Galatians 2, we'll be looking
at verses 19 and 20 this morning. Galatians 2, verses 19 and 20. The Scripture says, For I, through
the law, am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I
am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in
the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me
and gave Himself for me." The title of the message this morning
is, Dead to the Law and Crucified with Christ. Dead to the Law
and Crucified with Christ. Now Paul, in this chapter, if
you remember, he is recalling an incident in which Peter came
to the church of Antioch and by his actions, caused dissimilation
or separation between the Jews and the Gentiles, which was according
to the law. Peter got up from the Gentiles,
and when the Jews came in, he went and sat with them, and many
of the other Jews were constrained by Peter's actions to go over
and do the same. And when Paul saw this, he said,
I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. This segregation influenced the
others to legalistic action. So Paul is seeing this hypocrisy. He exposes Peter's error to him
in front of the whole church. Because Peter was acknowledging
by his actions that the law had some part in salvation. It had some part in the church. And he says, Peter, why are you
and I which are Jews? We were raised Jews. We understand
the law. These Gentiles have never heard
of the law before. We were raised like that. We
know that there is no possibility of our ever being justified by
the law. Why then would you by your actions
compel them to do the same thing? Paul clearly tells us that we
are justified, not by the works of the law, but by faith. Verse
16, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of law,
but by the faith of Jesus Christ. This faith of which he is both
the author and the object. Christ is the author and finisher
of our faith, and he is the object of our faith. Our faith in Christ
is not the cause or motivation for our justification. But rather,
faith is a gift of God by which we receive the justification. The justification had already
been purposed and accomplished, and by faith, that's how we receive
it. We receive what Christ has already
done. Justification is not something
that faith does. Faith can never justify. All
we've done is if someone says faith justifies a man, then he
is saying that faith is a work. Faith is not a work, faith is
a gift. It's a gift of God's grace to us. And by this we realize
and embrace justification. But all who seek to be justified
by works or law or merit will only be found guilty. This is all the law can do. The
law can do nothing else. The law can only condemn. When
you look at the law, there is no joy in the law, there is no
peace in the law, because the law only condemns the guilty. Is the law bad? No. The flesh
is. The flesh and our sin is what
is evil. The law is good. But when I look
at the law, all I can see is guilt. That's all the law can
do. And Paul says in verse 18, he
says, if I build the things which I destroyed, I make myself a
transgressor. What is he saying? He's saying,
look, I was a Pharisee. I thought as a Pharisee, I thought
that I could obtain merit by God's favor. But when justification came by
faith, I destroyed that. I did away with that. And if
I get that again, if I try to build the law again, all I'm
doing is making myself a transgressor and not justified. Last week we saw that Paul rebuking
Peter expresses this doctrine of justification by faith in
Christ alone. What is it to be justified? What
is it to be justified? To be justified is to be innocent. That's what it is to be justified. To be justified is to be free
from all guilt of sin. If I am justified, then what
can the law say to me? If I am innocent, what can the
law say to an innocent man? It can say nothing. Nothing. We are justified by faith in
Christ. God freely justified us from
all eternity by placing us in Christ, and Christ freely justified
us on the cross. And that by faith, which is a
grace of God, we receive it, and not by works of the law.
Now that gets us to our text this morning, verses 19 and 20.
And in verse 19 and 20, Paul deals with this question. If
we're not justified by the law, then what is the relationship
between the law and the believer? What is the relationship? Okay,
Paul, I understand. I'm not justified by the works
of the law, but the law is still in the Scriptures, isn't it?
What relationship then does that law have with me? This is the
main question in the church, especially in our day. What does
the law have to do with us who are believers? Paul clearly,
in verse 19, gives us this relationship. Here it is. For I through the
law am dead to the law. There is our relationship dead
to the law. Take a dead man. He's there in the casket and
going through the funeral. Now then, what relationship does
he have with anybody? What affects him? If the building caught on fire,
how would that affect him? He has no relationship with anything
in this world anymore. He is dead. The law cannot affect
him anymore. He is dead. Dead. A man is accused of murder and
guilty of murder if he is tried, convicted, and executed. After
he is executed, what relationship does the law have for that man?
Nothing. He's dead. He's dead. And this is the relationship
that every believer has with the law of God. We are dead to
the law. Dead. If we are justified by faith
in Christ, we are dead and finished with the law completely, as a
dead man is with his surroundings. Now, some in our generation are
offended by this thought and believe that the law still has
some part, some small dominion over believers. Especially the Ten Commandments.
Especially those. They take that one part of the
moral law and they hold that up and say, well, this part still
rules. Now, we don't have to sacrifice,
we don't have to be circumcised, but we have to follow these things
in order that we might be sanctified. This is what we call progressive
sanctification. It is the false idea that the
believer can, by his obedience, become holier. Become holier. But Paul says, I am dead to the
law. The whole law, not part of the
law. Now, I'm not free from all law,
are we? We're not antinomians. We're
not saying that we are dead to this law, that we are free from
all law. What is the law that the believer
is subject to? It is not the law of Moses, but
it is the law of faith, the law of love towards God and Christ. That's the law of our hearts. You remember in Romans chapter
2, the Apostle Paul says that the law of God is written on
the heart of every man. Every man by birth has a law
that's written on his heart. Go to Jeremiah chapter 31. Jeremiah
31, verse 33. Jeremiah 31, verse 33. But this
shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, saith the Lord,
I will put My law in their inward parts and write it on their hearts,
and will be their God, and they shall be My people." What is
that? Well, the law is already written
on our hearts by birth, but what is this law? This is the law
of the new covenant. This is the law of grace. This
is the law of mercy, of love, of faith, of righteousness in
Christ. This is the law that is now placed
on the heart of His people. Jesus said, take My yoke upon
you and learn of Me. You see, we're not free of a
yoke. We're just free of the yoke of
sin. We have the yoke of Christ. We are servants of Christ. We
love Christ. This law is not the law of Moses,
but it is the law of the new creation. When God comes in power,
He created something new in each one of us who are believers.
He created a new nature, a new heart, a heart of love, a heart
of grace. And that heart has now an affection
to God that the old heart never could have. The old nature can
never have the affection and love toward God in obedience. For the natural man, the carnal
man, is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
So that old man, he can't be. But the new man always is subject
to God. Always. The just shall live by
faith, not by law. The Ten Commandments are not
your rule of life. Faith is your rule of life. Now, I'll tell you, some of the
things that we know in our heart may overlap concerning that law. I know that you shouldn't lie.
I know I shouldn't lie. But I don't lie, I don't want
to lie, not because the law says so, but because I love Him. It's
altogether different. It's not the letter that... it's
the letter that killeth, but the Spirit gives life. And this is a life of love. No,
you're not, brethren. In Romans 7, Paul puts this,
he said, No, you're not, brethren. How that the law hath dominion
over a man so long as he liveth. Isn't that right? If a man's
alive, the law has dominion. But as soon as a man is dead,
the law is dead to him, and he is dead to the law, and neither
one of them have a relationship anymore. And so Paul illustrates
this by marriage in Romans 7. If you remember, he takes the
law of the husband and wife. And he said that as long as the
husband liveth, if the woman wish to marry, then she commits
adultery. But if the husband be dead, she
is free from his dominion and free to marry another. I love my wife dearly. But if
I were to die and she comes in the next day with a man, don't
anybody say anything. She is free. She is free. And that's exactly what happened
to the law. We are free from the law because
we are dead to the law. We are free to marry another,
even Christ. Number two, let's look at the
cause of our death. The cause of our death. Go back
to your text in Galatians 2. He says, for I, through the law,
am dead to the law. We have seen that because the
body of Christ, through His life and death, the believers are
free from the law. Because Christ has died and lived
for us as our representative, we are dead to the law through
Christ. But we are also dead to the law
through the law. Believers, we are not justified
in a vacuum. God cannot justify us and sweep
the law under the rug. He can't be unjust. His law must
be satisfied if we are to ever be justified. The problem is, we have never
honored the law. But our representative has. He
has honored the law in all its fullness, in all its completeness. He has, by His righteousness,
obtained our righteousness. And by His death, obtained our
redemption for us in our place. And He did this not around the
law, but through the law He did this. He did this. But this is also speaking of
our experience. This is speaking of our experience
of every believer in conversion. Paul once thought himself and
the law to be friends. He said, I had no qualms with
the law. I thought that I should obtain
righteousness by my deeds. I was a Pharisee of the Pharisee,
an Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law, blameless.
No man could blame me for anything that I've done against the law.
But when the Spirit of God came, He said, the law revived. Sin revived. and I died." Isn't that what happens when
the Spirit of God came to us? Were we not then exposed before
a holy God so much that we fell as dead at His feet? Did we not
realize the deadness of our own human nature? Yeah, we did. The law, by the Spirit, Killed
me. It killed me. Is it not the thoughts of all
natural men that somehow we will render God Righteousness that
he's pleased with. That's the natural thought of
man. As though he could make peace. In Isaiah 28, he said,
you thought you made a covenant with death and hell. And that's
what people think. They think, well, everything's
going to be okay. I've made my peace with God.
No. No, you haven't. Why? Because they've never been dead
to the law. The law has never been fully revealed to them.
for what it is, a minister of death. When Paul was revealed
the holiness of God, he became as a dead man. The law which he thought was
his hope became his death because of his sin. But this always, when this comes,
it always brings us to Christ. Scripture says in Galatians further
on that the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. And once
we have come to Christ, we are no longer in need of Him. No
longer in need of Him. Why? He killed us. We're dead. And this has brought us from
death to life. Look at that in verse 19. For
I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto
God. In that picture of marriage in
Romans 7, of the wife who is free to marry another after the
death of her husband, even so has Christ set us free from the
law and its demands by union with Him. Marriage speaks of
union, doesn't it? It is by our union with Him that
we are made alive. It is by our union with Christ
We are no longer married to the law, but to Christ. We are His
bride, and He is our husband. And the union brings forth fruit
unto life. Every believer is alive unto
God when we serve Him, not by law, but by faith and love. In that Scripture, Paul uses
the word, that. He says, through the law I am
dead to the law that. That word means in order that.
In other words, without this, you can't have this. Without
being dead to the law, you cannot serve God. If the law has some dominion
over you, if the law has some power over you, If you are not
completely, totally dead from the law, then you cannot serve
God. It's an either-or thing. You
must be dead to the law or you cannot serve God. But we who
are dead to the law, guess what? We are alive unto God and serve
Him. Lastly, let's look at our union
with Christ, this union that causes us to be dead to the law. Here it is, verse 20, "...for
I am crucified with Christ." Having now concluded that we
are dead to the law, He gives us an elaboration of it. This can be better translated,
I have been already crucified with Christ. Isn't that better?
I already have been crucified with Christ. When God chose His
people, He chose us in Christ. And yet in time, He must have
accomplished our redemption by being made a curse for us. And
He did truly die for us. There's no doubt about that.
He died for us. But that's only half the story.
Only half the story. Let me illustrate it like this. It's not just a clearly judicial
thing. If you were guilty of murder,
and you were sentenced and someone came in and took your place underneath
the eye of the law, and you went into this other room and you
watched it all, and this person died in your place, You know
what the problem is? You didn't really pay for anything. You were still guilty. But the Scripture here tells
us that we were so in union with Christ. From all eternity, God,
when He placed us in Christ, He meant we became His body. We were so in union with Christ
that when He came and became a man and lived righteously,
I lived righteously in Him. When He came to the cross and
He bore my sins in His own body on the tree, I was crucified
with Him spiritually. This is the union with Christ.
And when Christ arose from the dead, I arose in Him. And now He is seated on the throne,
and I am in union with Christ even now. Not only in union with
Him, but guess what? He is in union with me. I don't feel that, pastor. You
know what? I didn't feel Adam's transgression
either. But I was in my father Adam when
he sinned. That doesn't make it any less
true. You see, we grab this by faith, friends. We can't fully
wrap our minds or understand this. It is by faith we see this,
that we were actually, personally crucified with Christ when He
died. And the law saw me when it saw
Him. What else can the law ask of
me? What could He demand of me? Nothing. I was crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth
in me. There's His union with us. Father,
I pray that they may be one even as we are one. I in them, Thou
in me. That's an amazing thing, isn't
it? We are one with Christ. Thomas Goodwin wrote this, as
in the womb, head and members are not conceived apart. So were
we and Christ, making up one mystical body to
God, formed together in the eternal womb of election. We are His body. He is our head. And friends, for one of God's
members, one of God's body, to not be present in eternity means
that Christ Himself is not whole. That's never going to happen.
His body is complete in Him. He has satisfied all the law's
demands. We have already been crucified
in Him. What more can the law demand
from us? Nothing. Why? I'm dead. I have
no relationship to it. And I'll tell you what, that's
the most impossible thing for this flesh to get over. That's why Paul said we should
labor to enter into His rest. I always seem to be laboring,
trying to honor the law of Moses. I'm dead to that law. That law
has no hold on me. I should seek to honor Christ
with everything I am and everything I have, because He is my head
and I am His body. I pray God will bless this to
you.