Well, it's good to see you out
tonight. If you will, turn in your Bibles to Galatians chapter
2. Galatians chapter 2. Verse 17 through 19. Paul says, but if, while we seek
to be justified by Christ, we ourselves are also found sinners,
is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid. For if I build again the things
which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. For I, through
the law, am dead to the law, that I might live unto God."
Now, what Paul is addressing is a very serious subject about
the believer's relationship to the law and the law's relationship
to the believer, and the answer to both of those
situations is DEAD. The law is dead to the believer,
and the believer is dead to the law. Paul wrote a young pastor
named Timothy and told him that he left him at Ephesus to keep
people from teaching any other doctrine. And the other doctrine
that he was talking about was that some were trying to bring
believers back under the law. He said this, they desire to
be teachers of the law. understanding neither
what they say nor whereof they affirm." Now what that simply
means is they don't know what they are talking about and have
no idea or notion of the consequence if someone believes what they
say. And the consequence is that the
work of Christ is of none effect. For he goes on to say this, But
we know that the law is good if a man use it lawfully. How
can a man use the law lawfully? He uses it lawfully as it's set
forth in Scripture, that it was fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ,
answered in its justice by His death on the cross, and then
set aside because it has no more use whatsoever to the believer. But if a person insists that
a believer goes under the law, this is how the believer ends
up if he indeed goes back under the law. It says, Knowing this,
that the law is not made for the righteous man, but for the
lawless and the disobedient. So if a person goes under the
law, that makes him lawless and makes him disobedient. For sinners,
it makes him a sinner. For unholy makes him unholy. For the profane makes him profane. For murderers of fathers and
murderers of mothers. Patricide, matricide, that's
when he becomes a homicidal maniac. Manslayers, a person who kills
people. For whoremongers, if you make
a man go back under the law who said he believes on Christ, that
person to you is a whoremonger. men that defile themselves with
mankind, homosexuality, for men-stealers or liars, kidnappers, for perjured
persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary
to sound doctrine. So that's what the law does. If a man stands
in the pulpit and seeks to bring believers back under the law,
he's saying you're a whoremonger, Christ's work did not put away
your sin, there's something I have to say about it, And I say that
you still need to do something in order to be righteous before
God. That's what Paul is dealing with in the book of Galatians
and also in the book of Colossians. He's dealing with this matter
of those who would come in to those who have received the grace
of God and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ for their salvation
and that only and bring them back under some rule and regulation
of the law. He said, you make us sinners. And if we do it, If preachers
do it, they make themselves transgressors. And that's important. And we
look at the law, and we think of Moses' law, the ceremonial
law, and the rites, and we think, well, some people like to separate
the two. So we have the Ten Commandments, and then you have the ceremonies.
Which one law? One law, the Ten Commandments
condemns The ceremonies point to the Lord Jesus Christ as the
only hope of salvation, and that's all the law does. That's what
it does. But men can make laws out of other things. They can. Men can take, for instance, those
who trusted the merits of Jesus Christ alone for salvation, and
require them to accept or receive a specific area of doctrine that
has nearly nothing to do with what Christ accomplished on Calvary
Street. And then they make the gospel a law, to believe a law. And it's very common in the world,
very common in religion. Men like to chase rabbits down
rabbit holes. They do, and they will do that. And if they want to self-aggrandize
and bring themselves up and set themselves in a situation of
power and strength, they will take and make the gospel a pie
chart. It's not a pie chart. It's just
one thing. Christ and Him crucified. That's
the gospel. But they'll take a section, something
that happened, something that He did, and make that, or some
aspect of faith, and make that the singular most important thing,
and then say, if you don't agree with me, I can't have fellowship
with you. They've created a gospel law.
and they brought people back under the law. That's just what
they've done. And they're saying that Christ's death, which happened
2,000 years ago, and the work was finished. F-I-N-I-S-H-E-D,
it was finished. The word he used on the cross
was teleo, perfect. That word is used three times
there in John 19, accomplished. And perfect and finished. Accomplished,
fulfilled, and finished. Same word, taleo. It is exactly
the same word that was used describing what He did on Calvary's tree
in Hebrews chapter 10 when He said, He hath perfected forever
them that are sanctified. And where that remission is made,
there is no more sacrifice for sin. So Paul here is dealing
with a very, very important thing. It's very important. It's not
a matter of opinion. It's not a matter of theological
discussion. What it is is a dead-set fact
and an absolute that Paul is dealing with. In this passage
Paul is SET for the defense of the gospel of free grace as it
stands in TOTAL, COMPLETE, and ABSOLUTE OPPOSITION to the works
of the law. total opposition. He has established
that justification by Christ and justification by the works
of the law CANNOT coexist on any level or to any degree. He said that in verse 16. knowing that a man is not justified
by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ."
That's the phrase he uses often throughout Scripture in Romans
here and in Colossians, and what he's talking about is the work
that Christ did when he said that. We're justified by the
faith of Jesus Christ or by the work that Christ accomplished
on Calvary's tree. Knowing that a man is not justified
by the works of the law, but by the work of Jesus Christ,
even we have believed in Jesus Christ that we might be justified
by the faith, by the work of Christ, and not by the works
of the law. For by the works of the law shall
no flesh be justified in his sight." Now he made that clear,
made that very clear, this dogmatic position. And this dogmatic assertion
was basically this. The believer is justified without
doing the works of the law. And those who would seek to add
the works of the law for justification are they themselves not justified
at all. That's pretty clear. That's pretty
clear. The bane of legalists is for
someone to say that the works of the law have nothing to do
with justification. But the fact is that the works
of the law is a non-issue for believers. The legalists of that
day, as well as those of this day, would call believers antinomians,
against the law, or those who are averse to the law. But you can be assured that the
same accusation will be applied to you if you believe that salvation
is by grace alone. That word will be applied to
you. It's hard for a legis to believe that their life doesn't
count for something. How you live in this world matters,
but it doesn't count. It matters. But it doesn't count
in the salvation of your soul. Not one whit. In verse 17, Paul turns the legalist
arguments on its head and defines the consequence of asserting
that a person must not only believe, but also do the works of the
law for justification. And Paul, in no uncertain terms,
declares that those who are applying to the law for justification
are sinners. He says that. Those who apply
to the law for justification are sinners rather than those
who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, he's not saying
that believers are not sinners, but rather that in truth, if
we hold that a man is justified by the works of the law, we are
the actual transgressors of that law. The first phrase of verse
17 says exactly that, when he says, We ourselves are also found
sinners. He is equating keeping the law
for justification with sinning against God. Now boy, that just
doesn't seem right to most of religion in this day. You sin
against God when you try to get a man back under the law if he's
a believer in grace. That's a sin against Almighty
God. The wording is difficult because
the Old English doesn't always fit with our American version
of the same language. I think it's been said that England
and America are Two countries separated by the same language,
and that's often true. Paul is saying that if we who
believe Christ yet apply to the law for righteousness, we are
sinning against God. He said it differently in chapter
5 and verse 4 of the same book. He said it this way, Christ has
become of no effect to you. Whosoever of you are justified
by the law, you are fallen from grace. That means you've left
grace. You no longer believe grace. And though this interpretation
is so, it does not fully deal with the context of what Paul
is dealing with here. Paul is dealing with how legalists
view or perceive gospel believers. how legalists view or perceive
those who believe the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. They
view them as sinners, as sinners or those who disregard the law. He said in verse 15, We who are
Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles. This being so,
Paul is here saying that in light of the way that the law men,
these forensic specialists view believers being a sinner according
to their view, they say we're a sinner. God says that's the
only right thing to do. If they say you're a sinner because
you won't keep the law, that means you're doing right. That's what he's talking about
here, and that's an amazing thing. if you seek to be justified by
christ if we seek to be justified by christ we are found to be
sinners if we go back under the law or if we have a someone else
do it for us those who refuse to go to the law for righteousness
those who have turned their back on the law and i want to and
one who had don't go to the law for righteousness well i won't
say completely because i'm i'm really a legalist in recovery. I guess you'd say there's a whole
lot of legalism still left in me. My flesh is totally legalist.
It's always against the Spirit of God. It always is. It's totally
legalist. But generally speaking, and I
make this as a generic statement somewhat, those who refuse to
go to the law for righteous, those who turned their back on
the law, they're merely acting as believers rather than Judaizers. That's what they're doing. They're
acting as believers. He says in verse 14, but when
I saw, speaking of Peter and Barnabas, when I saw that they
walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, now
what had they done? Had they denied the gospel? Had Peter
said Christ didn't die for his sins? Had Peter said Christ didn't
put away his sins? Had Peter said that Christ wasn't
Lord of all and he had accomplished salvation? No, Peter would never
deny that. You could never put him in that position. Well, what
had he done? He had switched tables at a church social is
what he had done. So what's the deal about that?
Well, these people over at this table have been saved by God's
grace. They believe Christ alone is
their righteousness and their only hope. And they know they've
been saved because they've heard the gospel. And they never even
knew what the law was. They're Gentiles over there.
Never been under the law. Didn't know anything about it.
According to Romans 2, they were a law unto themselves. They excused
themselves or accused others by the law in their own hearts,
their conscience. But Peter was sitting with them
and everything was going fine. he was rejoicing in their salvation
as he says he was in Genesis chapter, I mean Acts chapter
15 rejoicing in their salvation patting them on the back, hey
brother we got it going and we believe the gospel bless our
hearts Christ died in our room and stayed everything good and
in walks the Judaizers in walks the legalists their nose in the
air proper clothing proper attitude austere scary and they walk over
to Peter and they don't say much they just sort of nudge up against
him and say you know these fellows here have
not been circumcised they really need to be circumcised and Peter
caved he didn't love those guys any
less but he caved. And he got up and went down and
sat with the Judaizers. And Paul said, But when I saw
that they had walked not uprightly according to the truth of the
gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew,
livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews,
why compelst thou the Gentiles to live as the Jews? Why do you
do that? Why do you do that? Because,
like I said, I guess we're all legalists in recovery. This being
so, Paul is here saying that in light of the way that the
law men view us, we are sinners. And that's the best thing to
be in that light. This is but the necessary consequence
of justification by the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. To
the legalist, the believer is found to be a sinner because
he ignores the law. Does trusting Christ alone for
justification, which makes us in the eyes of the legalist a
sinner, then make Christ the minister of sin? That's what
he's asking. But if while we seek to be justified by Christ,
we ourselves are also found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister
of sin? God forbid. Christ the minister of sin? Is
Christ the promoter of sin? It does. If ignoring the law
for righteousness is sin, it makes Christ the minister of
sin. If ignoring the law for righteousness is sin, it makes
Christ the minister of sin. Paul, however, says, God forbid.
No, not ever, ever, no, never let it be. That's what that means.
You see, rejecting the law for justification may make us sinners
before the religious legalists, and it will. But in the sight
of God, we are doing the right thing. We're doing the right
thing. If believing Christ alone for
justification makes me a sinner in the legalist's eyes, then
I'll gladly wear that badge, and I'll gladly and REJOICE in
them calling me a transgressor. of the law. The indictment against
legalism is that it makes Christ a promoter and minister of sin. And as a believer, you can expect
religion to respond to this truth negatively. The legalism asserts
that the believer, the one who believes he's justified by Christ
without the law, promotes lawlessness. We've all heard it. We've all
heard it. To believe that salvation is
by grace alone, will the religionist declares, open the floodgates
of sin. I've heard them say it. If you
believe in grace alone, you just open up people to sin all they
want to. Well, I sin all I want to anyway.
Don't you? You held back on yourself? I don't think so. You got a gun
to your head? I don't think so. I send more than one to be unsweetened,
but I don't hold back, neither do you, neither do you. And I
tell you this, I've been sick sometimes, and I've been healed. I do not want to be sick again. I don't want to be sick again.
Anybody who's been healed by the grace of God, do not want
to be sick again. So they refuse to go back under
the law. But that's the natural reaction
of the lost religion is to the freedom accomplished by the gospel. Paul dealt with it in Romans
chapter 3. He says, they slander us. They're saying what we preach
that we're sin abounded, grace did much more abound than we
ought to sin more so we'd have more grace. They slander us. That's what he said. Those who
believe in Christ alone as their justification before God are
those who disregard the law for justification. The believer who turns his back
on the law for justification is doing right in the eyes of
God, and the legalist sees this as contempt for the law, but
nothing is further from the truth. I'll tell you, I love the law,
and what I'm doing right here tonight and what you've done
for forty years and what you do every Sunday and Wednesday
night is take flowers and put them
on the grave of the law that's what the gospel does I visit
the gravesite but not to ask for help not to dig up the old
bones but to honor it because it was good and holy and just
and I broke it I was bad and unjust and unholy But I love
the law. I just don't look to it for anything.
And neither does any believer. The believer who turns his back
on the law for justification is right. And the legalist sees
this as contempt for the law. But the believer is actually
the only one who establishes the law according to Romans chapter
3. We establish the law through faith. He's the only one who
sees the law for what it is. It's good and holy and just.
He's the only one who honors the purpose of the law in its
temporary capacity, and the law is a temporary thing. It entered
because of transgression. It entered because of sin. It
entered. What was it before? It wasn't.
It came in, and it went out on Calvary's tree. No doubt about
that. It went out on Calvary's tree.
It has a temporal capacity. temporal capacity. In verse 18,
Paul continues the principle that faith in Christ alone is
disregarding the works of the law for justification, and that
is a right thing to do. He says, For if I build again
the things that I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.
If I go back there, I make myself a transgressor. He now speaks of the ramifications
of believing Christ for righteousness without the deeds of the law.
The principle might be best understood by asking this question. What
would Paul be doing if, as a believer, he began to apply to the works
of the law for justification? Paul says that he'd be building
again that which he destroyed. Building again that which he
destroyed, and the result would be that he would make himself
a transgressor of the law. Now, though the legalists call
believers sinners because they turned their back on the law
for righteousness, if the believer returned to the law for righteousness,
he would actually be making himself a transgressor. Paul uses some
strong language here to declare this truth. He says that believing
Christ alone for justification is destruction of the law. It's destruction of the law and
to return to the law is sin. It's sin. Tell that to a legalist
sometime. It's the truth. It's the truth. He refers to the works of the
law for justification as the things he once built back when
he was Saul of Tarsus. It's a good definition of the
legalist way of life. The whole system of false religion,
no matter the alias under which it travels, is conditioned upon
building something, accomplishing something, stacking up something,
and that something is usually, always actually acceptable, legal
merit before God, to obligate God to save you. The idea of
rewards, people like to talk about rewards, crowns and such,
And that idea of rewards in religion, in order for one person to get
more than another, and that's always the way it is. Many years
ago, back in the Southern Baptist Church, I was in Sunday school,
and my Sunday school teacher was a student of Piedmont Bible
College, and he actually wrote up on the board for us kids.
I was a teenager at the time. I didn't know God from a goose.
And I was Southern, I've been raised on the Bible and cut my
teeth on the KJV because that's what went on in our house and
in our neighborhood. But he says, he says, I'm competitive
in this rewards thing. He says, I want to get more rewards
than anybody else. And as dumb as I was, I thought,
that don't sound right. That don't sound right, and it's
not. But people believe that. If I do things in the merit of
righteousness for God, I'm going to get some kind of reward in
heaven. Reward in heaven based on some
legal merit. The notion, and I say it's a
notion because it's not a Bible doctrine. It's a notion. The
notion of progressive sanctification must have its progress measured.
How can you say it's progressive if it can't be measured? It must
be measured. It must be measured, and if it
is measured, that's how you keep score. The imperative suffixes
of ER and EST, people like those, holier and holiest. Jim Byrd
was sitting with a fellow up in Virginia one time who took
a pastorate there in Virginia, and they were talking about holiness.
And Jim Byrd says, Do you believe you're more holy today than you
were yesterday? And that fellow says, Yeah. Jim
said, my soul, I don't know if there's any hope for you at all.
Holier and holiest. Holiest is in the Bible when
it speaks about that 15 by 15 foot cubicle that the great high
priest went in once a year to offer blood sacrifice before
the sky and the glory of God. Never applied to a human being.
Holiest. And when the word holier is used
in scripture, our Lord says it's those who say, I'm holier than
thou, and they're smoking my nose. So those don't apply, but
people like to apply them because, you see, they're making progress. They're on that road. They're
marching on that road, and they're making progress toward God. Listen
very carefully. I'll only say this once. That's
Oscar Mayer. Baloney. That's what it is. Every believer knows this. The
older he gets, the longer he's in this thing, the blacker his
heart is, the wickeder his mind is, the weaker he is, the frailer
he is. and the more utterly dependent
he is upon God keeping him or he will fall. If you think you've progressed,
you're in trouble. You're in trouble. What you're
demanding is recognition. That's what progressive sanctification
demands. Recognition of your building
skills. This is the language that Paul
uses to describe what those who will not submit to the righteousness
of God is in Romans 10, verses 1-4. He said, I bear them witness,
they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, for
they will not submit to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end
of the law for righteousness of them that believe. They go
about to establish their own righteousness, to build a righteousness
before God. Though Christ is the end of the
law, and that means the purpose and the fulfillment and the satisfaction
of the law, for righteousness to all who believe, the legalist,
rather than submit, rather than believe, and that's what submit
means, rather than believe, goes about the business of building
up a righteousness by which he will obligate God to accept him.
And people believe that. Many years ago there was a judge He used to attend church. He's
gone now. Him and his wife both died. He
was from Bradenton, Florida. And I would have loved to heard
him on the bench because he had a resounding bass voice and had
a real command of the English language. And was very good at
what he did as a judge. And often he would say he appreciated
my messages and hugged me and patted me on the back. What he
liked was my style. I figured out after a while he
didn't like what I said, but he liked my style. And one day
in the hospital, his wife was sick and he, I went over to visit
his wife and have prayer with her. And he was sitting in the
lobby of the hospital. I came out. I said, Hey, judge, how
you doing? He said, I got to ask you a question, question
pastor James. And I said, okay, go ahead. And he's a man who then had the
color hair I have now. Back then my hair was red and
he was an older fellow, so I wanted to show him respect. And I said,
what do you have, sir? He said, I know you've been saying
that our works don't mean anything. Now I've heard you. He said,
but my wife's sick and I've been caring for her for about a year.
I've been taking her to the hospital. I've been washing her. I've been
feeding her. he said you mean to tell me that
doesn't mean anything and i said i mean to tell you
it doesn't mean anything i'm glad you're doing it and
i can see you're a good man for doing it but that will not stand
before god when i am the legislative people will and by doing so they are transgressors
of the law. It's important. Important. Paul declares that
he used to be a builder. If I destroy that which I built.
He used to be a builder before he understood the purpose of
the law. He said, when I actually understood the law, sin revived
and I died. I thought I was alive. I thought
I had everything going for me. I was keeping the law. And according
to his testimony in Philippians chapter 3, he was pretty good
at it. He says, touching the law, I was blameless. Touching
the law, I was a Pharisee, a Hebrew of Hebrews. I had it all going
for me. He said, there's nothing but
manure, but it was good manure. I had it going. He had built
up a reputation of a holy and a righteous man and he held on
to that. He said, I built that up. I was
of the Sanhedrin. I went out to persecute the church.
I wanted to get the name of Jesus Christ wiped off the face of
the earth. I was full of zeal and I was working for God. And
he said, that's what I was building. And then one day I met Jesus
Christ on the road to Damascus. Found out that I'd been kicking
against the pricks. He blinded me and sent me down
to a house on a street called Strait in a place called Damascus.
And I stayed there in that house blind as a bat, couldn't see
anything. One day he sent a preacher named Ananias to me. And Ananias
said, Brother Saul, you've been chosen of God to see the just
one. And to be a witness in His name.
And the scales fell off my eyes. And from that day on, I believed
Christ. And with that belief in Christ,
everything before that was destroyed. Destroyed. People have difficulty
with their former life. With their former life in religion.
Donny Bell used to say, a man will give you his wife, his car,
and his bank account for you, give up that old profession of
faith. I've had people, I had a doctor who came to the church
at Sequoia for a while, a sovereign grace believer, I mean, he came
all the way from Florida and moved to Franklin so he could
drive to Cherokee so he'd hear the gospel from Tim James. Well,
he heard the gospel from Tim James for about six weeks And
then I preached from Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 14. You believed after you heard
the word of truth. And the word of truth, when you
heard it, was the good news that God had saved you 2,000 years
ago on South Calvary Street. And everything before that is
nothing. And the good doctor stopped me
on the porch and said, that can't be. I remember trusting Christ beside
my mama's sickbed when I was a young child. And I said, well,
I said, I don't doubt your experience. Don't doubt people's experiences.
People have experiences. I've had plenty of experiences. They used to call me Mr. Rededication
at Antioch Baptist Church, because I was always running down the
aisle crying because I was always guilty. I've had tons of experiences
in religion. Don't I doubt a man's experience.
If he has an experience, fine. I said this, does your experience
that you had as a child at your mother's bed, does it line up
with what God says about how He saves a sinner? Because if you've not heard the
gospel, You don't know Christ. And there's just one gospel.
One gospel. That's what Paul was talking
about. Having believed Christ alone
for justification. If a believer does then and returns
to the law, The law would still have the same effect on him it
had when it started. And that effect is simply this,
namely that sin would revive and he would die. No matter how
logical or pious the legalist argument may sound to return
to the law is to disallow the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
And that's the believer's only righteousness. That's it. God
hath made him to be unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. You have no other righteousness. But that righteousness
which is imputed to you, the imputed righteousness of Jesus
Christ, and therefore to stand before God without any righteousness
at all, you're going to perish. And if you go back to the law,
you're back under sin, and you have no righteousness. To apply
to the law for righteousness or for the rule of life, is to
sin against God. In what manner did Paul, by trusting
Christ, destroy the law? He did not destroy the law in
its function and its temporal purpose. Believing Christ destroys
the law basically in two ways. First, it destroys the law by
rejecting it as a covenant under which men are righteous before
God. You could never be righteous
under the law. Why? The Lord said that the law is
a shadow of good things coming, not those very things, because
even the law could never make the comers thereunto perfect
as pertaining to conscience. But once he believed on Christ,
there was no more conscience of sins. All those sacrifices were offered,
and there was plenty. And the Feast of Tabernacles,
in an eight-day period, there was close to a thousand beasts
killed, and their blood poured out. And from Adam all the way through
the book of Revelation, it's blood, blood, blood. The Old
Testament is a coagulant finger pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ,
but in ALL that a veritable crimson tide. Not
one sin was remitted. Not one. Think about that. Think how marvelous that is. How God, as it were, soaked the world in blood, pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And when He came, Paul was not angry with the law, but he destroyed the law as a
covenant under which you could be righteous. Secondly, believing
Christ for justification destroys the law as to its usefulness
to the believer. The believer has no use for it.
Why? Because the believer is righteous.
There are speed limit signs all the way up and down these streets.
You notice them? I hope you notice them. If you drive the speed limit,
does that speed limit sign have anything to do with you? Really? If you drive under it, does it
have anything to do with you? If it's 45 and you're driving
44, does that law have anything to do with you? No! Only if you go above it. Then
the law condemns you, and that's what the law does. It always
condemns. It always condemns. To the believer,
the law is useless. Why? Because he's righteous.
He's righteous before God. And the law says he's righteous.
The law itself looks at the child of God with the searchlight of
holiness from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet.
And the law can find no grounds upon which it can accuse. No
grounds. You say, but I know what I am.
I don't care what you know. I want to know what God knows.
And God said, I will remember their sins no more. Christ put
away our sins by the sacrifice of Himself. He buried them in
the bottom of the sea, cast them behind God's back, separated
them from us as far as the east is from the west. Where are they?
I don't know. God don't know. God said, I forgot
them. And if you were to ask God today,
is Tim James a sinner? He'd say, absolutely not. My son took care of that 2,000
years ago. 2,000 years ago. All the elements of the law have
been fulfilled by Christ and therefore set aside. That's what
he said. Lo, I said, I come in the volume of the book that is
written to me to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first and
establishes the second. Take away that first revealed
covenant. and establishes the old covenant, the one whose second
revealed. To build again that which I've
destroyed is sin, Paul said. It's sin. The righteousness that
is in the law has been fulfilled. Christ kept the law one time. Now, He fulfilled the law altogether.
In His life, He fulfilled the law. he kept the law in his death
there's a difference he kept the law how did he do it he died
under its penalty and that's the only way you can keep the
law die under its penalty keeping the law ain't never gonna do
nothing for you christ kept it for you if you're his he fulfilled
the law And the law is not only representing Moses' law and the
ceremonies and the various covenants set forth in Scripture, it's
this Bible, this book from Genesis to Revelation, it's the law of
God. It's the teaching of God. It's the doctrine of God. And
verse 19 is one of those verses that intrigued the mind and is
often fodder for theological debate. It says this, For I through
the law am dead to the law. I threw the law." How is that?
You mean the law says I'm dead to it? Yes. Why? Because it's been fulfilled and
kept. It has nothing to say to you. That's a wonderful thing. Generally speaking, most commentators
assert or at least imply that Paul's referring only to the
law of Moses for justification while still holding to observing
the law as a rule of life or some kind of moral compass. To
suggest that Paul is here leaving some wiggle room in this matter
is to do injustice to the context. One would have to suspend all
reason to suggest that Paul, when he was Saul of Tarsus, looked
to the law for justification, but not as a rule of life. That
just doesn't make sense. If the law is approached for
justification, it is because it's a rule of life. Likewise,
if the law is approached as a rule of life, it's so it'll justify
you. That's why you do it. Likewise,
that principle set forth here is very clear. The law is fulfilled,
and it's not for justification for the believer, nor for the
rule of life. Well, what's my rule of life? Jesus Christ. Paul said it this way, Galatians
6, verse 14, God forbid that I should gloat. Save in the cross
of Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and
I am crucified unto the world. And every man that lives by this
rule, peace be upon him and the Israel of God." There's a good
rule. Can you live by that rule? Next
time somebody tells you, you need to do that, you need to
do this, say, oh, God forbid that I should glory. Save in
the cross of Jesus Christ. That's my rule. That's my regulation. And that will do you, because
that will bring peace for you, even upon the Israel of God,
which is the church of the living God. Very strong language Paul
uses here. So when Paul here asserts that
he's dead to the law, he's referring to be dead, literally having
died to it for justification and as a rule of life. You don't
want the law for a rule of life. You don't. You done broke the
first one here 10,000 times tonight. Now shall love the Lord God with
all thy soul, all thy heart, all thy might. Let me see a show
of hands. How y'all doing with that? Nobody
raised their hand. Why? Because you don't do it.
You're condemned. It's not a rule of life. It's
in the graveyard where it belongs. It's strong language. What is
death? Well, it's the last mystery,
I confess. The last thing we don't understand. Death is a cessation. of ability
to connect on any level with one's surroundings, with one's
previous environments. I've stood by many a casket,
and so have you, and looked into the face of those
I loved in the flesh And they looked just like they
were alive. They had ears, eyes, a nose,
a mouth, a tongue. They had lungs. They had a liver,
a pancreas, intestines, a heart. They had arms and hands and fingers
and feet and toes. And I could say, hey, Friend,
how are you? Nothing. Nothing. Why? Because it's if
a curtain, a veil of some sort, has been lowered between us and
them, and though everything I knew and loved about them is there, But there's no communication.
Can't communicate. Why? They're dead. They're dead. That's what death is. It's a
cessation of the ability to communicate or to be communicated with your
former environs. A corpse is finished with its
former existence. The law is finished with its
former existence. If the law was my former existence
being dead, I am finished with it too. I can't communicate with
the law. There's no way I can communicate
with it. It can't communicate with me. Death is total. Death is final. The corpse has
not partially died and thus will be able to have some part in
its former life. It's dead. It can't show up for dinner.
It won't do it. When I was a boy, I loved Mad
Magazine. I read it, every copy. I never
missed a copy of Alfred A. Newman and all that stupid stuff
that went on. I could still sing some of the songs in my head
that I read. But one particular line struck me as humorous. And when I was preparing this
message, I thought of that line. This young girl came down the
stairs and told her brother, Grandpa is dead. And her brother said, Well, I
wondered why he didn't touch his soup. Funny, but true. The law can't touch you. The
law can't do anything. It's dead and you're dead to
it. This is elemental understanding. Whatever the law entails, whatever
it entails, Paul and every believer is totally and finally finished
with it. There is no going back, my friend.
To err here is tantamount to digging up a corpse. and seeking
advice on self-improvement from a putrefying carcass. Legalism is spiritual necrophilia. Paul said, I died to the law. But Paul ends this sentence with
a very distinctive and powerful statement. that I might live
unto God. I died to the law that I might
live unto God. This is the conclusion of the
matter. This is the total thing that is worthwhile in all our
thinking in this matter. This is the final analysis. The
only way I can live to God is to be through with the law.
I can't live for God and have the law have anything
to do with my life. Our relationship to the law must
be totally and finally resolved by being dissolved or I may not
live to God. But he said, I'm dead to the
law and now I can live to God. I'm going to live to God. If
I am seeking the law for justification or rule of life, I'm dead to
all things spiritual. I'm dead to God. If I'm dead
to the law, then I am spiritually alive to God. That's what Paul
is saying. And there's no mixture and no amalgamation and no dipping
of the finger and no sneaking a taste here into the law for
justification. That's not permitted. Our doing
does not justify. Does not justify. Only Christ
dying justifies. and that by the substitutionary
law-obeying, law-fulfilling, justice-satisfying, God-propitiating
death of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if, while we seek to be justified
by Christ, we also are also found sinners, is therefore Christ
the minister of sin? God forbid! For if I build again
the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.
for I through the law am dead to the law that I might live
unto God." That's a very clear statement in the scriptures. Are you a believer? Then there's someone dead in
your past. It's the law of God. Don't apply to it for anything. or you realize you're dead and
sin is alive. God bless you. Free from the law, oh happy condition. Jesus has bled and there is remission. Amen. Hope you'll stay and eat
with us tonight after the service. Our Father, we thank you for
your word. Help us to receive your word
against all that might be otherwise said. Help us to enjoy the liberty
that we have in Christ. Not use that liberty for a reason
to justify misconduct, but for a reason to glorify and worship,
praise you. We thank you for this food we're
about to partake of and for all that are present tonight. Bless your word to our hearts,
for we ask it in Christ's name. Amen.