PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH

                                             PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH

“Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another” (Gal. 5:26).

Introduction

It would seem that nobody likes a hypocrite. Even Jesus Christ showed an intense dislike for hypocrites. Hypocrites are people who say one thing and do another. Hypocrites are those who don’t practice what they preach.

Now, I’m sure that you, like me, have found yourselves saying one thing yet doing another. Well, that’s the type of thing we’re dealing with in the following.

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As you know, the Apostle Paul in this Epistle has been countering false teaching. The false teaching is coming from a group of people who don’t believe in salvation by grace alone. Nowadays we would call this type of people Arminian, after Arminius the great enemy of Calvinism (properly understood). Arminianism (properly understood) is a contemporary form[1] of what Paul is combating in this Epistle. In its simplest form, whereas only Calvinism proclaims that we are saved by God’s grace and God’s grace alone, Arminianism believes that we are saved by grace plus our own works.

Now then, why am I telling you this?  Well, if you are of the opinion that you contributed to your own salvation, you have grounds for conceit, don’t you? That’s why Paul says, “Let US not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another” (Gal. 5:26). In other words, we who have been saved by grace ALONE have nothing to be conceited about. The word “conceited” there means literally “empty glory,” “vain glory.”

The Calvinist has got nothing to boast about, nothing to brag about. He’s got no reason to be conceited about his conversion because he contributed nothing, not even faith. Salvation is God’s gift to undeserving sinners. The Calvinist considers himself as one who was completely and totally and utterly dead to God before God saved him. That’s what the Calvinist believes and that’s what he preaches, otherwise he’s not a Calvinist. Therefore, why should another Christian be provoked by him?

Why would another Christian envy the Calvinist? He’s just a sinner saved by grace and grace ALONE. He made no contribution in the slightest to his salvation. But the Arminian cannot say this! Those who were troubling the Galatians with their false teaching could not say this. The very nature of what they were teaching meant that they were conceited. It meant that they were provoking the Galatians to jealousy. In other words, they were telling the Galatians that you needed more than grace to be saved. In this case they were teaching that you also needed to be circumcised to be saved, that you needed to keep certain aspects of the Ceremonial Law of Moses to be saved. Hence Paul, in verse 24, says, “And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

Any addition to Christ’s work in the crucifixion is a work of the flesh, is what he’s saying. It’s the fruit of the Spirit the Galatians should be desiring and not works of the flesh. “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” is the way he puts it in verse 25. In others words it’s from the Spirit we derive our strength and not the things we practice. If we claim to be in the Spirit, then we should be operating in accordance with what the Spirit teaches in Scripture and not according to our own ideas.

The Principle

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I used to be a plumber in another life. When I was serving my plumbing apprenticeship in Scotland I was sent to Clydebank Technical College. I went to technical college to learn why I was doing the things I was doing when I was plumbing. In other words, I was sent there to learn the principles of what I was doing in practice. The idea is that the best plumber is the one who understands the principle behind what he does. Therefore I had to learn about gravity, friction, atmospheric pressure, calorific values and such like. They didn’t call it “technical” college for nothing. It was “technical” to say the least.

Now, I’m not telling you this in order to brag about how tough technical college is. But I simply want to illustrate what Paul is saying in the text before us. If you don’t understand the basic principles of plumbing, then you’re asking for trouble. This is even more true with regard to the Gospel.

The Judaizers, the false teachers at Galatia, had not understood the first principle of the Gospel. It’s by grace ALONE that we are saved (Eph. 2:8). Understand this, and conceit will find no toehold in your heart. It’s imperative that you understand this, otherwise, like the plumber who runs his drain-pipes uphill, you’ll be asking for trouble! Conceit, empty-glory, will start to back up within you, no matter how humble you try to be. You’ll start to experience flushes of pride if you don’t understand this first principle of the Gospel.

The first principle of the Gospel, put another way, is that you have been crucified with Christ. Therefore, your flesh with all its passions and desires has been crucified. This is the important principle Paul is teaching us here. And he is encouraging us to act upon this principle. We are to practice what we preach, or in this case what Paul preaches. Therefore, in order to truly practice what he’s preaching, we must come to a correct understanding of what it means to have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

So first off we take note of what the Apostle is saying in v. 24. He’s speaking only of a particular group of people, i.e., “Those who are Christ’s, i.e., those exclusive ones who are belonging to Christ, these have crucified the flesh. Or we might put it like this: “If you belong to Christ, then you have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” So, we see then, that there’s a condition. The condition is that you need to belong to Christ in order to crucify the flesh.

You need to belong to Christ, because it’s through His crucifixion that you crucify the flesh with its passions and desires. If you have bypassed, or circumvented, or ignored the cross, then your flesh is not crucified. And this is the exact problem of the ones with the false teaching at Galatia. They were exhibiting passions and desires of the flesh, which is to say that they were showing conceit in their own works, i.e., circumcision and all the rest.

They weren’t looking at the cross, the crucifixion of Christ, the grace of God. Rather, like those whose faith is in their own faith, they were looking at their own selves to be saved. That’s why Paul in 3:1 reminds them that Christ crucified had been portrayed before their eyes. It is on account of Christ’s crucifixion that those in Christ’s have crucified the flesh. In other words, the passions and desires of the flesh have been crucified in principle.

You are in Christ. Christ has been crucified. Therefore your flesh with its passions and desires has been crucified with Christ. That is the principle.

The flesh with its passions and desires dies with Christ on the cross. This is because Christ on the cross was taking away ALL your sins and transgressions. Therefore, look to the cross to have the flesh with its sinful passions and desires put to death. To look anywhere else but the cross is to show conceit, which is an expression of the flesh. But look to the cross and you will see there the grace of God in that He has killed the flesh with its passions and desires. For only in the death of Jesus is the flesh with its passions and desires put to death. And herein lies the first principle of the Gospel: Christ’s crucifixion proves we are saved by God’s grace alone. This is because I have to be shown Christ’s death before I can crucify the flesh with its passions and desires. And how would I have known about Christ’s cross if God hadn’t sent His only begotten Son?

No cross means no forgiveness! But because Christ has been crucified so too is my flesh with its passions and desires. The death of Jesus is the death of my flesh with its passions and desires. That is the principle that I need to learn. That is what I need to hang onto. Because that is the principle that I need to put into practice.

The Practice

We Christians are told to be doers of the Word and not just hearers only. In other words, we’ve to put all the principles we learn from Scripture into practice. As Paul says elsewhere, “We preach Christ crucified.” And, “I have been crucified WITH Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). Therefore, we need to learn to practice what we preach. So, let’s restate what it is we’re preaching.

We’re preaching that Christ has been crucified. And, because you and I are in Christ, we therefore have been crucified with Him in His crucifixion. That is the principle behind what Paul is saying here.

So then, how do we put this principle into practice? How do we practice what we preach? In other words, how do we put the crucifixion of the flesh with its passions and desires into practice? Well, in order to do any work on a plumbing system, it’s wise to find out where the water turns off. The place ends up in a mess if you try to work with the water still on. So it is with sin, i.e., the passions and desires of the flesh. Therefore, it’s wise to find the place where sin turns off. So, in practice, if we are going to do any work on our flesh, we need to turn the flow of sin off, otherwise we’ll end up with a mess like the false teachers at Galatia.

        So then, let’s say you’re struggling with some sin in your life, how would you go about fixing it? Are you going to attempt to fix it with the water still on? Or do you think it would be better if the water was turned off? Now let me ask you: Where do you go to turn sin off? Is Christ’s death sufficient to stop the flow of sin? Or do you think the flow of sin can somehow seep past Him and well-up within you?

Do you think you need to mop up some of your own sin? That’s the way some people view Christ on the cross. This is what the false teachers at Galatia were saying. They were saying that something more than Christ’s crucifixion was needed to cure sin. The same kind of false teaching is around even to this day, which is to say that some teach that Jesus has done all He can, now the rest is up to you. And hence some people end up never knowing if they’ve done enough to please God. But all of this only serves to demonstrate they haven’t understood the first principle of the Gospel. The haven’t understood what Paul states in the clearest terms to the Ephesians, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the GIFT of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9).

So, it’s the grace of God alone that saves us, not our own efforts. Our salvation from our sins is a gift of God to us. It’s not something we’ve earned. It’s this “gift” then that we need to put into practice.

We’ve been told that “those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Therefore, we are expected to live our lives as if that were true. Let’s say that then that you or I start to experience the passions and desires of the flesh. Let’s say that we start to wrestle with some sin or other in our lives. Let’s say that you discover that you’re a gossip. What should you do? Should you say to yourself, “Oh, I’ll have to try harder to stop gossiping. I know that gossiping wrong. I know it’s wrong to unfairly paint another in a bad light.” So what would you do then? How would you go about stopping your character assassinations?

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What would be the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian ceasing to gossip? Non-Christians could stop gossiping every bit as much as a Christian, so what’s the difference? Well, unlike the non-Christian, the Christian doesn’t stop his particular sin by becoming a stronger person in that particular area. No, the Christian considers the facts, doesn’t he? And, in this case he considers the fact that the flesh with its passions and desires has been crucified with Christ. Hence, he realizes that’s he’s been acting like a hypocrite. He realizes that he hasn’t been practicing what he preaches. So he confesses his sin to God who by His Spirit points him again to the cross. Thus, once more he is reminded of the grace of God. Once more he is reminded that he is saved by grace alone and not grace plus his own efforts. For at the cross, he is reminded that the flesh and its passions have been crucified along with Christ. Or, if you will, he is taken once again to sins stop valve.

Yet so many Christians tend to by-pass the cross as they try to deal with sin in their own lives. One way is that they try to redefine sin. They start to call certain sins a “syndrome” no pun intended. But be that as it may, if you are in Christ, then your sinful passions and desires have been crucified. Therefore, if you discover that you’re acting as if they have not been crucified, that is your cue to reconsider the fact that they have. And if you find yourself having an argument with yourself that goes something like this: “The Bible says that the flesh with its passions and desires have been crucified. But I’m suffering from certain passions, I’m suffering some sort of sinful affliction, for that’s what passions of the flesh are, sinful afflictions, I also have these desires to sin.”

So, how do you combat this type of thing? Well, you consider yourself dead to sin. For this is what the Apostle is saying here. He’s saying that if you live by the Spirit you’ll walk in the Spirit. He’s saying therefore that you need to listen to what the Spirit is saying. The Spirit is saying that you are dead to sin. Therefore behave as one who is dead to sin. Put into practice what you know to be true. “Reckon yourselves to be indeed dead to sin” (Rom. 6:11).

Have you got it? It means that you have to act on a certain principle. The certain principle is that you are dead to sin. That is the principle that you need to put into practice. But you won’t put this principle into practice until you understand how dead you are. And this is the problem with the false teachers in the Church at Galatia. This is the problem with the teaching of Arminianism today. They do not fully understand how much sin has affected man. Otherwise, they wouldn’t believe that they could contribute to their own salvation.

But sin has completely and utterly killed you and me. However, Christ has killed sin. How can I say that sin has killed you and me dead and not just half dead? I can say it because Christ wasn’t half-dead on the cross! The Judaizer’s in Paul’s day and their offspring, the Arminians in our own day, think that man isn’t completely dead. They think that man has the ability no matter how small to assist in his own salvation. But we can see, can’t we, that this is not the case at all. We can see it because Jesus really died upon the cross. He didn’t become sick or almost dead. He died completely, didn’t He? And what killed Him? Sin! Whose sin? Your sin and my sin! Therefore, if sin killed Jesus Christ, then what has it done to me?

Conclusion

The glory of the Gospel is that whilst sin killed Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ also killed sin. Hence God counts me as dead as His Son Jesus Christ on the cross. But praise God that He now counts me alive in His Son. Therefore, if God reckons my flesh with its passions and desires as dead as Jesus on the cross, then, shouldn’t I? Shouldn’t I live my life according to this knowledge and not according to how I feel? Christ’s death is my death, but Christ’s life is now my life. Therefore, if the flesh with its passions and desires should engulf me, I will practice what I preach! Which is that my sinful flesh has been crucified with Christ.

And if and when I see sin in my life, I will bring it to Christ’s cross and leave it there. Then I will be free from its torment because I will see that Christ has killed it for me. And out of a response of gratitude I will strive to avoid the sin that killed my Savior. The principle is that I died with Christ. The practice is that I need to show in my life that I believe it.

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[1] The Canons of Dort (1619) were written to address Arminianism in the Church. Arminianism essentially is the Protestant expression of Roman Catholic Semi-Pelagianism.