One of the more enlightening moments I’ve had in my life, I had during the time of my sabbatical in Louisville, KY. And I hope it’s not too discouraging to you all to hear that it did not happen while I was in a classroom. It actually took place while I was listening to Ryan Fullerton talk at Immanuel Baptist Church where Lili and I attended while we were away. But it didn’t even happen while Ryan was preaching. This enlightening moment I had took place while I was listening to Ryan give some announcements.
What I realized in that moment was how powerful a role the gospel plays in producing love in a community. I didn’t realize it at that moment because I had never seen love in a church community. I know it here quite well. As your pastors, Ray, Nathan, and I feel loved. And I want you to know our love for you. I’d seen and felt love here deeply among this congregation before ever going to Louisville. But what I realized was the role the gospel plays in creating that love among a community of believers.
You see, when we went to Immanuel, it was the first time that I sat under someone else preaching for any consistent period of time. Prior to the sabbatical, I had preached almost every Sunday for eight consecutive years. And I found that as I sat listening to Ryan preach each Sunday my soul was being nourished as he held up the gospel before us week-by-week. However, after a while of hearing Ryan hold up the gospel before me each Sunday, his wife, Christy, was diagnosed with cancer. Therefore, Ryan took what amounted to an indefinite leave from the church. He stopped preaching, stopped leading things, and stopped much of everything in order to focus on his wife and care for his family. Yet, on this certain Sunday morning, after a long absence, he stood up to make announcements. And as he was reading the announcements, I found my heart rejoicing just to see him and hear him again – even if it was only to make announcements. I realized in that moment that the Lord had put a deep love in me for Ryan. But it wasn’t because we’d been able to spend great amounts of time together or had a great number of meaningful conversations. We hadn’t. I realized that love was growing in me toward him to the point that my heart leapt up within me as he was making announcements because this brother had been holding out the gospel in its beauty to me week after week. That’s when I realized the power of the gospel in creating love in a community.
And from the moment of that realization, I grew anxious to get back here to this community and hold up the gospel week after week for you again and again. Therefore, it’s fitting that in our study through Galatians in which we’ve celebrated the gospel in all its beauty, that we take a week to see what love should look like in a community of believers. And the great thing is that we do not have to depart from this study to do it because I think this is the main focus of Galatians 4:12-20.
In this text Paul appeals to the Galatians as one who loves them and one to whom they had expressed their love. So, my hope is that as we see these things that it might transform how we relate to one another as a community, growing even more in our love for one another and demonstrating that love to each other in a more powerful manner. So, with that said, I want to outline walk through this text in a way that will sound like we’re reading 1 Corinthians 13, seeing what love is like and what it does in a Christian community. Therefore, first we see that Christian love longs for others to know the freedom that comes from the gospel.
As Paul begins this section of text, he begins by pleading with them, by entreating them, by begging them to do something. So, what is it that he is begging them to do? He writes, “Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are” (12). Paul pleads with them to become as he is.
Now, I don’t think this means that Paul wants them to be like him in every respect, as if Paul thinks he is the epitome of what a human should look like, has the ideal personality, etc. When Paul says that he wants them to become as he is, he means that he wants them to experience the blessing of being free from the law. After all, as he mentioned, he, a Jew, has become as they are as Gentiles, and yet now they want to bind themselves to a law that will only serve in condemning them.
So, we see that at the end of the day, Paul is not writing this letter because he wants to overcome some opponents who had come into Galatia and were disrupting them. He wasn’t simply wanting the Galatians to think rightly. Though he wanted no less. Ultimately, he wanted them to know the freedom from condemnation that he was experiencing. He wanted them to know the joy that he knew, the delight before God that he knew. He had found something incredibly freeing when he believed the gospel, and he loved the Galatians enough that he was grieved that they would return to a position of slavery.
And we need to understand that as a community. As much as I’ve wanted each of us to understand the blessing of justification by faith alone, it is not enough that we focus on ourselves getting this. It is not enough that we focus on ourselves knowing and walking in the freedom that we have because of the gospel. That is good, but it is not sufficient. Christian love demands that we devote ourselves to making sure that our brothers and sisters here understand that and walk in that freedom. So, though week-by-week through this study you may have examined your own thinking and living and found yourself growing in your understanding of and delight in the gospel, I want us now to move beyond simply thinking of ourselves and long to see everyone in this body grow in their understanding and delight in the freedom of the gospel. I want to encourage us to make ourselves instruments by which others come to know the freedom and beauty and glory of the gospel. We must do no less if we are going to aim at loving others in this body even as we love ourselves.
But there is great news that goes along with this. First, see that I’ve exhorted you to hold up the gospel to one another and fight for one another to delight in it and walk in it. Well, second, I want you to know that Christian love is heightened toward those who hold up the gospel for you.
Do you see how this works? I’m telling you to hold up the gospel for others, but I also want you to know that as you do this, their love for you will supernaturally increase toward you. We see it here in our text. After entreating them to begin verse 12, Paul begins to reflect on when he first brought the gospel to the Galatians, and he speaks of how they overflowed in love for him.
He writes, “You did me know wrong. You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus” (12-14).
So, when Paul first was with the Galatians, he had some kind of ailment. We don’t know what it was, and it probably does not aid us to speculate. But we do know that the illness somehow brought him to the point of sharing the gospel with the Galatians. Maybe he initially was going to go somewhere else but his sickness limited him so that he went to the Galatians. We do not know. We simply know that he was sick and for some reason his sickness led him to be with the Galatians and preach the gospel to them.
Paul also tells us that his condition was a trial or temptation to them. You see, in this day and in this culture there would have been a mindset that said that if someone was sick, then perhaps the gods were against them. I guess in some ways the same can be true of things in our day. Oftentimes we hear people say things like, “What have I done so that this sickness has come upon me?” We have as much trouble as Job in realizing that the righteous suffer or as much trouble as Jesus’ disciples in realizing that some people are blind not because they or their parents sinned.
So, you can imagine someone coming to you in the midst of a culture that tells you that sickness is the judgment of the gods, and that person who comes to you bringing you a message of hope and of good news of how you can be justified before God, coming to you with some kind of obvious sickness. It was no doubt a temptation to them to write him off. Why would they even take the time to hear him?
However, they didn’t write Paul off. They didn’t shut their ears to him. And as they heard him preach to them the good news that Christ lived a perfect life, died for their sins, was raised on the third day, and that they can be justified before God simply by placing their faith in Christ and not relying on their good works, their hearts were stirred, they believed, and they received the Holy Spirit. And the result was that instead of writing him off, they gladly endured him. Their love for him grew. In fact, as a demonstration of how clearly Paul knew of their love for him, Paul reminds them in verse 15 that they would have been willing to have gouged out their own eyes and given them to Paul if necessary. If Paul had said, “I cannot preach the gospel to you anymore because of my eyes,” they would have gouged out their own eyes and said, “Here, take mine. We love the good news you’ve brought to us. We love to hear you proclaim this message.” That’s the kind of love they had for Paul.
But where does that love come from? It comes supernaturally from God as the Spirit within you brings delight in response to the gospel. It’s the love and affection that was increased in my own heart toward Ryan Fullerton in Louisville, though we had not known him long. It’s the love and affection that was so obvious to me that it rose up when he read announcements. That kind of love doesn’t come merely because someone’s lovable. As I mentioned, I had spent very little time talking with Ryan. But he’d been holding up the gospel for me Sunday after Sunday, and the Spirit was producing love in me toward such a messenger. I think it’s the same love that we’ve known here. It’s supernaturally created by the Spirit in response to the gospel.
And Paul was writing about that because the Galatians couldn’t deny it. If they were going to deny the message Paul was bringing them, Paul wasn’t going to let them overlook the love that the Spirit had produced in their hearts toward him when he first heard the gospel. And we know it as well. So, the great news from verses 12-14 is that even as we demonstrate our love by longing and fighting for others to know the freedom that comes from the gospel, so as we hold the gospel up before our brothers and sisters, their love for us will be increased. It’s like a beautiful ascending spiral.
Yet there’s more in this text. After all, you might now be asking, “If Paul and the Galatians had such affectionate love for one another, then why did he write in Galatians 3:1, ‘O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?’” And you might wonder why so much of this letter has been such an argument. But there is an answer for that, and it is not something that goes against what has been said already. It is this: Genuine love not only holds up the gospel, but genuine love is willing to declare the truth, regardless of the response of others.
Paul references that response of the Galatians because he fears that they might respond differently to that same gospel message today. After all, false teachers were coming in and telling them Paul was wrong. Therefore, Paul writes in verses 15-16, “What then has become of the blessing you felt? For I testify to you that if possible you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me. Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?”
Now, Paul asked this question, knowing that it was a possible reality. Perhaps the Galatians would respond to Paul by saying, “Paul, we now want nothing to do with you. We wish you would have agreed with us, but since you haven’t, away with you.” Nonetheless, Paul held out to them the truth of the gospel and the truth of justification by faith alone.
You see, there’s a temptation to think that love is seen when we simply all pretend like all is well. But that’s not love. If a man says he is going to leave his wife, and you and that man have walked closely as friends and brothers, there is a temptation not to want to disrupt the waters there. There is a temptation that says, “You’re friends, just tell him that you understand he’s going through a hard time.” But the demand of Christian love is that you must tell him that he cannot leave his wife and call him to repentance.
Nor is it love to hear your brother or sister talk about their struggles, discern from what they say that they have bound themselves to a legalism that sees their standing before God as dependent on their good works, and just let that go because you don’t want to get into discussion with them. That’s not love. That might go for good and peaceful conversation, but it’s not love. Love would hold up for them the gospel, realizing that if they don’t want to accept the truth that it will drive them away. But if they do hear it and accept it, then the Spirit will produce a love in them for you more deeply rooted than anything this world knows.
You see, the false teachers were taking that route of something that looks like love. Paul writes in verse 17, “They make much of you, but for no good reason. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them.” You see, the false teachers were telling the Galatians how great they are, that they were able to obey the law, perhaps, among other things. They were building them up. But Paul says, “You want to know why they’re building you up? It’s so that you might boast of them.” He exposes their self-centered motives.
Again, let’s go back to the example of a man who simply decides that he’s going to leave his wife. If that happens, there will be those around him who tell him he’s doing the right thing. There will be those around him who will build him up, tell him he deserves better, and that he’s going along the right path. In every situation that I’ve known of where someone is tempted to disobey God’s Word in some kind of public manner like that, that person can point to friends around them who tell them they’re doing the right thing. The person might even say you, “At least those people love me.” It happens all the time. I’ve lived through it. You’ve lived through it.
And I want to say something about that. If you have those kinds of friends in your life, then open your eyes to their motives. They’re not telling you that because they’re great and loving people. They’re not even saying that because they’re trying to be understanding. Paul shows us why they’re saying that. They’re saying that because they want you to make much of them. They want you to think they’re great, to tell others they’re great, and to think they’re better than others. That’s their motive. That was the false teachers’ motive as well. And Paul exposes it as a shallow impersonation of love.
Love doesn’t build up others to the detriment of truth. It tells others the truth regardless of how that person might respond.
So, then, you might ask, “Does genuine love then not care about building others up or making much of them?” In the ideal setting, would the church be full of people who never make much of others? No, it wouldn’t. In fact, ideally, the church would be made up of people who love to exalt one another, even when others cannot benefit you.
Clearly Paul isn’t saying, “It’s not good to make much of people” because he writes in verse 18, “It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you.”
That is, Paul built them up. He delighted in them. Read of Paul’s letters to the churches and you will read the writings of a man who delighted in building up those over whom the Lord had placed him. But he didn’t do it simply so that they might make much of him. And that is evidenced in the fact that Paul made much of them not only when he was present with them. And Paul expected them to make much of others who came to them with the gospel, even when it wasn’t him.
Genuine love almost cannot help but making much of others. When we really love someone, we delight in exalting them before others. When we are prideful and envious, we have no desire to do these things. But when our hearts have been filled up with love by the Holy Spirit, we actually seek opportunities to build up others – even, and perhaps especially, in their absence.
When I was in Louisville, I found myself again and again exalting you all before others. I would tell my peers that they would want to get in line to take my place if they could. I would tell of the grace of God in your life and the clear evidence of that again and again, and I loved doing it. In fact, I did it enough that I made Aaron O’Kelley want to move his family here, and even when he decided to, I was confident that he would soon see what I know – a community whose lives are filled up with the grace of God.
So, we don’t respond to those who puff others up simply to be thought well of themselves by refusing to exalt people. Rather, we build up those whom we love even when they cannot benefit us, even when they are not around.
Yet, there’s one more thing about love we see in the text. Love labors as much of necessary to see others grow to maturity in Christ.
Paul writes in verses 19-20, “My little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you! I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.” The first thing I want us to see in these verses is that Paul did not like needing to confront them. If you enjoy confronting people, then there’s something unhealthy in you. Yes, love is willing to confront, but simply to thrive on confrontation is not love. And here, Paul wishes he could change his tone. But he is willing to speak in this tone because he has a goal for them. He wants the Galatians to grow to maturity in Christ, and he was willing to toil and labor for it.
Paul gives the picture as if he is a mother going through labor again for them. He had already labored to bring them the gospel, and now he is laboring in order that they might not stray from it. Again, it’s as if he is going through the anguish of childbirth again. And there’s a reason why he uses that image. It’s because this wasn’t a walk in the park for Paul.
In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul is talking about all of the things he has suffered for the cause of Christ. He mentions being beaten with 39 lashes on five different occasions, being beaten with rods, being stoned, three times shipwrecked and adrift at sea, in constant danger, without food, and cold. Yet, then he writes, “And, apart from other things, there is a daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?” (2 Cor. 11:28-29).
You see, Paul carried upon himself a commitment to labor for his brothers and sisters in Christ until they grew to maturity in Christ. If they were weak, he allowed himself to feel it. If they fell, he felt righteous anger. If they needed correction, he was willing to speak the truth to them – in harsh tones, if necessary. Did he do this because he got thrills from it? Of course not. He did it because the Spirit produced love in his heart for those to whom the Lord had directed him. And he was therefore willing to do whatever necessary to see them grow to maturity in Christ. That is what Christian love looks like.
And so this morning we have the privilege in the midst of our study through Galatians and our celebration of justification by faith alone to stop and get a glimpse of what Christian love looks like. When we love our brothers and sisters, we long for them to know the freedom of the gospel, we grow in our love when they hold up the gospel to us, we tell them the truth regardless of the cost, we delight in making much of them, and we do everything necessary to see them grow in maturity. That is what love looks like, and that is what I pray spreads like a fire across this congregation. If we truly loved one another like that and acted out of that love, then I cannot imagine how clear it would be to the world that we are indeed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, let’s pause this morning, remember the gospel, delight in it, and then ask God to help our hearts to be filled with love in response to that gospel. Then, let’s discipline ourselves to loving and serving ours brothers and sisters. Let’s even celebrate together as we come to the table. Amen.