It was the second week of a fuel scarcity, and the queue at the filling station on Ikorodu Road stretched back almost to the bus stop. Obi had been waiting for nearly two hours in the second-hand Hilux he had bought for his building materials business only a month before. When he finally reached the pump, the attendant was arguing with a danfo driver who was trying to jump the line. She grabbed the nearest nozzle, filled the tank, took Obi’s money and waved him on.
He was already pulling out when he glanced at the receipt. Twenty litres. PMS. Petrol. His truck ran on diesel.
For a moment he thought about going back. Then he looked at the queue, and at his watch, and reasoned with himself. The tank had been half full of diesel already. Twenty litres of petrol on top of that was surely not so much. It would dilute. He would top up with diesel at the next station and the problem would sort itself out.
By the time he reached Ojota the engine had begun to knock. By Maryland it was hesitating at every gear change and a thin white smoke was trailing behind him. Just before the flyover, it died completely. He sat in the stationary truck with horns blaring around him and the afternoon heat pressing through the windscreen.
The mechanic who came out to tow him listened to the story, sniffed the fuel cap and shook his head. “Oga, you cannot cure this thing by adding more diesel,” he said. “Petrol is good. Diesel is good. But mix them inside this engine and you will spoil the pump, the injectors, everything. We have to drain it. All of it.”
Obi had discovered, at some expense, that two good things mixed in the wrong place can bring an engine to a standstill. Many believers have discovered the same thing in their spiritual lives, and the cost has been far greater.
How mixture sounds from the pulpit
Mixture rarely announces itself. It usually arrives in a single sermon, sometimes in a single sentence, so smoothly that nobody notices the join.
“Jesus paid it all on the cross. Now, if you want to keep your salvation, make sure you never miss a midweek service.”
Punchline“You are the righteousness of God in Christ. But until you complete this twenty-one day fast, God cannot fully release what He has for you.”
“The blood has cleansed you from every sin. Of course, if you die with unconfessed sin, you will go to hell.”
“God loves you unconditionally. That is why you must work hard to stay in His good books.”
Each statement begins with something wonderful and true. Each then adds a clause that quietly changes the ground on which the hearer stands before God. The first half is new wine. The second half is an old wineskin. The listener goes home with both in the tank, and before long the engine starts to knock.
The confusion this produces is real, and it is not simply intellectual. A believer who has been fed a mixture never knows quite where he stands. On Sunday morning he feels forgiven. By Tuesday evening, after a failure, he feels condemned and unsure. He cannot say whether God is pleased with him because of Christ or displeased with him because of himself. He is trying to run one engine on two fuels.
James describes the result: “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8). James is speaking of a man who asks God for wisdom while doubting. The principle reaches further. A heart divided between two foundations will be unstable, swinging between pride when things go well and despair when they do not.
We need to see why the New Testament treats this mixture so seriously, and why the cure is never a little more of either.
Begun in the Spirit, finished by the flesh
No letter in the New Testament addresses mixture more directly than Galatians. Paul had preached Christ in the region of Galatia, and many Gentiles had believed. Churches had formed. Then teachers arrived who told these new believers that faith in Jesus was a good beginning, but that to be fully part of God’s people they needed to be circumcised and take on the law of Moses. Paul’s response is the most emotional letter he ever wrote:
O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? Have ye suffered so many things in vain? if it be yet in vain. He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
“O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?” The word for bewitched was used of the evil eye, a spell that fixes a person’s gaze and clouds their judgement. Paul cannot understand how people who once saw so clearly could now be so confused. “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you.” The phrase evidently set forth translates a word used for public notices posted up in the marketplace. When Paul preached to them, it was as though he had placarded the crucified Christ in front of their eyes. They had seen Him plainly. Now something had drawn their eyes away.
Then Paul asks them to remember their own experience. “Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” They knew the answer. They had not received the Spirit as a reward for law-keeping. They had heard the message about Christ, believed it, and the Spirit had come. Miracles had followed. God was at work among them, and none of it had come through the law.
NuggetSo Paul presses the point: “Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?”
This is the heart of the Galatian mixture. The false teachers were not denying that the Galatians had begun with Christ. They were telling them how to continue. Start with grace, they said, and then finish with law. Receive the Spirit by faith, and then complete your standing by your own performance.
That pattern is still with us. Very few churches would openly say that a person is saved by keeping rules. But many quietly teach that a person is saved by grace and then kept, matured or made acceptable by effort. Grace becomes the entrance fee. After that, the believer is on his own.
Paul calls that foolish. Not because growth and obedience do not matter, but because the source of the Christian life does not change after the first day. “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him” (Colossians 2:6). The way in is the way on. You received Christ by faith. You continue in Christ by faith. The Spirit who began the work is the Spirit who completes it.
Why grace and works cannot share a foundation
Some people imagine that the safest position is a balance: a little grace, a little law, so that nobody becomes careless and nobody becomes legalistic. It sounds wise. Paul says it is impossible. In the middle of a discussion about God’s choosing a remnant of Israel, he lays down a principle that applies far beyond that setting:
And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.
“And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace.” Paul is making a point of logic. Grace and works, as the basis for acceptance with God, are mutually exclusive. The moment works are added as part of the ground of acceptance, grace stops being grace. You cannot have both on the same foundation, any more than a gift can remain a gift once a price tag is attached to it.
Think of what would happen if a friend handed you the keys to a car and said, “This is my gift to you.” Then, as you thanked him, he added, “Of course, you will pay me two hundred thousand naira every month.” Whatever that arrangement is, it is no longer a gift. It is a hire-purchase agreement, however kindly it was offered. Adding the payment does not make the gift more responsible. It changes it into something else.
That is why mixing law and grace is not a middle path. It is a change of covenant. Paul tells the Galatians plainly, “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain” (Galatians 2:21). If even part of our righteousness must come from law-keeping, then Christ’s death did not fully accomplish what it claimed. Mixture does not add to Christ. It subtracts from Him.
This is also why the confusion it produces cannot be cured by adding more grace on top. Obi could not fix his engine by pouring in more diesel. A preacher cannot fix a mixed message by speaking more warmly about God’s love while leaving the condition in place. The condition has to be drained out.
PunchlineA gift with a price tag attached has stopped being a gift. Grace with works added as its foundation has stopped being grace.
New wine needs new wineskins
Jesus Himself spoke about this incompatibility, early in His ministry. The Pharisees and the disciples of John had noticed that Jesus’ disciples did not keep the regular fasts that devout Jews observed. They asked Him why. Jesus answered that the wedding guests do not fast while the bridegroom is with them, and then He told two short parables:
And he spake also a parable unto them; No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.
The first parable is about clothing. Nobody cuts a patch from a new garment to repair an old one. The new garment is ruined by having a piece cut out of it, and the new patch does not match the old cloth anyway. Both are spoiled.
The second is about wine. In the ancient world, wine was stored in skins, usually goatskin. New wine was still fermenting, and as it fermented it expanded. A fresh skin could stretch with it. An old skin had already been stretched to its limit and had become brittle. Pour new wine into an old skin and the pressure would split it. “The new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish.” Both would be lost.
Jesus was telling His questioners that what He was bringing could not be contained within the old forms of religion. The life of the kingdom could not be poured into the old covenant system as though it were merely another set of observances. It needed a new container. That new container is the new covenant, which Jesus would inaugurate through His blood (Luke 22:20).
Notice the final verse, which only Luke records: “No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.” That is a remarkably honest observation about human nature. People prefer what they are used to. The old system feels familiar. It may be heavy, but at least we know how it works. We know the rules, we know how to measure ourselves, and we know how to measure others. The new wine of grace can feel strange and even dangerous to someone whose palate was formed by law.
That is one reason mixture persists. It is usually not a deliberate rejection of the gospel. It is the comfort of the familiar. A person drinks the new wine, feels its strength, and then reaches for the old skin because it feels safer.
What Paul meant by fallen from grace
After three chapters of argument, Paul makes his appeal to the Galatians in words that have often been misunderstood:
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.
“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” The word again is important. These Gentile believers had never been under the law of Moses. But they had been under the bondage of pagan religion, with its fear, its rituals and its endless attempts to appease the gods. Paul says that taking on the law as a means of standing with God would be a return to the same basic kind of bondage, the same yoke under a different name (Galatians 4:9).
Then come three serious statements. “If ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.” Paul is not condemning circumcision as a physical act. He had Timothy circumcised for the sake of his ministry among Jews (Acts 16:3). He is speaking of circumcision received as the means of being justified. If a person takes that route, Christ is no help to him, because he has chosen another foundation.
“He is a debtor to do the whole law.” The law is not a menu from which we select a few attractive items. A man who seeks righteousness through the law has committed himself to the whole of it. Paul has already quoted Deuteronomy: “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Galatians 3:10). Nobody can mix in just a little law. Once you put yourself under it as a way of standing with God, all of it applies.
“Ye are fallen from grace.” Many believers have been terrified by this phrase, because they have heard it used to mean that a Christian who commits a serious sin has lost his salvation. Look at the context. Paul is not describing someone who has fallen into immorality. He is describing someone who has tried to be “justified by the law.” To fall from grace, in Galatians, means to step off the platform of grace onto the platform of law-keeping as the basis of acceptance. The fall Paul warns against here is the fall from grace into legalism. It is the religious person who is in danger in this verse, not only the careless one.
Then Paul gives the alternative. “For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.” Faith is not idle. It works. It expresses itself through love. But that love flows from faith in Christ. It is not added to faith as a second foundation.
A few verses later, Paul gives the reason he is so concerned: “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (Galatians 5:9). A small amount of yeast works its way through an entire batch of dough. A little law, mixed into the foundation of the gospel, does not stay little. It spreads through the whole of a believer’s relationship with God. Twenty litres of petrol was enough to stop the whole engine.
Even Peter needed correcting
It would be comforting to think that only immature believers fall into mixture. Paul tells us otherwise. In Galatians 2 he describes an incident in the church at Antioch involving the apostle Peter himself:
But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?
Peter knew the truth of the gospel. He was the one to whom God had shown, at the house of Cornelius, that Gentiles were to be received without first becoming Jews (Acts 10). At Antioch he had been eating freely with Gentile believers. Then certain men arrived from Jerusalem, and Peter quietly withdrew from the table, “fearing them which were of the circumcision.” The other Jewish believers followed his example. Even Barnabas, Paul’s partner in mission to the Gentiles, was carried along.
Notice that Peter did not preach a sermon against grace. He simply changed where he sat. But by changing where he sat, he sent a message to every Gentile believer in the room: you are not quite acceptable as you are. Paul saw that this was a gospel issue. “They walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel.” The Greek suggests walking straight, keeping to the line. Peter’s behaviour was off the line, and it compelled the Gentiles to adopt Jewish ways if they wanted full fellowship.
What drove the mixture? Fear. Peter was afraid of what the visitors would think. That is very often what keeps law mixed with grace in our churches. A leader fears that if he preaches grace too clearly, people will become careless, or his denomination will question him, or his members will stop attending the programmes. A believer fears that if he truly rests in Christ, he will lose the edge that keeps him serious. Fear reaches for the old wineskin.
The encouraging part of the story is that Peter was not left there. Scholars still discuss exactly how the Antioch incident fits in time with the Jerusalem meeting of Acts 15, but the Peter we meet in Acts is the man who stood up before the apostles and elders to defend grace in the plainest possible terms.
The day the church settled the question
Acts 15 records that meeting. The dispute had begun when certain men from Judaea taught the believers in Antioch, “Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). In Jerusalem, some believers from among the Pharisees pressed the same demand: Gentile converts must be circumcised and commanded “to keep the law of Moses” (Acts 15:5). After long debate, Peter rose to speak:
And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.
Peter’s argument rests on what God had already done. God gave the Holy Ghost to Gentiles “even as he did unto us,” and purified their hearts by faith. God made no distinction. Why then should the church make one?
Then Peter describes the law in words that should silence anyone who thinks it was a light burden: “a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear.” This is a Jewish apostle speaking about the law he grew up under. He does not despise it. He simply tells the truth: nobody had been able to carry it.
And then his conclusion: “But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.” Notice the order. We might have expected Peter to say that the Gentiles will be saved just as the Jews are. He says the opposite. We Jews will be saved in the same way as these Gentiles, by grace. Grace is not a concession made to outsiders. It is the only way anyone has ever been saved.
The council’s decision followed. James summed up the matter, and a letter was sent to the Gentile churches:
For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.
“To lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things.” The Gentile believers were not required to be circumcised or to keep the law of Moses in order to be saved. They were asked to abstain from four things: food offered to idols, blood, things strangled and sexual immorality. Interpreters have explained these requests in slightly different ways. Many see them as practical guidance to make table fellowship possible between Jewish and Gentile believers, since these were matters that would deeply offend Jewish consciences. Others emphasise their connection with pagan temple worship, from which new believers needed to make a clean break. Both explanations agree on the essential point. These were instructions for holy and loving community life among people who were already saved by grace. They were not conditions for salvation.
Luke tells us how the letter was received: “Which when they had read, they rejoiced for the consolation” (Acts 15:31). That is what clean grace does. It brings joy and relief, even when it comes with practical instruction.
Clean grace still has a shape
There is an opposite danger, and we must name it. Some believers, having seen how damaging mixture is, conclude that any instruction, any command, any call to holiness is a return to law. They hear a sermon on sexual purity and say, “That is legalism.” They are corrected for dishonesty and say, “You are putting me under law.” That is a misunderstanding of Galatians as serious as the one Paul was correcting.
Paul himself, in the same chapter where he warns against falling from grace, writes: “For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13). Liberty from the law as a way of righteousness is never liberty to harm people. Paul goes on to list the works of the flesh and to say that those who practise them will not inherit the kingdom of God (Galatians 5:21).
So the question to ask of any instruction is not, “Does this contain a command?” Most of the New Testament letters are full of commands. The question is, “What role is this command being given?” Is it being presented as the price of acceptance, the thing that makes Christ’s work effective for me? Or is it being presented as the shape of the life that grace produces in people who are already accepted?
Consider a woman I will call Ifeoma, who joined a ministry where every member was required to attend a dawn prayer meeting six days a week. Prayer is good. Early prayer is good. But she was told that members who missed more than three sessions in a month had “lost their covering,” and that any misfortune that followed was their own fault. When her mother fell ill during a month in which she had missed four sessions, she was sure she had caused it. She was living with a mixed message: saved by grace, protected by attendance. The cure for Ifeoma was not to stop praying. It was to have the condition drained out, so that prayer could become again what it was meant to be: fellowship with a Father who had already received her.
Now take a different case. A church member is discovered to have been diverting money from the welfare fund. When the elders confront him, he protests that the church preaches grace and should not be judging him. That is not the gospel either. Grace does not leave a church welfare fund exposed to theft or ask the widows who depend on it to absorb the loss quietly. The man is not being asked to earn his salvation by repaying the money. He is being called to repent truthfully, to make restitution where he can, and to accept the safeguards that protect others. Clean grace has a shape, and that shape is love.
It took most of the next day to sort out Obi’s truck. The mechanic drained every drop from the tank, flushed the fuel lines, changed the filter and filled it again with clean diesel. When the engine finally turned over and settled into its familiar rumble, Obi let out a breath he felt he had been holding since Ojota.
“Oga,” the mechanic said as he wiped his hands, “next time, come down from the car. Stand by the pump. Watch the nozzle. Read what is written on it.” Obi laughed. But he did it. For years afterwards, whenever he pulled into a filling station, he climbed down and stood beside the pump until the tank was full.
That is the habit every believer needs. Stand by the pump. Watch what is going into your heart. When you hear a message that begins with Christ and then quietly adds a condition for your acceptance, notice it. Read what is written on the nozzle. You are not being difficult or rebellious. You are guarding the gospel that saved you.
If your own spiritual engine has been knocking for a long time, it may be that something has been mixed in that does not belong there. You do not need to add more effort, or even more grace, on top of the mixture. You need to drain it. Come back to the cross where you began. You received the Spirit by the hearing of faith. You will be perfected the same way. Stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has made you free.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Which of the “mixed” statements at the start of this article have you heard, or believed? What effect did they have on your confidence before God?
- Paul asks, “Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” Where might you be trying to finish by effort what God began by grace?
- Why do you think “the old is better” feels true to so many believers? What old wineskins are you most attached to?
- How does understanding “fallen from grace” in its Galatian context change the way you read Galatians 5:4?
- What is the difference between a command presented as the price of acceptance and a command presented as the shape of the life grace produces? Can you think of an example of each?
This Week
Read the whole letter to the Galatians this week, in one or two sittings if you can. As you read, keep a sheet of paper beside you and note every place where Paul describes what the false teachers were adding to Christ, and every place where he describes the life of the Spirit. Then take one spiritual practice you are currently keeping, and finish this sentence honestly: “I do this because...” If your answer makes the practice a condition of God’s acceptance, bring it to the Father in prayer and ask Him to drain out the mixture, so that you can continue the practice from rest.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that I received Your Spirit by the hearing of faith, and not by the works of the law. Forgive me for every time I have tried to finish in the flesh what You began in the Spirit. Show me where I have mixed conditions into the gospel, and where I have reached for the old wineskin because it felt familiar and safe. Drain out of my heart every condition that does not belong there. Teach me to stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has made me free, and to use that liberty to serve others by love. I believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ I am saved. In His name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.