Not of Man

Pastor Ian Potts
Audio sermon
The Lord’s Day – 10/31/2010
52 min | Galatians 1:11

Galatians 1:10 For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. 11 But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. 12 For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught [it], but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Comment: In this message, Pastor Potts clearly distinguished salvation by the free and sovereign grace of God from the deadly poison of ‘grace plus works’ salvation schemes. He passionately preached (unfeigned and without pretense) that we are free from the law, dead to the law, the old man having been crucified with Christ (nailed to the cross) and that the law is never to be deemed the rule of the Christian’s life. Instead, the Christian is guided by the Lord Jesus Christ, through the Spirit of God, and it is the divine grace, foreordination, and effectual working of God that governs us — not the moral law. We are experimentally constrained and led forth daily by the love, fear, reverence, and good works that God works in us and that He has afore-ordained that we should walk therein. Those who look to the moral law, trusting in it for sanctification and the ordering of their steps will surely fall. Those who look to Christ, His finished work, and His all-sufficiency to lead them successfully through every path wherein they must travel — they are the ones whom He carries to safety and keeps secure unto the very end. 

Listen: Not of Man