Boasting Only in the Cross

Audio2012Galatians: Fighting for Grace

Jan 15

Tom Shrader closes his series on Galatians by examining Paul's summary in chapter 6, verses 11–18, which sets circumcision and human religious effort against the cross of Christ. He exposes the Judaizers' three motives — religious pride, fear of persecution, and the desire to boast in their recruiting success — and contrasts them with Paul's singular boast in the crucified Christ. The teaching calls listeners to recognize that genuine salvation rests entirely on God's provision through the cross, not on any human effort, external ritual, or joint contribution, and that boasting in the cross means acknowledging that He is everything and we are nothing.

“If we boast in ourselves and in our ability to save ourselves, we shall never boast in the cross and the ability of Christ crucified to save us.”
— Tom Shrader

Series: Galatians: Fighting for Grace

Recorded: 2012 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 54 min

Themes: boasting, the cross, pride, salvation, grace, religious effort, humility, persecution, struggling with pride, new believer, feeling unworthy, performance-driven christian, young adult, questioning salvation, recovering legalist, seeker

Scripture: Galatians 6:11-18, Galatians 1:4, Galatians 1:6, Galatians 3:16, Acts 7, Acts 15:1, Matthew 6:1, Matthew 6:5, Matthew 6:16, Matthew 7:13, Matthew 7:15, Matthew 23, Luke 16:15, Philippians 3:4-10, Romans 12:1-2, 2 Corinthians 5:17

Theological Themes: justification by faith, sola fide, sola gratia, legalism, atonement, works righteousness, galatians, circumcision

Full Transcript

Introduction to the Passage

Open your Bibles to the book of Galatians. This is the last time we'll be saying that, as this is the final session of our study in this book. One commentator writes these words: "The last section of Galatians is more than just a hastily written postscript, the afterthought of the apostle. Instead, these verses constitute a summary of the entire letter. They place circumcision over against the cross. They show justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone means boasting in the cross alone. And to understand this is to understand Galatians and, more than that, to understand the gospel."

We are going to look today at verses 11 through 18, and hopefully this will serve as a great summary of what we have looked at in these twelve weeks.

Reading the Passage

I want to do something by way of introduction that I do not think I have ever done before. I want to read the passage from one of the translations — the New American Standard — and then read from two of the paraphrases. The reason I do that is that particularly today, these paraphrases do a wonderful job of taking this passage and putting it in an order we can get our arms around.

Verse 11, chapter six, the book of Galatians: "See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand." Verses 12 and 13, Paul talks about the Judaizers: "Those who desire to make a good showing in the flesh try to compel you to be circumcised, simply so that they will not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For those who are circumcised do not even keep the law themselves, but they desire to have you circumcised so that they may boast in your flesh."

Now Paul talks about himself in verse 14: "But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." He then makes his summary thoughts: "For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And those who will walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the brand marks of Jesus."

Paul Takes Up the Pen

"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brethren, amen." Now in these sentences, Eugene Peterson writes: "I want to emphasize in bold scrawls, with my personal handwriting, the immense importance of what I've written to you." He then addresses the Judaizers, breaking their motives into three categories. These people who are attempting to force circumcision on you have one motive: they want an easy way to look good before others. They lack the courage to live by faith — that sharing in Christ's suffering and death — and all they talk about the law is gas. They themselves don't keep the law, and they are highly selective in the laws they do observe. They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting you to their side. It is contemptible.

Now Paul, writing about himself in verse 14: "For my part, I'm going to boast about nothing but the cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, I've been crucified in relation to the world, set apart from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns they dictate." Can't you see the central issue in all of this? It's not what you and I do — submit to circumcision or reject circumcision — it's what God is doing. And He is creating something totally new, a free life.

"All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God, His chosen people, peace and mercy on them. Quite frankly, I don't want to be bothered anymore by these disputes. I have far more important things to do, the serious living of this faith. I bear in my body scars from my service to Jesus. May what our Master, Jesus Christ, gives freely be deeply and personally yours, my friend. Oh yes."

A Second Paraphrase

Now the Phillips translation is another paraphrase. All I'm trying to do is come at you with these and help you see what Paul is writing. "Look at the huge letters I'm making in writing these words to you in my own hand." These men who are always urging you to be circumcised — what are they after? What is their motive? It is as though he breaks out three distinct motives, and I do think there are three we can get from this passage.

Number one, they want to present a pleasing front to the world. Number two, they want to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ, for even those who have been circumcised do not themselves keep the law. And number three, they want you to be circumcised so they will be able to boast about your submission to their ruling.

Now Paul: "Yet God forbid that I should boast about anything or anybody except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, which means that the world is a dead thing to me and I am a dead man to the world. But in Christ, it is not circumcision or uncircumcision that counts, but the power of the new birth. To all who live by this principle, to the true Israel of God, may there be peace and mercy. Let no one interfere with me after this. I carry on my scarred body the marks of my owner, the Lord Jesus Christ. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, my brethren, be with your spirit."

Why Paul Writes in His Own Hand

Now if we pull these apart and take a look at them, some things become pretty obvious. In verse 11, Paul is saying: now I am taking the pen. In almost all of these instances, Paul would dictate a letter, and there might even have been professional scribes who would write it out. But in some instances — at the end of 1 Corinthians, at the end of Colossians, at the end of 2 Thessalonians, and here — Paul says, give me that pen, and he writes what is a personal closing.

He is talking here about the size of the letters, and that prompts all sorts of conversation. It could be a variety of things. The scribes were actually professionals, and there would be a kind of beauty to their writing that obviously was not Paul's. Paul was probably more accustomed to writing in Hebrew than in Greek. To put it in terms I think about: I am left-handed, and if you put a pen in my right hand, the writing tends to get a little larger and sloppy.

It could also have been an eye problem. Most scholars believe that Paul had a thorn in the flesh — we know that — and that the thorn in the flesh was likely something to do with his eyes. There is not unanimity on that, but it could be that he did not see very well and so tended to write large. Or it could be that he is employing a deliberate technique. Typically the writing of that day would be the equivalent of our cursive writing, but the custom if one wanted to emphasize something was to write in single block letters — think of how an architect writes, or how in an email we would type something in all caps to emphasize it.

Most people would probably be comfortable with a combination of all these explanations. The point is that Paul is clearly emphasizing something here. What he is emphasizing as he closes is not just a normal, typical closing. We noted at the beginning of the letter that Paul starts it in a very abrupt fashion. Back in chapter 1, Paul identifies himself in fairly typical fashion through verses 1 through 3, but in verse 4 he interjects some heavy theological truth about the substitutionary atoning death of Christ — meaning Jesus died for our sin so He could rescue us — and then Paul goes right to verse 6 and is right in their faces. He says he is amazed, disappointed, and stunned at how quickly they have deserted the gospel for a different gospel, a false gospel. He goes right into it, and it is as though he ends the letter the same way.

The Abrupt Ending and Its Purpose

Paul closes this letter in a way that is noticeably different from his other letters. Oftentimes when Paul is writing, he will make reference to the people who are with him — Timothy is with me and says hi, or Luke is with me and says hi — or he will make reference to somebody in the church and say make sure you tell him hi for me. He does not do that here. It is as if he is cruising along, gets to the end, grabs the pen, and goes right after the Judaizers again. He comes right to an explanation of who he is and, in doing so, sets up a contrast: here is what they boast about, but here is what I boast about — and the two cannot compare. This is about a new life, about walking by this rule, about living in the Spirit, grace to you and peace, and goodbye. It is a very abrupt ending.

What Paul is emphasizing, though, is what he has driven home throughout the entire letter. Someone said to me this week, "You almost sound apologetic every week, like you are saying sorry for saying the same thing over and over again." I assured them that is not what is happening. We are returning to the same themes because Paul himself returns to them, and today, in this summary passage, it makes sense to ask: what have we learned?

The Gospel as God's Solution

Paul sets everything up with the gospel, and the gospel becomes God's solution to our problem — separation from Him because of our sin. I love to illustrate it this way using the Bible I use for teaching. Page one and two is about creation. Page three is about man ruining it — that is sin. And pages four through twelve hundred and sixty-eight are about God fixing it.

When you come at Scripture from all these different angles, you boil down to really two issues: something is wrong with man and he is separated from God, and we are either going to rectify that through our own effort or through God's provision. Those are the only two options. God's provision is biblical Christianity, and it includes a concept unique to the faith — it is called grace. Our own effort is everything else.

Now, that second category can be a combination. You may have elements that talk about Jesus' death, but then there is also a list of what you need to do as well. In business terms, it would be a joint venture — a partnership. You might even say God is the general partner, but you are still a limited partner bringing something to the whole endeavor. So in terms of getting right with God, you have two approaches: biblical Christianity and everything else.

Biblical Christianity is about a holy God reaching down to a sinful man. Everything else involves a sinful man trying to be good enough to appease an angry or wrathful God. Those are the two options, and the Judaizers represent that latter group — those who say they are going to do something that will make God happier or satisfy God's wrath.

The Motives of the Judaizers

What Paul lays out here is the motive of the Judaizers, and then what drives him in contrast. Let me read from the Phillips paraphrase. Speaking of those in verse 12 who are urging circumcision, Phillips says: "These people who are urging you to be circumcised want to present a pleasing front to the world, and they want to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. For even those who have been circumcised do not themselves keep the law. They want you circumcised so they can boast about your submission to their ruling."

Now hear it also from Peterson's paraphrase: "These people who are attempting to force the way of circumcision on you have only one motive — they want an easy way to look good before men. They lack the courage to live by faith because they don't want to suffer. They themselves don't keep the law. They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast of their success in recruiting you."

So Paul identifies what drives these men. Number one is religious pride — look at me. Number two is an attempt to avoid persecution — they do not want to pay the cost associated with the cross. And then Paul points out that these men are hypocrites: they are putting others under the law while not keeping the law themselves. They are asking people to do something they do not even do. And the motive behind the recruiting is so they can brag about how many people they have brought in and how effective they are. That is what Paul is addressing in verses 12 and 13.

Religious Externals and the False Gospel

Their teaching is a false gospel — that is what we saw back in chapter 1, verse 6. They are teaching a different gospel. Acts chapter 15, verse 1 records what the Judaizers would teach: "Unless you are circumcised according to the customs of Moses, you cannot be saved." Circumcision was an external sign of the covenant made between God and the people of Israel. In itself it did not save — it was an external marker. And that is exactly the point: the Judaizers, the scribes, the Pharisees, and the religiously minded of all times are deeply invested in externals. Externals matter enormously to them.

Turn to the left to the Gospel of Matthew — I believe it is around page 525 — to Matthew chapter 6.

External Compliance Versus Internal Heart Condition

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is speaking to the disciples about relationship and commandment. He had been saying, "Here is what you heard, but here is what I say," expanding the commandments to show that it is not about external compliance with the law, but an internal condition of the heart. Then in chapter 6, verse 1, He says, "Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them." That is the Judaizers, the Jewish leaders He is addressing. As Jesus says in Luke 16:15, "You are those who justify yourself in the sight of men, but God knows your heart."

We do not want to leave this concern back in the ancient world, because the same pattern appears in people today. Rather than circumcision, they talk about baptism — regenerational baptism — saying it is the act of baptism itself that is essential to salvation. Or they point to certain external evidences and compliances. Having attended Catholic grade school, high school, and college, there were all sorts of these compliances: first Fridays, various rituals, symbolic acts. Watching coverage of the Pope in Mexico and Cuba that week was particularly discouraging and frustrating — liturgical, ritualistic, all about show, all about form, dotting I's and crossing T's, and missing the whole big picture.

Giving, Praying, and Fasting for an Audience

In Matthew 6, Jesus says He will address three things: giving, praying, and fasting. The unifying concern behind all three is the warning He opens with: "Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by men." When it comes to giving, He says, "When you give, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites in the synagogues on the streets do. But when you give to the poor, don't let your left hand know what the right hand's doing." In certain instances He references, they would literally have trumpeters go before them — a very public, announced act of generosity.

The same problem could show up today. Someone might say they want to give anonymously, while at the same time expecting naming rights to the fellowship hall. Jesus says do not do that. When it comes to prayer, in verse 5, He says to be careful not to pray like the hypocrites who love to stand and pray on street corners so they will be seen by men. They would time their prayers to coincide with being at a busy intersection, stopping and praying with the hope that passersby might notice — maybe even capture a photo of what a holy man he is.

Then in verse 16, when it comes to fasting: "Whenever you fast, don't put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, and they neglect their appearance so they'll be noticed by men." They would not wash or take care of themselves while fasting, so that when someone encountered them on the street and asked if they were sick, the answer would be, "No, he's fasting — he's a godly man." In all three cases the activity itself — giving, praying, fasting — is not wrong. Jesus' point is that you can be doing the right thing in entirely the wrong way, meaning with the wrong motives.

Doing the Right Thing for the Wrong Reason

This same dynamic plays out in the context of coming to church. People can be here for very different reasons. Some, like Susan, genuinely yearned to be in community, and the sicker she became, the more she longed to be present on a Sunday. Others, particularly younger students, are here simply because their parents require it. And then there are those who are attending primarily because it serves a relational strategy — not really believing, but calculating that showing up to church might lower someone's guard just enough to create an opening. The external action is identical; the interior motivation is entirely different.

The Narrow Way and the Warning Against False Prophets

As Jesus summarizes the whole Sermon on the Mount, in chapter 7, verse 13, He says there is a narrow way and a broad way: "Enter by the narrow gate." The narrow gate is not heavily traveled, but it leads to life. The broad way, He says, leads to hell, and there are many people on it. Then in chapter 7, verse 15, He adds a further warning: "Watch out for false prophets." The false prophets are the ones who say do this, do this, do this, do this.

This can be subtle sometimes, and sometimes it is obvious. In everyday conversation about heaven or eternal life, people will often say that what they need to do is simply be good. This came up at a particularly discouraging moment during a Priority Living study and Q&A session. Written questions are used in that setting — not out of fear of being stumped, but to avoid spending ten minutes on questions that no one else could possibly be interested in.

When Good Works Replace the Gospel

In a recent study, I received around 75 questions, and about 50 of them were on salvation. One in particular caught my attention. Someone wrote that they believe what you have to do to get to heaven is be good. And that really caught me off guard. I thought, really? You've been sitting here for 21 years and you walk away with that? I don't know that was the case about this particular person, but I think sometimes you can sit in a church setting and not realize that there's a whole group of people sitting right there who still don't necessarily grasp — or if they grasp, don't necessarily believe — the gospel. Instead, they believe there's some stuff they have to do.

Sometimes it's as blatant as that. Sometimes it's very subtle. Someone sent me a quote from an LDS church leader. Look at how subtle this is: "It would mock the Savior's suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross for us to expect that He should transform us into angelic beings with no real effort on our part. Rather, we seek His grace to complement and reward our most diligent efforts. Perhaps as much as praying for mercy, we should pray for time and opportunity to work and strive and overcome. Surely the Lord smiles on one who desires to come to judgment worthily."

You've got Gethsemane, you've got the cross, you've got Him dying — but then the argument is that you need to do something too. No. His grace is about His grace and mercy, not anything that is in us. If God gives us anything as a response to what we are doing, it is not grace anymore. These are subtle distinctions, but the distinction matters enormously. It is the gospel.

Three Terms Foreign to the World

When you start talking about biblical Christianity, you introduce at least three terms that are essentially foreign to the world: grace, agape love, and humility. The world — especially in that day — looked down on all three of them. They didn't even have a category for grace. We don't either, really, because we say things like "God helps those who help themselves" or "no free lunch." Well, grace is the free lunch.

We talk about love, but the Scripture speaks of agape love — a word the surrounding culture didn't even use. And humility? In Greek, they had to create a word to express it. That is how foreign biblical concepts and biblical living are to the culture.

Avoiding the Persecution of the Cross

Now, the second thing Paul addresses — back in Galatians 6, tucked into verse 12 — is that the Judaizers wanted to avoid the implication of persecution that comes from the cross. This may be a concept that gets missed. The persecution of the early Christian church came primarily not from the Romans or the Greeks, but from the Jews. In Acts chapter 7, it is Stephen who delivers a sermon calling out the stiff-necked Jews, and they respond by killing him. Then Paul himself becomes the instrument who carries that persecution all through Jerusalem and on the road to Damascus.

One scholar writes: "As the church spread through Asia Minor, Jewish persecution spread with it. But there was one easy way to avoid it — to become circumcised. What made devout Jews angry was people who failed to maintain the proper boundaries between Jews and Gentiles, yet even Gentiles were welcome if they agreed to God's covenant promise of circumcision." So these Judaizers, among other things, were afraid of persecution, and what they did was weaken the cross by adding works or circumcision to it.

The Cross as a Symbol Then and Now

The cross has become a dividing issue, but for our culture this is a foreign concept, because the cross has become almost a vogue fashion statement. You can watch the Grammys and see a lot of people wearing crosses, and if you push them on it, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. There was a time at the mall when I saw a young woman working in a store wearing a T-shirt that said "Jesus is my homeboy." I asked her what it meant, and she said she didn't like to talk about religion with people. I thought, well, then you shouldn't wear the shirt. When I pressed her further, she said she didn't know — she just thought the shirt was cool.

You have a whole group of people walking around with a cross because they saw Madonna or Lady Gaga wearing one. But in that day and age, the cross was not something cool or even carrying the religious significance it holds now. It was an instrument of death. To put it in equivalent terms, it would be like walking around with a chain bearing an electric chair or a noose. That is the transforming power of Jesus — His death on the cross turned that image of execution into the ultimate picture of love.

What the Cross Truly Represents

When we talk about the cross of Christ, we are not talking about a piece of wood upon which He was crucified. We are talking about what it represents. When we understand the cross as it is expressed in Scripture, associated with it is humiliation — it was a humiliating way to die. It was not simply that they nailed you there and you died quickly. It could go on for hours, as we saw with Jesus, or even days. It was a humiliating death reserved for the worst of criminals.

So when we take up the cross, there is this idea of humiliation, there is the idea of the curse, and there is the idea of helplessness. When we understand it rightly, we understand that the cross that Jesus bore represents all of these things — and it is into that full reality that the gospel speaks.

The Cross Cuts Against Human Pride

The cross reminds us of who we are and who He is — how impotent, weak, helpless, and dead we are in our sin. My pride does not want to hear that I am helpless, that there is nothing I can do. Religion says do something; the cross says there is nothing you can do. It is about God's provision and my dependence upon Him. While I am a sinner, while I am an enemy of God, this is God's way. The cross, as properly understood, undercuts every religious effort.

The Hypocrisy of the Legalists

Turning to motivation, Paul says in verse 13 that these men are hypocrites. They recruit people to the law, but they do not fulfill the law themselves — they pick and choose. And they do it in a way that is all about people noticing their success. It is almost their equivalent of selling Girl Scout cookies: if I do enough of these, I get an award. Look at him go.

Paul is acutely aware of this because it is the background he comes from. Turn to Philippians 3, page 637. Paul lays out his own credentials and resume. He says in Philippians 3:4, "If anybody could put confidence in the flesh, me more than them." If anybody was ever going to earn their salvation, it was Paul more than these men.

He then lists his pedigree in Philippians 3:5: "I was circumcised on the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee." You cannot get any higher than that. And when it comes to zeal — not just theoretical zeal, but living it out — Paul says, "As to zeal, a persecutor of the church." Paul was present in Acts 7, watching Stephen be stoned. He then went through Jerusalem wiping out the church, and was so effective that he obtained letters authorizing him to travel to Damascus and spread that persecution there. Paul did not just play at this.

Externals Without Obedience

Understanding his own past, Paul calls these men out. He says it is all about externals — all these laws and rules, and yet they do not follow them. Jesus makes the same point, recorded in Matthew 23. For those who picture only a meek and mild Jesus, there is one group of people who drive Him to the point of the sharpest rebuke: these Pharisees and Jewish leaders. Here is what He says: "Therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them. They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger." It is all externals.

The Dangerous Fruit of External Religion

False religion that focuses on externals leads to comparisons, unhealthy competition, and pride. And even among people who believe the one true gospel, proving that they believe the one true gospel can itself become a source of arrogance. As one commentator writes, showing off is one of the differences between true and false religion. False religion gets caught up in externals like attendance figures and worship rituals. It is what churches become when they seek to entertain rather than edify, and when they base salvation on what people do for God rather than what God does for them.

Among church circles, success tends to get measured in what some bluntly call bucks, butts, and baptisms: How is the church doing financially? How many people are showing up? Are people being baptized? These are all externals. And honestly, that is one of the frustrating things about church — how do you measure what God is doing? In a business, it is straightforward: you have sales, you have profit. A coach either wins games or loses them. But in the church, the temptation is to default to those same visible, countable metrics.

Legalism Is Ultimately Lawlessness

What Paul is driving at is that these legalists are actually lawless. To follow what they say is to come under the curse, because with circumcision they are saying, "Keep the law." And Paul has made this point again and again: if you are going to keep the law, you must keep all of it.

Boasting in the Cross

In Galatians 3, verse 16, Paul says that if you are going to keep the law, you have to keep every law. Break one commandment, and you have broken the whole law. That is what the Judaizers were about — what we have been discussing for twelve weeks. Now, in verse 14, Paul says that if he is going to boast, what he is going to boast about is the cross. These men are running from it; he is going to run to it.

The word translated "boast" carries a somewhat negative connotation in our language because it sounds prideful, but the idea here is one of rejoicing, glorifying, and praising something. It could mean bragging about oneself, or it could mean glorifying and taking pride in one's relationship with the cross. That is what Paul is talking about. He says he does not brag about himself — he knows there is nothing good there. He brags about the cross, because in the cross he finds the power that frees him from the bondage of the world, the power that gives him strength to overcome the flesh, and the power that brings salvation.

Paul says he has been crucified to the world. That does not mean the battle is over — we talked about this a couple of weeks ago — but it means he no longer has to live in submission to the world.

Counting All Things Loss

Consider Philippians chapter three. After Paul lists all his credentials, he says that whatever those things were, they were gain to him but are now loss. He writes, "I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord." In verse 10 he says, "I want to know Him and the power of His resurrection," and he adds that rather than running from suffering, he wants the fellowship of His suffering — because he understands that to live for the cross is to invite suffering and persecution with it.

Two Points on Boasting

Two points emerge from this passage. First, the cross is not just something to boast about — it is the only thing to boast about. Second, you cannot boast about the cross and about your own human efforts at the same time. We are all going to brag about something. Do not brag about what you did. Brag about the fact that you have been redeemed, forgiven, and declared righteous. Brag about the fact that you have been spared from the wrath of God.

Here is how we should say it: we have been saved by God — and oftentimes we forget the second part — from God. From the judgment of God. And we have been saved for a purpose. This connects to what we noted statistically: that roughly 85 to 90 percent of people who come to know Christ, when asked what vehicle God used, point to family, friends, and human relationships. It is skin on skin, human relationships, nearly every time.

John Stott summarizes it this way: "If we boast in ourselves and in our ability to save ourselves, we shall never boast in the cross and the ability of Christ crucified to save us. We have to choose. Only if we have humbled ourselves as hell-deserving sinners shall we give up boasting of ourselves, fly to the cross for salvation, and spend the rest of our lives glorifying in the cross."

A New Creature

Back in Galatians 6, verse 15, Paul says that he is a new creature. It is not about circumcision or the law, and it is not about him — it is about being a new creature, and it is God who brings that about. As 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature." He begins the process of thinking differently. Romans 12:1–2 instructs us: do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Through that renewing, life begins to change. We begin to see things differently, so that we can be doing the right thing, in the right way, for the right reason. Our hearts are different. We draw comfort and value not from what the world says is valuable, but from what God says is valuable.

Two Colliding Value Systems

There are two colliding systems at work. There is the so-called American dream — which, as often as it gets discussed, seems to amount to me getting something. And then there is the dream God has for you. God's values and the values we see around us are in direct conflict with one another. The world says draw comfort from stuff; God says draw comfort from relationship. The world says your value comes from where you live, what you wear, and who you know; God says it is indeed about who you know — do you know Jesus, and what is the vitality of that relationship? These two systems are in collision with one another.

A friend's father, who is not a believer and is very suspicious of anything having to do with Christ, defines a missionary as a loser chasing losers. Many people find that offensive, but there is a certain truth in it — it is someone saved by grace through faith, choosing to pursue people the world would call lost. It is a complete reversal of how life is normally viewed. All of a sudden things are changing: terms are changing, values are changing, you are changing.

Major Ian Thomas

A friend named Larry Wright, years ago in a Bible study, was writing about beginning to see things differently as one draws closer to Christ. One of the writers Larry loved was a man by the name of Major Ian Thomas. Larry had come across a particular passage, and when it was shared, it resonated deeply. We will go ahead and post this on the City — it should be up by Tuesday or Wednesday. Here is Major Ian Thomas's interpretation:

Boasting in Nothing but Christ

Paul writes of his appraisal of Jesus. There was a time when, as Saul of Tarsus, he made his own independent evaluation of this man called Jesus of Nazareth. He investigated Jesus' life to see whether this leader of the Nazarene movement was worth following. He applied to Him all the normal, natural standards by which any life is evaluated in any age.

He looked first into His ancestry and discovered there was a cloud over His birth from the start. It became quite clear, as Saul investigated, that Jesus was an illegitimate son of a faithless woman who had been taken in by a kind-hearted carpenter and raised as his own son — an outcast from the beginning. Socially, He was worth absolutely nothing.

Further, Paul investigated His professional standing and discovered that Jesus was born of peasant stock and attended no school. He was raised as a simple carpenter in a village of no standing in Israel. Professionally, He was worth absolutely nothing.

As Saul of Tarsus, Paul investigated His theological and ecclesiastical background and found that He sat at nobody's feet, that He had been to no seminary, and that He had no theological training. In fact, He was repudiated by all the ecclesiastical authorities of the day. He was nothing but an incorrigible street preacher and rabble-rouser, and as far as theological standing was concerned, He was worth absolutely nothing.

Furthermore, Paul looked into His financial standing and found He had no bank account. He was born in a cave and laid in a borrowed manger, and He lived in other people's homes. He was always borrowing things — He borrowed money to pay His taxes, borrowed clothes from other people, rode into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey, died on a borrowed cross, and was buried in a borrowed tomb. Financially, from the standpoint of the accumulation of this world's goods, He was worth absolutely nothing. So as Paul investigated and applied to Jesus the normal standards by which any life is evaluated, he concluded that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, was not worth following.

The Damascus Road Reversal

But on the Damascus road, something happened. There, in a blinding flash of a moment, Paul looked into the face of a man and saw God. He discovered that the one whom he had thought to be worth nothing was the Lord of everything — the God of glory — that everything that is made is upheld by the word of His power, that He is behind all things, and that He is the very imprint and image of God.

There Paul found that He who he thought to be nothing was everything, and he who he thought to be everything was nothing. In that moment, he came to a tremendous reversal of all the values of his life. And later, he learned that he who was nothing could be filled with Him who was everything, and that would make his life something.

That is what Paul comes to grips with in this passage. He says he can boast — there is no question about it — and he can even boast about the life he is living, walking by this rule, having been the recipient of peace with God and therefore the peace of God. But he says the biggest thing he boasts about is not that he is something, but rather that he is nothing and that Christ is everything. And the minute he adds to the gospel, he begins to somehow make Christ less than everything and make himself more than nothing. That is the problem.

The Proper Perspective on God and Self

A.W. Tozer puts his finger on this, and we come to it again and again: the problem with so much theology is that it does not ascend high enough and it does not descend low enough. The only thing that puts those in proper perspective is biblical Christianity. When I see God for who He is, I immediately understand who I am.

This connects to a series on dumb mistakes and how to avoid them. The first mistake identified is failure to fear God — that is, failure to understand who God truly is. Because when I understand who God is, I immediately understand who I am, and then I can see that God dictates the rules. So when I want to understand how I can be right with God, it is not about what I think — it is about what He says.

Someone made the observation afterward that for all those who fail to fear God, they fear everything else. Whether or not that is universally true, it carries some interesting implications. This is the heartbeat of the book of Galatians: He is everything, I am nothing.

What the Cross Accomplishes

Galatians returns again and again to this theme. Going back to chapter 1, verse 4, we read that He gave Himself for our sins to rescue us, because we are in jeopardy. We need to be delivered, rescued, saved, redeemed, and there is nothing we can do about it. He is everything; I am nothing.

But then, in a moment in time, Christ comes — what we celebrate on Good Friday — and He dies on the cross. And what we celebrate on Sunday is that He is raised from the dead. Jesus' last words were "It is finished," and the resurrection is God's amen to that.

Consider the list of words used throughout the book of Galatians to describe what is true of those who are in Christ. We are saved by grace through faith. We live by the Spirit and are radically changed. We have been forgiven, justified, and declared righteous — amazing words. We are saved from the futility of self-salvation. We are loved unconditionally. We are God's people of promise and heirs.

We have been adopted — we are not sons and daughters of disobedience but sons and daughters of God. We are free, blessed, indwelt, and led by the Spirit. We are a new creation with a new identity and a new purpose. We are servants who understand and live by love, and who love others even when they are not lovable. That transformation takes place in the most important transaction.