Galatians 5:4  Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.

 

It is a startling discovery to find that those who return to the works of the law are "fallen from grace." If they ever knew the Grace of God in truth, they have lost the sense of it in their souls in turning to the Law, and Christ needs to be formed again within them. (Gal. 4:19). We shall look at just what that means.

 

A well taught servant of Christ has said, "Nine-tenths of the children of God are fallen from grace", meaning they are mixing law and grace, or trying to do so, without the understanding that they are two entirely different and opposite principles. Many truly saved persons are without peace with God because of this and they do not know Gospel Liberty (Gal. 5:1). The epistle to the Galatians was written to recover the churches from their departure from the truth in going back to the law principle. They ran well at first, but had been stopped. 

 

Galatians is a very important epistle for a Christian to study, because it is an easy matter to fall into the Galatian error (even its heresy!). The reader himself may judge to what extent the "leaven" has spread in the church of God today. 


The true believer, walking in liberty, and who has the sense of the Grace of God in his soul, is a happy Christian. He walks by the Spirit, he walks in grace. The law, in contrast, brings one into bondage, because it seeks to exact something from the fallen nature, that which the flesh cannot achieve. 

 

It may be that the reader needs to read the Galatian epistle very often and very carefully.

 

One final thought:  "Fallen from grace" does not infer that a saved person becomes an unsaved person, but rather that a true believer who was walking in holy grace in the liberty that salvation gives, has left that position and moved under the law principle. And by doing so he or she has moved out off the ground of victorious Christian living, into a principle where the flesh is utterly shown to be incapable of measuring up. To walk under the law principle therefore, is to be fallen from grace.