Sunday Sermon: Crucified With Christ (Galatians 2:15-21)

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You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

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New Testament book. On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday.

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit.

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Here's Pastor Gabe. Many of you probably know my testimony and those of you who have listened to the podcast and even heard it recently, as Becky and I shared it, our own respective testimonies about a week ago.

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I had a good reputation when I was in high school. One of those squeaky clean young men that you could look at my resume and I looked like the most upstanding

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Christian guy. Even when I got into college, everybody's moms wanted me to marry their daughters.

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And if there was anything sinful that was in my life, it was hidden and it was secret. It was certainly out of the way, out of view from everybody else.

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And I did have some deep secrets that I was hiding in a closet, but nobody really knew or saw those things.

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I lived in view of everybody else as a good Christian should.

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But the Lord really allowed me to fail when I got into college and into my twenties, though I had gone all the way through high school on my merit and probably even thumped my chest as to how good a person

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I was, yet it was not by my own merit that I was saved. I still believe that I was a

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Christian even through that particular period, but I was getting a little too big on myself and taking too much credit for my own ability to be a great person instead of understanding that I am a wretched sinner who is deserving of death and it is only

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Christ who gives righteousness. The righteousness that I had was not something that was mine, but it was something that was given to me by God through faith.

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I was forgetting that, though. I was getting too big for my bridges. I was relying too much on my resume and not enough on Christ.

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So God, in my arrogance, really allowed me to fail tremendously and fall into sin and fall into even a sense of hopelessness and weeping before God.

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I remember weeping on my bedroom floor on more than one occasion because I realized that I was powerless to conquer the sin that was in me.

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I could not do it by my own ability. It was only by the power of God and His Holy Spirit that I was going to be able to overcome these things, these secret sins that I thought, as long as no one else saw them, then they weren't a bad deal, but they were overtaking me and they were polluting and infecting my mind and my heart.

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And so there was a point where this finally came to a head. I was about 27 years old and realizing how much

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I needed God more than I had ever—more than I had ever needed Him before. Truly, I'd been a

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Christian and a follower of Jesus for most of my life, but had never really understood that the righteousness that I had came by faith and not of works.

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All of my works were not good enough. When I tried to do it, I would fail at it. But relying upon Christ, who was sufficient for me, is where I came to understand the righteousness of God that is given by faith.

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It was during that period of time trying to come out of the pit that I had dug for myself and God lifting me out of that pit that I was reminded of Psalm 119.

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And Psalm 119 verse 9 says, How can a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word?

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With my whole heart I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments.

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I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you,

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O Lord. Teach me your statutes. With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth.

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In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.

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I will delight in your statutes. I will not forget your word.

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So the question to me became in this moment of repentance in my life, do I delight in God's statutes or did

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I delight in my own righteousness? And delighting in my own righteousness, again, as I mentioned,

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I failed at every point. But delighting in the righteousness of Christ, I have found the strength to live as Christ.

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For I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.

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Galatians 2 .20 The apostle Paul reminds the Galatians here that we are justified by faith.

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We are not justified by works of the law. And certainly when Paul talks about works of the law here, he is referring very specifically to those works of the law that the

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Judaizers were coming into Galatia telling the Galatians that they had to abide by in order to be saved.

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If you want to be a Christian, you have to be circumcised. That was exactly what they said in Acts chapter 15 verse 1.

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But even more broadly speaking, not just about the works of the law, but any work that a man might do, thinking that it is by his works, we would gain justification and righteousness.

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We would gain right standing before God. That God would look at us as a good person because we have merited goodness unto ourselves.

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But we can't do that. It is not by our works that we might find ourselves to be declared righteous before God.

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But it is by the work of Christ. Indeed, do not get me wrong. God demands righteousness.

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He demands it. The highest order of a Christian is

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Matthew 6, 33, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Jesus said in the previous chapter, in Matthew chapter 5, be perfect as your heavenly

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Father is perfect. But we understand that we cannot in our own ability achieve this goodness or perfection that God requires of us.

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It is by faith in Jesus Christ that we are given His righteousness. And God looks at us as righteous, not because of what we've done, but because of what

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Jesus has done for us. So again, don't get me wrong.

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God does demand righteousness, but righteousness is not only

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His demand. It is His gift. He demands righteousness.

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Righteousness we can't even aspire to. And so He loved us by giving

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His Son for us, that it would be His righteousness we would receive since we couldn't achieve it on our own merit.

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God demands righteousness and He has given His righteousness. So the

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Apostle Paul reminds the Galatians that if they're going to go back to trying to merit righteousness by their own works, they are following after a false gospel.

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That's what he came right into the letter saying in Galatians 1 .6,

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I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

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Not that there is another one, because there isn't. But there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

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Paul goes on to say this, Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed.

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As we have said before, so now I say again, so emphatically he repeats himself. If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you receive, let him be accursed.

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My friends, if our understanding of salvation is Christ plus something else, then we believe a different gospel.

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It is by faith in Christ alone that my hope is found, as we have sung today.

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It is by faith in Christ alone that we are justified. We are declared innocent before God and we are saved.

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Saved from what? Saved from our sin? Saved from death, the wages of sin,

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Romans 6 .23. Saved from the wrath of God that is burning against all unrighteousness,

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Romans 1 .18. Wrath of God is coming against all the unrighteousness of man.

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And it is only by faith in Christ that we are given a righteousness that puts us in the favor of God.

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And we are not the objects of his wrath, but we are the children of his love and his mercy.

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It is only by faith. We distort the gospel when we think that our salvation is any other way,

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Christ plus something else. For the Galatians, it was works, believing that they could be saved by their works.

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Now, understand me, and as I said this to you before, we were in Galatians 1. The Galatians surely still believed in Jesus.

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It's not like they did not believe in this man named Jesus who died for our sins and rose again from the grave, but they were adding to that gospel,

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Christ plus something else, and changing it into a completely different gospel. It was as though they believed in a different Christ, which was why

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Paul said, I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

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When we distort the gospel, we believe in a different Jesus. We have raised up a

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God of our own making and thinking, this is the God I must please in order to be saved.

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And it's no longer the God of the Bible that we are following after, but the God of our own imagination.

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So Paul calls the Galatians in love. He writes to them not to say, I'm done with you, but to call them to repentance and to remember once again the gospel that was proclaimed to them at first.

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Paul says in chapter 2 verse 15, we ourselves are Jews by birth and not

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Gentile sinners. What does he mean by bringing this up? Because he is one who has brought the gospel to the

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Galatians and one who is condemning those Judaizers who have come saying, you've got to do all these

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Jewish works in order to be saved. Paul is saying, well, I am that. I am a

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Jew. I had the law just as they had the law. I know it just as well as they do.

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But we ourselves being Jews by birth, we are not Gentile sinners. Gentile sinners referring to Gentiles who did not have the law.

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They did not know the law of God. They did not know God's righteous standard. And he goes on to say, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

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This is really a short version of something that Paul laid out in Romans chapter 1 verses 18 through chapter 3 verse 20, and that was bringing all men into condemnation, whether Jew or Gentile, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

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The Jews had the law, but they transgressed it and they became sinners. The Gentiles did not have the law, but they went against their own consciences and violated the natural law that God has written on the heart of every man, and therefore they became condemned by their sin.

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So whether a Jew or a Gentile, all stand in condemnation before God. The Jew cannot say,

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I am favored by God because I was born a Jew. The Gentile cannot say, I am favored by God because I didn't even know what the law was to transgress it.

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Everyone has sinned before God. And all stand condemned. And so Paul is making that same argument here in much fewer words.

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He's saying we ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, but yet we know a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

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Jew or Gentile, you cannot claim righteousness before God because you were born one or the other.

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We are justified not by works of the law, but by faith. In Jesus Christ.

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So we also have believed in Christ Jesus. We also have believed, again, making reference to himself as being born as a

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Jew. He and his other missionary brethren, we ourselves are Jews by birth, but we also 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.

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No one is going to find innocence before God in having done such meritorious, wonderful things in his presence.

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For as we read in Isaiah 64 6, even our best deeds are as a soiled garment before a holy

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God. We can look around this world and we will judge a person's works by other people.

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And you might look at a person who is not a believer and find them doing great things.

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Indeed, I have known atheists that have done wonderful things. There is an atheist that I know of who built an orphanage over in India.

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So even atheists are capable of kind and gracious acts.

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And we would judge those things based on what we do, what other people do.

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Well, that person's good, that person's bad. And then we'll even declare our own righteousness because we're not as bad as the worst of the worst, right?

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Well, I'm a good person. I'm not Hitler. I still call my mom once a week.

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I still pay my tithes in church. I open the door for people and we'll try to come up with works that we do to try to justify ourselves, try to make ourselves sound better than we really are.

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But what we're essentially doing there is we're just judging our works by everyone else's works. Who we need to be judging our works by is

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God's works. And when we take our works and compare them with God's works, we find that we fall far short of that mark.

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And even the person who does the greatest, kindest deed for someone else, if they are not a follower of Christ, it is done in vain because they do it to declare their own righteousness instead of giving praise and honor and glory to God.

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Our best deeds do not win us approval before God. You will stand before God in judgment and be throwing out trash, thinking that this is going to be good enough to get you into heaven.

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And most people do not understand this. What we're reading here that it is by faith that a person is justified and not by works of the law.

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Because most of my evangelism experiences, even here in Junction City, is encountering a person who says, yeah,

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I'm a good person. I'm not Hitler. Same sort of justification.

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Justifying ourselves according to other people and not according to what God has said. But again, we read in Romans 3 .23

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that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And we are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

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God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.

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Working on memorizing all of Romans, by the way. And if I do so, let me say, if I accomplish memorizing

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Romans 1 through 16, you know how righteous that makes me before God?

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Not at all. The ability to memorize the Bible does not merit your righteousness.

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Christ is righteous. And it is by faith in Jesus that we are made righteous before God.

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And that's the word that we use. That's the word that we find in the Bible, righteous. But righteous very simply means right.

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We are wrong. We are sinners. We are worthy of condemnation and eternal destruction.

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For God is eternally holy. And if left to our own devices, we would be eternally sinful.

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But God, by His grace, didn't leave us dead in our sins. He has rescued us by giving

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His Son, Jesus, to die for us. That all who believe in Him are justified, righteous, made right, declared innocent before God.

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And it's in knowing that, it's having received the gift of God's Son.

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It's having been taken from being a child of Satan and a child of wrath in this world to being a child of God and a recipient of His love.

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Now, having received these things, we desire to live as children of God, no longer following after the ways of Satan, but desiring to live in the ways of Christ.

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And so when Paul talks about being justified, it's not merely that in a moment of time, we went from being dead to alive.

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We went from hellbound to heavenbound. And then for the rest of our lives, we're hinging everything on that single moment, a moment that we believed, and that carries us through the rest of our lives.

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That's not enough. For being justified doesn't merely mean that in a moment you believe something or you prayed a certain prayer, but your entire life has changed.

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And while at one point you lived unto death, now you live unto life in Jesus Christ.

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Your whole life becomes a reflection of Christ. Your whole life becomes about the pursuit of Christ.

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There are many whom I encounter. There was a drunk man that I witnessed to just about two years ago, as a matter of fact, who told me, yeah,

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I'm a Christian. I prayed the prayer. I got baptized when I was 14 and believed that he was a

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Christian because of that, but showed no evidence in his life that that conversion he said that he experienced at the age of 14 was actually genuine.

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It was a passing opinion. And my friends, praying a prayer of salvation are not magic words.

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When Paul says in Romans chapter 10, confess with your mouth and you will be made unto salvation, it means that what we say with our mouths becomes a reflection of our heart.

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We don't just say it once, we continue to say it. And we continue to display that our lives have been transformed by the power of God.

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The power of God is not so weak to bring us into a moment of prayer in a single solitary time in our lives, never to be reflected in our lives again.

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Behold the power of God. But the power of God is transformative in the sense that we become a new person, a new creation.

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The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. For I have been crucified with Christ.

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Paul says in verse 20, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.

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So if Christ now lives in me, do you expect that that person would go back to living the sinful, depraved life that they were living before they professed faith in Christ?

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Or would it become evident in that person's life that they're no longer living for themselves, but living for God?

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So being justified means more than just a single moment in the life of a person, but that their entire life reflects justification, the pursuit of justification, a desire for God and His righteousness.

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Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Once again, Matthew 6, 33.

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But Paul goes on in verse 17 to say this, But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is

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Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not. Now, let me explain what

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Paul is referring to. Remember that there was a group of Judaizers that came into the churches in Galatia, and they were saying, you have to do these

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Jewish works of the law in order to be saved. Paul doesn't do those works. He used to do them.

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He doesn't do them anymore. He's become a transgressor. Okay? So now as a representative of Christ, which these

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Judaizers also claim, they say it's fine if you believe in Jesus, but Jesus was a Jew. So you got to do

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Jewish things in order to actually be saved. So if Paul is no longer doing those

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Jewish things, does that mean that he's become a sinner and Christ is also a servant of sin?

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And the last phrase that we have there at the end of verse 17 is certainly not. In the Greek, it's, which is the strongest possible phrase of opposition that Paul could craft.

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In English, we might translate it more accurately this way. No, no, a thousand times, no.

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Amen? So Paul says, I have not transgressed in this way, and certainly

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Christ has not transgressed in this way. For if I rebuild what I tore down,

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I prove myself to be a transgressor. Let me show you how Paul has flipped this argument here. So if Paul were to come in preaching the gospel and saying, it is only by grace you are saved through faith.

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And all the Galatians went, amen. And then Paul went, oh, by the way, you also have to keep the works of the law in order to be saved.

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And if you do not keep these works, then you are not saved. Then Paul would become the sinner. Then he's the sinner at that point.

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He's not the sinner for preaching the gospel of Christ. He would be a sinner for saying, you have to have faith and works in order to be saved.

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So these people who are saying that Paul has sinned by preaching the gospel and not of works,

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Paul is saying, no, actually they're the transgressor because they preach a different gospel.

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They're trying to merit their own righteousness by their works. And by saying so, they've actually become sinners.

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So you understand trying to gain righteousness by our works makes us sinners. It doesn't make us righteous.

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So Paul says, if I rebuild what I tore down, if I tell you that it's by works that you're saved, when

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I just told you it's not by works that you're saved, then I show myself to be the transgressor. Verse 19, for through the law,

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I died to the law so that I might live to God.

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Through the law, I died to the law. What does that mean? Well, remember once again, it is

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Christ who fulfills the law. In Matthew chapter five, Jesus said, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

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I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. I tell you not a dot, not a tittle, not an iota will pass away from the law until all of these things have been fulfilled.

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So if one person reduces even the least of these commands, he is a transgressor of the whole law according to Christ.

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So Jesus says that he has fulfilled the law. And Paul, understanding that teaching of Christ says, through the law,

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I died to the law. I don't live according to the law. I can't. I cannot gain eternal life by living according to the law.

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So I've died to the law and I've become alive in Christ that I might live to God.

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Now, this phrase is very, very important when it comes to understanding the role the law has in our lives as Christians.

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For Paul to say, for through the law, I died to the law so that I might live to God.

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Let me explain something plainly, because there's this idea that we have as Christians that we don't have to keep a law at all.

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And usually this understanding has come from tearing a certain verse out of scripture in Romans chapter six, where it says that we are no longer under the law, but under grace.

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And so that verse will get ripped out of context and say, Pastor Gabe, you cannot tell me to obey God anymore because we're no longer under the law.

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We are under grace. That's not what Paul was saying there. For Paul will go on to say in Romans chapter eight that the law is spiritual.

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And in 1 Timothy chapter one, verse eight, that the law is good. So he's not trying to dismiss the law as something that we do not have to follow.

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But through the law, I died, meaning understanding that I do not come to right standing before God by my keeping of the law, but this happens so that I might live to God, meaning what?

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Previously, before Paul became a follower of Jesus Christ, he could not keep the law in a way that was pleasing to God.

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But now that he lives in Christ and the Holy Spirit of God lives within him, now

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Paul can keep the law in a way that is pleasing unto God.

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My friends, the law has not been abolished. Once again, I did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

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Christ has fulfilled the obligation of the law. So by the law, we do not earn our salvation.

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It is only by faith in Christ. But now in Christ, we live to God. What does it mean to live to God?

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We obey his commandments. Jesus said in John 14, 15, you will show me that you love me when you obey my commandments.

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And now in Christ Jesus with the Holy Spirit within us, the law is no longer this thing that is outside of us, etched on stone, and we're reading it and gliding our finger down it, trying to find all the little places that we're not doing it right, and we need to do it right in order to gain favor with God.

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The law is no longer written on stone tablets. I was gonna say tones of stablet.

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On stone tablets. The law is not written on tablets of stone.

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It is written on our hearts. In Ezekiel 36, through the prophet,

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God said that a day was coming on which God would write his law on our hearts, that he would take out our heart of stone and he would replace it with a soft heart.

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He would sprinkle clean water on us and cleanse us from all our uncleannesses.

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And he said, I will cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

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My friends, that day is here now. It is for all of us who are in Christ that have the

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Holy Spirit of God within us. It's not that the law is abolished. We need to understand what the role of the law is in the life of a

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Christian. It is not by living according to the law that we earn our righteousness. And if you ever hear a preacher say such a thing, that we must follow the law in order to be saved.

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He is a false teacher. He is a heretic. Leave that church. Get out of the building.

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For our salvation is only by grace through faith in Christ. So what is the role of the law now in the life of a believer?

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Was R .C. Sproul is illustrating, takes this from Romans 3. This is not something that has just been made up by some theologian.

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But R .C. Sproul illustrates that the law has three uses in the life of a believer. Number one, the law serves as a mirror.

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Whenever we look into the law, we see our sinfulness and our need for a righteous savior.

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Paul makes this point in Romans 7. Through the law, I realized what it meant to not covet. I didn't know what coveting was until I read in the law, do not covet.

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And then I realized in reading that I'm a covetor. But Paul goes on to say also in Romans 7, that when

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I read that command, it actually awakened the sin in me. Because I read do not covet and I go, okay,

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I'm not going to covet. But then by concentrating on not coveting, I'm actually concentrating on coveting and sin became alive in me and I became a covetor.

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So he said my concentration on the law could not keep me following the law. And you get to the end of Romans 7, he says, wretched man that I am who will save me from this body of death.

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Praise be to Christ Jesus, my Lord. So through the law, we realize the weakness of our flesh and the sinfulness that is inside of us and the desire that is inside of us to do our own thing, to chase after the passions of our flesh.

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And we realize that God is righteous and we are not. And we see his righteousness and how his righteousness is defined according to his perfect law.

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And so by looking into the law, it becomes like a mirror. It shows us our sinfulness and shows us

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God's righteousness. That's the first use of the law.

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The second use of the law in the life of a believer is it becomes a restraint against evil. Now by keeping the law, we're not justified, but the law nevertheless will prevent you from falling into worse sins than you could be doing.

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You know, when I told you that in my young adulthood, when I kind of went my own way and God had to let me alone since I was trying to justify myself, he took his hands off of me and let me fail.

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But yet I was never too far away from him. There's also a verse in Psalm 119 that says, though I take my life in my own hand continually, yet I will not forget your law.

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So the things that I had been taught from my youth were still with me even though I was trying to do my own thing.

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And the law was preventing me from falling into worse sins than I could have been going into. So in such a way, the law works as a restraint.

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When we're tempted to do sin, we are reminded of what God has asked of us and we don't do that, but we desire to do the righteous thing.

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We're not trying to give permission to our own sins by saying things like, well,

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God has justified me and now I'm free to go sin and do whatever I want because the grace of God is upon me.

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No, Paul has said in Romans 6, if that's your attitude and that's your behavior, then you don't actually have the grace of God.

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If you think the grace of God exists to give me permission to sin, you don't actually have his grace.

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You're still dead in your sin instead of being alive in Christ. You are still a slave to your sin instead of a slave to righteousness.

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And Paul says, I say these things according to your human limitations. So he uses the illustration of slavery.

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You are either a slave to righteousness or you're a slave to sin. And if we are in Christ and released by his grace, then we cannot help but to walk in grace and having the

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Holy Spirit of God within us, desiring to reflect the holy and perfect character of Christ.

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Romans 8, 29, in Christ, we are being made into the image of the son.

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And so that is our pursuit as Christians. So again, three uses of the law. It is to be a mirror.

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It is a restraint of evil. And the third use of the law in the life of a believer is that it reveals what is pleasing to God.

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What is the first and greatest commandment? You will love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.

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The second commandment is like it. You will love your neighbor as yourself.

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And Jesus said, when he was asked this question and he gave these two commandments, he said, all the law and the prophets hinge on these two commands.

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Now understand those two commandments are not gospel. They are law.

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Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Well, where do we find that in the 10 commandments?

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It's actually the basis of the first four commandments. You will have no other gods before me. Do not raise up any graven image.

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Do not take my name in vain. You will honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. All four, all of those first four commandments are vertical commandments.

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They have to do with our relationship with God. Loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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Love your neighbor as yourself. Where do we find that in the 10 commandments? That's the next six. You will honor your father and your mother.

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Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness.

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Do not covet. All six of those commandments have to do with our relationship with man.

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They are horizontal commandments, the way that we treat one another. So all the law and the prophets hinge on these two commands.

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Loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving your neighbor as yourself. So when it comes to understanding what is pleasing to God, we look into God's law and we find how we shall now live in this world.

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And Paul says in Romans 12, 1, therefore, my brothers, in view of God's mercy, present yourselves as holy and living sacrifices unto the

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Lord. This is your spiritual act of worship. And we're only able to do that and do it in a way that is pleasing unto

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God because we have the righteousness of Christ. Again, righteousness is not just the requirement.

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It is also the gift. And when we live in righteousness, it is not to merit our salvation.

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It is to display with our whole lives that we have salvation. We have been saved by Christ and his grace, and therefore we live by faith.

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We are saved by faith. We live by faith. And it's an understanding, once again, this threefold use of the law that we realize as Christians how we are to live.

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We're not justified by works of the law, but it's through the law that we see how we might live a life that is pleasing unto

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God. Now that we've been called out of this world and into his kingdom of light. So reviewing those things, once again, the threefold use of the law, it is to be a mirror reflecting to us our sinfulness, but also that we might see

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God's righteousness. Number two, it is a restraint of evil that we would not do the sinful thing, but desire to do the righteous thing.

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And number three, it reveals to us what is pleasing to God in the way that we live. I went through these things with our high school students in the

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Romans class that we have on Wednesday night. And to summarize those things into three

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R's, the threefold purpose of the law, reflect, restrain, reveal.

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So if you can remember that as you go from there, Gabe said three things about the law, but I don't remember what they are.

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Let me summarize it down into three words, reflect, restrain, and reveal.

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So that we might see in the law, the way that we live a life that is pleasing unto

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God. And once again, stating this too in different words in the way that I've said it already, we've been justified by faith in Christ.

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We are also sanctified by faith in Christ. It's not God justified you, and now you're on your own to live a pleasing life unto

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God. No, it is by the power of the spirit that is within us that we can even live a life that is pleasing to the

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Lord. So when you are tempted with sin, go before God. As James says in James 4, draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

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Resist the devil and he will flee from you. It is still by the power of God that we were saved, that we are saved, that we walk in this salvation, that we will get to heaven on the other side of this life.

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All of that is the work of Christ in the life of a believer. So we do not even live the

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Christian life by our own strength, but by the power of God within us. Once again,

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Paul says, if I rebuild what I tore down,

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I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law, I died to the law so that I might live to God.

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So may we all as Christians live unto the Lord with our whole lives, loving the

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Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, with all our strength.

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And again, it is the Holy Spirit of God that creates in us the ability to do that.

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Verse 20, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.

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Understand reading that once again, the power of God that is within you. Do not fall into despair when you are tempted with sin and certainly don't be tempted and go, well,

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I can just give in to this and God is going to give me grace. There could come a time in your life that came in mind when you persist in that sin and God will take his hand off of you.

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And you will either have to lose a hard lesson or it may be revealed that your heart was never really for God in the first place.

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It was just a passing opinion that you had for a while. You lived as a Christian as a time in this world, but when it no longer served a purpose for you, you went back to the ways of the world.

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If the power of Christ is within you, do not make excuses for your sin.

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Kill it. As the apostle Paul said in Colossians 3, 5, put to death what is earthly in you.

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First Corinthians chapter six, flee from sexual immorality, run away from it, put it to death.

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Let it not reign anymore in your mortal body. But by the power of God, you live unto righteousness instead of unrighteousness.

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I have been crucified with Christ. I have put to death the sinful desires of my flesh.

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And it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life

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I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

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Jesus left his throne in heaven, became a man, and being found in human form, he became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

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Therefore, having perfected our sanctification in his life and in his death,

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God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name.

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So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord to the glory of God the Father. Every knee should bow.

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My friends, you will either bow or you will be made to bow. And don't you want to be the ones on judgment day who are bowing before Christ in glory instead of bowing before him in fear?

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Knowing that judgment is not for us, but for all who are in Christ Jesus, we have been saved from the wrath of God and will live with him forever in glory.

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So the life I live now, as long as I am still in this flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

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John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son and whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

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Paul goes on in verse 21, I do not nullify the grace of God. For if righteousness were through the law, then

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Christ died for no purpose. If Christ even accomplished 99 % of our salvation, but 1 % could be accomplished by the law,

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Christ died for no purpose. God in heaven became a man to not accomplish fully our justification and sanctification?

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The power of God that was not enough to justify us by his blood on the cross and resurrection from the grave?

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Then what was the point? How powerful a God could he be if by this work it was not enough to save us?

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It's not by our works that we're saved. It is by the work of Christ. And God in his grace has transmitted the righteousness of Christ to us just by believing in him.

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There's no work that we do. And my friends, even the faith that you have is from God.

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As Jesus said in John 8, this is the will of God that you believe in him whom he has sent.

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I'm sorry, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent. That's specifically what the verse says.

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And we read in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, by grace you are saved through faith and this is not your own doing.

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It is the gift of God. And I quoted to you in a prayer today already from Hebrews chapter 12 that we fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith.

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He's the one who gave us our faith, the author, and he's the one who is growing us in our faith, the perfecter.

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The author and the perfecter of our faith, Jesus Christ. If righteousness were through something that we do, then

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Christ died for no purpose and his power is not all that powerful. Dr.

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Robert Godfrey this past week at the Ligonier conference that was held in Orlando, Florida, he said the following, wrote this quote down,

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Jesus is not half a savior to whom we need to add some work.

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He's a complete savior who died for all our sins and all our transgressions.

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And it is by faith in Christ that we are saved. In Christ alone my hope is found.

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He is my rock, my strength, my song. If you are here today and you don't know the righteousness of Christ, maybe you've not known the gospel your entire life.

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Maybe your entire life you were told, I just need to live this way and I'll be saved. And maybe

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I've said something today that has become brand new to you. By grace through faith in Christ alone, you are saved and not by your works.

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And I would encourage you to stick around and talk with me or talk with Dave or talk with Pastor Dwight.

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And we would love to take you through the scriptures and show you further what it means to be a

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Christian and a follower of Christ Jesus. And know with certainty, with assurance, that you have salvation.

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And on the day that you stand before God in judgment, you will not hear, depart from me, you worker of lawlessness,

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I never knew you. But you will hear, well done, my good and faithful servant, for great is your reward.

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♪ Here is love, as vast as the ocean ♪ ♪

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Loving kindness has ransomed ♪ ♪

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Shed for us His precious blood ♪ ♪ We cease to sing

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His praise ♪ ♪

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Grace and peace and perfect joy ♪ ♪

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Enslaved by hateful men ♪ ♪

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In resurrection and in death ♪ ♪

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Radiant Son calling home

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His father's children ♪ ♪

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Radiant Son of heav 'n He stands ♪ ♪

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Calling home His father's children ♪ ♪

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Holding forth His wounded hands ♪

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Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

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For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org. On behalf of our church family, my name is

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Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.