Justified by God through Faith (Galatians 2:15-16)

Well, good morning.

It's been a while, but I really appreciate being able to take over for Jim for this Sunday, and it really is an awesome, awesome privilege to be able to share with you from God's Word. Some of the things that we just now sang about is what we're gonna be talking about this morning, and it seems to me that it's already been said, but for some reason the Lord wants us to look at it again, and that is what we're talking about, being justified by faith in Christ Jesus.

Reading Galatians 2:14-21 and the Central Theme of Justification

So let's start this morning, let's read Galatians 2, starting with verse 14, and down to verse 21. Galatians 2, 14, and just let me say this before we read. A lot of what we're gonna hear this morning is things that we heard a couple weeks ago when Jim was preaching, but you know, like I said, for some reason the Lord wants us to review this, and in my own heart, that's what I've been doing is reviewing it over and over.

So let's look here at Galatians 2, verse 14, starting with 14 and down through 21. He says, but when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, who Paul is talking about is Peter and Barnabas and some of the others, when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas, or Peter, in the presence of all, if you being a Jew live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like the Jews?

We who are Jews by, we are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles. Nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not the works of the law, since by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified.

But if while seeking to be justified in Christ, we also ourselves have been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be, for if I rebuild what I have once destroyed I prove myself to be a transgressor, for through the law I died to the law that I might live unto Christ.

I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. In the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.

I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly. Well, let's just have a word of prayer before we go any further. Lord, we just thank you this morning for your texts.

We thank you for what we've heard from Romans and also now from Galatians. And Lord, from the song we were singing that you are the justifier of the sinner. Thank you so much, Lord, for this text now.

We pray that you'll hear not my words, but your words coming out, and that we will glorify you in whatever we say this morning and think about. Thank you so much, in Jesus' name, amen. Well, like I said, it's been a long time since I've been up here.

Overview of Galatians and Its Four Major Sections

And we were looking at the book of Galatians. We've gone through some of it already. But instead of giving us a review immediately, what I'd like to do is give us an overview of the whole book, the whole letter that Paul wrote to the Galatians this morning.

And this overview's gonna touch on some highlights of each section of the book this morning. And it's gonna help put it in perspective what Paul is teaching in some of the verses we just read together, both in Romans earlier and just now.

And what's important to note is that now we're coming to a central theme in the book of Galatians, and that is justification, the doctrine of justification. And this doctrine we're gonna be looking at is important in understanding the whole gospel, isn't it?

And this is why it's central to Paul's letter. So in a sense, it's gonna be like an overview and a review as well, because we're gonna touch on some of the things that I talked about last time to kind of bring you up to memory.

So what does Paul's book cover? What does it, what is it? I broke it down into four sections. And let's just, in brief, I wanna give you the sections and just give you a summary before we get into actually Galatians 2 .15 here.

Galatians 1, one through 10 is called the introduction, the introduction and Paul's purpose statement. And in this section, Paul has been telling the churches who he is and why he's writing them. And he very boldly comes out here, and he talks a lot differently in this letter than he does in the Philippians or Romans or some of the others, because he just gets right to the point here.

And he tells them that they, the teachers who have been coming from Jerusalem, the Jewish teachers, they're false teachers, and they've been distorting the gospel. And he tells them that it was twisted into a false gospel.

And then we get an indication of Paul's agitation, because we read in Galatians 1, seven and eight, where he says this to the Galatian believers. He says, I am amazed, he says, that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ.

For a different gospel, which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. So Paul's letter here was, in this section, was very personal, wasn't it?

It was very personal, telling them right to their faces. And it was to wake them up, to get them to look and to see what was going on. And you know what, this is for us too, because we also need to remember at all times that we also are prone to seek God's approval sometimes by things that we do ourselves, whether it's by praying or by going to church or by singing.

We often try to think we're getting God's approval, and that's what Paul was talking about. We cannot do anything to gain God's approval. And so that was section one, verses one through 10. Then section two starts in verse 11, and it goes to 2 .14, and this is what I labeled as Paul's authority and his defense of his apostleship.

And then in my last two messages, we covered this last section, and in summarizing it, I would like to say that Paul was very effective in proving that he was appointed by Jesus Christ and he was given Jesus Christ's message.

It came from Jesus. We saw also in this section how Paul used an experience for an illustration for the Galatian Christians, and his experience was when he confronted Peter in Antioch for his hypocrisy.

Peter had been afraid of what his Jewish friends were thinking about him, and so he had pulled back from the assembling with the Gentiles. In other words, he was saying that he was better than the Gentiles, but he was also trying to teach the unity of Christ at the same time, so it was hypocrisy.

So he was basically communicating the same message that the false teachers were giving, that a man had to conform to Mosaic laws as well as believe. So we got conforming, or works, and faith together, works and believing.

So Paul was dabbling in what we would call a false religion, because all religions are basically the same thing. They make us think we can work our way to heaven or work ourselves into God's approval.

So this is where we came to at the end of this section last time, and that was from 111 to 214. The next section, Galatians 2 .15, to all the way to the end of the chapter four, 4 .31, and this is Paul's defense of the doctrine of justification through faith.

This is the one, this is the heart of his letter, okay, that he wrote, the most important section, and this is almost all doctrine, but it has some illustrations. Paul illustrates this doctrine by telling us how the Mosaic law was a tutor for a time, to put people under it for a time.

And he also gives the story of Abraham's faith and the comparison of Abraham's two wives, Sarah and Hagar, and the differences that they represented between slavery and freedom, which also is the law and grace.

Each of these illustrations show how a believer can only be justified through faith. Here in this section, he defines what justification means and logically gives proof, and he uses a number of questions in it, and I'd like to go through that whole section, but it's way too long, so we're only gonna do just a tiny bit of it this morning.

This is where we're gonna come back to in a minute. The next section is Paul's practical applications, and it goes from Galatians 5 .1 all the way through to 6 .10, and just a summary, he outlines what it means for a believer to be sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and he makes a call to stand fast in the liberty that we have in Christ.

He also contrasts the difference between someone who's living in the flesh, which would be an unbeliever, and who's living by the Spirit, which would be a believer. It's also about applying practically what he taught from these previous sections, from the doctrinal section.

I like applications, so that's why I'd like to get through this whole thing, but like I say, we're only gonna do a couple verses. Galatians 5 .1 to 6 .10 is Paul's, excuse me, that was his application.

Galatians 6 .11 through 18 is his autographed conclusion. Here, he wanted the believers to understand that he had written this letter with his own hand, and we don't see that very often. In fact, we don't see it.

It's usually somebody else, like Timothy, has written the letter for him, and so this is Paul saying, I wrote this with my own hand. He also makes the point that he could only glory in the cross, while those who wanted to add circumcision and following the laws were glorying in their flesh, in their own accomplishments, so it was pride.

So even this conclusion of Paul's letter is still about maintaining a pure gospel. All right, so that's just a brief overview of the whole book, so now we're gonna come back to Galatians 2 .15 that starts this section, and all we're gonna look at this morning is an introduction, Paul's defense of the doctrine of the justification through faith.

We're gonna look at some other related scriptures, quite a few, in fact, so let's just go as quickly as we can here. I have to keep my eye on the clock, because I think this is way more than we'll ever cover today, okay?

So hang in there. All right, 2 .15, it says, we are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles. So, okay, who was he saying when he says we?

We.

He obviously would be including himself, and he would be including Peter, because he's still talking to Peter here, and he's including Barnabas and those other Jews who had been separating themselves, being hypocritical in their actions.

They're in Antioch, so that's the we. And he says, we are Jews by nature. What did he mean by this? What he was saying was that these men that he's talking about, himself and Peter and Barnabas and the others, they hadn't become Jews later.

They weren't proselytes. They were Jews by birth, and they were also Jews by the fact that they had followed all their lives, all the regulations, all the ceremonies, before they had become believers.

They had followed the traditions. They had been taught to observe everything. So this is what I believe he said by, we are Jews by nature. But then he adds this very interesting next phrase here, and I had to puzzle over this one for a while.

He says, and not sinners from among the Gentiles, okay? Such an interesting phrase. It's almost, in our modern times, it could sound a little bit prejudiced, wouldn't it? As he's calling himself a Jew and those guys sinners.

So what did he really, what was he saying here? Why was he saying this? Well, I don't believe it was being prejudiced or anything. I think he was reminding Peter again, okay, that even though they were a part of God's original choice as the Jewish nation to be God's representatives of himself and the rest of the world, that was a little bit, that's a tiny bit of the distinction.

He was calling them sinners to convey that the Gentiles had some real disadvantages. Okay, they were sinners, but we're all sinners, aren't we? But they were not, they didn't have the advantages of going through the law and going through the promises of what the Jews had been through.

They hadn't known what it was like to keep the law. They hadn't realized that a man can never be saved by his own efforts. They hadn't heard any of this. Whereas the Jew had heard that. The laws were pointing them to what?

They were pointing them to the Messiah. It was actually saying, you can't do this. But the Gentile had never heard this before. They'd come out of this darkened life without the restraint of the laws.

They'd been notorious sinners and pagans and idolaters. And I think that's why Paul was contrasting the Jew with the Gentile. So by going through this description, he was just leading them up, then, to the next verse.

Justification by Faith in Christ, Not by Works of the Law

Verse 16, so we're gonna look at this. Look with me at Galatians 2 .16. He says, nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in him, so that we may be justified by faith, and he's referring to we, again, the Jews.

We may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, since by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified. Another version says it this way. Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law.

And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law, for no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.

Now, you'll notice that Paul has started this with nevertheless. Now, I was a little bit surprised to find that there's no Greek word here. It just, it could be yet, or nevertheless, or just and. Because it's not really, it's just leading in to the next section.

A simplified paraphrase of both 15 and 16, I kind of worked this out, and this is what I would say. And we, as Jews, because of our rich heritage, should know that, or we should understand that a man is not justified by the works of the law.

That's all he's saying. We should know that. Or since we who are Jews know that no one is justified by any works of the law. Now, remember, we gotta remember the context here. Peter's made an error, and Paul is using this as an illustration for the Galatian believers to realize that this error that Peter made was that they were still trying to say there was a basis for legalism.

By their action, they were showing, they were separating themselves from the Gentiles. They were being hypocritical. They were teaching grace and teaching unity. Among the believers, they're an anti-ach.

But they were implying by their actions that the Jews were still more blessed by God, and more importantly, they were implying that a man is justified, in part, by keeping the law. And that's where Paul is hitting on it.

They had promoted a gospel, a false gospel of works plus grace. And so this is why I think that Paul's statement here, when he says, yet we know, we know, was almost a bit sarcastic. Because he was saying, we already know this, guys.

Come on here, we know it. And Peter should have known it because God had revealed it to him, even there in Acts 10, with his encounter with Cornelius. So Peter should have known it, and that's why Paul is saying, and yet we know.

All right, now, as we move down the verse, we come to the part that's really, I think, is most important, and it's that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus, he says here in the second part of verse 15.

So I have four questions that I'd like to ask. Four questions. What does Paul mean by the word justified? And we sang about it. Do we really understand it? And I had to go back and think, okay, what does it mean to be justified?

Now, turn to where Jim read earlier this morning, Romans 3, and verses 21 and 22, where he says, but now, Romans 3, 21 and 22, but now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe, for there is no distinction.

So the passage here in Romans is a little bit similar, isn't it? But there's some differences. There are some differences. Paul wrote in Galatians that a man is justified through faith in Christ, but here in Romans, he wrote the righteousness of God is through faith in Christ.

So we got two different sections here. Are they different? Not really, not really, because in Galatians, Paul is saying that God justifies the sinner, and the word justified here in Galatians comes from, I'm not gonna pronounce this right, but the Greek word here, this word justified, is dikaio, okay, dikaio.

The Greek verb means rendered or declared righteous. So in other words, when we say that a man is justified, we're also saying that he's been declared righteous. But then we look at Romans 3 here, if it's still open there, it says that we're talking about the righteousness of God.

The word righteousness comes from the Greek noun, okay, not the verb, but the noun, and the word is dikaio, dikaiosune. So in Galatians, it's dikaio. In Romans, it's dikaiosune. Well, what's the difference?

One's a verb, the other's a noun, okay?

I like grammar.

I guess you'll probably figure that out. The word in Galatians is a verb, and the word in Romans is a noun. But we're both talking about the same root word, the same root word. And so when it says in either one of them, being declared righteous, it also means, in Romans it says declared righteous, in Galatians it says justified.

Then if we drop down in verse 24 here, in the same passage here in Romans, look at verse 24, it says, being justified, whoops, it's actually the same idea, it's the same word, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.

So Paul uses the same Greek word that he used in Galatians here. So righteousness of God and being justified by God are the same thing. So, like I said, where have we heard some of this message before?

Thank you, Jim, and he's probably gonna get more into it. But it's just amazing how God is bringing us back to this point again. For me, to study through this, it's just incredible as I read through it.

In a sense, I said it's kind of a review of Jim's message. In Hebrews 10, 38, the author says the just man lives by faith, doesn't it? Which is what we covered. And he showed us, Jim showed us, that this just person is one who has been justified or declared righteous.

What he demands, he also provides and closes with. It's not just that we're pretending to be good. A while back, I also listened to a message that Jim preached way back, I don't know when it was, 100 years ago, in Philippians.

I think it was in 2008. And I really enjoyed going through Philippians because it's one of my favorite books. But when Jim got to Philippians 3, 9, all right, let me read that one to you before I say anything.

Philippians 3, 9. You don't have to turn over there, but just listen. He says, and may be found in him not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ.

Sounds pretty similar, doesn't it? We got three verses here that almost say exactly the same thing. It must have been important, right?

I think it was.

This righteousness is only from God. So now, the second question is, because it's from God, how do we obtain it, this justification? How do we get it? In Galatians 2, 16. Back to Galatians, okay, for just a second here.

Galatians 2, 16. I wanna see first how we can't obtain it because that was part of Paul's point. He says there in verse 16, nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law. And then in Romans 3, 20, it says because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified.

And then in Philippians 3, 9, it says not having a righteousness of my own. So in each of these, we see clearly that it cannot come from a man's conduct. It can't come from keeping the laws. As Jim mentioned a few weeks ago, we can't be justified through attending.

Well, maybe we can. Can we be justified by attending 10 seminar meetings on holistic living? No, we can't. What about through prayer? If we pray every day, can we be justified? No, it doesn't come from that.

What about if we follow a daily Bible reading program? Well, I do that, so am I justified because I've done that? No, it doesn't come through that. Doesn't come from any of those things, does it? But being righteousness in God's sight is not because of anything we can do to earn it.

And that was Paul's first point to Peter and his first point to the Galatians.

It cannot come,.

A righteousness cannot come through ourselves. Paul was telling the Philippian believers too that he counted all his own good, the things that he did good, as what? I don't know if you remember the passage in Philippians 9, as dung, as rubbish, as trash, as a loss in contrast to gaining Christ.

So we can conclude that it is impossible for us to do anything about it in order to be made right with God in God's sight. Okay, but how can we do it now? We looked at how we can't, so how can we do it?

The first part of this, verse 16 here in Galatians says, nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but, and I love the but here in this verse, but through faith. And also we read in Romans 22, 322, it is righteousness of God through faith.

And in Philippians 3, 9, and he founded him not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith. We got a channel here, that's what that means. This word through, the English word in all three verses is translated from the Greek word dia.

And according to the definition in Strong's Dictionary, dia means a primary, it is a primary preposition, preposition, I like grammar, there you go. Primary preposition denoting what? The channel of an act.

And it's usually translated into English as through, or on account of, or because of. So the idea in all of them that faith is the, is just a channel, it's just a channel, okay? Faith is the channel. So faith is the manner that we get the righteousness of God through.

It can't come by any good work, it can't come by anything we've done, or by keeping the law, as it says in each of those passages. So the focus is really on, in a sense, this channel of faith, that being declared righteous before God through faith.

So, that comes to question number three. What is this faith? What is faith? Now, I know, and you know, that probably next week, we're gonna get into faith a lot, okay? Because that's what Hebrews 11 is.

But I don't wanna take away any of Jim's ideas, I probably won't. But, I just wanted to think of this. I found some really interesting things online about what faith is, would you like to hear them? Okay, apparently the whole world seems to think faith is something else.

Something that, some whimsical feeling, or thing that we can work up within ourselves. This is one of them. Well, to get through my problem, all I need is to have some faith, okay? All right, that's one of them.

Number two, faith is what helps me to get through illuminating the pathway in times of darkness, helping to give me strength in times of weakness. So, faith is a light? I don't know about that, okay? Here's another one, sounds pretty good though, doesn't it?

Okay, another one is, faith is the pathway, okay? To finding solutions in life. So, faith is a pathway, that's pretty good, isn't it? All right, they all sound kind of like the same, don't they? Some kind of mysterious, abstract thing that we need to find somehow, okay?

Now, while I'm sure that you're convinced as much as I am that this is not what Paul was talking about, was he? And like I said, Jim's gonna cover more on that. So, I'll leave most of the definition to him, but I do wanna mention a particular problem that we had while we were translating.

I love to go into, in fact, I wish I was there translating some more with the Montague people. Maybe I'll take a second here just to mention something. I've gotten back into translation. My son is actually doing the work, but he just sent me the book of Jonah to go through and do a content check on.

And so, he says, Dad, you're working again. You're back in translation, and I need you so bad. So, I've been able to do that, and we're gonna work all the way through the Old Testament now doing the same way.

So, I get to do it here while he's doing hard work down there. I just get to look at it and tell him what I think about it. So, it's been fun. We just, like I said, we just finished the book of Jonah.

And I'll do one more part. I get to back translate it into English for the consultant checker. So, it's been fun. Anyway, when we were in Paraguay working and doing it ourselves, we had a problem, okay?

Now, the problem was that these people speak a language that has very few abstract nouns, okay? Now, for yous that don't care a thing about, a lick about grammar, you can just ignore all this, okay? But faith is an abstract noun.

And what I mean by that is it's one of those nouns, one of those object things, like those people who are thinking about faith being a light or a pathway, they're kind of thinking like that because they think that it's a noun, but the Manui people can't say these words in their language.

All they see in nouns are concrete things, you know, like wood or floor or ceiling or sky or tree or bird. That's what their nouns cover. Everything else has to be a verb. And most of their language, they're called a verbal language is what it is.

So they can't say I have faith because you can't touch it. They can't say God credited his righteousness to me because you can't touch righteousness. And they can't say God's grace is good. These are all nouns, see?

And so they can't say that. So we had to translate, we had to do a flip-flop. We had to turn all of these nouns, so to speak, into verbs, into action words. So, for example, back in Romans 3 .22 and both in Galatians 3 .22 and 2 .16, where it says that a person can have God's righteousness through faith and where a man is justified through faith, because both of them are talking about God's imputed righteousness to us, we translated both pretty much the same.

This is how we said, we said, and I'll say it first in Manui just to give you an idea that I really do speak Manui. Manui, shenat yiten tasayis b 'po 'et n 'ol talapeti yui shaha batikat manishen bak b 'hiso kristo, okay?

So that's Manui, here's what it says in English. God states or declares that a person is good because he believes in the Savior, Jesus Christ. So we took faith and turned it into a verb is what we did.

We do have another problem. Because with the word believe, you cannot just say believe. Guess what you gotta have? An object, okay? So you got a transitional or a transitive verb, there again is the grammar, that has to have an object.

And as I said in my example, it has to be believe in Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus. So it's pretty obvious then that this answers my fourth question. In whom do we believe? Okay, there in that verse. We can't have just lots of faith, lots of lights, lots of paths eliminating us, can we?

It has to be faith in someone, and that is Jesus Christ. God justifies us through faith in Jesus Christ. So it's instead of being declared righteous, rendered righteous by one's works, it's because of Jesus Christ.

So this is the message that Paul was speaking to Peter and to the Galatians, that God can only come, the justification of righteousness of God can only come through believing in the person of Jesus Christ and what he's done on the cross.

It's both rejecting the idea that I can do it on my own, and it's accepting the idea that Jesus Christ has done it for me. That's through faith, we can do nothing about it. And again, I'll say it, we're justified, we're declared righteous only because of what Christ has done and there's nothing we can do.

We have Christ's righteousness because God credited it to our account when we believe. And that's what the word imputed means. In Romans 4 .3, Paul spoke about it again, another verse that also says basically the same thing.

It says, what did the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, from Genesis 15 .6. Guess what? There's six passages in the Bible that say the very same thing. Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Must be important, huh? What do you think? So just like Abraham, God imputed or credited Christ's righteousness to every believer's account, to mine, to yours if you're a believer, the righteousness of Jesus Christ is not ours.

There's nothing we can do to get it. We've been declared or credited with his righteousness. And Romans 3 .24 says, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.

So it's a gift, isn't it? We can't do anything to earn it, we can't do anything to work for it, it's a gift. Another thing on this idea of faith, and Jim, you're gonna have to back me up on this. But I just thought about this, this other thing about faith.

This act of believing in Jesus Christ, it's never considered in the scriptures as a meritorious work or a good work that we can do.

It isn't.

It's always, because faith is always contrasted with works. You have faith or you have works. It's not, faith is a work so that you can be saved. Faith is always contrasted. So again, Paul is not saying that, when Paul is saying that justification comes through faith, another way that I was thinking about saying this would be it is knowing for sure, and that's part of Hebrews 11.

Knowing for sure that we can't make ourselves acceptable before God by good works. And it's accepting the fact that everything has already been done because of Jesus Christ. So that's just why it can't be considered a meritorious act when we believe, because we aren't working.

Or doing anything.

We're simply convinced that God has done it already and that Jesus Christ, what God says about Christ is absolutely true. So in a sense, we're letting go of our own idea of works because it's already been done.

It's already been done. So this makes much more sense to see faith in this way. Now, I wanna close with another passage. Turn over to Matthew. Matthew 19, 16 through 26. I wanna go through it really quickly because we're running out of time here.

But I believe that there's a possibility that Jesus went through this passage with Paul in Arabia.

Okay?

Not necessarily, we can only speculate that. Because of Jesus' own teaching. Listen to this. I'm gonna just read the verse and give you my thought, okay? So you don't really have to read it, just listen.

This good man came up to Jesus in verse 16 of Matthew 19. He came up to Jesus. He was a ruler, he was a rich man. And he said, teacher, what good thing may I obtain, may I do, should I do, that I may obtain eternal life?

What good thing should I do? He was assuming there was something that he still had to do, wasn't he? Some righteous act for God to accept him. He was thinking there was some law, some elusive religious thing he had missed.

And so Jesus answers him, actually, down in verse 26, finally. And he says, man, this is impossible, but we're not gonna get there until a couple minutes from now. Look at verse 17 first. What does Jesus say?

He wants to just hint about it first. He says, why are you asking me what is good? There is only one who is good. And you know what, this should have stopped the man right in his tracks there, that rich, young ruler, to ponder on the fact that he couldn't do anything, really, in the eyes of the only one who was truly good.

But Jesus knew that he wouldn't get it yet. So he went on, he says, but if you wish to enter into life,.