Am I now seeking the approval of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? For if I were still pleasing men, I wouldn’t be a servant of Christ.For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? or am I striving to please men? if I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ.
3 sermons cite this verse
… Where do I get that? Galatians 1.10 Am I striving to please men? if I were still trying to please men, Paul says I would not be the bondservant of Christ if I were trying to please men I would not be the bondservant of Christ but I am the bondservant of Christ therefore I don't give a rip about pleasing men unless my pleasing them might lead them to please my master. Which is what Romans 15 says. Let us seek to please one another for edification that we might glorify God through bringing others to him. But what's driving this man is a radical Christ orientation because Christ bought him, owns him, and rules him now. and all of his thinking is, how can I please him? How can I honor him? How can I magnify him? And what we want to create at Bethlehem, and I know that the vast majority of you are with me on this, what we want is a church of people who are radically oriented on pleasing Christ, honoring Christ, magnifying Christ, and letting the chips fall where they will, instead of being what most people are, namely second-handers. …
… It is meaningless. Galatians 1.10, He says, I'm not a man pleaser. It doesn't matter what people think. ذری being the judge and jury of my own life. Why? Because Proverbs 21 says, every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. You don't have the final verdict on your life. You're biased in your own favor. It's part of your residual fallenness. He says, I don't wrest the judgment of my life into the hands of men. I don't even put it in my own hands. It doesn't matter, because neither others nor my own judgment are the final word. Man's verdict is too biased, the standard is too low, and it's a very insignificant thing, what people think. So in verse 5 he then says, therefore do not go on passing judgment. Stop literally, stop passing judgment. Stop saying, Apollos is this, and Paul is this, and Peter is this, and Christ is this. Stop rendering these judgments. You don't know enough to render a right judgment. …
… Now notice how Paul follows up with this very, very sharp and strong warning. With a rhetorical question, for I do I now persuade men or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ. Now that seems to be in direct contradiction to what I just read to you out of Romans. where Paul talks about the business that we are not to be pleasing ourselves, but we are to be pleasing our brothers. And here he says to the Galatians, if he is pleasing to men, he cannot be a disciple of God. Now he's obviously talking about two completely different types of pleasing of others. In Galatians, he's talking about a sin, a sin by which the church has been laid waste countless of times in church history, where the gospel of God has been compromised or distorted for the sake of man-pleasing. For we know that the gospel is foolishness for those who are perishing. …