week to come on down here, for the ladies to come on down here and spend a couple hours together talking, studying God's word, worshiping together. It's always a wonderful time, and I'm sure you won't be disappointed if you, if you come. Also, Matthew announced last week, and you should have gotten an email this week, that we're going to start a monthly prayer meeting here at Providence. And we are very excited about this. You know, it's, it's a wonderful thing for God's people to gather together and to pray and to seek him. And that's what we want to do. We do it in our care groups, we do it individually, but we want to do it corporately as a body. And we'll be starting that in, in March, next month. Paul Potash will be in the back hospitality room right behind those double doors at the back of the sanctuary. At just after the service, start making your way back there. So about 5 minutes or so after the end of the service, if you could just gather in there. Paul Potash will be back there, and he'll be filling you in about this prayer meeting. And we'll be kind of trying to take, take the pulse of what, what day of the week and find a time that works best for everyone. So if you could just gather back there, Paul will be there. We'll just have a brief informational meeting about this coming prayer meeting that we're very excited about. I would encourage as many people as possible to make your way back there and find out about this. And Let's make prayer a priority in our lives, in our corporate life this year as we seek God. Also, we're going to be having lunch together as a church next Sunday. So everybody plan on staying afterwards. And I would like to encourage you, if you do come, and I hope you can, and you bring— in the bulletin there's a breakdown of what everybody's to bring. The last couple of times we've had lunch together, we've been a little short on food. Had to supplement it a bit. So I'd encourage you, if you do come, you're bringing a main dish or a salad, bring enough for at least twice the size of your family. Remember, only half of us are bringing main dishes and only half of us are bringing salads. So everybody double up, we should be great. Also, the last thing is most of the dads with daughters would be aware of this, but we've had a couple of exciting nights down in the gym Friday night and Saturday night this week with our Daddy-Daughter Dance. We had the privilege of entertaining and treating a lot of young ladies, not only from this church but from our surrounding community, to a wonderful evening with their dads. We had 140 to 150 dads and daughters here the last two nights, just having a great time, enjoying time together, enjoying dancing together, enjoying a nice meal together. And I want to thank everyone from Providence who helped make that possible. It's been a long three days I don't know about you, but my legs, my feet, my back are pretty sore from Thursday morning. We've been going nonstop, and it's not done yet. We've got to take it all down, restore the gym back to its normal self, a gym, today. So, but I want to thank all of the helpers who came out and made this possible, from the decorating crews, from the kitchen crews, to the helpers, to the The sound guys, you guys did a great job. It was very much a huge success. I had lots of compliments from folks. And there's one particular person who I want to recognize who really pulled all of this together and made it all possible, just kind of took this off of my plate this year, and that's Ann Stublin. So Ann, thank you so much. Anne has a gift in administrating events like these, and she did an outstanding job. So we'll be doing it again next year and looking forward to it. All right, if the, uh, children's ministry workers want to make their way to the back, we'll get ready to release our kids here. All right, kids, you can find your way back to your teachers back there and be released to your classes. And Matthew will come and bring God's Word to us.
Just to reiterate that one announcement, please bring enough food. Please. Your pastor is hungry after preaching. Please bring enough food. In all seriousness, it maybe has something to do with how much your pastor eats at the potlucks. Maybe that's why we're running out of food. Hopefully you will join us for that. It is not just enjoyable to get together and break bread, it's biblical. It's something God's people have done for centuries together, is to join, come sit at a table and eat and enjoy one another's company and each other's fellowship. So please set aside time next Sunday. It's just a wonderful thing. I have wonderful memories from my childhood of church potlucks, some of those indelible memories of what it meant to be a part of the body of Christ. So hopefully you'll set aside time for that. We are continuing this morning in our sermon series in Galatians, so you can turn with me there. We work— there's a little bit of like a kind of hollow sound behind me. I don't know if anyone else is noticing that, if we can tweak that a bit. So we'll look at Galatians 2, and this morning we are now starting to narrow in on what is really the really core thesis statement of Paul's letter. And we're going to look in verses 15-21 at the core of his argument. He's been building to the statements he's going to make in this passage this morning, and he's going to then build from them the rest of the letter. So everything he said in these first two chapters really comes to an exclamation point this morning, especially in verse 16 and what he says following it. And then everything he talks about in the rest of the letter is building upon the foundation that we're going to look at this morning. So it's significant. We don't want to miss what he's saying to us. Now, with that in mind, I'm going to cheat a little bit. I don't usually use a quote in an introduction, but J.I. Packer is just sometimes too good to pass up. So here's what J.I. Packer says. The doctrine of justification by faith, that's what we're going to see this morning, is like Atlas. Atlas is— he's the Greek mythology character who holds the world on his back. The doctrine of justification by faith is like Atlas. It bears a world on its shoulders, the entire evangelical knowledge of saving grace. When Protestants let the thought of justification drop out of their minds, the true knowledge of salvation drops out with it and cannot be restored 'til the truth of justification is back in its proper place. When Atlas falls, everything that rested on his shoulders comes crashing down too. That's a pretty significant statement about what we're going to see in this passage this morning. So hopefully you're listening and you're attentive. Salvation depends on the truth in today's passage. If we lose this, if we If we obscure it, if it becomes dim in our eyes, we're losing sight of salvation, losing salvation itself. But when the truth that we look at is in its proper place, its effects and evidence should ripple out into our lives. Its presence or absence is conspicuous. Would you bow your heads and pray with me?
Lord, give us eyes to see this morning. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear. We want to know and understand salvation rightly. We want to taste it. We want to be changed by it. We want to think right thoughts about you. We want to understand and embrace and worship you correctly. And to do that, we have to understand how it is that we can come into relationship with you in the first place. And so do that now, Lord. Lord, those songs that we were singing this morning, we want that to be true. We want to see that Jesus is all to us, that there is nothing else that matters or compares to him. And to see that this morning, Lord, we know from your word that we must grasp the truth of this doctrine in Galatians chapter 2. And so, Holy Spirit, come and help us to do that. We want all that we think and all that we imagine, all that we sing about, all that we do with our lives to be to the praise of Your glorious grace, God. But in order to do that, we must grasp and grapple with and understand and be changed by the truth of justification by faith. So come, Spirit. Come, Spirit of Christ, help us and glorify Christ in our midst this morning. As we see and are satisfied in how God makes the unrighteous righteous. Would you do that, Jesus? Do that, Spirit. Do it for the praise of your glorious grace. In your name, Jesus. Amen.
Turn with me to Galatians chapter 2. Starting at verse 15. We ourselves, Paul says, are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law. Because by works of the law no one will be justified. But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then the servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. 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 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 was the law, then Christ died for no purpose. That's the glorious truth we're going to examine and look at this morning. Salvation hinges upon it. If we miss it, if Packer is correct, and I think he is correct, everything else you would consider, everything else you would think about, everything else you would seek to do with your Christian faith, with your Christian life, isn't worth a thing. So that's the significance.
Now I think we can look at this text this morning and really ask two questions. If we ask two questions, We're going to kind of get at what Paul's driving at. So first, our first question is just this: How can I get right with God? That's a question Paul's asking in the text. More precisely, the question would be: How can an unrighteous person become accepted by a righteous God?
Now, righteous just means how does somebody who's not holy, who's not perfect, get right with somebody who is holy and who is perfect and who can't stand the sight of anything that's not perfect? How do I get into God's good graces? How do we get on God's good side? Well, the natural answer to that, the way that our flesh is inclined to think is this: We get right with God by working harder. Or by working holier. Right? That's the way we're inclined to think. And Paul spends v. 15-16 attacking the idea that justification for a sinner can be accomplished by works of the law. And the reason he attacks this is because he knows this is our knee-jerk answer to the question, 'How do I get right with God?' It's why when you see any of those evangelism videos, they always ask that question, 'Are you good enough? Why do you think you're going to go to heaven?' And the person always says, 'Well, I'm pretty good.' Paul knows it's just the natural human inclination to say, 'How do I get to heaven? Well, it's a question of—' Am I good enough? Have I done enough?
6 · Pastor Chris unpacks the phrase 'works of the law,' defining it as any human effort to earn God's favor, then illustrates first-century Jewish works-righteousness thinking with Regina's tombstone
And so that's the knee-jerk. I've got to work harder. Now, this phrase 'works of the law' that Paul is using, it's a loaded theological phrase. It's got tons of theological freight behind it. At its most basic level, the works of the law were things that are done to be holy. Works of the law are things done to be holy. So circumcision, Torah— keeping Torah is just a fancy word for the law in the Old Testament. Sometimes it could refer just to the first 5 books of the Old Testament. Sometimes biblical authors say the law and they refer to the whole Old Testament. Well, those sorts of things—circumcision, Torah keeping—they were covenant markers. They identified somebody as a part of God's people, but they were more than just that. Works of the law is this broad category that includes anything that we do to earn favor with God. So it's the Ten Commandments, all the way to circumcision, all the way to keeping kosher. All of those things are consumed in this phrase 'works of the law.' It's everything someone must do to prove that they're obedient. To prove through works of the law that you are obedient enough to merit salvation. That's what that 'works of the law' phrase means. Another way of saying, 'How do you get right with God?' Through works of the law. I show that I've done enough right stuff according to what God commanded, that He'll now accept me. Now, the Old Testament— we need to get this in our mind because I think sometimes we confuse this matter— the Old Testament was never about salvation by works. Let's not read our Bibles and look at the Old Testament and say, 'Well, in the Old Testament, it was all about works, and the New Testament is about faith.' That's wrong. Paul isn't pitting the New Testament against the Old Testament in Galatians. What he's doing is saying, Galatians Christians, Providence, you misread the Old Testament. You don't understand the points God is making in it. Paul is identifying a natural tendency to work our way to God based on merit. So in Galatia, men are saying, you know what, faith is necessary, but it's not sufficient. You've also got to do good. Now justification, this word that Paul keeps popping up and using in this text, is just a word, remember from last week we spent some time unpacking it, it's just a word that asks, how does somebody get right with God? Justification is part of that answer to our question. How do I satisfy the requirements of a righteous God? It's a judicial word. When you're justified, it means the holy judge of the universe has looked at you and said, not guilty, perfectly innocent, and perfectly obedient. Now, it seems the logical answer— how do I get right with God? How do I satisfy the requirements of a righteous God? Doesn't it kind of seem like the logical way to answer that question would be, well, how do I satisfy the requirements of a righteous God? Do righteous things. Doesn't that seem logical? If God's righteous and I want to satisfy Him, I need to do righteous things. If God's holy and I want to get right on His terms, I have to be holy and do holy things. You want to get right with God? Then do right. Now, this kind of thinking is incredibly common in Paul's day. Jesus is attacking this kind of thinking in the Gospels all the time. And it was just incipient in the Jewish mindset of that day. They had taken the Old Testament and they had begun to read it through an eye, through the lens of works. Now, here's an interesting thing I want to read to you. A Jewish epitaph from the first century. So a Jewish, basically, this is something that would be inscribed on a tomb. This actually was. There's a book that was written just studying what were basically Jewish tombstones looking like in the first century. So this is, in Paul's day, in the day of Christ, and this is reflective of the mindset of your average Jewish person in how they perceived salvation. So it says, 'Here lies Regina. She will live again, return to the light again.' In other words, it's saying she's going to have eternal life. 'For she can hope that she will rise to the life promised as a real assurance.' to the worthy and the pious, in that she has deserved to possess an abode in the hallowed land. In other words, this tombstone is saying, here lies Regina, and she deserves a place in heaven. This your piety has assured you, this your chaste life, this your love for your people, this your observance of the law. Your devotion to your wedlock, in other words, she was a faithful wife, the glory of which was dear to you. For all these deeds, your hope for the future is assured. What that tombstone is saying is a great representative of the functional theology of Paul's day. Regina is going to heaven because Regina did enough good things.
7 · Pastor Chris exposes the fatal flaw in works-righteousness: it's not that holiness is wrong, it's that perfect holiness is impossible
Now, that makes sense logically. It does make sense. There is something biblical about the idea that to get right with a righteous God, you must be righteous. To get right with a holy God, you must be holy. But here's the problem Paul points out in verse 16: Yet we know a person is not justified by works of the law. But through faith in Jesus Christ. Why? Because by works of the law, no one will be justified. Regina isn't going to heaven because at the end of the day, Regina can never do enough to be justified. No one is righteous enough, Paul says. The issue isn't that it's wrong to be holy. The issue isn't that it's wrong to do the right and righteous thing. The issue is that it's impossible. It is impossible to be right enough. It's impossible to be righteous enough. Paul here is quoting David from Psalm 143. Here's what David says. Hear my prayer, O Lord. Give ear to my pleas for mercy. In your faithfulness, answer me in your righteousness. So because you're holy, because you're faithful, answer me. 'Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.' David, the guy who gets the inscription 'a man after God's own heart,' confesses that there is no one living who is qualified to stand in the presence of God's impeccable holiness. Because your own holiness, your own works of the law would have to be as impeccable as God.
8 · Pastor Chris defines legalism and distinguishes between Christianity as religion versus religion as an evil system of works-righteousness
The legalism that works of the law justification promotes, so this, the legalism that says you can be justified, you can get right with God, you can stand before Him if you do enough holy things, crowds out a theology of grace. Now here's what Paul is doing here. Paul is hammering religion. Now, before we go on, we have to define what we mean by religion. You can think religion and think lots of positive things, right? Christianity, if you ask someone on the street, would say is a religion. But there are also ways of defining religion the way James does in his letter that help us to see there can be an evil undertow to it. Religion, the way Paul is hammering on it here, is any attempt at appeasing God's holiness, appeasing God's righteousness through moral effort. So religion is basically saying, 'I'm going to work hard enough to get right with God.' That's what Paul is working his way towards. He's not just hammering circumcision and law keeping. He's hammering all religiosity. In other words, he's hammering the place where all of us turn to, to show that we're religious.
9 · Direct application exposing the congregation's own religious strands
You're probably not clinging to the fact that you obey kosher food laws to prove to God that you're worthy, right? But we've all got little religious strands in our heart. Paul has in his crosshairs every attempt to curry favor with God. Religious activity, Paul says, doesn't save. Being a Jew doesn't save. Doing the right things, or being a good parent, or a loving spouse, or not stealing, or coming to church on Sunday are never sufficient to save us. You can have your devotions every day of the week, and that is not sufficient to save you, Paul says. And that can kind of be contrary to how we would normally think. Our false gospels and functional saviors, the things we imperceptibly add to the gospel to get right with God are never enough. Religion, Paul says, is a bad thing when it centers around self-righteous activities. I do to get right. I do to get right with God, or I do this and that so I can get more right with God. Religion is a false gospel when it says I have to, I have to reach this bar. I have to carry out this activity. I have to live up to this standard in order to be saved. Or, I have to believe in Jesus and I have to do all of this, and then God is pleased with me, and then God will save me. It perverts the gospel by making grace about rule keeping, about adding rule keeping to grace.
10 · Pastor Chris steps into an intimate shepherding moment, naming the secret fear in every believer's heart: that God's love is conditional and He's keeping score
Now, the danger is even if we profess salvation by grace through faith, If we're honest, and we've said this before in this Galatians series, deep down inside, we've got a sneaking suspicion that God still loves us conditionally. We operate and live that way. Even if I know, I know justification happens because I entrust myself to Christ and His work on the cross on my behalf, deep down inside, the way our human hearts work is there's still a sneaking suspicion, yeah, but I think I think God's still keeping track. I think He's still got all these demerits against me, and I've gotta go and offset them with all of my merits. It's by grace, yes, but there's still some little things He requires, and I've got to add those things before my conscience is at peace.
11 · Pastor Chris expounds faith as the biblical answer to justification, defining it as coming empty-handed with nothing to offer
Now that's the natural answer. How do we get right with God? Here's the biblical answer. Faith in Christ. That seems very obvious from our text, but there's so much there that we tend to just gloss over. Paul is saying salvation is not gained by doing, but by believing. We said last week there's a receptivity, there's an emptiness to faith whereby we come with nothing in our hands. Faith is fundamentally saying there's nothing, there's nothing I bring to this. It's all you, it's all that you've done, Jesus. Recognition that there's nothing we could possibly add to Christ's saving work. That only Jesus obeyed, that only He persevered in temptation, that only He ever perfectly kept the law's demands, that only He could ever bear the weight and punishment and guilt of sin. Now, our problem before God is twofold. On the one hand, our relationship is broken because we fail to live morally, right? Just another way of saying our relationship is broken because we're sinners and God's holy. We try to keep the law, but we can't. Our sin separates us. But our second problem is much more subtle. It is that even our apparent virtues, even the things that look moral, are deficient. Even our morality isn't moral enough. This is our second problem. We delude ourselves into thinking that we don't really need unconditional justification by faith. It's a deception that lies in all of our hearts, whispering this half-truth that we just need some justification by faith, and I also need some justification by works, that there's some things I can do that are good enough that God will commend me for. Faith says the opposite. Faith is a position that utterly crushes the human ego, and that's why we resist it. Faith confesses, 'I bring nothing to the equation of my salvation except failure and sin and guilt, all of which must be cast upon Jesus.' Faith recognizes that only righteousness, the only righteousness that gets credited to my account in this equation, is the righteousness of Jesus. Faith in Christ clings to the righteousness of Christ, not my own righteousness. But imputed righteousness, this idea that Christ's righteousness gets credited to us, first requires us to accept the bankruptcy of human righteousness. I don't really fundamentally live my life casting myself on the mercy of Christ's righteousness on my behalf until I've become convinced I absolutely need 100% of His righteousness, because there is none of my righteousness that's worthy to be credited to me. I can't put this better than George Whitefield. Now, this is a long quote, but bear with me. Before you can speak peace to your hearts, in other words, before you can assure yourself that you're saved, that you're right with God, you must not only be sad for your sins, you must not only be troubled for the sins of your life, but likewise You must be troubled over your best duties and performances. When a poor soul is somewhat awakened by the terrors of the Lord, then that poor one, being born under a covenant of works, flies directly to a covenant of works again. In other words, when a sinner gets conviction of sin and gets saved, they get saved and they turn right back around and go back to works. As soon as he is awakened and he senses his need for God, he says, 'I will be mighty good now. I will reform. I will do everything I can, and then certainly Jesus Christ will have mercy upon me.' This is such a good picture. And as Adam and Eve hid themselves in the trees of the garden and sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness, so the poor sinner, when awakened, flies to his duties, and to his performances to hide himself from God. But before you can be certain that Jesus Christ is in your heart, you must be brought to see not only that your sins must be done away with, but your righteousness. You must see that all your duties, all your righteousness, all put together are so far from recommending God to you, so far from being any motive of inducement for God to have mercy on your poor soul, that he will see them to be filthy, rags, and that God hates them, and He cannot but do away with them if you bring them to Him in order to recommend you to His favour.
12 · Pastor Chris expounds Isaiah 64:6 to ground Whitefield's claim biblically
Now that's intense. The best prayer you've ever prayed, Whitefield is saying, the purest love you've ever had for another individual, the most selfless act you've ever done, Whitfield is saying, has to be utterly cleansed in the blood of Christ. Where is that in the Bible? Isaiah 64:6: We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. All of these good things, all these prayers and these acts of service and these merciful things and the way I love and the way I'm selfless, these things that I put on to cover myself before God. I put on this righteousness, my own righteousness, to say, 'See, Lord, look, this commends me.' And Isaiah says, 'No, look again. That garment that you've put on is polluted.' all those virtues are still corrupted. That's how deep our depravity goes. Even post-faith, even after we've come to faith, we ooze self-justification according to our alleged relative goodness.
13 · Pastor Chris rewrites Regina's epitaph according to the gospel, inverting every claim
Seeing the bankruptness of our goodness is fundamental to receiving the gospel of faith with nothing but faith. Now, if Regina, remember Regina, our dead first-century Jew? Regina, the really nice lady who did all those nice things? If she understood the gospel, here's what her tombstone would have read. Here lies Regina. She will live again, for she can hope that she will rise to the life promised as a real assurance to the unworthy and the impious. Who have trusted in nothing but Jesus, to deserve and possess an abode in the hallowed land. This Christ's piety, not Regina's, has assured for you His chaste life, His love, His observance of the law, His devotion to His bride the Church, the glory of which was dear to Him. For all these deeds of Christ, and none of yours, your hope for the future is assured. Write that on your tombstone if you grasp the gospel of grace.
14 · Structural hinge summarizing the answer to the first question and pivoting to the second organizing question of the sermon
So that's the first question. That's the answer. How does someone get right with God? By putting aside all attempts to earn, all attempts to prove, all attempts to show that our righteousness is enough, and clinging in faith to Jesus, coming empty-handed and receiving all that Jesus has done on our behalf. Here's the second question: How do I live in light of that?
15 · Pastor Chris frames the second half of the sermon: how should justification by faith reshape the entire Christian life? He establishes the first imperative: don't turn back to the law—die to it
If that's how I get right with God, how does that mentality, that frame of reference, shape the rest of my life? How do I live with justification by faith lenses as I go out through my life? That I see the world and interpret the world, interact with people only through that lens? That's what Packer was saying. If you lose sight of that, everything else doesn't just become obscure, it falls apart. Well, there's several pieces that Paul unpacks, I think, to the answer to that question. So the first thing, how do I live in light of justification by faith? First answer Paul gives, don't turn back to the law. Instead, die to it. Remember, Whitefield says, we believe and we hear the gospel, we leave the covenant of works, and then our temptation is to turn right back around and go to it. And Paul cuts us off. He says, no, don't. You've left it. Don't go back to it. In fact, let it be dead to you. Die to it.
16 · Pastor Chris expounds Galatians 2:17, acknowledging its exegetical difficulty but pressing forward with the core argument
Galatians 2:17, 'But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not.' This massive phrase in the Greek that just says, 'Never! No! Not possible!' 'For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor.' Now, the class I took in December from Tom Schreiner on Galatians, he admits verse 17 is the trickiest exegetical verse in the entire book. So let's just admit it's a little hard to work around. There are godly, gospel-loving theologians that have 2 or 3 different interpretations on what exactly that verse means. So there's some things I don't want us to get bogged down in here, but the gist of Paul's argument is this: in the Jewish Christians' eyes, not keeping kosher is still sinful. That's what they're saying in Galatia, right? You believe, but if you don't go back and get circumcised, if you don't go back and keep all these things, you're sinning. You're not living as a Christian should live. Which makes sense when you understand it from their frame of reference. They're looking at the Old Testament and saying, God has said, live this way. So in their mind they're saying, if you don't continue living this way, you're living in sin. Paul flips the argument. Paul says, with the advent of the Messiah, the script is reversed. Now rebuilding the law as a means for justification, going back to works of the law, Paul says, that's now what's sinful. For thousands of years, Jews considered it is sinful not to keep the law. Paul says now that Jesus has come and perfectly kept it, it's now sinful to go back and try and keep the law if your purpose in keeping the law is to prove that you can get right with God. That's an incredible statement for a former Pharisee to make.
17 · Pastor Chris clarifies that the law itself is not sinful, but returning to it as a means of justification puts believers back under its tyranny
The law itself isn't sinful. Paul's not saying the law is sinful. He's saying if we return to the law as a means of adding to salvation, after faith, then what you're doing is you're putting yourself back under the law's influence. When Whitefield says the person, the poor sinner, is convicted and leaves the covenant of works, that's just saying the works of the law in order to earn favor. When he leaves that and has conviction and comes to faith and then turns back to it, that description Whitefield gives, Paul says when you do that, you're not just turning back, you're going back under its influence. And so the tyranny of the law, this impossible standard that is meant to break us, after faith in Christ, you're saying, 'I want to go back and live in that tyranny again. I want to go back and have no peace of conscience. I want to go back and struggle every day. Is God for me? Have I done enough to make sure that He loves me today?' That's the issue that's at stake. To do this, Paul says, is to reveal you're sinners. Now what he's saying there is we are sinners, and if we return to the Law after faith in Christ, all you're going to discover is what you already knew. Yeah, you're still a sinner. You still can't completely live this out. No justification, no getting right with God is accomplished by turning back. It's not just, 'I believed and that made me right with God at my conversion, and now I do holy things and that continues to make me right with God.' No, Paul says, if you go back and try and live that way, all you're going to find out is you're going to realize, and it's going to prove what you already know, that you stink at perfectly obeying the law. You stunk before Jesus, and now with Jesus, you're going to stink some more at trying to live perfectly. You can't do it.
18 · Pastor Chris expounds Galatians 2:19-21, establishing that dying to the law means being crucified with Christ
Now, the gospel gives us power for holiness. The Holy Spirit helps us in that, but that's because of our justification. Not to re-justify us. So how should we live? Well, look what verse 19 says. For through the law I died to the law. Why? So that. Anytime you see a so that, read the thing right before it. So that I might live to God. I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life 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. So how do you live in light of justification by faith? Die to the law. Die to holiness. Now, here's what I mean. Not holiness in the sense of seeking to live a holy life. That's still important in Paul's mind. But die to seeking salvation through rule keeping. Die to religion, as we defined it earlier, and live to God. If we've died to the law, Paul says, we've been crucified in Christ. The two terms are synonymous. If you've died to the law, then you're crucified in Christ. If you're crucified in Christ, then you will be dead to the law. What has happened for the eye to have life? What does Paul say? What has happened for the eye to live? It must die. The only way for salvation is for the eye to die. The death of ourselves. The answer isn't moral reformation or attempts to be a better person. The answer isn't Ben Franklin Christianity. You know Ben Franklin had this list of virtues? He had this list of 14 virtues. And he had set out, you know, he was just, he was a good Pharisee at heart. He meant well, but he thought, how do I improve myself, this Enlightenment man? How do I show myself to be more, morality's good, we need to be a good moral nation if we're gonna be a good democracy, Franklin thought. So he listed, 14 virtues. And so week 1, he would work on patience, and the next week he would work on self-control, and he'd cycle his way through. And at the end of 14 weeks, he would go back to the beginning and rework on patience, and then the next week rework on self-control. That is not the way you live. That is utter religion and no gospel. The answer to the Christian faith is that you've been crucified and that you have to die to yourself, which is another way of saying you have to die to self-righteousness. Here's the thing: the law can't change a person's desires. Remember in Romans, Paul just says the law just stirs it up. You know what the law did? It just took the hornet's nest of my sinful heart and just went, Grrr! And shook it up, and now the bees are just buzzing. The law just exploited the sin that was in my heart. The law can't change your desires. Coveting, you know where coveting comes from? It's inside you. Lust is in our bones. Selfishness and pride and envy and anger, they're at home in our hearts. The law can't reform. And it can't sanctify. What we need, Paul says, is the death of ourselves.
19 · Pastor Chris draws out the logical consequence of dying to the law: we now live to God as those crucified in Christ
To say, 'I died to the law,' is to say, 'I've been crucified with Christ.' Conversion is a death to the law and its power. Its power to live in light of Christ. It's a power to live in light of the cross. And so, to that answer, how do I live in light of justification by faith? Well, you die to the law. But if you're dying to the law, what do you live to? Well, you live to God as one crucified in Christ. I'm dead to the law. I'm done with trying to prove that I'm good enough. I'm not. I am morally bankrupt. I'm a bad guy if you really saw my heart, and I admit that. And because of justification by faith, I'm dead to living like that and trying to prove to you that I'm better. And now I live to God as one who's been crucified in Christ, as one who's covered in the righteousness of Christ, as one whose blood has been purified. Your only means of life is by dying. What an irony. To come to Christ and the freedom He brings. So why would you go back to the law?
20 · Pastor Chris expounds Galatians 2:21, showing that Christ's fulfillment of the law is what enables believers to die to the law
When Paul says that it's through the law, that he's died to the law, what he means there is he's referencing that Christ has become the perfect fulfillment of the law in our place. That Christ, that through the law he's died to the law means that Christ has already come and perfectly met every demand of the law and that Christ has already borne our curse. He's already borne the penalty for all of our inability to keep the law. The gospel has replaced the law's captivity with the grace of God. The gospel has replaced the law's captivity, the law's condemnation the law's perpetual guilt that I haven't done enough for God to love me, with the grace of God. So be dead to it and live to the praise of His glorious grace. Therefore, in verse 21, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness was of the law, then Christ died for no purpose. That's a big, big verse. Here's what Paul is saying: if the law could justify, then there's utterly no need for Christ. In other words, if I go back to religion after I believed, I'm essentially saying I didn't really need Christ in the first place. You know, Jesus was my fire insurance. I'll get Jesus to make sure, but now I want to go back and show I could have done it on my own. Yeah, I got Jesus in my hip pocket, so if all else fails, He's my safety net. But when I go back to the law, when I go back to religiosity, when I go back to showing and proving what I am fundamentally saying with my life, I don't want to die to the law because I don't need to live as one crucified in Christ. I can still show you at the end of the day, God, if I'd had a little bit more time, I could have done it. Christ transcends the law, and He fulfills it. To claim or pursue self-justification is really to make consistent statements that I don't need Jesus. His life, His death, His resurrection were superfluous. They're of no real need. They weren't necessary. When we turn back to religion, to rule keeping, morality as a means of measuring up before God, that is what you are saying fundamentally. I don't need Jesus now is really just another way of saying I didn't ever really need him to begin with.
21 · Extended Band of Brothers analogy illustrating the permanence and depth of crucified identity
Now, I want to use an illustration. What does it look like to be so dead to the law and so alive to being crucified in Christ? What does that look like in the the life of somebody. Has anybody ever seen the miniseries Band of Brothers? It's a documentary— not a documentary, it's a miniseries HBO did showing and following Easy Company, this elite group of US soldiers, these Airborne Rangers, as they go through World War II. Now, I saw this for the first time in college, and I was smart when I saw this. I knew that it was kind of a 10-hour version of Saving Private Ryan. And so I went into this thinking, okay, if I'm going to watch this bad boy, I've got to watch it with surround sound. I've got to see this thing so that, you know, when the bullets whiz, I'm going to hear through the speakers that bullet whiz past my ear. And when there's an explosion and an 88mm mortar falls, the room's going to shake because the bass is shaking it. That's the only way to watch something like that, right? Of course, of course. All the guys are elbowing, saying, 'We need to get the surround sound from Best Buy.' That was the way I watched it, and it was incredible. And it was horrifying. I mean, it was like you were almost there. You think of that first scene from Saving Private Ryan when they're on the beach on D-Day. And just boom, boom, explosion. You got bullets zipping by, and all of a sudden just that silence, because a concussion has come and he can't even hear. And he's just laying there and the screen is shaking and you don't hear anything. And then all of a sudden his hearing starts to come back and all the sounds and concussions and horror of battle comes back. Remember seeing that for the first time? Band of Brothers, I walked out of watching that and just thought, 'Man, I've got a new perspective for what those men did. I have a new perspective for what freedom costs.' Right? And then, a day or two later, I was back to living life as usual. But if you've watched Band of Brothers, and you've seen those interviews, Those interviews with those soldiers that they show with each episode, and these old men, 80, 90 years old, these survivors, they know it in their bones. It wasn't just surround sound that made D-Day and Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge and Operation Market Garden real. It wasn't just a movie and great acting that made liberating a concentration camp and all those horrors real. They bear it and they feel it in their bones. 50, 60 years later, they're still changed by it. They go every day as someone who is different than they were before that experience. It's changed them. There is no going back to Dick Winters prior to World War II. He's dead to that Dick Winters. He can't go back. He's had an experience that has utterly changed him. That's the kind of thing that Paul is describing here. Rather than the horrors of war, he's describing the glories of the gospel. It should change you in that way.
22 · Pastor Chris applies the Band of Brothers illustration directly to Galatians 2:20, declaring that being crucified with Christ is not mystical or optional but an indicative reality for all believers
Experience it, and then 2 days later be back to life as usual. You are dead to the law, but now you live to God as one who's been crucified in Christ. That's what he's describing here. That's the significance. That's verse 20. I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live. The old me is gone. Christ is the one who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God. Who loved me and gave himself for me. I'm a completely different person. This being crucified in Christ is not some mystical experience. It is an indicative reality for all Christians. There's no let go and let God in Paul's theology. There's no, there was a total surrender and then mysteriously I released myself into Christ's power and was different. There's a lot of Christians that believe that kind of stuff. Paul is speaking in frank terms of what happens for all of us at regeneration and conversion. We have all been crucified with Christ. Now pursue fillings of the Spirit so that you can live that way, so you can know that reality, you can be changed by it on a daily basis. Because of this, Christ now literally and actually indwells you. Why go back to the law when the lawkeeper, the perfect Christ, the Son of God, already indwells you? The one who already kept the law is already living inside of you. You're united with him. You're a co-heir of Christ, of all his blessings. So why go back to the law?
23 · Pastor Chris expounds how faith functions in the Christian life: daily trust rooted in God's love displayed at the cross
We live by faith in the new life in Christ. Of daily trusting and believing and leaning on Jesus. Peter was living by fear in what he did in Antioch. He's living out of step with the gospel. But to live accurately as Christians is to live by faith in the Son of God who loved me, loved me so much he died for me. We are always in every situation called upon to trust God. Every sin is an expression of unbelief and a lack of living filled with faith that because of Jesus, God is perpetually and unfailingly for me. He is for my good. That's what faith is. And the absence of faith is an unbelief that says, I can't really trust that. We can really trust because Jesus loves us, because he gave himself for us. Faith is born from trust that is rooted and founded and built upon the cornerstone of God's love displayed upon the cross. We can't trust someone who we don't believe loves us. You can't do it. It's not possible. The language is intentionally intimate and intentionally experiential. If we aren't trusting God, Paul says, then we aren't experiencing his love. This is how the gospel functions in our daily lives. To lose sight of this is to tragically grow distant from Christ. That's what Packer was sort of saying at the beginning. If we go distant from the gospel of justifying grace, we are inevitably growing away from Jesus himself. We're going back to the law. There's no intimacy with Jesus that's not a result of the gospel's past work. And the fruit of our ongoing awareness of the gospel's ongoing and continued significance. Does that make sense? This is why Luther says we must relearn the gospel every day. Remember the quote? The immature saint who says they've got the gospel and moved on to meatier things? Luther says they've never had the gospel to begin with. You must be relearning it every day. The moment that you think you've outgrown it is the moment you've forgotten it.
24 · Pastor Chris contrasts two mutually exclusive identities: religious self-identity versus crucified identity
Paul is describing here a total shift in identity. Religion, working our way into God's favor, and the gospel are two diametrically opposed ways of considering God and considering ourselves. Paul's describing a crucial way in which the gospel of grace changes our religious self-identity into crucified identity. Last, last thought. Religious self-identity says this: when I'm not thinking in terms of the gospel, when I'm thinking about myself, my identity is built up in these other ways. It's what religious self-identity says: obedience creates acceptance. Obedience brings blessing. Criticism is crushing to me because it cuts down the illusion that I'm primarily good. I can't accept criticism. I can't accept correction. Any threat to my image, for the religious person, must be destroyed. Religious self-identity swings between pride, pride in our own moral superiority, and then disgust with anyone who's weak or insecure or inadequate, to the other side. My identity is based on my work ethic. My identity as a religious person is based on my moral superiority. I'm superior to you. Because I really think deep down I'm better than you. I'm holier than you. I'm more moral than you. The religious person finds his spiritual identity in success and performance, and because of that, because of that, the religious person's heart oozes idols like status and ability and discipline. And moral success and titles. And to lose one of those idols is to lose a part of himself. And so it must be defended at all costs. Regardless of what I profess about God, these are the places where hope and significance in life really lie for me. I count myself at the end of the day Worthy. Because the idol of my bank account says this. Because I've worked really hard and I get to have this really cool prefix in front of my name, this title. Because I know, Lord, thank You that I'm not like that sinner over there, right? The Gospels say. That's the identity of a religious person.
25 · Pastor Chris presents the alternative: crucified identity
Crucified identity says this: acceptance, being justified with God, produces obedience. Obedience stems from joy in Christ and desire to delight more fully in God. Criticism doesn't devastate me because my identity is built from what the cross has already said about me, and the cross has already acknowledged my inadequacy. And also God's love for me in spite of it. Crucified self-identity puts no merit, no merit in morality. The lens of the cross reminds me each day that I was so bad, so bad, so utterly unrighteous that Christ had to die for me. But that God loves me so immensely in Christ that it was his joy to send his Son to do just that. I see the lost, I see those who don't measure up to many standards of the world, of the church, whatever it might be. I see the lost through the lens of my own utter need for grace. And I extend grace to the weak, grace to the hardened, grace to the broken. The crucified self lives in the freedom of knowing that Christ pleases. God and no one else. A Christian who is living by faith in the works of the Son is pleasing God. Pleasing God is not about what we do, but about believing in the only one who could authentically please the Father. Even on our best day with our best works, we could not be acceptable to God. But even on our worst day, through faith in Christ's righteousness on our behalf, we are acceptable and we are loved by God.
26 · Pastor Chris brings the sermon to its climax by synthesizing the entire argument into a vision of crucified identity
As humans, we derive our worth from what we can accomplish. That's how we're wired. Our work, our families, our athletic abilities, our bank accounts, our reputations— the list goes on and on and on and on and on. We've made an art form out of creating places to place worth. The gospel informs us that none of these accomplishments commends us before God. The gospel is the true hope of our lives. Our lives. And if it is the true hope of our lives, it will also be the true source of our identity. Faith says, Christ is my righteousness. Christ is my hope. Christ is my salvation. Christ is my life. My identity, my worth is Christ, and it's nothing else. My worth isn't defined or measured by accomplishments or achievements. My worth is utterly bound up in Christ. I've been crucified with Christ, Paul says. That's who I am. Nothing else matters. The experience of understanding and coming to life in faith in Christ was so life-altering for me that I live every day now with that reality before me. I see the world, and in the forefront of my seeing the world is the cross of Christ, and that's how I view it. And it doesn't matter what anyone says about me because I know when God looks down upon me, He's looking at me, and at the forefront of His vision of me is the cross of Christ, and He's favorable. I don't need your commendation. I don't need your praise. If it's for the right reasons, it's great, I'll accept it, wonderful. But I live and I am satisfied knowing that I have God's commendation because of Christ. Because I have trusted in Him and I stand before God and God, the judge, looks at me and says, I'm not just your judge anymore. I'm your Father. You are so completely and perfectly crucified with Christ, so bound up with Him in all of His perfections, that you are His co-heir. That every ounce of My love for the Son is now yours in Jesus. I pray for Providence that we would have religionless delight. A religionless delight in pursuit of living out in proclamation of Jesus Christ and him crucified. That even though Isaiah says our righteousness are polluted garments, that we put on that righteousness, our duties, and it's polluted. Isaiah also says, yet I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exalt in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He's covered me with the robe of righteousness. He's covered me with Jesus.
27 · Closing prayer asking God to help the congregation put off religion and corrupted identities and put on Christ's righteousness
God, every inclination of our hearts, of our flesh, of our frailty is tempted to turn away from that. God, you know, you know our frame. You know our weaknesses. You know our limitations. You know our temptations. You tell us that part of the Incarnation was so that Jesus would understand perfectly, that He could sympathize perfectly with us in all our weaknesses. So with the author of our righteousness standing before Your throne, praying for us and pleading for us right now, God, I ask to Praise your glorious grace. Would you help us to put off religion? Help us to put off man-centered working towards God as if we could ever be holy enough. Help us to put off corrupted identities that care more about what man says than what God says. And help us to put on with perfect delight and complete joy and eternal satisfaction the righteousness of Christ and to live each day, every moment through the lens, 'I'm dead to the law, I'm dead to my old life, I live to God as one who is crucified in Christ.' That Jesus would be our everything. And Lord, that those ripples would be the waves of a tsunami going through our lives. That to come into contact with a person here at Providence would be to come into contact with someone who just oozes a crucified identity, who just oozes satisfaction and peace because Jesus died on their behalf. Do this for your glory, for the name of your Son, for the joy of your people. Amen.