Jesus Is All You Need: Delivered from This Present Evil World

Continuing the study of Galatians – Paul’s “fighting epistle” – in the Sunday morning service, Pastor Chris Parker preached from Galatians 1:1-5, centering on verse 4: “Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.” After reviewing how Judaizers had crept into the young Galatian churches questioning Paul’s apostleship and adding works to the gospel, the pastor pressed Paul’s great theme: Jesus Christ is all you need. Church membership, baptism, good works, and rules are all good in their place, but none of them will get a person to heaven. From the greeting “grace be to you and peace,” found in all thirteen of Paul’s epistles, he showed that grace always precedes peace – you will never experience peace until you experience grace – and drew the vital distinction between peace with God, which comes only at salvation, and the peace of God, which depends on how a believer lives. Turning to the inexhaustible truth of verse 4, he preached that Jesus was a voluntary sacrifice who laid down His life for the sheep (John 10:15-18), the Lamb of God who died not for His own sins but for ours, for all have sinned and the wages of sin is spiritual death – eternal separation from God. If Christ’s death paid our sin debt, why try to keep the law? “By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Galatians 2:16). Christ delivers His people not only from future judgment but from this present evil world – a world no more wicked today than it was two thousand years ago, but just as much in need of deliverance. The message closed with the reminder that victory over the world, sin, and Satan comes not by rules and regulations but by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.