Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

When you pause to consider that God is infinitely strong and can do all that he pleases, and that he is infinitely righteous so that he only does what is right, and that he is infinitely good so that everything he does is perfectly good, and that he is infinitely wise so that he always knows perfectly what is right and good, and that he is infinitely loving so that in all his strength and righteousness and goodness and wisdom he raises the eternal joy of his loved ones as high as it can be raised — when you pause to consider this, then the lavish invitations of this God to ask him for good things, with the promise that he will give them, is unimaginably wonderful.

This means that one of the great short-term tragedies in the church is how little inclination we have to pray. The greatest invitation in the world is extended to us, and incomprehensibly we regularly turn away to other things. It’s as though God sent us an invitation to the greatest banquet that ever was and we sent word back, “I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it,” or, “I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I must go to examine them,” or, “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come” (Luke 14:18–20).

He Invites Us to Pray

Three times he invites us to pray — or, you could say, if you will hear it lovingly, three times he commands us to pray — to ask him for what we need. It’s the number of times that he invites us that gets our attention. Verses 7–8:

The repetition is meant to say, “I mean this.” I want you to do this. Ask your Father for what you need. Seek your Father for the help you need. Knock on the door of your Father’s house so he will open and give you what you need. Ask, seek, knock. I invite you three times because I really want you to enjoy your Father’s help.

Even better and more amazing than the three invitations are the seven promises. Verses 7–8: “Ask, and [1] it will be given to you; seek, and [2] you will find; knock, and [3] it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks [4] receives, and the one who seeks [5] finds, and to the one who knocks [6] it will be opened.” Then at the end of verse 11b (7): “How much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

God Makes Himself Available at Different Levels

Jesus encourages us not only by the number of invitations and promises, but by the threefold variety of invitations. In other words, God stands ready to respond positively when you find him at different levels of accessibility.

Everyone Who Asks Receives

Jesus encourages us to pray by making it explicit that everyone who asks receives, not just some. Verse 8: “For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” When he adds the word everyone in verse 8, he wants to overcome our timidity and hesitancy that somehow it will work for others but not for us. Of course, he is talking about the children of God here, not all human beings. If we will not have Jesus as our Savior and God as our Father, then these promises don’t apply to us.

We Are Coming to Our Father

We have implied it, now let’s say it explicitly with its own force: when we come to God through Jesus, we are coming to our Father. Verse 11: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” Father was not a throw away label for Jesus. It is one of the greatest of all truths. God is our Father. The implications is that he will never, never give us what is bad for us. Never. He is our Father.

Our Heavenly Father Is Better than Our Earthly Father

Then the Jesus encourages us to pray by showing us that our heavenly Father is better than our earthly father and will far more certainly give good things to us than they did. There is no evil in our heavenly Father like there is in our earthly father.

We Can Trust God’s Goodness Because He Has Already Made Us His Children

Here is another implicit encouragement to pray: God will give us good things as his children because he has already given us the gift to become his children.

This insight came from St. Augustine: “For what would he not now give to sons when they ask, when he has already granted this very thing, namely, that they might be sons?” We have already seen that being a son of God is a gift we receive when we come to Jesus (John 1:12). 

The Cross Is the Foundation of Prayer

Finally, implicit in these words is the cross of Christ as the foundation for all the answers to our prayer. The reason I say this is because he calls us evil and yet he says we are children of God. How can it be that evil people are adopted by an all holy God? How can we presume to be children, let alone ask and expect to receive, and seek and expect to find, and knock and expect to have the door opened?

Jesus gave the answer several times. In Matthew 20:28, he said, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” He gave his life to ransom us from the wrath of God and put us in the position of children who only receive good things.

Take Jesus at His Word

But if we take Jesus at his word, oh how much blessing we forfeit because we do not ask and seek and knock — blessings for ourselves, our families, our church, our nation, our world.

https://www.parsonsporch.com/sermons/2017/9/6/the-sin-of-prayerlessness-1-samuel-1219-25

P.T. Forsythe once said, “The worst sin is prayerlessness.  Overt sin or crime or the glaring inconsistencies which often surprise us in Christian people are the affect of prayerlessness or its punishment.  We are left by God for lack of seeking Him.”

Samuel identified prayerlessness as sin!  It is sin because it is a violation of God’s command.  Jesus said: we “…ought always to pray and not lose heart.”  The word, “ought” implies moral obligation, a sacred duty.  It is then, a responsibility placed upon every Christian by the Lord himself.

Prayerlessness is sin because it denies pleasure to God.  The wise man of the Old Testament wrote:  “The prayer of the upright is His delight.” (Proverbs 15:8)  Imagine that!  God enjoys my praying!  Besides all the benefits I derive form praying, God also finds joy! There is another reason why prayerlessness is a sin:  it defeats the power of God.  Because he was a man of prayer, the Apostle Paul could write:  “I am ready for anything through Christ who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:13)

https://www.harvestprayer.com/resources/personal-2/sin-of-prayerlessness/

Without a doubt we are commanded to pray. Jesus told His disciples to pray and not give up (Luke 18:1-8). Paul commanded us to “pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Peter wrote that we are to be self-controlled so that we can pray (1 Peter 4:7). James commanded us to pray for each other (James 5:16). If failing to do something we are commanded to do is sin, then prayerlessness is surely a major sin for believers.

There are some very specific ways to help us move away from this sin and into greater praying. Perhaps the most foundational issue here is that prayerlessness is a declaration that we do not need God. Ronnie Floyd, in his great book, How to Pray, said there are two critical statements about prayer that we must understand: “Prayer occurs when you depend on God” and “Prayerlessness occurs when you depend on yourself.”

Failing to pray is also an indicator of a lack of love for the Lord. Prayer, at its heart, is communicating with God. What does it say to Him when we fail to find time to talk with Him? Do we say by our lack of prayer that we are not at all interested in spending time with the Lord or hearing anything from Him? When we do not pray, we move away from any possibility of intimacy with Christ.

When prayerlessness is prevalent in our lives, we are also guilty of failure to love one another. There is scarcely any greater way to demonstrate love than to pray for someone. In godly intercession, we lift the needs of another to God and watch as He moves to meet needs and provide for the one we are praying for. Through prayer, bodies are healed, families are knit together, individuals are saved, and churches are revived. When we withhold prayer on behalf of others, we demonstrate hardened hearts and a failure to love them enough to bring their needs before a loving Father.

Two Reasons How God Gives His Best When We Pray

http://www.word-smith.info/textual/best

#1: God gives us his best when we pursue it actively (Matt 7:7-8)

• All we can do is establish the conditions under which it is natural for God to give us his best. Does one receive without asking; find without seeking; have a door opened without knocking? No! God blesses the pursuit (Heb. 11:6). Therefore, we conclude that God blesses our initiative and effort.

#2: God gives us his best because it is his nature to do so (Matt 7:9-11)

God has a beautiful plan for our lives. His willingness to give us his best is evident: “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). He intends for us to ask, seek, and knock with the intent of discovering and submitting to his plan. Prayer is a powerful tool when it is leveraged against outcomes that are pleasing to God.

https://bible.org/seriespage/psalm-81-what-might-have-been

In Psalm 81, God laments over what might have been. As He ponders the history of Israel, His chosen people, God mourns over what He could have done for them and through them, if only they had obeyed Him. It’s an inscrutable mystery that while God is all-powerful and nothing can thwart His sovereign purpose, at the same time He limits His power and blessing to the obedience of His people. As we join the Lord in observing the wreckage of these wasted lives, the message to us is:

The way to avoid a wasted life is to walk in obedience to the Lord.

Chapter 18 Questions

1. Read Matt. 7:7-11. Discuss scripture , share insights from book and notes.
2. Pg 135: Discuss Luis Palau’s statement : “ I realized I’d always seen God as One whose expectations I could never meet rather than One who truly desired to bless me. I could think of many reasons why He should never bestow His gifts on me. However ,I began to see that I needed to simply humble myself before the Lord and receive from His kind hand the gracious gift that Christ has earned for me. “. How do you perceive God?
3. Pg 135-136: Read the five scriptures and discuss the 5 “True Prayer “ statements?
4. Pg 137: Read Psalm 81 : 12-16 and discuss.
5. As a group , share recent answers to prayer….how God has blessed you !! We are in the family of God and it is encouraging to hear other answers to prayer!

His father was an unbeliever and George grew up a liar and a thief, by his own testimony. His mother died when he was 14, and he records no impact that this loss had on him except that while she was dying he was roving the streets with his friends “half intoxicated.” He went on living a bawdy life, and then found himself in prison for stealing when he was 16 years old. His father paid to get him out, beat him, and took him to live in another town (Schoenbeck). Mueller used his academic skills to make money by tutoring in Latin, French, and mathematics. Finally his father sent him to the University of Halle to study divinity and prepare for the ministry because that would be a good living. Neither he nor George had any spiritual aspirations.

Then on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of November, 1825, when Mueller was 20 years old, he was invited to a Bible study and, by the grace of God, felt the desire to go. “I have not the least doubt, that on that evening, [God] began a work of grace in me. . . . That evening was the turning point in my life.” 

Mueller became sick (thank God for providential sickness!) and in the summer of 1829 he went for recovery to a town called Teignmouth. There in a little chapel called Ebenezer at least two crucial discoveries were made: the preciousness of reading and meditating on the word of God, and the truth of the doctrines of grace. For ten days Mueller lived with a nameless man who change his life forever: “Through the instrumentality of this brother the Lord bestowed a great blessing upon me, for which I shall have cause to thank Him throughout eternity.”

https://www.azquotes.com/author/10538-George_Muller

“In order to enjoy the Word, we ought to continue to read it, and the way to obtain a spirit of prayer, is, to continue praying; for the less we read the Word of God, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray.”

“I live in the spirit of prayer. I pray as I walk about, when I lie down and when I rise up. And the answers are always coming.”

“I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man may be nourished…I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it.”

https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.cloversites.com/87/8759bcc4-8a64-4fd5-89a9-80d17e816988/documents/Soul_Nourishment_First.pdf

Soul Nourishment First from The Autobiography of George Muller

 It has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of which I have not lost for more than fourteen years. The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord, but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God—not prayer, but the Word of God. And here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God so that it only passes through my mind just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what I read, pondering over it, and applying it to my heart. To meditate on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed. And that thus, by means of the Word of God, whilst meditating on it, my heart be brought into experimental communion with the Lord. I began therefore to meditate on the New Testament from the beginning early in the morning. The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God, searching as it were into every verse to get blessing out of it. When we pray, we speak to God. Now, prayer, in order to be continued for any length of time in any other than a formal manner, requires, generally speaking, a measure of strength or godly desire; and the season, therefore, when this exercise of the soul can be most effectively performed is after the inner man has been nourished by meditation on the Word of God, where we find our Father speaking to us, to encourage us, to comfort us, to instruct us, to humble us, to reprove us. By the blessing of God, I ascribe to this mode the help and strength which I have had from God to pass in peace through deeper trails, in various ways, than I had ever had before. How different, when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning, from what it is when, without spiritual preparation, the service, the trials, and the temptations of the day come upon me!                                           May 9th, 1841

https://www.compellingtruth.org/childlike-faith.html

Childlike faith looks outside itself for salvation. Salvation is a gift; man does not pay for or contribute to his salvation—it is entirely of God (Ephesians 2:8-9; Romans 8:1; Romans 5:1). Just as a child has to use his father’s money to pay for a Christmas gift he plans to give his father, we depend on God’s provision for everything, even the good works we do in His name (Ephesians 2:10). The world sometimes misunderstands the idea of childlike faith, thinking that Christians are childlike because they believe in myths and fairy tales. But this is not the Bible’s meaning when it compares us to children. Instead, childlike faith is a metaphor for trust, dependence and love, and an encouragement to ask for what we need (Matthew 7:11).

https://www.crosswalk.com/faith/bible-study/what-does-the-verse-faith-comes-from-hearing-mean.html

So then, faith comes by hearing, and hearing from the Word of God (Rom 10:17)

Faith in God means believing in and trusting in the greatest hope—that God became man, lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death for your sins, and rose again to glory so that you could have eternal life by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. 

The ESV Study Bible explains verse 17, “Paul now sums up the argument thus far. One can come to faith only through hearing the gospel, and the specific message that must be heard is the word of Christ, that is, the good news about Jesus Christ as the crucified and risen Savior.”

According to the Lutheran Study Bible English Standard Version (ESV), the meaning of hearing includes, “the act of hearing, the ear, or the message heard. The message is the meaning here.” (Romans 10:17 Commentary p 1930). The ear receives the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, faith begins in the hearer.

The cross of Christ fulfilled God’s plan of salvation for the world. Those who hear this message and receive it come to understand the meaning of faith. They know that faith is a gift from God and that salvation is God’s grace poured into the hearts of the hearer through the power of the Holy Spirit. We can say with certainty, “God gives us faith as a gift, through which Christ’s righteousness is credited to us (Ephesians 2:8-9) and our sins are forgiven (Romans 3:22-24)”

Chapter 11 Questions

1. From pg 84….what does childlike faith look like ?

• What hindered George’s devotion to Scripture in his early years as a Christian ?
• Who do you like to read ?
• What obstacles are in your life that keep you from the Word of God ?

2. Read and discuss Romans 10:17

3. What do the verses on page 87 say to you on how to approach the Word of God.

4. Discuss George Mueller’s “ Soul Nourishment First “ ( in notes and mentioned on pg 86 )

He then ends by showing that this will be demonstrated in our attitudes to each other: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another” (Gal 5:26). Paul writes something similar in his letter to the Ephesians: “Be filled with the Spirit” (Eph 5:18). This includes “addressing one another (Eph 5:19) and “submitting to one another (Eph 5:21).

The point he is trying to make is that bearing the fruit of the Spirit is not some isolated, mystical experience, but it manifests itself in practical outworkings of love and care that we should have for each other. It is easy to talk about love in a detached, isolated way. In this section, Paul shows that love has to be displayed in real, practical ways.

Bear One Another’s Burdens (Gal 6:1-5)

It is the Loving Thing to Do

Paul says “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2). The immediate assumption is that we all have burdens, and we are not meant to carry these burdens alone.

Some people try to bear them alone. They think it is a sign of strength and fortitude. But this is more stoical than Christian.

Others think they should only take their burdens to the Lord. They think of verses like “Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you” (Psa 55:22), and that Jesus invited those with heavy burdens to come to him (Matt 11:28). True, Jesus can carry all our burdens and we are to cast our burdens on Him for He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). But we should not forget that one of the ways God cares for us is through human friendship.

It Fulfills the Law

Human friendship in which we share each other’s burdens is part of God’s purpose for His people. So we should not keep our burdens to ourselves, but seek to share it with other believers, who can bear the load with us. By this kind of burden-bearing, we “fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2).

In doing so, Paul is making a side swipe at the Judaizers. They were adding to their burdens. Paul is saying that true Christians do not add to other’s burdens but carry it alongside them. Jesus gave his disciples a “New Commandment” that they “love one another” as He loved them (John 13:34). Loving one another is not some heroic form of self-sacrifice most of the time. Rather, it is the everyday, mundane task of walking alongside other Christians and sharing their burdens. Similarly, we need to be humble enough to share ours with others as well.

It Demonstrates Humility

Paul goes on to say: “If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, deceives himself” (Gal 6:3). The thought is, that if we think that bearing others’ burdens is beneath us, then we are deceiving ourselves. The truth is, that we are not something. We are nothing. This is not an exaggeration. We ourselves deserved to experience the wrath of God and condemnation to eternal torment in hell. Our salvation was a free gift that we did not deserve. That is the heart of the gospel. So we are never superior to any of our Christian brothers or sisters who get tripped into sin. We are no better. So in humility and gentleness, we can seek to restore them without judging them. We saw in our last study, that the opposite of love is to “bite and devour one another” (Gal 5:15).

The transgressions Paul is referring to may not be obvious sins. Possibly the transgression the believer falls into is faltering faith. Perhaps the heavy burden makes them doubt the goodness of God. By coming alongside the struggling believer and bearing their burden, we are also helping them see the goodness and the faithfulness of God.

Paul points out that the restoration needs to be done “in a spirit of gentleness” (Gal 6:1). Paul adds, “keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted” (Gal 6:1). Perhaps we can also be tripped up by the same sin, but it is also possible for us to be tripped up by the sin of self-righteousness and pride. We need to be aware that we are no better, and only then can we truly come alongside a fellow believer and restore them. This takes a whole lot of love as well as courage. Jesus compares it to eye surgery (Matt 7:1-5)

A Practical Way to Fight Against Conceit

Paul then gives us a practical way to fight against becoming conceited. He says we should not compare ourselves with one another, but rather, “let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone, and not in his neighbor” (Gal 6:4). 

The reason we become proud (or sink into despair) is that we tend to compare ourselves with others. Paul here gives us the practical advice – “don’t do that”! We have the Word of God, and we have the Holy Spirit. So let us judge ourselves by God’s standards, without comparing ourselves with other people. When we see how far we keep falling short, that will keep us humble. Paul concludes this thought by saying “for each will have to bear his own load” (Gal 6:5) – meaning, each of us is accountable to God for our actions alone, not those of others. (Note that this verse does not contradict verse 2. This is like a small back-pack – our accountability before God. The other is like a burden that is too heavy for us to bear, and we are to share that with others).

Sowing and Reaping (Gal 6:6-10)

The Law of Harvest

Paul now talks about a fundamental principle. “Whatever one sows, that he will also reap” (Gal 6:8). This is a principle of order and consistency that exists in all of life. A farmer sows during seed-time, and reaps in the harvest. If he sows barley seeds, he will get a barley crop. If he sows rice, he will get a crop of rice. He cannot sow wheat and expect a crop of grapes. Similarly, if he sows good seed, he can expect a good crop. If he forgets to sow, then come harvest, there will be nothing to reap. If he sows plentifully, he can expect a plentiful crop. If he sows sparingly, he can expect a small crop (see 2 Cor 9:6).

It is not the reapers who decide what the harvest will be like. It is the person who does the sowing, who determines what the harvest will be like! Hosea warned his contemporaries, “those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7).

This is a fundamental law of nature. Paul makes his point clear with a command “Do not be deceived” (Gal 6:7) and a statement “God is not mocked” (Gal 6:7). The possibility of being deceived is mentioned several times in the New Testament. After all, Satan is a liar, and the father of lies (John 8:44). There are many who think there will be no consequences for their actions. They think they can get away with it. That is why Paul points out that God will not be mocked.

So there are three kinds of sowing that Paul talks about here. The point he is making is that by sowing the right things, we will reap a good harvest, so ultimately we will be the ones with the greater blessing!

Take Care of Those Who Feed Us Spiritually

The first thing Paul talks about is to sow into the ministry of our local churches. Our pastors and church staff need to be supported, and it is our duty to provide for their needs. As they nourish our souls spiritually, we should provide support to their physical needs.

Yes, this will bless the minister. But actually there is a bigger blessing for us! This is what Paul explains to the Philippians. “it was kind of you to share my trouble. … Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit … And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:14-19). The Philippians had provided for Paul to “share his trouble” (Phil 4:14), and these seeds that were sown, as it were, would cause fruit to increase to their credit! This caused Paul to “rejoice in the Lord, greatly” (Phil 4:10).

Sow to the Spirit and Not to the Flesh

The next thing Paul mentions is sowing to the Spirit, or in other words, to fight the battle for holiness. 

The Bible makes it clear that we are not helpless victims of our nature, temperament and our environment. Who we become tomorrow is shaped by how we behave today. So the Holy Spirit is likened both to the path that we walk as well as the field where we sow. How can we expect to reap the fruit of the Spirit if we do not sow into the field of the Spirit?

This saying is true:

• Sow a thought, reap an act
• Sow an act, reap a habit
• Sow a habit, reap a character
• Sow a character, reap a destiny.

In our last study, we saw the works of the flesh. Sowing to the flesh is to pander to the desires of our flesh rather than crucifying it. Every lingering bad thought we have, every time we are in bad company, every time we decide to sleep and not to pray – all of these are seeds that we are sowing to the flesh. Some Christians, myself included: sow to the flesh every day, and wonder why they are not becoming holy. Paul says, “God is not mocked”. Holiness is a harvest. Whether we reap it or not depends entirely on what we sow.

On the other hand, to sow to the Spirit is the same as to “set our mind on the Spirit”, or to “walk in” or “keep in step with” the Spirit. Again, we sow with our thoughts and our deeds. The books we read, the music we listen to, all of this can be sowing to the Spirit. We are to “set our minds on things above, not things of the earth” (Col 3:2).

The two harvests come from two sowings. The results are logical. If we sow to the flesh, we will “from the flesh reap corruption” (Gal 6:8), but if we sow to the Spirit, we “will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal 6:8).

Do Good to Others, Specially Believers

Then  Paul talks about doing good to others. He says we should do this “as we have opportunity” (Gal 6:10). This earthly life is full of opportunity. 

Our first responsibility is to those “who are of the household of faith” (Gal 6:10). This means other fellow-believers. As the saying goes, “charity begins at home”. Christians claim our first loyalty.

However, this then extends to everyone else. We are even commanded to “love our enemies” (Matt 5::44).

Do Not Grow Weary

And as Paul winds up this section, he reminds us that much patience is required. He knows that we will be tempted to get weary. So he exhorts us “let us not grow weary in well-doing” (Gal 6:9). Active Christian work is tiring, and we are tempted to give up and to “slack off”.

So Paul gives us an incentive with a promise. “In due season we shall reap if we do not give up” (Gal 6:9). The seed that we plant does not bear fruit immediately. There are seasons of waiting. Paul tells us to stick with it. We need to “wait on the Lord” (Isa 40:31), for His harvest in His time. And the promise is, that harvest is coming! Our patience is evidence of saving faith.

The Cross is All that Really Matters (Gal 6:11-18)

Until now, Paul has been most likely dictating his letter. But as he does in most of his letters, he ends the letter with a few words by his own hand. Sometimes it is just a final greeting or a signature. The reason Paul did this was to guarantee his letter against forgery. In this case it is several sentences.

Some Boast in the Flesh

The Judaizers “boast” in the flesh. Paul says several things about them.

1. They are braggarts. forcing the Galatians to become circumcised in order to “make a good showing in the flesh” (Gal 6:12). They were more interested in numbers and statistics than the souls of the people.
2. They are compromisers. Another reason Paul gives is that they want to avoid being persecuted (Gal 6:12)
3. They are persuaders
4. They are hypocrites – they themselves do not keep the law (Gal 6:13).

The key point is that they are doing these things to exalt themselves. Paul goes on to talk about his motivation. It is not himself, It is the cross of Jesus; i.e., it is the work that Jesus did on His behalf that he wants to proclaim from the roof-tops.

We Should Boast only in the Cross

Paul says “far be it for me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal 6:14). He goes on to say that the cross is “by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6:14). This reminds us of what he wrote in Gal 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”. As far as Paul is concerned, the cross of Jesus shattered every confidence he used to have in the flesh. He was willing to “crucify” it all for the sake of his relationship with Jesus Christ as a part of Abraham’s lineage of faith.

Application

So here are some ways we can evaluate our own faith.

Is our faith inward or outward?

Paul says: “for neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision” (Gal 6:15). The point is that circumcision is an outward symbol. Yes it is meant to signify something. But it should never be exalted to the position of a required “work”.

In our world today, the critical issue may not be circumcision. But for example, thinking about baptism and nit-picking how it is to be done or to whom it is to be done, or worse still, thinking that baptism is a necessity for salvation, brings all the issues that Paul is so strongly opposed to in this letter. Yes, baptism is an important part of a Christian’s life. But it can never be a requirement for salvation. If anyone says it is, then they are nullifying the work of Christ on the cross for our salvation, for precisely the same reasons that Paul says the Judaizers are. So we need to be careful to put baptism, and every other tradition we may practice, in its right place. What really matters for salvation, is that we become children of God, through faith in the completed work of Christ for us on the cross. Everything else is secondary. That is why Paul is willing to boast only on the cross.

Paul says “I bear the marks of Jesus” (Gal 6:17), meaning, he has scars from all his suffering for Jesus, that proves that he is not self-serving and is willing to sacrifice his very life for his faith.

Is our faith human or is it divine?

Paul also goes on to say “neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation” (Gal 6:15). The new creation is the new birth that we experience when we put our trust in Jesus. It is being “born of the Spirit” or “born again”, as Jesus put it. Ultimately, that is all that matters. Am I born again? Is the Holy Spirit living in me? That determines everything. That is how I bear the fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians chapter 5, and that is how my new life in Christ grows.

Paul concludes: “And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God” (Gal 6:16). As children of God, peace with God and mercy follows, and we are the “true” Israel of God. The spiritual Israel. The spiritual descendants of Abraham! Paul’s final benediction is “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen” (Gal 6:18).

Coming to today’s text we will look at Galatians 3:1-14. Paul could have concluded his letter at the end of chapter 2. He has made his point, that justification is by faith alone. But thinking about the Galatian Christians, his feelings overwhelm him as they did in Gal 1:6, and he begins a whole new section for the next two chapters to buttress his statement of the gospel with theology. We will see the first few of his arguments here.

1. An appeal to their own experience (Gal 3:1-5)
2. The example of Abraham (Gal 3:6-10)
3. Two roads leading to two destinies (Gal 3:11-14)

“O Foolish Galatians! Who has Bewitched You”? (Gal 3:1)

Here is an interesting question. How could the Judaizers ever convince the Galatian Christians that the way of the law was better than the way of grace? Paul asks them “Who bewitched you”, or “Who cast a spell on you”? 

Of course Paul knows who deceived them. It was the Judaizers. However, there is a subtle hint here, that there is more going on. There is a spiritual battle being waged against their souls (1 Peter 5:8) which is being masterminded by Satan. Behind the false teachers, Paul sees the activity of the devil himself, whom Jesus calls a “liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

The reason this was so astonishing to Paul, is that it was “before [their] eyes that Jesus was publicly portrayed as crucified” (Gal 3:1). The word could be translated “placarded”, as in announced in a poster and waved in public. In other words, Paul is saying that “the message of Jesus as Messiah who died on the cross was plastered up in bill-boards before your very eyes” (Cole). Paul had preached about the death of Jesus with crystal clarity. Remember, Paul preached in Galatia exactly the way he did at Corinth, where he said, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). Paul did not allow his preaching to get distracted from the single point of the death of Jesus on the cross. So let us ask ourselves. Is this the focus of the preaching we often hear today? If not, we may possibly be listening to a false gospel.

Why is the gospel of works so enticing? Because it panders to our old nature. It enables us to compare ourselves with others, and to feel proud. It enables us to have a sense of superiority to others. This is why we are always tempted to add to the gospel. But to yield to that temptation is deadly, and our eternal destiny could be at stake.

When Paul says Jesus was publicly portrayed as “crucified”, the word is in the perfect participle. This means it was a once-for-all event, but the benefits of Jesus’ crucifixion are forever valid and fresh. The death of Jesus was completed, and it achieved its purpose perfectly. The gospel is not good advice for men, but good news about Christ. It is not an invitation to do anything, but a declaration about what God has done. It is not a demand but an offer.

This is why Paul is saying that if the Galatians had grasped the gospel of Christ crucified – that everything necessary for our salvation was accomplished by the death of Jesus on the cross, they should have resisted the spell of whoever was bewitching them. They were enticed because they did not carefully think through the implications.

Here is a sobering truth. The gospel needs to be grasped by our minds and not just by our hearts and our emotions. We need to think deeply and process its truth and make it our own. This is how we grow deep spiritual roots. Cole says “theology is nothing more than the ordinary rules of grammar and logic applied to the text of Scripture”. This is the gift that our education gives us as Christians. We can use all our study of language and grammar to help us understand the deep truths of God. Ultimately the only purpose of education is to help us understand God more. Everything else is chaff that will pass away and has no eternal value.

Was All This in Vain? (Gal 3:2-5)

Paul first appeals to the Galatians’ own experience. Usually it is dangerous to depend on our experience, so Paul will not stop here. This is a launching pad for him to buttress all his assertions from Scripture.

He asks them how they initially received the Holy Spirit. Paul is making an implicit assumption here that he states explicitly elsewhere. To have new life in Jesus Christ is to receive the Holy Spirit in our lives (see Rom 8:14). This is a good place for me to point out another false teaching that is prevalent among us today. There are some who teach that after accepting Jesus, we need to live a life of purity and seek after a “second blessing” called the baptism of the Holy Spirit that is evidenced by tongue speaking. Here Paul is clearly stating that our conversion is marked by our reception of the Holy Spirit. I would like you to keep this false teaching of the second blessing in the back of your mind as we go through today’s study, and evaluate it in the light of what the Bible says here.

Paul goes on to say “Did you suffer (or experience) so many things in vain – if indeed it was in vain?” (Gal 3:4). He is basically saying that if they go back to semi-Judaism, all that they experienced will be worthless. I.e. They will not be saved. Another way of looking at it, they “began in the Spirit” (Gal 3:3). That is they were “born again”. They had a new spiritual life. How can they feed that spiritual life by trying to be “perfected in the flesh” (Gal 3:3)? That does not make sense. They need to continue in the same way that they started. They cannot go back to what would only gratify their old natures.

Once Saved, Always Saved?

Clearly, Paul sees the possibility that all that the Galatians experienced could have been “in vain” (Gal 3:4). This is why he also says, “I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.” (Gal 5:3-4). He also says, “I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you: (Gal 4:19). So regarding the maxim: “Once saved always saved”; is it true? By this, if we are asking, “Can a professing Christian fall away”? The Bible’s answer is clear. “Yes”.

The reason this is not necessarily the full story is because God makes certain promises, e.g. John 3:16. All those who believe “will not perish but have eternal life”. Jesus promises that He will not cast away anyone who comes to Him (John 6:37). He promises that “no one can snatch us from His hand” (John 10:28). Everyone who is “justified” will also be “glorified” (Romans 8:30). So those who look at this question from the standpoint of what is called “Reformed Theology”, point out that if God is true to His Word, He is promising to take the responsibility of keeping all those who come to Him in faith and are “justified”. Jesus is the good Shepherd who keeps His sheep (John 10:9).

But if that is true, how can a professing Christian fall away? Here is how we reconcile both these strands of biblical teaching. We have already seen from Galatians, that it is possible to “come to Christ” without putting our entire trust in Him. In today’s society, it is possible to come to Christ for the sake of all the blessings we think we will get if we become Christians. There are people who come to Christ because they think God will become their “bartender” who will give them whatever they want, be it health, wealth or prosperity. There are many reasons people may “accept Christ” but may not really understand the gospel, who do not come solely trusting the finished work of Christ. Sometimes I have heard preachers preach that if we come to Christ, God will take care of our problems, and our lives will become very fulfilled. That is not the gospel. If they give an altar call with such a message, many may come forward without really understanding the true gospel at all. Therefore, there could be many of us who think we are Christians, but in reality have believed a false gospel and are not saved at all. We may then attend Bible studies, go to church regularly, read the Bible and pray, and yet still not be saved. Then when difficulties come, we get disillusioned with God and lose our faith. This is what happened to the seeds that fell on rocky soil and among thorns. Both started to grow, but never bore fruit. Their growth was external without penetrating into their hearts. I.e. they appeared to be saved, but never were and so they fell away. This is why we sometimes see those who appeared to be strong Christians, preachers even, who have walked away from their faith. There is no guarantee that apart from repentance they will be accepted by Jesus on the final judgment.

Then how can we know we are saved? Never 100%. The Bible uses the term “assurance” of salvation. It is not a guarantee, but a gift given to us by the Holy Spirit. “The Holy Spirit testifies with our spirits that we are the children of God” (Rom 8:16). When we are walking with God our assurance is strong. When we stop walking with God, He withdraws our assurance, along with the sense of His Presence, to draw us back to Him. This is God’s gift to His children, to draw them back to Him through this unease that they feel. Those who subscribe to the reformed view will go as far as to say the evidence of true salvation is that a person remains faithful to Christ until death. We may wander, but God will draw us back. Those who fall away and never come back have most likely demonstrated that they were never saved. “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19). While we are on earth, we need to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling” (because eternity is at stake) (Phil 2:12). We need to battle against sin because our passions “wage war against our souls” (1 Peter 2:11) and because Satan seeks to devour us and destroy us like a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8). Please note, only God knows who really belongs to Him. He sometimes disciplines sinning believers with death, but that does not necessarily mean they were not saved (see 1 Cor 11:30). If you have a loved one who accepted Christ and then walked away, and is now no more, only God knows if that person had really put his or her trust in Jesus. We cannot see the heart. For ourselves however, we are warned to keep watch over our own souls.

So in summary, is “once saved, always saved” true? There are some who would say “no”. Others would say “yes” and “no”. “Yes” is from God’s standpoint. God knows those who are His, and He will preserve them and keep them in His fold (2 Tim 2:19). However in either case, from a human standpoint, the evidence of our salvation is by the fact that we remain in the faith and bear the fruit of the Spirit (Matt 24:13). It is dangerous to just look back to a time in the past when we “accepted Christ”, and be confident we will be saved. Many will say to Him on the last day: “Lord, Lord, did we not do x, y and z” (Matt 7:22), and He will say “Depart from me, I never knew you, you who practice lawlessness” (Matt 7:23). It doesn’t matter what we professed in the past, or even profess now. If there is no evidence of new life in us, we need to heed Christ’s warning. Let us not be lulled into a false sense of security. Regardless of which view we hold, we can only be confident of our salvation to the extent we are walking with God. This sense of assurance sometimes waxes and wanes as we live our lives, and that is God’s way of making us “work out our salvation with fear and trembling”.

However we cannot face sin, trials or truly love if we are stunted by fear, because our motivation for doing such things will be wrong. We won’t seek God for His own sake. If you lack assurance of your salvation, you will question His care for you. So if you are wrestling with doubt, spend time studying the BIble, praising God and filling your mind with Scripture. Does this make you saved? No because these are works (see Eph 2:8-9). But doing this will remind you of the gospel. We need to be constantly reminded of Who God is, and what He has done – that we are saved by grace, not works! Don’t rely on your feelings. Trust His promises.

Abraham Become Righteous By His Faith (Gal 3:6-9)

Paul then points out that Abraham became righteous while he was still a “kind of Gentile”. Let us recall the story. Abraham was an old man. Although he had no children, God promised him a son. One day he took him outside on a clear night’s sky and showed him the stars and said “so shall your descendants be” (Gen 15:5). The bible then records “And he believed the Lord and He counted it to him as righteous (Gen 15:6). Remember what we said about “justification” last week. It is a declaration by God that we are “not guilty” and have a right standing before God. This verse indicates that Abraham was “justified” in this sense at that very moment. This was well before Isaac was born, and definitely well before God instituted circumcision as the sign of His covenant with Israel. Paul is therefore pointing out that Abraham was justified by faith, and not by works.

Paul then takes this a step further. He says that Abraham is the “father of the faithful”. He takes us back to an even earlier promise God made to Abraham. “In you shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gal 3:8, referring Gen 12:3). Paul says this was the gospel that was first preached to Abraham. Everyone who has faith in God are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith (Gal 3:9).

Two Roads, Two Destinies (Gal 3:10-14)

Paul explains this further by providing two alternatives to the Galatians, both from the Old Testament.

1. “The one who does [the deeds of the law] shall live by them” (Gal 3:12 quoting Lev 18:5)
2. “The righteous shall live by faith” (Gal 3:11, quoting Hab 2:4)

These are two completely different paths, but both offer eternal life. Do you remember Jesus’ answer when the rich young man came to Jesus with the question “What must I do to obtain eternal life” (Mark 10:17)? Jesus answered the question. “You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother” (Mark 10:19). God’s promise with regards to keeping the commandments was “do this and you will live” (Luke 10:28). The problem is, that no human being besides Jesus has ever kept all the commandments perfectly. And God’s promise of life through the law has a flip side. “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the Law and do them” (Gal 3:10, quoting Deut 27:26). This means every one who tries to please God by obeying the law is under God’s curse.

Then Paul goes on to say that Jesus took on our curse on Himself. He does this by pointing to the fact that by hanging on the cross Jesus was cursed, according to Deut 21:32 which says “a hanged man is cursed by God”. This was the same curse we are under because we cannot keep the law. Jesus was cursed by God because of our inability to please God. This is why Jesus cried out from the cross “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” (Mark 15:34)? He Himself bore God’s curse for our sins. This is why we are saved when we put our trust in Jesus. Our sins have been accounted for and we have been set free or “redeemed”.

Paul says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by being a curse for us” (Gal 3:13). Redemption always has the connotation of being “bought with a price”. It is used for slaves who were purchased, or prisoners who were set free. The actual price that obtains redemption is called the ranson. Paul is saying that Jesus purchased our salvation through his death on the cross. Jesus said: “The Son of Man did not come to serve but to be served, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The apostle Peter says it beautifully: “you were ransomed … not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:19). His blood was “precious”. Our redemption was costly. Yet Jesus did this for us.

Paul also says Jesus became a curse “for us” (Gal 3:13). This has the idea of substitution. Jesus’ gave up his life as a substitute for mine. He died the death we deserved. He took our place and bore our punishment. We deserve God’s curse for our sin and Jesus bore that curse in our place. Therefore, when we put our trust in Him we are no longer under that curse. The penalty of sin has been paid. We are free!

So Paul is challenging the Galatians, just as he is challenging us today. Which road should we take? One, where the price is paid in full, and our freedom from the curse of the law has been secured in Christ? Or do we think we can help God by working for our salvation? If we do, we remain under God’s curse, and are not saved. This was what is at stake for the Galatians, and what is at stake for us, if we do not rely wholly on the cross of Jesus for our salvation.

Application

What the gospel is. The gospel is Christ crucified. It is His finished work on the cross. To preach the gospel is to publicly portray Jesus Christ as crucified. The gospel is not primarily a baby in a manger or the teachings of a wise teacher, or even just the empty tomb. The gospel contains Christ on the cross. Only when Christ is seen “publicly portrayed as crucified (Gal 3:1) is the gospel being preached. This was not just a historic event that happened 2000 years ago. It has relevance today, because Jesus bought our salvation on that cross. He died as our substitute, and faced God’s curse in our stead. We need to be confronted with this crucified Jesus, and we need to come to this crucified Christ for our salvation.

What the gospel offers. The gospel offers great blessing. God’s promise to Abraham was “in you all the nations of the earth will be blessed”. What was this blessing? First it was “justification” (Gal 3:8). Second, it is the gift of the Holy Spirit (Gal 3:5). These two gifts are interdependent. Both come together . Everyone who is justified get the gift of the Holy Spirit. This marks the beginning of new life in Jesus Christ – a life that bears the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23). It is a life that lasts forever, where we will spend all our days in the Presence of the One who redeemed us as a people to Himself.

Although the gospel is free for us, it came at a terrible price. Paul says to the Corinthian Christians: “You were bought with a price, therefore glorify God with your bodies” (1 Cor 6:20). Jesus paid the ultimate price to redeem us. The ransom was His very life blood, that He shed for us. Let us not take this lightly, but let us bow down in gratitude and worship before this God who was willing to pay so much to set us free.

What the gospel requires. The gospel offers blessing. What must we do to receive it? Nothing. Just believe that it has already been won for us by Jesus who died on our cross to procure it for us. This is the gospel of both the Old and the New Testaments. It unifies all people of faith in the history of the world. One day we will all celebrate this gospel together with Jesus. A gospel of grace, through and through! What a blessing this is!

Part of the life of the early church was that they participated in a communal meal called an “Agape Feast”, or “Love Feast”. Here the whole congregation came together to share a meal prepared from them pooling whatever resources they had. For some slaves, this may have been the only nice meal they had all week. It was a powerful statement of the togetherness of Christians in a very special way.

This is all very good. However, we must not forget that there were Jews who had very strict food laws and ceremonial laws, and that Gentiles who did not have these constraints. Jews literally believed (and it was true under the Old Covenant) that God only accepted people who identified with the Jewish people and submitted to their laws. A strict Jew was forbidden even to do business with a Gentile. So in Antioch, this posed a problem because the church had both Jews and Gentiles. If the old law was obeyed it would be impossible for Jews and Gentiles to sit together and eat a common meal.

When Peter first visited Antioch, he completely disregarded the old taboos in the glory of the new faith. But later some people came from the Jewish party in Jerusalem in James’ name. It is important that this does not imply that these people shared James’ views, or were actually sent by James. In fact, James says he did not send them. He says, “We have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instruction” (Acts 15:24).

Out of fear of them, Peter withdrew from the common meal. Then other Jews also followed Peter’s example, including even their pastor Barnabas. However, it gets worse. This meal probably ended with the Lord’s supper. If Peter joined the Gentiles during the meal, then surely he also participated in their remembrance of the Lord’s death by celebrating the Lord’s Supper together. So by not joining the Gentiles during the meal, he was also withdrawing from fellowship with them over the Lord’s Supper.

Peter should have known better. He heard directly from Jesus Himself, that the food we eat cannot defile us, because it just goes through our bodies and comes out again later. Jesus taught that true defilement originates in the heart, not in external things (Mark 7:14-23). Then he had another revelation from God regarding this, that prompted him to share the gospel with the Roman Gentile, Cornelius (Act 10:9-29). He later defended his actions with full conviction (Acts 11:1-18). This is why when Peter first went to Antioch he had no qualms eating with the Gentiles. However, because he was “fearing the circumcision party he withdrew and mingled only with the Jews (Gal 2:12).

Considering Barnabas, remember that he was the one who introduced Paul to the apostles in Jerusalem (Acts 9:27), and Barnabas invited Paul to minister in the church at Antioch, which began Paul’s public ministry (Acts 11:25). Yet here, “even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy (Gal 2:13). Most likely for Barnabas it was a matter of love. He did not want to grieve the people who came from Jerusalem. But for Paul that was “peace at any price”. And Paul was not willing to buy peace on those terms.

Paul Confronts Peter and Barnabas (Gal 2:14)

At this point Paul decided to act very firmly and decisively, because he saw that a church ceases to be Christian if it contains class distinctions. If we are all children of God, then we need to be able to fellowship together. Paul considers the situation serious enough that he needed to deal with this in public. Paul was willing to oppose Peter as well as his friend because the truth of the gospel was at stake. Interestingly, Paul calls Peter “Cephas” here (his old name prior to being renamed by Jesus). This is a subtle reminder that Peter was not living in the light of his new life.

Peter may not have realized it, but by withdrawing from the Gentiles, he was implicitly saying that Jews were superior to Gentiles. In some ways the Gentiles lacked something the Jews had. Otherwise why would they separate? Now, if you pressed Peter to this point, he would no doubt have denied it. But Peter’s actions asserted it. Just because Peter did not do it consciously or deliberately, did not make it ok. His actions had serious consequences and he needed to be held accountable for his behavior.

Paul starts off by pointing out the basic inconsistency in Peter’s behavior. First Peter did not follow Jewish ceremonial law and ate with the Gentiles, thus “living like a Gentile”. Then by associating with the circumcision party, he was tacitly agreeing with them that in order to be a true Christian, Gentiles must live like Jews (Gal 2:14). But worse than inconsistency, Paul points out that this is hypocrisy. And Peter’s actions were not just personal, but he was misleading others as well.

In addition to using this incident as a means of showing how important the true gospel is, Paul was also showing through this that he was independent of the other apostles, and also had apostolic authority.

This is probably one of the watershed incidents in the history of the church, that God used to preserve the purity of the gospel to us. Imagine what would have happened if Peter and Barnabas’ actions won out. The church at Antioch would have stopped being a “missionary church”. They would have sent out their “missionaries” from the circumcision party that would have either consumed or divided the early church. But this issue did not become a crisis because of Paul’s swift intervention. We may not be here today, if Paul had not defended the integrity of the gospel so vigorously.

Peter’s Response

How did Peter respond to this confrontation? The Bible does not say. However it has to be that Peter acknowledged his sin and was restored to fellowship. When we read Peter’s two epistles you see that Peter teaches exactly the same gospel of grace in God as Paul does. The word “grace” is found in every chapter of Peter’s letter. Peter also makes it a point to say that he and Paul were in complete agreement (2 Peter 3:15-16). In fact, Peter calls Paul’s letters “Scripture” that “unstable people distort”. This is the highest praise for Paul by the apostle Peter, showing that this incident did not destroy their friendship and unity in Christ, but rather, strengthened it.

Why This Issue Was So Serious: Gal 2:15-21

This section continues with Paul’s confrontation with Peter, and we don’t know exactly when it becomes general teaching from Paul. It contains key words (“sin”, “works”, “justification”, “grace”, “the cross”, “faith”, “union with Christ”) which comprise the heart of the gospel. Here Paul first outlines the gospel, and then spends Galatians chapters 3 and 4, defending it.

Paul gives three arguments explaining why the integrity of the gospel was at stake.

1. The basis of our justification before God
2. Freedom from the law
3. The reason Jesus needed to die.

Justification by Faith (2:15-16)

This is the first appearance of an important word in this letter. “Justification by Faith” was the slogan of the Reformation, and we need to understand what “justification” means. Many of these thoughts have been taken from Theodore Epp’s commentary on Galatians.

Job asked: “How can a person be just before God” (Job 9:2)? God’s answer is “The just shall live by his faith (Hab 2:4). This truth liberated Martin Luther from religious bondage.

Justification is “The act of God, whereby he declares a believing sinner righteous in Jesus Christ”. It is a one-time act, not a process. No one christian is more “justified” than another. God is the one who justifies (Rom 8:33). By obeying the works of the law, no one can be justified. Paul explains later in this letter that the law’s purpose is to reveal sin, not to redeem us from sin.

In justification, God “declares” a person righteous. He does not “make” the person righteous. Of course justification leads to a changed life, which is what James 2 was all about. But justification is an act of God. Before a person was “guilty” before God, but the moment he trusts in Christ he is “not guilty”, and he can never be called “guilty” again!

Justification is more than “forgiveness”. If a person is simply forgiven and let go, he can do wrong again, and become guilty all over again. But once you have been justified by faith, you can never be held guilty before God.

Justification is also more than just “pardon”. A pardoned criminal still has a record. However, in God’s sight God no longer holds our sins on record (see Psa 32:102, Rom 4:1-8).

Finally, God justifies “sinners”, not good people. Paul says that God justifies “the ungodly” (Rom 4:5). The reason most sinners are not justified is only that they will not admit that they are sinners, or come to Christ. It is only such people who can be saved by Jesus.

This is why when Peter separated himself, implicitly implying that Jews were better, he was undermining the truth that all Christians stand equally justified before God due to no merit of their own.

Freedom From the Law (Gal 2:17-18)

The apostle Peter calls the Mosaic law a “a yoke that neither we or our ancestors were able to bear” (Acts 15:10). Here by his actions he was going under that yoke of bondage again.

Paul therefore says, “But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor” (Gal 2:17-18).

This sounds complicated, but he is basically saying: “Peter, you and I did not find salvation through the law. We found it through faith in Christ. But now after being saved you are going back to the law. This means Christ alone did not save you, otherwise you would not have needed to go back to the law. Further, when you preached the gospel to both Jews and Gentiles you told them they were saved by faith and not by keeping the law. Now by going back to legalism, you are building up what you yourself had torn down. So by tearing it down you were also sinning. And this would lead us to conclude that Jesus caused you to sin, making Jesus a ‘servant of sin’”.

Putting it another way, Paul is reminding Peter of his own experience of the grace of God in his life. To now go back to Moses is to deny everything God had done for him.

“Crucified With Christ” (Gal 2:19-20)

For Paul, the “once-for-allness” of his conversion will not allow him to turn back. The law had taken him to the gates of death. He was a condemned criminal without any hope. In turning to Christ the darkness left him symbolized by his regaining his sight, and the light streamed in. So he was happy to let his past reliance on the law die. And he would never go back there.

He then says something very precious in Gal 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”.

This is a powerful statement for the total sufficiency and efficacy of the work of Christ. The cross was for Jesus, a complete break from life. Paul is using this metaphor. In putting his faith in Jesus, he had died to his old way of life by trying to please God by following the law. He is dead to all claims that would commend him by way of the law. There went all his hopes. A lifetime of accumulation of “merit” was wasted. In a sense the old Paul died.

But Paul goes on to say something positive. “I have been crucified … yet I live”. Live in what sense? It is Christ living in him now. Every moment he lives in constant dependence on Him. He looks to Jesus for everything. This is a life that matters, and Paul cannot even consider the thought of going back.

He then says something absolutely mind blowing: He says Jesus “loved me, and gave Himself up for me”. This is so fantastic we fail to really believe it. Jesus’ love is intensely personal. Jesus did not die for the world in general. He looked through the portals of time, and saw you and me, and when He gave up His life, it was for “me”, personally. He set Paul apart before he even was born. He has done the same for us who know Christ. He has loved us even before we existed. Think about it. Put your name alongside the “me” in this verse. “The life I now live … I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me, Peter, and gave Himself up for me, Peter”! Think of the magnitude of that love. Jesus saw you and me, and chose to give up His own life to save us!

Why Did Jesus Have to Die (Gal 2:21)?

Paul gives one final argument in this section. He just asks a simple question, namely this. If it is possible to please God by doing good things and being obedient, then why did Jesus have to die in the first place? This is beautifully captured in the song by the band Mercy Me called “Best News Ever”. Some of the lyrics go like this:

Some say, “He’s keeping score”
So try hard then try a little more
But hold up, if this were true
Explain to me what the cross is for

Think about it. Even before the incarnation, Jesus was the Lord of creation. He ruled the universe, and He chose to step down and be humiliated and mistreated, and cruelly murdered on a shameful cross. Remember in Gethsemane, He cried out to His Father that if it was at all possible that God would remove this “cup” from Him (Mark 14:36)? The Father did not remove that cup. This means the death of Jesus was absolutely necessary for our salvation.

When we think we can earn God’s favor, we are effectively insulting all that Jesus did for us and “nullifying the grace of God” (Gal 2:21). The fact that earning God’s favor is impossible is why Jesus came. He came because we couldn’t help ourselves. He came because we were horribly guilty and there was nothing we could do about it. So He chose to take away our guilt by bearing it on Himself. If we put our trust in Him, God looks at us and declares that we are “Not Guilty”. The transaction is completed. It is done. Nothing can change this. Is this good news or what!

Application

Have I been saved by the grace of God? This is a question we need to ask ourselves. Grace is “God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense”. Am I trusting in myself for my salvation? My morality? My good works? My religion? If so, I am not a Christian. A true Christian is one who trusts in Christ alone for salvation. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is a gift of God – not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph 2:8-9).

Am I trying to mix law and grace? Law means I must do something to earn favor with God. Grace means God has already done everything for me through the finished work of Jesus Christ. Salvation is not by faith plus something. Salvation is by faith alone. While attending church and other religious activities have their place as good expressions of our faith in Jesus, they can never be added on to our faith to secure our eternal salvation. “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace” (Rom 11:6).

Do I really believe that I have been justified in Christ? It has been said “justified” means “just as if I had never sinned”. This is correct. We have a right standing before God, and God does not hold us guilty for any of our sin. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us” (Psa 103:12). We need never fear judgment, because our sins were already judged on the cross. “There is therefore now no condemnation for us in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1). Do we really believe this? This is tremendously liberating.

Even Christian leaders can seriously sin. This incident about the apostle Peter shows that even though he was the leader of the Jerusalem Church, he also had feet of clay. This should be an encouragement to us. If Peter could make such a serious mistake and be restored, then there is hope for us. The gospel is tremendously freeing in this way. It frees us from the guilt and burden of sin.

I need to respond well to confrontation. Peter’s humility in response is also good for us to think about. He did not hide behind his reputation or his position in the church. The fact that Paul and Peter had a good relationship with each other after this says something about Peter’s humility. This is also a consequence of the freedom available to us in the gospel. We can allow ourselves to be vulnerable and acknowledge when we do wrong. We are fully “justified” before God, so there is nothing for us to prove. This security frees us to be vulnerable.

My relation with other Christians. Let us now think in terms of Christian fellowship. When we refuse to eat at the Lord’s table with one whom we yet acknowledge to be a fellow Christian, it can only be because we think we have something that the other has not. Whether it be membership of a certain denomination, or the mode of baptism, or apostolic succession or some other theological doctrine. This is what Paul opposed so strongly, because he will point out presently that our standing before God is only by faith in Christ’s finished work on the cross, and on nothing else.

Am I willing to defend the truth at all costs? On the flip side of this, when the fundamental truth of the gospel is being compromised by someone we know, “peace at any cost” is not worth the price. This was Barnabas’ approach. This incident also shows us the power of loving confrontation when a fellow believer is seen to be sinning. A Christian who loves God, will be grateful to receive criticism, because he sees it as God’s way of showing him things in his life that he may be blinded to. The Bible says, “The kisses of an enemy are profuse, but faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:6). Let us learn to encourage correction from Christians we trust. This is a tremendous tool God uses to help us grow in sanctification.

The title of my talk is “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” with a sub-title of “Identifying Spiritual Abuse and Narcissism”.  Why Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing? This was a phrase used by Jesus regarding the kind of people we will be talking about today. The idea is that they appear to be “sheep” who come alongside us with gentleness, but in reality, they are “wolves” who can devour and destroy us.

Often when there is spiritual abuse or narcissism, the abusers are highly respected Christian leaders in public, yet those who know them well, see a different side to them.

Here is why Spiritual abuse and Narcissism is so deadly.

In normal cases of abuse, a Christian can go to God for refuge and comfort. In the case of spiritual abuse, the victim’s picture of God is so marred and distorted, it leaves them with a feeling of complete hopelessness, where they feel like spiritual worms, and are wracked with guilt and shame. This is why there are some who even walk away from the faith.

Why Talk about Spiritual Abuse and Narcissism?

Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I grew up in a strong Christian home with many Christian leaders. I gave my life to Jesus at a young age, went to a Christian School. I memorized Scripture, read a lot of books and gained a lot of knowledge. I was being groomed to become a Christian leader. So, I imbibed a lot of spiritual pride growing up. God in His grace used my marriage to expose this pride. It was a long time before I realized that I had been blinded to the fact that I was a spiritual abuser in my marriage. It took me an even longer time to realize that I had grown up in a spiritually abusive situation as well. I will explain this in more detail presently.

By the grace of God, He was faithful and helped open my eyes to the truth. I am still asking God to help me undo the years of damage I have caused and am working towards healing in my own heart as a victim, and also trying to heal the hurt I have caused as a perpetrator. We are still a work in progress because the wounds and scars have been extensive, and some are still raw. So, this subject is very close to home!

Since my eyes have been opened to these truths, I have also studied them extensively. I have observed that this is a widespread problem in Christian organizations, churches and in families, but it is not much talked about or dealt with.  That is why I am speaking about it. I know that I am probably going to shake up a lot of people, and I pray that God will use what I have learned to help others.

Here are four reasons that I am talking about this subject.

• I know that I would have benefitted if I had understood what spiritual abuse was early in my marriage. Possibly I can speak into the lives of younger versions of myself, and God-willing, help spare them and their families years of pain.
• Possibly what I share with you today can help some of you who are living in a fog of pain because of the spiritual abuse you have experienced. I pray that God will enable you to have hope and move towards healing by seeing Jesus more clearly.
• I also hope that those of you who have been so deeply hurt will be able to get some guidelines and next steps on dealing with your situations.
• Possibly onlookers will be better able to recognize spiritual abuse when it happens and be able to speak up and defend those that they see suffering.
• That we will stop being a part of the problem by praising and eulogizing spiritual leaders and putting them on pedestals.

Some Situations to Consider

The scope of my talk is specifically when spiritual abuse comes from a Christian source, not obvious cases of oppression or persecution from unbelievers.

There are some cases of spiritual abuse which are well known. For example, if a person enforces their authority and demands submission, that would count as spiritual abuse. Another obvious example is, everyone knows that church prayer meetings are great places to catch up with the latest neighborhood gossip. This can be slanderous and hurtful to those being victimized.

A less known case is when divorcees are shunned from places of Christian fellowship such as their church or their small groups. They are often told that God forbids them to remarry, without taking the time to understand their situations, such as the case of marital infidelity by the husband. This is spiritual oppression and abuse.

Another example is if a person goes to a “healer” asking for prayer when they are sick, and they are not healed. The healer then turns around and says it is their fault because they did not have enough faith. I have known people to lose their faith over such condemnation, and this is spiritual abuse.

However, the most devastating kinds of spiritual abuse are the last five points in the list. It comes from spiritual control, inducing guilt, emotional manipulation, bullying and shaming, and avoiding confrontation using various techniques. Let me give you some specific examples, so that you will begin to understand the kind of behavior I am talking about.

This is an example of having the “desire to control”. My marriage was an arranged marriage. My parents approved of my future wife before we even met. Eight months after we got engaged, my mama who was also my spiritual godfather and lived in a different country, wrote to me saying I must break off the engagement and start from scratch because I did not seek God’s will properly. He had started a theological college and was also my spiritual mentor. He prefaced what he wrote by saying he had spent many days and nights weeping in prayer and wrestling with God before he was convicted to write to me. He never gave me any specific reasons, so I wrote back that I clearly felt God’s leading through my parents who had approved the alliance, and it would be wrong to break our word to my future wife and her family for no good reason.  He wrote back that since my mind was closed to correction, he had nothing more to say. He said that he would continue interacting with me but not with my wife. After this he chose not to come to our wedding. Over the years he never explained the reasons for his opposition, despite my repeatedly asking. He refused to interact with my wife or our children until the end of his life. This was very harmful. Not a single person was willing to acknowledge the sinful abuse and mediate. They felt that since he was so spiritual, he must have had a good reason for his actions and could not have done anything wrong. Put yourself in my wife’s or her parents’ shoes and imagine the confusion and hurt this caused.

The next point on the slide is “inducing guilt”. Here is an example from an incident that happened just before my wedding. For some reason my mother felt that in order to have a truly God-glorifying wedding the bride should not wear a veil and there should be no wedding cake. So, I communicated this to my fiancé’s family who were planning the wedding. Understandably they pushed back, because this did not make any sense to them. So just a few days before the wedding, my parents visited my future in-law’s home, and my mother told my fiancé: “Do you have any idea how this will destroy the testimony that Peter has taken so much trouble to build up over the past few years?”. All of us were stunned to hear this – including me. I would do anything to be able to change what happened next – or rather, what did not happen next. I kept my mouth shut. This deafening silence on my part would mark the beginning of my marriage, where I continued to be blinded to the hurts my wife experienced from others and I failed to protect her and stand up in her defense, and also for the truth. My fiancé later shared with me that she had cried all night after that incident. She kept thinking that if she was having such a negative impact on my testimony, what would be the point of even going through with the wedding? Truth of the matter is, that God was being dishonored not by those things, but by the way His name was being used to control a situation for someone else’s agenda. Incidentally, just like many South Indian weddings, although my family did not ask for any dowry – which is a well-known evil practice, they expected the bride’s family to bear the weight of the entire wedding expenses and felt they had the right to control and to be demanding. If at all, this was the bigger sin in the whole situation. This is an excellent example how God’s name can be used to unnecessarily burden a person with feelings of guilt over things that are inconsequential. I have tried to make this right with my wife and my in-laws, but I wish it had never happened this way.

I will now give an example of “emotional manipulation”. My wife and I were going through a personal issue which we chose to share confidentially with both our parents, requesting them to pray for us. My mother immediately said she would share it with her siblings for them to pray as well. One of her siblings was my mama who had opposed our marriage. So, I told her that this was a confidential matter and that she should not share it with anyone – specially not my uncle who had cut himself off from my wife. This made my mother very upset. She said that she and her siblings were very close and always prayed for each other, and that maybe we did not know what that kind of deep Christian fellowship was like, and that I had no right to ask her to keep the matter confidential. However, I continued to insist that this issue was ours to share with the people we wanted to, and not hers. This made her so upset that she did not speak to me for a couple of months. This was the time I was leaving India to go for my post-doctoral fellowship. We left the country without her saying goodbye. This is using emotional control. When confronted the perpetrator gets hurt. So, they break communication to inflict punishment, until the victim feels guilty for what has happened, and apologizes for causing the hurt. That is exactly what happened in this case. I did apologize – and the issue never got resolved!

I am just skimming the surface of hurtful interactions we have had to face. I am not going to be giving any more details because my purpose is not to air out grievances, but to educate you on this extremely critical area of sinful spiritual abuse that is pervasive in the Christian community. Let me just say this. The manner in which I dealt with these hurtful interactions provides another example of how I myself acted as a spiritual abuser, although I was blinded to it. Whenever my wife tried to explain to me how much she had been hurt, I would tell her she was being unforgiving.  This accusation of unforgiveness caused her to think she was a sub-standard Christian. And she had nowhere to go except to suffer silently. She could not even take this to God, since it was spiritual guilt that she was experiencing. Her picture of God began to get distorted and her wounds began to fester without reprieve. Imagine what it would do to her when I told her that God says, “if you do not forgive others their trespasses, then neither will your heavenly Father forgive you”. This became a deadly weapon used by wielding Scripture. There were times when she was so devastated, I questioned whether she was even a believer! The problem was that I had a wrong view of what “forgiveness” really meant. You can forgive but still keep a distance when there is no repentance from the other party. So, the issue was not that she was unforgiving, but that she did not know how to deal with the repeated hurts that she kept experiencing, because I failed to protect her from them. And when even I was not listening, there was nobody she could share it with – not even God. Meanwhile, I genuinely felt I was doing the right thing by my reactions and was completely blind to the fact that in reality I was myself being a spiritual abuser. It grieves my heart to know how quick I was to give everyone else the “benefit of the doubt”, while I was not willing to do that with my own wife! Can you even imagine how hurtful my behavior was to her? If I had defended her, we could have together been able to deal with all the wolves that were attacking our marriage from the outside. But instead, I just piled it on even more! And after years and years of struggle in our marriage, after wrestling with God and shedding many tears on my part, God in His great mercy opened my eyes and showed me that I should have seen truth in the Word of God all along. She had been right. But by then, a lot of damage had already been done.

I now understand why at times my wife would tell me in sheer frustration: “I will really start knowing God only after you die” The point was, that the picture my side of the family and I were painting of God to her was so distorted, that it was destroying her spiritually, and also seriously damaging our children.

This is the horrible effect that spiritual abuse can have on a person, and why it is so important for us to be educated about it and stop It in our own lives and families. Jesus said that if we cause someone to stumble, it would be better for us to have a millstone tied around our necks and to be thrown into the deepest sea. That is how seriously God takes spiritual abuse.

I thank God for His mercy in opening my eyes before it was irrevocably too late, and my wife and I have been working towards healing. The wounds are deep, and the process is long. But I am so grateful to God for preserving our marriage, and that now we are on this journey together. I thank God for graciously working in my wife’s own heart by revealing Himself to her in fresh new ways that are drawing her so much closer to Him. This is how amazing our God is. He can take the worst of situations and the most brokenness and redeem it and transform those ashes into something really beautiful. I pray that if any of you are in similar situations, you would be able to learn from our experiences and be spared from similar pain. … or that you also would be able to find hope and healing at the cross.

False Shepherds

I am now going to talk about the root cause of spiritual abuse and Christian narcissism.

God speaks of false shepherds in the book of Ezekiel: “Ah, shepherds … who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them … and they became food for all the wild beasts.” (Ezekiel 34:2-5)

 This passage provides a key to understanding the source of spiritual abuse and narcissism. The key characteristics are the following:

• Top priority is “Me”. I am the most important. I am Number One.
• I use others so that I can be exalted at their expense. I don’t care how I hurt them.
• I do not have any genuine care about the well-being of others, but I may show it superficially.
• Jesus calls Himself the “Good Shepherd” and contrasts with false shepherds. There he says: “The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy but I have come that you may have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

Here is the problem.

Our society often puts Christian leaders and teachers on a pedestal.  We constantly praise and flatter them. We constantly invite them to speak in our meetings, and we consider ourselves honored if they grace our get-togethers with their presence. We look up to them. We treat them as demi-gods.  It is possible in Christian ministry to become nationally or even internationally famous, or even become very wealthy.

All of this can get into any human being’s head. This kind of glory and adulation can become addicting.

Jesus says of the pharisees in Matt 23:5-7: “Everything is done for people to see. … They love the place of honor in banquets and the most important seat in the synagogues. They love to be greeted with respect and to be called “rabbi”.

We see this in our culture. For example, I have seen pastors expect the assistant pastor or others to put on their robe on them, and they expect to be given a cup of coffee just before the church service, while they treat everyone very rudely. When ministry leaders make house visits, they expect to be thanked profusely and given money. They often will not visit those who are poorer and cannot afford good monetary “gifts”. Here is a specific way they do not strengthen the weak, while they are “feeding themselves”.

But this can get worse. Constantly being praised by people and being put on a platform, causes severe damage to anyone’s soul over time, because only God has the capacity to accept this kind of worship. The person can actually start believing they are spiritually better than everyone else. This often leads to spiritual abuse. Taken to an extreme it changes the wiring of the brain, and becomes a mental disorder called NPD (narcissistic personality disorder).

There are many Christian leaders who lie somewhere within the narcissistic spectrum. This is spiritually damaging to them and can be destructive to those closest to them, even to the point of damning their souls. I would encourage you to look at the pastors and ministry leaders you encounter in the light of all that we have talked about.

Jesus told the pharisees in John 5:44: “How can you believe if you seek praise from one another, and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” This is straight from the mouth of Jesus. Seeking praise from people can actually be a hindrance to having saving faith. That is how serious this is.

I would like to give you the opposite biblical example of how Paul and Barnabas dealt with a similar situation. They were in the city of Lystra, and after Paul healed a crippled man, everyone wanted to worship them, saying “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men”. You know Paul and Barnabas’ response? You can read about it in Acts 14:14-15. They tore their garments and rushed out to the crowds crying “Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men of like nature with you”. They did not consider themselves special and saw the tremendous danger of accepting that kind of adulation.

Every leader is a human being just like everyone else. James makes this point, even when talking about the prophet Elijah, in James 5:17. He says that Elijah was a man with similar human frailties that the rest of us have. Therefore, the bible speaks of “servant leadership”. We are to consider others to be more important than ourselves” in Philippians 2:3. Jesus Himself said: “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Every person in spiritual authority including parents, teachers, ministry leaders, pastors, evangelists, etc., are likewise called to follow Jesus and take up their cross in service, rather than lording it over others.

 Signs to Identify a Spiritual Abuser

Having already given specific examples, let me just make a couple of additional points.

Spiritual abusers surround themselves with an inner circle who constantly affirm them. The popular inner circle feeds their desire for praise and adulation. Whenever a person goes against them, they shame that person and shut them down.

Thus, the abuse becomes a self-feeding cycle that gets worse. This causes an environment of fear and intimidation rather than openness and honesty. Spiritual abusers are often willing to lie without a conscience, because they genuinely believe that protecting their platform is worth it, for “the sake of the gospel”.

Signs to Identify a Christian Narcissist

The key distinguishing factor of Christian Narcissists is a grandiose sense of self-importance and entitlement. They genuinely believe they are more spiritual than everyone else, and they have a need for constant praise and admiration. They exploit others, and frequently demean, intimidate, bully or belittle those who do not toe the line. They control by praise or punishment. Those who go against them are demonized and become a scapegoat who takes the blame for anything that went wrong as a fallout of the narcissist’s behavior. This frees the narcissist to continue that destructive pattern of behavior.

Here is an example of emotional manipulation when a narcissist is being confronted with hurt that they have perpetrated against someone.

The narcissist responds: “You do not know how much you have hurt me. Only God knows”

This makes the victim feel guilty and to desire to appease the hurt they have caused (even if it is not their fault). So, they ask the narcissist: “What did I do to hurt you?” Notice that immediately the victim’s original concern has been deflected, and the conversation has already moved elsewhere.

The narcissist may respond like this: “I do not remember. I have forgiven you and committed it to God”

See the manipulation here.

• If the narcissist has really committed the matter to God, why was this even mentioned?
• The victim’s confrontation has been flipped
• The victim is made to feel like they are the unforgiving perpetrators because unlike the narcissist they were unable to forgive and commit the matter to God.

Thus, the effect is that it induces a sense of guilt in the victim, and in confusion and frustration with a conversation that went nowhere, the victim drops the subject. This experience also makes them think twice about bringing that issue or anything else up again with the narcissist. That is how an atmosphere of fear and intimidation builds up. Often people not closely interacting with the narcissist have no idea that this kind of manipulation is happening behind the scenes. Having effectively shut down the victim, the narcissist comes out on top and gets stronger in the cycle of spiritual abuse.

Here are some other kinds of responses a narcissist may make:

• “Don’t judge me”. The Bible warns us not to judge or we will be judged
• “I answer to God, not to you”
• “God knows my heart”
• “How dare you question me? Do you know who I am?”
• “God is blessing my ministry, so clearly you are the one in the wrong, not me”.
• “You are like the person trying remove a speck from my eye, when you have a log in your own eye”

In all these ways, confrontation is obstructed with spiritual sounding responses, and the victim is unable to have any of their concerns addressed.

To make matters worse, if the victim goes to someone else in the narcissist’s inner circle, even seeking Matthew 18:15-17 resolution, those people become what is technically termed “flying monkeys”. They have been groomed by the narcissist to support their point of view, and they tend to believe the narcissists version of the story – and the narcissist often has no qualms about lying – rather than objectively investigating the truth. This only causes more devastation to the victim. So, it is important for victims to choose people who have no vested interest in the relationship.

Christian Narcissists control the narrative of the spiritual health of the ministry they lead. 

Jesus is Different

“A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not extinguish” (Matt 12:20). If you are wounded and broken, Jesus will not do anything to destroy you. He will come alongside you and help you to heal.

Jesus came to “heal the broken-hearted and to set the captives free” (Luke 4:18). This was the purpose for which Jesus came.

Jesus said that He is the “Good Shepherd”, and that He lays down His life for the sheep. He serves the sheep and does not expect the sheep to serve Him (John 10:11-16)

He says: “Come to Me” – in the context of spiritual oppression and abuse (Matt 11:28-30). “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light”. If you feel the burden of being a Christian is too heavy, it is possible you have not fully understood the freedom that is available in Jesus.

We need to study and meditate on the truths of the Word of God and the promises of God. This will help us understand our own worth in Christ and will also help us recognize those shepherds over us who do not behave like our Chief Shepherd.

He never accepts us based on our behavior. He died for us so that He could invite us as we are. The transformation happens after this as a result of His magnificent love.

“It is only those who are sick who need a physician” (Mark 2:17). This is why He came!

 Jesus can Heal You

We can be wounded in two ways: (a) By others (b) by our own sin. Usually we struggle from a combination of both.

Jeremiah poses a question to the struggling people of Judah: “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” (Jer 8:22)

A well-known hymn applies the words of the text this way:

There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.

Jesus is truly the “balm of Gilead” for all the hurting people of the world. God’s grace is always greater than all of our hurt (whatever it is) and all of our sin (however bad it is).

Philpot says: “There is more in the balm to heal than there is in guilt to wound; for there is more in grace to save than there is in sin to destroy.”

Our True Healing comes from the Cross

Jesus bore our sins on Himself so that we could be set free from all of our guilt and all of our shame.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1)

Why? Because Jesus bore it on our behalf. Every single wrong thing we ever did were borne by Him, if we have put our trust in Jesus. There is nothing left in us that God will condemn.

He looks at us and sees the perfection of Jesus Himself, because He looked at Jesus, and saw all the filth of our sin.

“God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we may become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).

A Note to the Victims

First of all, I want to say I am really sorry for what you have gone through. Please hear me clearly. If you have been mistreated spiritually or emotionally by a Christian leader (I repeat that it could be a spouse, a parent, a teacher, a pastor, a ministry leader), it was evil and sinful. Period. They have not treated you the way Jesus would have done. Let us call a spade a spade! God cannot be pleased with such behavior.

However, since we have seen that often personal confrontation of a narcissist does not work, how can a victim deal with it?

• Fix your eyes on Jesus. Comfort yourself with the Promises in His Word.
• Fight the urge to feel sorry for yourself and to stew in your own hurt
• Avoid fighting for your rights, unless the honor of God is at stake
• If you cannot find any way to stop the behavior (by trying to talk, to confront, Matthew 18:15-17, etc.), if possible, distance yourself from being in a position where you can be abused
• If for any reason distancing yourself is not possible, and you do not see any resolution in sight, then take the matter to God
• Ask God to give you the grace to release bitterness and unforgiveness from your heart. Only then true healing can begin

But on the other side of the coin we need to be honest. Even victims in their pain and confusion often respond sinfully to the abuse they face. Unfortunately, a narcissist will even use those sinful responses to further tear down the victim and make a more solid case for themselves. This can cause a downward spiral for the victim. Satan “the accuser of the brethren” also uses this as a weapon to make the victim feel even more miserable, guilty and hopeless. So be aware of this.

Have You Been Victimized? Seek Help

Each situation is different. As we have seen situations can become very complex. Victims should seek help using God-given means. Spiritual abuse wounds the heart at the deepest level, and you may need others to walk alongside you, and help bind up your wounds and point you towards the Great Physician Jesus.

Pray for wisdom regarding how to deal with your situation. God promises: “If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of Him who gives freely without reproach” (James 1:5)

Actively seek help. You may not be able to deal with this alone.

• Your church
• A Biblical Counsellor/Psychologist
• Support Ministries such as The Deborah Rise Movement
• Christians whom you trust for support

Feed yourself on the truths and promises of Jesus. He is the One who created you, and who fully knows every detail of what you are going through, and who fully understands your situation

Safeguards Against Becoming a Spiritual Abuser or Christian Narcissist

I want to now address anyone having any form of God-given leadership or authority. As you can see, the pathway to Spiritual Abuse and Christian Narcissism is very wide and slippery, and it is extremely easy to develop these patterns of behavior. So how do you guard against them?

• Submit yourself under the authority of God in everything you do (family, work, ministry, etc.)
• Recognize that you are a sinner who frequently sins, even if you are a leader
• Think higher of others than yourself.
• Treat others with respect, and work towards really empathizing with their feelings when they share
• Do not make excuses for sinful behaviors such as pride, self-righteousness, lying, selfishness, lack of compassion, anger, lust or adultery, etc. Repent quickly and wage war against your flesh.
• Seek only to please Jesus and do not get your worth from your public reputation
• When you wrong someone in public, apologize in public. When you wrong someone in private, apologize in private. Always seek to make things right
• Accept correction from anyone (even your children or subordinates). Wage war against thoughts such as “Who are you to tell me this”. “Healthy correction is good, and if you accept it you will be wise” (Prov 15:31)
• Be vulnerable and encourage honesty and show yourself open to correction
• Hold yourself truly accountable to one or more people in your life
• Integrity means being the same in public as you are in private. Battle against any behavioral pattern in yourself that is different in private

A Note to the Onlookers

Micah 6:8 “Seek justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God”

“Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and to untie the cords of the yoke” (Isa 58:6)

God takes justice seriously

• To see someone being victimized and not doing anything about it is tantamount to agreeing with the oppressor. In God’s eyes you are also culpable of the evil because you did not choose to intervene.
• To keep quiet only enables the abuser.
• We should be more willing to “err” on the side of the vulnerable rather than on the side of the powerful
• Do not flatter or worship Christian leaders. It can be dangerous or even damning to them.

Conclusion

I think this wraps up what I wanted to share with you today. Take this message to your homes, your ministries, your churches and your workplaces. Talk about it and make changes. We need to educate, and we need to fight for God’s honor.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, I want to pray for all those who are listening to me right now. Some of them have been hurt by Christian leaders and I want to just commit them into your hands at this time. I pray that they will be able to find healing in you. I also pray for those here who may be spiritual abusers and narcissists, that the Holy Spirit will convict them about the dangerous path they are on and draw them back to you. Finally, Lord I pray for each one of us. Please give us wisdom to guard against the pitfalls, and courage to speak up on behalf of the vulnerable when we encounter spiritual abuse. In all of this, may Jesus be glorified, and I pray this in His name, Amen.

They try many ways to get to heaven by doing good deeds – giving to charity, volunteering, helping the needy, etc. They want to earn their way to heaven. They hope that their good deeds will cancel out their sins and so God will somehow allow them into heaven.

Others try to do all kinds of self-denials – fasting and praying, giving up many things, and even hurting themselves. They think that God will be pleased with their devotion and will not consider their sins. Many of these things may be good in themselves, but they will never remove our mountain of sins and make us fit for heaven. God is pure and holy. He cannot allow anything unclean or impure to enter heaven. King David, a great king in the Bible, prayed to God, “Wash me and I shall be whiter snow.”

Praise God, the blood the Lord Jesus shed on the cross for my sins has washed away the dark stain of sin from my heart! Now I am clean and white and pure because of the Lord Jesus’ sacrifice! God will welcome me in heaven! No one can work at going to heaven. God gives eternal life as a FREE GIFT! I am singing because I know for sure that my sins are forgiven and I am on my way to my heavenly home!

The Bible tells us: “Our citizenship is in heaven.” Is your heart singing also, my friend? Even if we don’t ever meet here on earth, I look forward to the day when we will meet in our Father’s house! 

Prayer: “Thank You, Father God, for Your priceless gift of eternal life in heaven with You and the Lord Jesus.”

“He came into the world to save sinners”, the Bible tells us. He told His disciples that He was going to die. His disciples were filled with sorrow to hear this. But He told them He will come alive again on the third day! The religious leaders were angry with him because He forgave peoples’ sins, showed love and compassion to sinners, and said God was His Father. So they wanted to kill him. They arrested him and their Roman leader decided to crucify Him – nail him to a cross – a cruel punishment given to murderers.

You see, no one could have arrested the Lord Jesus or crucified Him, because He was God. But he came to earth with one purpose – to die and pay our punishment for our sins. So He did not oppose or resist anyone. He willingly went to the cross for us. The Son of God who was the only human without any sin, who was kind and loving, who served everyone, who went about doing only good, was condemned to die like a criminal on a cross! 

He was beaten, mocked at, and humiliated. A crown made of thorns was placed on His head.  With all the torture He was very weak. He was made to carry His cross up a hill. There on a hill, He was nailed to a cross by his hands and feet. He suffered terrible pain, but He suffered in silence because He suffered for us. As the Lord Jesus hung on the cross, He bore your sins and my sins. He carried all our guilt, all our failures, and all our shame on that cross. Lord Jesus died that day on the cross. His heart-broken disciples watched as their Master’s body was wrapped in cloth and laid in a tomb in a garden. But a glorious surprise awaited them on the third day!!

Prayer: “Lord, who am I that You should suffer and die for me? I fall at Your feet and thank You for your awesome sacrifice to save a sinner like me.”