Can you earn your way into God’s family?

No. In Galatians 4:21-31, the Apostle Paul uses the story of Abraham’s two sons to show that we are saved by God’s promise, received through faith — never by our own effort. In this study, Dr. Toby Holt unpacks the surprising lesson.

Abraham had two sons. Ishmael was born through human scheming, when Sarah grew tired of waiting on God’s promise. Isaac was born later, exactly as God had promised. Paul uses these two sons to picture two roads to God: one built on human effort, the other on God’s promise received by faith. The surprise is that the people trusting in their own rule-keeping were acting like children of the slave woman, not the free woman. Holt warns against every “faith-plus” add-on — whether circumcision, baptism, a prayer, or simply being a good person — because only faith in Christ saves.

Questions this study answers:

1. Why does Paul tell the story of Abraham’s two sons? He uses it as a picture. One son came from human effort and one from God’s promise, showing the difference between trying to earn salvation and receiving it by faith.

2. What part do our works play in being saved? None, when it comes to earning it. We are saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ, not by works, so that no one can boast.

3. Why did the Galatians need this warning? They were being pressured to add rules to their faith. Paul wanted them to see that mixing human effort into the gospel actually leaves the gospel behind.

“So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman but of the free.” — Galatians 4:31 (NKJV)

Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt is the President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, a Reformed seminary in Colorado Springs. He is known for clear, down-to-earth Bible teaching, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio.

Listen and go deeper: This is Part 8 of the ten-part Galatians study. Find the whole series, along with verse-by-verse studies of other books of the Bible, at newgeneva.org. To support this teaching ministry, visit newgeneva.org/give.

[soft instrumental music] Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael. Each son had a different mother and a very different future. In Galatians 4, Paul uses the story of Isaac and Ishmael to make a theological argument about works and faith. That argument will be our focus in today's study.

A long time ago, there were two women. Now, the first of these women was named Sarah. The first of these women we know is Sarah. Now, who was Sarah married to? Abraham. Sarah was married to Abraham. Now, Sarah and Abraham loved one another dearly, but there was a challenge they had in the context of the relationship, and the challenge was that Sarah was unable to be with child, that Sarah was not able to bear a child. In fact, Sarah had gotten so old over the years that she thought she was well past child-bearing age. That is, until God came calling with a promise. The promise given to Abraham that Abraham, through Sarah, would bear a child. Now, that child would become the seed for a heritage more numerous than the stars in the sky and the sand on the beach. So God had made a promise to Abraham and to Sarah that there would be a son. However, time went by. God made a promise, and as God often does when he promises things, the fulfillment is sometimes a little bit past the horizon of what you can now see. Well, Sarah had grown tired of waiting. She looked at her body, and she looked at her bones. She said, "I don't have much time to work with here." And so although she believed, although she had faith in what God had said and that she was supposed to have a son, time went by, and more time went by, and then doubt filled her heart. Sarah was aware of God's promise. Abraham was aware of God's promise. But as old as they got, and they were not just old, but old, old. As old as they got, the less they believed, or at least Sarah believed. And so in time, she grew frustrated because there was a great desire for Abraham to have a child. So she thought that she would be the one to bear it, but in time that hadn't happened, so she came up with a plan. She came up with a plan, and that brings us to the second woman, a woman named Hagar. Now, Hagar was a handmaiden of Sarah. She was a bondswoman of this family. And Sarah's idea was that if she couldn't bear a child, and if Abraham were to have a child, perhaps it would be through Hagar, the handmaiden. So Sarah gave the handmaiden to Abraham, and in time, a child was born. Now, as if you assess what was going on, God had made a promise. Abraham and Sarah had heard the promise, but time had passed, and the promise hadn't been fulfilled. And so in order to lay hold of the outcome, in order to lay hold of the son, in order to lay hold of a child, and because it didn't seem like God was going to deliver it in a time and way that they expected, Sarah concocted what you might call a reach-around, an end run to try to attain the same ends. An end run that involved not trusting in the overt promise that she would bear, but introducing Hagar as the means, the human instrumentation by which a son could still be achieved of Abraham. Now, this was an idea, but it was a bad idea, as we'll find out in the text to come. Whatever the case is, Hagar, the handmaiden, did have a son, and that son was named what?

Ishmael. Abraham had a son. His name was Ishmael. It was the son of Hagar, not of Sarah, who God had made the promise to. Now, although Abraham and Sarah had grown either frustrated or faithless in God delivering this outcome. Although they had erred, although they had sinned, God still upholds his promises. If God makes a promise, that promise's outcome is not contingent on you. He will fulfill that which he has said. And so in due time, that's exactly what he did. In due time, Sarah bore a child. Sarah bore a son, and his name was what?

Isaac. We got Ishmael, the son of the bondswoman, the son of the work-around, the son of this effort to try to get a kid. So you have Ishmael, and then on the other hand, you have Isaac, who's the son of Sarah, the free woman, his wife, the son of promise, not the son of fleshly works. These are the two children. Now, if you and I, if we were to go to Israel, let's say this morning. Let's say we were to go to Israel, and we were to find an Orthodox rabbi, an Orthodox Jew, and we were to ask him, "Sir, would you tell me, which of the two sons of Abraham do you come from? Where is your family tree? Which child does it point to?" Well, the rabbi, whether it's in Israel or anywhere around the world, is going to come up with one name. They're going to say, "Isaac." Isaac. You have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs, the forefathers. They wouldn't even waste any time. They'd say, "It's Isaac." Everyone knows that. Isaac is the true son of Abraham, the son that God had promised and the son that God had delivered. Meanwhile, Ishmael? Ishmael, that was the son of sinful decisions, bad life choices, the child of the bondswoman, the child that came because Sarah and Abraham had failed to trust and have faith in God. They would say, "We don't come from Ishmael. We come from Isaac." With that said, in today's reading, in Galatians 4, Paul is going to tell the Judaizers the exact opposite. He's going to say, "You think your father's Abraham, right?" He's been saying this the past whole chapter, if you look back at the text. "You say your father's Abraham, right? Right. That's what you say. Okay. Well, let me tell you something. Those who are the true seed of Abraham are not necessarily those who came from his gene pool. They are those who share his faith. Abraham believed unto God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. The true sons, the true children, sons and daughters of Abraham, are those who share the faith of Abraham." But he's going to tell the Judaizers that they, no matter who their heritage might be traced from, even if it was Isaac, they have betrayed that heritage. And in fact, their spiritual lineage, such as it isIs that of Ishmael, the child of works, the child of the flesh, the child of the bonds woman. And as you could imagine, there's few things you could possibly say in this context that would be construed as fighting words more than that, to tell someone of a Jewish background that they are the stock, the spiritual stock of Ishmael, not of Isaac. So that's the point that Paul's going to be making in our text today. Today's text is an allegory. I'll tell you at the outset, Paul seldom writes in allegories. And the reason why is because allegories can be dangerous. But in today's text, he's referring back to an Old Testament circumstance and to people that the Judaizers would have known and would have understood. That's the basis for his teaching. And although it might be a little dense sledding for us today, we'll work through it and see how we can discern and extract and apply its meaning. All right. Let's look at verse 21, then we'll work our way through the balance. Verse 21: "Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law?" All right. Let's camp out here for a moment. Let's camp out and let's remember what we've been talking about for the previous seven weeks, what we've been talking about in our study of Galatians so far. As we've said in the previous number of weeks, the letter of Galatians was written to churches in the region of Galatia, which is right now the southern Turkey. It was written to the churches in Galatia who were immature in the faith. They were new in the faith. Honestly, if you were a church in the first century, all the churches were new in the faith. Well, the church in Galatia were not only new, but they were immature. They were given to turning to different doctrines depending on who was teaching them on a given day. And as we said earlier this morning, that was one of Paul's contentions with them. When he writes this letter, right out of the gate, he talks about how shocked he is about how they turned their attention, their affections to someone else who taught them a different gospel. He said, "I am astonished that you're turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel." Now, what was the different gospel that they had been called to? Well, if you've been with us the past seven weeks, or if you've spent any time in Galatians at all, you know that the different gospel that they had turned to, it was a gospel that still had a Jesus. To be clear, there are gospels outside our door that still have a Jesus, that still have a cross, that still have a Christmas, that still have an Easter. They had a Jesus in Galatia. They had faith in Galatia. There was men who came in, men called Judaizers, who went to Galatia, and then they talked about Jesus, and they talked about faith. But they didn't talk about faith alone. They didn't talk about faith exclusively. They didn't say, "In order to be saved, you must believe." That's what Paul said, but that's not what they said. They said, "Faith and belief, that's good, and that's great, and that's a wonderful starting point, but it's just a starting point." And they added what we would call works on top of it, or at least one critical work, one critical work among others. They said, "I'm glad you've got faith, but Gentile convert from Galatia, Gentile convert from Crete, Gentile convert from Athens, wherever you're from, know this. If you really want to be one of us, and more to the point, if you really want to be saved, you also need to be circumcised." They would talk and write to those in Galatia and spend time with those in Galatia. And if someone in Galatia says, "Oh, I believe in Jesus," they'd pat him on the head and say, "Oh, that's nice. But don't forget, you need to be circumcised. And if not, then you're not saved." Now in Acts 15:1, listen to this phrase. In Acts 15, the very start of Acts 15 says this, "Certain men came down from Judea, and they taught their brethren, 'Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.'"

So Paul understood that this teaching, it wasn't just happening in Galatia, mind you. This was going on elsewhere. The Judaizers had this vested interest in propagating their own beliefs and traditions and all the things that they esteemed, irrespective of whether those things conflicted with things that Christ had ushered in or that the apostles taught. One of the things that Jesus taught, one of the things that the apostles taught was that circumcision was no longer the sign of the covenant community. Rather, the sign was what?

Baptism. Baptism. There we go.

Baptism. Baptism had replaced circumcision. And so the people should have understood that, but there was people vested, had this interest in lassoing back, taking the converts and taking anyone that wanted to drift into Christianity and yoking them to Old Testament law, yoking them to the ceremonial law, yoking them to circumcision. Irrespective of what Jesus, Paul, or anyone else had to say about being saved through faith and about baptism and the like, they said, "Nah, not so much." This was a different gospel. And if one believed it, this was an unsaving gospel because it said faith really isn't the means by which you get saved. In fact, it looked at people in Galatia and said, "Your faith does not matter unless you have been circumcised." Which do you think is more paramount in that equation? Well, the Judaizers put the emphasis on the circumcision. And because of that, because they blew up the equation of salvation, that's why Paul is so furious with the Judaizers and so frustrated with the Galatians that they would believe this, that they would believe this stuff. And so in verse 21, he's sarcastically saying, he says, "Tell me. You who desire to be under the law, you who desire this, you who want this, you who just can't wait, shackled by Old Testament ceremonial laws that you no longer need to be shackled by, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? Do you not hear the law? Don't you understand what you're doing by emphasizing works and law keeping and the like? Don't you understand that's what you were set free from? This is not the escalator to heaven that you think it is. It's a trap door to hell, because you should know better." He's saying it to the Judaizers. And in verses 22 through 26He's going to explain why they should've known better using people and references that the Jews would've understood. That's where we get to Hagar. That's where we get to Isaac. That's where we get to Ishmael. Let's look at verses 22 through to 26 now. Verse 22, "For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondwoman, the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the free woman through promise." Born according to the flesh, that's akin to being born through efforts and trying hard and the like. "He who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, but he of the free woman through promise, of which things are symbolic. For these are the covenants, the one from Mount Sinai, which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar. For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia." That's where the law was given. "And corresponds to Jerusalem, which now is, and bondage with her children. But the Jerusalem above, Zion, the mountain above is free, which is the mother of us all." All right. As we said earlier this morning, when we look at these verses, verses 22 through 26, we need to recognize Paul is doing something here that he really never does. This is not his primary means of instruction. In verses 22 through 26, Paul is taking a real historical set of people and circumstances, events, and he's using them as an allegory. As an allegory to explain a modern theological point that he was making. Now, an allegory. We've heard of parables and similes and metaphors and the like. Well, an allegory involves taking an actual situation or circumstance or set of people, something that happened in history, something that already had an established meaning, and assigning to that circumstance and those people and events an additional meaning or perhaps a new meaning. Now, as you can guess, allegories are dangerous or can be dangerous because you can allegorize all sorts of things. You can go to Jonah and the whale or David and Goliath and come away with an entirely different understanding of what happened at those events if you use everything in scripture as an allegory. So it's not something that Paul does often, but he does it here because it's particularly helpful to his audience, which is made up of people that have been taught by the Judaizers. And he refers back to the Jewish story that every child in Israel would've known, that of Isaac and Ishmael. The distinctions between Isaac and Ishmael were well known. Isaac was the son of grace. Isaac was the son of promise. Isaac was the father of the nation, so to speak, and the son of Abraham. Ishmael, meanwhile,

his descendants were those who had consistently attacked Israel. To say someone was of Ishmael was in effect to say you were outside of the covenant community of God. So the people understood a distinction. You didn't want to be from Ishmael. You did want to be from Isaac. So with that said, when Paul is drawing them into this allegory, he's using people that they would've been finely, clearly attuned to in order to make his point. And he's saying, "Look, you may want to trace your ancestry back to Isaac. You might claim all day long that Abraham's our father and the like, and the patriarchs, they are who we came from. But you're acting as if you were born of Ishmael. You're claiming one thing. You're claiming we're of faith, the seed of Abraham, seed of faith, seed of Isaac, who was a child of the promise. You may say that, but you're acting as if, through your own efforts to appeal to law keeping and the like as the means to salvation, you're acting as if you're the son of Hagar. You're acting as if Ishmael is your father." Because Ishmael was born through a workaround. Ishmael was born because Abraham and Sarah didn't trust God. Because they thought that they could accomplish through their works and their efforts, that they could reach around and attain through their own means, that they could reach around and grab hold of God's promise, since he was apparently too slack to deliver it himself. This was the great sin of Abraham and Sarah, and Ishmael was the result. Well, in the case of the Judaizers and the Galatians, Paul's writing to them and saying, "You're trying to do the same thing. Here, you're given faith and promise and gospel and all this. Here on a silver platter, salvation is given to you. You're given the easiest means in the kingdom you could possibly want, salvation through faith alone and Christ alone. Here it is. Take it. It's yours. But you don't want that, do you? You want to work your way on in. You want to add circumcision or any number of other things and think that you can be saved through that means." That's the means of Ishmael.

That's a workaround.

If God freely gives you something with his right hand and you try to reach around and steal it from his left, you are wrong. This is his point. Let's look at verses 27 through 31 now. Verse 27, "For it is written, 'Rejoice, O barren, you who do not bear. Break forth and shout, you who are not in labor. For the desolate has many more children than she who has a husband.' Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. But as he was born according to the flesh, then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless, what does Scripture say? 'Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be the heir with the son of the free woman.' So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free." All right. As we've already mentioned, today's passage, this allegory, it's filled with contrasts. Contrasts between, say, children of flesh, efforts, works, trying hard and the like, and children of the Spirit, children of the promise. It's a contrast between the children of a bondwoman and children of the free woman, or a child of the free woman. It's a contrast between Mount Sinai, where the law was given, and the holy Jerusalem, the holy city. It's a contrast between law and grace. It's a contrast between a number of things. In our day and age, because we're not as attuned to some of the Old Testament people and players and the like, we might not get this point as quickly, but it would have resonatedWith the Judaizers,

they would have looked at this and understood it with greater clarity, I think, than sometimes we might, because these were references to people and situations that they held dear. And Paul is saying, "Look, for as much as you hold Isaac dear, as much as you like Isaac, and for as much as you reject Ishmael, you've turned it upside down in the way you're living, in the way you're choosing, in the way you're looking at the gospel." He's saying, "You are in danger of becoming a generation of Ishmaels. A generation of Ishmaels, and you're teaching others to be Ishmaels, too." That's one of the things that angered Paul. He said, "Judaizers, it's not just that you want to run to the law as if that's the means into heaven, that's the rungs you will climb to get there. It's not bad enough that you're doing that to yourself. You're teaching these poor people in Galatia. You're teaching them, those who didn't know Isaac and Ishmael, those who were Gentiles and outside of all this, you're teaching them the wrong stuff. You're creating a whole generation of Gentile Ishmaels." Again, Acts 15:1, this is what they were doing. "Certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, 'Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.'" If you were a Gentile

in Galatia, and Paul had come and taught you about faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone, and the like,

it was like you were set free. Remember, all the pagan belief systems, they all yoked you to a bunch of works, too. Whether it's Baal or Zeus or Apollo or what have you, all that was works-based as well. Paul had come and taught religious beliefs that were new, and they hinged on faith and belief and grace. They'd never heard such a thing, and they loved it, at least for a time. They loved it for a time, but

then these Judaizers had come in and had just disabused them of that and said, "No. The grace and faith stuff, yeah, it started there, but unless you're circumcised according to the custom of Moses,

unless the progeny of the men in your family are, you cannot be saved." Faith plus

is what they had instituted. And that error has worked its way out to the point that I guarantee you, almost everyone in the world at large, whatever belief system they might have, even in some brick buildings with crosses out front, there's an emphasis on faith plus. If there was a balloon that's just above your head a little bit. If there was a balloon that's just up above the head a little bit, something that it couldn't reach, one might look for some means. You'd look around and say, "Well, there's chairs. Maybe there's a ladder. Has anyone got a ladder?" Something like that in order to get it. If there was something you wanted to reach for, wanted to attain, needed to lay hold of, and you couldn't grasp it, you'd look at a tool. You'd look for means. You'd look for something that could help you do so. The same is true when people think about matters of salvation. They know heaven's above them, and they kind of figured out that they can't just get there on their own or reach it or grab it through their own immediate strength,

and so they look for tools.

They look for some means. And if someone comes along and tells them that if you will just be circumcised, you're in. If you're just baptized, you're in. If you just pray this prayer after me, you're in. People who know and desire and want to get to heaven but don't know how, if you insert one rung, one work, one chair, one ladder as a means by which they can do it, oh, they'll thank you for that. Because then in their mind's eye, they've been given the tool. Someone told them. Maybe someone with a clerical collar, or maybe someone who calls himself pastor, reverend, what have you. Someone told them that that was the means by which they could lay hold of that which they wanted to grab. People gravitate towards temporal tools to bridge a spiritual gap. That is not

the gospel. Even if it was what the Judaizers liked, even if it was what they liked in Galatia, even if it's what they like in Rome, even if it's what they like in all manner of other places, that's not the gospel. Verse 28 said, "We, brethren," we, as Isaac was, we are children of promise. We're children of faith. You want to lay hold of that. There is a means.

But it's not by looking around for some work or some thing you'll do or prayer you'll pray or a viable sawdust walkway you'll go down. Rather, it's through faith. We're not children of fleshly works and efforts and trying hard and reaching around God to grab hold of something we want of God's. Rather, we're children of promise, and that promise is that God said he would send his Son, and in due time, he did. And that Son is the singular means by which we get to heaven. Isaac, you think of his son, Jacob. Jacob one day has a dream. You ever heard the story of Jacob's ladder? Jacob's sleeping. He's been running, and he goes to sleep. He has this dream of this ladder that descends from heaven, and there's angels going up and down it. Now, he doesn't know what it is. He doesn't know what that means. For centuries, the Jews didn't know what that meant. For centuries, you could talk about Jacob's ladder, they didn't know what it meant. But Jesus came along and he says, "I am the ladder." Jesus came along and he overtly, clearly stated that, "I am the ladder. I am the singular means. I'm the ladder that came down from heaven. You want to get there, you ascend by one means, me."

You ascend by a singular means. We're saved by faith in Christ, not because we get another chair or another ladder or an elevator or anything like that.

We're saved through a singular means, faith in Christ alone. Now,

in this room, especially after having preached on this for eight weeks nowPreaching and teaching to Reformed Presbyterians about faith alone and grace alone, that's the very equivalent of preaching to the choir. I get that you get this. I get that I'm not shocking you when I say we're saved through faith alone. We get this. But here's the thing. There's people that you love desperately. There's people in your families, there's people in your places of work, there's people right down the street from you, maybe even your next door neighbor, who don't get this and don't believe it. And some of them may well indeed believe that they're in fine shape when it comes to God and when it comes to salvation, when it comes to heaven. And yet they've laid hold to some belief system that inserts or insists upon a man-made work or means in order to be reconciled with God.

Salvation is not found in these things. Right now you have friends, perhaps family, that believe that their salvation hinges on a ladder, all right, but it's a ladder of their good works.

If you were to ask them, "Why would God let you into His heaven?" these folks will say some variation of, "Because I'm a good person." They might not use that exact phrase, but that's what they'll be saying.

And what they'll be doing is they'll saying, "I've created my own ladder.

I will get there by virtue of my own works, which are pretty good.

And when I get there, salvation, it's not grace God gives me. No, no, no, no. Salvation's what He owes me."

Do you see the distinction? And do you see why what the Galatians and the Judaizers were doing was blowing up the gospel?

You go to God on that day and you say, "Salvation is mine because I was circumcised," or baptized, or I prayed a prayer once, or I was kind to old people, or I didn't kick the dog, what have you. You say to God, "I earn what I've gotten. And in fact, you owe me this, God." You say that to God, he will say to you, "Depart from me. I never knew you." There's a lot that hinges on this,

and that's why Paul was so adamant when he wrote. That's why he was so adamant, because he knew that this thing, that this issue, it was undermining the security, the salvation of countless people in Galatia and across the 2,000 years since,

perhaps countless millions.

Irrespective of whether you get this as a Reformed Presbyterian, there are people you love that don't.

And on the day in which they look to swing out into eternity, they are clinging to a scarlet thread that cannot bear their weight.

When Paul wrote to the Galatians, he was writing to people he knew were in danger, much as you know people who are in danger. And he was writing them to tell them with as much clarity as he could what was at stake and the danger that they were in. You know, in our day, writing letters has kind of gone by the wayside. In our day, you limit what you write sometimes to 144 characters or just a little bite-sized text or what have you. Well, Paul wrote this lengthy letter to the Galatians out of concern for their souls, and I would suspect there are people who we love who would benefit from such a letter from us.

Those who are trusting in their works, just as Paul's contemporaries were. And if it was good and appropriate for Paul to address them lovingly and gracefully, but directly, it's appropriate for us as well. All right, as we look to wrap up this morning, let me share a final story with you. One day, there was a father who was trying to explain the gospel to his son. Now, the father, he covered the basics. He talked about Jesus, he talked about the cross, he talked about resurrection. So he covered all the basics. And as the father covered the basics, as he talked about Jesus and manger scenes and crosses and empty tombs and the like, as he described these things, his son would nod his head in belief. See, the son could believe the chronology. Like any story, we hear a story, and we just take it in. The son believed the chronology of the gospel. He understood the basics, that Jesus was born in a manger, he grew up, he was nice, he lived perfectly and the like. Ultimately, the bad guys killed him, but he didn't stay dead, he came alive three days later. He got the basics of what the gospel was. That was the easy part. But then the father stopped talking about what Jesus did, and he asked his child this. He says, "Now, what do you need to do?"

And the son, his face kind of got screwed up, the brow furrowed, and he tried to think on that. He understood something about this Jesus and what Jesus did and the life he lived and what happened thousands of years ago on dusty hillsides and the like. He kind of understood the chronology and the like, the narrative. He got that. But when the father asked the son, "Now, what does that require of you? What do you need to do?"

the son didn't have an answer. He didn't know what that meant for him. If you ask that same question of a thousand people in the community around us, no matter how many people you ask, no matter how old they are, if you ask them, "What do you need to be saved?" assuming they think they have anything they need to be saved from, they'll tend to give you variations on only two answers. The one is, "I'm saved through faith, something I believe," and the other is, "I'm saved through works or something that I do." Again, it's not a small distinction, and I would submit to you that the balance of the people in the world around us would answer through the latter, that they would say it's something that I do. If you ever want to test this, try this on a child. Try this on your child. Say, "What do you need to do to be saved?" And then listen. What you want to hear is, "I need to believe. I must have faith." And if you hear that, perfect. But a lot of times, the world around us, even our own nature inclines us to add something to that. Say, "Believe in Jesus and be nice to my sister, and do..." That's the time you stop them. You say, "Well, yeah, I want you to be nice to your sister. Yes, yes, yes. Let's talk about that later." But he says, "You had it right the first thing that came out of your mouth. We're saved through our faith." The people that we care about, the people we're praying for, the people in our family, the people down the street, the people, the coworkers that we have, most everyone thinks that they're in pretty good shape, and if you ask them, if you pry into that, they'll say that they're either saved through their efforts or through their faith. Sometimes people will say both. Both is wrong. Both is wrong. In Ephesians 2, Paul said this, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, not of yourselves." Stop even thinking about works. Stop inserting them into the equation. Don't add a plus sign. "For by grace you have been saved through faith, not of yourselves. It's a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." Once again, I know that you've got this in a room full of Reformed Presbyterians, but some of the people nearest and dearest to you don't. The Judaizers, the Galatians didn't. Their souls hung in the balance. This week, there are other souls still hanging in the balance. Take this same message deliberately, volitionally, intentionally to them. Let's pray.