No, to be “fallen from grace” does not mean to lose salvation. Rather, it means “fallen out of the sphere of God’s grace.” You cannot mix grace and Law. If you decide to live in the sphere of Law, then you cannot live in the sphere of grace. The believers in Galatia had been bewitched by the false teachers (Gal. 3:1) and thus were disobeying the truth. They had removed toward another gospel (Gal. 1:6-9), and had turned back to the elementary things of the old religion (Gal. 4:9). As a result, they had become entangled with the yoke of bondage, and this led to their present position: “fallen from grace.” And the tragedy of this fall is that they had robbed themselves of all the good things Jesus Christ could do for them.
Paul next presents the life of the believer in the sphere of grace (Gal. 5:5-6). This enables us to contrast the two ways of life. When you live by grace, you depend on the power of the Spirit; but under Law, you must depend on yourself and your own efforts. Faith is not dead; faith works (see James 2:14-26). But the efforts of the flesh can never accomplish what faith can accomplish through the Spirit. And faith works through love—love for God and love for others. Unfortunately, flesh does not manufacture love; too often it produces selfishness and rivalry (see Gal. 5:15). No wonder Paul pictures the life of legalism as a fall!
When the believer walks by faith, depending on the Spirit of God, he lives in the sphere of God’s grace; and all his needs are provided. He experiences the riches of God’s grace. And, he always has something to look forward to (Gal. 5:5): one day Jesus shall return to make us like Himself in perfect righteousness. The Law gives no promise for perfect righteousness in the future. The Law prepared the way for the first coming of Christ (Gal. 3:23-4:7), but it cannot prepare the way for the second coming of Christ.
So, the believer who chooses legalism robs himself of spiritual liberty and spiritual wealth. He deliberately puts himself into bondage and bankruptcy.
This does not mean that the Christian is “under the Law,” for Christ has set us free from both the curse and the bondage of the Law (Gal. 3:13; 5:1). But the righteousness of the Law is still a revelation of the holiness of God, and the Holy Spirit enables us to practice that righteousness in our daily lives (Rom. 8:1-4). All of the Ten Commandments are repeated in the New Testament epistles for the Christian to observe except, “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.”
(Warren Wiersbe’s “Be” Series: Old & New Testaments)
Posts: 6787 | From: Colorado | Registered: Dec 2007
| IP: Logged |
|
|
|
Printer-friendly view of this topic
