Free at Last

The Message of Galatians

McCarson

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781498219044
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Grace is supposed to be amazing, but all too often the Christian life can be more about keeping stuffy rules than enjoying a relationship with Christ. The tendency to add works to salvation has been a thorny problem since the gospel was first preached. Legalism--the doctrine of salvation by works--robs the Christian of the grace-filled life. The book of Galatians is like an emancipation proclamation that says, "If the Son has set you free, then you are free at last!" The liberating message of Galatians says believers are free from sin, regulations, and guilt. Free from the need to measure up. Free to be loved by Christ and changed by his grace. Galatians is a guide for recovering Pharisees, and in Free at Last, Derrick McCarson takes us on a verse-by-verse journey through Paul's bondage-busting manifesto. You may be surprised to learn that Paul's message of grace is still as relevant today as it was centuries ago. While the culture has changed much in those intervening years, mankind's inherent desire for performance-based religion has not. This book is a timely reminder to Christians everywhere that if we aren't living by grace, then we have succumbed to spiritual slavery.

chapter 1

Let Freedom Ring!

Since 1886 immigrants to America arriving through New York Harbor have been greeted by a 300 foot lady who stands proudly. She holds a torch in her hand giving light to those in the dark. Atop her head is a crown with seven points which represent the seven continents of the globe. Attached to this lady’s feet is a chain that has been broken signifying her abolition from tyranny and oppression. An inscription upon the pedestal has the immortal words of Emma Lazarus’ sonnet:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

We know this special ambassador of freedom as Lady Liberty and she invites those beleaguered refugees from around world to come to America—the land of the free and home of the brave. Christ is holding out the same promise of freedom to those who are looking to escape spiritual bondage. Jesus, in the original emancipation proclamation, said in John 8:36, “If the Son sets you free, then you are free indeed.”

The epistle of Galatians has been called the Magna Charta of spiritual liberty, the battle cry of the Reformation, the Christian’s Declaration of Independence, and the rough-draft for Romans. Many church historians maintain that Galatians was the catalyst which sparked the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther, the great reformer, said, “The epistle to the Galatians is my epistle. To it I am, as it were, in wedlock. Galatians is my Katherine (the name of his wife).”1 Meanwhile, renowned Biblical scholar, Merrill C. Tenney, wrote of Galatians:

Christianity might have just been one more Jewish sect and the thought of the Western world might have been entirely pagan had it never been written. Galatians embodies the germinal teaching on Christian freedom which separated Christianity from Judaism and which launched it upon a career of missionary conquest. It was the cornerstone of the Protestant Reformation, because its teaching of salvation by grace alone became the dominant preaching of the Reformers.2

Think of Galatians as an invitation to freedom. In fact, the word “liberty” is used eleven times in this book. In this letter God invites us to throw off the shackles of man-made religion and embrace His grace completely. Say “goodbye” to legalism and performance-based religion—there is no place for that where we are going.

The Apostle to the Galatians (1:3, 6:11)

The author of this fiery letter is the Apostle Paul. In typical fashion he identifies himself in the greeting (1:1–2). Many scholars believe that this was one of the earliest letters written in the New Testament, penned sometime around 48 AD. In my estimation, Paul is the perfect candidate to write Galatians because of his background as a former Pharisee. If there were ever a man who knew anything about rule-keeping and adhering to religious traditions, it was Paul. Remember that before Paul was gloriously zapped by Jesus in Acts 9 on the road to Damascus, he was a card-carrying, law-loving, Christian-killing Pharisee.

Paul was born as Saul in the city of Tarsus, which is in the modern-day country of Turkey. He was a well-educated Roman citizen. Acts 22:3 says that he received his theological training at the feet of Gamaliel, who was the most prominent Hebrew scholar of the first century. You can get a feel for the kind of zealot that Paul used to be before Christ rocked his world when he wrote in Philippians 3:4–6:

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

This man had the equivalent of a PhD in the minutia of theological hair-splitting, so there was nobody better qualified to deal with the problems plaguing the Galatian church than Paul. More than any other apostle he understood the bondage of the law and the freedom of grace. Bible commentator John Phillips wrote:

Paul’s signature on a letter was worth millions, not in the coin of the realm, but in spiritual terms. The name Paul on an epistle is like the name Mozart on a musical score, the name Rembrandt on a painting, the name Rockefeller on a check, or the word sterling on silver. It indicates worth. Paul! He was the church’s greatest thinker, the church’s greatest missionary, the church’s greatest apologist, the church’s greatest theologian, the church’s greatest enthusiast, and the church’s greatest apostle.”3

It’s ironic to think how God used Paul so mightily—even though he was a Jew, the Lord would use him to reach gentiles; even though he once persecuted the early church, he would become the greatest promoter of the early church; even though he was once the greatest Pharisee, he would become the greatest freedom fighter for Christian liberty.

God performed a similar miracle with Martin Luther. Before Luther became the great champion of justification by faith. Luther was a German monk who was completely sold-out to the burdensome traditions of the Catholic Church. Luther wrote of himself:

When I was a monk I depended on such willing and exertion, but the longer [I worked at it] the further away I got . . . I was very pious in the monastery, yet I was sad because I thought God was not gracious to me . . . When I had prayed and said my mass I was very presumptuous. I didn’t see the scoundrel behind it all because I didn’t put my trust in God but in my own righteousness . . . the most pious monk is the worst scoundrel . . . I was a good monk and kept my rule so strictly that I could say if ever a monk could get into heaven through monastic discipline, I was that monk . . . And yet my conscience would not give me that certainty, but I always doubted and said, “You didn’t do that right. You weren’t contrite enough. You left that out of your confession. Although I lived a blameless life as a monk, I felt that I was a sinner with an uneasy conscience before God. I could also not believe that I had pleased him with my works. Far from loving that righteous God who punished sinners, I actually hated him . . .”4

There is a well-known story from Luther’s monastic life when he took a trip to Rome as a spiritual pilgrim. Luther made his way to a building called the Lateran. Outside there was a series of ancient stairs that had been transported from Jerusalem to Rome. Supposedly, Jesus had walked on those stairs outside Pilate’s hall. The Catholic Church taught that if you got on your hands and knees and crawled up the twenty-eight stone stairs, and said a prayer on each one of the stairs, by the time you got to the top stair you could reduce your time in purgatory. Thousands of pilgrims would come and climb those stairs on their hands and knees. Martin Luther—now deeply troubled—got on his hands and knees and crawled up those stairs, kissing each one as he crawled and saying “Our Father” along the way. When he got to the top, he looked back at the stairway and asked himself a question, “What if it is not so?”

God used that experience in Luther’s life to help him see the utter futility and bankruptcy of the Catholic religion. The turning point came in 1515 when Luther was allowed to teach the Bible. It was then that he began reading the Scriptures as never before. The single verse that changed his life was, “the just shall live by faith,” written by Paul some 1,500 years earlier, found in Gal. 3:11 and Rom 1:17.

The Audience of Galatians (1:3)

This letter was written to several churches across the region of Asia Minor. Paul knew these people very well because on his first and second missionary journeys he and Barnabas planted these churches on their evangelistic crusades. Acts 13–14 chronicle the journeys of Paul across the cities of Galatia. Every step of this mission trip was met with resistance and persecution.

When Paul and Barnabas went into the city of Iconium...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Let Freedom Ring!
• Chapter 2: Only One Gospel (1:1–9)
• Chapter 3: Countering the Critics (1:10–24)
• Chapter 4: The Freedom Fighter (2:1–10)
• Chapter 5: Peter vs. Paul/Law vs. Liberty (2:11–21)
• Chapter 6: Breaking the Law (3:1–14)
• Chapter 7: Law and Grace: A Dynamic Duo (Gal. 3:15–25)
• Chapter 8: Who Do You Belong To? (3:26–29)
• Chapter 9: Trading Sonship for Slavery (4:1–11)
• Chapter 10: Velvet Steel (4:12–20)
• Chapter 11: A Tale of Two Sons (4:21–31)
• Chapter 12: Standing Firm in Liberty (5:1–6)
• Chapter 13: Facing Off Against False Teachers (5:7–12)
• Chapter 14: Risky Business (5:13–15)
• Chapter 15: The War Within (5:16–21, 24–26)
• Chapter 16: The Fruit of the Spirit (5:22–23)
• Chapter 17: No Man Left Behind (6:1–6)
• Chapter 18: Spiritual Laws of the Harvest (6:7–10)
• Chapter 19: Boasting Only in the Cross (6:11–18)
• Bibliography