Please turn with me this morning to Galatians, Chapter 2, as we continue making our way through this ancient letter to the church, a letter that sets out to defend and promote the gospel of Jesus Christ. Today we'll be considering verses 15 through 21 of Galatians 2. Galatians 2, verses 15 through 21.
Hear now the word of the Lord. We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law no one will be justified. But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin?
Certainly not. For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
Let's pray. Father, you alone are the rescuer of men's souls and we have no hope except in your sovereign grace, but what a hope that sovereign grace is. We who deserve death have been given the very words before us today, words that declare that those who are crucified with Christ are also alive in Christ.
Death has no sting to those who have already died and life lived by faith in the Son of God is life everlasting and full of joy and purity and glory. Lord, in our best moments we long for that life but in our worst moments we so often run to substitute saviors, saviors of our own making, saviors that cannot save and so saviors that ultimately leave us hopeless and guilty. Teach us today as we meditate on your word to hold steadfast to the good news that in Christ we die to sin and the law's condemnation and in Christ we live to the saving of our souls. May we remain steadfast in this hope in the coming weeks, in the coming month, the coming year. In fact, until our dying day, keep us secure in the hope that Christ has become sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Holy Spirit, please open our eyes now to behold wonderful things in your word. I pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen. Well, our text today brings us to the central issue in Paul's letter to Galatia. Up to this point, he's been defending his source of authority.
He's essentially been establishing his credentials as an apostle but in verse 15 and following, he comes to the crux of the issue. This letter is about justification by faith alone. I think there's a danger for us this morning that we need to acknowledge here at the outset.
It's the danger of just sort of glazing over and being disinterested when familiar topics are being discussed. I mean, we are Protestants. We are Presbyterian Protestants. When it comes to the doctrine of justification by faith, confessionally speaking, we are the champions of this truth. Sola fide, faith alone, that's our slogan. That's in our top five, isn't it? That's one of the hills we die on. Surely, we don't need a sermon about that. We already believe it.
But here's the thing. The more central and foundational a doctrine is, the more damaging it is when that doctrine is neglected or misunderstood or forgotten or distorted. So the more central a doctrine is, the more important it is that we guard and protect that doctrine. The more foundational the truth is, the more crucial it is that we be absolutely precise and meticulous in our understanding of it. If you don't set the cornerstone of a building correctly, then the whole building is going to be compromised. If we don't accurately comprehend a doctrine like justification by faith, everything that follows is going to be skewed and distorted.
Why? Because this truth is at the foundation of the Christian faith. Here's another thing. This doctrine of justification by faith also is so foundational to Christianity, but it is a truth to which we as fallen sinners have a natural and almost relentless aversion to. Left to ourselves, we don't like this doctrine. In our flesh, we resent it. We resist it.
Case in point. Peter, the apostle, was struggling to remember and hold fast to this doctrine. This is the very context of Galatians 2. Paul had to confront Peter to his face and say, Peter, you've forgotten the foundation. You've lapsed back into legalism. Remember, justification is not through law keeping, Peter. It is through faith alone. If Peter can forget it, brothers and sisters, any of us can forget it.
Someone has said that our text today is perhaps the most significant text in Galatians. Remember how in school students would often ask the teacher, will that be on the test? They wanted to know if they needed to pay attention.
They were essentially asking, will this information affect my grade? Well, Christians, listen up. Know this.
Believe this. Remind yourself of this frequently because justification through faith will be on the final exam. It's a big deal. It's something we desperately need to pay attention to and learn and hold fast to, and yet how prone we are to forgetting this precious truth, how prone we are to take it for granted and not think about it, and then to gradually distort it and eventually forget it altogether. Before you know it, the church stands in need of a total reformation just to jerk it back to its doctrinal senses before the whole foundation crumbles. You see, the gospel is not a box that we check on the day of our conversion and never think about again.
The gospel is the truth that our souls need to contemplate and believe and obey every day of our lives. So let me exhort you this morning to resist the temptation to think to yourself, I already know that. I don't need to pay attention. Yes, you do need to pay attention.
I need to pay attention. We all need to be reminded today and tomorrow and next week and next year and for the rest of our lives of the central truths of the gospel. Otherwise, we will drift. Otherwise, we will wander off course, and before long, we'll run the risk of having the gospel being unrecognizable to us altogether. So we need frequent reminders of foundational truths, and God has graciously put before us this morning the familiar but also crucial truth that sinners can only be made righteous before God through faith in Jesus Christ and never through obeying a list of commands, even God's commands. Paul's opponents were adding obedience to the law as a necessary prerequisite for justification, and so in these verses, Paul explicitly and thoroughly refutes this false gospel. And he does so by making four assertions. The first assertion he makes is that justification through the law is impossible.
It's an impossibility. We see this in verses 15 and 16. Paul says of himself and Peter, we ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. He doesn't mean by this that Gentiles are sinners and Jews are not sinners. He's speaking in broad covenantal categories in a similar way to maybe how we would speak of faithful Christians and unfaithful non-Christians. We don't mean by that that Christians can't be unfaithful. Paul goes on, yet we Jewish Christians know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because, and here's the big proposition, by works of the law, no one will be justified. Paul and Peter, who grew up in the context of all these old covenant rules and ceremonies, knew from experience that these rules and ceremonies, in other words the law, could not justify them.
Why was that? Because law keeping cannot justify a sinner. It's an impossibility. Perhaps we need to pause here for just a moment and define the term justification. We may have some young believers or new believers who can't quite articulate what justification is.
We may have some old believers who can't quite articulate the meaning of justification. It's a beautiful word. It's a judicial word.
It's a legal word. It refers to a declaration of innocence. When a person is charged with a crime and goes to trial, he stands before a judge and jury.
The judge and jury hear all the details of the case, the accusations, the defense, the facts, the proofs, the circumstances, and at the end of the trial a decision is made about whether that accused person is guilty or innocent. Justification occurs when an accused person is declared to be innocent. They're vindicated.
The slate is wiped clean. The accusation, whatever it was, is dismissed. In a human court, there are times when a truly innocent person is declared guilty. There are also times when a truly guilty person is declared innocent.
The system doesn't always work like it's intended to. In God's court, however, there are no inconsistencies. The verdict comes down in God's court with 100% accuracy. Another aspect of God's court is that every person who stands trial in that court is actually guilty. There are no false accusations in God's court because there are no innocent people in God's court. All have committed the crime of breaking God's law. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And so one would expect that justification of the accused is something that would never occur in God's court since everyone on trial in that court is guilty.
But this is where the unexpected surprise of the gospel steps in. Jesus took the punishment for guilty sinners and on the basis of that substitution, God, the judge, is able to declare that guilty people are innocent. God is able to justify the guilty not because they aren't guilty but because Christ has swapped places with the guilty and in exchange, Christ lets those guilty people have his innocence. So justification is God's declaration that guilty sinners are innocent not because they actually are innocent but because Jesus gives them his innocence.
That's what justification is. Now back to Paul's point then. As Jewish men who grew up in a religion that demanded compliance to all sorts of ceremonies and rules and regulations, Peter and Paul knew from experience that no matter how hard they tried to meet the demands of God's law, they couldn't do it. They could not act righteously because they were sinners by nature.
No amount of trying and doing and resolving and promising to do better could ever make them better. Obedience could not make them innocent because no matter how hard they tried, they could not obey with perfection. The law does not make me obedient.
It simply exposes my disobedience. Well next, Paul points out that not only is justification through keeping the law an impossibility, it's actually sinful to believe and act as if it can. To believe and act as if the law can justify. Paul says that pursuing justification through the law is sinful. Verse 17, but if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? In running to Christ for justification, Peter and Paul and every other Christian, Jewish or Gentile, are acknowledging their own sinfulness.
And if running to Christ means acknowledging one's personal sinfulness, is Christ leading people into sin? Paul's opponents thought so. They thought that relying on Christ alone and not Christ plus obedience was just easy believism.
It was cheap grace. They were saying it's scandalous, Paul, to suggest that obedience to the law is an impossible means of justification. Surely at least a little bit of law keeping must be necessary, otherwise everyone is just going to plunge headlong into more sin. The gospel of merely believing Jesus is going to open the floodgates to all sorts of iniquity.
And this fear of too much grace is nothing new, is it? In fact, it's the same objection Paul addresses in Romans 6 where he asks the question, if grace abounds over sin, then why shouldn't I just keep on sinning so that grace can keep on abounding? If my law keeping doesn't justify me, then what's to keep me from indulging in all manner of sin? And certainly some people do use this line of reasoning as an excuse to sin more. Paul's going to address that line of reasoning in chapter 5, but here Paul is addressing the danger not of hiding behind grace to excuse my sin, but of hiding behind the law to excuse my unbelief.
That's what he's addressing here in chapter 2. Paul asks the question in verse 17, is Christ then a servant of sin? Is trusting in Christ alone just going to make me sin more? To which Paul replies, absolutely not, certainly not.
In fact, quite the opposite is true. Paul says, if I rebuild what I tore down, if I run back to the law, back to that which could not previously make me righteous, I prove myself to be a transgressor. I'm forsaking the very gospel I claim to believe. I'm sinning against grace. So justification through the law is an impossibility and to pretend that it is a possibility is actually sinful. Why is it sinful?
This is Paul's third assertion. It's sinful because justification through the law dishonors Christ. It dishonors Christ.
We see this in verse 21. Paul says, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. The false teachers in Galatia were trying to have it both ways. They wanted Christ and the law. They wanted to be justified by keeping the rules.
The only problem was they weren't good at keeping the rules. So they ran to Christ for justification. But then, and this is where they went wrong, they ran back to the law because they couldn't let go of the desire to contribute just a little bit of something to their own justification. They couldn't quite admit that they were absolutely morally bankrupt with nothing to offer God by way of self-redemption.
They wanted a version of justification that actually justified them but one that kept their pride and self-respect intact. Essentially, they wanted God to save them but they wanted to keep a little bit of the credit for themselves. This really is the basis of any false gospel, isn't it? It all comes down to man's arrogant desire to be his own savior. We have a thousand different ways of being our own savior. There's the gospel of good morals which says my good outweighs my bad so God owes me a place in heaven.
There's the gospel of comparison that says I'm not as bad as those people so God must be impressed with me. There's the gospel of the external rule keeper, be morally clean on the outside, dress the right way, keep the right friends, be mannerly, be a respectable citizen. It doesn't matter that your heart's full of pride and resentment, bitterness, self-righteousness.
Just look the part and you're good. Or the opposite of that, the gospel of humanism that makes authenticity the highest virtue, just be real, be human, be you. Sincerity is what matters most. That's the way to preserve your soul for all eternity and on and on the list of false gospels go. There's one thing that every single one of these have in common. They all deny the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation. If a substitute gospel of any sort is sufficient to justify me, then Christ is superfluous. If the law is enough, then Christ isn't enough.
Christ is in fact unnecessary. And so Paul says justification through the law, through God's law or through a law of my own making, justification through the law is a justification that dishonors Christ because it nullifies grace and makes Christ's death pointlessly unnecessary. So over and over, Paul makes the point that the law cannot justify. Obedience to God's commands will never result in the sinner being made righteous. The law can ever only condemn the sinner.
When I look into the mirror of the law, the only thing I ever see looking back at me is a law breaker. But thankfully, Paul makes one more assertion and it's the best assertion of them all. Justification through the law will only condemn.
Listen to this. Justification through faith in Christ brings life. Justification through faith in Christ brings life.
This glorious assertion is seen for us right there in verses 19 and 20. Paul says in verse 19, for through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God. In other words, through my inability to keep the law, I died to the notion that I could somehow attain salvation by keeping the law. My sin nature, with all of its enslavement and failure and inability, forces me to acknowledge that I cannot obey my way into heaven. The sooner I acknowledge this reality, the sooner I will become desperate for a savior who can actually save. In chapter 3, Paul is going to describe this process of dying to the law in terms of a teacher, a guardian, a pedagogue, bringing the sinner to Christ.
The reformers spoke of this process as one of the primary purposes of the law. The law is intended to make us become aware of our own sinfulness and in becoming aware of that sinfulness, we are driven to the only source of salvation from sin. And what is that only source of salvation? It is faith in Jesus Christ. The law does that.
The law drives us to that conclusion. Look at verse 20, the most hopeful and comforting verse. It says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. This means that Paul's old self, the one represented by Adam in his fallenness, in his sinfulness, is no longer alive and determining Paul's destiny. Instead, Christ is representing Paul before the throne of God. And so Paul's value, Paul's righteousness, Paul's status, Paul's standing are all determined by the fact that Christ is now his representative. Paul goes on, in the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So not only does Christ represent Paul before the presence of God, Jesus Christ indwells Paul, which means he is changing Paul from the inside out. So that one day Paul will not only be declared righteous in God's courtroom, he will actually be righteous in his behavior, in his motives, in his affections, in his thought processes.
Everything that Paul is and does will be righteous, sin free, morally upright, acceptable to God. And beloved, this state of being both declared righteous and being made righteous before God is true of anyone who has given up on trying to save themselves through keeping the law and instead is trusting in the atoning death of Jesus Christ. Years ago I went through an evangelism training program called Evangelism Explosion. Many of you have gone through that as well. And in that training course we're encouraged to use an opening question to help diagnose a person's spiritual state. It reveals their understanding or lack of understanding of the gospel. The question is this, if you were to die tonight and God were to ask you, why should I let you into heaven, what would you say?
And week after week we would go out into the community striking up conversations with people by asking them this question. I was amazed at how many people answer the question wrong, incorrectly. More times than not the answer people would give would be some version of justification through works of the law. I've tried to be good. I've kept the Ten Commandments.
I'm not as wicked as I could have been. I just try to love people and show respect for others. And on and on it would go, reason after reason for why my sin is really not all that bad and therefore God should be lenient with me. But folks there is only one correct answer to the question of why God should ever forgive your sin and accept you into his presence. And it's this, I am crucified with Christ.
It's no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. As I stand before God one day facing eternity there will be no reason why God should let me into heaven. There will be every reason why he should banish me to hell. If I'm ever to see the light of day or the streets of gold or the awesome throne of God it can only be upon the merits of Jesus Christ. My sins are to not be held against me.
It can only be because Jesus Christ has already been punished for those sins and God being just will not punish twice for the same sins. I cannot obey my way to righteousness. I will fail. I've already failed.
You've already failed. And for a sinner to even try is to impugn the holiness of God. My only hope in life and death is that I with body and soul both in life and death am not my own but belong to Jesus Christ who with his precious blood has fully satisfied God's wrath against my sins and delivered me from the power of sin and the world and the devil and even death itself. And so preserves me that not even a hair can fall from my head without God's ordaining will. This is the gospel. This is the only ground a sinner has for salvation on Christ the solid rock I stand.
All other ground is sinking sand. There are no explicit commands to be obeyed in our text today. It's all doctrine. Truths to be understood and believed.
And so the application for us is simply to believe these truths. To believe Paul's assertion. To believe the gospel. So let me just ask you this morning, how would you answer the question, why should God let you into heaven?
Would you point to something good in yourself? Do you really think you're good enough, clean enough, holy enough to enter the presence of a God who is so holy that even the best of humanity melt in his presence when they encounter him? Folks, we don't understand the depth and the purity of the holiness of God if we think we even have the slightest chance of surviving his presence on the merits of our own righteousness. We don't understand the depth and the magnitude of our own wickedness if we think there is anything beautiful or attractive to God about our hearts, our lives, our behavior. Thinking that I will stand before God one day and point to my moral goodness as grounds for his acceptance of me is something that we're all prone to do. And yet something that is so ludicrously misinformed and arrogant that the very thought of it ought to make us just hide our faces in shame and embarrassment. If you've lived your life thinking that justification through works is a viable option, I hope that you've seen today that it is an impossible option. It is in fact a sinful option because it is a Christ-nullifying option.
But we're not left without hope. The gospel has been revealed to us today in God's word. All one must do to be saved is to call upon the Lord Jesus Christ and in calling upon him to forsake our meager attempts at self-justification and rely on him for the righteousness we lack.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him will not perish but will have everlasting life. If you're weighed down with the guilt of your own sin, you're afraid of death, afraid of the future, not sure where to turn or how to gain access to heaven, I want to beg you to stop looking at yourself and start looking to Jesus Christ. And if none of this makes sense to you today, find a Christian friend who can help it make sense to you. Come talk to me or one of our elders after the service. Today is the day of salvation. Hear God's voice.
Don't harden your hearts. All who call upon him will be saved. And so sinner, come to Christ and be saved. But I think we need to not miss the fact that this gospel saturated paragraph in scripture was originally written not to unbelievers, but to people who had already given a credible profession of faith in Christ. It was written to Christians for Christians, which tells us something. It tells us that the gospel is easily forgotten, easily obscured, easily overlooked and undervalued. It tells us that even Christians need to be reminded of the hope that's theirs in Christ. Sin is so insidious and pride is so relentless that even those who have been transformed by the good news of Christ need constant reminders that we cannot save ourselves.
We need Jesus. Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer, loved the book of Galatians because he loved the doctrine of justification through faith alone in Christ alone. Luther said this of the doctrine of justification through faith. When you hear an immature and unripe saint trumpet that he knows very well that we must be saved by the grace of God without our own works and then pretend that this is a snap for him, well then have no doubt that he has no idea what he's talking about and probably will never find out. This is not an art that can be completely learned or of which anyone could boast that he is a master.
It is an art that will always have us as pupils while it remains the master. And all those who do understand and practice it do not boast that they can do everything. On the contrary, they sense it like a wonderful taste or odor that they greatly desire and pursue and they are amazed that they cannot grasp it or comprehend it as they would like.
They hunger, thirst and yearn for it more and more and they never tire of hearing about it or dealing with it. Just as Paul himself confessed that he had not yet obtained and just as Christ calls those blessed who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Christian, learn to love this doctrine by frequently meditating on this doctrine. You are crucified with Christ by faith.
And because of that union with him in his death, you will be spared an eternity of dying and in its place experience this declaration of God on judgment day. You are not guilty. You are righteous.
You are innocent. You are my child. Enter into the joy of your master on the grounds of the merits and the righteousness of my only begotten son.
Let's pray. Father, we misunderstand grace when we think you owe us something and we often think you owe us something because we underestimate the heinousness, the offensiveness of our own sin. Lord, we are really no different from those Galatians who fell prey to a false gospel. Christians who were enamored with the thought that somehow they might contribute at least something to their justification. Lord, we are the same way.
We are wired the same way. So when we begin to head down that path, please stop us in our tracks. Pull us back to the only gospel that can save. Thank you that the same union with Christ that covers all of our other sins also covers the sin of unbelief, sin of doubting the very gospel that saves us. You are a thorough and sufficient savior of sinners. So we look to you alone, the author and finisher of our faith. Amen.
