Boasting in Christ

Pride is a complicated problem. We want people to be prideful in their work. We want people to have a certain amount of pride that they invest in their work and their labor. We want people to have pride in who they are at some level. We just don't want anybody to be prideful. In other words, we like when someone really invests and takes pride in what they do. We just don't like them to talk about it. We don't like it when people boast about what they do. We want them to do it quietly. No one likes a boaster. Well, unless that person is a professional athlete or Donald Trump. Somehow then it's acceptable and entertaining. We know it's not socially acceptable to boast. So we don't always say what we're boasting about, but when we glory in it in our hearts, when we meditate upon it in our minds, we're boasting. We boast of ourselves. Our skills, our accomplishments, our significance, our work. We boast of ourselves that we're better than others at something or somehow. The key question this morning is how much do you boast of Christ? Is there anything you boast of more than Christ? How much time do you spend praising Him in your mind? How many words do you use to proclaim Him throughout the week? Boasting is what we talk about and what we think about. What do you boast about with your tongue? What do you glory in with your heart? I pray this morning we are challenged to boast only in Christ above all else. The message this morning is simple and clear. We are called to boast in Christ because we glory in the cross of Christ. We are called to boast in Christ because we glory in the cross of Christ. Let me read Galatians 6. I'll begin in verse 11 and end in verse 18. But the main focus is really that simple declaration from verse 14. But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. I'll begin in verse 11. See with what large letters I am 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 fall 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. For 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. Now, the context here is it's the end of the book of Galatians. This is the last section, and he begins writing in larger letters, I think. Some people said the larger letters are from his bad eyesight, so he wrote the whole thing in larger letters. I think he actually started writing in larger letters, kind of like we would put something in bold at the end. is to emphasize, this is my last summary, my last punch, the last focus of my remarks. Let no one fool you into boasting in circumcision. Boast only in the cross of Christ. The focus, he's bringing it back, is summarizing the entire book of Galatians, is that we are to boast only in the cross of Christ. The first question I want to ask as we think about what it means to boast in the cross of Christ is this. What keeps us from boasting in Christ? What keeps us from boasting in Christ? Well, for the Galatians, they were boasting in their circumcision. They were boasting in what they did. It wasn't enough to boast in the cross of Christ and what God did for them, what God proclaimed. They wanted to boast in what they did in response to God. They wanted to boast in their work. Their circumcision. They missed the point of God's redemptive plan. They missed the point of God's Word and His Son. See, if we look back to Genesis, Genesis 12, God called Abraham out. God initiated that relationship. He was a pagan. Abraham knew nothing of the one true God. And God sought him out and said, Go. And Abraham responded, Yes, I will. I will go. Then Abraham failed. He lied about his wife in Egypt. And God said, I will give you a son. And this isn't just giving a barren wife and a couple of calf children a son. This is giving the world salvation. This promise of a son to Abraham and Sarah is giving a promise that he's going to bring that son who's going to reverse the curse as he promised in Genesis 3.15. Abraham started to doubt God because he was getting older and older that he wasn't going to give him this son. And so he said, here, take Eleazar, take this servant of mine. And God says, no, I will give you a son. And then there's this great declaration. It says he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. Abraham believed the promise. He believed that God was going to provide the son. And God then took that faith and counted that as righteousness. Abraham wasn't righteous. He had already lied. He's going to fall and sin more. But God said, I count you as righteous. Verse 16, they get sick of waiting again. This time Sarah throws Hagar, her servant, at Abraham and says, lie with her. She'll give us a son. God can't do it. They have a son named Ishmael. God descends again and says, no, I'm going to give you a son, a miraculous son, a perfect promise, fulfillment of that you will have a child through Sarah. And then he gives a sign, the symbol, the circumcision. You see, the promise and the sense in that promise is what made Abraham declared righteous. It wasn't being circumcised. Circumcision was just a sign to remind them. It was the promise and the faith in that promise that saved them. The circumcision comes afterwards. What the Galatians are doing is making the circumcision the promise. They are reducing the covenant of God to a mere act of their own. They stopped listening to the promises of God and believing in them and letting that be salvation. Instead, they try to prove themselves in obedience. See, Christian, let me first talk to you. Where is your confidence and your assurance? Is it in your baptism? Is it in your service? Is it in how much you pray? Is it in how you lead your family? Is it in how many committees and programs you've been involved in? You see, so many Christians, I think the tendency is to believe in the gospel, to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and then we get so involved in all the activities that we stop trusting grace and we start relying upon what we do for God. We start focusing on the cross of Christ and we just think about all the things we do for Christ. We like to set up a control. You see, that's what a salvation by works is. It's trying to control. It's trying to have assurance in our own works. Because if we just trust in the promises, we don't have that comfort of control. My fear is this, is that we too easily make Christianity a to do list. Now, I love to do lists. I love making a long, detailed to do list. I don't like honey do lists. I want to make my own list. I want it to define what I'm going to do, because they're the things I want to do. And when I do those to-do lists, I love marking through them. I don't just check the side. I mark through it, because it gives me great comfort. I have accomplished this. I'm going to destroy it with my pen. And I don't throw the list away when I'm done. I leave it on the counter. hoping maybe my wife would put on the fridge. See, I love a to-do list because it makes me feel comfortable. I'm in control. I look at the list, I see what I can do, and it gives me comfort in the control that I can do these things. I've done them. It gives me a sense of purpose and significance. I'm in control of what I do. Look what I can accomplish. I boast in those things. As Christians, we too easily make Christianity a to-do list. You mark off, I've read my Bible, I've prayed, I've served, I've been on the committees, I come to church regularly. Yes, those things are good, but they're not what Christianity is. They're a response to what Christianity is. Christianity is believing in the power of the gospel to free you from your sins. Christianity is all about Jesus Christ and what he has done. He has died on our behalf. He has risen again and we place our faith in Him. And that's why we do all those things. We're self-centered. We like to focus on what we're doing for God and boast in that. If you're not a Christian here this morning, I don't know you. I don't know where you're coming from. I don't know what you've experienced. But I do know one thing. Your denial of the gospel comes down to one thing, and it's that your love for sin. Non-Christians deny the gospel, not because of intellectual issues, I believe. You deny the gospel because you love your sin too much. You deny the gospel that would free you from that sin because you love that sin. You see, in order to come to Christ and get forgiveness, you have to ask forgiveness for that sin. And by asking for forgiveness for that sin, you're saying that is wrong. And when you start to ask for forgiveness and you admit that it's wrong, you have to repent and stop participating in that sin. You're afraid of giving something up, but what you're doing is clinging to destruction and death. You're not giving anything up. You're gaining everything. You gain peace with God, love from God, a new family, one that will fight with you against that sin. Your heart will be restless until it finds rest in God. You see, if you're not a Christian, you're boasting in sin. Or rather, you think you're boasting in sin. You think you're delighting in that sin. You think you are boasting over it. But in reality, it's boasting over you. That sin is boasting over you because it's not just something you're enjoying. It's your master. It feels like a nice, cozy, comfortable blanket, but it's a constricting straitjacket. That sin that you're boasting it, it boasts over you and controls you. There's only one way you can be set free from that. There's only one hero, there's only one deliverer, there's only one redeemer. It's Jesus Christ. By confessing that you believe in his death and his resurrection, you believe that his action on the cross forgives you of your sins. His resurrection frees you to new life. He breaks the chains. And He lets you live the life you were created to live. One where you confess your sins and know they're forgiven. One where you have peace with God. You relate to God. You delight and enjoy God. That's your option this morning. You can continue to pretend to delight and enjoy sin. Or you can truly delight and enjoy God. Do not be afraid of what you're going to lose if you confess Christ. Be afraid of death without Christ. Our next question. Why should we boast in the cross? Why should we boast in the cross? We boast in the cross because it testifies to God's humble love for us. See, the cross in our culture is a sign of, it's a death marker. We see it everywhere. For Christians, the cross is a symbol of power, of deliverance. But in this culture, the cross is a symbol of shame, of humility. The cross is what they hung the worst criminals on. In addition to that, the Jews thought of it as being hung on a tree, which meant you were cursed. The cross is nothing but a symbol of shame and humility. And here we have Paul saying, boast in the cross. Glary in the shame. It's counterintuitive. It's a paradox. See, God chose that symbol. God chose that way of His Son dying. to emphasize how much he has lowered himself, how much he has humbled himself to love us. See, the cross is essential to the message of the gospel, that God came down to us to save us. God humbled himself to seek us out. When we look at scripture, We see that there is one God, there is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We'll look deeper into this next week as we look at Christ alone on Reformation Day. But as we, I hope, know we're about to celebrate for Christmas, it's the Son who became like us. It was the Son who was incarnate. The Son who was the glorious creator of all that you see. The Son who we can look at and see the beauty And the majesty of His being reflected in creation. The Son, He set aside the glow of His glory as the Creator so that He can have dust on His feet in the creation. The Son took on flesh. He did not take on sin. He took on flesh. Being very God, He is holy. And as Ben has been leading us through Wednesday night, being holy means He's set apart, but He's also so far above. We can't imagine how much greater He is. He is the greatest being. He's the most high, the most worthy, the most glorious, the most beautiful, the most loving. He is better than our minds could ever imagine. See, there's a hierarchy of being. We can see this in Psalm 8. There's God, the angels, and us. The angels are above us because they're spiritual beings. God made them better than us. They're still lesser than God because they depend upon him. God is the only independent being. He skips a level. The very God who created all things, he lowers himself to take upon our nature. It's his humble action, and it's not just taking on a new nature. He humbles himself, as Philippians 2 says, to the point of death. See, God on the cross reveals His love and power. He died in our place. The God who created all that we see, He died in our place. This is where we see the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Two big words that form one glorious doctrine. Substitutionary atonement. Substitutionary just means He took our place. Just like a substitute teacher would take your teacher's place, he stands in the place of us. Atonement is really where we see why he took our place. He took our place because we're all sinners. He took our place because we have offended God with every action, with every thought, with every breath. We are sinners. We have not lived the way we were created to live. We have not lived according to God's righteous rule. We are offensive to God. A God in His holiness and in His righteousness, He will pour out His wrath upon us. Because He is a perfectly good God, He must punish us in our sin. We will all, apart from God's grace, be punished for our sin. So that's the beauty of the substitutionary atonement. Instead of our sin going out to God and God's wrath being poured out upon us, He stands in our place. He was perfectly righteous. When He took on flesh, He never sinned. Therefore, when He died on the cross, He stands in the place of all who believe in Him. So that when God poured out His wrath upon Jesus, the perfectly righteous one, He takes God's wrath against us upon Himself. And then He transfers His righteousness to us. It's the glorious exchange. We boast in the cross because if we're not boasting in the cross, we're going to be under the wrath of God. We boast in the cross because it's there that Jesus Christ took our place under the wrath of God. The second reason we boast in the cross is because it's our only glory. We boast in the cross because it is our only glory. Now, this is what it means to be a sinner. We're self-centered. We are self-centered. We want people to think of us. We want people to love us. We want the world to revolve around us. That's what it means to be a sinner. Our hearts are no longer bent towards God. They're bent towards ourselves. By nature, we want what's best for us. What's amazing about the cross is it is the best thing for us. The cross is the best thing for us. At the cross, we have the most important being in all the world, the Creator himself, laying down his life for us. At the cross, we have the most important gift being given to us. Eternal life. At the cross, we have our greatest enemy destroyed. Sin and death. At the cross, we find perfect, never-ending, always-giving, faithful, incorruptible love. A love that seeks our good. We should boast in the cross because it's our only glory. It's our only hope. It's God Himself giving everything He has to us. And yet, that's offensive. Because it tells us the way we've been living is not right. It tells us that our sin is sin and it's ugly and offensive. We must repent of it and seek forgiveness from God. In the cross, we are delivered from this life of sin to a life of righteousness. We receive a righteousness from Christ. We are delivered from a life corruptible, where we will die and be judged, and we receive a life eternal. See, what's amazing with the cross is what ends, how it ends our life. When we burst into the cross of Christ, we know that one day we will be risen as Christ was risen. And there, we will no longer have sin. We will have a glorified body. We will truly live the way we were meant to live in the presence of God Himself without sin always turning our hearts in different directions. We'll be given glorified eyes so that we can actually look at the face of God. We can glory in Him face to face. No one else in Scripture could do this other than Jesus Christ. He gives us that opportunity as we become sons and daughters in Him. There's a glory in the cross because it's the only good we will ever have. It is our only glory. When we look at the cross, we see how far we have removed ourselves from God and how far he was willing to go to bring us back. When we look at the cross, we see how powerful our sin is against us in judgment and how much the Son loves us to take that sin upon himself. When we look at the cross, we see how offensive our sin is to God because we fight Him in rebellion and how He alone brings peace by overcoming our sin with forgiveness. How can we boast in anything else? Friends, as we conclude and we look to the cross, your options this morning are simple. You can continue to boast in your sin. You can boast in what enslaves you. You can boast in what boasts over you and will ultimately destroy you. Or you can boast in the life-giving, sin-destroying cross of Jesus Christ. He has died to set us free from our guilt, from our life of sin, and He has risen again to give us eternal life. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. We thank You, God, that You did not leave us without hope. We thank You, God, that You have given us the cross of Jesus Christ. That great symbol, but most of all, the great action that took place upon that day. When Jesus Christ died in our place. When He took upon our wrath and gave us righteousness if we believe in Him. Lord, I pray this morning that we would see all the things of this world that we would want to boast in. We would see them as they are. We would see them, Lord, as the snares and traps that only destroy us. We will repent of boasting in what we do for You, and we will only boast in what You have done for us. We thank You, our great God, for the power of the cross that frees us from the guilt, that frees us from the wrath, that frees us to live a life that enjoys You. In Your Holy Name we pray. Amen.