Killing the Karma Gospel
- David Fairchild
- Jan 21, 2007
- Series: Galatians
TEXT
Galatians 6:4-8, 16-18: “But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. 5 For each will have to bear his own load. 6 One who is taught the word must share all good things with the one who teaches. 7 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”
16-18: “And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. 17 From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. 18 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.”
INTRODUCTION
In this last message from Galatians, we’re going to look at two challenges for us:
1-Sowing in the Spirit (vv.7-8)
2-Learning in community (v. 6)
These are important points since the entire book of Galatians has challenged us to live out the Gospel in every area of our lives.
This book tells us that Christianity is different from any other religion in the world. All other religions basically say, “Do the right thing, or you’ll get it!” Gospel Christianity tells us something entirely different, it says, “No, no, the essence of Christianity is not do, but done!” The essence of all other religions is, “Do or you’ll be judged,” and the essence of Christianity is, “One was already judge for you and it is done. Now rest in that!”
The entire letter to the Galatians has expounded on this distinction, but now we come to verse 7 and it seems as if Paul has suffered from a lapse in memory and has forgotten all that he has previously written. Or, it just might be that we read the text with our own interpretation and this is what gets us so confused when something sounds out of key.
Have any of you watched the American Idol season premier? I find it so fascinating during these auditions when someone belts out a song before the panel and it is so horribly off key, but the person singing thinks it is perfect. That person is called “tone-deaf” and will probably need to keep their day job because they won’t make it as a singer. When it comes to Scripture, many of us are tone deaf as well. We think something sounds right in our own heads and when that assumption is challenged, it’s hard to hear since it sounds right to us.
This passage rings a certain tone and we hear it in a way that is popular and even sounds “on-key” in our heads, but actually it is quite “off-key.” My job is to play Simon Cowell and tell you it’s “bloody ridiculous.”
Now, if you’re new to Kaleo, this passage of Scripture certainly sounds like something you would imagine a preacher saying.
STUDY
Verses 7-8: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”
It sure seems as if Paul is commending that you, “Do good things or else you’re going to get it from the angry guy upstairs.” The problem is that we can’t assume Paul has totally forgotten everything he’s been saying in the last six chapters only to close with a statement that contradicts his previous points.
You don’t write an entire book teaching the importance of peace between Pakistan and India, only to summarize in the last few words, “and I’m looking forward to India going to war with Pakistan. The end.” You don’t give a speech and then in summary completely contradict everything you’ve said.
We then have to ask ourselves if the way we’re reading it is askew. Obviously there has to be more to what Paul is saying then what we’d take at face value.
What Paul is telling us is very important and very interesting, and if we put it in context, it’s a great lesson for us. Paul is telling us a couple of things about the structure of the universe.
Paul said vv. 7-8: “…whatever one sows, that will he also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” This actually flies right in the face of what a person in western culture believes.
Here is what Paul is saying: just as there are objective principles at work in physical nature, which we have to learn and adapt to, there is an objective order in the area of morality. There are objective principles in the moral order.
“Whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” This is saying two things:
- “Whatever you sow, that will you reap.” If you sow corn, you will not reap tomatoes. It doesn’t matter how much you want it to be tomatoes, no matter how much you feel it, no matter how much you wish it, it won’t become tomatoes. It’s an objective fact. You sow corn, you’ll get corn. If you sow tomatoes, you’ll get tomatoes. If you sow nothing, you’ll get nothing. If you sow poorly, you’ll get a poor crop. If you sow well, you’ll get a good crop.
- “You will reap.” It will come up, it may look like nothing is happening, it may feel like nothing is going to come of your sowing, but the truth is that eventually it will come in and you will reap. Now, this is very different from what you’ve come to think and perhaps you’re friends have come to think.
In the physical realm we know that even if you don’t believe in gravity, the principles of gravity are true whether you believe them or not. If you jump out of a plane telling yourself that you refuse to believe in the laws of gravity, you’ll find out that the laws of gravity disagree with you. It’s true whether you believe it or not.
But when it comes to the area of morality and spirituality, we think it’s different. You may not believe something is immoral, but that doesn’t make it so. You can believe that what you’re doing is moral, and it may not be. You might think that morality is based purely upon your opinion of it. In other words, what’s good for me is good for me; what’s good for you is good for you. This is a popular opinion today.
Western culture doesn’t believe that there is an objective moral order even though they agree that there is an objective physical order. If you think something is right or wrong in your mind, it is right or wrong in reality. Paul is going right in the face of this kind of thinking. Paul is saying to us that there is an objective moral order just like there is an objective physical order.
If you’re thinking, “Yeah, that’s right, wrong or right is dependent upon what I believe, not some moral order or standard outside of me,” you don’t really believe that, and you don’t live that way. You always know what a person really believes by their actions. If you are the president of an airline who says that flying is safe, but refuse to fly and demand that you take trains everywhere you go, you probably don’t really believe flying is that safe. What you really believe is shown by how you live.
You may say that all morality is up to you and that there is no such thing as an objective moral order, but you don’t really live that way. Do you really think the murder and rape of children is perfectly acceptable? Do you say that it is simply impractical, or do you say it’s wrong? Is it wrong no matter what the popular opinion is, so that if you traveled to another country and this practice was common, would you say, “oh, that’s just there personal expression,” or would you say, “stop, that’s wrong?”
As soon as you begin to claim anything is wrong, no matter what the opinions are, you’ve moved away from a moral feeling to a moral standard. A moral feeling is subjective, but a moral standard is objective and true whether a person believes it or not. When we hear of a story of some child being grossly treated in such a way, you don’t just say, “yeah, that’s not going to help society much;” you’re outraged! Why? Because it is wrong, and it doesn’t matter what the rapist thinks.
Paul is right. You can claim whatever you want, but there is an order and standard which is superior to ours and it is what we turn to and appeal to when we are outraged by some horrible crime.
Paul is not only showing us that there is an objective moral order, but that there is an organic moral order. Notice that Paul says, “God is not mocked…,” That kind of statement today has fallen under the “God is cranky and don’t make Him mad” chapter. This is a different picture than what Paul is painting. It seems as if Paul is saying, “If you’re a Christian, and you don’t do right, God is going to send a bolt of lightening and zap you!” Or, you might think that God is going to make you sick, He’s going to take away your house, or He’s going to ruin your finances if you don’t keep up this objective moral standard.
Listen, there are plenty of people that live in our culture who don’t find themselves as all that religious, but when something goes wrong in their life, they immediately ascribe it to something they’ve done wrong. They think a bolt of lightening was sent from God because they weren’t living right. Also, they think if something goes right for them, they must have been doing well in keeping some standard of good deeds or morality. The sad truth is that most Christians think this way in one form or another. Basically, most Christians believe in a kind of Christian karma.
When Paul says, “God is not mocked,” he is simply recapitulating what Moses said years ago in Numbers chapter 32:23: “your sins will find you out.”
You can’t treat God flippantly or lightly. “God is not mocked” is a way of telling you that you can’t simply shrug at your actions; you can’t blow him off and think what you want the way you want it. Now, does this mean that judgment won’t come upon those who mock God and treat Him lightly? Not at all; Paul is saying as much. But what you need to understand is that this kind of judgment is an organic judgment. The picture of the moral order of creation is an organic one.
Paul used an organic example by speaking about sowing and reaping for a reason. It’s what is. If you attempt to break the structure and design of creation, you’ll end up reaping what you’ve sown, so that the judgment that comes upon you is a natural judgment when you break the design of what God has created. God doesn’t run around zapping Christians with lightening bolts every time they fail to live up to His moral standard. The standard is inherent in our created order. When we go against this moral standard, we move against our true humanity and created purpose. This disruption in the objective moral order causes us to reap poorly.
If you sow poorly, you’ll starve. It happens gradually, but punishment and reward are linked together. If you eat fatty foods, you may have a heart-attack. Why? Because what you are doing is moving against your physical design and order. The heart can not process that much fat because it wasn’t designed to. When you go against the design, the heart breaks down.
If you buy a car and you’re supposed to change the oil every 3,000 miles and you choose not to, the car may blow up at 60,000 miles. Why? Because that isn’t how it was made. It was designed a certain way, and it runs best when it moves according to its design. You don’t need a mechanic sitting around punishing people for their actions; the physical order will take care of that. It doesn’t have to be supernatural.
There are natural consequences for our actions, and Paul is teaching us that this is what happens when we move against this moral order. Think about this: God has made your heart a certain way.
When the Bible teaches us the necessity of forgiving, it isn’t some arbitrary rule that God decided to come up with to make our lives miserable and difficult. God didn’t come up with that so that we’d have another hurtle to clear. God isn’t arbitrarily making our life hard by creating this standard so that you have to work to get to heaven. He isn’t up there saying, “Well, those who make it will be the worthy ones because they finished the obstacle course of life in time.”
If God says in His word that you must forgive, that He commands you to forgive, and it’s a sin if you don’t forgive, why would He do that? If we don’t, God is saying to us that it’s going to hurt us. If you don’t forgive, it will slowly but surely destroy you. God did not build the human spirit to be embittered. It simply doesn’t work that way.
If you sow bitterness, you’ll reap horrible loneliness. God isn’t saying, “That person is bitter, what am I going to do? Ahhh, I’ll make them sick or let one of their children get sick.”
Don’t you see that when God gives you a moral imperative, instructs you to live and love a certain way, or abstain from certain things, though He is concerned about His honor and holiness, He’s also concerned about your joy? When He says, “this is the way it works,” He’s not only glorifying Himself by showing off His holiness, He’s also bringing great joy to you because you’re moving according to your created purpose.
How about your generosity? God desires that you are generous with your money and you don’t hold on to it with clinched fists. And it’s not just a kind of thin giving He’s interested in, He wants you to be radically generous with it. What is He doing? Is He saying, “Yes! That’s a good one—they’ll really suffer if I tell them to give their money away! Then they’ll be worthy of getting into heaven.” No! He’s telling us that if we spend all our money on ourselves, it will hurt us. If we’re selfish and refuse to be generous with what we have, it will damage our hearts and we’ll suffer from moving against our design. We won’t be like Jesus! We were built to be like Him.
When you see forgiveness in this way, when you see generosity in this way, you realize that it isn’t some arbitrary rule, but that God radically loves you and is seeking your joy. You were built to live and love like Christ. To be truly human is to follow the only One that was. God’s glory is inextricably linked to your welfare. Inasmuch as God is glorified you are satisfied and filled with joy. Why? Because you’re living and loving the way you were made to.
You have to see this when you come to passages of Scripture in which you may not understand why God says to do or not to do certain things. You may not understand why God says that you should not be sexually active before you’re in a covenant marriage. You might think, “If it feels right, do it! How can something that feels so good be so wrong?” But, it is because your heart is not built that way. Sex is a good thing. God created us to desire and enjoy it. But, if we misuse what He’s given, we move against our created design and it will hurt us. It will damage our hearts and cause us to break down.
You may not know the specific reason, but you can always know the general reason; it’s to make you everything you ought to be. It’s for your joy and for God’s glory.
Very few things that God says not to do feel bad right away. If we don’t forgive, it may not feel bad but good to fume about why we’re angry with that person. It feels good. Why? Because sin is a seed that grows in stages and at times doesn’t seem as if anything is happening with it. You don’t throw the seed down and immediately there is a plant. You don’t think if you are bitter that your life will be destroyed right away, or that having sex with whomever you choose will destroy you immediately. It doesn’t happen like that. But, whatever you sow, that will you reap. It will happen.
To sow against the will of God is to sow against the fabric of your being. To move against God is to move against yourself. To sow sin is to reap your own destruction. That’s what the text is saying. It’s saying that it will destroy you. The word for destroy is disintegration. It means that piece by piece your true humanity will come apart. Just as the heart disintegrates when you don’t honor its design, so does your soul if you don’t honor its design.
This is another way to define sin. Sin is defined in many ways in Scripture, and this is one of them. Sin is that which moves against your created design. When you break one of God’s loving commands, you should not see it as breaking a busy rule that is a burden, but going against the owners manual for your heart.
Sin is going against your purpose. You were made for a purpose and reason.
Don’t you see that right and wrong, good and bad are inextricably linked to design and purpose? For instance, if I ask you if your watch is a good watch, you know that I’m asking this in reference to its intended design and purpose. I’m not asking you if it’s good at repelling wild lions on a safari. You know this. When I ask about it, it’s in reference to what it was made for. It’s a good watch if it moves according to its intended design and purpose.
Good and bad, right and wrong are not in abstraction. They are not on their own. Do you see what this means? If you are someone here that isn’t quite sure whether or not you believe in God, the idea of good and bad, right and wrong has no basis whatsoever because if we are nothing more than the product of time plus chance, we have no design or purpose. So, if a group of strong men kill and destroy a group of elderly and weak women, it can’t be wrong. It’s what happens in a chance universe. The strongest survive, that’s the way it goes down.
But if we’re made, if we’re designed with a purpose and with intention, then we can use words like good and bad, right and wrong because we know instinctively that when asking if he or she is a good person it is according to their design which is the standard of the Designer. We were designed to be something more than a bag of molecules and we all know it.
Paul in this passage doesn’t only say there is an organic physical and moral order, but he shows us how to fulfill it.
Verse 8: “For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”
What does this mean?
Does it mean that if you do a bunch of good deeds they’ll be put on a scale at the end of your life to weigh against all your bad deeds? Is he saying that it’s all about getting judged in the end? Now, of course there is judgment at the end of our days.
But what Paul is saying here is that the corruption which we’ll face happens now, not just in the future when we’ll die. The corruption we experience is due to our organic nature. When we sow against our design and purpose, we’ll come apart at the seams and come unraveled.
Is the flesh only the body? No. Sins like pride and greed don’t have to be physical, but immaterial. The flesh is that part of you that wants to be God. It’s that part of you that wants to be your own Savior and your own Lord. This is why Paul always contrasts the flesh with the Gospel.
To be under the law, trying to earn your salvation is to be in bondage to your flesh.
Galatians 5:16-18: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”
If you say, “I’ve got to forgive, and read my Bible, and obey the commandments and become a better Christian, etc.” and do all these things for the next several years, you’d only find you’re sowing to the sinful nature, to the flesh. And, you would begin to reap destruction very quickly.
How many people have you met that are tired of being the way they are and they say they need God in order to change? They become a Christian and after turning over a hundred new leaves and doing all the right things they become more judgmental, more critical, less gracious and merciful before they claimed to be a Christian. Why? Because they are sowing to the flesh. They haven’t really become a Christian yet because they’re still trying to be their own savior by using God’s rules. They’re worse off. There will be more destruction in their life.
You can’t just turn over a bunch of new leaves because you don’t want corruption and destruction in your life without a heart transplant performed by the Gospel.
What it means to sow to the Spirit is to understand the Gospel to the point that you no longer live out of the “do” mentality, but the “done” mentality. You do what you do because of what was done for you. To get rid of the fear and selfishness that drives you can only come from what Jesus Christ has done for you, not simply what He calls you to do.
There is a huge difference between common virtue and true virtue. In common virtue the heart is restrained, but in true virtue the heart is changed. In common virtue you’re generous and honest, but only because you’ve restrained the pride and selfishness in your heart. But in true virtue, you’re generous and honest because pride and selfishness has been destroyed in the heart.
There is a way, without changing the inside of the heart, to become a good moral person. There are many people who are not believers that are generous and honest. You are motivated to do these things out of fear; you don’t want to caught lying, so you don’t lie. Or, you don’t want to be seen as stingy and selfish so you are generous with your money. It’s motivated by a fear of getting caught or a selfish desire to succeed and to be well thought of; it’s not really because your heart is transformed. You’re not getting rid of the fear or pride, instead you’re using it to motivate you to do things. This is why we lie and do what we do: pride and fear. You can use it as a motivation. This is why we are shocked when an upright moral citizen who is a stalwart for morality and values does something outrageous. Just all of the sudden they totally fall apart. Like a car that has not been oiled, they are not really moving according to their design, which is to first love God and be loved and changed by Him. They haven’t understood that it’s not about “do” but “done,” so they do all they can and are not resting in Christ and they break down.
But, in true virtue your heart is transformed and you become a new creation. Your heart is utterly changed because it has found its rest in Jesus Christ.
What will deal with your pride and fear? The Gospel. The Gospel teaches us that you are a sinner and in desperate need of a Savior since you can never save yourself. The Gospel also teaches us that because of the perfect life Jesus lived, having never failed being truly human, our fear of ultimate failure can be destroyed because if we trust in Jesus, His success is imputed and credited to our account. Not only does our Father forgive us of our past sins and failures to live according to our design and His glory, but we are considered as having lived the perfect life of His Son, and therefore we can’t truly fail. We are seen as righteous and perfect before Him.
Only when you see that you are sinful and loved at the same time, will you start to live a free life which sows to the Spirit.
If the Gospel is true, that it is not moral reformation but inward transformation, then it is more complicated than just keeping the rules which sow to the Spirit, or breaking the rules which sow to the flesh. When Paul confronted Peter, Peter had forgotten the Gospel, not the rules. This is why Paul doesn’t simply confront Peter with the Law, but comes to him and tells him that the reason why he’s slipped into racism is because he’s not in line with the truth Gospel, or in other words, he’s forgotten the Gospel. Paul is telling him that he’s not thinking about the Gospel; otherwise he would have never withdrawn form the Gentiles.
The Gospel gets rid of the pride; it doesn’t restrain it. Peter was an Apostle and had forgotten the Gospel in that moment. Peter was sowing to the sinful nature. If Peter can screw up and let the Gospel slip through his hands, is it not possible that that is also our biggest problem?
What hope is there for you and I then?
Verse 6: “One who is taught the word must share all good things with the one who teaches.”
This means that you need to be a student of the Gospel. Those who are “taught” must share. You will never be able to grow in the Gospel by yourself. The word means a major disciple, a major student—not a casual auditor of the class, but someone who is connected and is learning and studying.
It means also that if you are under great instruction, share your resources with your teacher. But this isn’t all it means. That is only part of it. Sharing your resources is more than money. It’s yourself. It’s your life. If you are to grow in grace you need to be under the instruction of the Gospel in community. In a church with more than 40 people, you’re probably not going to have that kind of intimate relationship with your pastor that you’d have with someone who is further along in the Gospel. If you’re in a church with more than that, you need other people to instruct you in this community; people who know more about the Gospel than you do, to whom you are accountable, and in a koinoniea fellowship with. It doesn’t mean you’re coming as an auditor to just consume intellectual goods, but that you are plugged in and in tight relationships. This is why we encourage you to get into home fellowships. If you’re not in a home fellowship, you’re probably not in that kind of community in this church. You need it. This is what Paul is saying.
Are you an auditor or are you a student? You need to find people and develop in community. Even Peter strayed and he got instruction from a friend in the Gospel—and he needed it.
Lastly:
Verse 17: “From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.”
Paul has scars to prove his love for others, for the church. If you want to be an instructor, expect scars. And if you want to learn from someone, learn under someone that has them. This kind of fellowship will bring us scars.
Paul received his by being stoned, beaten, whipped, shipwrecked, and even a viper took a bit of his hand. For the sake of the Gospel he shared his life and all things for the sake of the lost.
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