God's Love Letter

Galatians 6:11-18 See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand! 12 Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. 13 Not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh. 14 May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 15 Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. 16 Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God.17 Finally, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.18 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.

It’s a wonderful thing to be the dad of a two-year-old girl.  I suppose I could state the obvious blessing like - well - I’m a dad.  Or, what it’s like to see her face light up when I get home, but I don’t want to talk about any of that right now.  I want to tell you about some of the other joys that you might not ever think about.  I get to do a lot of things self-conscious free that I never could’ve before.  I get to dance crazy in the living room to Coldplay’s You’re a Sky Full of Stars.  I get to read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and enjoy every second of it.  And, most importantly, nobody can say a bad word about me when I sit with her and I watch Disney’s Frozen.

Maybe you’ve watched it before.  It’s about the two cutest sisters on the face of the earth, Elsa and Anna, and their complicated relationship.  It turns out that Elsa has magical winter bringing, freezing powers.  And right in the beginning of the movie, Elsa accidentally freezes Anna’s mind. Anna’s parents find her little, crumpled, comatose body on the floor and tenderly pick it up.  It’s a parent’s worst nightmare.  One beloved child crumpled on the floor, harmed by their other beloved child.  What would they do to help little Anna?

Disney had a lot of choices they could’ve made in telling the story, but they made one in particular.  And it was the natural choice.  The only choice.  There was no call to the paramedics. There was no consultation with any neuroscientist.  There weren’t dealings with any human authorities at all.  None.  There was the natural choice.  The only choice.  Those young parents did what all people sense they must do when confronted with the biggest and most important spiritual and emotional questions.  They grasped for a knowledge and power that came to them from a higher place.  And they started by going to a sacred book.  

That’s telling, isn’t it? It may be totally controversial what truth is.  It may be argued how truth is understood and interpreted.  But it’s still mainstream and accepted that truth is found in a sacred book so much so that Disney put that idea in their most modern story.  The question is why.  Why do we need a heavenly book? That’s a question that the Apostle Paul gets at as he closes out a letter to people in a place called Galatia.

He gets at it in a pretty interesting way.  Listen to what he writes, “See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand!” (v. 11) It’s easy to miss what’s going on in this verse.  In fact, if you’re like me and your 1st grade teacher still haunts you, then you’re thinking to yourself, “Paul, this isn’t handwriting class.  There’s no need for you to be so self-conscious.  I mean.  I get it.  I’m self-conscious about my handwriting too, but there’s no need for you to be embarrassed about it. It’s ok with me if your letters are a little on the large side.” Except this isn’t Paul suffering from a momentary collapse of self-esteem or his self-deprecating way of dealing with handwriting that could be mistaken for chicken scratching.  This is something way, way bigger.  

First, let’s admit the obvious.  Paul’s handwriting was unusual.  For whatever reason, it was definitely on the large side.  Why is that? We’re not sure.  We’ve got a guess.  It’s possible Paul couldn’t see well.  And that could explain why earlier in the letter Paul talked about how the Galatians cared about him so much that they would have given their eyes to him if that were possible.  But that’s just theory.  What we do know is that Paul’s handwriting was distinctive.  So distinctive that all of those ancient Christians could take one look at this letter and say, “No need to hire a forensic handwriting analyst from the FBI for this one.  These letters are so different, so distinctive, and so large that this could only be one person: Paul.”  

And Paul wanted the Galatians to know that as a final, closing thought to this letter.   No, Paul needed the Galatians to know that.  He needed them to know that it was really his voice, his thoughts, his message that was coming to them in this letter.  He desperately needed them to read the large, awkward letters and say in their hearts, “I know this hand.  It’s Paul’s.”

It’s important to understand why that is.  There’s always been a battle for the heart of Christianity. It’s been that way from the very beginning.  We know from some of Paul’s other letters that there were forgeries.  People would write letters filled with stuff they wanted people to believe and then they’d sign it - The Apostle Paul.  But there’s something else here too.  This wasn’t just a case of ferreting out which letters were Paul’s and which weren’t.  The Galatians needed an authentic, authoritative letter because of the nature of the human heart.

A nature that had its genesis in a simple suggestion from a serpent to the first humans.  “Maybe God was lying to you when he said that you shouldn’t eat from that tree.” That thought hijacked the minds and hearts of Adam and Eve and we’ve been struggling ever since.  Witness the Galatians.  These were people who had had the best pastor outside of Jesus himself.  Think of it. The Apostle Paul had taught them.  Let me say that again.  The Apostle Paul had taught them.  I guarantee you he had been abundantly clear with them what God’s message was.  Then he leaves and someone comes along and suggests, “Maybe Jesus isn’t enough.  Maybe you need to follow a few of the Old Testament rules too.” And just like that Galatian hearts got hijacked by those Old Testament rules.

Sort of like Sara did, a fitness instructor in LA.  Yeah, I know there are a ton of them.  It’s a big city.  But I’m not talking about a normal, average instructor.  I’m talking a big time instructor.  She’s one of those gorgeous, super fit, amazingly talented fitness instructors who train the best of the best so they can look their best when they walk the red carpets.  That’s Sara, but one day she walked into her pastor’s office and came clean.  She told him, “I’m dying inside.” And why? You wouldn’t believe it, but she confessed, “I don’t think I’m fit enough, pretty enough, good enough, and talented enough.  I have tons of anxiety.  And I’m dying inside.”  

Sara had breathed in spiritual air that says, “Jesus won’t do it.  You must be beautiful enough, successful enough, accomplished enough.” She had been hijacked by worldly rules that promised to bring her peace, but never would.  And it was killing her.  Literally, it was tearing her away from God, and it was wrecking her faith in Jesus.  These worldly rules had hijacked her away from Jesus.  We get spiritually hijacked anytime we let anyone or anything tell us who we are other than God himself.  Like a fitness instructor who identifies with her fitness instructing.  Like a careerist who identifies with his success, the mom who identifies with her parenting, the sinner who identifies with her sin, or a Galatian who identifies with Jewish behavior.

And that’s why Paul said, “Look at what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand!” (v. 11) Make no mistake about what he’s doing.  He’s claiming authority for the contents of this letter.  He’s saying, “What’s in here is God’s voice.  I’m not just some guy who got his degree on the internet.  I’m God’s apostle.  I’m a deliverer of divine, perfect words.  My pen - no joke - is a fountain of truth.”  And please understand something.  This isn’t Paul being a control freak.  This isn’t him saying, “Other preachers are horning in on my territory and so now I must reassert myself.” This is Paul saying, “Other ideas are hijacking truth from people I deeply love and I’m not going to stand by and let that happen.  I am going to use my apostolic pen to lead them right back to God’s truth.”

And that’s what Paul did in his letter.  He said, “We are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” (3:26) Only God gets to tell us who are and he’s told us.  We are his children through faith.  That’s how we are to identify ourselves.  Amen.  Case closed.  That’s what Paul showed the Galatians.  Much like what Sara’s pastor showed her.  He began by asking her a question.  He asked, “Who are you?” She said, “Well, I’m a fitness instructor.” So gently, but firmly he said,  “No. Who are you?” Surprised and confused she answered again, “I’m a fitness instructor.”  One more time, he said, “No.  Who are you?” This time the question hung there and silence filled the space between them.  ‘Til the pastor softly smiled and began to hum.  That’s all he needed to do.  He began to hum.  And Sara’s Hollywood layers began to fall away.

He hummed for her God’s truth about her Jesus given identity.  And Sara got it.  Before she could feel guilt for allowing herself to get so far from Jesus, so far from faith, she knew she was forgiven and loved by God because of Jesus.  Because the pastor was humming a simple truth.  Jesus loves me.  This I know.  For the Bible tells me so.  Then they turned together in their Bibles to a letter Paul wrote with his large letters.  And they read a passage and the pastor asked her again, “Who are you?” And this time Sara let heaven tell her who she was.  She said, “I am God’s child through faith in Jesus.” Sara believed that.  It was authoritative for her.  

I don’t know if you’ve thought about that before, but that’s what biblical authority is for.  It’s for driving that simple truth home to hijacked hearts and minds over and over and over again.  I actually think that’s one of the big misunderstandings that people have about the Bible.  They see the Bible as some sort of divine club that tells us what we must believe and do to enter heaven. And make no mistake.  It is authoritative.  It does tell us what to believe and do but not as a club. The Bible is anything but a club.  

And the letter to the Galatians is a prime example.  Yes, Paul claims authority.  That’s exactly what he’s doing when he says, “Look at these large letters.” But it’s not authority for the sake authority. It’s authority for the sake of the gospel.  It’s authority so that we know it’s not just wishing on a star to believe, “We are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” It’s authoritative so we know that’s true.

The Bible isn’t a club.  The Bible is a love letter.  It’s a letter written to a bride that left God at the altar.  It’s a letter written from a God who would do anything and risk everything up to and including the sacrifice of his own Son to win her back.  That’s not a club.  That’s a love letter from God to you.  And its authority is there so that you can trust and know that Jesus saved you from sin, and from death, and from hell itself.  

In this church, we believe in the authority of the Bible.  Not only that, we believe the Bible’s perfect.  We believe it’s without errors.  We believe it’s right and it’s true and it’s clear.  We’ll even use words like infallible and inerrant to describe the Bible because we believe there’s not a single letter or word that’s off or that isn’t truth.  We believe all of that.  And we further believe that God gave us a book like that not so that he could sit on his throne and boss us around, but so that we’d believe that he got off his throne and he climbed onto a cross to save us.

I’ll be honest.  I like being the dad of a two-year-old daughter.  Without being self-conscious, I get to read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.  Without any inhibitions I get to dance crazy with her in the living room to Coldplay and she sings along too.  I get to do stuff like that.  But I didn’t tell you about the good stuff yet.  You know what else I get to do? I get to sing.  I get to sing, “Jesus loves me.  This I know.” I get to sing that to her.  I get to visit that truth over and over again.  It’s one of the reasons I like being the dad of a two-year-old girl.

You know what else I like? I like being a part of this church family.  I like being a member of a church that knows you don’t have to be the dad of a two-year-old to let your soul sing, “Jesus loves me.  This I know.”  I like being a part of a church that knows it’s our right.  That knows it’s our privilege.  That understands it’s our joy and our peace to become children again and just believe that.  And why? Because the Bible tells us so.  Amen.

Stop Trying and Start Believing

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, discovered in this matter?  If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God.  What does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation.  However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.  It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.  For if those who live by law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless, because law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression. Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all.  As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.

Eren Tatari’s sister died at the age of 19.  In her grief she asked her best friend what she thought it meant.  Her best friend replied, “I am too young to think about it.” That stunning reply taught her something important.  She learned, “that people are very skillful in self-deception and shunning the reality of their own death.” Then she went on to point out something very important about us.  She said, “Yet, regardless of our age, gender, culture, religion, or socioeconomic status, we all have existential questions that beg answers. Where did I come from? Who am I? Where am I going? We can’t help but ask these questions, and it is literally impossible to shut them off.”

Call them life’s big questions.  Call them existential realities that we need to discover.  Call them whatever you want to call them.  They’re questions we all have and they’re questions to which - as Eren points out - we need answers.  It’s one of those big questions that God wants to address today in Romans chapter four.  It’s this question: What makes me important? Or to put the question another way: what justifies my existence?

This question is so fundamental that it is the question that all religions attempt to answer.  Interestingly all religions answer the question the same way.  Except one.  Ours.  I know that sounds too easy and overly simplistic, but it’s true.  An honest analysis proves it.  Fundamentally, all major religions answer this question with a man-centered approach.  They say, “If you want to be justified, be a better person for God.”  And then the different religions lay out precepts and systems for how to do that.  If you’re Muslim, you have the five pillars to obey.  If you’re Hindu, you reach upwards by following the guidance of the Vedic scriptures.

Which is why when God shares the answer to that question, he proves his case with a fella by the name of Abraham.  Think about it.  Even in modern times, all three ancient monotheistic (one God) religions claim Abraham as their father: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.  That makes Abraham the ideal choice.  He is a person who stands at the crossroads for millions of people as the person who had the right beliefs about justification.  He is the one who originally showed us all God’s way.  He is our father.  He has that kind of credibility with people all over the world.  And because Abraham is positioned so beautifully, he becomes God’s go-to guy when it comes to helping people grapple with the truth of justification.  Paul asks the question this way: “What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, discovered in this matter? (v. 1)” In other words, what did Abraham find justifies a person’s existence? What makes them important and right in God’s eyes?

The Jews thought they knew what Abraham’s answer would be.  Their hero.  He up and left his homeland because God told him to.  He up and circumcised his entire household because God told him to.  He prayed rightly and worshipped truly.  Abraham did an awful lot of things right and it’s all right there in the Bible in Genesis.  They thought Abraham was justified by what he did before God.  They saw Abraham saying, “If you want to be justified, it can be done.  Work hard.  Keep your nose clean and you’ve got it made in the shade.” That was their religious approach to justification.

If you think about it, that’s no different from more modern, secular approaches.  There’s a story about an author who was of the starving artist variety.  He wrote and nothing seemed to take off for him.  He talked about how it depressed him and it made him wonder why he mattered.  This is what he concluded, “Then I looked at my two little girls and found out why I exist.”  A friend of mine recently went to Phoenix to visit her friend.  Her friend is over the age of 70 and can’t quit selling real estate there.  She’s incredibly wealthy, but she just can’t quit.  Why not? She wouldn’t feel worthwhile anymore.  Maybe you remember the classic movie Chariots of Fire.  Do you remember what the sprinter said?  He said, “When that gun goes off I have ten seconds to justify my existence.”

Do you see what that says about us? There is a reason all religions, but one have it wrong.  There is a reason why we can fall into very secular traps of false justification.  We are hardwired to rely on our personal virtues, record, or performance for our justification.  I can tell myself I’m an ok person if I can get a church started in Aiken.  You can believe you’re doing alright because you’re a decent mom, an incredible employee for your company, have beautiful shots of yourself on Instagram, have academic achievements that make Bill Gates look normal, or athletic chops that make people swoon before you.  In the end, all of those justifications are all the same.  They are part of our hardwired attempt to stake our justification before God and people on our virtue, record, or performance.

And we can’t just write any of this off as a non-issue.  What we believe justifies us has huge consequences in our life and on our eternity. Many of you know what happened on Black Tuesday back in 1929.  The stock market crashed and people lost billions of dollars of wealth.  Poof.  Up in smoke.  There were people who had built themselves on that money.  They believed it justified them, made them important, etc.  Then it was all gone on one single day.  If you don’t know the history, I’ll bet you can still guess what happened.  People who justified themselves with money lost their reason for existence.  So what did they do? They jumped out of their skyscraper offices.  False justifications devastate us.  What happens when someone who builds their life on athletics gets a career ending injury? What happens to someone who builds their justification on being a mom, but then makes a big parenting mistake? And what happens when we get to God’s court in eternity and we tell God, “This is why I matter.  I obeyed this system of rules.  I am smart.  I am good,” or whatever false justification we haul out, and we watch God show us that what we thought justified us is actually the cruelest self-deception and the ultimate house of cards? 

There has to be a better justification.  And there is.  There’s God’s justification.  It’s the justification that Abraham discovered and to which Abraham clung. “What does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’ (v. 3)” Abraham didn’t pull a Stuart Smalley.  He didn’t wake up in the morning and say, “I am good enough.  I am smart enough.  And doggonit, people like me.” In fact, what’s stunning, amazing, and totally counterintuitive is that when it comes to Abraham’s justification there is no resume.  There is no list.  There is no performance record or personal virtue listed.  It simply says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited as righteousness.”

God credits righteousness through faith.  It’s that simple.  What is righteousness? It’s not a word we use too often these days and when we do often it has kind of a negative connotation.  Think of righteousness as right standing before God that gives you access to him and his gifts.  There’s a club in New York City called the Harvard Club.  Who can be a member, network with the powerful people there, and have access to all the privileges there?  Harvard grads.   Who can be a member of God’s family, have complete access to heaven, and have an audience with the most powerful being in the universe at any time? People who have righteousness.  So, yeah, righteousness is nothing short of the most important gift on the planet.  It’s right standing with God and membership in the heaven club.  And you get it by graduating from God’s school of morality, right? Wrong.  God gives it when you trust him for it.

Do you see how counterintuitive this is to us? Imagine if you showed up to a job interview and you said, “I believe you will give me this job and, therefore, you’re going to give it to me.” They’d think you’re a nut.  You prove yourself with a resume.  Imagine if you showed up to a beauty pageant in street clothes and said, “I believe I will win this competition and, therefore, I will get the crown.” They’d say, “Go and make yourself look pretty.”  Or if you showed up to a spelling bee refused to participate and said, “I believe I will win and, therefore, I already have.”  We don’t experience anything in life going quite that way.  Except in the matter of justification.  God comes along and says, “No, seriously.  That’s exactly how it works.” “...to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.’ (v. 5)” We trust that God justifies the wicked and, in turn, we are credited as actually being righteous.

That’s the whole story of the gospel.  It’s a story of wicked people who stopped trying and started believing that God would have to pull off salvation through the Messiah.  Think of how that played out in Abraham’s life.  He worried, wondered, and fretted.  He caused massive family issues when he tried getting a son through his wife’s maidservant.  He even almost messed it all up by pawning off his wife as his sister.  Yet through it all he believed.  He believed that somehow, someway God would bring salvation through his offspring.  He believed that his ninety-year-old wife would have a son.  He believed that when the knife was coming down on that miraculous son that God would somehow bring him back to life.  Abraham believed that God would pull off his salvation totally through a son of his and that faith was credited to him as righteousness.

That’s the faith that justifies.  When we say that God justifies the wicked, we’re not saying that God is making some unilateral decision about us that isn’t backed by salvation history.  It’s not like God said, “You know what? I feel like letting people who trust me off the hook so I’m just going to declare it and make it so.” Believing that God makes us righteous is believing that God worked in human history to send one of Abraham’s kids to forgive people and give the entire world righteousness.  That’s what Isaac was about for Abraham.  He was another link in the chain that finally led to the Messiah.  The difference between Abraham and us is that we now know who that Messiah is.  Paul explains it like this: “The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone,  but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. (v. 23, 24)” When we say that we’re trusting God for righteousness, that’s just another way of saying that we believe Jesus’ work is totally ours.  His performance, his virtues, his perfect record - all of it is credited to us as our righteousness through faith.  That finally is the faith of Abraham.  That’s what he believed.  That’s what he clung to for his entire life.  That’s what justified him forever.

Do you see it? It’s not that you’re to stand before God in eternity without a resume.  You’ll have one.  It’s not that you won’t have a whole list of achievements.  You’ll have them.  It’s not that you won’t have a whole bunch of virtues and merits that you can show God to make an ironclad case for why you should be in heaven.  You’ll have all of that and they will belong to you.  It's just that they will have come from Jesus.  It's just that they will have been lived by him and then applied to you as righteousness through faith.  Have you ever thought of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John like that? Have you realized that that historical record of Jesus’ moral performance there is your moral performance through faith? Have you ever taken to heart that you get to show up before God and point to Jesus’ love and virtues in those books - his entire earthly record - and make the claim that its yours by divine right through faith.  Because that is exactly what this means and that is exactly what we’re saying today.  All of Jesus’ righteousness is yours through faith.

There is a wonderful, freeing, and practical application to all of this.  It’s this: Stop trying.  If you’re on the religious treadmill, step off.  It’s exhausting to confess, try harder, confess, try harder, and so on and so on.  It’s no less tiring to try to find our reason for existence in some great work or some important role that we have.  It’s time to stop trying and it’s time to believe.  I heard a story recently of a money manager who finally understood God’s justification.  He spoke about it back during the teeth of the Great Recession.  You may remember that the stock market tanked and he lost millions and millions of dollars.  When that happened he said, “I have never been happier.” He explained why.  He said, “Before it was my life.  Now it’s just wealth.”  God’s justification is the end of trying.  It’s the end of trying to make my professionalism, my mothering, my beauty, my smarts, or my morality my crown.  It’s time to stop trying and to start believing.  It’s time to believe that Jesus truly is my righteousness, my life, and my crown.  Amen.