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Well, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. We are taking a little break from our
study of Isaiah to consider a passage that is found at the end of Paul’s letter to the Galatians.
My sermon text this morning is Galatians chapter 6 verses 11 through 18. Galatians chapter 6 verses
11 through 18. You’ll find that on page 1158 of your few Bibles. Friends, this is the Word of God.
Let us hear it with reverence and awe. See with what large letters I’m writing to you with my own
hand. It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised
and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.
For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to
have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. But far be it from me to boast,
except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me
and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision,
but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them
and upon the Israel of God. From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the
marks of Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.
Let’s pray for God’s blessing upon the preaching of his word. Our Lord and Father in heaven,
we thank you, God, that you give us a clear revelation of yourself in the holy scriptures.
They are indeed a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, a guide to our way. We pray that by
your word and spirit, you would cause your word to find a lodging place in all of our hearts and
souls this day. And we pray that that word through the blessing of your spirit would bear much
spiritual fruit in our lives. Cause us, Lord, through what we learn today to grow in the
knowledge and in the love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And Lord, we pray that you would set
a guard over my lips, that I, your unworthy servant, may only speak that which is faithful
to your word. In Jesus’ name we pray and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated.
Well, the title of my sermon this morning is Boasting in the Cross of Christ. And children,
the three words you can be listening for in my sermon today are the words boasting,
Christian, and supernatural. Boasting, Christian, and supernatural.
Well, dear friends, there is a whole lot of boasting that goes on in the human race, isn’t there? For
example, sometimes you will hear residents of a particular city boasting in the greatness or the
popularity or the accomplishments of their particular city. Business advertisers are
quick to boast about the superiority of their particular product or their particular brand
of a product in contrast to their competitor’s brand. Sports fans will often boast about the
accomplishments of their favorite teams in comparison to other teams. I know those of us
in Pittsburgh don’t necessarily know what that is about, right? But there’s a lot of boasting
in the arena of sports. And of course, secular elitists in the government, in academia, the media,
and the entertainment industry will often boast, or what’s called today virtue signal,
about their supposed intellectual and moral superiority to us knuckle-dragging traditional
Christians. And sometimes they will do so through subtle or not so subtle attacks upon the biblical
truths and the biblical ethics that are embraced by Christians. Friends, as fallen sinners, we are
naturally prone to boast in ourselves, to boast in our own achievements, in our own supposed works
or merits or moral virtues. But few portions of God’s word are better suited to humble sinful
man’s arrogant pride and to silence sinful boasting than the apostle Paul’s epistle or letter to the
Galatian churches. Now, Paul wrote this epistle to the Galatians in order to address an urgent
theological and pastoral crisis that was facing the Galatian churches. In this epistle, Paul combats
the false gospel being preached by a group of Jewish Christian false teachers who are often called
the Judaizers. And these false teachers boasted in the old covenant ritual of circumcision. And
they boasted in their own attempts to keep God’s law. And they were trying to persuade the Gentile
believers in the churches of Galatia to engage in this same kind of legalistic boasting. But my
friends, in verse 14 of this final section of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the Holy Spirit
through the apostle Paul shows us believers what we as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ really
ought to be boasting about. He says in verse 14, but far be it from me to boast except in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.
Now, we’re used to seeing cross symbols. Many folks wear crosses as jewelry. But in the world
of Paul’s time, to boast in crucifixion, one of the most horrible forms of torture would be regarded
as counterintuitive in the very, at the very least ridiculous. Why would you boast in the cross? Well,
beloved, because on the cross, Jesus our Lord accomplished our eternal redemption.
There is certainly a lot of sinful and proud boasting that we who are Christians should strive
to avoid. But there is also a Christian kind of boasting that it is our joyful duty to engage in.
And my friends, that is boasting in the cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Now, as we turn our attention to our text for this Lord’s Day morning,
we learn here first of all that sinful boasting arises from sinful motives. Sinful boasting
arises from sinful motives. And those sinful motives are an expression of a heart of sin.
It starts off, Paul starts off here in verse 11 by saying this as he’s wrapping up his
letter to the Galatians, he writes, see with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.
Why does Paul mention this? What’s Paul’s point here? You see, when we compare Paul’s letters
in the New Testament, we find that it was a customary practice for Paul to employ the services
of a secretary. That was very common in Paul’s day. And it was also his practice to dictate his
letters, therefore, to his secretary. Now, engaging a secretary does not in any way compromise the
work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was superintending all of this. But that raises the
question, if Paul had been using a secretary to write the contents of Galatians, why does he at
this point take up the pen himself? At this closing point in his letter, he takes up the pen
and he writes the remainder of this letter in his own hand. Again, in this verse, Paul tells us that
he is writing with large letters as we see in verse 11. Now, why does he mention that? He says,
see with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. Why does Paul point that out?
Why does Paul point that out? Now, there has been a lot of scholarly guesswork and speculation in
trying to answer that question about why Paul decided to finish up Galatians in his own handwriting
and why he wrote with such large letters. Some, for example, have speculated that Paul perhaps
had a problem with his vision. And maybe that’s why when he wrote himself, he needed to write
in large letters. Or perhaps he wrote in large letters in order to authenticate the
genuineness of the letter, in order to assure the recipients of the letter that, hey, this is
actually from Paul. This is not a fraud. This is not someone pretending to be Paul. This is actually
Paul himself writing this letter. Or perhaps the large letters were meant to underscore the
seriousness of his message. Whatever Paul’s reasons might have been in writing with his own
hand and writing in such large letters, it is safe to say that Paul’s large letters would indeed have
the effect of authenticating the genuineness of this letter and also of underscoring just how
serious Paul was about the subject matter that he addresses in this letter. This is very important
in other words. And then in verse 12, Paul says this, it is those who want to make a good showing
in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised and only in order that they may not be persecuted
for the cross of Christ. In this verse, Paul exposes two sinful motives of the Judaizers,
these false teachers who were trying to convince the Gentile Christians to get circumcised and keep
the Mosaic law as a condition for salvation. First of all, he says that they want to make a good
showing in the flesh or as the New International Version puts it, they want to make a good
impression outwardly. In other words, they are motivated by a desire to impress others. Perhaps
they wanted to impress the Jews in Jerusalem and they wanted to impress others by converting the
Gentile Christians in Galatia to their own Judaized distortion of Christianity. A second
motive that Paul mentions is that they also want to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ,
the cross of Christ being Paul’s shorthand for the gospel message itself. After all, the gospel
message centers on Christ’s saving work on the cross. And why is it that the message of the cross
invites persecution? Well, because the cross confronts mankind with its sin, its incapability
of redeeming itself by its own works or merits. Dr. James Boyce in his commentary explains it as
follows. He says, to have the cross is to have three disquieting and humiliating doctrines.
Number one, man is a sinner. Number two, his sin brings him under the curse of God, which curse
Christ bore. And number three, nothing man can do can earn salvation. For if this were possible,
the cross would have been unnecessary. These doctrines humble man. Consequently,
men hate the cross and actively persecute those who proclaim it. This is one of the
chief evidences of the truthfulness of Christianity, of the biblical Christianity
that we affirm. This chief evidence is that no mere human religion would be invented like
Christianity because Christianity humbles us. False religion exalts man, exalts our pride
and our own efforts to merit God’s favor. But Christianity humbles us and proclaims that your
only hope is found in Christ. As we sing in that hymn, my hope is built on nothing less than what?
Jesus’ blood and righteousness. Not my own righteousness, not my own blood, sweat and tears,
but Jesus’ blood and righteousness alone. And then Paul goes on in verse 13 to say this,
for even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to
have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. In this verse, Paul is saying that not even
the Jews, including these Judaizing Christians themselves kept the law of God about which they
boasted so much. Even though they had circumcision, even though they had the external written code of
the Mosaic law, they themselves did not keep the law of which they boasted. And the reason why they
wanted to convince the Galatian Gentile Christians to become circumcised was so that they might boast
in your flesh. In other words, again to quote from Dr. Boyce, they were trophy hunters and wanted to
be able to report on mass quote conversions in Galatia. The humbling parallel, Dr. Boyce says,
the humbling parallel would be in the tendency to take pride in counting the number of decisions
for Christ and baptisms today. Now, brothers and sisters, we rejoice when we hear of people
coming to faith in Christ. When we hear news of conversions, we do rejoice in that. When we
hear of people coming into the fellowship of the church through baptism, that’s a source of rejoicing
for us. But the temptation is to take credit in that, to boast in that. Beloved, there’s many
things that we can take away from this passage as applications, but let me just mention a couple
things. First of all, let us be warned, brothers and sisters, against the temptation to take pride
in outward appearances and external things. Be warned about taking pride, for example,
in your church affiliation. We are Orthodox Presbyterian. We love our denominations,
history and heritage, and we are blessed to be part of that heritage. But let us not boast in
our denominational heritage or in our local church affiliation. Let us not boast in the amount of
time we spend in private devotion, in prayer and Bible reading, or let us not boast in our wealth
and giving money to charity and so forth. Now, those are all good things, but they are not to be
a source of boasting. Just to take you to a couple other passages of Scripture that underscore the
need for believers to avoid such boasting, one passage from the Epistle of James, James 1,
verses 9 through 11, urges God’s people to avoid boasting in their wealth. In James chapter 1,
verses 9 through 11, we read these words. James writes, Let the lowly brother boast in his
exaltation and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass
away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass, its flower falls,
and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Again,
we need to recognize that in God’s kingdom, the first shall be last and the last shall be first,
and there is no boasting in the body of Christ on the basis of economic distinctions between
the members of the body. But what about boasting in spiritual things? Well, the Apostle Paul
addresses that in passages like Ephesians, the very familiar passage Ephesians 2,
verses 8 and 9, where Paul reminds us, For by grace you have been saved. What is grace?
God’s riches at Christ’s expense. Grace is God’s unmerited favor given to unworthy,
undeserving sinners. And Paul is saying, You’re not saved by works, by grace you have been saved
through faith. Well, can you boast in your faith? Well, no, he goes on to say,
And this, meaning this faith and the entire process of salvation from beginning to end,
This is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works,
so that no one may do what? So that no one may boast. We have nothing to boast about.
Oh, dear listener, be sure that you do not base your hope of salvation upon a proud
and self-righteous boasting in your own flesh, in your own human achievements,
human merits or virtues. Boast not in yourself. Boast only in Christ and his cross work.
You know, someone once said the only thing that we have to contribute to our salvation,
there is something we have to contribute to our salvation. You know what it is?
It’s our sin. That’s the only thing we contribute to our salvation. Our salvation is by grace,
through faith, God-given faith from beginning to end. Not only are we justified by faith,
a truth that Paul vigorously maintains and defends in his letter to the Galatians,
but we are also kept by grace. We don’t begin by the spirit, but then complete salvation by the
works of the flesh. No, salvation is of grace from beginning to end. Both present justification and
final salvation are by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And some would say,
what about good works? Good works are the necessary fruit and evidence of a true and living
faith, but your good works do not contribute one iota to your final salvation. Christ’s work alone
saves you from beginning to end and in all of the phases of salvation. So let us boast in the Lord.
Are you trusting in Christ and Christ alone for your salvation from beginning to end? Look to
Jesus who was crucified for the forgiveness of our sins and raised from the dead for our
justification so that whoever believes in him, trusts in him, might not perish but have
everlasting life. And that brings me to my next point as we consider verse 14.
We learn in this verse that Jesus Christ is the only worthy object of Christian
boasting. Jesus Christ is the only worthy object of Christian boasting. And I say Jesus Christ,
now Paul mentions the cross of Christ, well because the person and work of Christ are
inseparable. Jesus Christ is known in his work. We know him in the scriptures and he
he has brought us salvation. So Paul says in verse 14, but far be it for me to boast
except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Notice how he describes Jesus. Jesus is our Lord.
He’s divine. He is our God. He is the Lord incarnate. We boast in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. Now the Judaizers boasted
in their flesh, but Paul is emphatic that he will not boast in anything else but in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ. And when Paul talks about the cross of Christ, he is referring to
the atoning sacrifice of Christ. Christ’s death on the cross to pay the penalty for human sin. This
is the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement. That Christ took the penalty for our sin as our
substitute, our sin bearer. That’s what he was doing on the cross. We call that the doctrine,
again, the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement. Now theological liberals and other
unbelievers often despise and mock at the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement.
I’ve even heard of liberals mocking those who believe in the substitutionary atonement,
whom they often call fundamentalists in the minds of some theological liberals. Anyone who
holds to the classic biblical doctrines that we affirm in, say, the apostles in Nicene Creed,
including the virgin birth of Christ and his bodily resurrection, they call us fundamentalists.
And sometimes you hear of liberals mocking the substitutionary atonement as a religion of blood
and gore. Well, yes, I boast in the blood and gore of Jesus on the cross. Not because I love
the thought of my Savior suffering the infinite wrath of God for me, but because what Jesus did
on the cross is my only hope of salvation. Biblical Christians’ glory in the awesome truth of the
precious blood atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. We recognize that the atonement is the heartbeat
of the gospel and any so-called preaching that either avoids, denies, or even sidelines the cross
of Jesus is certainly not gospel preaching. We believers’ glory in the cross, because on the
cross of Calvary, Jesus our Lord suffered for our sins and accomplished, not just made possible,
but actually accomplished the redemption of his believing people. Again, Dr. Boyce puts it well.
He says, the legalizers had a motive for their actions. Well, so did Paul. Only his motive was
not that of a fear of persecution or of a desire to boast in statistics. He was boasting in the cross
of Christ because of what the cross had accomplished in his life. As Paul looks back on his life,
he realizes that before his conversion, he was exactly like the legalizers, exactly like them.
Once he too was ruled by externals, he too gloried in human attainment.
When he met Jesus, all this passed for him, so much so that he is able even to apply the bold
image of crucifixion to it. The world with its selfish and fleshly attitudes was crucified to
him and he to the world. In its place came Christ alone, Christ who is everything.
My dear Christian friends, this morning as we partake of the Holy Supper by a living faith
in our living Lord, what we are doing is we are boasting in the cross of Christ.
In the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, we remember, we celebrate, and we
commune in the salvation victory that our Lord Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross of Calvary.
Today we make our boast in the Lord and in his cross work. As you take the elements of the supper,
you’re saying, I’m a wretched sinner. I can’t save myself. I boast in Jesus. He’s my only hope.
Today we make our boast in the Lord and his cross work. My dear Christian friend, do you
glory and boast in the cross of your Lord? And when you share, have opportunities to share your
faith with others, do you focus on yourself and your testimony? There’s a place for that. I
understand. There’s a place for that. But we need to get away from ourselves as quickly as we can
and point people to Jesus and what he did on the cross and by his resurrection from the dead.
Do we glory and boast in the cross of our Lord? And finally, as Paul wraps up his epistle to the
Galatians, we learn in this closing section, verses 15 through 18, we learn that true Christianity,
gospel Christianity, is not natural and external, but supernatural and internal. True Christianity
is not natural and external, but supernatural and internal. The Judaizers came to the Galatian
believers claiming to bring a message of peace and hope and mercy, a message that would result in
these Gentile Galatians actually becoming part of the true covenant community, the true Israel of
God. If only they would submit to circumcision and keep the law of Moses, especially the ceremonial
aspects of the law seemed to be in view for them. They would say to the Galatian Gentiles,
it’s great that you guys have come to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah. That’s great.
We believe that too. But you know, if you really want to be on the in crowd, if you really want to
be part of the true people of God, you should be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. But they
were already part of the true Israel of God, the true people of God. Paul blasts this false gospel
of the Judaizers into oblivion. He does so by asserting that in union with Christ Jesus,
neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. Circumcision
was just a covenant sign. It was important. It had its place. It was a means of strengthening
the faith of God’s people living under the old covenant. But it pointed like all covenant signs,
it pointed beyond itself. It pointed to a reality beyond itself. It pointed to the new creation in
Christ. In verse 16, Paul pronounces God’s peace and mercy upon those who embrace the true gospel.
And he implies that only those who accept this true gospel belong to God’s true covenant community,
the Israel of God, as it says in verse 16. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be
upon them and upon the Israel of God. In verse 17, Paul then expresses the hope that the Galatians
will no longer trouble him by allowing themselves to be influenced by false teachers like the
Judaizers. Paul was very upset and anxious about these believers and how they were being led astray
by these false teachers. And he says, don’t trouble me anymore. Stand firm on your faith. Don’t wander
away after false gospels. And in verse 18, Paul very appropriately ends this amazing letter by
pronouncing God’s grace upon them. How appropriate in a letter when the main purpose has been to
defend the gospel of grace against a false gospel of legalism. As he says in verse 18,
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.
My dear friend in Christ, always remember that it is not the external trappings of religion that
ultimately matter. These things of course have their place, but they are worthless apart from
the work of the Holy Spirit and the grace of the new birth. May God bless his means of grace,
but may through the work of the Spirit, may those means of grace point us beyond themselves
to the one who is himself the giver and secure of grace for us, namely our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. Amen. Let us pray.
We thank you, God, for the finished work of Christ, the cross work of Christ,
which has secured for your people an eternal redemption. We pray that we would glory in,
indeed boast in, not ourselves, not our testimony, but in Christ and his cross work. We pray these
things, Heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name, and all of God’s people said, Amen.
Let’s respond to what we’ve heard by rising and we’ll sing it
as our hymn of dedication 350, Beneath the Cross of Jesus.