FATAL LIVING, VITAL DYING
Galatians 2:15-21
S: Justification
Th: Grace-Full Living
Pr: WE ARE MADE RIGHT WITH GOD BY GOD.
?: What?
KW: Implications
TS: We will find in our study of Galatians 2:15-21 two implications of being made right with God by God.
The _____ implication of being made right with God by God is…
I. LIVING BY LAW IS FATAL LIVING (15-18).
II. LIVING BY GRACE IS VITAL DYING (19-21).
RMBC 5/28/00 AM
INTRODUCTION:
ILL Mistake (I’m back here)
John Norman had purchased movie tickets for his girlfriend and himself. While he got the popcorn, she went inside to find seats. By the time he was served, the previews were being shown. John stumbled through the dark, sat down and gave his girlfriend a kiss. Then he heard a familiar voice say, “John, I’m back here.”
Ooops!
That was a mistake.
If you are like me, you do not enjoy making mistakes.
How about you?
1. Do you like being right?
ILL Marriage (Mr. Right)
Paul Kessler and his wife were doing errands and discussing current events. Soon, they got into an argument over the issues. When he reiterated his position forcefully, it was his wife, Christine, who had the last word. “When I knew I’d found Mr. Right,” she snapped, “I had no idea his first name was Always!”
Well, a lot of us can probably relate to that situation.
We like being right.
And we don’t like to admit being wrong.
But we need to note this today…
2. There is something more important than being right—it is being right with God.
While we are concerned with the relationships around us, there is a relationship that makes an eternal difference.
For we need to be in right relationship with God.
TRANSITION:
As we come to this letter to the Galatians, we find that…
1. Paul is writing this letter to defend the gospel and his apostleship against the Judaizers.
The Judaizers were false teachers.
We call them Judaizers because of their passion for Jewish laws.
They knew that in order to successfully communicate a different message than the founding pastor had communicated, they first had to undermine his credentials and authority.
In the process of doing this, they strongly insinuated that the Twelve Apostles in Jerusalem agreed with them, and they held up Peter as their patron saint.
When Paul got wind of this heretical teaching, he wrote this strong, emotional letter denouncing anyone who communicated any other Gospel than the one he had spoken, which is that salvation is a free gift of God’s grace.
Then he went to considerable lengths to prove that he received the gospel by direct revelation, and in turn, he was not dependent upon the Jerusalem apostles.
And when he eventually did have a “powwow” in Jerusalem, the leaders of the Church confirmed and supported his message and gave him the right hand of fellowship signaling friendship and partnership in the gospel.
Furthermore, when Paul and Peter had a major conflict, Peter was the one who backed down and admitted he was wrong.
That’s the historical background of what we have studied so far in this letter to the Galatians.
We need to recognize that the argument between Paul and the Judaizers was over how one becomes right with God.
Paul’s conclusion was this…
2. When one chooses a lifestyle based on self-righteousness or performance, it is a fatal mistake.
It is a lethal notion that human beings are basically good.
We are not fundamentally righteous in our being.
And it is also a fatal idea that whatever lack we have can be resolved through our efforts.
Paul says that this is the way of death.
For when we try to experience salvation through “doing the works of the law” basically what that means is that we’ve developed a checklist of sorts.
A checklist full of those things that we have to do or accomplish in order to be saved or assure our place in salvation.
Once we finish the list, then we are done.
Our place is assured…or is it?
Unfortunately, with the Law, it almost seems that for each item you check off the list, ten more appear.
So you find yourself running around in circles, out of breath, out of steam, never able to know whether or not you’ve made it or if you’re even close to making it.
This is why Paul said to Peter that he dared not compel the Gentiles to live like Jews.
Nobody can do it!
Peter dare not imply that keeping the dietary laws is a work by which they can show themselves more worthy before God.
For that means salvation is accomplished by more than Jesus’ work on the cross.
It is not sufficient!
For here is the truth we must understand today.
There is only one way we are made right with God.
3. WE ARE MADE RIGHT WITH GOD BY GOD.
Now this is good news!
God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
We cannot be made right by following the law, or any law for that matter.
It is impossible to keep.
There is, according to Paul, a different way to live.
ILL Notebook: Justice (erasers)
At Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, students were known to toss erasers at the clock. They did this because each precise hit caused the clock to jump ahead one minute. Before class one morning, they succeeded in advancing the clock by ten minutes. Since the professor was beyond the accepted starting time, the class left. The professor never said a word about the incident. However, he presented the class a killer of a final exam. As the students labored to finish in the allotted time, the professor amused himself by tossing erasers at the clock.
Do you know what I have discovered?
We love justice.
We like it when someone makes things right.
We like justice…until it affects us.
Then we hope for mercy.
God as Judge is purely objective.
God is altogether morally righteous.
This means that He cannot simply overlook sin.
As a result, we are in an awful predicament.
Now justice is being applied to us and we cannot perfectly keep the law.
The good news of the gospel is that God surprisingly forgives.
But He forgives only when justice is satisfied.
It is Jesus who legally assumes our guilt.
He bore the curse of the law on the cross.
This is justification.
4. Justification is an act of God whereby He declares, on the basis of the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that the sinner who puts his faith in Jesus is “not guilty” and made right.
Note what we said here.
Justification is an act, not a process.
Our standing before God is not determined by what is still to happen, or by what we are currently doing, but on what has already taken place.
We have been made right with God, by God.
So…
5. We will find in our study of Galatians 2:15-21 two implications of being made right with God by God.
OUR STUDY:
I. The first implication of being made right with God by God is LIVING BY LAW IS FATAL LIVING.
1. We all have equal standing before God (15-16).
We who are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners’ know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.
When the Judaizers came in and claimed that the Gentiles had to be circumcised and follow the Jewish dietary laws, they assumed a religious superiority.
They said, in effect, that there is only one way to God.
It is the Jewish way.
But Paul said, “No, that’s not true.”
We are all justified before God in the same way.
We have equal standing.
We are justified by faith.
It has nothing to do with what we do.
ILL Luther
Martin Luther identified this same issue in the Roman Catholic Church.
He said:
"If ever a monk got to heaven by monkery, I would have got there too; all my brothers will testify to that. For if it had gone on much longer, I would simply have martyred myself to death with vigils, prayers, reading and other work."
Paul, though, does understand the concern of the Judaizers.
They felt that if the law were made secondary, mankind would abandon the morality prescribed by the law.
Eventually, Christians would be no different than the world.
So, when the Judaizer required law-keeping of Gentile converts, he felt he was reducing sin.
They were providing guidelines for believers just as the traditions of the Pharisees had helped the faithful keep Mosaic law.
Though Paul understands, they have it wrong.
For, just because we gain right standing with God…
2. We do not have the freedom to sin as we please (17).
If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not!
Christ is never a promoter of sin.
And He is not an agent of sin.
But He is an agent of freedom.
We no longer need what the law provides.
For…
3. If we choose to live by law, we only prove that we are sinners (18).
If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker.
The repeal of the law freed one to live righteously, while a return to the law made sin inevitable.
We need to recognize that the law gives us no power to obey its requirements.
Once broken at but a single point, the law stands over us, condemning us at every other point, reminding us of how unworthy we are, and how great is our debt to God.
Through the Law, no one can be declared righteous since no one can perfectly obey the Law.
But through the Gospel and faith in Christ, the believer is regarded as righteous, since the perfect obedience of Christ is reckoned to us through faith alone and not through faith and obedience.
We need to give up on the idea that obedience is effective in obtaining life.
For…
4. When we persist in believing that we can gain God’s favor, we will find that our way leads to death (Proverbs 14:12).
There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.
We may think that we are getting better.
We may think that God has to look on us with favor.
Bu the truth is, as long as we are trying to earn our way to God by works of law we cannot have a close relation to God.
The closer we try to get to God by works, the farther we drive him from ourselves.
It is fatal living.
II. The second implication of being made right with God by God is LIVING BY GRACE IS VITAL DYING.
1. We must cease being a “law man” in order to be God’s man (19).
For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God.
We need to recognize that we are no longer under the power of the law.
Its job is done.
It holds us no longer under its paralyzing effect.
The law could not save us.
The law could not sanctify us.
And the redemption that the law promised, and of which the sacrificial system was a prototype, could only be accomplished by the sacrifice of Jesus, the Lamb of God.
The result is that the sinner, powerless to live righteously under the law, is now free to live to God.
But before you celebrate, realize that this is all very humbling.
The gruesome death of the innocent, loving Son of God for my sin is the most radical indictment of my hopeless condition imaginable.
The crucifixion of Jesus is the open display of my hellish nature.
When I see this and believe that he really died for me, then my old proud self who loves to display its power by climbing ladders of morality and intellect and beauty and daring dies.
Self-reliance and self-confidence cannot live at the foot of the cross.
So here is the testimony of Paul’s argument.
When Christ died, I died.
And paradoxically…
2. We find life in death (20).
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
“I have been crucified with Christ…”
A Christian is a person who has died with Christ, whose stiff neck has been broken, whose brazen forehead has been shattered, whose stormy heart has been crushed, whose pride has been slain, and whose life is now mastered by Jesus Christ.
You no longer need law, for you have Christ.
The person of Christ lives in us.
And I live by faith, faith in the One who resides in me.
And I live faithfully, for this One who resides in me, loved me and gave Himself for me.
As a result, I possess new freedom to choose righteousness and pursue holiness.
Under the law, I could not do that.
But when Jesus lives in me, I can.
I can choose righteousness.
I can pursue holiness.
But…
3. When you fail to trust Jesus, it is an insult to the grace of God (21).
I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!
When we operate by something or trust in something other than grace, we declare it insufficient.
We say that it is unnecessary.
Even worse, we may be saying it is unwanted.
ILL
John Walvoord said it best,
"If righteousness comes by keeping the law, the Cross was the biggest mistake in the universe."
Or as Paul put it, “Christ died for nothing.”
APPLICATION:
But that is something we do not believe today.
Christ did not die for nothing.
His death was effective.
For by it, we have been justified.
1. We are made right with God by God.
Legally, we have been granted right standing.
And our right standing is not based on our performance.
This is good news.
But as Paul will continue to reveal as he writes this letter, it is not the end of the story.
For in light of God’s gracious declaration that by faith in Christ we are in the right in His eyes, rather than giving us free rein to live unrestrained lives, there is a clear expectation that in our new standing we will grow in holiness and righteousness in a way impossible by any other means.
We are not to think that our right standing is the end of the story.
ILL Internet
An old farmer frequently described his Christian experience by saying, "Well, I’m not making much progress, but I’m established!" One spring when he was hauling some logs, his wagon wheels sank down to the axles in mud. Try as he would, he couldn’t get the wagon out. Defeated, he sat atop the logs, viewing the dismal situation. Soon a neighbor who had always felt uncomfortable with the farmer’s worn-out testimony came along and greeted him, "Well, Brother Jones, I see you’re not making much progress, but you must be content because you’re well established!"
In the same way, we cannot be content to just be justified.
It is only the beginning.
You see…
2. We possess the power of the resurrection.
The power of sin and death has been defeated at the cross when Jesus raised from the dead.
So we too, by our identification with the death of Christ and His resurrection are able to live rightly.
You see, we are not only declared to be right, we can live right.
But we do not do it on our own.
It is like a glove, for example.
A glove cannot do anything by itself.
It needs a hand to fill it.
When the glove has a hand inside, it is enabled to do all sorts of things.
We are like a glove.
What we need is the Lord to fill us with His power.
Then we will be able to do all things through Christ, who is living in us.
We are able to do this because…
3. We are permeated with the Holy Spirit.
We have been permeated.
The Spirit impacts every aspect of our lives.
You know…
We delude ourselves if we think because we have made some decision we are done with it and forever secure in God’s eyes.
We delude ourselves if we think we can live immoral lives, shack up with partners who are not our spouses, defraud others of their money, take no action to alleviate social ills in our world, and live in constant tension with our children and family members.
We delude ourselves if we think we can live like this and pretend that we are at peace with God and enjoy his Son’s justifying work.
Those who have been justified, live justly; those who have been made holy in Christ, live holy lives; those who have experienced God’s love, love others; those who have experienced God’s forgiveness, for-give others.
When we are made right with God by God there is a dynamic difference.
We think differently.
We act differently.
We are different.
And it happens because of grace alone.
BENEDICTION: [Counselors are ]
Rejoice…you have been made right with God, not by anything you have done, but by the prefect work of Christ—this is grace;
Rejoice…you have the freedom to choose righteousness because the power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to you—this also is grace;
Rejoice…Christ lives in you and will impact every aspect of your live and now you can mane an eternal difference in others—this too is grace.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
