My dear Harmony Plains Singing School friends,
The 59th session of HPSS will be held Sunday evening, July 16, through Friday evening, July 21, 2023. Our 2023 theme is “Christ Hath Made Us Free” taken from Galatians 5:1, which is our 2023 theme text. The theme song for 2023 is “Grace Is Free”, #43 in Old School Hymnal, 11th Ed.
The theme text expresses great concern that God’s children might fall from freedom in Christ. It states we must “stand fast” in liberty against the tendency to fall into bondage. What is the bondage? Guilt produced by living under the law. No one attempting to find perfection in the law will ever be free; they will forever see themselves guilty and unforgiven.
If a person is not sure of the forgiveness of God wrought by Christ and God’s sheer unutterable mercy, he cannot look at the Father in the face. Also, such a person cannot look at others in the face. Lastly, such a person cannot look at his own face in the mirror. If there is no forgiveness, there is no freedom, and the only option is to run away and hide as they did in the Garden of Eden, because it was there in Eden that the first “cover up” took place.
Legalism destroys Christian life, and it destroys the gospel’s message in the world. Legalism kills joy. We are free; it is the of the Christian faith. False teachers teach that to receive the full extent of God’s love, we must do certain things. Paul says rest in done—you are free. If we must work to gain His love, we’re in slavery.
It is an exhausting existence to make it on your own. The constant voice of law is do, do, do. The law, however, is shouted down by the louder voice of the cross—done, done, done. Paul is saying you are not what you do, but what Christ has done for you. In Christ, an individual has a foundational identity in Christ, not in what he does, or in what he fails to do.
Paul says fundamentally you are what Jesus has done for you. Your affection is purchased for you. In Luke 4, Jesus said, I came to set the captives free. In Galatians, where we find our theme text, he has for four chapters been saying the same thing—You are free, “Christ Hath Made Us Free!”
Alas, if our current cultural climate tells us anything, it’s that the needs addressed by religion—for hope, purpose, connection, justification, enoughness—haven’t diminished as churches have become coffee shops, theaters, and concerts. The psychic energy involved in such venues evaporates when one messes up. What then can be done?
In Galatians, they chose circumcision as their means of keeping the law or justifying themselves as righteous. However, choose your works, whatever they be, they are still works. The cost of pursuing an ideal of righteousness is the producing of the reality of unrighteousness, pure and simple. The law was given for us to see our guilt.
This is stunning. He is saying get past your check lists, get past your to do lists, get past what you must do for God to love you. Rest in what he has done in Christ for you. You are free! Once you are resting in the ever existing, eternally bestowing, not to be maxed or diminished love of God, once you come to terms that nothing can separate you from the love of God, then love will produce the godly life you desire. Focusing first on belief in what Christ has done is what matters in the Christian life, not first attempting to doing better and better.
Focus of the Christian faith is not what the Christian does but what Christ did. If the pulpit is more about the Christian than Christ, it is more about guilt than freedom. It is then more about us than about God, more about law than gospel, more about slavery than freedom.
It is our doing that got us into bondage, and Christ came to undo our doing, so be sure our doing this side of Christ’s done is not going to make us free. “Christ Hath Made Us Free.” The foundation, center, and capstone of the Christian faith is what Christ has done, not what you are doing. He came to set us free because we could not free ourselves.
May the Lord bless HPSS 2023 is our prayer. All my love, Brother Dickie