Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program today,
I'm glad you could join us. And if you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'm going to be preaching from the book of
Galatians, the New Testament epistle that Paul wrote to the
churches in Galatia as he was inspired by the Spirit. Galatians
chapter three, and I'm going to begin with verse six. And
the title of the message is justified through faith. Justified through
faith. What does that mean? You know,
in Romans chapter three, the apostle Paul wrote about this
subject being justified by faith. And that word faith is an interesting
word in the scriptures. You know, the base meaning or
the root meaning, you might say, of the Greek word faith that
we see in faith is knowledge or knowing. In other words, the
idea there is that we believe something because we know it
to be true. If you believe something and
it's not true, you believe a lie. And so that word faith has to
do with knowledge. Sometimes the word faith is a
verb referring to the act of a person believing something. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ
and you shall be saved. Sometimes the word faith is a
noun which refers to the content or the body of doctrine which
embodies faith. What is your faith? The faith
of your choice, people used to say. Go to the church where they
preach the faith of your choice. In 2 Corinthians 13, Paul wrote,
examine yourselves whether you be in the faith. Sometimes faith is talking about
the body of doctrine, the gospel that God's true people believe. And sometimes it talks about
Christ faithfulness or a believer's faithfulness. to do what God
brings them to do and Christ, in his case, his faithfulness
to do what the Father sent him to do to save his people. Well,
here it's talking about Abraham as Paul had been warning the
Galatian professing believers against the false preachers of
legalism who sought to teach to them that their salvation
was not complete until they added their works, their law keeping
to it. And he goes to use Abraham as
an example. And in verse six, he says this,
even as Abraham believed God, Abraham believed God. Now what's
essential to understand this is you have to understand what
God promised Abraham. Well, God made Abraham many promises. Now you can go all the way back
to Genesis 12 and read all the way up through Abraham's life
and you'll see the many promises that God made Abraham. For example,
God promised Abraham a physical land, which would be the land
of Palestine that the Jews occupied. Abraham himself didn't occupy
that, didn't live there, but his ancestors did. And so, you
know, we talked about here in Galatians 3 later on, he talks
about the law of God given to the Hebrew children outside of
Egypt through Moses on Mount Sinai. And that was 430 years,
he says, after God made promise to Abraham. But God did promise
that to them for a temporary time. So God made Abraham some
promises, but some of those promises were physical. Some of those
promises were spiritual. Now the physical promises made
to Abraham applied to his physical ancestor, the Jews. And you understand
that, who came through Isaac, the miracle child of Abraham.
And we're gonna be talking about Isaac here in just a moment,
a little bit. So the physical promises applied
to the physical nation of Israel under the old covenant law. But
the spiritual promises, they were applied to Abraham's spiritual
descendants, spiritual Israel, spiritual Jews, which is all
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, Jew and Gentile. And this is
one of the points that he makes here in Galatians 3. He made
the point in Romans 2 and Romans 3 and Romans 9, other places,
Romans 11. God, spiritually speaking, eternally,
as far as eternal salvation is concerned, God has a people out
of every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation. And they are spiritual
children, descendants of Abraham. because Abraham is an archetype. He is an example of God, how
God justifies sinners. And if you'll look over in Galatians
chapter three and verse 26, this is our text now. If you look
across the page, how Paul ends up this section of Galatians
verse 26, listen to what it says. It says, for you are all the
children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. In other words, if God
brings me to saving faith, gives me the gift of faith, then that's
what faith is now. It's a gift from God. Now I want
you to understand this. Faith is not the product or the
result of your free will choice. Because the Bible teaches that
if we're left to ourselves in our natural state, spiritual
deadness and sinful and unbelief and depravity, we will not choose
God. We will not choose Christ, left
to ourselves. If we receive Christ, it's the
product of God's grace and power that's given to us by the Holy
Spirit in the new birth. And it's the gift of God. So
he says, for you are all the children of God by faith in Christ
Jesus. Now the churches of Galatia,
were made up both of believing Jews and believing Gentiles. But he says, you're all children
of God by faith in Christ Jesus. And he says, verse 27 of Galatians
3, for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have
put on Christ. Now that baptism there is not
the ordinance, the Christian ordinance of water baptism. Those
who say that it is, they're taking it out of context. You know,
there's a group of people who call themselves Christians who
say, well, you've got to be baptized in water to be saved. That's
a lie. And they'll use verses like this.
But this baptism, the word baptized, sometimes in the Bible refers
to the ordinance of water baptism, which is not salvation, but a
confession of salvation already. accomplished in you. It's a confession
of public identification with Christ and His people. That's
what the ordinance of water baptism is, where we identify it with
Christ in His death, His burial, His resurrection. but the new
birth has already taken place. See, if you're baptized without
having been born again by the Spirit and brought to faith in
Christ, all you're doing is just taking a dip in a pool, but you're
not baptized according to the Scriptures. So he says, as many
of you have been baptized, the word baptized literally means
placed into. In other words, you've been united
to Christ. And how are believers united to Christ? Well, there's
several ways. Number one, all of God's people, His elect now,
that's not just the Jews, but all who come to faith in Christ,
they were united to Christ before the foundation of the world as
God chose them and gave them to Christ, put all the responsibility
of their salvation upon Him and made Him their surety. other
words, their sin debt even before the world began was placed upon
Christ as their surety. So that's the eternal being placed
in Christ, the eternal union of God's elect with Christ. Secondly,
they are in union with Christ legally in redemption. When Christ,
having their sins imputed to Him, being made their surety,
He had to become their substitute and take upon Him the likeness
of sinful flesh, yet without sin. He's God and man in one
person, the Word made flesh dwelling among us, and obeyed the law
unto death on the cross. And when he died, he died for
his people. Having their sins charged to
him, he put their sins away and his death, burial and resurrection. And that's what we confess in
the ordinance of Christian baptism. That's why we're not sprinkled
or poured, we're dipped in the water, we're placed into the
water and come out of the water. And so that's a legal union of
redemption, placed into Christ. And then thirdly, they're placed
into Christ at the new birth. That's the spiritual union with
Christ. That's spiritual baptism. That's
the baptism of the spirit. The baptism of the spirit is
not some, you get saved and later on you get the second work of
the Holy Spirit and you begin talking in tongues and all that
stuff. No, the baptism of the spirit is being born again by
the spirit under the preaching of the gospel. where you're brought
to faith in Christ, that knowledge is revealed to you, placed upon
your mind, your affections, your will, your heart, and you believe
in Him, and you lay hold of Him, and you rest in Him, and you
repent of all dead works and idolatry, and you follow Him. Now that's what he's talking
about here in Galatians 3.27. For as many of you as have been
placed into Christ have put on Christ. Now what does it mean
put him on? That means to believe in him.
If you're in union with Christ, if you're placed into Christ,
if he's your surety, if he's your substitute, if he's your
redeemer, if he's your life giver, if he's your protector and preserver,
You put him on, you believe in him, that's how you know. How
do I know I'm one of God's elect? How do I know that he died for
me on the cross? How do I know that I've been
born again? I believe in Christ, I put him
on, I put him on every day. All the time, I keep on believing
Him. That's preservation, you see. And so he says in verse 28, now
if you've been placed into Christ, if you've been baptized in Christ
and put Him on, believe in Him, verse 28, there's neither Jew
nor Greek, there's neither bond nor free, there's neither male
nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Those divisions. that existed under the old covenant,
they're no more. We're all one in Christ, and
look at verse 29, and here's the key. And if you be Christ,
if you belong to Christ, that's a possessive there, if you belong
to Him, Then are you Abraham's seed, Abraham's child, Abraham's
descendant, and heirs according to the promise. Now, what is
the promise? The promise is eternal life,
salvation, eternal life, the forgiveness of sins, justification,
all by the grace of God in and by the Lord Jesus Christ, in
His glorious person and finished work. Now, go back over to Galatians
3 and verse 6. Even as Abraham believed God,
he believed that promise of salvation, conditioned on the promised Messiah,
the Lord Jesus Christ. That was the spiritual promise.
And God told him, in you, all nations will be blessed. In other
words, this is not just the gospel promise for the Jews only. It's
for the Gentiles too. Not all without exception now. Not all Jews without exception,
not all Gentiles without exception, but God's elect remnant out of
the Jewish nation. God's elect remnant out of the
Gentile nations. The elect of God. God hath from
the beginning chosen you unto salvation through sanctification
of the spirit and belief of the truth, whereunto he called you
by our gospel. Second Thessalonians 2, 13 and
14. So he says, even as Abraham believed
God, and it was accounted, it was imputed, charged, reckoned
to him, credited to him for righteousness. Now what was credited to Abraham
for righteousness? What God promised him. And that
is the merit, the value, the complete salvation accomplished
by his Messiah to come, the Christ. The righteousness of God in Christ
was imputed to Abraham. How do you know? He believed
God. And he wouldn't have believed God except for the work of the
Spirit in him. So it was accounted to him for
righteousness. That it there, just like in Romans
chapter four, verse three, it was accounted to him, it was
imputed to him for righteousness, refers to the merits of Christ,
obedience unto death. You could read it this way. Even
as Abraham believed God and the merits of the, the merit of the
obedience unto death of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom God promised,
was imputed to him for righteousness. And that's the way it is with
every true believer. If you're a believer in Christ, you have
a righteousness, a perfect righteousness that answers the demands of God's
law and justice by which God forgives you of all your sins
and by which God justifies you, declares you righteous. And you
did not have one thing to do with it. It was all the work
of Christ. You didn't make one contribution
towards it. And your believing it didn't
make it good. That righteousness that Christ
accomplished made your believing good. Because if Christ had not
risen from the dead, because he accomplished righteousness,
our faith would be in vain. That's what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians
15. Well, look at verse seven of
Galatians 3. He says, know you therefore that
they which are of faith, that's believers, sinners saved by grace,
who look to Christ as their complete salvation, the Lord their righteousness,
the same are the children of Abraham. Doesn't matter if you're
a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised. Paul wrote
in Galatians 6 14, God forbid that I should glory save in the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he said later on circumcision
doesn't mean a thing or uncircumcision. Do you believe in Christ? That's
circumcision of the heart. If you're a believer, if you've
been born again and come believe in Christ and repentant of dead
works, that's circumcision of the heart. And so he says in
verse eight, and the scripture, now that's the word of God, foreseeing
that God would justify the heathen through faith. That's Gentiles.
The heathen, that's a way of referring to the Gentiles. Now
the Jews were no better off, Romans chapter two tells us that.
And so it's not that the Jews were better, but this refers
to the Gentiles. He's saying he would justify
the heathen through faith. He preached before the gospel
unto Abraham saying, in thee shall all nations be blessed.
God has a people out of every tribe, kindred, tongue and nation.
And He's going to justify them through faith, that is, through
the person and work of Christ. And they'll believe it. And those
who do believe it, they're of faith, and they're called the
spiritual children of Abraham. Not that Abraham's their Savior.
Abraham's not our Savior. Abraham was a sinner saved by
grace, just like me. No better than me. Abraham had
a righteousness, but he didn't do anything to create that righteousness. That's the perfect work of Jesus
Christ. That's why if we're truly of
faith and we're justified through faith, if we're made right with
God, if we're forgiven of all of our sins and declare righteous
in God's sight through faith, that means this, that we realize
we didn't contribute anything to that. And we cannot measure
righteousness on a sliding scale. We measure it by Christ. And
the only way that I can stand before God and be declared righteous
justly in the eyes of a holy God who must be just when He
justifies is to be found in Christ, washed in His blood, clothed
in His righteousness. That's a metaphor. have his righteousness
imputed, charged to me. That's the only way, and there's
no other way. And that's what Paul is referring
to here. He said, God told Abraham, and
you shall all nations be blessed. How? Because God has a remnant
of grace, the election of grace out of every tribe, kindred,
tongue, and nation, and they'll be blessed. And he says in verse
nine, he says, so then they which be of faith, justified through
faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. Now was Abraham a perfect
person? Not in himself. If you go read
the history of Abraham from Genesis 12 on, you'll find that he was
less than perfect in many ways. But legally, redemptively, he
was perfect as he stood before God in Christ. That's why Jeremiah spoke of
Christ as being the Lord, our righteousness. He spoke of that
twice in Jeremiah 23, five and six and Jeremiah 33, 15 through
16. Christ is my righteousness. I
am not righteous in myself. I'm righteous in Christ. That's
his imputed righteousness. So he said, and to prove that,
Paul goes on. Now, here's the opposite of being
justified through faith. That is being right with God
through the merits of the obedience and death of Christ. Here's the
opposite. Verse 10, for as many as are of the works of the law. Now, who are of the works of
the law? Those who are trying to be saved
by their works. their law-keeping or even by
their will. Those who believe that Christ
died for everybody but it's no good unless you do your part
in believing or whatever, persevering, you're of the works of the law.
And it says, for as many as of the works of the law are under
the curse. And then he quotes Deuteronomy
27 or 26. He says, it's written, cursed
is everyone that continues not in all things which are written
in the book of the law to do them. In other words, if you're
thinking that you're going to be right with God by your law
keeping, you are required to keep the law perfectly. And if
you offend in one point, You're guilty of all. James said that
in James chapter one. You're guilty of all. Now, what
does that tell us? We'll look at verse 11. But that
no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident. Now, he may look good in the
sight of men, but in the sight of God, he's cursed. it's evident for the just shall
live by faith." That's the second time that Paul quoted that verse
that's out of the book of Habakkuk. He quoted it in Romans 1 17 and
here and he quotes it again in Hebrews 10 38 a third time. The just shall live by faith.
What does that mean? Well, does that mean that those
who are justified? Now, what is it to be justified?
Remember what that is. It's to be forgiven of all my
sins on a just ground. It's to be declared righteous
in God's sight on a just ground. Now, what is that just ground?
Is it our believing? Is that the just ground upon
which God justifies us? No. Our believing. though it is a gift from God,
and though it is a blessing and a miracle of grace, we still
have with us the flesh that brings us to doubt. And my friend, we
cannot present anything we do, even by the help of the Spirit,
as measuring up to the perfection of God's law that can only be
found in Christ. Now, in the book of Hebrews chapter
12, it speaks in verse one, the sin that so easily besets us,
you know what that is? That's unbelief and doubt. Even
believers, we have times where we go through unbelief and doubt. And that's why we're commanded
to run the race of grace, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher
of our faith. It's his faithfulness that saves
us. Our faith is the response, the
fruit. And so when he says the just
shall live by faith, is he saying that we're forgiven of our sins
based upon our believing? No, we're forgiven of all our
sins based upon the blood, the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
First John one says that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses
us from all sins. God said in the Passover feast,
when I see the blood, I'll pass over you. And then are we declared
righteous before God based upon our believing? No, we're declared
just before God, righteous before God, based upon Christ's righteousness
imputed. And that's what brings us to
faith and to believe in Him as our hope and our Savior. Well, he says in verse 12 of
Galatians 3, the law is not of faith. The law does not require
you to believe it. The law requires you to do it. Keep the law, that's it. The
law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live
in them. It is often said that the difference
between a false gospel and the true gospel is do, the word do,
and done. The false gospels of the world
require you to do something to be saved. The true gospel brings
you to a done, a finished work, the work of Christ. So the law
is not a faith. The man that doeth them shall
live in them. But look at verse 13. Now here's what it means
to be justified through faith. It says, Christ hath redeemed
us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. Think
about that. It's written, Deuteronomy 21,
it's written, curses is everyone that hangeth on a tree. Isn't
that something? Christ having my sins, the debt
of my sins imputed charge to him, he went under the wrath
of God for me. Now that's what you confess in
believers baptism. He died for my sins, and it says,
and he made me righteous, and it says, verse 14, that the blessing
of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ,
that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
It is justified through faith, justified before God. upon the
just ground of Christ's glorious person and his finished work
on the cross, whereby he died, he was buried, he was raised
from the dead. I hope you'll join us next week
for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia. Contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
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today and may the Lord be with you.