Today we are going to conclude this discussion on salvation by works or salvation by faith by examining Galatians 4:29 through Galatians 5:15. In this passage Paul does three things: First, he helps us understand there will always be a contention between those who declare a salvation based on good works and those who declare a salvation based on faith. Secondly, he is going to help us understand what we should do when confronted with someone who declares salvation by works. And lastly, Paul summarizes, as if to make one last big effort, to why we can be absolutely sure salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone.
Point 1: There will always be strife between those who declare salvation by works and those who declare salvation by faith alone in Christ alone.
Paul writes (4:29), “But just as at the time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now.” Paul is quoting Genesis 21:9 which implies that after Sarah’s son, Isaac, was born, that Ishmael, the son of Hagar, persecuted, harassed, and oppressed Isaac; now Genesis 21:9 does not explicitly say this, but it does imply it. And again, Paul quotes Genesis 21:9 to point out that, like Ishmael persecuted Isaac, so these false teachers who declare a false gospel of good works are persecuting and harassing the Galatian believers.
How were these false teachers harassing the Galatian believers? Paul said in Gal. 5:7, “You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?” In other words, at one point the Galatian believers were doing well in following Jesus faithfully, but along the way, these false teachers had gone and were holding them back from obeying the truth of the gospel. They were trying to get the Galatian believers to turn from the right way and only way to be saved – by faith alone in Christ alone – to a system that will condemn them.
In fact, these same people who were persecuting the Galatians are also the same ones who persecuted and harassed Paul. Paul said in Galatians 5:11, “But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed.” What Paul means by that is that if he were not preaching salvation through the cross of Jesus Christ, no one would be offended. But it is precisely because he preaches salvation through Jesus Christ that he is persecuted. And it is because the Galatian believers believe in salvation through the cross that they too are being harassed.
Thus, preaching salvation through the cross of Jesus is offensive, and it continues to be offensive. What we need to understand in the 21st century is that this strife continues. There will always be people who are offended by the preaching of salvation through the cross, there will always be people who harass those who believe salvation is only through faith alone in Christ alone, there will always be people who would rather trust in their own good works to save them instead of Jesus, and there will always be those who try to infiltrate the church of Jesus Christ in an attempt to persuade believers salvation can be attained by good deeds. There always has been this strife, and there always will be.
You might ask why? Why does this strife exist? Why will it always exist? Many reasons can be given, but what they all come down to is an issue of the Bible. According to a Gallup Poll conducted in 2017, less than one in four Americans believe the Bible is the literal Word of God. And so, you have this contention between those who believe what the Bible says and those who do not believe what the Bible says. We are even beginning to see this problem arise in Protestant churches. There are more and more Pastors turning progressive and not believing the Bible is the literal Word of God. And of course, if you do not believe the Bible is the literal Word of God, then you’re not going to believe salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone. If you do not believe the Bible is the literal Word of God, you are not going to have a Biblical worldview; you will have a secular worldview.
Point 2: So, what should you do if the church you are attending preaches salvation by works? Or preaches Jesus is not the only means of salvation? Answer: Get rid of them.
That was Paul’s advice to the Galatian believers in (Gal. 4:30), “But what does the Scripture say? ‘Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” Paul quotes Genesis 21:10, to make this point: Like Hagar and Ishmael were cast from Abraham & Sarah, those who declare a false gospel of justification by works, those who preach that salvation can be gained by doing good deeds, those who teach that a person can be made right with God by being a good person and doing good things, should be cast out and not allowed to teach in a church that follows Jesus Christ.
Paul did not take kindly to those who infiltrated the church that Jesus died to save and were misleading people away from the one Person who could save them, and neither should we. For example, Paul said, in Galatians 5:12, “I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!” That doesn’t sound very nice. What he means is that he desires that those who had infiltrated the church and introduced false teaching would mutilate themselves, injure themselves, and wound themselves. The idea is that they would disfigure or deprive themselves of a limb (an arm or leg). That they would go out and hurt themselves.
So again, if you are attending a church that preaches salvation based on works, go find a different church that gives sound doctrine, believes the Bible is the literal Word of God, and teaches the Bible. And if someone ever stands in this pulpit, or even in a Sunday School class, and they teach a salvation based on works, confront them and remove them. You have biblical authority to do so.
And do it quickly. Paul said, in Galatians 5:9, “ A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” All it takes is one false teacher to infiltrate this pulpit or a Sunday School classroom for the whole church to be deceived. That is all it took for the Galatian church. Notice Paul said in Gal. 5:10, “I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is.” There is zero tolerance to false teaching. As soon as it is discovered it must be dealt with.
Point 3: Now, you may ask, how can I be certain that my salvation depends on me putting my faith in Jesus Christ? How can I be sure that my good deeds are NOT enough to save me? How can I be certain that faith alone in Christ alone is enough to forgive me of my sins? I want to give you 4 reasons, from Galatians 5, why faith alone in Christ alone is the absolute only way to be saved. Again, this is a summary of much of what has already been discussed. Think of it as Paul’s last big effort to explain why faith alone in Christ is the only way to be made right with God.
Reason #1: You can be sure that faith alone in Christ alone is enough to save you because the purpose of God sending His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, was to set you free. Paul said (Gal. 5:1a), “For freedom Christ has set us free”. What did Jesus come to set us free from? The law. Jesus came from heaven to earth to set us free, to give us liberty, to give us independence, to deliver us and to release us from the law that depends on good works to inherit salvation. Jesus did not come from heaven to die on a cross to keep us bound or enslaved to a system that cannot save. Jesus did not come from heaven to give up his life to suppress us, restrain us, or hinder us from receiving the promise of salvation. A promise God made to Abraham centuries ago in Genesis 12. A promise that is based on faith alone.
And since Jesus came to set us free Paul writes (Gal. 5:1b), “stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” In other words, make sure you stay free. Make sure you don’t get tied up to the slavery of the law. Don’t go back to a system that cannot save you. Don’t go back to a system that does nothing but holds you in bondage. Don’t turn your back on Jesus. Don’t go back to the system Christ died to save you from. Keep your faith in Jesus. Keep trusting in Christ for your salvation.
Reason #2: You can know faith alone in Christ alone is the only way to be saved because Jesus is useless, if good works could save us. Paul writes in Gal. 5:2, “Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.” Remember, the false teachers were proclaiming that in order to be saved Christians needed to obey the Moral Law and the Jewish Ceremonial Law, which teaches all males must be circumcised. And Paul is saying to the Galatian believers, ‘If you are counting on circumcision to make you right with God, then Christ will be of no benefit to you.”
The same is true for us. If we depend on good deeds to save us, what Christ came to do for us by dying on an old rugged cross, is of no advantage to us. If we depend on good deeds to make us right with God then, what God sent His only Son to accomplish through death, is worthless to us. If we depend on good deeds to save us, Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, is absolutely useless to us.
Also, if good deeds could save us, Jesus’ death was pointless. Remember Paul said in Gal. 2:21, “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.” In other words, if we could be made right with God by good works, then there was absolutely no need for Jesus to die. There was no reason for God to send Jesus to die a horrible death, if we could be saved by good works. Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection are meaningless, if we can be saved by obeying the law.
Therefore, the cross of Jesus Christ, his burial, and his resurrection, which are proven historical facts, are all proof that Jesus is the only means of being saved. If Jesus was not the only means of being set free from the law, there would be no reason for God to send him. If Jesus was not the only means of being saved, there was no reason for him to die. If Jesus is not the only method of God saving humanity, there was no need for a tomb. If Jesus is not the only way to be made right with God, there was no need for a resurrection. In fact, if Jesus is not the only way to have our sins forgiven, then the Bible is a pointless book, because it’s purpose is to show how God moved through the history of the world to bring us a Savior, the Savior, one Savior, whose name is Jesus Christ.
Reason #3: The reason you can know faith alone in Christ alone is the only way to be saved is because it is impossible to be saved by law keeping. Paul writes in Gal. 5:3, “I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.” This means, if the Galatians are going to rely on circumcision to be made right with God, then they must obey every regulation in the whole law of Moses, which consists of 613 commands. And if they break even one of them, then their salvation is lost. The problem with that is this: it is practically a guarantee they will disobey at least 1 of the 613 commands in the law of Moses daily.
Of course, the same is true for us also. If we are going to rely on the Moral Law (Ten Commandments) to be made right with God, then we must obey every regulation of it, which consists of ten commands, and the moment we break even 1 of those 10 commands, the salvation we have worked so hard to attain is lost. James, Jesus’ half-brother, says (James 2:10), “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails at one point has become accountable for all of it.” That means, if you are relying on the law to save you, the moment you break one of the ten commands, you have violated all ten commandments, and are worthy to be condemned to hell. The problem with that is this: as it is the same with the Galatian believers, it is practically guaranteed you and I will disobey at least 1 of the 10 commandments daily. Thus, we can never be saved by law-keeping. We are too imperfect to be saved by good works (the ladder example).
There are a lot of people in the protestant church that think like this, even though the
Bible does not teach this. They believe as soon as you do one wrong thing, you lose your salvation. If that is the case, you are never secure in your salvation, despite Hebrews 9:12 saying it is, the blood of Jesus never cleansed you, God’s grace can’t overcome your sin, and you have no chance of getting into heaven, because there is no way on this side of heaven that you are not going to sin, even as a saved person.
The only way you are going to lose your salvation is if you deliberately turn your back on Jesus and cease to follow him. Or, if your confession of faith in Jesus was never true, genuine, and sincere in the first place.
Now, again, just because we will always struggle with the temptation to sin, just because you will sin, does not mean we have a license to willfully sin (go out and live how we want to live). As saved creatures, we still use the Ten Commands as our moral compass, but it is not the means by which we are saved, because we can never fully obey it.
Reason #4: The reason you can know that faith alone in Christ alone is the only way to be saved is because all we are doing by relying on the moral law to save us is separating ourselves from God. Paul says in Gal. 5:4, “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.” In other words, if we try to make ourselves right with God by keeping the law, we are cutting ourselves off from Jesus. We are falling away from the grace that God longs to freely give. Again, all we are doing by relying on the moral law to save us is separating ourselves from God; we’re not doing anything to draw nearer to Him. There is nothing the law does that draws us closer to God. In fact, some scholars believe that Paul is saying that if you have made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ, but are still relying on good works to save you, then you still do not have a genuine, sincere, saving relationship with Jesus.
True Christians understand this. Paul said in (Gal. 5:5), “For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.” Fake Christians try to produce their own perfect righteousness through their own efforts. False teachers want you to believe you can be made righteous by what you do, you can’t. Again, the more we try to gain salvation by our own effort, the more we end up separating ourselves from Jesus.
True Christians do not try to produce their own perfect righteousness by their own efforts, because their hope is not set on themselves. The true Christian understands they are not yet fully righteous but being made righteous; we are in the process of being made right with God. The true Christian knows they will never be made fully righteous as long as they are living in a sinful body. The true Christian understands as long as our saved soul is in this body of sin, this body of flesh, we cannot fully be righteous. We are saved souls in a condemned body of flesh. Therefore, the true Christian is eagerly waiting for the time his or her righteousness will be made perfect, that’s what Paul means when he says “we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.”
When is that? When is our righteousness made complete? When is our righteousness made perfect? When will we be blameless? There are two ways our righteousness is made perfect and complete. First, by death. According to Heb. 12:23, when those who trust in Jesus for salvation die and go to be with Jesus in heaven, they will be made perfect, blameless, and without sin. Secondly, according to 1 Cor. 15:35-49, at the return of Jesus when we undergo the bodily resurrection. The point of a bodily resurrection is so this sinful body will undergo a glorious transformation. This body that was sown in sin and dishonor, shall be raised at the return of Jesus as a body sown in perfect righteousness. That is the hope every true believer is eagerly waiting for.
What about those who are relying on work to save them? If you are relying on works of the law to save you, if you are relying on good works to save you, when you die or when Christ returns, all you have waiting for you is eternal judgment and wrath. If you are depending on being a good person to get you into heaven, there is nothing you should be eagerly waiting for. On the contrary, you should be very afraid. Because those who rely on the law to save them will be subject to God’s anger. If there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, according to Romans 8:1, then there is condemnation for those who are not in Christ Jesus. And those who are not in Christ Jesus are those who are relying on works to save them instead of Jesus.