Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love. (Gal_5:1-6)
In chapters 5 and 6 we have the third division, the practical part, of this letter. He shows us what the result should be in our daily lives if we have laid hold of the blessed truth that salvation is altogether by grace through faith in Christ Jesus, and so begins like this, “Stand fast therefore.” Wherefore? Because of the finished work of Christ through which all who believe have been not only delivered from the judgment due to their sins, not only delivered from the penalty of the broken law, but delivered from the law itself and en-lawed to Christ. The believer now walks in a place that was never known before. He is down here in this world, it is true, but he is neither without law, nor yet under law, but is subject to the Lord Jesus Christ, and so is brought into a glorious liberty- liberty, of course, not to do the will of the natural man, not to obey the dictates of the flesh, but liberty to glorify God, to adorn the doctrines of Christ by a holy, triumphant life as he passes through this scene. This is the liberty into which Christ has brought us, and now to go back to some legalistic system such as that of Judaism or those prevailing in Christendom today, is to become “entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”
Through the centuries that the Jews were under the law, not one of them found salvation through practicing the ceremonial law or obeying the law given at Mount Sinai, because every man failed, and it put them all under condemnation. But Christ has brought us into liberty. How foolish then to go back under law which only engenders bondage. Paul could say, “I was in that bondage once, but I was delivered from it. You heathen people never knew that bondage, but you do know something of the liberty of Christ. Are you going now into the bondage out of which God delivers every Jew He saves? It is folly to take a step like that. But if you mean to do it, you had better go the whole length, for you cannot take certain commands and say, ‘I will obey those things,’ for God says, ‘Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them’” (Gal_3:10).
“Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.” That is, if they depended upon the rite of circumcision for the salvation of their souls they were ignoring Christ. He is not saying that if somebody had been misled for the moment and had accepted the teaching of these Judaizers, he lost Christ, but if their dependence was upon these things, they have set Christ at naught. “For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.” If you take the first step, go the whole length, for the law is one. You cannot take from it what you please and reject the rest. “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.” Of course the real meaning is, that if one is seeking justification by law, he is seeking to be right with God on the basis of his own human efforts. You say, “Well, God commanded His people to do them.” Yes, in the Old Testament, but we read that “the law was our schoolmaster [our child leader] unto Christ,” but now that Christ has come we are no longer under the child leader. If you go back to law, you set Christ to one side; you cannot link the two principles of law and grace.
In Romans we are told that if salvation is “by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work” (Rom_11:6). It must be one or the other. Either you earn your salvation by efforts of your own, or you accept it as the free gift of God. If you have trusted Christ as your Savior you have received it as a gift. If you did anything to deserve it, if you worked for it, if you purchased it, it would not be a gift. So we read, “To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifleth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom_4:4-5). Therefore, if you turn back to law after you have known Christ, you are deliberately setting your Savior to one side. “Ye are fallen from grace.”
That is an expression that a great many people are interested in. A man came to a friend of mine, a Methodist minister, and said, “I understand that you Methodists believe in falling from grace; is that so?”
He said, “I understand that you Presbyterians believe in horse-stealing.”
“No, we do not.”
“Well, don’t you believe that it is possible for a man to steal horses?”
“Yes, but we wouldn’t do it.”
“Well, we believe it is possible for men to fall from grace, but we do not believe in doing it.”
But what do we mean by falling from grace? Here we have the expression in Scripture, “Ye are fallen from grace.” Really, a better translation is, “Ye are fallen away from grace”-you have turned away from grace. Does this mean that if a man is once a Christian but falls into some kind of sin, he loses his salvation and is no longer a Christian? If it meant that, every believer ceases to be a Christian every day, because there is not a person anywhere that does not fall into some kind of sin every day-sins of thought, of word, or of deed. But falling from grace is not sinking into sin, into immorality or other evildoing, but it is turning from the full, clear, high Christian standard of salvation by grace alone to the low level of attempting to keep one’s salvation by human effort. Therefore, a man who says, “I am saved by grace, but now my continuance depends on my own effort,” has fallen from grace. That is what it is to “fall from grace.”
I do not care what it is you imagine you have to do in order to keep saved; whatever it is, you put yourself on legal ground if after believing on the Lord Jesus Christ you think that your salvation is made more secure by baptism, by taking the Lord’s Supper, by giving money, by joining the church. If you do these things in order to help save your soul, you have fallen from grace-you fail to realize that salvation is by grace alone, God’s free unmerited favor. Someone asks, “Don’t you believe in doing those things?” Indeed, I do; not in order to save my soul, but out of love for Christ.
I would not work my soul to save,
That work my Lord has done;
But I would work like any slave
From love to God’s dear Son.
Christian obedience is not on the principle of law but of love to Christ.
It is the grace of God working in the soul that makes the believer delight in holiness, in righteousness, in obedience to the will of God, for real joy is found in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ. I remember a man who had lived a life of gross sin. After his conversion one of his old friends said to him, “Bill, I pity you-a man that has been such a highflier as you. And now you have settled down, you go to church, or stay at home and read the Bible and pray; you never have good times any more.”
“But, Bob,” said the man, “you don’t understand. I get drunk every time I want to. I go to the theater every time I want to. I go to the dance when I want to. I play cards and gamble whenever I want to.”
“I say, Bill,” said his friend, “I didn’t understand it that way. I thought you had to give up these things to be a Christian.”
“No, Bob,” said Bill, “the Lord took the ‘want to’ out when He saved my soul, and He made me a new creature in Christ Jesus.”
We do not make terms with the Lord and say, “If You will save me, I won’t do this, and I will do that,” but we come throwing up our hands and saying, “Lord, I cannot do a thing to save myself; Thou must do it in Thine own free grace or I am eternally lost.” Now if as Christians we stoop down from that high level and still try to make ourselves acceptable to God by some human effort, we have fallen from grace. Yes, we do believe it is possible to fall from grace, and we also believe that about three-fourths of Christendom have fallen from grace. I do not mean that they won’t get to heaven, but I do mean that many real Christians have come down to a very low level. They are so occupied with their own efforts instead of with the glorious finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
“For we through the Spirit.” Everything for the believer is through the Spirit. The Holy Spirit has come to dwell in us, and God works His works in us by the Spirit. And so instead of human efforts, instead of trying to do something in order to earn divine favor, we yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit of God that He may work in and through us to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. “For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.” What is the hope of righteousness? It is the coming again of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto Him. We are now made the righteousness of God in Christ, and yet every day we mourn over our failures; we do not rise to the heights we desire. Every night we have to kneel before God and confess our sins. But we are looking on in glad hope to the time when Jesus will come back again and transform these bodies of our humiliation, and then we shall be fully like Him.
Soon I’ll pass this desert dreary,
Soon will bid farewell to pain,
Nevermore be sad or weary,
Never, never sin again.
When he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. (1Jn_3:2)
“For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.” Whether a man is a Jew or a Gentile, it does not make any difference, whether he has been a rigid law-keeper or an idolater, there is no difference, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom_3:23). When people put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in them, and they are said to be “in Christ,” and, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Rom_8:1), for we are forever linked up with His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our human works and religious ceremonies count for nothing as far as justifying the soul. What does count? “Faith which worketh by love.” And as we walk in fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, as our hearts are taken up with Him, as faith makes Christ real (“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” [Heb_11:1]), we shall find that it is the substantiating of the things for which we hope, the assured conviction of the reality of things that our eyes have never seen. Faith tells us Jesus lives, faith tells us that the sin question is settled, that we are in Christ. As we go on in faith looking to Him, drawing from Him new supplies of grace day by day, faith works by love, and love is the fulfilling of the law, and therefore we do not need to be under the law in order to live aright. It is the only natural thing now for Christians to seek to live for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
A physician came into a room where I was visiting a family where a dear child was very ill. She was the apple of the mother’s eye. The doctor said, “Now, Mrs. So-and-So, there is one thing I would suggest. Because of the condition the little one is in, I would not let anyone else take care of her but yourself. It is going to mean a great deal to the child to have you care for her. She is in a very nervous condition.” Do you think that mother found that a hard law to obey? Her mother-heart led her to respond at once, “Yes, Doctor, I will see that no one else looks after the baby. I will do all I can for her.” Was that legality? No, it was “faith working by love.” So with the Christian. All our obedience springs from heart-devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. We delight to do good, we delight to help others, we delight to preach His Word, to minister to those in need and distress, we delight in what Jesus Himself calls “good works,” because we love Christ and we want to do those things of which He approves. Anything else than this is to “fall from grace.”
