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May, 2025 (Vol.59-No.5) |
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Preached by Dr. Gene Scott on July 22, 1990 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. Galatians 3:10-11 I AM CONTINUING TO PREACH through the book of Galatians. Today’s message will begin with some review before we move forward. In the previous message, I pointed out that as you practice faith, God credits your faith as righteousness. He then adds righteousness to your “ledger” that moves you toward Him and eternal life. Your works will not take you to heaven. Regardless of how you might surpass other Christians in your performance, and regardless of how wonderful the accolades you receive may sound, your works cannot save you. Anyone who tells you that you can be saved by applying your willpower to a knowledge of good and evil is preaching Satan’s message. God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. He told Adam and Eve, “If you eat of it, you will die.” Satan came along and said, in essence, “Stop trusting God. Stop believing Him. He does not mean what He says. If you eat the fruit of that tree, you will not die. Instead, you will be like God!” In other words, “If you know what is good and what is evil, you can use your willpower to do good and avoid evil. And by so doing, you will be like God.” It is a message of destruction. That is why Paul asked the Galatian Christians, “Who hath bewitched you…?” Literally, “Who hath evil-eyed you, that ye should not obey the truth…Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” God gave you the gift of His life for your faith. He put all of your sins on Christ and gave you His righteousness for your faith. Most traditional churches teach that in order to make progress in your journey toward God, you must stop doing all the things they say are wrong, and start doing what they consider to be righteous deeds in their place. Instead of preaching the gospel, they tell us we must stop sinning in order to get to heaven. In the New Testament, sin is simply defined as “falling short.” Regardless of how closely you think you can approximate God’s standard, you still fall short, and falling short of God’s perfection is the sin that condemns you. The Bible says, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” but “the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” The Hebrews letter teaches us Christ’s role as our Mediator. He stood in our place and died for our sins. God treated Christ as though He were you and me, and He received God’s wrath in our place. Christ paid the price to ransom every sinner and buy us back from slavery to sin and death. He paid the price to remove the barrier between God and man. There is no sin you have committed, nor is there any sin you will ever commit, nor is there any sin that any man has ever committed all the way back to Adam, that was not specifically laid on Christ. We are saved the moment we encounter Christ and act in faith. We do not have to first change ourselves. We do not have to try to prove we can be like Christ. We commit ourselves in a trusting relationship to God in the knowledge of what He has done to cover all of our sins. We are saved when we trust with our hearts and confess with our mouths our acceptance of His finished work. All evangelical Christianity admits, or accepts, that we are saved at that moment. God takes you as though you were Christ. So Paul was saying to the Galatians, “Foolish saints, don’t let someone bewitch you! Don’t let them ‘put the evil eye’ on you and persuade you that there is some other way to finish your journey. God counted your faith as righteousness; even so, your progress in God must continue to be by faith that will be counted as righteousness.” As I said in the previous message, God does not keep a ledger of our sins. Those sins have all been canceled out. To us the symbolic language of the Old Testament, our sins have been put on the scapegoat and carried away. Another Old Testament passage says that God cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. We start with a blank ledger. Now, God credits our faith as though it were righteousness. It is a major step to effectively communicate that thought to most Christians. We must resist the traditions that make void the word of God, whether those traditions are peddled by our friends and relatives, or by churches that have nothing to offer other than self-righteousness. God gives us grace and peace. “Grace” means “unmerited favor,” and “peace” means “cessation of againstness.” God is not against us anymore! Now, as we make our journey along life’s road, every act of faith is counted by God as righteousness. It is difficult for many Christians who were raised in a traditional church to accept this. But if we can buck the tide, throw off the weight of traditions, and finally come to believe that all our sins were laid on Christ, then we are ready for the next step. People might agree that we are all sinners needing grace every step of the journey, but they erroneously think that the preacher who delivers that message had better “walk right.” So Paul asked another rhetorical question in Galatians 3:5, referring to his own ministry: “He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” I want us to pause on this verse for a little while. People think, “Fine, it’s okay for the saints to live by faith, but what about the preacher? After all, he has this exalted position of having received this revelation of truth that can set us free. He can communicate the good news of the gospel: that faith is the only way into God’s presence eternally. Therefore, in return for the privilege of being the channel of such a marvelous revelation, the preacher ought to be at least a little righteous by his works!” When Paul said, “He therefore that…worketh miracles among you,” he was referring to his own ministry. Based on the way this verse reads in the King James Version, we might think it applies only to someone who heals the sick or raises the dead. But the expression does not refer solely to healing evangelists. Paul certainly healed people, but that is not what this verse is saying. It may include such miracles, but it is not limited to them. The Greek words translated “worketh miracles” are energon dunameis. We get our English words “energy” and “dynamite” from these two Greek words. Therefore, I could paraphrase this verse, “He who is energizing dynamite-power among you.” Circle the words “among you.” The Greek words are en humin, which are better translated “in you.” So Paul was saying, in essence, “Let’s now talk about the one who energized dynamite-power in you.” When you translate the verse this way, you begin to see the function Paul performed. This was the prelude to his asking, “How did I accomplish these things?” Paul was the one who had energized dynamite-power in them. What was the “dynamite?” Paul said in Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ,” the good news, “for it is the power of God unto salvation…” Again, the Greek word translated “power” is dunamis. Paul was not ashamed of the good news, for it is the dynamite-power of God unto salvation! When you act in faith, God not only counts your faith as righteousness, He does the added work of freely putting His Spirit in you. He gives you a deposit of His life: He puts His own nature in those who trust Him and act in faith instead of relying on their works. That life has the power to change you. Paul taught the Galatian Christians that salvation is by faith alone, and that grace and peace come from God. He also said in Romans 10:17, “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” By preaching the gospel, Paul had planted the seed of the word. And he taught that there is another kind of righteousness, from faith to faith. God gives grace and peace to those who trust in His promises. Grace is not only unmerited favor, it is also a substance. God’s grace is the unmerited deposit of His life in us. For faith and trust, God transferred our sins onto Christ. When people responded in faith to Paul’s preaching, he had energized the dynamite-power of God in them! That is the meaning of Galatians 3:5, which is so much more than “merely” working miracles among them. Paul had asked the Galatians a rhetorical question: “Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” Then he asked, concerning the one who had energized the dynamite of God’s life in them, “Doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” In other words, did Paul do these things by keeping the law and commanding others to keep it? Or did he do these things by the hearing of faith? In short, even preachers must be allowed to make their way toward eternity by faith and not by works. Both you and the preacher must follow the same road. Preachers are to preach and exemplify faith, not preach and try to exemplify works. Whatever sins may attach to me, I have the same rights as you! My walk is by faith and not by works! Let’s be done with this nonsense that you or I must be perfect in order to get to heaven. And let’s be done with this nonsense that only perfect preachers can preach the gospel. Paul went on to the subject of Abraham, one of the heroes of faith. It would be as though a modern preacher had said, “Get over yourself, and get over your preacher. Now, let’s talk about the heroes of faith.” You might carry the memory of some saintly grandparent or preacher who seemed to be incapable of sinning. Oh, these saintly images we carry in our memories! People think, “There must be someone who was truly like Jesus, without fault.” But if even one man or woman in history other than Christ could make it into heaven by their righteous behavior, doing the works of the law, then Christ would not be needed – and we are all doomed! You had better understand what Paul was saying: only one Man in history fulfilled the law, and that was Jesus Christ. The law became incarnate in Him; and on the cross at Calvary, when Christ died, the law died. You will not make it to heaven by your works, nor will your preacher, nor did the father of faith himself, Abraham, make it by works. Abraham faithed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. Paul said in Galatians 3:7-8, “Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith…” Notice the words “would justify.” Grammatically, in the original Greek, this is a verb in the present tense. It is also indicative and active. Therefore, it should not read, “foreseeing that God would justify.” It should read, “foreseeing that God does justify.” God has been justifying and will keep on justifying. Whom does God justify? The righteous? No! Paul said that God justifies the heathen! It is the ungodly who are being justified through faith, not people who imagine themselves to be righteous. God will continue justifying those heathen and ungodly when they become “saints,” those who offer themselves to God. The words “to be justified” mean “to be held as though you were righteous,” through faith. Paul said that God “preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.” Abraham was not given this promise because of his works, but for his faith. Paul went on to say, “So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse,” and that curse is falling down upon them like a guillotine blade. Nothing will stop it from falling on those who try to do the works of the law. All the works of the law are fulfilled works of the law, because the law was fulfilled in Christ. If you try to keep the law, the curse will fall on you because, no matter how good your works might be, they still fall short of God’s perfection. That is why, in the Old Testament, the sin offering provided a covering for sins committed in ignorance. All of the Old Testament offerings symbolically pointed to Christ’s vicarious sacrifice. He covered both our known and our unknown sins. You see, even if you could perform the works of the law so perfectly that your pastor, the deacon board, the church, and all your friends and neighbors would give you an “A+,” you still could not do them all! For that reason, the curse is falling, “for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” Underline those words “all things,” because the law is much more than just the Ten Commandments. If you dare to claim that you keep the law, do you want to try to recite the entire Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, from memory? Then, once having recited those books, do you think that you can give them their full meaning, a task which has defied exegetes throughout the centuries? Again, God’s word declares, “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” Ignorance of the law is no excuse. If you fall short of even one item in the law for only one second of your lifetime, you are short-fallen. You failed to keep God’s law. Paul said, “But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God…” Yes, it is possible to take a small portion of the law and reduce it down to a little checklist that says, “Do this and don’t do that.” You can keep your little checklist and be justified in the sight of man, but not in the sight of God. He knows that failure to do all the things written in the law is to fall short. “No man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith,” or “The righteous by faith they shall live.” Indeed, they shall live with God’s life in them eternally! “And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.” But if you fall short of the law, God’s word says, “The wages of sin is death.” Paul said, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us…” The Greek word translated “redeemed” was used to describe the price paid to purchase the freedom of a slave. It is also the price paid to redeem a lost inheritance. Christ paid the price to ransom or buy back or redeem us from the curse of the law, “being made a curse for us.” Christ put Himself between us and the curse of the law. The curse was falling, but He let it fall on Himself. Christ was “made a curse for us.” Circle that word “for.” At one time, scholars thought that the New Testament was written in a special kind of Greek. But as archaeologists began to dig in ancient piles of trash and broken potsherds, they discovered early examples of writing that indicated the New Testament was written in the common Greek language of that day. That is why it is called Koine Greek, meaning the language “held in common.” Archaeologists found that this word “for” appeared frequently in legal documents. If you could not sign your name on a contract or deed because you could not write, someone could sign on your behalf. For example, if I could not write and my father signed a contract for me, he could sign it “W. T. Scott for Gene Scott.” So one definition of the word translated “for” means “to put yourself in the place of another for his benefit.” The curse was falling, but “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” Christ perfectly lived the law; it became incarnate in Him. Then He put Himself between us and the curse of the law, and the curse fell on Him. Why? “That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith,” not through the works of the law, but as God’s gift to us for our faith. There is no other way in. We have passed out from underneath the curse of the law because Christ was made a curse for us. If we return to the works of the law, we put our sins back on ourselves and let the curse fall on us, because our best efforts fall short of the glory of God. You had better stick to the way of faith! Maybe you are living a less-than-exemplary lifestyle, as others might judge you. But that has nothing to do with your salvation. It it your faith and trust in God and in Christ who died for you that takes you to your eternal home, and not all the garbage being peddled and the guilt that is laid upon you! Jesus died to set you free from the law of sin and death, and “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed!” Reprinted with permission for Pastor Melissa Scott | Return Home | Current Wingspread | Wingspread Archives | Contact Us | |
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