Send us a text

In the last episode we saw that the Apostle Paul had introduced the believers in Galatia to the concept of freedom in Christ. Paul knew once he had introduced this idea the legalists would show up in force, and they did!  Legalists came to Galatia to challenge this concept, and when Paul journeyed to Jerusalem they showed up again.

Anytime freedom in Christ is championed, whether it be now or then, legalists will always voice an abjection. 

However, the Apostle Paul was ready for the legalists. When Paul left Antioch for Jerusalem he brought with them what Pastor Harris calls a secret weapon. And he brought the secret weapon to the private meeting with the Jerusalem church. The apostle would need this secret weapon because the word of the meeting had leaked out to the Pharisee Christians in Jerusalem and they immediately crashed the meeting.

The secret weapon that Paul had brought was actually a young believer named Titus, and this man Titus had never been circumcised. In other words he was a full blown gentile, meaning that his body bore no external sign of righteous standing with God.  This young man was special.  He enjoyed such a deep intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ that everyone at this meeting could see Christ in him. Especially when he was compared to those narrow minded legalists who suddenly burst into the meeting room.

Oddly enough, there is no record that Titus ever spoke a word in that meeting.  Apparently he just sat there dead to himself and alive in Christ and preached a silent sermon of Grace.

Those in the room could see that this Christian faith is based on a relationship with the living Christ, not rules, it always had, and it always will, and Titus was living evidence of that relationship.  And he did this without him ever having obeyed a single rule, Jesus had come to dwell in his heart and every apostle there could see it. He was living proof that salvation is based upon faith, and faith alone. In fact salvation has always involved Jesus plus nothing, and is not Jesus plus the law.

It had better not ever be Jesus plus the law because none of us can keep that law.  We have fallen to a sinful nature and that nature will not allow us to keep that law.  The only human being that had ever been able to keep that law was Jesus Christ and he kept it perfectly.

In this message Pastor Harris will examine the concept of the law and will examine why we cannot keep it and why struggling to keep the law will never save us.

Support the show