Galatians - Justified In Christ

God Centered Theology

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John MacArthur, in his commentary on the book of Galatians, says the following about justification and salvation.

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He says the basic term was originally used forensically of a judge's declaring an accused person not guilty and right before the law.

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It was the opposite of being declared guilty and condemned. Throughout Scripture, justification refers to God's declaring a sinner to be guiltless on the basis of faith in Him.

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It is the free and gracious act by which God declares a sinner right with Himself, forgiving, pardoning, restoring, and accepting

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Him on the basis of nothing but trust in the person and work of His Son, Jesus Christ.

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No amount of law -keeping can make a person righteous, because the root of sinfulness is in the fallenness of man's heart, not in actions.

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Man's basic problem is in what he is, not in what he does.

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Sinful acts are the outward expression of a depraved nature that contains sinful thoughts.

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And let me just say in passing that conversely our works of righteousness as Christians are outward expressions of the inward transformation.

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He goes on to say only faith in Christ Jesus can bring a person the gracious gift of righteousness that provides forgiveness and salvation.

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Faith in Christ is not mere intellectual assent to the fact that Jesus died and rose for man's sin, but His personal trust in His death to remove and forgive one's own sins.

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It is total commitment to submit to Him as Lord. End quote.

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Throughout all the ages, man has been asking, how can a man be right with God?

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Going all the way back in the Old Testament, this question to my knowledge is asked two different times in the book of Job.

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Once by Job himself in chapter 9, and then by one of his friends, or so -called friends,

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Bildhad, in chapter 25. Man loves to create his own gods, and in many cases he even becomes his own god.

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And we've looked at this before with places like Isaiah 44 and other places, how man goes out and gets the tree and cuts from it a block of wood that he falls down and worships.

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But the authority of divinely inspired Scripture of what we talked about last week says that there is only one true

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God. The God of Isaac, Jacob, the God of the Israelites, the

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God of all of God's people. Only one true God. As I mentioned,

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Isaiah 44 verse 6 says, Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and His Redeemer, the

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Lord of hosts. Now notice it says He's the Lord, the King of Israel. We haven't gotten to this part in Galatians, but we will get to Galatians 3 very shortly.

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And in Galatians 3 7 it notes the fact that it is the people of faith in God that are

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Abraham's true offspring. It is the spiritual, the ones of faith that are

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Abraham's true descendants. So when he says here, the King of Israel, he's not looking at just ethnic

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Israel. He's looking at spiritual Israel. He's looking at those that will place their faith and full trust in what

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God has revealed about Himself. And for us in our day it is faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

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For there is only one Savior and one mediator between mankind and God. He says,

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I am the first and the last. Besides me there is no God. Who is like me?

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Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me since I appointed an ancient people.

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God says, I am the one that called the nation of Israel out from among all the other pagan peoples and set them apart and sanctified them as my own people.

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I gave them my law. I gave them blessing. I gave them man. I gave them all these blessings. Who else can say they've done that?

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Only the God of the universe. It is only the God of the universe that created the universe and all things in it.

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He says, Fear not, nor be afraid. Have I not told you from of old and declared it?

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Is there a God besides me? There is no rock. I know of any, not any. You see there's no other

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God besides God. There is just one eternal being called God. Revealed Himself in three distinct persons, the

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is no other God. There is no other King. There is no other

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Redeemer. He is the supreme authority in all the universe. And all the universe holds and has its consistency and is upheld by the

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Word of His power. And that is why as we looked at last week the Scripture is not only sufficient, but it is inherent and infallible and it is the authority.

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Why? Because of its Divine Author. The Divine Author, that is where the authority comes from.

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And it is because of the authority of Scripture that we can trust Scripture. We know it's true.

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And it is one of the best, if not to me the best blessing of all of the truth of Scripture is what we're looking at today is that we can be justified in Christ.

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Moving on, if you want to turn with me, I want to turn and look at Romans chapter 2. And we're going to look at just a few places here in Romans 2 before we make our way over to our text in Galatians.

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But in Romans chapter 2 in verse 5 it says, "'But because of your hard and unrepentant heart you were storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when

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God's righteous judgment will be revealed. There is a God. He created all things.

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And because He is the creator of all things, all things that have been created would not have been created if it were not for Him.'"

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We find this in the prologue of John, the first five verses of John. But it also means that all things are accountable to this

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Creator. Every single human being that has ever lived, beginning with Adam and going all the way down to the last person that will be in existence at the time when

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Christ returns and ushers in the kingdom and pronounces judgment on sin, every single human being will stand before God and give an account of himself.

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Notice He says in verse 6, "'He will render to each one according to his works.'" Now, we're going to explain that obviously salvation is not by works, but that does not exclude or remove the fact that God is still going to judge everyone based on whether they were sinful or righteous.

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Now obviously in skipping ahead we are righteous by the Son of God, not by our own works but because of His.

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But He's still going to judge. Everyone will be judged according to His works. You will either be judged for your works and judged for your sin and then pay for those sins eternally in a place called

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Hell, or you will stand before God fully justified and fully righteous because of the works of Christ.

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He says, "'To those by patient and well -doing seek for glory and honor and immortality. He will give eternal life.'"

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Now one of the ways to understand how to interpret Scripture, you have to interpret the unclear in light of the clear.

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You can't take a section where they're not giving a specific teaching on something and then act as if that is the teaching on it.

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So when He says, "'Those who pursue in well -doing, seeking immortality,' He's not saying that it is your works or that you're seeking or well -doing or quote -unquote doing something good that saves you.

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Paul has made it abundantly clear, and we're going to see this in Galatians, that apart from Christ no flesh will be justified.

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So that doesn't mean that He's sitting here in Romans 2 teaching something different. He's already defined that well -doing means to place faith in Christ.

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So what He is saying is the point of this passage, the point of this paragraph here in Romans 2 is the contrast that Paul is drawing here.

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He's not giving a teaching specifically on justification or faith. He's giving a teaching on the fact that there is a

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God, there is judgment, and the contrast between the two people groups that will stand before God in that judgment is that there will be those that are still in Adam and then those that are in Christ.

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There will be those that are sinners and those that are in their sin and have died in their sin. And there will be those that have died to their sin and are in Christ because they've been crucified with Christ.

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Verse 8 it says, "'But those who are self -seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, they will be wrath and fury.'"

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This is picking up really well on the first chapter of Romans. Romans 1 .18 when He says, "'They suppress the truth in unrighteousness.'"

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That is what the unregenerate mind does. That's what man does. He knows there's a God. Ecclesiastes says

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He's put eternity in man's heart. There's no denying it. But man suppresses that truth.

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He suppresses the truth of the Word of God. He suppresses the truth of the natural revelation around Him that shows there is a

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God. And he suppresses that in his own unrighteousness and in his sin. And that judgment will come.

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He says there will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil. The Jew first and also the

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Greek. But glory and honor, and notice He says, and peace for everyone who does good.

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And as I said before with the well -doing, the good is described as having faith.

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We're going to see that when we look at chapter 3 in a minute. He says the Jew first and also the Greek, for God shows no partiality.

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The lack of distinction is so overwhelmingly abundant in the New Testament. Not only is there no distinction when it comes to our standing before God in the sense that we're all equal in Christ, but there will be no distinctions among the ones who are in Adam and who are not saved.

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They will all equally be sinful, all equally sinners, all equally deserving of the wrath and judgment of God.

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Just as those of us who are in Christ are all equally not deserving of grace, not deserving of mercy, not deserving of eternal life.

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But we've received it as a gracious gift. Romans chapter 3, Paul even builds on his point even more here.

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When in verse 9 he says, What then? Are we Jews any better off? Or what advantage is there to being a

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Jew? He says, Well, none at all, for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are under sin.

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As it is written, None are righteous, no not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God.

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All have turned aside. Together they become worthless. No one does good, not even one.

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You see, while redemption and salvation is particular, some some will believe, not all.

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Sin and its consequences, in Romans 6, 23, the wages of those sins is universal.

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Every single human being, this applies to. Every single person, this sin and the fact that none are righteous.

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None seek after God. There are none good but God. The only good and innocent person that ever received something they didn't deserve was

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Jesus Christ, period. None are good. We're all sinners. And see the thing about it is why so many

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Christians struggle with this. You'll hear them say things like, It's not fair. I mean how could

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God send someone to Hell? And I don't know why they come up with this hypothetical because it's just simply not possible.

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But they come up with a hypothetical. What if they only committed one sin? My friends, that's the wrong focus.

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We so are ingrained to focus on ourselves and do everything to the prism of ourselves.

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When you truly understand the purity and the holiness and the righteousness of God, then you can understand why no sin can even be in His presence.

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See, we don't even have a correct understanding of holiness. Our finite minds cannot even conceive of the infinite value and eternal nature of God's holiness.

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We serve a God that's so abundantly holy that you could take the collective wisdom of every human that's ever lived, have them describe the holiness of God, and it wouldn't even put a speck of truth in coming close to describing it.

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Every time someone came into contact with the presence and the holiness of God, they're falling on their feet, shutting their eyes because they can't even look at it.

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And you think sin's going to go into the presence of that holiness? We're in Adam.

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We're born in Adam. We're sinners. We sin because we're sinners.

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We don't become sinners when we sin. That's the problem with so much of American evangelical

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Christianity is they no longer filter what they believe through the prism of Scripture. They filter it through the prism of what they want to think or what they feel is right.

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They get it backwards. They filter even their sin and the understanding of what is good, and the understanding of judgment.

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Everything is filtered through things outside of Scripture. And we have no wonder why people don't get it.

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Why people aren't evangelizing like they should. Why we aren't making disciples like we should. Why the world is in such a place as it is.

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So while redemption is particular, sin and its consequences are universal in scope. None righteous.

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But then notice we turn the page to Romans chapter 5 and verse 1, and here's where we begin in earnest about justification.

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It says, Therefore, in light of all that Paul has said up to this point, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God.

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Peace with God. Notice it says, because we have been justified, we now have peace.

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What does that mean? That means without justification you don't have peace with God. That's the lie!

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That's the lie that Satan has sold to us! Everybody's basically good.

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If you're good outweighs you're bad, or you're not as bad as that guy down the street. Surely you'll get in!

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None righteous. Period. Man in his unregenerate state in Adam is a rebellious,

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God -hating sinner. He's at war with God. And without the justification of God Almighty by the grace and mercy of God, there will be no flesh justified in His sight.

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We have peace. Peace that man cannot provide. The peace with God that we have does not originate in us!

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So we shouldn't be looking for it in us! You move on to Romans chapter 80 just really brings the point even further.

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Romans 8 verse 5 it says, For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the

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Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. What Paul's doing in this chapter is he's got another contrast.

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Paul did a lot of his teaching through comparison and contrast. A lot of things a lot of preachers will do is they'll either use stories, or they'll use a comparison and contrast.

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You'll use different ways to bring out a point, different ways to illustrate things, different ways to explain things, right?

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He's using another comparison contrast here. He's saying that just as I've said there are people in Adam or in Christ, unsaved, saved, so on and so forth.

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He's saying there are those of the flesh and those of the Spirit of God. Those unsaved, those saved.

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Those lost, those regenerated. And he says those that are of the flesh, those that are unsaved, those that are unregenerated, those that are in their sin, they set their minds on the things of the flesh because they're in bondage to sin.

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They're in bondage to it. They're in bondage under the law to have to keep the law because apart from Christ your only hope is to perfectly keep the law of which we know no one can do so that all are under sin.

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And he says, for to set the mind on the flesh is death. The wages of sin is death. The mind set on the flesh, the mind set, and in their sin it only produces death.

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It cannot produce life. But the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.

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The mind, the soul, the Spirit has been regenerated, that's been saved, that's had the work of the Spirit in them.

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It's eternal life. It's peace with God. Two different types of people.

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For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. For it does not submit to God's law.

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It cannot. The person that's unregenerated, that's lost, they cannot submit themselves to God's law.

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They don't have the capacity. Any good or anything they do is always with the wrong motivation.

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It's always self -centered focus. It's self -seeking because they don't want to obey the truth. Man cannot produce one single act of righteousness that God would accept.

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None. And as I told you earlier in the beginning when we were going through MacArthur's quote, any righteousness that we do as Christians still isn't our own righteousness.

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It's Christ's righteousness in us working in and out through us. As Mike quoted two weeks ago, we are

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His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. There's nowhere in Scripture where it says

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God accepts us on the basis of what we have done. Not a shred. But it does say over and over and over again abundantly so He accepts us on the basis of what

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His Son did. Then notice in verse 8 of chapter 8 in Romans it says, "'Those who are in the flesh cannot please

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God.'" And this is how we understand what He's talking about with this contrast.

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This is where we really get the better understanding of what He's doing when He's talking about those in the flesh, those in the

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Spirit. He says, "'Those who are in the flesh can't please God.'" Well how do we know they're unsaved? Well because you'll remember in Hebrews 11 .6

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it says, "'Without faith it is impossible to please Him.'" So what

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Paul was saying here in Romans is that when those that are in the flesh can't please

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God. Why? Because they don't have faith. It's what these

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Judaizers are doing. The whole point of Galatians and why we're going through it is to understand what the true gospel is and it's also to contrast that and point out what it's not.

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And these Judaizers, it's not what it is. That's why Paul confronted and opposed

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Peter the way he did. He said, "'Look man, what are you doing? You were eating and doing right and now you're retreating and going back.'"

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Remember Hebrews 10 .1 also says, "'For since the law was but a shadow of the good things to come,' instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, never, never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year make perfect those who draw near.'"

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So in Hebrews 10 .1 it says, "'The law can't make perfect who draws near.'" Hebrews 11 .6 says, "'Without faith it is impossible to please

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Him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and He rewards them who diligently seek

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Him.'" Paul is telling Peter, if you remember in the paragraph from last week, he says, "'We as Jews of all people should know better.

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We should know these things. We were under law. We're Jews. We have the law. So many of our brethren as Jews stand up and think they have some kind of advantage,

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Romans chapter 3, to being a Jew. We have the law. Look at us. We're great, not us Gentile sinners.

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Look at them. They don't even have a law. They don't know how to please God. We've got the law. We're great.'"

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He says, "'It's that very law that condemns you to hell because it points out your sin.

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It shows where you've missed the mark. All have sinned and continually fall short of the glory of God. All have sinned, past tense in Adam, present tense, since we continually fall short.'"

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You can never make up for the gap. That is the essential logical error of a works -based righteousness.

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Even if you could make up for something you had done, what about all the other sin?

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And what if you sinned five minutes before you died? You see,

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Paul refused, absolutely refused to compromise the gospel and the truth of Scripture.

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And all of God's people will do the same. Because Scripture's the only source for divine truth, and because it is incapable of error, that means we can trust it completely.

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There's no need to resort to law, or works, or self -righteousness, or man -made religion.

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We're not saved by the law. And therefore our identity as Christians is not in the law.

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You see, this is the ultimate need of man. Justification. Not external conformity, which is what the

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Judaizers wanted, which is what the law demands, which is what legalists demand. External conformity, but inward transformation by the power of the

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Holy Spirit in regeneration and salvation. The only way a man can be right before God is to be justified by God and before God, and the only way a man can be justified by God and before God is in Christ.

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Which brings us to our text in Galatians as we finish up this morning. Just a few short verses before we'll turn our attention to chapter 3 next time.

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On the heels of our confrontation from last time when Paul opposed Peter because he was going against the truth of Scripture and the

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Gospel. He goes in in verse 15, he says, Now he's obviously not saying, he's not talking in terms of sinners in terms of your justification.

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He's talking about that was a term they would have understood. They considered, as I said, all Gentiles to be sinners because of who they were.

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It was just a thing that Jewish people thought. He says, Yet we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

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So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

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Our justification is in Christ. Our faith is in Christ.

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Because outside of Christ there's no justification.

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You won't find it in the law. You won't find it in yourself. I don't care how much money you have.

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I don't care what your church attendance is like. I don't care what your work history is like. I don't care how many children you have.

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I don't care how many houses you have. I don't care how much money you give to the poor. I don't care what you do.

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There is nothing in this life that will justify you before a holy God other than the works of Christ.

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It just won't happen. But thanks be to God for that.

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Because I certainly couldn't earn it. I know how sinful I am. In fact, if you claim to be a

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Christian, you profess to be in Christ, and you're not at war with yourself daily over your sins, something is wrong.

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Something is amiss. Because Satan, the more you live for Christ, the more he wants to get you to stumble and fall.

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You should wake up every morning, put on that spiritual armor, because you know you're going to be at war. And if you're not at war, something's wrong.

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Verse 17, he says, "...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. For if I rebuild what I tore down,

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I prove myself to be a transgressor." You see, if Peter was sinning, you remember Peter was, for a period of time was eating with Gentiles.

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Man, he was enjoying the freedom of Christ. Going along, following through the Scripture, no big deal. Judaizers coming into town, they say, oh man,

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I don't want to lose popularity with these guys. Let me retreat over here and go back and not eat with Gentiles.

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If what he was doing originally was sin, then that would make Christ a minister of the origin of sin.

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Because it is Christ that we're claiming to be in. It's Christ He set us free from sin, not to sin.

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That's why Paul's telling them, you're not sinning. You're sinning by going back. You're sinning by retreating.

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You're sinning by acting like your freedom in Christ is something to be ashamed of. 19, it says, "...for

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through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God." See, you're either going to live to die, or you're going to die to live.

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You're going to live to die, or you're going to die to live. Notice it says in verse 20, "...I have been crucified with Christ.

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It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

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In the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave

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Himself for me." You see, for the Christian, when Christ died, we died.

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If you insist on having it your own way, doing things on your own terms, thinking you'll have plenty of self -righteousness to present to God, then you're going to, my friend, spend eternity in hell.

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Because God's going to look at all of your self -righteousness, and He's going to say, that's filthy rags. It means nothing to me.

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Don't try to have it your own way. If you repent, if you die to yourself, if you've been crucified with Christ, then on the authority of Scripture I can tell you 100 % certainty that Christ lives inside of you.

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Christ lives in you. He is your life. He is your righteousness.

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He's the very air you breathe. Our faith is in Christ.

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Our eternal life is in Christ. Our salvation is in Christ. Our justification before God is in Christ.

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Our Christian life is lived by Christ in us. Our new identity is in Christ.

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We're a new creature. We are loved by Christ. And the life that we live in Christ is lived by faith, not because of anything we did, but because of what

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Christ did and then giving Himself for us as it tells us in Galatians 2 .20. The one thing...

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I'm a simple kind of man. My wife would argue that's not the case. She's wrong.

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I'm a simple kind of man. I like to boil things down in a simple kind of way. You want to know the one thing all professing

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Christians in this world could do to make us get taken more seriously? If we stop acting like God owes us something and start living like we owe

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Christ everything. Stop acting like God owes you anything because He doesn't.

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And start living like you owe Christ everything because you do. And I do.

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Verse 21, the end of the chapter 2 here says, 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 our righteousness, if our justification were through something or someone other than Christ then

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Christ's death on the cross was a colossal waste of human and divine life because He was and is the

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God -man. You see if Christ can't save if Christ is not the

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Savior of mankind, if He's not the mediator between God and man and He can't save perfectly, there's no hope.

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We're wasting our time sitting in this building right now. There are so many other things we could be doing.

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An act of worship to a God who can't save perfectly is not a God worth worshiping. But we worship

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God in this place because He's a God who saves perfectly. I just don't have enough time, man.

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We're going to have to save this. I even wrote on here, if time. I can't even get to Romans 6. We're out of time.

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We'll have to do that another time. So much good stuff there. So while I'm not going to preach it,

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I encourage you to go home today. Read the first 11 verses of Romans chapter 6 and it will further deepen your understanding of how we are united with Christ and His death, burial, and resurrection.

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But I want to end today by reading you something from Martin Luther and what he said about justification.

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He says, And just and true to thee,

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I am a sinner still. I know that often when I strive to keep a spark of love alive for thee, the powers within leap up in unsubmissive might and oft be numb my sense of right and pull me back to sin.

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I know that though in doing good I spend my life, I never could atone for all

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I've done. But though my sins are black as night, I dare to come before thy sight because I trust thy

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Son. In Him alone my trust I place.

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Come boldly to thy throne of grace and there commune with thee.

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Salvation sure, O Lord, is mine. And all unworthy

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I am thine for Jesus died for me. My friends, there is only one source of divine truth and there is only one

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Savior. And the good news of the Gospel, the Gospel that's worth defending, the

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Gospel that's worth fighting for, the Gospel that Paul opposed Peter to his face in public over, is a

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Gospel which man is freely and graciously and mercifully justified before the holiest being that has ever and could ever exist because He alone is

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God. And if you repent of your sin and place your full faith and trust in Jesus Christ, you will stand before God and you will not be judged for your sins because as far as God will be concerned you never sinned.

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Have you ever thought about that, dear Christians? It's not just forgiveness in the sense, well, okay,

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I know you did that, but okay, I'll let it slide. No, because of Christ, He's going to treat you as if you never sinned.