Justification By Faith Is Where Legalism Dies - Galatians 3:6-9

In his book, The God Who Justifies, Dr. James R.

White, who I actually had the pleasure of meeting one time, it was back in the before days, before RONA, in 2019 in,

I believe it was in Mechanicsville, Virginia or somewhere thereabouts, there was a conference there on the Trinity and I actually had the joy of meeting him and he signed two of his books for me, so it was a really neat treat to meet him, but he states the following about the vital doctrine of justification in his book.

He says, you are justified only when God the Father, based on the meritorious work of Jesus Christ in your place, declares you to be so upon the exercise of the gift of faith.

This faith is directed solely to the God who justifies the ungodly. To be justified means to be declared right with God by virtue of the remission of sins accomplished by Jesus Christ.

And the word remission meaning the cancellation of a debt, a charge, or a penalty.

He goes on to say, Christ's righteousness is imputed to the believer, and the word imputed meaning assigning to someone a state or a class or a status.

And these two words are very important in this doctrine. So he says, the believer's sins are imputed to Christ who bears them in his body on the tree of Calvary.

Justification is from beginning to end a divine action based upon the mercy of God the

Father and the work of Jesus Christ. Dr. White goes on to say on another page later in the book that justification in the biblical sense is a declaration concerning the relationship of a man to God and his law.

It is a legal statement that a man or woman is no longer under the curse of the law but stands righteous just before the bar of God.

Amen. Justification by faith, my friends.

What we're going to see this morning, that justification by faith is ultimately where legalism dies.

Now legalism, we're not going to be defining it or dealing with it this morning because we've already done that in previous texts in Galatians.

But he's bringing it all to a point here. This is where legalism ultimately dies and from here through the rest of this chapter we're going to be looking at justification and faith and the promise of God and those different things.

So we've already dealt with it that the Judaizers wanted to require those who believed in Christ to be circumcised and keep the law.

But this, with this vital doctrine, with this fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith, legalism ultimately dies.

Justification by faith is one of the cornerstone doctrines of the historic Christian faith and religion.

Without it, everything else falls like a house of cards. There's really no point in discussing anything about the

Christian life. There's no point in discussing anything else about doctrine or theology if we're not justified by faith.

Because the whole of our life, the whole of our energy would need to be spent working towards our salvation.

But we don't have to do that. The Judaizers would have loved to have used

Abraham as their quote -unquote proof that circumcision was necessary to please

God and become acceptable to Him. However, as we're going to see in our primary text this morning and in other texts that we look at, the

Scriptures paint a much different story. We please God with our living faith and we are acceptable to Him based on the righteousness of Christ which is imputed or assigned to us.

Circumcision was never meant to be a means of salvation. Now we're not going to have time to look at it this morning, but one of the texts that was on the chopping block, if you will, because we have limited time every

Sunday morning and we have to make choices about which ones we'll cover. But if you want to go later and look at Romans chapter 2, towards the end of the chapter there's an extended discussion about circumcision and how one needs a circumcision of the heart.

That would definitely go along with what we're talking about, but we won't be able to cover it this morning. So if you want to go and read that later, that'd be a great chapter to look at as well.

And this is much of what I preach and have been preaching many times to you since I've been here with you.

I talk often about the perfect Savior and how He saves perfectly. And every single human being that repents of their sin and puts their full faith and trust in Jesus Christ will find

Him to equally be a perfect Savior for them and for everyone else.

Christ's sacrifice is not divided. It's not that I get 40 % of the sacrifice, you know,

Richard gets his 5%, maybe Gina gets another 10 and, you know, we just kind of split amongst all of us.

No, every single saint, every single saved one, every single believer, just like Abraham, is 100 % perfectly saved and justified.

So, in our main text this morning, we have four verses and they're going to give us an outline of four items about how legalism dies at the foot of justification by faith.

Number one, legalism dies when faith is counted as righteousness.

Notice in verse six it says, just as Abraham believed

God and it was counted to him as righteousness. This word believed means to be convinced, to have a sure and steadfast belief.

We often equate faith and belief to things like, you know, if you've ever flown on a plane, you're not the one flying it, you're not the one in control of it.

You are completely at mercy to pilots, to the plane, weather, and a whole host of other variables that you have no control over and yet people still get on them every day.

Why? Because even though there are instances where things happen, planes have proven themselves over time to be trustworthy, to be faithful.

Christ is even more so because He has no instances of failure. He is perfect.

He has not only proven Himself to be trustworthy, He's not only proven Himself to be faithful, but He has proven that every person that puts his faith and trust or her faith and trust in Him is perfectly saved.

Counted here, you'll see in the King James, New King James, some older translations will translate this as reckoned to Him, reckoned, counted, assigned, attributed to Him.

So Abraham's belief, his faith is attributed, reckoned, counted, assigned to Him as righteousness.

And righteousness meaning the state of being what one ought to be. In its most simplest terms, that's what it means to be righteous.

It means you are being what you ought to be. Now, those of you who are with us on Wednesday nights,

I repeat a lot of times that when you're dealing with, you know, someone saying, well, you should do this or you ought to do this.

When we deal with what ought to be, one's moral barometer, what you would say, you better, you should, you ought, that has to come from somewhere.

So when we say righteousness is the state of being what you ought to be, this ought is not what man decides, it's not what society decides, it's not what culture decides.

It's what God has said. And we cannot be what God wants us to be.

We cannot be as we ought to be on our own terms, on our own efforts.

But we are told here very clearly that Abraham believed God and because of that, he is treated by the

Father that he is what he ought to be on the basis of what

Jesus Christ did for him. Which at Abraham's time was something he looked forward to.

We look backward on what Christ has already accomplished. Abraham looked forward to what would be accomplished.

So in the doctrine of justification, our faith is the instrument by which

God justifies us. But an instrument comes, our faith comes on the basis and on the grounds of what

Christ has done. If you'll turn with me to Genesis chapter 15,

Genesis chapter 15, we see this very clearly that legalism dies when faith is counted as righteousness.

In Genesis chapter 15, in verse 1, it says, After these things the word of the

Lord, the word of Yahweh, came to Abram in a vision saying, Do not fear,

Abram, I am a shield to you. Your reward shall be very great.

And Abram said, Oh Lord, Yahweh, what will you give me as I go on being childless and the heir of my house is

Eliezer of Damascus? So he did not have his own child, his own seed at this time.

It was something that was promised to him. Verse 3, Abram said, Since you have given no seed to me, behold, one born in my house is my heir.

Meaning there was one born but it wasn't his actual seed or his actual blood. And then behold, the word of Yahweh came to him saying,

This one, or this one that Abram had already pointed out to him. He says, This one will not be your heir.

However, one will come forth from your own body. Meaning your own seed.

He will be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, Now look toward the heavens and number the stars if you are able to number them.

Which, as you know, we can't. And he said to him, So shall your seed be.

And then it says in verse 6, Then he believed, he, Abraham, believed in the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness.

Now, I'm going to attempt not to skip ahead too much here because in point number 3 we're going to deal with the gospel of the

Old Testament. But I think it's very important that we point this out right now. Genesis was not written at the same time that Galatians was.

Genesis was written by Moses very, very early and before.

Many years before Paul was even alive. Before Paul was even saved.

Before Paul even knew to write Galatians. And yet here we have, in the book of Genesis, which

Paul quotes, obviously in Galatians Paul's quoting Genesis 15, that Abraham believed

God and it was counted or reckoned to him as righteousness. So anyone that would say,

Well, you know, there's a division between the testaments. You know, the Old Testament, that's the Old Testament God.

He's raining down brimstone and fire and, you know, expect you to do all these things. And, you know, now we have the

New Testament graceful God that's merciful and loving. Hogwash! There is no division.

God says, I never change. I don't change. I can't change. The same God of the old is the same

God of the new. The same God that saved people by faith in the new. He saves them the same way in the old.

How do we know this? Because the father of all of us, in terms of our spiritual father, not in a sense the same way in which we would call

God our father, but Abraham is very much a spiritual father of us all, as Paul points out, because it starts with Abraham and this is before the law.

Abraham lived some 400 years before the law even came on the scene. So if the law was going to save us, why at this point in time did he say,

Abraham's just because of his belief. And that's the point that Paul is making here.

He's saying it is not based on works. It's not based on Judaism. It's not based on circumcision.

We're saved the same way that Abraham was. So notice with me in Romans chapter 4 now.

We're going to skip back over to the New Testament. Romans chapter 4. Look at the first five verses of Romans chapter 4.

Abraham comes up again. Same author, Paul, he says,

Now there's no mistake here that he says according to the flesh because he's trying to make the point.

All these Jews, especially Judaizers, that were trying to say that there's something more important or overly important about ethnicity.

You know, hey, I could trace my line straight to Abraham ethnically. Well, good for you. That's great.

Doesn't save you. So he says, he's our forefather according to flesh.

But what did he find? For if Abraham, and this is a rhetorical question he's putting out here, if Abraham was justified by works, he would have something to boast about, but not before God.

He stomps that out really quickly. He says, and when he says if he was justified by works here, what he's saying is if he's justified out of works or because of his works.

So if a man or woman could stand before God and find themselves justified coming out of their works, yes, you'd have something to boast about, but you wouldn't be able to boast about it towards God.

Why? He quotes Genesis 15 again here. But notice what he asks here.

What does the scripture say? This is one of the best questions you could ask anybody.

It's one of the best questions you can ask yourself. This is what it comes down to.

And look, I'm as guilty as anybody. We have our traditions, we have our things, so even

I have to do this to myself. But I don't want to hear about tradition. I don't want to hear about what I think.

One of the worst things you can say is, well, I think this, or I think that. Well, okay, but is your thinking in line with scripture?

Because it matters not what man thinks, but what God has said. And Paul points that out there. This was the issue.

These Judaizers and all these people were misinterpreting scripture. They were ignoring the parts they didn't want to hear and setting up Abraham in the way they wanted him to be set up, focusing on his physical act of circumcision.

He says, hold on a minute. Y 'all are acting like Genesis 15, verse 6, isn't it?

Which they, you know, I'm being funny here because they didn't have chapter and verse divisions then, but for the sake of our understanding, it's like Paul was saying, y 'all are acting like Genesis 15, 6 isn't in the

Bible, y 'all. Because you know Paul was Southern. He's saying, look, let me tell you again, what does the scripture say?

And I'm not talking about the scripture we're writing right now. I'm talking about your Tanakh, the

Old Testament. It's in there and it said, and he quotes it here, Abraham got circumcised for God, followed the law for God.

That's right, there was no law then. He believed God and that belief was counted to him as righteousness.

Now, yes, to the one who works, his wage is not counted as grace, but according to what is due.

But to the one who does not work, but believes upon him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

Well, if you have a job, you can go to work, you work out your two weeks or half a month or whatever it is, however you get paid or whatever it is.

When that money comes in, it's not, oh, gracious boss, you've given me something

I haven't earned. No, it's, where's my money? I mean, it used to be so much fun at Food Lion because the paychecks used to, this is dating myself a little bit, in the early 2000s when

I was a little young buck and worked at Food Lion, you didn't have direct deposits and all these things and paperless, all this stuff.

It was, you had to wait for the grocery truck to come because they'd have a little, about yay big bag and all the paychecks would be in there.

And you'd have people that had been off for three days be there at 7 o 'clock in the morning.

And you couldn't get them to come at 7 o 'clock on time when they're not supposed to be there at work. But when that paycheck come, they were right there at that door.

Wait, where's mine? Where's mine? And you'd have to go, here's yours, here's yours, because it was due, it was what they had earned, they were ready for that money.

When our salvation, I don't care what you've done, you're never going to receive a paycheck in the mail or in a bag that says you're justified.

That's what Paul's saying here. He says, y 'all are so focused on the wrong things. You're focused on all the things that cannot save you.

You want to talk about Abraham? Fine! Let's talk about Abraham. He wasn't justified by getting circumcised.

He was justified by faith. And that's what he's telling them there. So getting back to Galatians 3, number 2, we see that legalism dies when faith makes one a son or daughter of Abraham.

Notice verse 7 of Galatians 3, it says, so that those who are of faith, those people are sons of Abraham, sons and daughters of Abraham.

Those who are of faith, those that believe God in the same manner, in the same way as Abraham, they are the ones who are the sons of Abraham.

Interesting story for this. How many of you as a child heard the story of Zacchaeus?

Remember Zacchaeus? The short little guy that climbed up in the tree? We all know the story, right?

Well, there's an interesting verse at the end of this short story of about eight verses, nine verses, that I had never seen before, that I actually learned this while studying for this sermon.

I never caught this before. And it goes right along with what we just said. Notice here, and you can follow along if you want to, in Luke chapter 19.

Luke chapter 19 is where we find this account. It says, he entered Jericho, this is Jesus, and was passing through.

And behold, there was a man called by the name Zacchaeus. And he was a chief tax collector and he was very rich.

Now Zacchaeus was trying to see Jesus, or who Jesus was, and he was unable because of the crowd because he was small in stature.

Very short guy. He ran on before and climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to see him, for he was about to pass through that way.

And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today

I must stay at your house. And yes, I know the song, but I'm not going to sing it because I would not inflict you with such misery.

He goes on to say, he hurried and came down and received him gladly. And when they saw it, they all began to grumble.

And this is all the onlookers. They're looking and saying, grumbling and saying, well, he's going to be the guest of a man who is a sinner?

So, this whole sermon for another day, but notice we've got legalism in the story of Zacchaeus.

You've got all these onlookers going, why is he going to his house? He's a sinner. He's a tax collector.

How dare Jesus? He should be going to our house. We're special. So you see how this is going.

But no, that ain't how Jesus rolls. So, Zacchaeus stops and he says to the Lord, Behold, half of my possessions,

Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything of anyone, I will give it back four times as much.

Now, quick note here. We interpret what is unclear in light of the clear.

You cannot take this text here on its own by an island and say, well, here you go.

Zacchaeus was saved by his works because he gave half of what he had to the poor, so on and so forth. We have extended documentation, most of which we're dealing with this morning, that specifically teaches justification by faith.

So, with that clear teaching of Scripture, we cannot go to Luke 19 and say, well, that contradicts the clear.

No, what it means is that Luke 19, because of its brevity, just simply doesn't go into the fact that Zacchaeus is doing this because he's been saved.

He's doing this as a measure of his faith, and we will get to this eventually, sermon for another day, the living faith that one has that is counted to him as righteousness is a faith, and we touched on this some last week, that produces good works.

So here you have a man that's been saved, he recognizes the error of his way, he's making it right, not to earn his salvation, but because he is saved.

So we just want to make sure we cover that parenthetically. But then notice here, after all this, verse 9,

Jesus says to Zacchaeus, Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.

For the Son of Man has come to seek and save the lost. Jesus Christ, before Paul wrote

Galatians, while Jesus Christ was alive and walking on this earth, refers to Zacchaeus as a son of Abraham.

And then we have Paul writing here in Galatians 3, in this extended chapter here, to define for us what a son of Abraham is.

And he tells us in verse 7 of chapter 3, Those who are of faith are sons of Abraham.

So in inspired scripture, we know that Zacchaeus was called a son of Abraham by Jesus because of his faith, and not what he did subsequently.

Because legalism dies when faith makes one a son of Abraham. So with the idea of Zacchaeus in mind, look quickly at this one verse in Romans chapter 4.

We looked at the first five verses already, skip down to verse 16. Notice it says, For this reason it is by faith in order that it may be according to grace, so that the promise, and this promise here parenthetically is talking about the same promise made to Abraham, the promise will be guaranteed to all the seed.

Not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.

What's being said there is that the promise of salvation through Christ is to all the sons and daughters of Abraham.

Not just to the Jewish ones ethnically, because a lot of them thought that because of their ethnicity they had a step ahead or something.

It said not just to those who were under the law, who were ethnically Jews that believed, but also Gentiles, those who have no ethnicity that is comparable, but they still believe the same.

Because with Abraham, it wasn't about his ethnicity, it wasn't about anything about him, it was about his faith.

And that is what is being drawn out here in this doctrine. Number three, Legalism dies when the

Old Testament gospel is proclaimed. Now, all of a sudden you can hear many people who don't know any better saying,

What? An Old Testament gospel? No, come on Andy. No, we learn about the gospel in the

New Testament, right? No, the New Testament is where you're seeing the gospel being fulfilled.

It's where you're seeing the gospel coming to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. The gospel, the

Old Testament gospel, you see it lived and breathed in front of us, and now we are recipients of that good news.

But my friends, make no mistake about it, the gospel is not exclusive to the

New Testament. It finds its basis and its origin in the Old Testament. Notice here,

Galatians 3, verse 8, it says, And the Scripture, foreseeing that God...

Now, this is not saying that a literal book, like this Bible I'm holding in my hands, has the ability to foresee something.

But oftentimes, you have to remember, you have to understand the original audience and the culture and how they understood things.

And many times in this culture, they would personify Scripture and attribute to it human things to make a point.

So it's saying, The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, proclaimed the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying,

All the nations will be blessed in you. So Paul is taking a quotation from Genesis, attributing it to the gospel and to our salvation, our justification.

Now, where is he getting this from? Turn with me to Genesis chapter 12. Genesis chapter 12, verse 1 through 3.

It says, And Yahweh said to Abraham, Go forth from your land and from your kin and from your father's house to the land which

I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great.

And so you shall be a blessing and I will bless those who bless you. And the one who curses you,

I will curse. And this is the part that Paul quotes in Galatians. In you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

Now, yes, it is true that Abraham has had untold thousands, if not millions upon millions of ethnic seed, people that come from his seed and in his line, ethnically from him.

Even Paul, in Philippians 3, he says, Look, I'm a Hebrew of Hebrew, tribe of Benjamin.

He knew very well he'd ethnically descended from Abraham, and all that's important, all that's great.

God uses ethnic Israel for great purposes. He gives them the land. All these things are true.

And what I'm going to say, does it change that or neglect that? But the reason

Paul quotes this in Galatians is he's trying to help these Judaizers and reinforce the

Galatian believers to help them understand that the ultimate promise of Genesis 12 has nothing to do with ethnicity or land.

It has everything to do with the blessing that comes through the faith of Abraham.

That's why he says here, I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you a great nation. He says, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

What it's looking forward to, and the reason he quotes this in Galatians 3, when he says that the scripture foreseeing that the gospel is preached beforehand, saying all the nations will be blessed in you, it's foreseeing the day when

Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah would come, and because of him, people are saved.

And notice, people in the entire world, all the nations of the world are blessed.

This is not a gospel for just the United States of America. It's not a gospel for the continent of Africa.

It's not a gospel just for Russia or for China. It's a gospel that affects and blesses people all over the globe.

All the nations are blessed in you because all nations, meaning nations of people, all people groups can be and are blessed because of Abraham's faith and because of our faith.

You say, well, how is it a blessing today? My friends, you don't think for a second that it's a blessing to have

Christians in our local community? That it's a blessing to have Christians in Congress and in the

Senate? I always ask this question. Can you imagine, and what do you think would change if tomorrow morning

God regenerated and saved 90 % of Congress?

That's what, is it 435, I think, members in Congress? If I'm remembering my high school civics.

So whatever 90 % of that number is, let's just take, let's say, forget the percentage. Let's say 400 out of 435 members of Congress were regenerated, and some of them probably are already, but were saved, true believers like Abraham started studying their scriptures, applying it to their lives.

You don't think this nation would change? Oh, yes, it would. It is a blessing for God's people to be on this earth.

Look at Acts chapter 3 with me. In Acts chapter 3, this is a very important part here, because legalism dies when the

Old Testament gospel is proclaimed, but also our last point this morning, it dies when faith makes one blessed, and we've already seen that.

But in Acts chapter 3 here, we're going to see how this blessing really takes the forefront. In Acts chapter 3, verse 22, now, one of the things that's very important, parenthetically here, when a

New Testament writer quotes the Old Testament, we need to pay attention. There's a reason why he's doing it.

So Acts chapter 3, verse 22, it says, Moses said, okay, now

I want to perk up a little bit, the quotation here is coming from Deuteronomy chapter 18. So if you want to go back and read this later, we're not going to go there now for the purposes of time, but it's quoting

Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses 15 through 19. He says, Moses said, the

Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.

To him you shall listen to everything he says to you. Now this sermon here in Acts chapter 3, by Peter, he's explaining why

Jesus is the Christ and why Jesus is the only means of salvation. He's quoting

Deuteronomy 18 here to tell them that Lord God's going to raise up a prophet. And he's signifying that prophet is

Jesus. And he notes here that Moses predicted that it would come from your brothers.

So yes, the ethnicity of being a Jew is important in the sense that Jesus comes through the line of David.

He comes and he was a full Jew. Comes among your brothers, meaning from your ethnicity, from your

Jewish compadres. And so he's telling them, to him you shall listen to everything he says to you, verse 23.

And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.

And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken. Notice this here, y 'all. All the prophets who have spoken.

So you remember the Old Testament, you've got the first five books, but then you've got major prophets, minor prophets, you've got a lot of prophetical stuff going on.

Peter says here in inspired scripture that all the prophets from Samuel and his successors onward,

I and II Samuel, Haggai, Zechariah, Zephaniah, all of them proclaimed these days.

What is he saying? He says you're blessed, my friends, because the gospel of the

Old Testament has been fulfilled. The good news has come to you and it's come to you in the person of Jesus Christ.

Notice he says here in verse 25, it is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which

God made with your fathers. Here's Abraham once again saying to Abraham, and in your seed, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

So in Galatians 3, we have Paul saying you're blessed because all the nations of the world be blessed in Abraham.

Here we have Peter saying the same thing. This prophet, this servant, the one who was coming, in Abraham's seed, all the families are blessed because that is how we get

Jesus Christ. And so then he finishes it off here and says in verse 26, for you first,

God raised up his servant and sent him to bless, to bless you.

Notice the use of the pronoun here. God raises up, he sends

Christ to earth, he raises up as he gets older, he becomes a man, he goes into his ministry for what purpose?

What purpose is he sent in Acts 3 .26? To bless you, my friends, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways, bringing justification to your hearts and minds, which brings us to Galatians 3, verse 9.

So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.

Now you could translate this a little bit more literally and say that those who are of faith are indeed blessed with the believing

Abraham. You see, the prophet that Moses spoke of, the servant that the

Old Testament prophet spoke of, the blessing of God that Abraham believed and hoped for, the true seed, the true

Israel, that's Jesus Christ, who saves us from condemnation, who justifies us from sin.