Watch as Ray David unpacks Galatians 4:21-31, and shows us how the Gospel + Nothing = Freedom in Christ.
Gospel Displacement
Some of the most important factors that shape your life are unconscious and unspoken. So one of the most important things to do in our Christian life is to take those unconscious and unspoken things and name and identify them, and then intentionally displaced them with the truth of the Gospel.
Freedom and Slavery
Sometimes we pursue freedom but in a way that actually leads to slavery.
If you put all of your hope in financial freedom you will become enslaved to your pay cheque. If you pursue self indulgence, you will become enslaved to yourself. Freedom to choose is slavery in itself.
There is only one way to true freedom; the Gospel.
The Centre of your Life
There are two ways of viewing your relationship with God and viewing your life. Either you are at the center of your life, or God is at the center of your life. Living with you at the center of your life is slavery and living with God at the center of your life is true freedom.
Anytime humans try to rely on their own effort, they mess it all up. What are the areas in your life where you are relying on your best efforts?
You will find freedom when you remove yourself from the centre of your life and the universe and put God back in the middle of everything.
True Freedom
True freedom is found not in trying to help God out, but by resting is the fact that He is the miracle-working God. Your own efforts only enslave you, but he is the God who gives grace to those who don’t deserve it.
The promised city of God, the place of peace and rest, is not a city of human effort and construction, it comes down from heaven as a gift from God.
The picture of a Gospel-shaped life is a picture of resting and trusting in the promises of God. Your life and your relationship with God is shaped by His work, not yours. Resting in the Gospel of grace sets you free from the prison of your own hell and sets you free to be like a little child who trusts completely in his parents.
No Proud Saint
Here’s what Martin Luther said,
“God accepts only the forsaken, cures only the sick, gives sight only to the blind, restores life to only the dead, sanctifies only the sinners, gives wisdom only to the unwise fools.
In short, He has mercy only on those who are wretched, and gives grace only to those who are not in grace.
Therefore no proud saint, no wise or just person, can become God’s material, and God’s purpose cannot be fulfilled in him. He remains in his own work and makes a fictitious, pretended, false, and painted saint of himself, that is, a hypocrite.
The most damnable and pernicious heresy that has ever plagued the mind of man was the idea that somehow he could make himself good enough to deserve to live with an all-holy God.”
Freedom in the Cross
True freedom is not found through making the right choices, but by looking to the cross.
Look to the cross and rest in what God has done for you. You are no longer a slave, but a child of the free. You had about as much to do with your rebirth as you did with your birth.
Our Response
Our response to the Gospel is not trying, or choosing – it is rejoicing.
Let the good news of God’s initiative in the Gospel lift off the yoke of slavery and set you free.
