If you want to follow along in
Galatians chapter 2, we're continuing. We're going to be picking it
up in verse 11 today, and I want to go through at least verse
18. The Lord would allow us to get
that far. I'll try not to hold you too long, so I'm going to
cover things that are very important. and try to do it succinctly.
Let's pray. Father, thank you for your Word.
We wouldn't know the truth if you didn't reveal it. And you've
chosen to reveal it in a written form that men can't alter. We have it here before us. We
can all read it, and we delight to read it and find again the
truth you've given to us about our eternal salvation in the
Lord Jesus Christ. A salvation that doesn't depend
upon us. A salvation that you determined,
provided, promised, and the Lord Jesus performed. And now it's
ours, all by your grace, all by his work. You've given us
your spirit to know it and believe him. And we're thankful. We're so thankful. And we pray
for grace to rest in this salvation. We pray and bless us, Lord, for
Jesus' sake. And you would receive honor and
glory in doing so. Bless each one here. We pray,
Lord, that as we meet together week by week and year by year,
you wouldn't leave any who hear your word unsaved. In Jesus'
name we pray. Amen. Galatians chapter 2 and
verse 11. Paul said, when Peter was come
to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be
blamed. Peter came to Antioch This was
Peter who had been taught that the Gentiles were equally accepted
by grace. He himself had preached it at
the gathering there in Jerusalem in Acts 15. He believed it. Somehow, he did something here
that denied by action what he had taught by words and believed
in his heart. And that teaches us something
very serious, doesn't it? That we're all prone to fall.
God has to hold us up, even those who think they're strong. The
scripture says, if you think you're strong, then remember
that you're not, you're just flesh. The Lord, our strength
is in Christ. And it teaches us again that
there was nothing in Peter that we are supposed to revere, but
only the work of God's grace in Peter. The Apostle Paul himself
said, I am what I am by the grace of God. Catholics revere Peter. They claim he was the first Pope,
and therefore infallible. Obviously, that's false. He was
very fallible. And therefore, God teaches us
not to glory in men. In 1 Corinthians chapter 3, the
Apostle tells the Corinthians this was their problem. Some
say you're of Paul, some of Apollos, and some glory in Cephas. He
said, don't do that. That's wrong. And so, through
this weakness on Peter's part, we see our own frailty, our own
sinfulness. And that's an encouragement,
isn't it? I heard Bruce Crabtree say one
time, unbelief loves company. And that's what we find in ourselves.
Fear. and guilt, we find comfort in
knowing that we're not alone in this. But it's not to be left
there. We're not to wallow in our unbelief
and fear and our own sinfulness, but we're to look away to Christ.
And that's the point of this passage, is that Peter himself
had to live in the same way that the Gentiles did. Which he had
been doing, but now he had faltered. So when Peter was come to Antioch,
Paul said, I withstood him to the face because he was to be
blamed. What he did affected others, and so it had to be corrected
publicly. Verse 12, For before that certain
came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles. To eat with the
Gentiles means he fellowshiped with them. He ate the same food
they ate. He ate in their houses. He ate
with them. There was no distinction. He
knew that. And so that's why he did this. He lived in this
way with the Gentiles as a Gentile. Not as the Jews. That's an important
point. He lived as the Gentiles did.
He ate what they ate. Fellowship with the Gentiles.
He made no distinction because God made no distinction. He purified
their hearts by faith. The Lord Jesus Christ was their
sin-cleansing atonement before God, and He knew it. He knew
that was His only hope, too. It says here, "...but when he
did eat with the Gentiles before these came from James, but when
they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them
which were of the circumcision." The circumcision were the Jews
who believed that their circumcision was necessary to salvation and
that it somehow separated them and made them better than the
Gentiles. And so Peter stopped fellowshipping
with the Gentiles, stopped eating with them, and only ate with
the Jews, and ate what the Jews ate. He was kosher at that point,
where before he was not kosher. Verse 13, And the other Jews
dissembled likewise with him, insomuch that Barnabas also was
carried away with their dissimulation. This means that their actions
contradicted their profession. Peter's actions went against
what he was preaching and teaching, and what he actually believed,
and what he had been shown by Christ. It was very clear he
knew these things, but what he did was a bigger sermon than
what he said, and so even Barnabas, who had been a traveler, a co-missionary
laborer with Paul, was led away. I've been led away after I believed.
I have been caused to believe for a while that there was something
I had to do. And every time that happens,
and it happens recurringly in our lives, we're brought back
to see that our salvation is in Christ alone. And when we
see that, then we rest again, our shoulders slump in relaxed
mode, and we're saying, oh, it's so good to know that though I'm
a sinner and my faith is unstable and weak, my hope is in Christ. And so Barnabas was led away,
and Paul's going to correct this, because their error was a great
error. Verse 14, but when I saw Paul,
when Paul saw, when I saw that they walked not uprightly according
to the truth of the gospel. So what is the standard that
they were being held to by Paul? And by the Holy Spirit who is
speaking now through Paul? The truth of the gospel. Because
in this new covenant age, the gospel is our rule of life. And so Paul said to 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 do the Jews? What is he saying? Peter was
a Jew. But he had been living with the
Gentiles as a Gentile. He was not observing the distinction
between Jews and Gentiles. It had been done away in Christ.
He was not holding the Gentiles to a requirement that they had
to be circumcised and keep the law to be saved. He was eating
with them, eating the food they ate, and fellowship with them.
He was living like a Gentile, wasn't he? And so Paul says,
if you live like a Gentile, if you're a Jew and yet live like
the Gentiles, why do you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?
Because that's what he was doing when he got up and left the fellowship
and eating with the Gentiles and he went to be with the Jews.
The Jews were put under the law. They had to do all these ceremonial
things and keep the law in order to be righteous before God. At
least that's what they understood. And so they were bound to the
law like a schoolmaster until Christ came. And yet, though
they were under the law as Jews, now Peter was no longer under
the law because Christ had come and he looked to Christ and saw
that his satisfaction to God for his sins and his fulfillment
of God's law was in Christ alone. And so he left, as a Jew, he
left trusting in the law and he trusted only in Christ. But
then he changed, and this action that he did by leaving the Gentiles
and their fellowship to be with the Jews, and acted as if the
old covenant was still in force, the new covenant had not put
it away, and therefore what Christ had done really hadn't accomplished
anything more than just some contribution to salvation, instead
of our entire salvation. A deadly error. And so why are
you doing this? It's complete hypocrisy to be
a Jew and say, I'm not under the law. I can live like a Gentile.
And yet when the Jews come, you revert and you tell the Gentiles,
now you have to be like the Jews. And so Paul says in verse 15,
we who are Jews by nature, we were born Jews. And we were raised
as Jews. We were taught the law and we
lived under it. We're Jews by nature. And not
sinners of the Gentiles. They weren't born Jews. They
weren't called by God's name. They didn't live under the law.
They didn't know what they worshipped. They worshipped idols. We're
not sinners of the Gentiles. How do the Gentiles live? There's
no law. I'm not under a law. And so Peter
had been living that way while the Gentiles were there in Antioch,
before the Jews came. I'm living like the Gentiles.
I'm not under the law. He says, we who are Jews by nature
and not sinners of the Gentiles, because that's what the Judaizers
called the Gentiles, sinners. They don't have law. They don't
live under the law. We do. We have the law. We live
under it. We're not sinners. That's what the Jews thought.
If that's what you're preaching by your action, Peter, why do
you do this? And then verse 16, we, we who
are Jews by nature and not sinners among the Gentiles, knowing,
we who have been convinced by Christ, this is something we
know. And this verse and what follows is the very heart and
soul of the message of all of Scripture. This is the justification
that God has provided for sinners in Christ. Knowing, this is something
we're certain of, 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 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. Not one. Not Peter. Not Paul. Not Abraham,
not Noah, not Adam. None. None will be justified
by their own personal obedience before God. Three times in this
verse the negative is used. You will not be justified before
God. Three times. By your own works
in keeping the law. Because that's what it means,
the works of the law. It means my obedience to God's requirements. Something I do. Some value in
me. Something about me. Something
that I can say belongs to me. Something I did or experienced.
It can be insignificant in comparison to what the law requires, but
if I trust in it, then that's trusting in my performance. But the law itself says the law
is no hiding place. It's no refuge. There's no salvation
here. Look at chapter 3, verse 10. The law itself says, don't look
to the law for salvation. Verse 10, for as many as are
of the works of the law are under the curse. There it is. For it
is written in the law, cursed is everyone that continueth not
in all things which are written in the book of the law to do
them. That's what the law says. If you don't do everything in
the law, all the time, perfectly, then you're cursed. So there's
no salvation there is there for a sinner. And verse 11 and 12
goes on. But that no man is justified
by the law in the sight of God, it is evident. For, and now he's
going to quote the prophets. The just shall live by faith. Habakkuk 2.4. The just live by
faith. The just are the righteous. The
righteous, how do they live? By the law? No, by faith. And
verse 12, and the law is not of faith. Living by the law is
not living by faith. The demands of the law are demands
placed on the individual. The gospel places all of God's
demands on our covenant head, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior,
our Substitute, our High Priest, And the law is not of faith,
but the man that doeth them shall live in them. You'll live if
you do it. That's what the law says. So
the law itself denies that we are justified before God by our
own law-keeping. Job said, how shall a man be
just with God? How shall he that is born of
woman be clean? In Job 25.4. So the law all throughout
says that we're not justified by the law. We're sinners. And
in the Psalms, in Psalm 32, David said, Blessed is the man whose
iniquities are forgiven. The law doesn't do that. Whose
sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord will not impute sin. In other words, we're saved by
something else. We're saved by the imputed righteousness of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Abraham believed God and it was
imputed to him for righteousness. Christ's righteousness was credited
to him. That's what the law says. And
don't you hear the law? In chapter 4 of Galatians, Paul
says, don't you hear the law? That Abraham had two sons? The
law itself. Genesis through Deuteronomy says,
Abraham had two sons, one of the bondwoman, one of the free.
But he that was born of the bondwoman was born after the flesh. And
he persecuted him that was born after the spirit, the son of
promise, Isaac. That's the way God saves his
people, is through promise, by grace. And not by what we do,
not after the flesh, but the spirit of God. So we're not justified
by the works of the law. What does it mean to be justified?
It means that we appear in the court of heaven. Like a criminal
appears before the judge. Or a man, maybe not a criminal,
appears before the judge in our land. This happens all the time
in our land. We're very familiar with it.
If you ever go into a courtroom, you'll experience it. And if
you're an adult, after you're registered to vote, they call
you in to be a juror. And you'll experience this. You'll
go into a courtroom. There will be a judge. There
will be an attorney defending the one who's accused. And there
will be someone who's prosecuting, bringing evidence in order to
prove the guilt of this person. And then there's going to be
these people who are going to listen to the evidence presented.
And they're going to give to the judge what they think. And
the judge is going to make the final verdict. But God in heaven
sits as judge alone. It's His law. He is the one who
imposed His law upon us. God Himself as judge requires
us to appear in His presence. He looks at the law and He looks
at us. If He finds anything in us that violates His law, or
any shortcoming that didn't fulfill the requirements of His law,
then he condemns us. And this condemnation, this sentence
of condemnation, passed on us when? When Adam, our father,
committed that sin in the Garden of Eden. That one sin, by that
one sin, we all became sinners and we were condemned in Adam.
All in Adam die. That's what the judge said. Then
how can we be justified? The judge has to find for us
a righteousness. So pure that His law is fulfilled. So satisfying to His justice
that all of our sins are taken away. And the punishment for
those sins is brought upon us in such a way that God is satisfied. And he therefore finds another,
one for the many, just as Adam stood for his, all of his people,
Christ stood for his. And God looks at the evidence
of what Christ has done, and based on that, he justifies. He pronounces as righteous those
to whose credit God gives or imputes the righteousness of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Justification. It means God says,
you are righteous. But not based on our own, because
we have none, but based on the righteousness, the obedience
of another. By His sufferings our sins were covered, and by
His obedience our righteousness is established. And that's the
only justification that there is before God, the Judge. We
have to appear. Everyone will appear before the
judgment seat of Christ. And the Judge will sit, and He
will judge out of the books according to their works. And everyone
who is not found written in the book of life shall be cast into
the lake of fire. Because only in the book of life
has Christ blotted out our sins and fulfilled our righteousness
for us. And that's the only way that the judge of all the earth
can do right and yet justify the ungodly. That's justification. Justified by the imputed righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he says here in verse
16, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the
law, not by what you do. I remember as a young person,
I wanted to be saved. I did not want to go to hell.
What do I have to do? You have to do this. You have
to raise your hand. You have to come forward. You
have to talk to the preacher. You have to ask Jesus into your
heart. You have to commit your life to Christ. You have to be
sincere. You have to keep doing these
things or you haven't been saved. And I began to try to do those
things. I went forward, crying, afraid
to go to hell, asking Jesus to come into my heart. At least
I thought I did. I don't remember. It was so long ago. That's the
trouble with depending upon what you do. You can never remember.
Did I really do it? Was I in my right mind? Was I
sincere in it? Did I have the right understanding? Did I make the right decision?
It all comes back to you, you see. And that leaves us without
a hope, without any justification before God. And so the works
of the law are anything that we bring. It can be our tears,
our sorrow, our resolve to do better, our reform, our repentance,
even our faith in Christ. We can trust our confidence in
Christ. There was some, a couple of guys
came to my house and they were, I was talking to them. And one
of them, in the course of the conversation, said, yes, but
I believe that God has given grace to all and that we have
to accept Him. I said, okay, well let's assume
that's the case. Did you accept Jesus? Yes. Well, how do you
know? How do you know you did it right?
How do you know you accepted the right propositions? How do
you know you were sincere? How do you know that you did?
Well, because of my works. Well, how do you know you've
done enough works and that you continue, that you will continue
in them? How do you know? It all comes
back to you, doesn't it? You see, when the Lord convinces
us, we not only look away from ourselves, but we look to Christ
and we confess, this is my hope, this is my message. This is what
I'm living by. So we're not justified by the
works of the law. Not by anything we do. No contribution
on our part. God does not respond to us to
justify us. That's what he convinces us over
time. At a moment in time. In order for us to be saved,
Christ had to do something. And God had to receive it for
us. And that's the end of the story. And he has to give it
to us to know it. So we're not justified by the
works of the law, but we are justified, he says here, listen,
look what it says, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. The King
James Version is the only version available today that I know of,
actually, no, there's one other one, that actually puts it in
this way, where the faith belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. the
faith of Jesus Christ. Most translations say, our faith
in Jesus Christ. But that's not what it says in
the original. It actually makes it clear in the original that
this is faith belonging to the Lord Jesus Christ. It belongs
to Him. So what is this faith of Jesus
Christ? Because by the faith of Jesus Christ, we are justified
according to what Paul says here. We are not justified by what
we do, but we are justified by the faith of Jesus Christ. What
is this faith? Well, as I've done so many times
before when I've read these words in the past, I've said, I don't
know what this means. And I've asked the Lord, what
does this mean? Why did the scripture write it this way, the faith
of Jesus? Why didn't it say it so that
I could understand it without struggling over it? Have you
ever read the Bible that way? I don't understand what it means.
Why didn't God make it clearer? It's frustrating. The reason
it's not clear to you is that you have to go to the Lord and
ask Him for it. And then He'll show us. Faith
is spoken of in scripture in two ways. Faith is what we believe, or
faith is our believing it. So faith can be the thing that
we believe, or it can be our own exercise of trust in, our
understanding of and trust in what we believe. Now what this
is saying here is that the faith of Jesus Christ is what we believe. It's who we believe. It's what
He did. It's not our subjective experience
of being persuaded and trusting Christ. But it's the object of
our faith. I've used illustrations of this
before, but even in scripture these illustrations are used.
Remember what Jesus said, if a man builds his house on the
rock, when the storms come, what happens to his house? It stands
firm. But if a man builds his house
on the sand and the storms come, then the sand washes out from
under the house and the house crumbles. The first one is the
faith of Jesus Christ. The second one is something else.
It's sand. Jesus said in scripture that
men trust in their riches. Men trust in their righteousness.
Men trust in lots of things. Their own law keeping. Their
own goodness. But there's only one trust that
won't fail. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. And there's other examples
given to us. Remember the example Christ gave
that there's a broad way that leads to destruction. A broad
way. It's as wide as it needs to be
for everyone to go in. And it's so wide and smooth and
clean looking. And everyone's going that way
that most people go that way. It's like there's a great chasm.
You know what a chasm is? When I was a little kid, my parents
took us all to the Royal Gorge. A place where the Colorado River
is a mile below the cliff. You can look down one mile and
see the bottom of the valley. So steep. And I remember thinking
back how I was actually, as a child, there were no barriers sitting
and walking around on that precipice just at the edge of that cliff.
I was surprised and thinking back that I'm sure my mom was
biting her nails. She always trusted the Lord.
But I think back about that, I could have fallen. I remember
looking down and seeing the river down there and still thinking
how far away it looked. That's a chasm. It's deep. They have these things in the
ice called crevasses or crevices. I don't know how you say it.
It depends on whether you're from Scotland or the US. The guys that work
from Scotland would say crevasse. Glacier. Anyway, glaciers and
crevices or crevasses and glaciers. But a chasm is a very deep thing. And think of faith, the object
of our faith like this, the Broadway, is a path across the chasm. a crossing of the chasm. And
most people go in there. But is the crossing strong enough? Is it long enough? Can you get
across it all the way? Because if you get into the crossing,
the bridge, and it ends or it fails, then you're going to end
up falling into the chasm. The chasm I'm speaking about
is that separation between us and God. And what lies beneath
is eternal perdition, damnation, eternal hell. And there's a broad
way that goes across. People think it goes across this
chasm. And that consists of our own
personal obedience to God's requirements. And somehow, because of our sorrow
or tears or reform or resolve to do better, our hope that we
can somehow be better someday, we're going to get across this
chasm. That's the broad way, that's the way everyone goes,
except a few. And then there's another way
called the narrow way, and it's so narrow that few people find
it, and few people go in there, and so narrow that you can't
carry any tools to repair the bridge while you're there. And
the strength of the path, whether the first one or the second one,
the first one, the signs all around it say, only the strong
enter here. Only those who persevere enter
here. And so people are emboldened
in that, and they think, I can do this. It's like Nike. Just do it. Just go for it. We
have confidence in ourself. I know I can do this. I'll just
resolve to do it. Pull myself up by the bootstraps.
It's like the Army or the Air Force. I went out a long time
ago to a Beale Air Force Base and had this building. And P,
period, R, period, I, period, D, period, E, period, pride. Professional results in daily
experiences. Something a man can beat his
chest about. We can do this. We're all in
this together. It can't fail if everyone's going
this way. Oh yes, it can. In fact, if everyone
goes that way, it will certainly fail. If we depend on our ability,
then it will fail. But the other path, the other
path, the other path is so narrow. that only a few find it, and
a few enter therein. And that's the way of the faith
of Jesus Christ. It's the way of grace. And what
is this way? Well, as I said, God speaks of
faith in two ways in Scripture. What we believe, or who we believe,
versus our believing it. And so in Romans chapter 1 verse
5 it says, "...by whom," by Christ, "...we have received grace and
apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for
his name." The faith here is the faith objectively. It's what we believe. It's the
teaching, the doctrine, the truth. It's not our believing it, but
our obedience is that obedience of our own believing it. That
persuasion. Our understanding of it. Our
resting upon it. But the faith itself, here spoken
of, is the teaching and the truth, we believe. And what is it? It's
the gospel. In essence, it's Christ and Him
crucified. And so, like the two crossings,
those going over the wide way are depending on, in some way,
their strength and wisdom to get across this path. It seems
easy. Everyone's going. It seems like
everyone's doing it, so it's got to be okay. They're not thinking
about what God thinks. They're thinking about something
that they can do. Or maybe they are. They think, well, God's
going to look upon me with favor because I'm doing my best here.
I'm sincere in this. I mean, God's not going to send
people to hell who are sincere. Is He? I mean, they might be
wrong, but if they're sincere, He won't send them to hell, will
He? You see, that's depending upon
us. Our own personal understanding
and convictions. But the faith spoken of is the
faith of the Gospel. And so He speaks about it here.
Look at Romans chapter 3 and verse 3. He uses this in the
same way there. He says in Romans 3.3, In other
words, if I don't believe the truth, does my unbelief change
the way things are? If I don't believe that the world
is round, for example, if I think it's flat, do I change the world?
Make it flat? Or so many other examples. If I think that the wide bridge
is going to hold me up, but it's weak because it depends on my
strength, will it really hold me up? If it ultimately depends
on my understanding, and I grow old and forget, and I lose my
mind, then I'm lost. Or if I lose my resolve, or my
interest, or all those things, then I'm hosed. But there's another
faith spoken of in scripture, and it's our persuasion of the
truth. It's our understanding, persuasion
of the truth. And it's our trust in what we
believe. And everyone has that kind of
faith in something, don't we? Everyone believes that. Children
are really good examples of trusting. We all trust our parents in some
way, don't they? Mom and dad say this is the way
things are. Yeah, it must be that way. Dad said so. There's
no doubt. Until you get older and you begin
to hear teachers at school and they say opposite things. And
then there's this big process of trying to correct things.
But anyway, we all trust naturally, don't we? Do you put your money
in the bank? Some of us do. Why? Because you trust the bank's
going to keep it. You trust that the whole banking system's going
to be sound, so you put it there, don't you? You get in your car,
you smash down the accelerator, and you go toward the stop sign,
and you're going like 40 miles an hour, and you're only a little
ways from it, and you take your foot off and you hit the brake.
You expect you're going to stop, don't you? Because you trust
that the brakes are going to work. Otherwise, you wouldn't
barrel down the road like you do. We trust things, naturally. So all people trust things. But
it's not our degree. of trusting. It's not our understanding.
There's people who can read Greek and Hebrew and Latin and English
and lots of other languages, French and Italian. One person,
knowing all these languages, is able to converse clearly in
them. And knows history, very intellectual,
analytical, and all these things that we might admire in men.
And they don't know the truth. They believe a lie. It doesn't
matter how big our faith is. Our salvation doesn't depend
on the strength of our faith, but it's the strength of the
one we believe. The faith of Jesus Christ means
the object of our faith. And what is that? Well, it's
the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ came from heaven as the
Son of God, took on our nature as man, and bore our sins before
God. And because He bore them, He
endured the punishment of our sins, the wrath of God, and took
it away. And He also, in His love for
His Father and for us, fulfilled God's law so that every requirement
of God on us was fulfilled by Him. And in all that He did,
in His life, in His death, in His obedience, in His love to
His Father and for His people, that obedience that fulfilled
the law, because love fulfills the law, in His whole heart,
mind, soul, and strength, Never thinking of anything except doing
the will of God, in love to his Father, for his people, laying
his own life down, giving himself, that fulfilled God's law. That's
the object of our faith. That's the faith of Jesus Christ.
It's what he did. That's the only bridge that'll
get you across the chasm of hell. and satisfy God. That's the only
way that you can appear in the courtroom of heaven and God will
pronounce you just and righteous. Knowing that a man is not justified
by anything the man can do, but only by what Christ has done,
even we have believed in Jesus Christ. That's what he says here. I'm paraphrasing, of course.
But he says it in verse 16. But by the faith of Jesus Christ,
by all that God has said concerning His Son, what He did, who He
is to us as Mediator, Surety, Substitute, High Priest, King,
Reigning Lord, Intercessor and Advocate, And all that He did,
He obtained our eternal redemption. He made propitiation for our
sins. He washed us from our sins in His own blood. We are seeing
Him, understanding Him as our substitute, persuaded that He's
enough in all, and we depend on Him. We're trusting. Before
God, I have no other confidence then that God would look on Christ
and receive me for His sake. That's it. And I'm not trusting
in my degree of knowledge, or in my persuasion, or in my trust
in Christ. I'm trusting Christ Himself.
That's what he's saying here. Even we have believed in Jesus
Christ. You can't believe in Christ and
also believe in yourself. You're either in the broad road,
on the broad bridge, or you're on the narrow path. You're either
built on sand or stone. There's no two ways. You're either
trusting your riches and your righteousness or you're trusting
Christ's righteousness. You're either believing Christ
or you're not. But we believe in Jesus Christ
in order that we might be justified. Not that our faith causes God
to do something. Faith doesn't move God. Faith
doesn't change God. God can't change. His decrees
are eternal. His work has already been accomplished
in Christ. But faith allows us to enter
in and take and receive to ourselves what God declares to us to have
been done. So our faith, that subjective
depending on Christ, our understanding from scripture, that causes us
to look away from ourselves and say, it's all in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And so we can ask these questions.
And we need to ask these questions of ourselves. Who justifies you? Do you appear before God and
defend yourself? Or does God justify you? It says
in Romans 8.33, it is God that justifieth. If you think that you're going
to stand and appear before God and answer God, maybe even debate
with Him, or even present the evidences why you should be justified,
then you've already lost. But God justifies. So the next
question is, why? What moved him? What induced
God to justify you? If you say, well, because I asked
Jesus into my heart, or I accepted Jesus, or I really was sorry
for my sins. I shed great tears of sorrow.
I remember that experience. It was so climactic in my life.
I remember it well. You're thinking back about that.
No. Faith looks to Christ and Him
only. So the only motive that moved
God, that cause that induced Him to justify us, was His own
grace, justified freely by His grace, without any consideration
of what we could do or had done. In fact, in spite of all of our
sin, Who justifies God? Why? Because of His grace. And
what is the basis? What is that legal basis on which
God can say, you are righteous before me? There's only one. It's the obedience and blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Is that your only basis for justification? Do you think that God is moved
by what you did? Or do you think that He did it
out of His own grace? When you were a dead dog sinner,
guilty before Him, naked, barren and undone, and unable to do
one thing. You see, if you see that God
must justify, if you see that He must do it by His grace, and
He does it only for what He thinks of Christ, then you have the
faith by which we receive that justification. And God has declared
it to you. That's the faith of Christ. That's
the truth declared. And we could go on. Is your faith
that which satisfies God? Did your faith die for you? Did
your faith obey God's law? Is your faith perfect or does
it increase? If we look to ourselves in any way, then we're constantly
finding some other way across the chasm. Something more solid
than what Christ has done. But if you have only one hope,
if God has persuaded you that you're a sinner and you have
no hope in yourself, then you have only one hope. It's got
to be Christ. If He didn't answer for me, I
have no answer. If He doesn't answer for me now,
and in judgment, I will have no answer. And if He didn't clothe
me in His own righteousness, if He didn't wash me from my
sins in His own blood, then I'm filthy and naked before God. And that's where we leave it.
That's my only hope. What is your hope? The message
of the man I was talking about, his hope was that he had received
what God did for everybody. But if God did it for everybody,
and only you and some others receive it, then ultimately you're
talking about what you did. The difference you made. Something
about you that made a contribution. That's called the broad way,
the sandy foundation. trusting your own righteousness.
So we see here in this verse the whole matter of our eternal
life is based on what Christ has done. Are you persuaded of
this? Has God convinced you that it's
only Christ and Him alone? And what God thinks of Him? Or
do you think that God's going to ask something of you and demand
something of you that you have to provide and that you can do?
Because if you do, then you haven't been convinced yet that you're
a sinner. May God help us to see that. Verse 17. Paul goes
on, "...but if while we seek to be justified by Christ..."
Now, we here. He's identifying himself with
Peter. We who believe Christ. "...if
while we seek to be justified by Christ..." Because that's
what faith does. Believing in Christ. We're coming
to God. We're depending upon the Lord
Jesus Christ. We're coming to Him, Lord, look
upon Christ for me, so that we might not make God justify us,
but so that we might receive in our own conscience the peace
and joy and enter into the praise and thankfulness that Christ
is all and God has provided Him to His glory. We seek to be justified
by Christ. If, while we do this, we ourselves
also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God
forbid. You see, Peter, by getting up
from the Gentiles and going to the Jews and leaving the Gentiles,
he said, I'm seeking justification in Christ, and yet, I've found
a sinner. Either because he was acting
as if he had to do something to keep the law in order to make
himself saved, to make a distinction, and therefore his salvation depended
somewhat on what he did, what he was, and therefore he had
to be a sinner before God. Is Christ the minister of that?
No. Of course not. God forbid. Or,
if, by this verse he means, if Peter, you say that you're trusting
Christ only, and the Judaizers say, no, you have to keep the
law too, and in their eyes you look like a sinner, if he's saying
here, if while we seek to be justified, you perceive us as
just being sinners before God because we're trusting Christ
alone, is Christ the minister of sin? Does he leave us somehow
short? And in our sins? No, God forbid. Both are not true. And there's
this subtle notion in this passage of scripture where the Judaizers
are taking the view that if God saves us entirely by His grace,
then that's going to leave us with this attitude, well, I can
do whatever I want. And that's a dangerous attitude.
We can't let people be that free. And by thinking that way, think
about it. If you say, well, if I'm saved
by grace alone, then I'll do whatever I want to do, and that's
lawlessness. We can't let people do that,
so we have to preach Christ plus law keeping. Then what you're
saying is the only reason that I serve God is because I fear
his wrath, or I'm trying to earn his reward, and it's not out
of love, because love springs only from pure grace, a complete
and finished salvation received by Christ alone." So if while
we seek to be justified by Christ, because we do, and yet others
think that we're sinners because we haven't done what they expect
to do for our salvation, or if we sinfully depart from Christ
and begin to hold to the law. Either case, Christ is not the
one who caused this, this sin. He didn't leave us in our sins.
He fully satisfied for us and clothed us with His righteousness.
And He also doesn't have a gospel that teaches us to one day believe
Him only and then go try to fulfill His law the next day. Neither
one is true. Verse 18. For if I build again
the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor."
It's not Christ. If Peter gets up from the Gentiles
and goes to the Jews, and by doing that he says, the new covenant
didn't actually complete the old. The law is not fulfilled
in Christ. I have to do something now. And
the old is still in place. If I build up what I destroyed
when I said, Christ is enough and Christ is everything. And
you began to preach that and live that way, like Peter did. But if now I begin to rebuild
what I once destroyed saying, yes we are saved by something
we do. I begin to build it up again, then I make myself a transgressor. I show that I'm still under the
law. And I'm not trusting Christ only. In verse 19, let me just briefly
say this. Let me read it. For I, through
the law, am dead to the law. How am I dead to the law? Why
am I dead to the law? Because the law says you're a
sinner, and a sinner must die. I, through the law, am dead to
the law. But I didn't die. I, yes. But my substitute who
took my sins died, and I died with him. Through the law, the
law demanded my death, my sins were laid on Christ, the law
demanded He be cursed, and He was hung on a tree. I, through
the law, am dead to the law, not that I might live to myself,
but that I might live to God. not to be a transgressor, not
to act as if I have to somehow keep the law now, but I live
to God by the grace in Christ alone. I do what I do out of
love because of this faith that God has given me. In verse 20,
perhaps the most significant verse in all of scripture, 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. Do you see how personal salvation
is? Me. He. Gave himself for me. I live by the faith of the Son
of God. I don't live by my own law-keeping,
but His. Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, our
Holy Father, We pray that you would receive us for our Savior's
sake. Find us in Him, not having our
own righteousness but His. Not having our sins because He
took them away and made satisfaction for them. Buried them in that
grave and we rose again with Him. Lord, find us so we're trusting
Him alone. We don't look for anything from
ourselves. We know ourselves to be weak.
We know our faith to be imperfect. even temporary. One day we'll
see by sight, it won't need it anymore. And yet we know the
Lord Jesus Christ and His obedience to you and His own body as a
man and His and his nature as God fulfilled your law for everlasting
ages, and that's all of our hope and salvation. And we're thankful,
and we rest in it, we trust, and we ask you for more grace
to increase our faith, to continue resting, and trust him more,
and joy in him even more greatly. Take glory to yourself, Lord.
Give us worship in our hearts for you, for what you've done.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.