Begun by the Spirit, Kept by Grace

There is a man in your community right now who is working himself to death to get to heaven.

He does not know it. He thinks he is a Christian. He attends church most Sundays. He reads his Bible. He gives. He serves. He keeps the rules. And underneath all of it runs a quiet, desperate current: if I do enough, God will accept me.

Maybe you have sat across from someone like that. Maybe you recognize something of that current in yourself. Maybe that person is you.

Paul had a whole region of churches doing exactly this. And he could not fathom it. These people had heard the gospel. They had received the Holy Spirit. And now they were trading grace for a system of religious performance. His word for what happened to them is striking. He says: someone bewitched you.

Here is what Paul wants the Galatians, and what the Spirit of God wants us, to understand:

The grace that saved you is the same grace that is keeping you, and it is the same grace that will one day bring you home. You did not begin with God by your effort, and you will not be perfected by your effort. The Christian life, from first breath to last, runs on grace.

Paul works through this in five pointed questions, and the answers are all the same. We will follow those questions through Galatians 3:1–5.

Verse 1: Who Bewitched You?

Paul opens with a word that should stop us cold: foolish. He is so troubled by what has happened that he cannot hold it back. These people had heard the gospel clearly. They had seen Jesus Christ set before them as crucified. And now they were walking away from it.

The word "bewitched" is the key to the whole passage. Paul is not speaking of literal sorcery. He is saying that what happened to these Galatians was so irrational, so contrary to everything they had been taught, that the only way to account for it was that something had gotten into their thinking. They had been duped. Their minds had been captured by a lie.

It is not surprising when the unbelieving world falls into false religion. That is what the flesh does left to itself. What astonishes Paul is that someone who has known the truth, who has seen the atoning death of Christ proclaimed openly, would turn around and trade it for a system of religious performance. The mere fact that it happened is what he cannot get over.

Verse 2: How Did You Receive the Spirit?

Paul narrows to a single question and calls it the only thing he wants to know: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?

There is only one right answer, and every Galatian in the room knew it. They had not received the Holy Spirit by keeping religious rules. They had received the Spirit by hearing the gospel of Christ and believing it. That is how it happened for Paul. That is how it happened for them. And that is how it happens for every person God saves.

Paul will return to this same logic in verse 5, which tells you how central it is. The receiving of the Spirit is the hinge. Everything follows from it. The Spirit came, not through law-keeping, but through the preaching of the gospel received with faith.

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.Romans 10:17 (LSB)

Verse 3: Are You Now Being Perfected by the Flesh?

This is where Paul presses hardest, and it is where the message hits closest to home for us.

Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

The Galatians had gotten the beginning right: they were saved by grace through faith, by the work of the Holy Spirit. But somewhere along the way they had taken the reins back. They had decided that what started by the Spirit would have to be finished by their own religious effort. Paul calls this foolishness, and he is right.

We have to be honest here. Most of us are not in danger of confusing grace and works when it comes to justification. We know we are not saved by our own effort. That ground, for many of us, is well established. But legalism in sanctification is just as deadly, and just as foolish, as legalism in justification.

Think about how this shows up. Is church attendance important? Yes. Is modest dress important? Yes. Is giving important? Yes. None of those things are wrong. The problem comes when we begin measuring our standing before God by how well we are performing on those things. When obedience shifts from a response to grace and becomes the ground of our confidence before God, we have made the same error the Galatians made. We have started trying to be perfected by the flesh.

We are not kept in the faith by our natural will or moral consistency. The flesh will not carry us through. God saved us by spiritual birth, not natural birth, and He will keep us the same way. Saved by grace, kept by grace.

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.Philippians 1:6 (LSB)

Verse 4: Did You Suffer for Nothing?

We do not know exactly what the Galatian believers suffered for Christ's sake, but Paul clearly knows, and so did they. Whatever it cost them, they paid it. Their liberty in Christ had come at a price.

Paul's point is this: if you now turn from grace to law, if you abandon the gospel that cost you so much to hold, then what was all that suffering for? Was it nothing? Did you go through all of that only to end up back where you started, trusting in your own performance?

He does not want them to look back on what they endured for Christ and conclude it was wasted. But that is exactly what happens when a Christian walks away from grace into religious self-reliance.

Verse 5: Does God Work in You by Works or by Faith?

The fifth question brings everything home. Paul points to the ongoing work of God among the Galatians: the Spirit being provided to them, miracles being worked in their midst. And he asks: how is that happening? Is it because of your law-keeping? Or is it because God is acting in response to faith?

The answer is the same as verse 2. God is not at work among you because of what you have done. He is at work among you because He is gracious and He responds to faith. The God who gave you grace to repent and believe gives you grace to continue repenting and to continue believing. His work in you does not stop at conversion. It continues through every day of your life until it is finished.

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, laying aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.Hebrews 12:1–2 (LSB)

Where We Land

Paul asked the Galatians five questions, and every one of them had the same answer. Not by the law. By grace. By hearing with faith.

You did not talk God into saving you. You did not qualify. You did not climb high enough or clean yourself up enough. The Spirit came to you because God, in His mercy, sent the preaching of the gospel to your ears and gave you faith to believe it. That is the only explanation for why any of us are here.

And on the other side of that: the same God who gave you grace to repent and believe is giving you grace right now to keep repenting and keep believing. He is not finished with you. Jesus is the Author of your faith, and He is also its Perfector. You are not holding yourself in the faith. He is holding you.

So let the man working himself to death to earn God's favor hear this: the door is not works, it has never been works, and it never will be. Christ did the work. Trust Him.

And let the believer measuring their standing before God by their performance hear this: you are not kept by your consistency. You are kept by His. Stop trying to be perfected by the flesh. The Spirit who saved you is the Spirit who is sanctifying you, and He will not stop until the day of Christ Jesus.

The grace that saved you is the same grace that is keeping you, and it is the same grace that will one day bring you home. Rest in that. Walk in that. Go and live like it is true.