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You will turn with me, please, to Paul's epistle to the Galatians, chapter 2. Paul's epistle to the Galatians, chapter 2. Before we look to God's Word, let us once again ask Him to bless our time together.
Our gracious Heavenly Father, we do ask that once again as we open Your Word, You would meet with Your people. Lord, that we would be a people with hearing ears, obedient hearts. Lord, as we touch upon very important issues this evening, that You would press upon our hearts the weight of the Gospel, the importance of Your Word.
Lord, that we might leave this place as better servants of Jesus Christ. For it is in His name that we pray. Amen. Just recently, at least as we have even a slight liturgical calendar, we don't have one at all, but as we recognize some things anyways, we had what is called Reformation Day.
The recognition of the fact that it was in 1517, October 31st, 1517, that an Augustinian monk who had no earthly idea that what he was doing was going to have the kind of impact that it did, nailed a series of theses to the castle door in Wittenberg, Germany, simply looking to challenge someone else to engage in a debate on the subject of indulgences.
And it was an enterprising German printer who came along, read the theses as they were written in Latin, translated them into German, printed them and lit a match that became the Reformation. And at that point in time, normally most of us who look back at the Reformation in a positive fashion, will think about the key issues of the Reformation.
We'll think about the great solas. We think, of course, about the sola scriptura, the scriptures, the sole infallible rule of faith of the church. We think about sola gratia, grace alone. Sola Deo gloria, the glory be to God alone.
Solus Christus, Christ alone. And, of course, sola fide, faith alone as the means by which we are made just before God. And there's normally a discussion about that and we think about that and then very often we just move on from there.
But the reality is that one of the very central themes that runs through the text of the New Testament is this issue of the Gospel and the freeness of the Gospel and the God-centeredness of the Gospel and the fact that a person who comes to God carrying in their hand anything that they think is of worth, anything that they think they can offer to God, to in some way barter with God, to receive something from God, some kind of merit, some kind of worthiness, that person will never find that hand filled with self-righteousness to be the kind of hand that will grasp the hand of God, that gracious hand of God in salvation.
That excess, that misunderstanding, that selfishness, that human pride, whatever it is, will forever keep that person from being able to grasp the free gift of God which is in Jesus Christ. And so we know that at the time of the Reformation, the Reformers proclaimed with clarity the fact that there is only one way to be made right with God and that way is of course through faith in Jesus Christ and faith in Christ alone.
And so with that in mind, I'd like to look at a portion of Galatians chapter 2 to remind us once again of the importance of this great truth beginning in Galatians chapter 2 verse 15. 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 that 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.
But if while seeking to be justified in Christ we ourselves have also 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 die to the law so that I might live to God. 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 to the law then Christ died needlessly. Now certainly when you hear the last four words in the original language in verse 21, Christ died needlessly, immediately your attention should be drawn to the fact that whatever is being discussed here has eternal weight.
It is something that should immediately catch our attention and we should immediately be thinking whatever this is talking about is absolutely impossible. How could it possibly be that Christ would die needlessly?
Well, if righteousness comes through law then there is absolutely no need for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Now those are the very kind of stark black and white categorical terms that we are told by the society today we can't use any longer.
You can't think that way anymore. You have to allow for all these different nuances and in some areas I understand what is being said, but when it comes to what God has done to bring about salvation itself, the Scriptures are very clear, there is no way that we can have gray areas on this subject.
If righteousness comes through law, if there is some way that by what we do, by our status, by our obtaining certain symbols, by our doing certain things, by any type of meritorious work, anything like that at all, if there is anything that is going to in any way go into that hand that we are trying to place in the hand of grace, it's going to block that process and the result is Christ dies needlessly.
Now we need to remember what the context of this was. Remember what has happened in Galatians 2. It's an amazing story when you think about it. Because remember what's happened. There in Antioch, the church has been going along and they have peace, they have fellowship, and clearly Peter and Paul have come to understand that there is only one Christian church.
You don't have Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians and there is sort of a difference between them where one is a little bit higher than the other. No, you have one Christian church and you have table fellowship when they get together and I think next week is our hymns thing and fellowship.
Is that next week? Because I am going to be gone, so it must be. It's the week after. Okay, it's one of the two that I am gone. It just always seems to be the way it is this time of the year. So when we get together, we all sit at the same tables and we don't have assigned tables.
We don't have Jewish tables and Gentile tables. We don't have Cardinals fans way over in the corner of the Cowboys fans. We don't even allow them in. They have to eat out in the back porch or something like that.
We don't have any kind of division like that. Blessed be those who are benighted enough to be Cowboys fans. But anyways, we don't have that kind of division because we all recognize that that would be improper because it would be placing people on different levels.
And Paul and Peter had come to this conclusion. They recognized that until certain people came from James. And it seems maybe in Jerusalem they hadn't really come to understand this yet, but certain people came from James and Peter is like, well, he can tell immediately when they arrive that when they come into the fellowship, they all sit over together.
And when one of the Gentiles comes over with his tray, they all look at him like, and he just goes the other direction. And so they separate themselves off and Peter sees this and he's carried away in their hypocrisy.
And all of a sudden, there's a division. And the Jews understand why because that's how they had always lived. But the Gentile Christians are probably sitting over in their part going, what gives? What's happening here?
And Paul is very straightforward. He says, when I saw that they were not walking straight in accordance with the truth of the gospel, Paul saw that this was a gospel issue. Paul saw this was not just some little thing that, well, we can let them, let's just let them do their thing.
The people from James are going to be leaving eventually and then we can all get back together again. No, Paul recognizes, in light of who James is, in light of who Peter is, that this cannot go unchallenged.
And so publicly, not even privately because Paul realized this is not a private issue. This is not a Matthew 18 issue. You hear that all the time. You're never supposed to review if anybody publicly has Matthew 18.
No, Paul recognized this cannot be something that's private. He didn't take Peter aside privately and say, don't you think in front of everybody he rebukes one of the men that stood on the Mount of Transfiguration.
That was the guy who said things he didn't really understand on the Mount of Transfiguration. But still, he was on the Mount of Transfiguration. He was one of the... He had looked in the tomb. He hadn't been there.
Paul didn't walk on the water. He didn't see Jesus walk on the water. He didn't see the vast majority of Jesus' miracles. And yet, who is he to stand up to Peter? Well, he's an apostle. And what his standing up to Peter demonstrates is that the gospel is more important than any individual.
And if someone does not walk straight in accordance with the gospel, well, they need to be rebuked for not doing so. And so notice it says in verse 14, I said to Cephas, in the presence of all, if you being a Jew live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, that must have gone over really well with the guys from James.
How is it you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews? And so here begins his demonstration of the problem in trying to have a Jewish Christian church and a Gentile Christian church. And having this kind of division where you've got someone who's on a little bit higher plane.
They're a little bit more in with God than someone else. So you won't have fellowship with them. And so he says, we are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles. Now, here is where it's really important that you know something about the background language.
Otherwise, this section can become extremely confusing. A lot of people just sort of rush by it and catch some of the highlights and move on from there. This term, sinners, was a term that the Jews would use of the Gentiles simply by nature of the fact that they did not possess the law.
It was not like you and I think of someone who commits a particular act of sin as if the Jews were saying, oh, we never sin. And the Gentiles, that's all they do is sin. It was more because they don't even possess the law, it's just their status as Gentiles constitutes them as sinners because they don't possess the law.
We have the law, and therefore we can do what's right before God. They don't, so they can't even if they wanted to anyways. So, it was more of a status type thing from their perspective. And so, when you see that term here, it's going to help explain what's coming on a little bit later on because it gets a little bit confusing.
We are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles. So, you and me, Peter, we've been circumcised, we've gone through all of these things. Nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus, Peter, you remember when you were up on the rooftop at the Tanner's house, remember?
You were told not to call what God has called clean, unclean. You've proclaimed the Gospel to Gentiles. Have you forgotten, Peter, what God has said to you? Even we, so even we who possess the law have believed in Christ Jesus.
Now, we possess the law, but we had to believe in Christ Jesus because the law will not justify us. We know that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but instead, through faith in Christ Jesus, even we who were not sinners according to the Gentiles, but Jews, even we have believed in Christ Jesus so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified.
So, you see the categories he's talking about here? You've got Jew and Gentile, but how does he finish the verse? No flesh. Whether Jew or Gentile, it doesn't matter what your background is on that level.
There is only one way of justification in the sight of God and that is by faith in Christ Jesus. There simply isn't any other way. And so, Peter, by your withdrawing table fellowship from the Gentiles, you are compromising this.
You are saying there is something that sets you apart and makes you special and allows you to have fellowship with these kind of Christians, but not these kind of Christians. Fundamental division would exist in the church if Paul had not challenged this particular situation.
And that's what the next couple of verses are talking about because they're a little bit hard to follow. Read along with me. But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners.
Is Christ then a minister of sin? So what's he talking about there? Well, the point is, if the law will not justify you, if you recognize that the only way that you can have righteousness before God is by faith in Christ Jesus, then we're all back on the same level as the sinners.
We have no advantage in that sense as Jews over the Gentiles. We have only one way of righteousness before God and that's faith in Christ Jesus. So we're on the same level as sinners. So evidently there had been some objections raised to Paul's gospel by either the Jewish opponents of Paul or maybe the Judaizers themselves.
Maybe even some of the men from James. It's hard to say exactly where it's coming from. And the only way we can know what the objections were is by Paul's rebuttal of them. But it seems that possibly one of the arguments that was being made was, well, Paul, you can't be right about this.
You can't be right about this idea that it's just faith because if that were the case, then we're just being reduced back to the level of the Gentiles. And everything God has done in raising up the Jewish people and giving us the law, it's all been done away with.
And there are some echoes of that in some of the things we see in Acts and some of the things that Paul was accused of. And Paul's response is, is Christ then a minister of sin? Because He has lowered us to the level of sinners?
May it never be. For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself a transgressor. Well, what's he talking about rebuilding? Well, if you've already recognized the law cannot bring me justification.
If you've already recognized it was never intended to justify, it reveals God's holy nature, but it does not provide the power that I need to be able to obey it perfectly and therefore have righteousness in God's sight.
If I go back to trying to observe that, whether it just be the one thing of circumcision or now the table fellowship or whatever else, if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, because if I've turned to Christ in faith only as Peter had, then I have destroyed the law as a means of righteousness.
So if I start trying to build that up after having gone to Christ, then I'm proving myself a transgressor. I'm proving I've already broken the law. For through the law, I died to the law so that I might live to God.
I've recognized, you know what? The law kills me. That's all it can do. It can reveal God's perfect nature to me. It reveals my sin. And what's he going to say later on? It's our schoolmaster. It's our tutor to lead us unto Christ.
For through the law, I died to the law so that I might live to God. And it is in that context then that Paul says Galatians 2 .20. Now, I hope, if you have not memorized this text, if it is not a part of the core memory list that is yours, I would highly recommend that you add it.
Because I really truly believe there are not very many higher texts in all the New Testament for a Christian to be able to repeat with Paul than you have in these words in the 20th verse of the 2nd chapter of Galatians.
Notice what it says. I have been crucified with Christ. Now, before you go on with the rest of it, we've all heard it before. I know how hard it is to step away from a text and hear it with fresh ears.
But try to this evening. I have been crucified with Christ. What an amazing statement that would have been in the ears of anyone in the ancient world. Now, you and I, you know, you see people, you see crosses on steeples, on buildings, and the cross is considered to be a great Christian symbol, and that's the culture we've grown up in.
But never ever forget that the cross was a repulsive, ugly thing in the ancient world. There were certain writers in Rome that would not even use the word in their writing because it was considered too low, too vile to even refer to the term because everybody had seen the horrific nature of the death upon a cross.
And so when Jesus says, take up your cross and follow me, He is saying join the death march. He is not in any way saying anything that would be attractive to anyone outside of their having come to know what it means to die in Christ and to die with Christ.
And so Paul can say, I have been crucified with Christ. So intimate, so real is the union of the elect with their Lord that His death is our death, His burial our burial, His resurrection our resurrection.
That's why baptism is such a beautiful picture of that death, burial, and resurrection with Christ. But he can say, I have been crucified with Christ. It was an amazing thing to have the opportunity on October 7th of 2013 to stand in a room, to stand inside the Masjid at the Abu Bakr Siddiq Mosque in Erasmus, South Africa where most of the audience is seated upon the ground and most of the audience are Muslim men who are no farther away from me than the front row right here, maybe even a little bit closer.
And to be able to quote this verse and speak about what it means as a Christian to have been crucified with Christ. Now, of course, they don't believe Christ is crucified, so it had a double meaning to be able to point this out.
But this truly is an amazing statement for a Christian to make. And we must understand what it means. We must understand each and every day, this cannot be something that just once in a while we happen to inch up to considering what it really means that we've died with Christ.
This needs to be a daily recognition, death to self, because we have died with Christ. We have been united together with Him in His death. That's how real the union of Christ and His people are. There's that beautiful hymn.
I wouldn't mind if we... Remember how in the old hymnals we stuck that one hymn, we glued it in the front? You can tell how long ago we glued it in the front by how brown the glue has become in that. But there's another that is truly beautiful that has a line in it that we should probably look at sometime.
And it talks about the fact that my name was written on His hands. That it was a personal thought on the part of Christ. He personally knew those who were His who were united with Him in His death. It wasn't just that Christ was dying for a nameless, faceless group.
But He was dying for a particular people. And it is a personal, substitutionary atonement. And that means it is loving on His part. Never forget that. Never allow all the discussions of theology and things like that to overshadow the reality of your union with Christ and the fact that you have died with Him.
You have been crucified together with Him. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. You've died to yourself. You've died to your own will. You've died to your dreams.
You are not your own. You have been bought with a price. And therefore, if Christ calls you to whatever kind of life and whatever kind of service and whatever kind of suffering or blessing, we have absolutely no right to question His wisdom or His right over us.
He has the complete right. Because we've died. And the life which we now live, He is living within us. 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.
You want to talk about regeneration? You want to talk about the radical nature of the change that takes place in true Christian conversion? Here's a picture of it. Here's what a true Christian says. It's not any longer I who live.
I've died. And I deserved the death that was mine. And now the life that I live, this life is not mine to control. I look only to Christ. I look only to Him to determine how I am to live, what I am to do, how He is to use me as His servant.
The life which I now live in the flesh, because I know that this life is going to continue on. There is something after death for every believer. I live by faith in the Son of God. That's the defining factor of Christian life.
Is it has the object of faith in the Son of God, not as some vague concept out there, but as the object of love. Who loved me and gave Himself up for me. I cannot imagine more satisfying, comforting words for a believer than to describe the very Son of God as the one who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
I do not think that it is a mere happenstance that the form of the word loved is in what's called the aorist. It's referring to a specific act and we can tell in the context what it is. I've said many times, if you ever, ever doubt the love of God for you, look at the cross.
Look at the cross. You want proof? Don't look at your circumstances. Don't compare yourself to somebody else. Don't compare the size of your house to somebody else's house or anything else that's irrelevant.
If you want evidence of the love of God, you look at the cross. Because there, the very Son of God, the Creator Himself, loved me. That was an act of love and it was personal and it was knowledgeable and it was direct and I don't even understand how you can say that without understanding substitutionary atonement.
There are so many today that are denying it. So many who call themselves evangelicals are denying it, but it's right there. He loved me. How? Well, He gave Himself up. Kuper emu. In my place. In my place.
Very same term of Jesus being given up and betrayed by Judas. He gives Himself up voluntarily in my behalf. There's love. There is undying love. There is a love that survives any of the difficulties and trials of this life.
And that act of love is demonstrated in the Son's bearing the wrath of the Father that was rightly due to me. Who loved me and gave Himself up for me. What tremendous words and what a tremendous truth.
And so what does that mean? Well, what does this have to do with Peter? You think Peter didn't already believe this? Well, of course he believed it. He understood it. Sometimes even Spirit-filled apostles, men who would be used to write books of Scripture, can lose their way.
They were not walking straight in accordance with the truth of the Gospel. They had veered off. And the pressure that had been placed against Peter was the pressure of tradition and his history and his family and his people.
It's easy to understand. It probably happens to us more often than we even recognize it. Peter understood this. I'm sure Peter felt tremendous conviction when Paul said these words because he knew they were true.
The Spirit testified to him of their truthfulness. He knew that Jesus had loved him and given Himself up for him in a pretty unique way, didn't he? My, those words must have stung in light of Peter's denials.
But Peter knew that. Peter knew these words were true. So what was the application? Because these are the words of any Christian. Was he going to stand there and say that Cornelius, any other Gentile who had placed their faith in Jesus Christ and said, I live by faith in the Son of God, was Peter going to say that's not enough?
You need this Jewishness. You need circumcision. You need the law. You need the proper table fellowship and kosher foods and all that. No. Peter knows. Anyone who says these words, that's my brother, that's my sister.
We're fellow believers. He then concludes this public refutation of one of the apostles of Jesus Christ who had erred by saying, I do not set aside, nullify, make empty the grace of God. For if righteousness comes to the law, Christ died needlessly.
Well, if verse 20 hadn't put Peter on his heels, verse 21 would put him on his knees. Because what he's saying is, Peter, if you follow through with this consistently, and I don't think Peter had any intention of doing so, but that's not the point.
Peter, if you follow this through consistently, then your actions are nullifying, setting aside, making empty the very grace of God. Because you see, if righteousness comes through law, then Christ died needlessly.
How many times does Paul have to lay it out? There are two paths. There is the way of the law, and there is the way of grace. And they go opposite directions. And you cannot walk down both paths at the same time.
And that's what man always wants to do. Wants to be a syncretist. Wants to take the middle road, the third way. There are some things you simply can't do that. You just can't do it. And this is one of them.
You take one step down this direction, you can't take a step this way. It's all or nothing. In fact, he's going to keep developing this in the book of Galatians, and finally in chapter 5. Oh, my. Some of the strongest language in all of the New Testament.
And eventually he's going to say, look, if you start down that road, Christ will be of no benefit to you. You've fallen from grace. There is no grace on that road. It's perfect. Perfect obedience, that's all that's there.
Christ is on this road. Not on that road. He's the schoolmaster. This leads us unto Christ, but if you will not listen to what the law says and see your own sin, then you won't flee to the only one who by grace can save you.
And so, if you believe that righteousness comes through law, if you believe that the Jew is a little bit higher because of his law keeping than the Gentile, there's something there, then you, A, nullify the grace of God.
Remember Romans 11? We've just been looking at it. If it's by grace, if it's by law, if it's by grace, they are opposites of one another. They cannot be put together. I wrote a tract years and years ago that we passed out at the temple and other places many times.
Grace plus works is dead, being meaningless. That's what it said on the front. Grace plus works is dead, being meaningless. The point is that the idea of merit and worthiness destroys the freedom of God's grace.
They cannot be mixed together. The one destroys the other. And so, if righteousness comes through law, then, A, the grace of God is nullified. You've got Pelagius. You've got the ability to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
We're all a new Adam. No. And if righteousness comes through law, then Christ died needlessly. Think about the context in which those words were spoken. Publicly to Peter. And everybody knew. Everybody knew the Gospel story.
And everybody knew that Peter had denied Christ. Now, they also would have known of his restoration. That's the picture of grace. But you see, that's just it. Peter needed that grace, and now Peter, by his actions, was denying that grace.
And my, how very heavily those words must have landed upon Peter's heart. That he would do anything. That he would be so blind in his traditionalism that he would do anything that would result in making void the grace of God, and even more so, in saying that Christ died needlessly.
The doctrine of justification doesn't really excite people the way it once did. There was a time in church history when armies went to war over this topic. Now, you can't hardly get anybody to even show up at a Bible study about it.
What's happened? Well, there was a day when people lived their lives and they saw death all around them, and they knew their own mortality. There was a day when families lived together and you saw Grandma and Grandpa die.
And they died in the home. It wasn't hidden from the kids. And so you grew up knowing your own mortality. At the time of the Reformation, it hadn't been all that long since the great plague had swept through Europe and had taken a third of the population away, and it still kept popping back every once in a while, and nobody knew how to deal with it.
And in many places, a woman would have to have ten children to make sure that one lived through to maturity. And so people lived with the constant recognition of the fact that they were human beings subject to death.
And so the subject of how you could be right with God, be a part of that people of God, know that you have a right staying with Him, that was on everyone's mind all the time. It's not that the issue has changed.
Death can come to us just as quickly today as it could 500 years ago. It's just that we don't think about it. We are distracted. We amuse ourselves and stumble blindly into the sick room, into the hospital, unprepared, because we don't think about it.
We don't think about it. Scripture has a clear and wonderful message for anyone who seriously wants to know how can I be right with God? How can I be prepared for eternity? But it is a sign of God's judgment upon a culture when the people of that culture no longer even think about eternity to come.
When they are so amused by their gadgets and their sports and their celebrities that they don't even give consideration to what should be the first thing that we are thinking about. And so, yeah, I know there are a lot of topics that would be more popular today, but there are very few topics that touch more centrally upon what the Gospel is.
And when the Spirit of God begins to bring conviction of sin upon a heart, this is the only message that will give that heart peace. That's what Luther discovered. Oh, he had all the sacraments in the world.
He had all the good deeds in the world. He slept on the bare floor without a blanket in the German winter. The German winter part scares me. Because I'm going to be in Berlin the week after next, and it's cold there.
But he would sleep on the bare stone floor without a blanket to prove that he could mortify that flesh. Six hours in the confessional. Going to Mass. None of it changed his heart. None of it could bring him peace.
Only the message of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, found in Scripture alone was what could bring him peace. And that's the only message that can bring peace to any heart, even to this day.
Is it important? It's central. Should we be able to explain it to anyone? Yes, because God calls us to be the instrument. And when you find someone in whose life the Spirit is moving, you can be the instrument to deliver to them the very message by which they can have the same peace that you and I have by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let's pray together. Our gracious and glorious God, we do thank You for the Gospel, and we thank You that it is centered all in You. It is all about You. It is all about Your perfection, Your provision, Your love.
It's not about us. And we thank You, each one of us who has bowed the knee in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ, we thank You that we can say, I have been crucified with Christ. The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me.
Oh, what words! May we recognize the great price that was paid whereby we could say those words. May we live in light of those words this coming week. If there be any in the sound of my voice that is not yet in repentance and faith, turn to Christ to be able to say those words.
May this be the day. You reveal Yourself to that person. Draw them to Yourself. Grant repentance and faith all to Your honor and glory. We pray in Christ's name.