Faith and the Flesh

I have just a few words today about what it means to be 'justified by faith.' This was the main focus of the writings of the apostle Paul, and with good reason. That reason is what I would like to elaborate on just a bit in this article. We'll start with a couple of Paul's quotes on the topic, and see just what he's getting at: "This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them" (Gal. 3:2,3,5-12). There's enough Gospel in that passage to transform the world. Wow. You may note at the beginning of the passage that the apostle emphasized the holy Ghost, and that is because the baptism of the holy Ghost is exactly what genuine faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ produces. Jesus said so in fact: "He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. [But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.]" (Jn. 7:38,39). That is why in his final instructions to his followers just before he ascended to heaven, Jesus flatly told them to go to Jerusalem and wait for the baptism of the holy Ghost that he would send to them (Acts 1:4,5).

So immediately we see that Paul was reminding the Galatians that they had received the holy Ghost purely by faith in the cross and resurrection of Christ. He was trying to re-convince them that believing on Jesus Christ, and being "endued with power from on high" as a result, was and is all that the Gospel is about (Lk. 24:49). In asking if they were "now made perfect by the flesh," he was referring to the carnal ordinances of the old covenant, which false apostle's had convinced them they must keep in order to be 'complete.' Paul warred with this conflict for the entirety of his ministry, because errant Jews were trying to subvert Gentile congregations that he had established, by means of the ceremonial law. It began when Paul and Barnabas were with the Gentile believers at Antioch in Syria: "And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved" (Acts 15:1). In this same book of Galatians the apostle Paul addressed that very mindset with these words: "But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid" (Gal. 2:17). The point of that saying is that the law was as he said in another place, "Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient..." (I Tim. 1:9). So if one must keep any of the ceremonial ordinances of the old covenant after having been baptized by Jesus with the holy Ghost, it constitutes an admission of being a sinner. That was the point of his saying in Galatians 2:17. In our text passage Paul also reminded the Galatians that Abraham, the father of all the faithful, was justified before God because he believed God; not because of something he could 'do' on his own. What he had to say about that in relation to new covenant believers is worth repeating: "Know ye therefore that they which are OF FAITH, the same are the children of Abraham." He also said in regard to Abraham's faith and new covenant believers; "In [Abraham] shall all nations be blessed."

So it is very important that we, as new covenant believers, follow the faith of Abraham, who is our common spiritual father. He went on to make it very clear that the 'works of the law' [ceremonial ordinances] could never justify anyone, and neither can they now. He emphatically quotes the prophet Habakkuk with "the just shall live by faith," and what this simply means is that there is no other way to be justified with God OTHER THAN by faith in the completed work of Jesus Christ. You see, the Gentiles had never been under the old covenant law to begin with, and they got he direct route to Christ, which is faith. The Jews had been under the old covenant for almost 1400 years, and the law actually served to guide them to faith in Christ. Paul explained in the same chapter: "Wherefore the law was [the Jews] schoolmaster to bring [the Jews] unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (Gal. 3:24-27). This was to say that we become the children of God by being baptized with the holy Ghost into Christ, which takes place solely by faith (I Cor. 12:13). So his point in saying this was the same as he stated in another place: "And ye are COMPLETE IN HIM, which is the head of all principality and power" (Col. 2:10). So if we've been baptized BY JESUS with the holy Ghost, with the accompanying sign of "speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gives the utterance," we are as 'complete' as it gets! (Acts 2:4) If we are persuaded by anyone that we need to add some ceremonial ordinance to that experience to make us complete, then we are in effect saying that Christ is insufficient, and that he has led us into sin. If we give acknowledgment to the ceremonial law then we are in effect saying that 'putting on Christ' is not enough to get the job done. The scripture tells us plainly, "Therefore if any man be IN CHRIST, he is a new creature" (II Cor. 5:17).

Being a new creature in Christ is as heavenly and holy as it gets, and we get into Christ through the baptism of the Spirit (I Cor. 12:13; Eph. 2:6). The only thing we can add to being a new creature, is more of the new creature, which is us having "put on Christ." That takes us back to our text passage where Paul asked the Galatians, "This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?" The word 'perfect' is defined as 'complete,' and he was asking them if practicing the ceremonies of the law had improved upon them being a new creature in Christ. The obvious answer is no, but there is more to it than that, as he told them later in the letter: "Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing... Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace" (Gal. 5:2,4). What needs to be understood is that the inclusion of carnal ordinances in the Gospel message, and in the worship and service of God, is detrimental to the spiritual well being of those who are in Christ. The reason that this needs to be understood today is because it is still going on with prevalence in the body of Christ today. While it's true that we don't have people trying to convince Spirit baptized believers that they have to be circumcised in the flesh,' it is also true that all of Christianity observes water baptism and 'communion services' as being part of the faith of Christ. It is true that both water baptism and the Passover, which 'communion' is a fragment of, had a close relationship with bringing forth the Gospel in the beginning; nonetheless they are both ordinances of the ceremonial law and therefore have done much damage to the body of Christ by being kept and regarded as godly.

Jesus plainly said that what he was doing with his disciples at the last supper [Passover] was going to be fulfilled and kept after a spiritual order in the kingdom of God (Mat. 26:28,29; Lk. 22:15-18). And what exactly is the kingdom of God? The answer goes to the point here: "For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost" (Rom. 14:17). Jesus also said clearly that water baptism was an ordinance of the law that he needed to fulfill, when he came to John to be baptized (Mat. 3:15; Mat. 5:17). God is the only one who knows the hearts of men, and he knows who attributes how much respect to these 'works of the law' that are still among us today; but there is no question that it is not of the leading of God's Spirit that these carnal ceremonies are still practiced. Paul gave us the reason for that in the same book of Galatians, in effect saying that to keep these ordinances is to go backward from the leading of the Spirit: "But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law" (Gal. 5:18). God is going to unify his people before the return of Jesus to this world, and eliminating these burdensome weights will be part of that process. Keeping these carnal ordinances in fact blocks the light from being fully on Jesus, and greatly diminishes what he actually suffered, died, and rose again for us to have. As the apostle Paul tried to establish to the Galatians, faith in Jesus and the empowerment that results from that faith, is the Gospel experience; and there simply is none other. We cannot by any means improve upon the following, but we can and have taken from it: "But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" (I Cor. 6:17). So may God grant to us the grace to do as one body what the scripture says, and, "let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us" (Heb. 12:1). Amen.