Twenty-Seventh Meeting
(February 25, 1964 A.M.)
We are
asking the Lord to help us in these mornings to consider
some of the most vital matters of our Christian life. In
our New Testament we have a number of documents. But
amongst those documents, there is one which stands
related to perhaps the most vital question that has ever
risen in relation to Christianity. In the matter of
space, it is not a very long document. Indeed, it is one
of the shorter ones; but into its brief space the writer
has crowded the very essence of Christianity. He took up
his pen to write this document with an intense
determination to settle this great question. So he
concentrated into a short space the very essence of
Christianity. I do not think the apostle ever wrote
anything under a greater sense of importance and
necessity. This letter just throbs with the sense of his
passion about this particular matter. A great question
had arisen. That question threatened to destroy the real
nature of Christianity. The question was this: What is
this thing which has invaded this world by the coming of
Jesus Christ? For in the coming of Jesus Christ into this
world, God had broken into history, and God had broken
into history to make an immense change in everything. So
the great question was: What is it that has come into
this world with Jesus Christ? Is it just the
continuation of an old system with some things added to
it? Is it a legal system shaped on the basis of the old
Jewish system? In other words, is it just the
continuation of Judaism with something added to it? Or is
it an entirely new, living, spiritual movement from
heaven? Is the old garment of Judaism just to have some
new patches put into it? Or is it to be an altogether new
garment? Is it the old wine-skins of Judaism to have new
wine put into them? Or is it to be an altogether new
wine-skin? This was the great question.
This
great question represented a vast difference, and that
difference became a great battlefield between the old and
the new. This question just wrought Christianity into
confusion. For a time, everybody but a few were in a
sense of uncertainty about this. It led to very serious
divisions amongst the Lord's people. It even insinuated
itself among the first apostles themselves. Peter, the
leader of the twelve, had a great battle over this
question, and at one time he came into serious conflict
with the Apostle Paul on this matter. James, who was one
of the brothers of our Lord on this earth, had serious
reservations about this matter. The first Christian
martyr died on this very question; Stephen was martyred
because of this very matter. Wherever Christianity went,
this dispute followed it. We, in our time, are not able
to realize how tense was this strain over the matter of
the real nature of Christianity.
Although
this particular document to which we refer did settle it
very largely at that time, the nature of this controversy
has persisted right through into our own day. Is
Christianity a legal system, or is it a spiritual life?
It was in relation to that question that the Risen and
Ascended Lord broke through from heaven and laid His hand
on the Apostle Paul. Jesus came right out of heaven,
right through from the glory, and put His hand on this
man Saul of Tarsus. It was not a small thing for the Lord
Jesus, Who had sat down at the right hand of the Majesty
in the heavens, to get up off the Throne and come back
here again. He must have seen that there was a very
serious matter involved. So He did not send an angel or
an archangel; He left His place in glory and came down to
that man on the road to Damascus, and He laid His hand
upon him. Afterwards, Paul described it as being
apprehended by Christ Jesus. You know what that word
"apprehended" means? Well, I hope you do not
know what it means so far as the law is concerned. When
the policeman is after a criminal and he finds the
criminal, he puts a very strong hand on him. And that is
the word that the apostle used. He said, 'I was
apprehended. I was arrested by Jesus Christ.' And it was
in relation to this specific question. The Lord arrested
Paul as the instrument through which He was going to
answer this question. So serious did the Lord regard this
matter, that it is impossible to understand the Apostle
Paul's ministry unless we recognize this particular
connection. The whole of the Apostle Paul's ministry
related to one issue: And that issue is the true,
spiritual, heavenly nature of Christianity.
Now Paul
by that mighty act from heaven had come to see this great
difference. He had come to see that a great divide had
been created between old Judaism and new Christianity,
between the old earthly Israel and the new heavenly
Israel. He had come to see that these were two distinctly
different nations. He had come to see that this question
divided the ages. What had existed in the past ages was
now terminated. And something new had been introduced to
be the nature of things for all the eternal ages. When
the Apostle Paul himself came to see that, when that
broke upon him from heaven, that is, the vast difference
between the legal and the spiritual, he threw himself
into THAT BATTLE to the last drop of his
blood.
That
battle began immediately when Paul was saved. When he had
been met by the Lord, and entered the city of Damascus,
after being baptized and receiving the Holy Spirit, he
testified to them that Jesus is the Christ. Recognizing
what that meant where this man himself was concerned,
recognizing that he had changed his ground, that he had
left the ground of legalism, the ground of Judaism, that
he had taken the ground of Christ: THEN THE BATTLE
STARTED. And right through the thirty years of his life,
everywhere he went he was found in that battle.
The last
chapter of the Book of the Acts, which leaves Paul in
prison waiting the sentence of death, finds him still in
the battle. The Judaizers are with him in his prison. He
seeks to reason with them, but then he has to turn from
them and say, 'It's no good, I must turn to the
Gentiles.' The battle was on from the beginning to the
end of his life; and this battle was on one mighty issue:
Is Christianity a legal system on this earth, or is it a
spiritual movement from heaven?
Now, I
began by saying that there is a document in the New
Testament which sets forth the answer to that question,
and I expect many of you have already come to the
conclusion as to what that document is. If you are not
sure about that, let me say at once, it is the Letter to
the Galatians. It is now fairly or generally believed
that this letter was the first letter that Paul wrote. In
my early days, it was believed that the Letters to the
Thessalonians were the first letters that Paul wrote. And
I used to say that. But further investigation has led
those who know very well that the Galatians Letter was
probably the first letter. Now I am not going to argue
out that matter this morning. You can believe it or you
need not believe it. But, if that should be true, how
significant it is that that should be the first great
issue about which the apostle wrote. And if you read that
letter, and feel the strength with which the apostle
wrote it, you can discern how serious he felt this
question to be. He saw that there was that which was
threatening the whole nature of Christianity. And so he
set himself to do this work. That is, to preserve the
pure spiritual nature of what had come in with Jesus
Christ.
Now
before we proceed to consider what is in this letter,
there are two basic things which must engage our
intention. First of all, what the apostle himself meant
by this letter, and that is contained in chapter one, and
verse eight, "But though we, or an angel from
heaven, should preach unto you any Gospel other than that
which we preached unto you, let him be anathema" (ASV).
The whole letter is gathered into that one sentence.
"The Gospel which we preached." He says that
what he is dealing with is the nature of the Gospel. He
says we preach the Gospel to you. This letter then is a
restatement of the Gospel. Now various names have been
given to what is in the New Testament. It is called by
many Christianity, and that is a very comprehensive term;
or it is called the Christian faith, or the Christian
religion. In the New Testament, it is known by none of
those names. The New Testament never speaks of this as
Christianity; it never speaks of it as the Christian
faith; it never speaks of it as the Christian religion.
It is known just by one name. Everything that is in the
New Testament and which came in with Jesus Christ is just
called The Gospel.
Now here
is something that we need to carefully notice. You see,
we draw a distinction between what we call the Gospel,
and fuller teaching for believers. By the Gospel, many
mean that which is for the unsaved, and what we give to
the saved, well, it is something else. Suppose you are
going to have some gospel meetings at the end of the week
and they are not for believers, they are for the unsaved.
That is an altogether artificial distinction. Everything
in the New Testament for the unsaved and for the saved is
called the Gospel. It is not a religion. It is not a
philosophy of life. It is not a system of truths and
practices. It is just the Gospel. And that word means:
"Good News." It is given various connections,
such as the Gospel of our salvation. But there is one
overall and inclusive thing about this word, and that is,
"The Gospel of God concerning His Son Jesus
Christ" (Rom. 1:1-3). So when we divide between the
Gospel for the unsaved and something else for the saved,
do you see what we are doing? We say, we have left the
ground of God's Son, and we have come on to some extra
grounds for Christians. The Gospel is comprehensive of
everything in Christ. You will never get to the place
where you will cease to discover something new concerning
God's Son; and although we may be discovering more
throughout all eternity, it would still be the Gospel.
Do you
think the Gospel ends when you are born again? Do you
think the Gospel ends when you leave this world and go to
the Lord? If you see the great multitude, which no man
can number around the throne, and you listen to their
song, they are singing a gospel hymn, "Worthy is
the Lamb." But they have come into a very very
full understanding of God's Son. See, the Gospel is the
Gospel of God concerning His Son for all time, and for
all eternity. The Gospel is something infinitely bigger
than salvation from sin; it is infinitely bigger than
deliverance from judgment and death. The Gospel
comprehends all that is in Christ. It was that for which
the apostle was fighting. It was not just for the
salvation of these people, but that they should
understand what they are saved into. That is the
battleground. He says, "The Gospel which we
preached." And what does it amount to? A whole
letter is crowded into that one sentence. The Gospel is
emancipation from all legal bondage. It is emancipation
into the liberty of the sons of God. That is the theme of
this letter: Emancipation from all legal bondage.
Emancipation into the liberty of the sons of God. And
Paul says, "That is the Gospel which I
preached."
In this
letter, Paul calls legalism a yoke of bondage. He cries,
"Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made
us free, and be not entangled again in the yoke of
bondage." When he used that word "yoke,"
he was using the same word as Jesus Himself had used in
Matthew eleven, verses twenty-eight through thirty. Jesus
looked out on the multitude, He said, "Come unto Me,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden. Take My yoke upon
you, and learn Me. My yoke is easy, and My burden is
light." He was speaking to the multitudes who were
under the yoke of Jewish legalism. He said to be under
that yoke is to be in labour and be heavy laden. He says,
"My yoke is easy," by which He meant: I will
liberate you from the yoke of Jewish bondage. I will set
you free from all this toil under legalism.
The
scribes and the Pharisees had thousands of
interpretations to the Old Testament Scripture. They had
taken the law of Moses, and they had put two thousand
interpretations upon every law. Everything that God had
said, they had interpreted it to mean a thousand
different things. And so they had taken the Word of God
and given to it an interpretation which became a great
burden to bear. Not only had God said, "Thou shalt
not," the scribes and the Pharisees had said,
"Now that means, 'thou shalt not this; thou shalt
not that; and thou shalt not a thousand things."'
Not only had Moses said, "Thou shalt," the
scribes and Pharisees said, "Thou shalt a thousand
things." Jesus said, "They bind heavy burdens
and put them on men's shoulders." That is always the
effect of legalism. Under a legal system, you just do not
know what you may do. You are always asking: 'Now,
really, may we do this? If we do this, shall some
judgment come upon us? And if we don't do it in that way,
shall we fall under the judgment of God?'
That is
how it was then, and Paul himself had been under that
burden. He tells us about it in the seventh chapter of
the Letter to the Romans. And he ends that terrible story
with "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me
from this dead body?" That whole system is a system
of death, but then he adds, "I thank God through our
Lord Jesus Christ. I now meet all in Christ." Now
that is the battle of this letter to the Galatians. So
this is what Paul calls the Gospel. And as I have not the
time to go to the second thing this morning, I am going
to leave it there. I mean the second fundamental thing
that lies beneath this letter. If the Lord wills, we will
speak about that tomorrow. But let him who runs, READ;
and let him who reads, RUN. Run out of all
this sort of thing into the liberty wherewith Christ
makes us free.
Now what
I have done this morning is just to present the great
question. This great question as to the true nature of
Christianity, or of that which came in with Jesus Christ.
But I must say this as I close, do not take what I have
said as everything; that is only the beginning. We have
really got to see what it is that we are in, in Christ.
In general, we are in liberty. But we have got to see
what that means. So do not go away and say: 'Well, he
said this.' Just keep that quiet and say, 'There is
something more that we have got to learn about this.' I
leave that with you for this morning, but it is a
glorious Gospel - the Gospel of our liberty in Christ.
And we refuse to be brought back into bondage by any man.