Justification by Faith — Ron Bailey

I ask you, Lord, to take it and use it and give us not just knowledge but understanding, Lord, that sinks down to the very depths of us and fixes foundations in our character on which other things can be built.

We do look to you today, Lord, for your special help to speak and to hear. Amen. There are so few that I won't ask about coffee at this stage. Just a word of explanation then about today's notes. You'll find there are just two sheets, a sheet four and a sheet five.

Sheet four is a replacement for last week's sheet four. No major change of doctrine since last week, just one or two additions. And then page five. The reason I've done no more than that is that we only actually got halfway down page two of last week's session, so if we get to the end of this one we shall be doing well.

And that will take us about halfway through chapter four, so we'll have a third of the book to do next week, so we'll see how we get on. We're coming really into the real meat of this letter now, the part where we shall need to apply ourselves and consider it, maybe even in greater detail than we have up to this point.

Justification by Faith as the Beginning of Christian Life

If you've got a revised one of these things, this was actually called Justification by Faith, this study, I suggest you call it Justification by Faith and more. Because we shall find that although Justification by Faith is the great foundation from which other things are built, that isn't the end of the story.

Justification by Faith really is very much the beginning of the story, and we shall find out how we go on from that into the greater, fuller things that God wants to speak to us of. We shall see that a little bit this morning as we're working our way on.

Page two then, and we'll try and work our way through the verses, verse by verse, as we did last time. See if we're more successful this time. Galatians chapter three. This is the part of the letter that, if we are using Graham Scroggie's little outline, is the part that begins from chapter three and verse one, and goes on to the end of that chapter and then into the next section.

So it's what he called the doctrine argued and applied, and the doctrine illustrated and applied. Okay, those are the parts of it. Now page two then, and this is chapter three and verse one. This is what we've called an appeal to their own experience.

What Paul does in the Spirit of God now, is having said some of these things about his encounter with Peter, and having begun to say some basic things about Justification by Faith. Let's just remind ourselves of that definition, that Justification by Faith, Justification really, is a legal declaration of righteousness.

And Justification by Faith is what happens in that God is able to legally declare us to be righteous on the basis of our faith union with Jesus Christ. Now he's begun to talk about that in chapter two, and then when he comes into chapter three, he illustrates it, and he illustrates it in two ways.

First of all, he goes to their own experience, and secondly, he goes to Abraham's experience. So you've got a kind of a practical application of it, first of all, as an illustration, and then he goes back to its biblical roots, and shows that their experience is founded on the truth of the Scripture.

The Galatians’ Experience of Receiving the Spirit

So this is what he says in chapter three and verse one. O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth, before all whose eyes Jesus Christ has been evidently or graphically set forth, crucified among you.

Then he goes on to say this in verse two, this only would I learn of you, received you the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith. This is his basic question, reminding them of their experience, reminding them of their own encounter with God, and he asks this question, from your own experience, he says, did you receive the Spirit as a result of you keeping the deeds of the law, and so gaining your own do-it-yourself righteousness?

Did you receive the Spirit as a result of your contribution, or was it as a result of faith, receiving that that God had provided for us? Let me just say this at this point, that sometimes, and particularly in the days in which we are living, faith is made much of, and in some ways too much of.

Now you might almost say, well it's impossible to make too much of faith, but it is, if we don't understand this, that faith is not the source of salvation. Grace is the source of salvation. By grace are ye saved through faith.

Faith is the root that grace takes to bring salvation to us. Faith is the hand that reaches out to receive what God has provided. But faith on its own can't provide anything. It can only receive what God has provided.

But he's basically saying here, how was it that you received the Holy Spirit? Was it by your energies and keeping the law, or was it as a result of your faith? And then he goes on and he says, are you so foolish, having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?

Have ye suffered so many things in vain, if it be yet in vain? He therefore that ministers to you the Spirit, and works miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith.

These few verses are a fascinating little insight into what Paul understood as the beginnings of a Christian experience. You see, he talks about receiving the Spirit. He talks about beginning in the Spirit.

He talks about having the Spirit ministered to us, and he also talks about someone who is ministering the Spirit to us. Literally, someone who is continuing to add the Spirit to us. That's really where it all starts.

That's what salvation is really all about. It's all about a personal relationship with the one who gives the Spirit, and who continues to give the Spirit. Unless we have had a beginning which is in the Spirit, not just one that is a result of our own mental appreciation of things, because we've come to understand the basics upon which God is working, but unless we've had a real beginning that's in the Spirit, you can't really build anything on that.

And without becoming too introspective, we do need to know that for sure. Paul is able to refer to the experience of these people. He's able to, because he was there when they had their beginnings, he's able to put his finger on it and it says, you remember when you began in the Spirit.

You remember when you received the Spirit. You remember as you constantly have the Spirit ministered to you. You remember as miracles are wrought or worked amongst you. How does it happen? As a result of your keeping of the law, or as a result of your faith receiving that that God is providing?

Okay? Do you notice how Paul says in chapter 3 and verse 1, Before whose eyes Jesus Christ has been evidently set forth, crucified among you. I find this verse very moving, very challenging, more than challenging, really very sobering.

Because obviously as a result of his preaching and his living, Jesus Christ had been set forth among the Galatians, evidently, graphically, obviously crucified. They'd seen it, they'd heard it. But most of all they'd seen it before your eyes, he says, it's been done.

Preaching as the Manifestation of the Eternal Word

There's a little verse in Titus that I was looking for the other day and couldn't find but I found it there. In Titus chapter 1, Titus chapter 1 and verse 3, well we'll read verse 2 because we'll need to notice this verse a little bit later on.

He's speaking, well we'd better read from the beginning. Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledging of the truth which is according to godliness, in hope of eternal life which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began, but has in due times manifested his word through preaching which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Saviour.

This is what provokes and challenges and sobers me, this little phrase here. He manifested his word through preaching. The word there is the logos. Preaching really is intended to be the manifestation of the eternal word through the spoken word.

The Bible is the manifestation of the eternal word, that's Jesus Christ himself, through the written word. So I suppose if you've got a good biblical preacher, it's the manifestation of the eternal word through the written word by means of the spoken word.

There's the definition of preaching for you. Not just standing up and talking. If it's not actively manifesting, manifest really means to make a thing very plain and obvious. It means to, it really has built in it the idea of something shining, something which has appeared, something which is increasing in its appearance.

You see it with increasing clarity. That's what preaching's supposed to do. Supposed to set forth Jesus Christ. You are to be witnesses, he said, unto me. There are many doctrines that spring from him, but doctrines are just truths from the truth about the truth.

He is the truth and it's the preaching which manifests him, which is the preaching which sets forth Christ, crucified among us evidently. In some of Wesley's hymns, quite a few of Wesley's hymns, you've got this little phrase where he talks about our eyes now seeing Christ crucified.

Lots of them. There's kind of an eternal present tense in lots of Wesley's hymns. And it's almost as though the hymn itself is setting forth this present tense fact of Jesus Christ. Now the Galatians had seen this.

They'd seen it. They had, the Lord was speaking to us about this the other week, they had looked and lived. They had fixed their eyes upon the crucified Son of God, upon the snake on the pole, going back to the numbers experience and the illustration of it that we have in John chapter 3.

They'd fixed their eyes upon him and they had lived as a result of it. Now that's, that's the enormity, that's the tragedy of what they'd done. They had once had their eyes on him, now they had put their eyes on it and on me.

What do I have to do? How do I have to maintain what God has given to me? That kind of pattern of things. Just to make this point, because we'll need to see this and need to establish this for later on, that there's no doubt at all that these Galatian Christians to whom this letter was written are genuine born-again believers.

They have received the Spirit. That's really what Christianity is all about. It's not about us making the right decisions, it's not about us having the right understandings, it's not about us doing the right things.

Ultimately, at its very foundation, it's all about who have we received. That's why the great question of the New Testament is, is not actually have you been born again. It's not have you been converted, it's not are you saved, it's not any of those things.

The great question, the fundamental question of the New Testament is that Paul spoke, asked of the people in Ephesus when he said, having believed, did you receive the Holy Spirit? In other words, you can believe and not receive the Holy Spirit.

Having believed, did you receive the Holy Spirit? Paul can point back to a point in their experience when they did. He knows that they did receive the Holy Spirit. And he knows, and they know, that they didn't receive the Holy Spirit as a result of their keeping the law.

They were probably ignorant of most of it at that time. Then he kind of works his way on here, coming down to verse 6, where we come to just a little phrase which we'll go back to see in Genesis. But it is an amazing phrase, and if we read it as we will do in Genesis in a moment, you'll see it's even more amazing where it crops up there.

But he says this, verse 6, even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. We're going to be talking about accounts, accounted to him. If you're using different translations, you may have reckoned, or computed, or calculated, all kinds of different things.

This, the word actually comes from the word logic. It really means to calculate, but on a sure foundation, on a sure basis. You know that this thing is absolutely definite. And what it says here is that Abraham believed God, and it was, let's change it a little bit, it was put to his account as righteousness.

That's to say, Abraham believed God, and God took Abraham's faith, and he put it to Abraham's account as righteousness. This is the whole basis of justification by faith. If we just look at it in Genesis chapter 15, and we'll spend a little time trying to work systematically through this so that we don't miss any parts of it.

In Genesis chapter 15, very significant where this comes. It comes in promises concerning the seed, not seeds, many, but seed, singular. It's when Abraham is bemoaning the fact to God that he doesn't have any seed of his own, no natural children.

Verse 3 then, and Abraham said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed, and lo, one born in my house is mine heir. Can you see seed and heir? Notice these two words, seed and heir, because we shall be coming back to them in Galatians.

And behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars if thou be able to number them.

And he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness. God speaks this promise about the seed and the heir to Abraham, and I don't know to this day how much Abraham really understood of it at this time, but he believed it.

In fact, more than that, I like it the way it's expressed in the New Testament, Abraham believed God. He put his trust entirely in God, he relied entirely in God to work this thing out and make it so.

It tells us in very great detail in Romans chapter 4 the whole process of Abraham's faith. And the process of Abraham's faith, or to use the Bible's phrase, the steps of the faith of our father Abraham, is very, very instructive for us to look at, to kind of just see how faith develops.

But Abraham, to begin with, just believed God, and as a result of his faith, his belief that God would do this thing, God credited Abraham's account with righteousness. Last week it was algebra, this week it's accountancy.

He credited Abraham's account with righteousness, and we'll see why God was able to do that in a little while. Let's just have a look at Romans chapter 4 and verse 12, Romans 4 and verse 12. This is the chapter where he's talking much about Abraham's faith.

And he says this, let's read from verse 11, where it calls Abraham the father of all believers. Verse 11, and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had being yet uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised, that righteousness might be reckoned unto them, or accounted to them, or imputed to them.

And the father of circumcision, to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised. You'll see this is one of these very long, involved sentences.

Just by way of experiment, this isn't really very, I don't know what the word is, recently I put the letter to the Galatians through a style checker on a computer, to see what they made of it. And they liked it, and they thought there was a lot of action in it, and a lot of personal pronouns which makes it very easy to read, but they didn't like the length of the sentences.

And that's one of the things you always get when you come into Paul's letters, the length of the sentences. So, if we just kind of break this up a little bit. In verse 11, what Paul is saying is this, that they, that Abraham is the father of all them that believe, literally of all the believers.

Abraham is the father. The characteristics of Abraham concerning faith have to be reproduced in every believer. You follow that? That's why he's the father. His family likeness is reproduced in them concerning faith.

He's the father of all that believe. But then he goes on to say this. He's talking about them that were not circumcised, because Abraham wasn't when he first believed. And then in verse 12 he says that also Abraham is the father of circumcision.

To them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised. What Paul is saying is this, that for Gentiles, non-circumcised, non-Jews, Abraham is the father of the believers.

For the Jews, the circumcised, he is their father inasmuch as, inasmuch as they are both circumcised and believing. In other words, the Gentile, the non-circumcised, has to believe. The Jew has to have circumcision and faith.

That's what he's saying. If we were going back to our algebra, and we were to say, all right, well if faith is the thing that's necessary to salvation, and that is sufficient, and then faith plus circumcision leads to salvation, we could ask ourselves the question again, if that is true, what is the value of circumcision in that equation?

And now you know why Paul said it's nothing. Circumcision is nothing. And non-circumcision is nothing. It has no value in terms of its merit. It only had value in terms of something else, some other effect that God was using it to display at that time.

So the Jew, a true Jew, was not just someone who was circumcised. He was not just a physical descendant of Abraham. He was a physical descendant of Abraham. He was circumcised, and he was walking, present tense, in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham.

In other words, he was a man who was living in faith. I don't know how many Jews that leaves us with, but that's God's definition of it. In fact, earlier on, in chapter 2 of Romans, Paul makes this statement concerning Jews, verse 28, for he is not a Jew which is one outwardly.

Now there's an interesting statement for you. It goes counter to most of what evangelicals teach these days. But he says, he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew which is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God.

Faith, Imputation, and the Promise to Abraham

Let's see if we can work our way on a little bit. If we had followed the pattern of Abraham, we would have seen that the order really was this. This is the top of page 3, in most versions, I think, top of page 3.

This was Abraham's order. First came the promise. We didn't read that, but it's in Genesis chapter 12, verse 3. Secondly comes the faith. Third comes this state where God reckons righteousness to Abraham's account, because of his faith.

And it tells us in Romans 4, and verse 23, where it says this. Now it was not written for Abraham's sake alone that it was reckoned to him, but for us also to whom it shall be reckoned if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered for our offenses and was raised up for our justification.

When it talks about believing here again, it's really talking about believers, not just someone who has had a crisis of belief, not someone who has just come to a point of active faith, but someone who is continuing to believe, someone who is a believer.

It's a great title for Christians in the New Testament. It doesn't refer to Christians very often at all. The main title for such people, as we would call them, is believers. That was their characteristic.

They were believers, people who were believing constantly that God had done this thing. The law in Galatians, it tells us that all that the law did was that it brought a curse, or that it pronounced the curse.

I'll just read these notes as we go, because I want to come a little bit farther down. The law then pronounces the sentence of the curse. That's Galatians chapter 3 and verse 10. And the law, of course, demands total obedience.

This is Galatians 5 verse 3, for I testify again to every man that's circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole law. And James in his letter says this, for whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

The law then can never justify anybody. It can never bring a person to the place where it can say, this person has perfectly kept all my righteous requirements, therefore I declare him to be righteous.

That was never the purpose of the law. The purpose of the law was always to convince men utterly, to make it plain to them just that that was not true of them. This is that the law can't justify. If we go to Galatians now, chapter 3, just to link it in with where we're supposed to be, we'll read from verse 6 and you'll see that those things that we have been reading in Romans are stated here in Galatians.

Verse 6, even as Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him for righteousness, know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the sons of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would legally declare the Gentiles to be righteous through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham saying, in thee shall all nations be blessed.

So then, they which be of faith are blessed with believing Abraham. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse. For it is written, cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.

But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, obvious. For the just, as the righteous man, shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live in them.

And then he says this in verse 13, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law. Having been made a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is every one that hangs on a tree. I don't know whether you can follow the pattern of what he's saying here.

Christ Redeems from the Curse of the Law

It really is very wonderful. Jesus Christ, of course, was without sin. He was perfect as regards the law even. He had fully fulfilled all the righteous requirements of the law. The testimonies to his character come from all kinds of unexpected places in the scripture.

You get even his enemies and the people who didn't really want to admit it at all, who have to admit that they find no fault in him, that there's in him nothing worthy of death. Jesus himself threw out a challenge on one occasion and said, which of you convicts me of sin?

There was not a single thing that anyone could put their finger on and say this is sin. I remember years and years ago hearing someone preach and they took three different characters, I can sometimes remember sermons like this.

They took three different characters, they took Peter, first of all, and they said Peter was a man of action, that's true, and they came to this verse in Peter's letter where it says of Jesus Christ, who did no sin.

He as a man of action committed no offense against the law of God. That was Peter's way of expressing it. Paul, they said, was a man of the intellect, and in 2 Corinthians Paul says this of Jesus Christ, who knew no sin.

And then this person went on to say that John was the one who got closest to the Lord and knew what was in him, and John in his letter simply says, in him there is no sin. These are categoric testimonies to the sinlessness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And yet he hung on a cross. And anyone who hangs on a cross, it says in the Old Testament, anyone who hangs on a tree, that person was cursed, it was because it was the execution of a sentence against some sin.

So how can it be that someone who is not cursed suffers the consequence of the curse, and what is the consequence of all that? Well, this is what Paul says. He says, reading that verse again, verse 13, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law.

If we have time, and if I find out what is in the notes, we'll find that constantly through the Galatian letter, Paul uses these personal pronouns we, us, and our. When he does that, he's nearly always referring to we, Jews.

The great problem for the Jews was that they had this written sentence of death against them, which was the law. The Gentiles didn't have that. The law was not given to Gentiles. Now that doesn't mean that the Gentiles were without law.

They had the work of the law written in their hearts. But the specific details of the law were not given to the Gentiles. They were given to the Jews prior to them going into their own land, and were part of the conditions of the covenant between God and his people that were going to exist, that he was bringing them into.

Christ, for the Jew, has redeemed him from the curse of the law. He has redeemed him from the curse. He has suffered the curse which the law could only bring. That's all the law could do. It could only bring in the sentence of death against the sinner.

Christ, who was not a sinner, has suffered, received the sentence of death himself. So now, the law's power to enforce its penalty is exhausted. It's finished. Charles Spurgeon used to say this, if I can remember it, he used to say that it was as though God had taken the sword of his righteous indignation against sin, out of its scabbard, and had sheathed it once and forever in the body of his own son upon the cross.

It's finished. It really is finished. All God's righteous indignation, all the penalty of the law, was all focused in on Jesus Christ. All our sins met together in him. And all the penalty for them met together in him.

He became a curse. Not just the sin, but the curse he became, receiving it all. And then he goes on to say this. Remember when he says we, he's talking primarily about the Jews. Verse 13, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having been made a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree, that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

If we go from the beginning of verse 13 to the end of verse 14, you can kind of follow the line that he's on, perhaps a little bit more clearly. He's simply saying this, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit by faith.

There could be no receiving of the Spirit until Christ had fully received in himself the full penalty of the law. Until the law was exhausted in its righteous indignation against sin, until the penalty was executed, it would have been unrighteous for God to have given the Spirit.

The Spirit is the Spirit of life, whereas the law brings the sentence of death. How could he give the Spirit of life to those who had incurred the Spirit of death? You remember that's what he refused to do in the Garden of Eden.

He refused to let those who had incurred death receive the Spirit of life because of their sin. Do you remember that? They were driven out from the tree of life so that they couldn't touch it, because if they had touched it, they would have lived forever.

It could not be. God is a righteous God, and all that he does is utterly just. If we come down to this part now, we need to talk about propitiation, and page three in the middle of it, where it says Christ brings a blessing, and then A, he has taken the full penalty of the law of us, for us, and then B, the law's full force was received by Christ.

Propitiation and Reconciliation Through Christ

And then we come to this passage, Romans 3, verse 23 to 26. These are among the most wonderful verses in the Bible, if there are any most wonderful verses in the Bible. These are foundation truths that if the Spirit of God will quicken them to us, and they can really settle down into our understanding, they will alter everything.

I'm quite convinced that many people, good Christian folk, people who really have received the Spirit, come under all kinds of accusations, and find themselves in all kinds of backwaters, not able to flow in meetings and things because they have not fully appreciated deep down the real consequences of what Christ has done upon the cross.

Because they haven't fully understood the implications of justification by faith. So let's have a look at this and see what it says. Verse 23, he's just been talking about Jews and Gentiles, and then he says, for there's no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Then he says this, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission, the passing over of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God, to declare, I say at this time, his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of him which believes in Jesus.

Paul, in this part of the letter to the Romans, is really justifying God. He's really acting as God's advocate, God's lawyer. He is bringing his reasons as to why God is just, why what God has done is not just.

How is it that God can refuse to visit the sentence of death upon a sinner? How can it be possible that God should declare someone who has sinned to be righteous? How is it that God justifies the ungodly?

That's the phrase. How can it be honest? How can it be righteous? How can these things be? And this is what Paul says here. He speaks of Jesus Christ in the very last two words of verse 24. Jesus Christ whom God has set forth to be our propitiation.

This word propitiation is a long one and is just used three or four times in the scriptures, but it's a word which is one of the great Bible words. And for us to really understand this, well it'll just lay a foundation in our hearts to understand what God has done.

To propitiate someone is basically to appease them. There is an instinct in men and women that if you offend somebody, somehow every man and woman knows that they ought to do something to get back into the good favor of the person they've offended.

A child of two or three knows this. He's naughty and then he goes out to the garden and picks some buttercups or something and brings them back to mum. And although mum has said she's forgiven him and it's all over, there's something in him which says, something ought to be paid to get me back into my mother's good books.

That's an instinct. It's right through the human race. It's the basis of all blood sacrifice throughout all heathen religion, that a price has to be paid to get back into the good favor of someone that we have offended by some action of ours.

It's a true instinct, but without the revelation of God's word it becomes a cruel power that works in all kinds of vicious ways. It works in so-called Christian people too, who think that unless they repent enough or are sorry enough or believe enough or any of these things, unless they do them enough, the cause of the offense still remains and there is some separation between them and God.

Well, Paul says this, a propitiation is this, here's a definition for you if you want one. A propitiation is, it is the price paid to remove the cause of the offense so that there may be reconciliation.

That's what a propitiation is. When people try to propitiate the gods or try to, whatever it is, what they're trying to do is that they are trying to pay the necessary price to remove the cause of the offense so that there can be reconciliation.