I hope that's correct because
if not, John Chapman would be very angry at me. All right, for our Bible lesson
this morning, if you wish to follow along, turn to Galatians
chapter 2. Galatians chapter 2. I'll give
you just a moment to get there. Galatians chapter 2. I want to
read just one verse and of course this one verse is a part of Paul's
rebuke to Peter when Peter had walked not uprightly according
to the truth of the gospel. basically all Peter did was remove
from one group of people, the Gentiles, and went over and sat
down with another group of people, some Jews. But here's a part
of what the Apostle Paul said to Peter to his face, he said,
because he was to be blamed. Verse 16 of Galatians chapter
2, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the
law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. Even we have believed
in Jesus Christ, that we may be justified by the faith of
Christ and not by the works of the law. For by the works of
the law shall no flesh be justified. The subject clearly here in this
one statement of the Apostle Paul is this, justified by Christ's
faith. When I was in religion, when
basically born and raised into what we would call a fundamental
Bible-believing, soul-winning church, I was taught that Christ
died to make salvation possible. In specific, I was taught that
Christ died and did not actually justify anybody by his death,
but made it possible for us to be justified when we performed
our one act of faith. And yet that in no way fits what
Paul says here. May our God give us grace this
morning in our lesson to glean in this passage, and once again,
to find comfort in God's dear son, because that's the only
place I truly find comfort now. When I was in religion, it didn't
take much to comfort me. When God opened my eyes, nothing
comforted me but the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I wanna give you three things this morning trying to kind of
glean from this statement of the Apostle Paul. And I want
to deal mainly with the third point. So I'll move through the
first two quickly so I don't hold us too long for our Bible
lesson. First of all, think about it.
Justification by law works is out. It's out, period. No discussion, no debate. But we need to talk about this.
We need to figure this out, someone may say. No. Knowing that a man
is not justified by the works of the law. Now, I fully realize
that not everyone knows this. That's why they want to debate.
That's why they want to discuss. But Paul says somebody knows
this. Somebody knows this, knowing
that a man is not justified by the works of the law. No debate on this again, no argument,
no mind games. We had a fellow, and I don't
say this, I say this with a broken heart, a man that I'd been with
for 35, 36 years under gospel preaching. a deacon in the local assembly,
and a man who I thought had my back no matter what. And just a few months ago, he
turned his back on what I preach and said that what I preach is
heresy. Ripped my heart out. ripped my heart out because knowing
that a man is not justified by the works of the law is established
fact. So move on. Justification. What does it mean? I don't want
to try to oversimplify it, but I don't want to stand here this
morning in this lesson and try to sound theological. Justification. It means, we could say it this
way, declared to be right. but it means to be right. God
does not declare something to be right when it's not. That's
a false balance. God only declares to be right
what is right, that what is right. As a matter of fact, one of the
old writers in the Old Testament said, God hates a false balance. God hates a false balance. I
know everyone here probably has heard this before. You ever heard
of the phrase justifiable homicide? If you kill someone in self-defense,
it's not, it's wrong to do so, but we'll act like it was right.
We understand that that is right. Man, even by his own law says,
if someone attacks you, you have the right to defend yourself. Even if it means taking that
person's life, if they're seeking to take yours. So the homicide
in that case is right. We don't just act like it's right. It is right. So justification. Now, justification has many facets. justified freely by His grace.
This is statements from scripture. Justified freely by His grace,
justified by faith, justified by blood, justified in the name
of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God. And in our
text, twice Paul writes words like this. First of all, justified
by the faith of Jesus Christ and that we might be justified
by the faith of Christ. All of these, now I don't want
to spend too much time here because I want to get to this third point.
All of these are the same justification. It's just many different facets
of this same justification. A preacher one time put it this
way, we often speak, and I've said it myself, we talk about
imparted righteousness and imputed righteousness, but that is to
imply that there are two different kinds of righteousness. You understand
what I'm saying? He said it is righteousness imparted
and righteousness imputed. They're both the same righteousness,
it's just different facets of that righteousness. So we have
all these different facets of justification. Try to give you
a little illustration of this. Most of you can relate to this.
A diamond. And you take that diamond, and
a person who is skilled can, with liens, they can begin to
cut that diamond and form it into a thing that has, what,
many different facets. And when you look at it from
different angles, it has different views, but it's still, what,
the one same diamond. So again, I stress, All of these
are one single justification. Now there are different justifications,
that is different kinds. They're justified by works. James
speaks of that, does he not? James speaks of being justified
by works. The scripture speaks, and Christ
warns some other men of being justified before men. So these
are other justifications, but these are never justification
before God. Never. So what we're talking
about is justification before God. All right, now we're on
the third part now. When God, I don't remember when
this was. I mean, I don't have a date or
a time, but when God first opened my eyes to what Paul is saying
here, and this was, I mean, what I can remember, this was some
years after God had opened my eyes and revealed to me Jesus
Christ in His person and work, but I had so much rubbish from
religion around me, like the Israelites when they came back
from Babylonian captivity and remember they started to rebuild
the temple, but what did they have to do first before they
could even start to rebuild the temple? They had to remove the
rubbish. All where the old temple had
been demolished and the rubbish was laying around, they had to
remove all that. It's hard to remove all the rubbish. I still
have a lot of rubbish around me. But when God opened my eyes
to this, it let me breathe a little. Because I was still, even though
I knew Christ was my justification, I still was leaning somehow and
in some way on my act of believing as being that which was the grounds
of my justification before God, but it's not. Christ's faith
is the grounds of my justification before God. And my believing
him joins me to him who justified me by his faith. Therein am I
justified by believing. But let me look at this. I've
got five things that we'll, I'll try to be brief. So think about
this phrase, justified by the faith of Jesus Christ. Let me
establish a foundation here. Number one, it is of Jesus. If you look at it in the Greek,
and I'm able to do that, I don't understand much Greek. I studied
it a little. I got caught up with the Greek
language one time and fell in love with it, and God said, you
left your first love. So I run back to Christ as quick
as God enabled me to. But in the Greek, when we read
of Jesus here in the English, it's two separate words. You
understand? It's of Jesus. In the Greek, it is one word.
because the possessive, the two letters that are added to the
name Jesus or Christ, makes it to be the possessive sense. In
other words, it denotes ownership, okay? Ownership. So then, here's
the second thought. This is Christ's own personal
faith. hear what I'm saying now? This
is Christ's own personal faith. Therein are we justified. So let me read it again. Now
just look at it with me. Just follow along. Knowing that
a man is not justified by the works of the law. That's out.
We're not even going to go any further than in that other than
constantly reaffirm that that's the truth. But then look, but
by the faith, now look at of Jesus, you see it? Of Jesus Christ,
even we have believed in Jesus Christ that we may be justified
not by our believing, do you see it? But by the faith of Christ
again. One word of Christ is one word
in the Greek. It denotes it's his own personal
faith that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not
by the works of the law for by the works of the law shall no
flesh be justified. So then, this is the truth of
the scripture. Here's our third thought. Our
believing In Jesus Christ, I've mentioned it, but let me say
it again. Our believing in Jesus Christ joins us to him who justified
us by his own faith. Our faith in Christ is the measure,
the measure. This is what the scripture calls
it. This is the inspired word from God through the apostle
Paul. Our faith, our believing in Christ is that measure that
God dealt to us in his own wise purpose. Now turn with me to
Romans chapter 12, and we'll look at that. I don't want you
to take this to be Walter's word. All right, Romans chapter 12.
just want to deal for the sake of time, I want to deal with
just two verses, but you can look later at the context. Make
sure I'm not twisting this. I expect you to do this. Make
sure I'm not twisting this to try to prove my own point. But
let's look at verse 3, what Paul says here in Romans 12 verse
3, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among
you, not to think of himself more highly than ought to think,
but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man
the measure of faith." Do you see that? Dealt. And to look
at it in the context, God does this sovereignly by his spirit.
And He gives to men these gifts, severally or individually, as
He will. There is a measure, a certain
amount, that God has decreed to give to every one of His elect. I don't know what that measure
is. But bless God, it's enough. it's enough that it satisfies
and pleases God. So we see there's the measure
of faith. Now look at verse six. He says it in a slightly different
way. Having been gifts differing according
to the grace that is given us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy
according to the proportion of faith. You see that? So if we
have been regenerated by the Spirit of God and converted by
the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, then we have the portion
of faith that God ordained for us to have. Now, here's my fourth point. And I don't want to, I don't,
let me just give it to you. Here's the fourth thing. God does not create faith in
us. because God does not create his own perfections. His perfections
are. They are as eternal as God. God
is the only being that exists that has faith intrinsically. Faith is a perfection of God
and God don't create faith. He gives faith. Now do you get
what I'm saying? We sing a song at Sovereign Grace
Chapel, and you all may sing it here too. I was gonna look
it up, see if you all had it in your hymn book, but I forgot
and didn't do that. But I think the title of it is
I Know Whom I Have Believed. And it's a good song, don't get
me wrong, but there's a phrase in there that says about the
believer and God doing something for the person who he brings
to believe, and it says, creating faith in him, meaning creating
faith in Christ, but that is not scripturally so. He doesn't
create faith. To create means to bring into
being something that did not exist before. God don't create
us a different, special kind of faith. He gives us his faith
in measure. see it? In measure. And here's
the thing about that measure. I want to point this out. Here's
the thing about that measure. Christ said that if you had faith
as a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, be
removed and cast into the sea. Now I might not be quoting exactly,
but didn't our Lord say that? So that lets me know a couple
of things. One, the faith He gave me must be very small. Because
I can't remove mountains. But here's the second thing I
know for sure. It's his faith he gave to me. And it's precious. And it's glorious. Even if it's
smaller than a grain of mustard seed. Because it's not something
we worked up. It's not even something different
he created and put in us. It is a part of himself. His majesty. His glory that He
in free sovereign grace says, I give this to you through the
preaching of the gospel. When God allowed me to see that,
I realized this faith is not up to me to produce or to nurture
or to keep in power. We are kept by the power of God
through faith. You see that? Kept by the power
of faith. God. So briefly, remember this
faith that Paul talks about being our justification is Christ's
own personal faith. He gives us, God gives us a portion
of Christ's faith to us and faith, you've heard the phrase, water
seeks its own level. And it does, I mean, you dig
a ditch and if you wanna know how to get that thing perfectly
level, you just fill it full of water and that water will
seek its own level and it'll be level. But let me say this
about faith. Faith seeks its own origin. Faith
goes back to its source. And did not Paul clearly say
in Hebrews 12 too, looking unto Jesus. the author and the finisher
of faith. So if God gives me faith, if
he gave me faith, if it's really that portion that he determined
for me, if it's really from God, where will I look? To Jesus,
you see. Faith will run back to its origin. If what I perceive in me as being
faith looks to anything other than Jesus, it is something I've
mustered up and it is of no value before God. It is dead works. It is unclean and filthy rag. So now let's get right to the
nitty gritty. Here's the fifth point. We read,
we read of the faith of Christ. in two different ways. I'll give
them to you and then we'll go to these passages. Before I give
it to you, let me try to give us something that'll help our
minds to grasp or at least be prepared for what I'm about to
give us. Faith, that is that faith that has God as its origin. That faith that is a perfection
in God alone and that he gives to us in measure or in his proportion. That faith always produces action. You hear what I'm saying? That
faith always produces action. If you go to Hebrews 11, we're
not gonna take time to do it this morning. By faith, Noah
being warned of God, moved with fear, and he acted, didn't he? He built a boat, you see. By faith, Abel, what? Just sat down and said, well,
if I'm one of God's, I'm one of God's and I'll just wait to go to glory
one day. No, by faith, Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice than
came. This faith we're talking about
always has action. So, if I want to see the faith
of Christ, let us look at His action. Okay. Now here's at least
two. There are more than this, but
you know, I'm only going to spend another 10 minutes, hopefully,
hopefully at best in this. We read of Christ's faith in
his perceptive obedience, that is his obedience to God Almighty's
ordained purpose. We'll look at that. And also
we see the faith of Christ in his penal obedience, that is
his sacrificial sufferings on Calvary's tree. So first of all,
turn to John 17, we'll look at the first of these. And he doesn't
give us Well, actually, let me stop and scratch that out. He
was not giving us anything here in John 17. He was praying to
the Father. But in praying to the Father, he was giving to
us much. That's the way I should put this.
But I want you to look at one verse here. And remember, we're
talking about Christ. Christ is faith. He is faithfulness. That's one of the things that
they mocked him about when he hung on the tree, that he trusted
in the Lord, that's faith. But we'll see, our Lord described
this, and he describes it as he's praying to the Father. Let
me get my spot here. Look at verse four. This is his
perceptive obedience. He doesn't tell us all about
the obedience, but he describes it. He gives a summary of it.
I have glorified thee on the earth. That lets me know he must
have all faith because I can't pray that to the Father. Can
you? Look at it. I have glorified
thee on the earth. I have finished. You see it? I have finished, completed the
work which thou gavest me to do. What does he mean here? He still has Calvary to go. Right? He still has his interceding
for us at the right hand of God the Father, but he's talking
about his coming down as the servant of God and honoring and
obeying God in every facet. And he did that in absolute,
full, free, intrinsic faith. Everything he did, he did in
faith toward the Father. He trusted in the Lord and he
finished not the works, but it's summed up as the work the Father
gave him to do. For instance, if I'm in Christ,
if I was chosen in Christ before the world began, if you were
chosen in Christ before the world began, When he was conceived in Mary's
womb, we were conceived in Mary's womb. When he was born, we were
born. When he obeyed his mother and
father, Earthly, Mary and Joseph, we obeyed our mother and father. When he did always those things
that pleased the father, if we're in him, always did those things
that pleased the Father. When He honored the Law, we honored
the Law. We honored the Law. But now,
let's move on. Let's look at Christ in His penal, penal obedience. Turn to Philippians chapter 2. Philippians chapter 2. And again,
go back and look at the context, make sure that Walter's not pulling
something out of her, trying to pull some rabbit out of a
hat. Here in this passage, and mainly in one verse, we see the
faith of Christ manifested in his penal obedience. That's P-E-N-A-L. He was being
punished for something, okay? Look at verse eight, and being
found, In fashion as a man, he humbled himself. It takes faith to do that because
he is God Almighty. He is God Almighty. He humbled
himself and became, you see this, obedient. And became obedient,
but not just any regular obedient. He was obedient from the day
he was born all the way up until he prayed that prayer to the
father that we have recorded in John 17. But here we see Paul
now moving into Calvary. And he says he humbled himself
and became obedient unto death. But let our minds grasp the truth
here. He was not allowed like Was it
Jacob, I think? Forgive me if I'm wrong. Remember,
he was old, stricken in age, and he turned his head to the
wall and gave up the ghost and died. He died quietly in his
bed. That wasn't the death. Christ
died. You see it? He humbled himself,
became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. So he was obeying the father
when he suffered and died on that tree. So if I'm in him,
if you're in him, when he suffered and died on that tree, we suffered
and died. on that tree. Paul puts it this
way, even to the Galatians, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me. That's not a religious cliche.
That's a actual spiritual fact. Christ is in my body. if I'm his, isn't that what the
book says? The spirit of Christ himself, the Holy Spirit of God,
that is one with Father, Son, and Spirit, actually dwells in
my body. Sometimes that frightens me.
Sometimes that comforts me. But it's all for my blessing,
nonetheless. But look, look at the next, I
wanna give you this next one. Next couple verses, wherefore,
God also hath highly exalted him, given him a name which is
above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should
bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under
the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord to the glory of God the Father. I need That kind of faith. And I have it in my substitute,
in my redeemer, and my surety. But the glory of that is He didn't
just leave me to float around here wishing, well, just maybe
one day when I get to the judgment, maybe just one day when I get
to the judgment, then I'll find out if I'm really one of God's
or not. Nope, let's go back to our lesson text, Galatians 2
verse 16. Knowing, is it? Knowing that a man is not justified
by the works of the law. See it? A man is not justified
by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. Even we have believed in Jesus
Christ that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not
by the works of the law, for by the works of the law shall
no flesh be justified. Heavenly Father, I pray that
you, not me, not this clay pot, God, that you would have Christ
set before us in our hearts and minds in the full preeminence
that he is. Force us by your compassion,
mercy, and grace to just force us to look to him, rest in him,
and trust in him. In Christ's name, amen.