Grace in action.

Galatians, Part 12: How the gospel of free justification cultivates a life of loving service.

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An obvious ripple effect of the good news of justification is the freedom it gives us to “serve one another.” Since sinners are no longer burdened by the religious obligation to make atonement with God — because Christ has already done that — they are free to expend their religious energy for the good of their neighbors (Gal. 5:13). This, of course, is not something that is intrinsic to us. Rather, it is something the Spirit develops in us as we “keep in step” with him (Gal. 5:25). Part of what it means to be a Christian involves warring against sin’s lodestone of self-absorption. Inherent in Christ’s “call to freedom,” therefore, is a “call to arms,” as we engage by faith in lifelong combat with our fallen nature. However, the “weapons of our warfare,” Paul says elsewhere, “are not of the flesh” (2 Cor. 10:4), they are of the Spirit. In other words, this battle for our souls isn’t fought in our own strength. Indeed, by faith, we are galvanized by the presence of Christ himself who abides in us.

Accordingly, the life of a Christian is one that is lived entirely by faith in, with, and by the Spirit of God, which results in his fruit blossoming in us through of service that glorify the Father. Whatever opportunity the flesh might have to rear its ugly head is squelched by the Spirit who cultivates new opportunities for faithful and loving service (Gal. 5:13; 6:10). We can serve freely because we were saved freely. This is what the Holy Spirit perpetually puts in front of us — namely, the work of God’s Son who rescued us from death and darkness. The point is that it actually takes work to remember all of this. As humans, we are naturally credit-seeking creatures. We crave the acclaim and applause of our peers, especially since that recognition comes with attention and influence. We aspire to have others think highly of us. Ever since that fateful afternoon in the Garden, we have been inclined to seek out any avenue of achievement that allows us to hang our hats on something we have done. Indeed, our flesh is still beholden to the lie that we can be “like God,” which means we are free to do as we please. Insofar as this philosophy informs our faith we are in for real trouble and tragedy. Nothing good ever results from thinking you are the one who is responsible for your eternal standing.

This is what the Judaizers had done in Galatia. Their insistence that justification was only achieved through mankind’s obedience to the law led to Galatian congregations believing they were responsible for their standing before the God of the universe. Salvation, then, was an issue that was uniquely tethered to whether or not they were able to keep the codes of Moses (Acts 15:1). Accordingly, this emphasis on “keeping” and “doing” cultivated an understanding of the Spirit’s fruits as little more than another checklist of virtues and disciplines to add to the spiritual “to-do list.” As this conviction thrives, though, it never results in life together as God intended. Instead, it functions as a corrosive agent, fostering a church body that consumes, bites, and devours each other (Gal. 5:15). A credit-seeking religion eventually terminates in a self-destructive “household of faith,” wherein conceit and envy have displaced grace (Gal. 5:26).

If we determine that our spiritual standing before God is dependent upon us, we will quickly see our neighbors as rivals instead of partners. This is because any anthropocentric understanding of faith is very easily contaminated by the ecclesiological Hydra of competition and comparison. If the fruits of the Spirit are religious merit badges won by our spiritual grit and fortitude, the Christian faith devolves into a system of religious rankings and degrees of spirituality in which our level of piety is measured by the amount of fruit we bear, mangling the beautiful life of grace God designed for his church into a gnarly game of competitive holiness. Once the church starts consuming its own, God’s Spirit has surely been sidelined and his grace forgotten. This is why Paul admonishes the Galatian believers to “sow to the Spirit”:

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. (Gal. 6:7–9)

Even though the metaphor of “the flesh versus the Spirit” has moved from the battlefield to a farmstead, the point remains the same: the fruit you bear is a byproduct of who you are gleaning from. The yield of fleshly living is only corruption, which Paul described at length in the previous chapter (Gal. 5:19–21). Nothing good or profitable can result from a life “turned in on itself.” Why would we think otherwise? Why would we ever think that living for ourselves could lead to the enrichment of others? This makes as much sense as approaching an apple tree hoping to find bananas. But such is the delusion of the flesh, which offers the alluring fruit of a life that revolves around us. If those who belong to Christ are living for themselves, they are merely feeding the comparative and competitive game of religion that eats away at the “household of faith” and ignores the ones who are actually hurting.

Accordingly, Paul proceeds to illustrate the opposite of religious rivalry by showing us what “keeping in step with the Spirit” does in those “who are spiritual.” Rather than seeing our Christian brothers and sisters as spiritual rivals, “sowing to the Spirit” allows us to see them for who they are: desperate sinners who need grace. “Truly Christian relationships,” John R. W. Stott says, “are governed not by rivalry but by service. The correct attitude to other people is not ‘I’m better than you and I’ll prove it’, nor ‘You’re better than I and I resent it’, but ‘You are a person of importance in your own right (because God made you in His own image and Christ died for you) and it is my joy and privilege to serve you’” (157). Paul puts it this way:

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each will have to bear his own load. (Gal. 6:1–5)

The word “caught” is suggestive of someone who is “taken by surprise” or ambushed by some such “transgression” or vice. This sequence is significant since this is how sin often works. The addict doesn’t wake up one day and simply decide, “I’m gonna be an addict.” There is a gradual digression into deeper and deeper reliance until, eventually, they are “caught” in addiction. Similarly, sin’s cruel and unforgiving grip slowly but surely tightens around us the more we “sow to the flesh.” Those who are overtaken need someone to help set them loose; those who are stuck need a helping hand to get them unstuck. Consequently, this is what the gospel frees us to do: it liberates sinners to rush to the side of other sinners who have fallen and, instead of lecturing them, lovingly restore them (Gal. 6:1). The word “restore” is more vivid in Greek. Notably, it is the same term that appears in Mark 1:19 where James and John are said to be “mending their nets,” which captures the ministry of restoration that Paul is commending to the Galatians as a result of their justification. Christ’s death and resurrection emancipate us to affectionately reach out to the down-and-out by reminding us that that was us.

Before the good news can be received, we have to accept the bad news. The law comes first, then the gospel. The bad news is that we are all down-and-out sinners, wretched to the bone, and unbearably prone to be overtaken by sin. None of us is above falling face-first into the ditch — and as soon as we think we are that is a sure sign we are deceived (Gal. 6:1, 3). Paul’s warning about a faith that is defined by seeking credit for ourselves now comes full circle: a credit-seeking religion yields comparison and competition, which breeds conceit, and when conceit reaches full term, we end up looking down our noses at those in the ditch. “Can you believe that guy? Imagine doing what she did! I’d never!” This is the language of those who think their right standing with God is secure because of what they have done.

This is reminiscent of Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37). When the priest and the Levite notice the man in the ditch who has been beaten to a pulp and left for dead, rather than lending a loving hand, they go across to “the other side.” They wouldn’t be caught dead trying to help one as down-and-out as him! Why? Because they were beholden to their reputations and their religion of credit-seeking. But when you look down on those who have taken a tumble (or two, or twelve) into the gutter, it exposes the fact that you have forgotten you were once right there. You are just as prone to stumbling and straying as anyone else. Therefore, what is stopping you from bending low to extend a helping hand to a struggling sinner? The only thing that would hinder you from trying to restore one who is broken is failing to see that you, too, are broken and in need of mending.

Similarly, Paul admonishes us that the best way to demonstrate loving service for our neighbor is to “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2), which quite literally means to “shoulder the load” for those who are being “overtaken” by their burdens. We are free to do this because this is precisely what Christ has done for us (John 13:34–35). Like the Good Samaritan, Jesus stoops down to the wounded and hurting in order to restore them. He is the one who takes notice of our mess, of how utterly overtaken by sin we are, so that he can put us back together by giving us himself (Gal. 1:4). He comes for those who need him the most. He comes for sinners because sinners are all that there are. Accordingly, just as the Christ of God “came down from heaven to help us,” Hans J. Iwand concludes, “faith steps down out of the world of the Word and of freedom to serve the neighbor. What God has given to faith, faith gives to the neighbor” (63).

Those who are keenly aware of their fallenness will be swift to bear the burdens of those who have fallen. This is God’s design for the church (Gal. 6:6). (The word “share” is the Greek word “koinōneō,” which is the New Testament term we most often associate with the church itself.) The Body of Christ shares a common bond regarding what burdens us and who it is that can relieve our burdens. Those in the church “have nothing to be smug about,” R. C. Sproul once quipped, since “we are not righteous people trying to correct the unrighteous.” When the church assembles, it is not a congregation of good people learning how to get better. Rather, it is a room full of broken people who know they are broken coping with their failure to be good. Our “coping mechanism,” if you will, is nothing but the gospel of Jesus Christ who descends to the gutter to redeem those who are broken and burdened by sin and death. The paradigm for evangelism, therefore, isn’t that of an expert sharing his expertise but that of a beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.

Works cited:

Hans J. Iwand, The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther, edited by Virgil F. Thompson, translated by Randi H. Lundell (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008).

John R. W. Stott, The Message of Galatians: Only One Way, The Bible Speaks Today Series (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986).