Hello, my friends, it's Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and I am having a lovely day. I hope you are as well. My day has been lovely because my family, everybody took the day off, and we all worked on the garage. Those of you who have garages, you probably understand what I'm talking about. The garage is like the uh giant procrastination dumpster where you just hurl all the things that you probably should worry about at some point. But not today, because if you throw something in the garage, it doesn't count against you morally. It's just out there for now, in, you know, the abyss. And eventually the abyss becomes such that you can't walk through it or do projects because you can't get to your tools anymore. It was getting bad. We had a lopsided garage fridge out there. For those of you who live in other countries, I know that's a very strange concept, but in America, we have something called garage fridges, and it's just exactly what it sounds like. It's a fridge that goes in the garage. It's usually your old fridge. You don't buy a garage fridge, settle down. It's the old one. When you retire it and it still kind of cools things, you put it out there. Well, mine's all like wonky on sort of like a slope. And then it was running hard because I think the freon was all dripping to one side. So I leveled the fridge, not like leveled it like you level a city in ancient warfare. I mean, I like I leveled it out with a level and everything. And now it sounds great, and my Capri Suns are ice cold. I bought a bunch of receptacles and containers, and I put things that were similar together in the containers and put labels on them. I loaded an entire truckload of stuff and took it to the dump. I'm on cloud nine. It was amazing. And like I said, I hope your day is a fraction as awesome as my day is. Oh, here's something else that made my day awesome. A bunch of you signed up to support the podcast in the last week. That is cool of you. You want to know something I worry about all the time? I'm like, huh, this is like my favorite thing I've ever done in my entire life. I love doing this daily podcast thing. I've gotten to know a lot of the people who listen to it, and I just like that this is a part of what I do. And every time we wrap up a season, I'm like, I wonder if people will want another season. I hope they do, because I want to do another season, and then another one after that, and maybe the whole Bible someday. I don't know. I probably got to work on my pacing a little bit if we're gonna get that done. And so there's just always this bit of trepidation, if I'm to be honest, about the transition between one season and the next. And that's why I don't take a break between the seasons. I don't want you to think of something else to do with that time. Should I have said that? Now I just suggested that it's possible that you could do something else with your 10-minute Bible hour time. I well, you know, just don't think about that. No, I mean, all joking aside, um, yeah, I worry about it a little bit. And so just having a handful of you jump in here in the last week. Um, it means a lot. Obviously, it helps pay bills for the family and stuff, so it means a lot in that regard. But also from a pure encouragement perspective, that was really cool of you, and I'm grateful. Also, anytime we talk about this, it is so dang important for me to stress you don't have to support a podcast on the internet. You can just listen to it and be here. That is a gift to me as well. I love that all of you are here. Thank you to those of you who support the program. Thank you to those of you who are new. Thank you to those of you who have supported it in the past. I'm just ludicrously grateful that we get to do this, and I'm gushing with enthusiasm about that and the garage. Thank you for hearing me out. I'm gonna go play tennis here in just a few minutes. We have a new men's tennis league that's starting up. Maybe it started last week. I'm jumping in this week, and I've been trying to get better at tennis for the last five-ish years. And so I've been playing with good players and watching videos, and it's super fun. Like I'm not getting better at baseball, I'm not getting better at basketball anymore. I'm not a better hockey player than I used to be, or a better quarterback than I used to be. But at tennis, I'm getting better, and that's really invigorating and super fun and keeps me going out all the time, you know. I was thinking about this. Um, I was trying to figure out like, you know, how did I become a tennis player? Or how does one become a tennis player? This is going somewhere. Bear with me here. I suppose you get invited to play tennis and then you play, right? I mean, how does someone cross the divide from not tennis player or outside looking in on tennis to in? Well, I think you just show up and play. I I guess. I mean, I would suppose most people who become tennis players get invited to play tennis overtly by another person, but maybe you just see that tennis is a thing that exists and you're like, I would like to try that. So you go try it. I I don't know. Basically, you become a tennis player by playing tennis, right? You just you show up, and that's how it is. But how, this gets a little trickier, how would you know I'm a tennis player? Okay, let's just actually do the exercise. I know it's a little tedious, a little silly. Like I said, it's going somewhere. Okay, one, you would know I'm a tennis player because I said I'm a tennis player and that I like tennis. That could do it. Two, if you asked me something about tennis, you might notice that I have thought about tennis and I might have some things to say or be able to formulate a useful question about tennis. But probably the number one way that you could tell that I'm a tennis player is that I play tennis. If you went to a tennis court when I was playing tennis, you would see me out there absolutely wrecking my clothing with sweat whenever I play. Everybody knows this is a thing who's played me. My shirt, the sweat pattern forms into like this perfect, maybe Mickey Mouse or a monkey or like a care bear kind of thing, just right on my pecs and my abdomen. And you just get this this absolute like I'm trying to be all serious. We're playing tennis, this is important. But gradually, as we play, this adorable bear shape forms on my torso, and I just can't be taken seriously. And I think that's probably for the best for everyone. But that's another way that you would know that I play tennis, is you would see me out there sweating in a comical way and ruining my shirts. Likewise, okay. How does somebody become a Christian? We just spent a lot of time in the book of Galatians. I think the Galatian-Z answer without going anywhere outside this one little sliver of scripture, which is in my Bible, this many pages. One, two, three, four, five. Well, and the last one is the beginning of Ephesians, so like four and a half. That's it. Without going anywhere outside of that, I would say that the Galatian-Z answer is through Christ. That is how you become a Christian, which makes sense because it's right there in the name, Christ Christian. There you go. Well, how does that happen? Through Christ, or through faith. You believe, you know, just like Abraham, you are, you know, you join him as the man of faith, and then God does the work, Jesus does the work, and then you're blessed along with Abraham, who is the man of faith. So that's it. And if that's kind of frustrating in its simplicity, and if it kind of feels like, so I don't really do anything, yeah. I mean, that's the riddle. That's sort of why Galatians was written, because that was too easy for people to get it. And so they wanted to go back and be like, no, I'm gonna make up some stuff that I need to do to sign up to become a Christian on the front end. So kind of like how do you become a tennis player? There isn't really a lot that goes into that. And actually, probably more goes into the act of hitting a tennis ball once or walking onto a tennis court than even goes into the human fleshly act of becoming a Christian, because it's the gift of God. It's it's by grace so that no one can boast. And again, that just spins our compass because that isn't how things work in the world. But this is the one thing we need the most, and the one thing that is it just happens, it unfolds so completely differently. So by the power of God, by the work of Christ, by faith in Christ, which is the gift of God, that's how you go from not a Christian to a Christian. How is that efficacious? Oh, well, that's because of God too. You know, Jesus on the cross and the resurrection and the forgiveness of God, that's all also him. So he does all of that. Okay. But then how do you know somebody's a Christian? What happens that would cause you to say that person is a Christian? Well, if we just go with these five-ish pages right here in Galatians and what we've looked at for the last 250-ish episodes, it looks like it's fruit. It looks like there is stuff that happens when you walk in the spirit, stuff that happens when God is in your life, when you are indwelt with the Holy Spirit. There's stuff that isn't natural but is beautiful and is of God that is evident. There's ways that you treat people that are the gift of God. There's a capacity for love and for forgiveness that are foreign to human nature that are, again, a gift of God. In other words, there is action, there's outward, measurable, noticeable stuff that would cause you to look at somebody and be like, uh, those are things that happen with Christians. That's Christian stuff right there on that person. And it's more than just an ascent to right belief, though clearly Galatians talks about ascent to right belief. It's more than just planting a flag and saying, I am a Christian, I have faith in Christ, though that comes up in Galatians as well. You would know someone is a Christian because there's fruit, there's evidence. The acts of the sinful nature are obvious, and then there's a long list of very bad things, but the fruit of the spirit is this. Ah, there you go. Now, a lot of you are probably saying, like, I don't understand why this episode exists or what we're doing here. This is the most obvious thing ever. How do you become a tennis player? Uh go to tennis and play tennis. How do people know you're a tennis player? Uh, I don't know, they probably like see you with a racket or playing tennis, I guess. Right. How do you become a Christian? Uh faith in Christ, and I that that's the gift of God. Right. How do people know that you're a Christian? Uh like Christian-y things happen, fruit of the Spirit, I guess. I don't uh what's the controversy here? This all seems so obvious. Well, the controversy is this it's kind of born out of the very book we're looking at, Galatians. Anytime you start talking about any action, any external evidence that points to or is an indicator of faith in Christ and the reality of one being in Christ, a son, a daughter, an heir, an agent of the king. Anytime you talk about that, there is rightly a little bit of caution from certain Christians where they go, like, wait a minute, well, we're not saved by works. We don't have right standing with God because we do stuff. That isn't how it happens. We have right standing with God because of Christ. And so, understandably, they can be a little bit gun shy whenever you start talking about or saying things like what we're going to get into in the next little chunk of Galatians 6. That kind of sounds like, hey, these indicators should be there if you're a Christian. But the the way to diffuse the bomb, and I want to diffuse it in advance before we look at this next passage, is just to get the order of operations right. How did I become a tennis player? I got invited to go to tennis and I went. I mean, in that example, it's still kind of you know the flesh choosing to be a tennis player, but it's a it's a pretty low bar for entry. How do you know I'm a tennis player? You'd see me playing tennis, I guess. Okay. Order of operations when it comes to how do you become a Christian? Faith in Christ. It's just the grace of God, faith in Christ, plus nothing, full stop. That is step one. Then step two is we're no longer slaves to the flesh. That's also Galatians E. We're no longer bound to this cruel teacher that is the law. We're no longer tethered to a fate that is entirely bound to the frailty of our bodies and human weakness. That is no longer our defining identity or story. We are now a son, a daughter, an heir, an agent of the king. We are clothed with Christ. We're clothed with the righteousness of Christ. You're all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. The Bible could not be more explicit about this. How do you become a Christian? How do you go from not a Christian to a Christian? It's faith in Christ by the work of God. That's it. But then there's another really important question that also comes up in Galatians and very prominently in the book of James and other parts of the New Testament as well. And that is, cool. How do you know somebody's a Christian? And the answer always seems to be, because Christian stuff happens. How do you know that something is an aspen tree? Because look at it, it's because of how it is. It's an aspen tree. How do you know that something is an apple tree? Because look, apples. How do you know that someone is a tennis player? They're playing tennis, I guess. How do you know that someone is a Christian? Because their life bears this fruit, because Christian things happen. They can't help but happen. It's the natural outgrowth of the presence of God. And so we're about to get into a passage where, divorced from the rest of the book of Galatians, it might sound like Paul is saying, like, the way you have right standing with God is do a bunch of stuff, and eventually, hopefully it'll catch his eye, and he'll be impressed. And your perseverance and commitment to doing good things will earn his favor, and then you'll have right standing with God. But that can't be what he means because of these four pages right here that came before it. So we've set the table for the question of how do you know somebody's a Christian? We've got the context well built out here toward the end of Galatians. Paul is firmly looking right at the believers who are in turmoil, and he's getting them back on track here. And we're going to look at this very important passage, and instead of explaining it away or trying to make ourselves comfortable with it, hopefully now we're well positioned to benefit from it and savor the passage that is right in front of us. Am I going to read it today? Hang on. I'm going to crane my neck and look at the time. Oh my goodness! No, I'm not going to read it today. I'm going to read it tomorrow. What have I done? That was a lot of time. Okay. Well, that's plenty for the moment. More tomorrow. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And let's do this again soon.