The Gospel Path To Holiness

The Gospel Path to Holiness and the Gospel of Grace

Good afternoon, it's good to be here with you all again. Greetings from your friends there in Livermore.

At Gateway Church.

This afternoon, we want to be in Galatians 2, verses 19 through chapter 3, three. And I've entitled this message, The Gospel Path to Holiness. The Gospel Path to Holiness. And my burden, brothers and sisters, as I prayed about what to bring to you, is something near and dear to my own heart.

And that is, the gospel is not only for us when we're unsaved and we want to be justified before God and we understand then through the gospel that justification is by grace alone, through faith alone in Jesus Christ.

It is that.

But the gospel is for us even as Christians now in our Christian life, in our walk with the Lord. In theological terms, the gospel is not only relevant for our justification, but the gospel is also relevant for our sanctification.

And it's that second half of that statement. The gospel being relevant for our Christian life, our sanctification, is what I'm gonna zero in on today. Let me read the text to us, for us. Again, Galatians 2, verses 19 down to 3 .3.

Paul writes, I have to lift this up, I've got new trifocals here, and I am not quite dialed in yet, so forgive me here. For through the law, I died to the law so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

Oh, foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Christ Jesus was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by the hearing with faith?

Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? That's our text this afternoon. My wife, who's sitting right here in the black, Shirley, you know, many of you know her.

Her family is from Taiwan originally, but they settled in San Francisco. We were just there yesterday visiting her mom. And while we're in San Francisco, one of the favorite things we like to do as a family and as a larger family, including Shirley's family on that side, is to go to a place called Mount Davidson.

Mount Davidson there in the city. It's the highest point, natural point there in the city. And maybe some of you have been there. Mount Davidson at the very top of that mountain has a tall concrete cross.

And there are many paths, or there is a main path, excuse me, that is well-traveled that leads from the parking lot to that cross on the top. And you encounter various things on that path. You encounter, you know, soft dirt and some composting type of forest materials.

Sometimes you're just walking on bare rock. Sometimes you're in the shaded area. Sometimes you get a view of the Pacific Ocean. It's really beautiful. Sometimes you get a really neat view of the city as well.

You see many things along the path there. But no matter where you're at on that path leading from the parking lot all the way up to that cross on Mount Davidson, no matter where you're at on that path, underneath is solid rock, solid rock.

And it's that bedrock that makes this path stable. And I think that's a wonderful metaphor, at least in my way of thinking. It's a wonderful metaphor of the path of holiness for the Christian. There are many things on this path of our life that God uses to make us more holy.

For instance, on this path of holiness God uses Bible reading and preaching to make us more holy. He uses other means of grace like prayer and fasting to cause us to be more holy. Sometimes God uses fellowship and service to make us more like Jesus.

And sometimes a wonderful Christian book or a spiritual retreat help us in our progression, in our walk with the Lord and to become more like Him. Sometimes the Lord uses on this path of growth and sanctification suffering to draw us closer to Himself and to think less of ourselves and more of Jesus.

But whatever the Lord uses on our path of sanctification, our, as it were, path to holiness, beneath this path to holiness we have the solid rock of the gospel of grace. Let me repeat that again because it's crucial, because I believe that's what, in part, Paul is saying in our passage.

Below our feet there on the path towards holiness is the solid rock of the gospel of grace through the Lord Jesus Christ. And the gospel of grace calls us to ongoing faith in Jesus Christ with the power of the Holy Spirit.

If we want to progress, brothers and sisters, in our growth in Christlikeness,.

There's only one path,.

And that's the path of gospel grace, ongoing, or as Francis Schaeffer would say, moment by moment, faith and dependence upon Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. He packs in that sentence a lot of biblical truth that Paul uses a lot of time in his, and ink in his epistles to open up.

And we are at a passage here tonight where we want to consider that particular theme, that we need to continue to grasp onto Jesus by faith, the gospel call to continue to trust in Jesus if we're going to progress in our sanctification.

We can see this path to holiness in various parts of Paul's epistles. For instance, in the book of Romans, chapters six through 10, we can find this path. There Paul emphasizes our need of ongoing faith in Christ and the power of the Spirit.

We also see in Paul's epistles, he teaches sanctification is a cooperative process. That is, in this process of sanctification, God is working and the Christian is working, cooperative, God is working, but it's a process, and we're working as well by his grace.

God's work is most important. Through the believer's union with Jesus Christ, God's work by his grace, he works by his grace to make us more holy. And on the other hand, the Christian also works hard in the process of sanctification.

The believer needs to, for instance, he writes, Paul does, put off old sinful habits of the flesh. And the believer also needs to put on new habits of holiness by the power of the Spirit. And that's our work by the grace and the help of the Holy Spirit.

As the believer works, he must keep, this is crucial, depending upon Christ and the Spirit for power to mature. For instance, in Philippians 2, verses 12 and 13, we see Paul talking about this cooperation when Paul writes, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Notice Paul says the Christian is working his salvation, but then Paul also emphasizes the believer needs to know and depend upon God's gracious working in us. And so in our passage today, another of Paul's epistles where he's going to take up not only things about justification, but also things about sanctification, Paul here as well is going to emphasize this second element in sanctification, that is the process of sanctification, the believer needs to continue to depend upon Christ and the Spirit.

So this afternoon, I want to go to the book of Galatians here, and we're going to see the gospel of grace beneath this path of sanctification. I believe Paul wrote the book of Galatians. Some people debate that, but I believe it's clear that he has, that's the traditional understanding of this book.

I believe when he says Paul an apostle, as he writes here, it truly is Paul the apostle. In verse two, Paul tells us he wrote the book to the churches of Galatia. As the gospel spread through the area of Galatia, Gentiles as well as Jews were saved.

Then Jewish false teachers came into their midst. And these teachers taught the Christians they needed to keep the law in order to be saved or justified and to continue to mature. We have that throughout this epistle here.

That's the threat.

That's what theologians call the Galatian heresy that Paul is after. And if you recall, Paul in his introductions to his letters, he's very polite. He takes a while to warm up before he gets into the subject matter of his material.

Not with Galatians. He greets them ever so briefly. And then very quickly he says, I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and so forth. Paul is worked up because he knows there's a great danger that has infiltrated the church there in Galatia.

And that is the Judaizers that are telling them in order to be saved, you need to follow Torah. You need to follow the law of God in all aspects of it if you want to be accepted by God.

Justification.

But even if you're a Christian now, sure, believe in Christ. But in order to be sanctified and to make progress in the Christian life, you're still under the law. You've got to follow Torah. And Paul is going after that heresy with all of his heart.

And he's chiding, yes, he's chiding these dear Galatian people because he believes. He believes that they are Christians and he's concerned for them. So Paul heard about this threat to his friends in Galatia and he was upset that the Galatian Christians followed the false teachers and they had left the path of the gospel and they were now following a false gospel.

In this book, Paul's tone is very direct as I mentioned. This is because he's very concerned for them. And Paul is seeking to persuade them to return to the gospel path for their lives. And he uses a complex argument to confess, excuse me, to convince them of this.

Paul argues from the perspective of powerful experiences. The first experience is his experience. And then he talks about the Galatians' own experience and then he talks thirdly about Abraham's experience in the Old Testament.

And our passage is right in the middle of this argument, this threefold argument regarding three experiences. His experience of the gospel, the Galatians' own experience of the freeing nature of the gospel of grace through faith, and then Abraham's own experience.

And I've read the text to you already. Let's take a look then at two points this afternoon. We want to take a look at two things. We're just going to take a look at Paul's experience and the Galatians' experience.

I'm going to trim off that third experience of Abraham, but I think we'll get the gist and the import and the power of what Paul is saying here by the Spirit's help as we look at Paul's experience and the Galatians' experience.

Paul's Experience of Justification by Faith and Crucifixion to the Law

So first of all, Paul's own experience in his argument here to the Galatians and why they should not have left the gospel of grace and believed the Judaizers. First of all, in chapter two, Paul brings up his own experience.

From his experience, he argues for a life of faith in Christ. In verses 11 through 21, he recounts for the Galatians his experience to an important meal in Antioch. I'm just going to read verses 11 and 12.

And Paul writes this. Now, when Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face because he was to be blamed. For before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles. But when they came, these brethren from James, but when they came, he withdrew, Peter withdrew, and separated himself from the Gentile Christians, fearing those who were of the circumcision.

Paul was there at that event. He's recounting his experience. What happened there at that time? Well, present at this meal in Antioch are Paul, Barnabas, and Peter, and other Jewish and Gentile believers.

They're all eating together and enjoying fellowship. And Jewish believers, the Jewish believers know that they don't have to keep Torah dietary regulations to be saved, such as Peter. He knew that as a Jewish believer.

He didn't need to keep the law in order to be saved. They were free in Christ to eat and enjoy fellowship with their Gentile brothers and sisters.

What's happened?

They're all freely walking in the gospel path together.

It's beautiful.

And then, a group of Jewish people from Jerusalem show up at the meal. They're Judaizers. They start putting pressure on all the believers there. They say, to please God and to be accepted by God, everyone must obey Torah, all these regulations.

And so Peter and Barnabas and their Jewish believer, other Jewish believers, they stop eating with the Gentile believers. And Paul sees this, and he's angry. Paul says, Peter and Barnabas, you're acting like hypocrites.

They believe in justification by grace alone, through faith alone, but then when they see the Judaizers, they want to please these Judaizers. And so they pretend that they need to keep the law in order to keep pleasing God.

It's like going back to that metaphor that I mentioned earlier of Mount Davidson and that path up to the cross. There in San Francisco, sometimes we have a thick fog and sometimes it rolls over here into the East Bay as well.

And to the South Bay, right?

The fog rolls in certainly there on Mount Davidson.

From the ocean.

And if you're there on Mount Davidson, the fog can cover that path to that stone cross up there. And if you choose the wrong path, you might end right back up or back down at the parking lot. It can be confusing.

What's happened here at the meal? A fog has rolled in. The false teachers have rolled in. The fog is now obscuring the clear, freeing gospel of grace path to justification and sanctification. Believers are confused.

They're turned around. They're backtracking down that path of gospel holiness. Believers are going backwards in their faith, but Paul is not confused on the gospel path. Paul is not going back to Torah as a way to get justified before God or to even continue in God's acceptance.

He's not going back and he doesn't want Peter and Barnabas to go back either. And so from chapter two, verses 14 through 21, Paul recounts to the Galatians what he strongly said at that meal in Antioch.

That passage is one big quotation. And in verse 16 of chapter two, Paul clearly reminded Peter and everyone else at the meal about the gospel of free grace. He writes, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law.

For by the works of the law, no flesh shall be justified. One of the clearest expressions in Paul's writings in his letters about being justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and not by the works of the law.

Paul is clear, crystal clear. He stands up in that meal and he announces that again. And in verses 19 through 20 of chapter two, Paul boldly declares something else to Peter and everyone at the meal. He declares his own personal experience with the Torah.

He said he was dead to the law. In other words, in Christ, he was crucified to the law. He knew Torah keeping would not save him and help him. For I, through the law, died to the law that I might live to God.

I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And listen to this, how he lives his Christian life. And the life which I now live, he's already justified. He's talking about sanctification there.

And the life which I now live, I continue to, that I live in the flesh. He's continuing to live by faith in the Son of God.

You see what he's saying?

He's saying this Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me, he's continuing to hang onto Christ in his sanctification, in his path as it were. Going back to the metaphor of holiness, that pathway to holiness.

Paul was saying he no longer looked to Torah to keep, Torah keeping or human effort. Torah keeping is not a path to his justification. Also, Paul was not keeping Torah as a path for his sanctification and holiness.

Instead, for Paul, the whole of the Christian life now is by faith in the Son of God. Paul's path to both justification and sanctification is faith in Christ. And why did Paul tell the Galatians this story about this meal in Antioch?

Why did he go that far back? Here's the reason. It's because he wanted the Galatians to learn the same lesson that he taught Peter and others there in Antioch. Only if they stay on the gospel path can they have justification and true sanctification, progress in their life as a Christian.

The Galatians' Experience of the Spirit and the Danger of Legalism

And after Paul finished telling the Galatians his experience, now he brings up the Galatians' own experience. And that's my second point here. The Galatians' own experience. And let me say something parenthetically here.

I'm a reformed man, as you are as well. Do I believe that there is, for the Christian, for us who are Christians in this room and for any Christian in the world, a place for the moral law of God, the Ten Commandments, which are the summary of the Ten Commandments?

Absolutely. And so, don't confuse what I've just said, as I trust I'm being faithful to what Paul is saying about sanctification and the law. He's saying to do those works of the Torah and somehow that's going to be like a law of merit before God so that God in your Christian life will continue to love and accept you.

And Paul is against that. But there is a right use of the law of God. And that right use of the law of God, the moral law, the Ten Commandments, is as an expression of our obedience and, more particularly, our love to Christ.

Don't we want to show love to Christ who hung on the cross for us? Don't we want to show Him that devotion that He showed to us in His life and on the cross and that He shows to us even now? The answer is yes, of course.

We want to show that same devotion. We want to reciprocate. How do we practically and concretely show that? Not to earn merit, but to show it. Will we live lives according to Christ's commandments? That's the proper use, or as it's known as, the third use of the moral law of God.

Paul is not talking about the third use of the moral law of God here, okay? He's talking about using it as Christians in order with the hope that God's gonna love me more.

As a result.

And brothers and sisters, if we're on that treadmill, we know that justification is not by keeping the moral law of God, neither is sanctification, keeping on sanctification, God accepting us, based upon that moral law of God.

It's an expression, rather.

It's guidelines to express our love to Him. That's the proper use of it. I hope that clarifies what I'm saying. Just in case some of you were wondering, where's Pastor Chris going? Does he believe in the use of the moral law?

I do, and that's my qualification. Continuing on now, the second point, the Galatians' experience. In chapter three, Paul is talking directly to the Galatians. He wants them to pay attention to their own experience.

He points out their own experience in verses one through three. What the Judaizers did in Antioch is what the false teachers are doing in the Galatian churches. The false teachers are convincing Christians that they need to keep Torah regulations.

Paul chides the Galatians for following these Jewish false teachers. He says in verse one, oh, foolish Galatians. Remember, he's talking to brothers and sisters, who he loves, but he's shooting straight with them.

You guys are going backwards on the path of gospel holiness. You're off the path. You're back following those ancient Jewish laws with the anticipation that somehow, by that merit that you think you're going to gain by keeping it, God then is going to accept you on the basis of your law keeping.

You're wrong, he says, you're foolish. Who has bewitched you? Verse two, he asks them, did you receive the Spirit? By the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? From their own experience, the Galatians know that they started, that is they were justified in their Christian life.

They started off by faith in Jesus Christ. And then in verse three, Paul asks them other questions. Are you so foolish?

Having begun in the Spirit,.

Are you now being made perfect by the flesh? Paul is saying they started the Christian life rightly.

How did they start?

They started well by responding to the gospel of Christ by faith. And they received the Spirit, which was a proof that they were saved. But Paul says along the way, they changed. They started to depend upon their human efforts.

They started to keep Torah again. They thought only by keeping Torah would God keep accepting them. They were fooled into thinking that law-keeping would justify them and sanctify them. Because the Galatians were trusting again in human effort to justify them, they were foolish.

And paying attention to this, I'm sorry, and pay attention to this, I want to emphasize what Paul is saying about sanctification or holiness. The Galatians were also foolish to trust human effort to perfect their sanctification and holiness.

The Jewish false teachers and their teaching were like a fog. Their fog actually obscured two paths, as it were. One path, the gospel path of justification, and also that ongoing path to holiness. It's all one, to keep with my original metaphor.

We need to stay on that gospel path. According to the commentator Longnecker, Paul was dealing with two main problems in the Galatian churches. The first problem was legalism. That is, the false teachers taught that to be justified, one needs both to have faith and to have obedience to Torah.

And the second problem was nomism. That is, these false teachers taught that to grow in sanctification, one needs to keep Torah. If they kept Torah, then God would keep loving them. And Longnecker writes, quote, what Paul wants his converts to see is that the Christian life is one that starts, is maintained, and comes to culmination only through dependence on the activity of God's Spirit.

And of course, in that too, as we look at Paul, what he's emphasizing here, it's ongoing faith. Ongoing faith in Christ. Ongoing dependence upon the Spirit of Christ to live. Paul is calling the Christian Galatians back to a path of grace.

It's a gospel path. It is the path of ongoing faith in Jesus and the power of the Spirit. That's the firm, solid rock beneath the path to holiness. I was reading in Brian Chappell's book, his book on holiness by grace, and he quotes another author by the name of Mark, that, or excuse me, Mark Baker, who brings up and kind of applies this to us.

This wasn't only a problem with the Galatian Christians there. That is, relying upon law-keeping in order to be furthered in their sanctification. But this is something that often affects us as well.

As Christians all over the world, he writes, Mr. Baker writes, as humans, we seem to have a natural tendency to attempt to reach God or enter into a higher state through our own efforts. We seek through our actions to earn something from God or to appease God's wrath.

In day-to-day life, people's worth and standing are measured by their merits. This is true in almost all aspects of life, economic, social, educational, et cetera. The law of merit, not the law of grace, reigns.

Therefore, people, and I would say including us Christians, living in that cultural milieu of a law of merit in all aspects of our society and sometimes even our hope, therefore, people, and we Christians, naturally operate according to the law of merit in relation to God and the church as well.

And Paul was going after that. And I think that's an application in our life as well. Sometimes we'll find ourselves as Christians, if you're like me, feeling, Lord, I don't feel close to you. Lord, I don't have any joy in my Christianity.

I'm anxious, I'm fearful. And sometimes when you pray and read the scriptures and look deeply at yourself and at the word of God, what you'll find is that you have slipped, and I have slipped, off the gospel path into what's the common way of operating in all aspects of this society, a law of merit.

If I only read the Bible more, if I only was more zealous in preaching, if I was only more wise in my counseling, maybe God would have accepted me more and would accept me more. And maybe I would feel his love more.

What's happened?

I've gone off the gospel path. I'm using the law of merit to continue to justify myself before God and feel that that's how I'm going to be accepted. And brothers and sisters, if you walk weeks like that and months like that, the power of your spirit in walking the Christian life, your joy will be sapped from you.

It really will.

We need to return, as Paul is seeking to return the Galatian Christians back to the freeing gospel of grace. Sometimes, again, we are like the Galatian believers. We know that we are justified by grace through faith.

However, we feel in order to stay justified, we need to do a good job in being sanctified. We feel we want God to keep loving us and accepting us, and so we had better do something for him. So we read more of the Bible, as I mentioned, or pray longer prayers, or we fast more, or we give more,.

We serve more, we sacrifice more.

And we think that by doing more, we will become more holy, and if we are more holy, then God will be more loving and accepting of us. But then our consciences are not at peace. We think, did we read enough of the Bible today?

Did we pray enough? Did we repent enough? Did we give enough? Or if we forget to have devotions today, we feel guilty and feel like God is angry with us. Or if we do a poor job at something, we feel God doesn't accept us, or not as much now as he did maybe a few hours ago.

If we get poor grades on a test, then we worry, maybe God is unhappy with me too. And maybe we say unwise things in a counseling session or in a sermon, and then we feel God disapproves of us. And we feel he is shaking his head at us.

And instead of finding an increase in holiness, we feel less holy. And maybe we start to entertain hard views of God. You're really a hard task, Master God. I can't ever please you. You're always frowning at me.

There's less peace and joy in our hearts, and we feel God is too demanding.

What's happened?

The fog's rolled in. It's obscuring the gospel path. The fog is what? The fog is our trusting and law-keeping to grow in holiness and to please God. And if we do that, we are going backwards in our Christian walk, and we are trusting in our own works and not in Christ in the Spirit.

And so how do we clear out of the fog? This is my final point. How do we clear out of this? How do we clear the fog out, should I say? How do we return to the gospel path of our sanctification? We need again to believe the gospel.

We need to believe that because we are in Christ, the Father fully loves us and accepts us, not based on any merit that you and I have, but solely because we're in union with Jesus Christ, we're fully accepted in the Beloved.

And we need to obey Jesus' commands out of gratitude for His grace. And we need to have faith in Jesus to perfect us. And we need to remember the spiritual disciplines themselves do not make us more holy.

Rather, they strengthen our faith. That's what the means of grace or spiritual disciplines do. They, our Bible reading, our prayers, our fellowship, our attendance of the ordinances, they strengthen our faith to apprehend grace from Jesus.

Bible reading in and of itself, prayer in and of itself are not our saviors. They're not our grace, but they strengthen our faith. They strengthen our grip so we lay hold of Jesus who gives us grace to continue on in the walk and to make us more holy.

That's the functioning of the means of grace. And we need again, if we wanna get out of this fog to return to the gospel, we need again to rely on the Spirit for power to destroy old sinful habits. We need again to depend upon the Spirit of Christ to build new holy habits in us.

And in this way, the fog will clear in our life. And then we will see the gospel path of sanctification, of holiness again clearly. And then the joy and the peace will return. So in conclusion, the passage in Galatians teaches us it is easy to stray from the gospel path of sanctification.

May Paul's words in Galatians 2, 20 ring in our hearts. May these words cause us to keep abiding in Jesus. And may these words cause us to keep depending upon the Spirit in sanctification. Paul writes there in verse 20, I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me, amen. Let me just close this sermon by a quick word of prayer.

Father, we thank you for the law-free gospel that Jesus proclaimed, the gospel of the kingdom, where he is that one who lived the life that we should have lived, who died the death that we should have died, all because of his grace.

And we thank you that on this path of holiness, we still have below us that solid rock of the gospel of grace. Help us to ever, always stay on this path of grace. And as we wander, O Lord, and start to look to ourselves and the law of merit before even as Christians, help us to see our foolishness and our bad habits of falling back to a law of merit and help us to return to the gospel path of free grace in Christ, that we might praise you all the more and experience the joy and peace that the gospel brings in him.

We pray these things in Christ's name, amen.