The New Creation (7)

“If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves.” (Gal 6:3)
Now, let’s read verses 7-9.
“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” (Gal. 6:7-9)
 
Review
We are currently sharing a series of messages about being a New Creation. Last week, we looked at a specific attitude we must guard against as we live as new creations: "Religious Hypocrisy." This refers to a state where our lip confession and the faith in our hearts do not match the actual appearance of our lives.
After sharing the parable of the tree and the fruit in Luke 6, Jesus said:
“Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?" (Luke 6:46)
Jesus found it strange that people would call Him "Lord" while not practicing what He said, because these two things cannot happen at the same time. We must either call Him "Lord" and do His words, or not call Him "Lord" and not do His words. To call Him "Lord" while not doing His words is "hypocrisy," because the speech and the life are different.
Jesus explained this religious hypocrisy through the "Parable of the Two Builders." A wise builder dug down deep before building the house and laid a solid rock as a foundation to build upon. On the other hand, a foolish builder built a house on sand without such a process and without any foundation.
On the surface, the two houses looked the same, but there was a huge difference between them. In fact, the second house could hardly be called a "house" because, lacking a foundation, it could not perform one of a house's most important functions: protecting the occupants from external dangers.
When the rain fell and the winds blew, the house built on the rock did not shake but stood firm. However, the house built on the sand was completely destroyed the moment the torrent struck it.
In this parable, the builders represent Christians, and the houses represent their faith and lives. Through this, Jesus shows us what kind of faith we should have and what true faith is. The faith the Lord wants us to have is not a faith without a "foundation"—which comes from only hearing the Word and not obeying—but a faith built on a firm "rock" by obeying the Word we have heard.
Then, what does the foundation refer to here? It refers to going beyond simply hearing Jesus’ words and actually obeying them. In other words, it means welcoming Jesus as the true "Lord" and acting according to what He says.
The religious hypocrisy Jesus speaks of in this parable is "only hearing" the Word and not doing it. It is religious hypocrisy to hear the Word, realize God's will, and feel conviction in one's heart, but stop there without it leading to practical application and action in real life. This is the same as calling Jesus "Lord" but not doing what He says.
Because such faith lacks a foundation, it shakes violently even at small difficulties, trials, and temptations in life. Such faith cannot lead us to salvation in the end. Just as it is hard to call a structure a "house" if it cannot guarantee safety from the outside, this shallow faith is the same. A faith that cannot protect us from temptations and trials in the moments of crisis in our lives is not true faith.
We are all builders. We are all building our own houses. It is the house of salvation. The most important thing in building a house is laying the foundation properly.
So, please keep in mind: that foundation is not built simply by hearing the Word. It is not built by going to church once a week. It is not built by listening to some praise songs. It can only be built when we accept Jesus as the Lord and Savior in our hearts and act according to His Word—when we hear His Word and obey it. That is the way we store up good things in our hearts. Only the good treasure stored up through hearing and obedience can lead us to the truly good life that pleases God.
 
Then, why do so many Christians live in religious hypocrisy, calling Jesus "Lord" but not acting according to His words? There could be several reasons for this.
 
Inconsistency vs Religious Hypocrisy
First, we must acknowledge that because we possess a weak and sinful nature, it is impossible to obey God’s Word perfectly. This is one reason why a gap occurs between our profession and our actual lives.
We have a good desire to call Jesus "Lord" and follow Him. At the same time, however, the sinful nature remains within us, hindering us from fully following the Lord’s will.
The Apostle Paul confessed this struggle in Romans 7:
"So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin." (Romans 7:21-25)
Likewise, even if we confess with our lips Jesus as Lord, we cannot perfectly live a life where He is truly the Lord of our lives because of our sinful nature and weaknesses. We can strive to be like Him, but we cannot live a life completely free from sin like Him. Although we have been justified by faith through His blood, our sinful nature remains and continues to exert a powerful influence over our lives.
For this reason, the inconsistency between our confession and our lives that arises for this reason—calling Him Lord but failing to perform His words—is, to some extent, unavoidable. This struggle will continue until the day Jesus returns and grants us a new resurrected body—a glorious body no longer bound by sin, but completely free.
Until that day, we must strive to daily store God’s good Word in our hearts, remain in Christ to become like Him, and live relying on the Holy Spirit so that the gap between our lip confession and our actual life may narrow. This is what the Bible calls "sanctification."
My point is this: the disconnect stemming from our weakness and sinful nature is inevitable. Rather, it can lead us toward godly sorrow, make us humble, and drive us to rely more on Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
 
The religious hypocrisy Jesus addresses in Luke 6 is not this kind of inconsistency. Jesus is not speaking to those who fail to act on His words even though they have a desire to do so because of their weakness. Rather, Jesus is speaking to those who call Him "Lord" but have no intention of following Him at all. This is the very definition of religious hypocrisy that I’m talking about.
Then why do Christians live with such hypocrisy? If they don’t want to live according to Jesus' will or act on His words, they could simply stop calling Him Lord. Why do they remain uninterested in His will while still calling Him Lord?
There could be many answers, but a representative one is that they are only interested in the blessing they receive by calling Him "Lord."
Let me ask you a question. Why do you believe in Jesus? Why are you here on a Sunday morning worshipping at church when you could be sleeping in or doing something else? It is because you believe it is "worth" it. So, what is that "value"? It is salvation.
Many Christians think that salvation is just going to heaven after death. They believe that by believing in Jesus, their sins are forgiven, they get saved, and they go to heaven. I am not saying this is wrong. While the true biblical meaning of salvation is much deeper than just forgiveness and entering heaven, it is a biblical truth that we receive forgiveness and enter the Kingdom of God through faith in Jesus.
Then, how do we receive salvation? How can we be saved? The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 10:
"If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved." (Romans 10:9-10)
Here, Paul clearly states how we obtain salvation. We believe in Jesus with our hearts first, and we are saved by confessing His Lordship with our mouths. Therefore, confessing with our lips that Jesus is Lord is very important.
 
But there is a crucial point we must not miss. Paul did not say we are saved "only if we profess Jesus as Lord with our mouths." What must come first is believing in Jesus with our "heart." It means welcoming Jesus into our hearts and acknowledging His Lordship.
The Apostle John said in John 1:12 that those who receive Jesus into their hearts and believe in His name become children of God. Let’s read it together:
"To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12)
The confession of our lips is an outward expression of the faith in our hearts. We are not saved simply because we call Jesus "Lord" with our lips. We are saved because we have believed in Him and accepted Him as the "Lord" of our hearts and lives.
Therefore, what truly matters in salvation is not who we say Jesus is with our mouths, but whether we are truly accepting, believing in, and following Him as "Lord." Confessing "Jesus is the Lord of my life" with only the lips, without such faith, is meaningless. That is not a faith the Lord recognizes.
Jesus said in Matthew 7:21:
"Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 7:21)
 
This is precisely where religious hypocrisy begins. Many Christians call Him "Lord" because they want to go to "heaven," even though they have no interest in living by His words and no desire to truly accept and follow Him as Lord.
Calling Jesus "Lord" with the mouth is not difficult at all. However, living a life where He is truly the Master is very difficult and challenging. It means denying oneself, taking up one’s cross, and giving up all of one's rights.
That is why many Christians confess Jesus as "Lord" only with their lips while not really trying to live a life where He is the Master. They want to go to heaven after die, but they don’t want to endure the hardships that come with believing in and following Him in this world.
I believe this is the start of hypocritical faith. Many Christians come to church on Sunday but live the other six days completely apart from Jesus.
They call themselves Christians and say they believe in Jesus, but they do not give up anything or commit themselves to following Him. They do not deny themselves, nor do they try to carry their cross. They do not attempt to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They do not strive to fellowship with Jesus daily and become like Him.
Their faith stops at the level of coming to church once a week. They want the results—heaven and eternal life—but they don't want to commit or surrender their lives to Jesus. So, they confess Jesus as Master with their lips while they remain the masters of their own lives. If that isn't hypocrisy, what is?
 
Self-Deception
The important point is that if this life of religious hypocrisy continues, it eventually leads to a state where you deceive yourself and do not even realize you are living a hypocritical life.
The Bible repeatedly warns us against deceiving ourselves. In the Bible, 'self-deception' is warned against as a very dangerous state spiritually. This means failing to honestly face one's actual spiritual condition and standing before God, instead becoming trapped in one's own thoughts or stubbornness and distorting the truth.
 
1. Hearing Word without Obedience
This kind of self-deception can manifest in various forms. The first of these forms is hearing the Word but not putting it into practice.
The Apostle James says in chapter 1, verse 22:
"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do." (James 1:22-25)
This is in line with what Jesus said through the parable of the two builders. The Apostle James says that merely listening to the Word without doing what it says is the same as "deceiving oneself." What does that mean? It means we must find the evidence of our faith not in "hearing" the Word, but in "doing" the Word.
The true faith God wants from us is not about what kind of religious activities we perform; it is about whether we are truly living the way God wants us to live, bearing good fruit, and living holily in the likeness of Jesus Christ according to His will. God’s interest lies in the fruit of our lives rather than the confession of our lips, and in the transformation of our lives to be more like Jesus Christ rather than our religious activities. That is what proves the sincerity of our faith.
Therefore, any attempt to replace our faith with simple religious activities—without life transformation, fruit, or obedience to the Word—is like deceiving ourselves. Even if you come to church on Sunday and listen to the Word, if you do not obey that Word, it is not genuine faith. Even if you come to church on Sunday and worship God, if you do not worship Him in your daily life, both in your private and public spaces, it is not genuine faith.
Let me say it again: the evidence of true faith lies in the practical fruit of our lives—where we hear God's Word, obey it, and follow Jesus Christ as Lord in every area of our lives. Any attempt to find the basis of our faith in anything else is nothing more than deceiving ourselves. That is not biblical faith.
So, we must stop all attempts to find the foundation of our faith in our religious actions. We must return to the Bible, discover the true meaning of faith as the Bible defines it and how we can be certain of it, and strive to live according to that faith.
 
2. The Illusion of Being Something
The second form of self-deception is the illusion of thinking you are "something" when you are actually "nothing." The Apostle Paul said in Galatians 6:3:
"If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves." (Galatians 6:3)
Here, Paul criticizes those who think they are "something" when they have actually "become nothing." This also manifests in several forms.
 
1) Position vs Condition
Many Christians mistake the position they belong to for their own spiritual condition. Being in the position of a pastor in the church does not prove that person's faith. Even if one has served as an elder for decades, that does not prove their faith. Being a teacher, a praise team leader or member, or a small group leader does not prove that someone has genuine faith in Jesus. Our position in the church does not represent our faith.
It is self-deception to try to find the grounds for our faith in our church positions or the years of our religious life rather than in a life following Christ and the resulting fruit. Even if one holds a high position in the church, their spiritual level may still remain at the level of a child. This is because our growth in faith depends not on how long we have attended church or what role we hold, but only on how much we hear the words of Jesus Christ and follow them.
 
2) Knowledge vs Life
Another form of self-deception is mistaking "biblical knowledge" for faith. As you attend church for a long time, you naturally hear many sermons and accumulate various pieces of biblical knowledge.
Once that knowledge builds up, you can fall into the illusion that you are a person living according to the Word simply because of the "fact that you know the Word," even though you are not actually living by it. It’s like someone who memorizes a recipe perfectly and thinks they are a world-class chef. Possessing only knowledge without action is nothing more than this state of having "become nothing."
As I told you last time, the Word truly works in our lives and grows us spiritually not when we hear it, but when we obey it. What God is truly interested in is not how much biblical knowledge we have, but how much we are obeying the Word we know with all our hearts.
 
3) Assurance without Fruit
The third form of self-deception is assurance without fruit. Without the fruit of life, which is the true evidence of faith presented in the Bible, one tells themselves, "I am saved. I have faith," and claims to be a person with decent faith.
People who have the faith of self-assurance without fruit can deceive themselves by telling themselves they are people of good faith, even though their faith is actually not good. They are under the illusion of being "something" while being "nothing."
 
The Spiritual Danger of Self-Deception
These three are the forms of self-deception commonly found in the church. Then, what is the biggest difference between true faith and faith coming from self-deception? True faith humbles us before God. True faith makes us see our shortcomings and makes us rely more on God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit who can fix them.
However, faith coming from self-deception does not look at one's own weak points but inflates and overinterprets other parts. It inflates the years of one's faith, position in the church, biblical knowledge, and religious activities to deceive oneself into thinking they are a person of good faith through those things.
The reason having a faith based on self-deception is dangerous is that it hinders us from growing spiritually. Christians who believe they are "good believers" by bringing in other factors—without any fruit of life, without denying themselves, without giving up what is theirs, and without any effort to follow Jesus Christ as Lord—no longer try to change. Because they think the level they currently believe at is good enough, they do not strive to become more like Jesus.
For someone who hallucinates that they have become something while actually being "nothing," their spiritual growth plates close. The moment you think you are okay, the space for God's grace to enter disappears.
Therefore, we must always stand before the mirror of the Word to reflect on ourselves and be able to see our bare faces just as they are, seeking biblical faith rather than a faith from self-assurance or self-deception.
That is the way we can clear away the fog of "self-deception" and grow into the image of a true Christian that God expects of us. When we examine our lives in the light of the life shown by Jesus Christ and strive to grow into His full measure every day, we will be able to live as the true Christians God desires.
I will conclude today's sermon here. Next week, we will examine the third form of self-deception described in the Bible and look at how we can examine our faith in the light of the Word, and what kind of life we should live as new creations.
Let us pray now.
 
Closing Prayer
Heavenly Father,
We come before You now with humble hearts, acknowledging that You are the true Lord of our lives. We thank You for Your Word, which acts as a mirror, showing us not just who we want to be, but who we truly are in Your sight.
Lord, we confess that it is so easy for us to fall into the trap of religious hypocrisy and self-deception. We often find comfort in our church positions, our years of attendance, or the biblical knowledge we have gathered, while our hearts remain far from true faith in You. Forgive us for the times we have called You "Lord, Lord" with our lips, but lived as the masters of our own lives.
Lord, we ask that You would clear away the fog of self-deception from our hearts. Do not let us be merely listeners of the Word, but help us to be doers of the Word. Give us the courage to face our "bare faces" in the mirror of Your truth. Where we have become complacent or thought ourselves to be "something" when we are "nothing," break our pride and lead us to a place of genuine humility and repentance.
We pray for the strength to build our lives on the solid Rock of obedience. Help us to deny ourselves, take up our crosses daily, and follow Jesus with a faith that produces real, visible fruit.
As we go into this coming week, let us not be satisfied with just knowing about You, but let us strive to be like You. Keep us hungry for Your grace and dependent on Your Spirit, knowing that without You, we can do nothing.
In the powerful name of Jesus Christ, we pray,
 

[Reflection Questions]
1. Explain the difference between the gap between lip confession and actual life caused by our weakness/sinful nature versus the "religious hypocrisy" caused by self-deception. Why do many Christians attend church every week and call Him "Lord" while having no intention of truly welcoming Jesus as Lord and following Him?
 
2. Explain the two conditions for salvation mentioned by the Apostle Paul (Romans 10:9-10) and their meanings. In light of these two conditions, what kind of faith do you possess? If there is a deficiency in your faith, how can you supplement it?
 
3. Explain how "religious hypocrisy" and "self-deception" are connected. Based on James 1:22 and Galatians 6:3, describe the specific forms of "self-deception" mentioned in these passages.
 
4. Explain the three forms of self-deception derived from Galatians 6:3. Describe the differences between biblical faith and faith rooted in self-deception, as well as the dangers of the latter. Which one is your faith closer to, and why do you think so? If you feel your faith is far from biblical faith, what can you do to possess true biblical faith?