All of us struggle with being good enough. We wonder if we are smart enough to please our parents or teachers. We wonder if we are being productive enough at work to please our boss. Are we pretty enough to attract a mate? Have I done enough to make my spouse love me? Is our parenting enough to help our children grow up to be good citizens?
Or, to put more of a spiritual framework to it: have I spoken enough about Jesus to qualify as evangelism? Have I read the Bible enough or prayed enough to be connected to God today? Do I sing loud enough or in tune enough for true worship? Do I serve enough at church?
Mostly, we are asking: Am I good enough to please God?
Today I want to tell you that the answer to all of these questions is a resounding NO! You are not enough. And that should be extremely liberating to you.
In fact, even asking these questions reveals that we are all naturally legalists; it is so easy for us to become Pharisees who set up extrabiblical expectations that only end up upsetting us when we or someone else is unable to live up to them. This is the problem Paul was dealing with in Galatia. How does Paul define what is enough to please God?
Open your Bibles, if you have not already, to Galatians 5:1-6 and hear the plea Paul makes for you to free your mind from such impossible expectations.
This has actually been a very difficult sermon to prepare personally. Sometimes when I am studying I am just blown away at how big God is, how beautiful he is, how kind he was to us in Christ. These things get me so excited to simply brag on how amazing God is. But this week was difficult because in studying what Christian freedom looks like, I realized how enslaved I still am, how far I have yet to go. I desperately want that freedom Paul talks about in verse one, but in so many ways I am still a Pharisee at heart.
Let’s pause there for a second. I think that we sometimes feel like the Pharisees are the one group of people in the Bible that it is alright for us to sneer at. They kept people from knowing God. But when we are quick go there we miss that we all share something in common with them that we need help with.
What is a Pharisee? The Pharisees were a division of Jews who were in some ways the really conservative religious people. We know from reading our New Testament that they were strict rule followers. People respected them for how devout they were. But because of this, Jesus saved some of his most severe rebukes for them, which we will see carries over into Paul’s letters. Where did they come from? We can’t trace Pharisaism’s development exactly, but if we follow the Old Testament closely we can see what created the environment for their sect to emerge. And seeing the pattern will reveal that we all have a little Pharisee in us.
Way back near the beginning of our Bibles, in the book of Exodus, God gave the Israelites a bunch of laws that he intended to help them keep so that they would look like a special people and more people would be drawn to God through them. Yet, instead of saying to God, “Please help us, we can’t do it without you,” they said, “We’ve got this. Whatever you command we can do.” The entire Old Testament is the story of them thinking they can do it without God and only when things get really bad do they finally beg God for help. Finally, one day they reject God so thoroughly that God sends another country in to completely destroy their land and take them away as slaves. This is the period known as the exile. For many years Israelites lived in Babylon away from their homes as punishment for their rebellion against God. When they called out to God to rescue them, God did dramatically and returned them to their land. They never wanted that to happen again, so they determined they would never dishonor God in such a way again. Yet, instead of falling on their faces begging God to lead them, they buried their faces in the law and memorized every detail of what God commanded them to do. And from there they made a few extra rules so that they wouldn’t even get close to breaking a law. It would be similar to God saying to us, “Don’t touch that chair” and instead of asking God to give us a heart of joy to obey we build a giant wall around the entire city of Mankato so we never get close to that chair and anyone who gets close to the wall we shame for trying to get to the chair.
This is the mindset that Paul is confronting in Galatians. For four chapters Paul has been telling people that the law wasn’t intended to be a guideline for gaining access to God, it was a mirror in which we were to look and see our need for him. If you seek to impress God or others by the things which you do, you are falling into the same trap that the Pharisees did, not seeing God as worthy to be honored and enjoyed, but simply seeing his law as a tool to protect the one you really love, yourself. The gospel sets us free from trying to hold others to or live up to any standard and sets us free to give ourselves joyfully for the good of others.
Now let’s take a look at what Paul’s answer to this mindset is in chapter 5. Because I want to end on what I think is Paul’s main emphasis, freedom, let’s start at the end of this section. Here we see Paul’s foundation for this freedom. The Christian life is built on faith in Christ. Verse 5 says we await the hope of righteousness by faith. This means that a Christian does not point to what he has done or is doing to prove his goodness. A Christian knows he has no goodness. The way we receive a right standing before God is by faith, meaning that we trust that what Christ did on the cross is perfectly sufficient to satisfy God’s demands on my life. We can put our trust to please God in nothing else. Only faith in Christ counts for pleasing God.
Then , by faith, we can live in a way that accomplishes God’s work. Verse 6 says the only thing that counts is “faith working through love.” When we put all of our hope in Christ to bring us to God, we are able to change our behavior. We become less concerned about how we look to others and more concerned about using what God has given us to give to others. Both our salvation and our daily living is done by faith in Christ.
So Paul, here gives an example of what he is trying to get across to the Galatians. The church is arguing about the topic of circumcision. According to the law of Moses, in order to be a faithful Israelite a man had to be circumcised. After Jesus the Messiah came and opened the doors of the kingdom to non-Jews, many Jews taught that in order to join the church a man still had to be circumcised according to the law of Moses. Paul rejected that saying that only faith in Christ gains us access to God’s assembly, not anything we do. In these verses Paul is saying we have two choices, live freely in the knowledge that Christ accomplished on your behalf everything the law requires, or be enslaved to the law. He is contrasting freedom and slavery.
We will get to the freedom part, I promise, but now I want to find out what it means to be enslaved to the law. We see three errors regarding the law that it is so easy for us to make. First we fall into legalism when we hold others to a standard that God does not expect us to keep. The Jews in Galatia expected the non-Jews to be circumcised before they could join the church. Instead of accepting them by their profession of faith, they made them perform something additional to really prove they were good enough. Paul ran into this problem with the Corinthians too who didn’t want to trust him because he refused to jump through their hoops. He said to them in 1 Cor 10:29 “Why should my liberty be determined by someone else’s conscience?” How many ways do we hold up a bar over people’s heads and frown upon them when they can’t jump over it? We do this with non-Christians all the time. Instead of freely offering them forgiveness in Christ, we look at them with disgust that they are unable to jump over the high bar we are holding.
The second error is similar to the first but from a different perspective. The first was from the Jews holding up the standard, the second error is the Gentiles who submit themselves to the standard. In order to be accepted we sometimes feel like we need to try and earn our way into acceptance. Oftentimes there isn’t even an explicit expectation but we create in our minds the illusion that we need to perform in order to impress others so they will love us in return. We convince ourselves that if we don’t prove ourselves to be lovely enough then we won’t be loved in return. We voluntarily submit ourselves to this bondage of performance instead of living freely in the knowledge that Christ performed perfectly on my behalf. We don’t need to prove that we are lovely enough, we need to live knowing that it is already enough to be loved by Christ.
The third error is the defense of those who already got circumcised. We see this same attitude when somebody is confronted in the error of their ways and they immediately have a list of reasons why they had to do it. This person is quick to explain why it was necessary for him to make this decision or why he deserves praise and acceptance for his decision. This legalistic attitude defeats the purpose of Christ’s work on the cross who purchased acceptance for us. Paul, here in Galatians 5, has strong words of warning for those who are about to submit to this law. He warns them that if they do it they aren’t trusting Christ, they are cutting themselves off from him, falling away from the grace he offers.
Christ is all or nothing. If you feel like you need to do something in addition to the work of Christ, you are saying that his work was not sufficient. “Sure God himself offered himself to pay for all my sins, but he left a few gaps in his plan of salvation that I need to finish off for him.” When you justify yourself based on what you do, you claim more power and authority than God himself.
So what is our alternative. Freedom! Paul tells us in verse 1 that Christ has set us free. He is emphatic about it saying we’ve been set free in order to be free. The question we must ask ourselves now is, “What is freedom?”
I think moving our way back to verse 6 again gives us our answer. We have the negative example of expecting circumcision to prove our worthiness, but Paul ends this section saying that gospel freedom will result in faith working through love. Paul repeats this same point a few verses later. He says in chapter 5 verse 13 “you were called to freedom…Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh” meaning, freedom does not mean you get to do whatever you want to do. He says instead, “through love serve one another.” And he reminds us in verse 14, “the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
So I think that Paul is making a radical point for us:
- You are not good enough
- Christ performed perfectly and paid the penalty for sin entirely on behalf of any who put complete trust in him.
- This frees you to work not for your own acceptance but for others’ benefit.
Gospel freedom is the ability to give yourself completely to another person without any expectation of something in return, without any expectation that they first meet your standards, without any fear of rejection or shame, BECAUSE Christ gave himself as the sufficient payment for everything we failed to do right.
Gospel freedom also means freedom to fail without judgment. If we aren’t judged by your works in the first place, we can make mistakes and not feel like we have lost our hope, lost respect, lost someone’s love. It motivates us to get up and try again or try it differently.
Now let’s take a moment to consider how this law-making, law-keeping mindset still seeks to enslave us. No doubt this is a difficult truth to embrace. We are people who want control. We want to feel loved and appreciated so we create expectations for how other people can make us feel loved. If they don’t follow our expectation we feel loved and we feel like they are to blame. Then we manipulate others by creating a law in our minds that we are able to keep and we expect others to keep the law we made for them in return for us keeping the law we made for ourselves. I’m sure this isn’t making much sense yet, so let me give you a more personal example and then offer a few others to consider for yourselves.
I lived this law-keeping mindset far too much in my own marriage. Because I am so naturally focused on my own well-being it is so easy to try and manipulate my wife for my own benefit. For so many years in my marriage I fell into every Pharisaical trap in my marriage. I held my wife to unrealistic standards and when she wasn’t able to meet them I was sure to look down upon her for being such a failure. I also created my own set of standards which were fairly easy to keep, so that when I did keep them I expected her to reward me for them. This is the bargaining scenario in a relationship: I will help with dinner and the dishes with the expectation that I will receive something in return. Then, when she doesn’t give in return, I condemn her for failing to reward me for my “generosity.” Then I pull away from her and refuse to help any further, justifying that I deserve more respect because I am a hard working provider for the family, and I’m a committed church member, and I give my time and money to charitable causes.
What are some others ways in which we lean towards a law mindset instead of a freedom to love mindset?
Our education system is based completely on achievement. We receive grades to compare one another and to know what extra efforts or incentives should apply to each student. But we quickly transform this assessment tool into an identity marker. We brag about our children being honor roll students. I can easily begin to think I need to be the smartest guy in the class. And as soon as something happens in life to prevent us from getting the grade we think we have, we get angry, we start to blame others for our feelings of disappointment, we convince ourselves that we will lose all future career opportunities because we failed to meet some real or imaginary academic standard. All this anxiety results from a mindset of performance, of trying to be good enough. The gospel frees the student to enjoy learning without any fear that his failure to perform will throw off God’s plans in the world. The gospel frees the student to trust God’s sovereign plan to use whatever good or bad grades he receives to accomplish his purposes in the student’s life.
Another area in life in which many people struggle is their self-image. The culture has a standard of external beauty which it plasters all over for our eyes to consume. This standard of beauty drives deep into our hearts where our legalism awakens and we feel we need to measure up to it. And when our legalist heart meets the cultural standard of beauty it paralyzes us, keeps us from enjoying how God has uniquely made us. It keeps us from being able to give ourselves in love to others because we are so concerned about how we look. But gospel freedom reminds us that we don’t need to meet anyone’s standards. The gospel frees us to enjoy the body we have and to use it to serve others without fearing that we must first conform to someone else’s expectations. Then we have freedom to maintain the best body we can, not so people can approve of our image, but so we are better able to give ourselves more generously to others.
Another place in which I think it is most difficult to stand against this legalism is in our parenting. We know that our kids are far from perfect, but there is so much pressure in my heart to make sure my kids look as close to perfect as possible. The must always be on their best behavior, always be eating enough fruits and veggies, reading enough, avoiding TV, getting outside and playing (bathed first in sunscreen, of course), having enough socializing time with other kids (but not with the wrong kind of kids. They need to get their sports in, their swimming lessons and piano lessons done, raised with a classical education and finish college free of debt. We parents just are not able to handle all of these expectations; and when our kids don’t live up to our expectations each day we get upset with them . Gospel freedom allows us to simply do the best we can with the time and money we have been given and not feel like a failure when we compare ourselves to others. We trust that God has more of an influence over our children’s future than our efforts to micromanage their lives. And think about the pressure this mindset puts on our kids; they begin to believe that Christianity is about performing to a standard than about freedom in forgiveness.
One more, a general way in which we become slaves to expectations is when we fear criticism. We just hate it when we don’t measure up to someone else’s standards. When we are criticized we feel like someone looked us up and down and in their assessment we don’t measure up. If it is true that we aren’t good enough, then why should we be surprised if someone else realizes it too? We have room to grow, to improve, to be more loving so why are we so quick to get defensive and try to justify ourselves? Charles Spurgeon said, “if any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him; for you are worse than he thinks you to be. If he charges you falsely on some point, yet be satisfied, for if he knew you better he might change the accusation, and you would be no gainer by the correction. If you have your moral portrait painted, and it is ugly, be satisfied; for it only needs a few blacker touches, and it would be still nearer the truth.” The gospel frees us from the anxiety of someone finding out we are broken people. We already know we are broken and we don’t need to fear that someone else figure that out. Gospel freedom allows us to joyfully serve others even in the face of criticism because no matter what anyone says about us, we know that we are still accepted by God in Christ.
These are not examples of a gospel freedom mindset, but toxic relationships of legalism. There are so many ways in which we fall into this mindset, but the gospel frees us from it. I don’t know what it is in your life that triggers your legalistic nature, but if you are human, then there are still ways in which you are plagued by this tendency. Interestingly, Paul says in verse 1 that we need to fight for this freedom. It seems a bit paradoxical to say that we are free but we need to work for it. He is simply saying that our tendency is to fall back into justifying ourselves by measuring ourselves and others by a standard other than the love of Christ. We fight this tendency by standing firm on the truth of the cross and turning from any hint of law-making.
So take the time today to think how the Pharisee in you manifests itself. Ask God to bring you to the end of yourself so that you can be done with the law , so that you can know God’s pleasure with you in Christ, and you can experience the freedom of giving yourself to extraordinary generosity in love toward others.
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