There will be no perfect righteousness in this life.

There will be no perfect righteousness in this life. There will be no perfection. Anybody that teaches you you can be

perfect is going to teach you to lie or despair. So let's settle it. Perfectionism is wrong. We will not attain it in this life. We wait for it.

What does the Apostle Paul mean

by the hope of righteousness?

That's the question John Piper tackles from Galatians 5, 1 to 12 in this episode of Light and Truth.

This sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on June 1st, 1986.

Here's a group of people in the churches of Galatia who are pushing the Jewish requirement of

circumcision onto Gentile Christian converts and Paul's problem here is not that

circumcision is bad.

You remember he circumcised Timothy for a missionary strategy in Act 16. What's at issue here is motives. What's lying behind this push to get these

Gentile Christians to go another step beyond faith and keep the ceremonial law and get themselves

circumcised. There's a motive here that's diametrically opposed to the meaning of the cross and of the freedom of grace.

The cross means the end of all boasting, the end of all self-reliance, the end of all independence. That's what it said

in Chapter 6, that they were using this circumcision to boast and to glory in the flesh and therefore Paul

follows that in chapter six by saying God forbid that I should glory in anything

except the cross.

What's at issue here is the meaning of the cross

and the meaning of grace.

They were performing circumcision

and urging it upon the people in such a way that it called attention to religious accomplishment and to the work of the flesh and not to the grace of God which is free.

Therefore it made Paul angry.

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