Grace Only

Today, Dave looks at Paul's letter to the Galatians.  While they had put their faith in Jesus, they were going back to the old laws and adding to the requirements for salvation.  Paul  was adamant that it's Jesus and not Jesus + something else we need.

You can find today's reading here.

Home Church Questions

1. Paul was concerned that the Galatians were adding requirements to the gospel.
What are some ways Christians today can unintentionally turn grace into something we have to earn?

2. “We don’t do good things to get God’s love. We do good things because we’ve received God’s love.”
How does that change the way you think about obedience, serving, or following Jesus?

3. Galatians 5:1 says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”
What are some things Christians can feel they need to prove—to God, to others, or even to themselves? How might grace free us from that?

4. Grace does not mean ignoring harm or pretending that everything is okay.
How can we extend grace while still telling the truth, maintaining healthy boundaries, and recognizing the need for repentance and change?

5. Paul’s own past did not disqualify him from being used by God.
Is there a part of your past that you sometimes struggle to believe God can redeem? What might it look like to allow grace to speak into that part of your story?

6. Grace is something we receive, but it is also something we extend.
Where might God be inviting you this week to offer someone grace—perhaps through patience, forgiveness, encouragement, welcome, or simply giving someone another chance?

Closing Question
If you had to summarize what God is saying to you through this message in one sentence, what would you say?

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Website: theharbournewmarket.ca
Email: david@theharbournewmarket.ca

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:23

Well, good morning again, everyone, and thank you, Jay and Rick. You're you know, you seem to nail it pretty regularly when it comes to our uh our worship music and uh connecting with the uh with the message. Today it's uh it's pretty simple, but something we uh we stress over and we well, we fuss and fume, and that but it's simple and it's entitled Grace Alone. And over the past two weeks we've been following, of course, the story of Paul. Week one, we met Saul on the road to Damascus, and uh well, he encountered Jesus in a mighty way, his life was turned around, and we discovered in our travels with uh with Saul that God wants more than just to turn us around, he also wants to give us someplace to go. And so last week we saw how Paul and Barnabas set out uh from the church in Antioch, and the gospel was on the move, which of course is the theme of our uh of our series. So they traveled, they preached, they encountered, well, they encountered stones, because Paul was stoned at one part. That wasn't a great day. Uh but they encountered people and well, they encountered life. But churches were formed. So today we're gonna leave the book of Acts and just have a look at the book of Galatians because it it contains a topic that was right at the heart of Paul, and uh, of course, the understanding of the gospel as he saw it, and it's one word, grace. Just bow your head with me for a moment. Well, Lord, um, thank you for the words that you've given me to share this morning. As we listen to Paul's teaching and unpack it together, help us um well, help us to hear the good news at the heart of our faith. So show us your grace and teach us to receive it well, and more importantly, help us to extend it to others. In Jesus' name. Amen. Well, Galatians. Paul in this book is not happy. Um, if you look through some of the Old Testament or New Testament uh letters of Paul, they're they're quite flowery, they're quite uh quite friendly. He gives thanks for many, many things. But uh in Galatians, he's a little prickly. Um and so why? Well, it's pretty simple. And uh we pick it up in verse 6 where he says, I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ. You are following a different way that pretends to be the good news, but is not the good news at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ. Let God's curse fall on anyone, including us, or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of good news than the one we preach to you. I say again what we have done and what's said before, if anyone preaches any news other than the good news, the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed. So as you can see, Paul is not happy. He gets right to the point, not a lot of flowery prose, and he goes right after them. Well, why did Paul write this? He wasn't looking for an opportunity to write a theological essay. I mean, he was a scholar, so loved to write letters and communicate for sure, but something had gone terribly wrong. And Paul is concerned, and this book is probably the most emotionally intense of his New Testament letters. Um again, some normally there's lots of thanksgiving, there's lots of you know, give and take, and lots of flowery kind of prose. Um, you know, I'm grateful, I've heard about your love. But in Galatians, of course, he he dives right in. I'm shocked. Well, what does that mean? Well, what was happening is the churches in Galatia, which um, in case Marianne was here and wanted to play Stump the Pastor, Galatia is now Turkey today. Um, so somewhere way over there. Um, they had heard about Jesus, they had received Jesus, they had believed, and they received the Holy Spirit. They had become part of the people of God, but now other teachers had come along and were basically saying Jesus is important, but Jesus isn't enough. You need Jesus and circumcision, you need Jesus and the law, you need Jesus and taking on the markers of your Jewish identity. So you needed Jesus, plus you needed to keep the Torah. And of course, Paul emphatically says, no. And this isn't a little disagreement around among religious people and religious practice, it goes to the heart of the gospel. How does a person get right with God? Well, it's through what Jesus has done, of course, but it's certainly not because what Jesus has done, plus all the other stuff that goes along with it, and it comes down to one word, grace. That's how we're made right with God. So why was this such a big deal? Well, the early church was wrestling with a big question. What happens when Gentiles become followers of Jesus? Because remember, Jesus was Jewish, so he was operating in a Jewish culture, and now the church is on the move. The apostles were Jewish, the scriptures that they read were Jewish, the first followers of Jesus would have grown up within the story of Israel, but then the gospel started moving out, and now Gentiles are believing in Jesus. So people who weren't Jewish, people who hadn't grown up keeping the Jewish law, people who didn't have the same religious background, and probably had a little interest in being circumcised. So you have this division, don't you? So now the church has to wrestle with do Gentiles have to become Jewish in order to be fully part of God's people? And some people were simply saying yes, because that was their lived experience. And Paul emphatically says no. And this is where we need to understand the intensity of this argument. This was a big, big deal. Paul isn't saying don't worry about a few rules, he's saying do not add requirements. Don't put requirements alongside the gospel that Jesus never required. You can't tell people Jesus saves you. However, you need to do a few other things to really belong. And if you do that, you've changed the message. It's very simple. You've gone from grace to achievement. You know, from the gift of God's grace to qualifying for it, from receiving to earning. And see, Paul knew exactly where that road led. And I think this is why his language is so strong. You know, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, then let them be under God's curse. That's a big deal. Now, I can remember doing Galatians in seminary, and someone made the comment, boy, Paul needs to chill. Paul needs to calm down. He's a little, he's a little edgy. But why wouldn't he be? I mean, as I think back, you know, we receive God's grace, but then God uses our personality to do great things. So I don't think Paul's personality had changed much. He was pretty strong. He was a highly competent debater, teacher. He was really intense when he believed in something. So now Jesus has met him, and now his strength is being turned in a different direction. Jesus is using him. So Paul clearly knows what's at stake here. Because the people in Galatia, you know, they're not simply changing a few religious preferences. Well, this could work for me, this could work for you. They're beginning to turn and believe that Jesus is not enough. And maybe I need to hedge my bets a little bit. And uh Paul's not going to allow it. Full stop. He wants them to understand that the gospel is not Jesus plus something else, the gospel is Jesus. And Paul really takes us personally. Any study I've done on Paul, um, he is a fascinating guy. He takes things quite personally. Um but here he's not defending an idea that you know was invented in the classroom. He's defending the gospel that transformed him. It changed his life, it stopped him in his tracks. So Paul knew what it was like to build his identity around a religious achievement, because that was the law. He'd been a Pharisee, he knew the law. He probably knew the law better than most people. He had the credentials, he had the pedigree, and as we know, he was zealous. He was disciplined, and he was, by his own description, righteous under the law. So he had a religious resume that was impressive. Then he met Jesus. And as we've seen, everything changed. So it's no doubt that he would take this personally. When the persecutor becomes the apostle or the apostle and the enemy becomes a servant, well, it changes your life. And so he's watching other Christians being told, oh, Jesus is good, but again, you need you need just a little more. And of course, Paul knew exactly where that led, and uh he was having none of it. So Paul is ultimately defending one word, and it's grace. Grace. All the old hymns come to mind. You know, we talk about it a lot, we pray for it. But what do we mean by grace? Well, at the simplest, I think grace is just God's generosity to us. It's undeserved. But we receive it anyways. Grace is God's love reaching towards us before we've cleaned ourselves up. And that's a big difference. Before we've cleaned ourselves up. Grace is a gift. It's important uh because most of us understand how the world works. So grace is not a reward for good behavior. You know, in our world, you work, you get paid, you perform, you get promoted, you do well, you get recognized, or you mess up, then you face consequences. We understand in our society today how to keep score. We're really good at keeping score. And see, and grace operates completely differently. Grace just says you're loved before you've earned it. There is no keeping score. So you're welcomed before you've proved yourself. You're invited before you have everything figured out, and that's a beautiful thing. You know, some of us have fallen hard in a variety of situations, and grace is knowing that you're loved before you've figured out how to put it back together or how to start over. And uh, you know, maybe that's why it's so difficult for us to receive. Because grace takes away our ability to say, I did this on my own. Because we're achievers, we like to do things, we like to accomplish things on our own. And uh again, grace just takes that away. It's a gift. We can all face the temptation to add to or hedge our bats, as I like to say. And I think as if you read through Galatians, and it's a it's an easy read, it's uh five chapters, um I can see why Paul is so so worried. Um we receive grace, but then slowly over time we add things. You know, um church attendance, uh being in the right place at the right time, um, making sure we're totally aligned with the way we think ought to be, keeping all the rules. Maybe it's making sure everybody thinks we're doing okay when we're really not. And suddenly we've moved from Jesus has saved me to Jesus has saved me, and now I need to kind of keep proving that I'm worthy of that gift. And that's that's dangerous, and it's so easy to do, and it's subtle because the Galatians weren't necessarily rejecting Jesus outright, they were simply just adding to it. And uh Paul says, in no uncertain terms, that's enough to corrupt the gospel, because once grace becomes something we have to supplement that it isn't grace anymore. Now, Paul tells us to remember how we started, and we've all are on different kinds of planes on our faith journey, but uh in in Galatians and chapter 3, he just asks, Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? In other words, how did this begin? How did God give you the Holy Spirit? Because, well, did he give it to you because you're good enough? No. It's because you heard the gospel, you believed, and you received. So grace came first. So Paul invites them and in turn us to remember our stories and remember that we didn't earn our way into the family of God. We receive the gospel and we receive the Spirit and therefore receive grace. So we don't turn around and make performance the foundation of the Christian life. And that's hard. I acknowledge that. That's really, really hard to do in a culture that's so performance-driven. So, some thoughts on how we play with this on a daily basis. Well, we remember, number one, that grace always comes first. God's love isn't a response to our goodness. Our goodness is meant to be a response to God's love. So we think of our children, our grandchildren. A healthy parent doesn't say, once you behave well enough, I'll love you. Well, maybe you might think it from time to time, but um, no. You know, you never say, once you behave well enough, I'll love you. Our children are loved. And then because they're loved, you know, families work out how to live within that love and with the boundaries. And that's exactly the same as our relationship with God. We don't obey so that God will love us. We learn to obey because God loves us and desires a relationship with us. And therefore, one of His one of you know God's uh desires for us is to serve, is to serve like Jesus. But we don't serve so that God will accept us. We serve because we've been accepted already. So remember, grace always comes first, and then that changes everything from there. Sometimes grace is a little misunderstood. And I think it's an area we need to be careful. Uh if grace means God loves us regardless of what we do, does that mean that what we do doesn't matter? And Paul's answer is no. What you do matters a lot. Grace may be free, but as he puts it, it is not it is not cheap. The grace of God doesn't simply forgive our past and leave us exactly where we are. Grace changes us. Paul talks about that in Galatians 5. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. And notice that freedom, Paul isn't replacing one system of religious performance with another, but calling us into an entirely different relationship. Paul says, we've been set free. Free from having to prove yourself, free from having to establish your worth, and free from having to become acceptable through our own performance. And once we're free, then we can begin to live differently and look at things through a Jesus-centered lens. And so it changes your life. And hopefully the way you live your life on a daily basis. But again, not to earn God's love, but because we already have it. So maybe again, without hammering our way at this too hard, but it's something we really need to remember. We don't need to do good things to get God's love. We do it again because we've already received God's love. And that's a huge difference. And I think of people helping other people in need. One person thinks, maybe if I do enough good things, maybe God will be pleasing. And the other thinks, God has been so generous to me, how can I not be generous to somebody else? They may do the exact same task, but the motivation is completely different. One trying to earn, the other is simply responding. And that's what Paul's saying about the the Christian life. It's simply a response to the grace of God. I think the most important thing is maybe the last here, grace changes how we see ourselves. And I've learned that if my relationship with God depends on my performance, it's like living on a roller coaster. Good week, I feel pretty close to God. You know, things seem to be in sync. Then some weeks, not so good, a little off the tracks a little bit, just not necessarily going the way I'd want it to go. And I wonder, is God disappointed in me? When I pray regularly, I feel spiritual. And if I miss a few days or I get too busy, it's easy to feel like you failed. But God's grace gives us a foundation that is so much more stable when our identity isn't based on our performance. It's based on the love of God. And that doesn't mean our failures don't matter. They do. Actions have consequences, of course. But our grace is based on the love of God. You know, grace never calls evil good. Grace doesn't remove consequences. Grace doesn't mean we do not need repentance. We do. But it means that our failures do not have to be our identity. We can confess, we can repent, we can get back up, because our relationship with God rests not on our performance, but on God's faithfulness towards us. And that's the uncomfortable part of this book sometimes. And I'd encourage you to read it with that lens if you go back and read it this week. If grace is true, it changes so much more than how we see ourselves. It has to change the way we see other people. And this controversy in Galatia wasn't happening in a vacuum. We now have the gospel being spread. And that causes division. Or it certainly would have during that time when it had been quite neatly packaged and convenient until it wasn't. And you start, you know, division causes questions. Well, who belongs? Who's accepted? Who's in? Who's out? Who has the right credentials? And Paul just says, that's not the community Jesus is creating. And again, the tone of this letter, he's pretty blunt. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither is there male or female, for you are all, the word all, one in Christ Jesus. So Paul isn't saying differences don't exist. He's saying that differences no longer determine our standing before God. Grace levels everything. Now again, well, what about the person who's hurt me? Well, that's when it gets challenging. You know? We've um all been faced with situations where we've been hurt, we've been challenged, we've been lied to. Um and often our lived experience can dictate our response to this. I acknowledge it's it's hard because we all have challenging lived experience. You know, broken trust causes damage. There's lots of ways that uh we can be hurt, we can be damaged. And so grace never pretends that harm doesn't happen. And grace doesn't mean that there's no consequences. Grace does not mean that trust is automatically restored. And it uh certainly, as I've as I've learnt in my restorative justice work over the years, it doesn't mean that someone who has been wounded has to rush into reconciliation. Ananias and Paul were the idea, ideal, um, certainly the ideal outcome. But I think we need to acknowledge that forgiveness and trust are not always the same thing. Grace tells the truth about what happened while still acknowledging harm. Grace always leaves room for repentance, transformation, and the possibility and the hope of a new future. And that just takes time and that takes boundaries, and reconciliation takes work from both sides. But grace makes transformation possible without denying the truth. And friends, sometimes the hardest people to extend grace to is ourselves. We carry things, things we did, things we've said, things we'd love to undo. Yet, if we're going to extend it to other people, we need to receive it ourselves. And that's that's the hardest. That can that can be really, really difficult. And Paul's story speaks so directly to that. Paul persecuted the church. He stood by why people were arrested and beaten. Yet Jesus met him and called him, transformed him. And Paul never pretended his past didn't happen. He talks about it throughout his throughout his letters. But he also refused to let his past have the final word. So grace doesn't erase the past, it just redeems what comes next. And I think it really produces humility. That's another consequence of grace. It makes us humble. And if we've earned God's love, well, I could take some credit. If I made myself acceptable to God, I could compare myself with you, others. Then I could say, potentially, oh, I'm better than you. But you see, now I can only say I'm grateful. We're all on equal, equal ground. And that's why grace creates humility. One thing I've learned from working with men and ladies who have been incarcerated is that prison is the great equalizer. Nobody has any more, nobody has any less. You can be on the same sharing the same space with a millionaire or someone of just generational poverty. And out of that comes community. And I think one of the great things when we heard from Paul Tucken this spring, um, this discus community, the men and ladies who show up to that are just part of community with the volunteers. Nobody knows who did what, why, how, when. They just know that they're there because the grace of God and want to do life together. And so that's one of the beautiful things that grace produces. This uh this theme that you belong because God's still working in all of us. And that gives us great freedom. Because Jesus is enough. He doesn't make our lives meaningless, he makes them meaningful. Now we can serve without needing applause. We can give without needing recognition, we can love without needing something in return, and we can forgive without keeping score. And we can welcome people without asking what they can give us. We become free to love because that's where grace takes us. So connecting back to our series and conclusion, the gospel's on the move. The gospel found Saul, the gospel sent Paul, the gospel Paul carried was grace, and that was not a side issue. That was the heart of his message. You know, this week was an interesting week, and uh I love this theme, the gospel on the move, and I've pondered what does that look like? Well, some of you will remember Victoria, who was on some slides in the spring, and through a connection with Thane Golds, we meet this wonderful junior high-age girl that is so other-centered it was incredible, and created these compassion kids. So we contributed to those, and uh they were they flew out of our office um very, very quickly. Well, this past uh this past Tuesday night, um Victoria was invited to come to our John Howard annual meeting to uh receive an award. And I had nothing to do with this. I connected the dots, um, but for whatever reason, this has made a huge impact on the leadership of John Howard and the executive director. Um she really wanted to, and they had already sent her a little certificate and everything, but she wanted her to come to the annual meeting and be recognized. Okay, so up they came, and um Shannon delivered the most beautiful presentation I've ever heard in uh just the context of caring for your community, and I was I was blown away. And at this, you know, at this annual meeting were members of York Regional Police, um basically just community partners and and stakeholders, you know, board members from John Howard, but the highlight of the night, after well, after looking at financial statements, sorry, Peter, the anything would be the highlight of the night, but it was um it was absolutely wonderful. Victoria came up and uh received this award, and Shannon made a beautiful speech, and I went home thinking the gospel is on the move, because John Howard doesn't have any idea what's happening here with our compassion project. They just know that Dave pastors this community and something about Jesus, but they're learning. And uh just an example, friends. The gospel moves in spite of us, maybe sometimes. Um my heart is full. I can't tell you when I've ever driven home so happy after just seeing the response of this uh wonderful junior high. So, what do we do with it in conclusion? Grace, we better receive it. Um we better stop trying to earn it because it's been given to us. And thirdly, we need to extend it to others. So we think about who needs a second chance, who needs some extra patience, who needs forgiveness, who needs to be welcomed because Jesus loves us, Jesus wants to walk with us, and as we receive the love of Christ and are committed to following Him, the natural extension of that is to share it with others. Let's pray together. Well, Lord, this morning I just feel led to invite us to receive your grace right now. We get up, we fall down, we stumble, we try. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes not so well. Lord, we know that you love us. You're here to save us and support us. So help us to live in your love and in your grace as we move out and about throughout our week ahead. Thank you for your beautiful gospel, where that one word is so important.