The law is not a bonus to the Gospel

The letter to the Galatians part 2

In the previous article we saw how Paul introduces to us in the letter to the Galatians what the way of faith means. We have received the Spirit of the Son of God and when we are led by that Spirit and the Word we become more like the Lord Jesus.
In this new article, we need to examine what Paul says about the threats to that path of faith. There are two: 'the law' and 'the flesh,' that is, the sin in us. But we begin with what Paul 'the fundamentals of the world' calls.

The law and the flesh

In the letter to the Galatians, Paul talks about two things, "the law" and "the flesh," which in one way or another seriously violate the gospel he preached to them.

By "the law," for example, he specifically mentions circumcision and keeping the law of Moses. For us now, we may generalize this to standards and rules according to which we should organize our Christian life. It also always has to do with the idea that we are then "better believers.

The "flesh" is the "sin in us," and we have in a earlier article already discovered that this is the main negative characteristic of human nature. It is that every human being thinks of himself and strives to be the best, the tallest, the smartest, (and so on).

There were "false brethren" - that's what Paul calls them - intruding into the congregations in Galatians who were persuading believers to still follow certain Jewish customs, such as circumcision, and laws in addition to the Gospel. You might say: what's wrong with that?
Yet Paul rejects that with unprecedented force. This is because keeping to laws and rules - whatever they may be - appeals to "the flesh" in us. Whereas the Gospel actually teaches us that Christ has redeemed us from the law (from every law!) so that we would live from relationship with Him.

Paul calls the operation of "the law" and "the flesh" the "fundamentals of the world" and warns that we have been delivered from it and must not return to it.

“Likewise, while we were still infants, we too were subject as slaves to the fundamentals of the world." (Galatians 4:3)

"(...) and now that you know God, yes what is more, are known by God, how can you return again to the weak and poor fundamentals, wanting to serve again from the beginning?" (Galatians 4:9)

The fundamentals of the world

Paul briefly argues here that before coming to faith, the Galatians were a slave to 'the fundamentals of the world'. Then they did not know God, but now that they had come to faith they knew God and God knew them (Galatians 4:8,9). Now they were in danger of becoming entangled in this again by returning to lawful principles. Thereby they were in danger of falling into a condition that "Christ would be of no use to them, (...) they would become detached from Him and (...) they would fall from grace." (Galatians 5:3-5). So it's not nothing, and so the question must be asked, what exactly is that, those "fundamentals of the world?

The word "fundamentals¹ is also translated as "elements" or with "principles" in some translations. It denotes certain principles or "building blocks" that are constantly applied to build something. In doing so, it also establishes a certain order. Moreover, they also serve as a foundation for that which is being built.

Therefore, you can say that "the fundamentals of the world" are the fundamental and organizing principles upon which the entire world system is built and by which it is propelled and sustained.

Therefore, it is good to take a moment to consider what then the principles of law and flesh have to do with the world.

Not the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Many think that the principles on which the world is built can be found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UDHR 1948 (see, for example, at Wikipedia²). By the way, it is interesting that in drafting that Declaration at the time, a Dutch priest tried to get a mention of God in it. But "in the end, God was left out of the UDHR. People are, according to Article 1, 'endowed with reason and conscience,' but it is left open by whom or what they would be endowed with these³”.

All the good intentions of a UDHR won't get you there and they won't make a better world. It is human wisdom, but in God's eye it is folly. For He makes it clear to us in His Word that the fundamentals of the world are about the flesh and the law.

The flesh and the law as the worldly principles

What the meat is we've already covered once before⁴ pondered. We then discovered that it is the essence of the Fall. Then added to our human nature was "the sin in us.
It has become the core, the driving force of our humanity that strives to be the highest⁵, to be the first and the best. Higher than all the others. Every human being is afflicted with this from birth. It is the consequence of the Fall: "you shall be like god.

This is "the flesh," the source of all evil in the world. It does not disappear when a person comes to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You remain afflicted with it as long as you walk around here on earth.

It is not difficult to see the consequences of these tenets in the world:

• Every person will try to be the highest and reach the highest place. Competition and competitiveness is all there is and drives forward. In all parts of society, this is a constant human endeavor. It is the daily "rat race" and "survival-of-the-fittest.
• When you cannot do it alone, you do it with others. All kinds of partisanships, quarrels and wars have resulted to this day. Incredible misery, death and destruction!
• Even at the individual level, the human endeavor is to become the best and be higher than the others. From childhood in school, everything is measured and you must try to achieve the best and highest scores. Of course, because you cannot do everything, you have to limit yourself to the things you are good at. Then the goal remains to become and stay the best.
• When you work you are told what goals you must meet and then what bonus you will get. Or at some point a promotion that you are promised.
• The flip side of this endeavor, by the way, is that there are losers everywhere. Organizations, companies that do not make it and go bankrupt. But especially also people who drop out, give up and no longer want to belong. They lose out, with all the misery that implies.

I hope you can see with me that law and flesh are "two fundamentals of the world". The two principles upon which the whole world is built.

Satan is "the prince of the world⁶  and he uses these principles to dominate the world. For the purposes of this article, we will ignore that for now.

Drawn from the evil world

The letter to the Galatians begins with believers being snatched from this world.

"(...) Grace be to you and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is Has given Himself for our sins, that He might snatch us from the present evil world, according to the will of our God and Father. To Him be the glory in all eternity. Amen."

• Galatians 1:3-5

Let it sink in for a moment that Christ gave Himself for our sins, for the purpose that He would snatch us from the present evil world! A person who knows the Lord Jesus as his Savior is no longer part of this evil world and is by God 'transferred into the kingdom of the Son of God's love' (Colossians 1:13).

But then you must learn to "walk by the Spirit. That is a process by which we must grow in faith. We thought about that last time⁷.

This is the path you can also name as "following Jesus. But "following Jesus" also means denying yourself, as the Lord Himself puts it, "If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow Me." (Luke 9:23). 

'Denying yourself' is nothing something vague, but is very specifically that we are well aware of our own self - of 'the flesh' - and do not allow ourselves to be led by it. The ultimate characteristic of this is that we demonstrate a humility similar to "the humility of heart" of the Lord Jesus Himself (Matthew 11:29). That is the only way to show the world that we belong to the Lord Jesus and are substantially different from the people of the world.

But "denying yourself" is a completely different life from living by the principles of the world, "the assertive life," so to speak.

Don't be fooled!

A person can come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and receive from God the Holy Spirit. But the danger after that is to be deceived with fine words to make the flesh work. Paul puts it this way:

"O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you to disobey the truth; you to whom Jesus Christ was previously painted before your eyes as if He had been crucified among you? This only I want to hear from you: Have you received the Spirit from the works of the law, or from the preaching of faith? Art thou so foolish? You who began with the Spirit, will you now end with the flesh?" (Galatians 3:1-3)

Paul makes it clear that there are those who admonish believers to "try harder. They know the Bible well, better than you anyway. Their message is not spoken to deaf ears, for who does not know their own shortcomings, their own failures and the sin of their own hearts? Of course you would like to get rid of that, so how logical is it to follow this kind of advice.
But he calls them false brethren, who add things to the Gospel and distort it. They bring confusion to the churches (Galatians 1:6,7;2:4).

This is the beginning of a path that invites a believer to put the (religious) flesh to work. Then we do things that belong and are supposed to; they are things you are supposed to do. Things that are said to be normal for a believer.
But the problem is that this activates our old nature, the flesh, so we become accustomed to living Christianly out of the flesh. Of course, these are not things that are wrong in themselves, but because they are presented to us as a "law," our flesh will try to conform to them. Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it doesn't, and then we kick the habit.

Anything that is presented to us as a law or what we see ourselves as a duty or necessity appeals to the flesh. It directly challenges our flesh to respond and say (so to speak): I am going to do that (if it is a commandment) or I will never do that again (if it is a prohibition). But the result will always be that we can't do it. And when we do succeed, we'll pat ourselves on the back: well done!

The consequences are disastrous

When a believer continues in this way he gets used more and more to living "from the flesh. This is a major problem, because the result is that he strays from the way of faith. For the personal and living relationship with the Lord Jesus, God's Son who gave Himself up for you, gets pushed into the background and perhaps extinguishes.

Among the consequences Paul mentions in his letter to the Galatians are the following if we take this path:

• We come into bondage under the law (2:4; 3:10-12; 5:1) and we lose freedom in Christ.
• We then think we are justified by our own works (of the flesh) (2:16). After all, God will be delighted that we make a nice contribution ourselves, won't he? But then Christ would have died for nothing (2:21).
• Then we are disobedient to the truth (3:1). Then you are not living in accordance with the truth that you are saved by faith alone in Christ's work.
• Ultimately, then, we miss the inheritance, for it is the end of the path of God's promise by faith (3:13-18).
• In the practice of church life, disagreements soon arise. After all, instead of serving one another through love (5:13,14) it comes to "Bite each other, devour and digest each other" (5:15). We become people "with self-importance, challenging and envying each other" (5:26).

All this misery is the result of "the law," following a path in which you must meet certain requirements. A path that meets God's requirements and the high standards set for us by the Bible as best we can.

Grace - the heart of the Gospel

But in this way we notice that indeed 'the law does not make alive (Galatians 4:21). That does not bring us life in relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. What we lack is grace. Paul puts it this way:

“You have become detached from Christ, you who want to be justified by the law; and thereby you have fallen from grace.”

• Galatians 5:4

So when we belong to Christ, we want to live with and for Him until we are with Him. But the law cannot help us do that; it only takes us further away from Him. Then we become detached from Christ and fall from grace.

That is the key: grace, which we need to live our lives with the Lord Jesus Christ and follow Him.

 Grace we receive when we repent to God and accept Christ:

• “Because from grace are you saved, by faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God." (Ephesians 2:8)
• “For all have sinned and lack the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace, through salvation in Christ Jesus." (Romans 3:23-24)

But grace is also power to live a new life. It teaches and forms us:

"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, teaching us to renounce wickedness and worldly lusts..." 

• Titus 2:11-12

Grace we receive for all that we lack. The awareness of our own deficiency, weakness and failure brings us to Christ.

“Let us then approach with boldness to the throne of grace, so that we obtain mercy and find grace to be helped at the right time." (Hebrews 4:16)

• Mercy (Greek: eleos) means that God takes care of our misery. It is His inner compassion for our weakness, pain and guilt. He spares us instead of punishing us. Mercy is: God takes into account our distress.

• Grace (Greek: charis) is God's goodness and help, which we do not deserve but do receive. Grace is active: it gives strength, forgiveness and help. Grace is God giving us what we do not deserve (salvation, help, renewal).

Mercy and grace come to us simultaneously in Christ. When we pray or struggle, may we know: Mercy takes our guilt seriously; grace gives strength to go on.

Grace to move on

We do not need the law, nor can the flesh contribute anything to the Christian's walk. We have the cross of Christ, where He paid the price by which we were ransomed. Then we have received the Spirit of the Son of God, by which we walk. He leads us in His Word and transforms us into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.

For those way of faith we need grace, which we receive from Him. John testifies it at the beginning of his gospel: "Out of His fullness we have all received, and that is grace upon grace" (John 1:16).

His grace is abundantly available, yes very abundant, and we will not be short of it. Paul encourages Timothy with it when he says:

“The grace of our Lord, however, has been very abundant, with faith and love, which there is in Christ Jesus.”
(1 Timothy 1:14)

​“You then, my son, be strengthened in the grace who is in Christ Jesus."
(2 Timothy 2:1)

Almost every letter of Paul concludes with words with which he wishes us the grace of Christ. Therefore, we conclude with them here as well.

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
Be with your spirit, brothers!
Amen.”
^{(Galatians 6:18)}

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Footnotes

1. In Strong: g4747. στοιχεῖον stoicheion. The word occurs in this sense in Galatians 4:3,9 and also in Colossians 2:8,20 ︎
2. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universele_Verklaring_van_de_Rechten_van_de_Mens ︎
3. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universele_Verklaring_van_de_Rechten_van_de_Mens#Nederlands_aandeel ︎
4. https://goddienen.nu/over-de-zondeval-en-nederigheid/ of https://goddienen.nu/over-de-zondeval-en-nederigheid/#aioseo-de-zonde-in-ons ︎
5. I use the word "the highest" for all the variations there can be: the best, the smartest, the sweetest etc etc. Every person wants to be the best in some way in some field. Because without such, life has no meaning, one believes. ︎
6. John 12:31;14:30;16:11 ︎
7. https://goddienen.nu/geloof-genade-en-leven-door-de-geest/ ︎