Get out your vitals and turn
with me if you would over to Galatians chapter 2. Galatians chapter 2. We'll continue
our exposition through Galatians. Galatians chapter 2. Today we're
going to be looking at verses 16 again and moving into verse
17. Relations chapter two, 16 and
17. We was looking at 15 and 16 last
week and we're kind of stopped in the middle of 16, but we'll
continue to verse 16 and into 17. We're rolling this morning. But before we, uh, we read, uh,
Samuel, would you like to lead us in prayer this morning? Our Heavenly Father, I come to
you today, I thank you for everything you give us, and I thank you
for the word that we are about to hear, and that we would all
receive it, and that we would be blessed by it. And Lord, I
pray that today we can keep our eyes on you as they should be,
and today that we'll just do the fellowship together with
all who are blessed. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Galatians
chapter two, starting in verse, I'll go ahead and read 15. That's
where we was at last week, down to 17. It says, we who are Jews
by nature and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a
man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith
of Jesus Christ. Even we had believed in Jesus
Christ, that we'd 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. But if while we seek to be justified
by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore
Christ the minister of sin? God forbid. Now, if you'll remember,
brethren, as we have been going through this book, Paul has been
making a argument to the Galatians who had fallen into error uh... they've been listening to these
uh... jews that have come from jerusalem
who were still saying that we must keep the law of moses to
be saved that we are saved by christ but we have to keep the
law to be saved or to stay safe and also attached with that part
of the law that was uh... given to abraham which was circumcision
but we've seen that they were saying you know you can't be
saved by just believing in christ that you have to be uh... circumcised
and you have to keep the law for righteousness and uh... paul uh... told him that that
was another gospel this is another gospel this isn't the gospel
that jesus give us whenever he was here the doctrine that jesus
give us to preach and to teach the gospel that jesus give us
to preach and teach is not a gospel of works and grace but of grace
alone we are saved by grace alone. And so he spent all of chapter
one talking about the fact that there is no other gospel. There's
only one gospel, and that's the gospel of grace alone. And anybody
that preaches another gospel, he said, let them be accursed,
for they're trying to persuade men and not God. If we are preaching
a gospel that is not the gospel of grace alone, but a gospel
of grace plus works, we are not preaching the gospel. And the
Bible here tells us in chapter one that we are not a servant
of Christ. So any churches that are out
there, any preachers that are out there that are preaching
a gospel of something that you have to do to be saved, that's
not a person serving Christ. That's not the gospel of Jesus. That's another gospel. And there
are hundreds and thousands of churches around that are preaching
these very things, that salvation is based upon a condition that
we have to keep to get saved. But that's not the gospel that
Jesus gave us. The gospel is that Jesus alone
saves his people, and that that salvation doesn't require anything
from us for that salvation. Now, that doesn't mean that we're
not gonna repent and believe on Christ. We will repent and
believe, but that's because we have already been saved by Christ.
Christ has saved us, and he sends his spirit into us, and that
spirit enables us by that new life, that new spirit that is
in us, it enables us to be able to understand the gospel, to
understand spiritual things, it convicts us of sin, it shows
us our need for Christ, and then we believe upon Christ, we turn
away from our dead works, or we turn away from thinking that
we can gain our own salvation by our works of righteousness. Because the Bible says that all
of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. That there is none
righteous, no not one. There's nothing that we can do
in our flesh that could ever merit salvation. We needed that
substitute that we just sung about. We needed him to come
and live the law perfectly for us. and we needed Him to come
and die in our place. And because of our union with
Christ, the Bible teaches us that we have been united with
Christ before the foundation of the world. If we're His people,
we are united with Him, one with Him before the foundation of
the world, and that all spiritual blessings have been given to
us in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And our union with Him,
and because of that union, Whenever Christ died, we died. Whenever
Christ fulfilled the law perfectly, he fulfilled it for us. And so
now God looks on us, even though we have sinned, God looks on
us as if we had never sinned. And we are completely and totally
justified. That's the word that we're looking
here at, is the word justified. And it's a shame that in many
churches today, you don't even hardly even hear the word justified
anymore. these big doctrinal words, you
know, a lot of churches are tending to move away from them. They
want to tell life lessons and they want to tell good stories
or they want to take the word of God and make it so simple,
you know, and dumb it down so everybody can understand it instead
of teaching the people and bringing them up to the level of what
the scriptures say. That's what we want to do whenever
we're teaching our children. We want to bring them up in the
nurture and the admonition of the Lord We want to teach them
what the Bible says, not take the Bible and try to lower it
down so that our fleshly minds can understand. We want to teach
it as it is, and the Spirit will teach us if we are Christ, and
he will teach us that. And so we see Paul is making
the declaration that there is no other gospel, there's only
one gospel, and that's the gospel that Christ has saved his people. And then we see in chapter two
that Even though the apostles all agreed, whenever they met
in Jerusalem in the 15th chapter of Acts, whenever they met together,
they all agreed that both Jew and Gentile, which now in Christ
Jesus, there is no Jew or Gentile. There's only one. We are only
one people in the Lord. All this stuff that you hear
on TV about all the races and things like that, that's not
a biblical thing. In Christ Jesus, Lord's people,
we're all one people. There is no distinction between
Jew and Gentile. There is no distinction between
black or white. There is no distinction between
rich or poor. There's none of those, male or
even male or female. I mean, it's all in Christ Jesus.
We are one. And so whenever we are taught
that, we see that the Jews are not saved in a different way
than us Gentiles. And the Gentiles doesn't have
a special gospel just for them. And the Jews didn't have a special
gospel for them. Whenever they met at that Jerusalem
council in the 15th chapter of Acts, we see that what Paul was
preaching and what the apostles were preaching were the same
thing. Peter had that vision. Remember
that vision that Peter seen from the Lord, where that sheep came
down and had all those animals in there that were unclean to
the Jew? But the Lord taught him, he said, don't call unclean
what the Lord has called clean. And so that's, hey, that's good
for us, right? We're Gentiles, we're not Jews,
we were Gentiles. And so the Lord has deemed us
clean, but not because we're clean in our own righteousness,
because we're clean in Christ Jesus. Because we're in Christ
Jesus, there is no Jew, there is no Gentile. And if you look
there in verse 15, That's why Paul made the distinction there.
We who are Jews by nature are not sinners of the Gentiles.
Remember, their mindset was the Gentiles are bad. The Gentiles
are dogs. They called them dogs. They didn't
have anything to do. Matter of fact, if anybody came
in contact with a Gentile, they were ceremonially unclean. And they had to be cleansed from
that. They had to go through all their little rituals to be
cleansed of that. They wouldn't go through the
Gentile areas. They wouldn't allow Gentiles
into the place. I mean, it was that bad. And
so here, when Paul and Barnabas went and talked with those apostles,
and they began to discuss the gospel, they discussed the fact
that these men were coming from Jerusalem and teaching the law
to these new Gentile churches. And they were saying, look, they're
coming and trying to put a burden upon these people that they've
never been of. The Gentiles never had the law given to them. And
he said, the gospel is not about keeping the law. It's about Christ
who kept the law. And so we don't need to be teaching
them that. So these men that are coming
down, they need to stop doing that. They were called the Judaizers. Paul said, you know, this is
what we've been preaching. The Lord has been blessing this
gospel. Peter said, that's the gospel
that the Lord taught me. I learned that from Cornelius.
I know that whenever I went to Cornelius's house, the Lord saved
him and the Holy Spirit fell upon them just like they did
with us at the very beginning. And that the Lord is saving the
Gentiles and he's saving them by grace alone and not by the
works of the law or keeping a righteousness up for themselves. and then that's
whenever uh... that's where they brought up
the uh... remember the uh... prophecy of joel that said that
uh... that that tabernacle be rebuilt
and i was talking about the gentiles being included and so they decided
yes the gospel that we are to preach to every man is the gospel
that jesus alone is our salvation that we have uh... that we have
been justified by his faith alone and not by anything that we do
In chapter two, though, of Galatians, we see that Peter came down and
was staying with the Antioch church for a little while. And
while there, he was eating with the Gentiles, drinking with the
Gentiles, didn't have any problem following right along with everything
that he had been preaching and teaching. But all of a sudden,
some important Jews came down to visit. And whenever they did,
old Peter, he became a hypocrite, didn't he? He kind of slinked
back into saying, okay, well, I'm going to separate myself
from the Gentiles. And so he separated himself. And he did that, and it began
to influence some of the other people within the church. Even
Barnabas was drawn away by Peter's actions. And Paul, whenever he's
seen that, as I mentioned a couple weeks ago, whenever Paul's seen
that, he said, hey, we've got to cut this off right now. He
said, this is going to cause havoc within the churches if
we continue to be hypocritical this way. And so he confronted
Peter, right? He told Peter, he said, he said
that he confronted Peter to his face. And he told him right there
in front of everybody, he corrected him. He said, you know, hey,
you understand that we are not saved by anything that we do
in the law, but we're saved by Christ alone. And then why are
you, when these Jews come in, are you going back into that
old way of thinking. And so that's kind of where we
are here. And if you look there, he said, whenever I saw that
they walked not uprightly, verse 14, I'm sorry, verse 14, he says,
but when I saw they walked not uprightly according to the truth
of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, if thou being
a Jew liveth after the manner of the Gentiles and not as do
the Jews, why compelst thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? And so what he's saying here
is that whenever you walk by the law and not by grace alone,
you are not walking according to the truth. So our faith, whenever
we exercise faith, whenever we are born again and we exercise
faith in Christ Jesus, we're not exercising faith that Christ
just existed. We're not just exercising faith
that Christ died and was buried. Now, yes, we believe those things
to be true and that he was resurrected. But we believe that by his life,
that by his death and by that resurrection, that that is our
righteousness. What he did accomplished all
of our salvation. And so the faith that is given
to us when we are born again, when we are born from above,
that faith will clinch onto the true gospel which is Jesus alone
for our salvation. It won't look to other gospels. Now, there will be a time, and
all of us, you know, we're just talking, there's a time that
all of us go and we believe other gospels. We believe those false
gospels, maybe because we've been raised up into other kind
of religious beliefs. Did you guys, did you, have you
always been in the Pentecostal church? I know that a lot of
Hispanics are Catholic. Did you ever come to the Catholic
church? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Did you go from there
to the Pentecostal church? Yeah. Okay. And then you guys,
I know several people that have just, that's just like that.
Um, and so anyway, you see how, but you know, even before that
the Lord has kept his people and he brought them, there was
a place and a time, that the Lord had for them, them, for
us, for anybody else that's come this direction from false gospels. Now some, Samuel back here, he's
been blessed to be raised up in sovereign grace teaching all
of his life. Not all of us have. And so the
Lord brings us and teaches us those things in his time. And
like Paul said, you know, whenever the Lord revealed his son in
me, then I begin to think different about what I was doing. And everything
that I thought was my gain, I counted as loss. And so, Peter here was
exemplifying that, oh yeah, we believe that Christ alone saves,
but then he says, eh, now the influence of these others is
gonna make me say that there's a little bit of law keeping that
we need to keep. And we have preachers today that tries to
put us under the law. that tries to tell us that you
can't be saved or you cannot stay righteous before God without
keeping the law. But Paul here, he says that that
is not walking according to the truth of the gospel. We are,
by faith, we reach out and believe the true gospel, but we walk
in a daily walk. And this is what Galatians, a
lot of people says Galatians is about just justification.
I believe it is. We are talking about justification.
That's in our, as a matter of fact, it's in our verse in verse
16 and 17. But we also see in chapter three
and turn over, if you would, to chapter three and look at
verse three. He says, are you so foolish having
begun in the spirit? Are you now made perfect in the
flesh? This is also talking about our walk, not just our legal
salvation, not just what Christ has done for us. in saving us,
but it also talks about our experience of salvation, our day-to-day
living. That, too, is by grace alone. It's not by the works
that we do. The Bible says that we are His
workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which
God hath before ordained that we should welcome Him. And it
says that we should work out our salvation with fear and trembling
Because it is God who works in you, both to will and to do His
good pleasure. So the good works that we will
do in this life is also by grace alone. It's the work of the Holy
Spirit in us producing repentance and faith and love towards Christ. It's producing a desire for obedience,
a desire for holiness and for righteousness. And remember Paul
in Romans chapter 7 where he talked, he said, You know, my
flesh is warring against my spirit. I want to do good, but all I
see is me doing bad. My flesh just keeps doing bad
things. But my spirit or my mind, it
is set on doing the things of Christ. It is obedient to Christ.
In my mind, I am obedient. I want to be obedient. Well,
that's what we see here is that we have been given not only a
legal salvation, but an experiential salvation. Christ is still in
us. and he's giving us everything
that we need for life and godliness. But it's all based on him. It's
never based on anything that we do outwardly. Now that's not
to say that just go out and sin, okay? I'm not telling you to
just go out and sin and do whatever you want, that it's okay to do
whatever you want. No, if the Holy Spirit of God
is in you, the Bible says that it will convict you of sin. It
will constrain you. The love of God will constrain
you. It will keep you from wanting
to do those things. But we will continue to do sin. I mean, if anybody says that
they have no sin, they make God out to be a liar because he says,
for all of sin, and all of us continue to have sin. However,
the thing is, is that Christ has died and paid for every one
of those sins. And God never is gonna hold those
sins against us ever again. And so that's the good thing
about justification. And so the word justification
and what we see here, and it brings us to where we're at here
in verse 16. Whenever we walk according to the truth of the
gospel, we are walking looking by faith to what Christ has done. That's what it means to walk
by faith. If we walk by faith or if we're
walking in the spirit, that means that we are walking with faith
to Christ alone and not towards anything that we do. We only
walk towards Christ alone. And so now Paul, he says, knowing
that a man is not justified by the works of the law. I mean,
that is a principle of scripture, that is a doctrine that you can
sit down, is that no one can ever be made right before God
or stay right by God by any works of the law. I mean, that's just plain and
simple. He says, that a man is not justified by the works of
the law. But how are we justified? By
the faith of Jesus Christ. Now, a lot of your modern translation
of Bibles has faith in Jesus Christ, but that's not what's
in the original Greek. The original Greek has the faith of Jesus
Christ. We are saved by the faith of
Jesus Christ. We are justified by the faith
of Jesus Christ. As I mentioned last week, there
are some sovereign grace believers that even get this a little bit
off. They think that it is the faith
of Jesus in us that we exercise that brings justification. No,
it's actually Christ's faithfulness. When Christ came and he was faithful
to the Father, to obey and to do all that the Father sent him
to do, that was his faithfulness. That was his faith in the work
of the covenant of grace. In the covenant of grace, he
was given as a mediator, as a substitute. He was given as the surety for
his people. And whenever he came in flesh
and he lived and fulfilled the law, he did everything. Remember,
Jesus said, he said, I do the things that the Father tells
me to do. Everything the Father has done, I've done. I've not
missed anything. I've completed everything. that
the father has told me to do. That's his faithfulness. He had
the faith that in the covenant of grace that everything that
he would do and accomplish would be the satisfaction of God's
just righteousness. That his justice would be kept. And so Jesus fulfilled that.
And so it was based upon Christ's faithfulness by living perfectly
the law and by dying in our stead. So Jesus lived as a substitute
for us, and then he died for a substitute for us. And that's
what's so ironic about this, is Jesus lived perfectly. He
was the perfect man, living perfectly, fulfilling all of the law of
God, every jot and tittle of the law of God, he fulfilled. But yet he also fulfilled being
the sinner for all of his people. He was the sinner that God poured
out his wrath upon and that he died in our place. So even though
he was the perfect lamb, he was also the perfect sacrifice. He was the sinner of sinners.
The Bible says that he took our sin upon himself, that he became,
he who knew no sin became sin, that we might become the righteousness
of God. That's justification. See, Christ
died for us as a sinner, even though he never did sin. Don't
ever think that just because the Bible says Jesus became a
sinner in our place, that doesn't mean that Jesus ever sinned or
actually becomes sinful. He was impeccable. He never sinned. He couldn't have ever sinned
because he was God. But yet he came and he died in
our place as a sinner and he took on everything that the sinner
of God is going to experience in the wrath of God to the point
where God was satisfied. I don't know how much that was.
I don't know what it felt like. I don't know what it's going
to be. Thank God I don't have to know what it feels like. But I do
know this, that whatever it was that God poured out in separating
himself whenever Jesus was on that cross, and the Bible says
that the Father forsook him. Listen, I believe it means what
it says. That he actually was forsaken
of God, that God turned from him, looking at him, and that
his, that everything was turned away
from him as far as God was concerned, and that he experienced separation
from God for the first time. And that that separation, whatever
that is and however that's felt, he experienced whatever it is
that people without Christ are going to experience that wrath.
And God said that he looked upon that and was satisfied. We're
going to read that verse here in just a minute. So, Christ
substituted for us in his obedience, and that is the faith of Christ
that justifies. It's not your faith when you
exercise it in Christ Jesus. You exercising your faith in
Christ Jesus is a signal or a sign that you already have been justified. Justified people have faith or
walk by faith in Christ Jesus. Unjustified people don't walk
in faith. They look to their works. They
look to their own righteousness, their own goodness. They look
to their own ability. They even look to their own self
as saying, you know, well, Christ is doing the work in me. Well,
how do you know that? I preached that message once before about
trusting in Christ for our works alone. I asked the question,
how do you know that the good works that you do or the works
that you're doing are the work of God in you or your own flesh
just being good? We don't know that, do we? We
can't know that. All we have to do is trust that
God is doing what he promised, that he is working in us to willing
to do his good pleasure. But those works, specifically
the works that are talked about in the Word of God that we walk
by is not outward works, but inward works. It's works of repentance. It's works of belief. It's works
of faith. See, you can do all the good
on the outside. I mean, everybody, I can pretend all I want to.
You know, I can dress real nice and go to church and I can sing
and I can preach and I can pray and I can give money and I can
You know, I can go out and tell other people about Jesus. Everybody
can mimic that. I used to mimic that before I
was saved. You know, I did all that stuff. But one thing I couldn't
do is I couldn't trust in Jesus alone for my salvation. I had
to think it was either I had to make a decision for Jesus.
I had to walk down an aisle or shake a preacher's hand or, you
know, I had to be baptized or, you know, I had to choose Jesus.
You know, it was up to me. Jesus did all that he could.
And he made salvation possible, but I had to believe. And if
I didn't believe that he could give it to me. See, those are
conditional things that the Bible says that that was never taught
to the disciples. The disciples were never taught
that. Whenever they had that counsel, you know, they said,
hey, we never told anybody that you are saved by anything that
you do outwardly. It's always, it's all inwardly. Everything
is inwardly. Now, is there going to be a change
in the way that we walk outwardly? Yes, but that can't ever be your
assurance, brothers, sisters. Our outward appearance can never
be our assurance. Our assurance is always an inward
assurance. The Bible tells us that the Spirit
bears witness with our spirit that we are Christ. It's an inward
thing. The Bible tells us that the Spirit
works in us for bringing us to repentance, for bringing us to
faith, that he convicts us of sin, these are all inward things
that we see, not outward things. So whenever you have preachers
and churches teaching you that it's all about the outward things
that you do, and we know, you know, a tree is known by its
fruit, they're always looking at the outward appearance. But
didn't Jesus say, you know, you're always looking at the outward
appearance, but it's the inward appearance that counts. He called
those Pharisees, he called them whitewashed sepulchers or whitewashed
tombs or graves. What does that mean? Well, they've
taken something that's got something dead and rotten inside, but they've
taken it and they've painted it all pretty to make it look
good. We even do that today in our own funerals, don't we? We take those dead bodies and
we lay them in a pretty expensive casket with all the flowers around
it. And we have all the lovely things
and everybody's got all the stuff that's surrounding it to make
it look as pretty as it can. But ultimately, what's inside
that is dead. It's ugly. It's rotten. There's
no life in there. And that's what Jesus was saying.
These Pharisees, you look good on the outside. You're trying
to keep the law, and you're doing all these things. And to most
people, you seem religious. But inside, you're dead men's
bones. Inside, you are dead. And unfortunately, that's what
a lot of Christianity is like. There's a lot of people outwardly
who look good but inwardly they're dead. They still need life in
them. Someone who's alive in Christ Jesus is trusting Christ,
walking by faith in Christ Jesus alone for their salvation. And they're not trying to gain
a salvation or keep a salvation by the law. So it says here that
knowing that a man is not, back in verse 16, knowing that a man
is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith
of Jesus Christ. And then he goes on, because
we kind of stopped there last week, I didn't go with the rest
of the verse, but it says, even we have believed in Jesus Christ,
that we might be justified by the faith of Christ. Now, someone
might say, well, there you go, preacher, you're wrong. It's
not by the faith of Christ, it's by your faith in Christ. Because
it says it right there, even we have believed in Jesus Christ,
That we might be justified by the faith of Christ. Now, remember
I told you that the original language, whenever these were
written, they didn't have commas. All these commas, this punctuation,
commas and periods and all this stuff, all that was put in by
the translators whenever they translated our Bibles. And I'm
not necessarily trying to say bad things about the translators.
But they put those in there to help with the flow of reading
and understanding. But that isn't always the case.
Sometimes they put the punctuation where it probably shouldn't be.
And if you ever would get a Bible, I've got, electronically I've
got a Bible and then one that I've got of the New Testament
that is all in paragraph form. It doesn't break it up in chapters
and verses. When you read the Bible without the chapter and
verse breaks, sometimes a lot of things come a little bit clearer
because you're reading them as they was intended to be read
in the letter. But anyway, I don't wanna get
off on that. It says here, even we have believed in Jesus Christ,
what is it that we have believed in Jesus Christ? That we might
be justified by the faith of Christ. What is it that we're
believing? That we might be justified by
the faith of Jesus Christ. That's what that verse is saying.
It says even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might
be justified by the faith of Jesus Christ. Not by our faith
in Jesus Christ, but by the faith of Jesus. We're justified by
the faith of Jesus Christ. And not by the works of the law.
For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. Again,
Paul makes it very clear here that no one is ever gonna be
justified by keeping the law. Now, let me show you why that's
the case. Turn with me over to the book
of James. James 2. And look with me down at verse
10. The Bible says, for whosoever shall keep the whole law and
yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. Whosoever shall keep the whole
law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. Now there's
something like 600 laws in the Old Testament. Have any of y'all kept all of
them? Faithfully? In mind and in deed? I don't
think none of us can do that. We can't do that. Matter of fact,
it's impossible for us to do that. But the Bible here says,
if you even break the law in one, and here's the reason why,
is because even though the Bible uses laws with an S, laws, plural,
the different laws that the Lord has given to us, it's always
looked on as one whole unit. The law of God is all one unit. And so if you've broken one,
you've broken the whole thing, because God looks upon that law
as a perfect unit, that it's all one thing, you have to keep
every bit of it. And so if you want to gain your
own righteousness before God, or you think that you can stay
right before God, you have to keep the law 100% of the time
perfectly. In word and deed, in thought
and deed. in your heart. Jesus says that
if you've sinned in your heart, you've sinned against him. It
may not be an outward sin, it's an inward sin. You've still sinned
against God. So see, there is not, and that's
the purpose of the law. The purpose of the law is if
we've been given spiritual understanding, we realize that there is no way
I can keep that. There's no hope for me to be
righteous before God because I can't keep all that. I can't. And listen, if you try and you
don't keep it, you're under the curse of the law. The Bible says
that every person who sins, that the wages of sin is death. The
curse of the law brings death. The strength of the law is sin. Sin in us is the strength of
the law. All the law does is show us that
we cannot keep God's righteousness. That's why we had to have a substitute.
And that's why Paul is saying this is such a wonderful gospel,
a beautiful gospel, because none of us, and remember in Acts 15,
they said, hey, why put that yoke upon the Gentiles who never
had it? All of our forefathers couldn't even keep that. They
knew there's no hope in the law. There's only condemnation. And
so there's where in justification we find the opposites, okay? You have justification and the
opposite of that is condemnation. You're either justified or you're
condemned. One or the other. You either
stand as justified in Christ Jesus or you stand condemned
in your sin. The other opposites is this,
is works and faith. You are either working for salvation
or righteousness or you are by grace trusting in Christ alone. for your works and righteousness.
See? They're complete opposites and
they don't ever mingle together. They are absolutely opposite
of each other. You cannot be condemned and justified
at the same time. If God has justified, matter
of fact, there's a scripture in the Bible that speaks to that
about that. Does anybody know what that is?
It says, who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
For it is God who justifies, right? If God has justified you,
there isn't anybody, Satan, God, or even yourself, or in a lot
of cases, other Christians. Other Christians sometimes want
to condemn you because you're not living to the standard of
holiness of faith and fair living, right? There is no one that can
lay a charge to any of God's elect because God has justified
them. And if God has justified them, who shall separate us from
the love of God? Nobody can. There's nobody that's
going to be able to take that justification away from us. God
has loved us in Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus has came and in
that love has died for us. He has substituted for us. And
God has counted that as our righteousness. But on the other hand, there's
condemnation. There are those that are condemned. And it's
those who are trying to work for their salvation. or work
to make themselves righteous before God in their everyday
life, that is considered unrighteousness. You trying to work and please
God by law keeping is actually unrighteousness. You think you're
working, that's why it says in Matthew that there'll be many
on that day who's saying to me, Lord, Lord, did we not in your
name cast out devils and demons and didn't we do all these wonderful
works and we did them in your name. And he said, depart from
me ye doers of iniquity. All those good religious things
that they were doing were works of iniquity. Why? Because they
were doing it thinking that they were gaining for themselves a
righteousness and a standing before God. And that's not what,
that was not how anybody was gonna be saved. And so they,
even though they were doing, and they may have been doing
good church things, obviously they were. They said that they
were casting out demons and that they were doing all these wonderful
works in his name. I mean, they were even giving
Jesus glory. They were saying glory to Jesus.
And isn't that what we see? A lot of religious institutions
here, whether it's different denominations or different world
religions, whether it be Hindu or Buddhist or Muslim or anything
like that, All of them are, you know, we're doing this in the
name of our God. You know, we're doing this in the name of our
God. But even within Christianity, there's those who are who are
blinded, who do not see the true gospel, who they believe that
they are working at righteousness within themselves and for themselves
before God, and that they are living righteously before God
because of something they're doing outwardly. And Sadly, before
God, one of these days, he's gonna say, depart from me, you
doers of iniquity. And they're gonna go, I don't
know, doers of iniquity? I mean, we were doing things in your name.
And he said, depart from me because I never knew you. See, that's
what makes the difference, is being known of God. Because those
who are known of God have been born from above also. And those
who have been born from above walk in faith in Christ Jesus
alone and not in their outward appearance. And so we see that
if we do not keep the whole law, then we cannot be justified. And by the deeds of the law,
no flesh will be justified. Now, with that being said, that
also is a principle. And I believe that that principle
was laid down even before the foundation of the world, that
God never intended in giving the law to ever justify anybody. I've heard it said, and I even
used to preach this myself, that god give us this law uh... and
which is god's character and that uh... that uh... in that law we ought to keep
that law uh... and do that law and that we are
bound to keep that law and if we break that law you know we
ask forgiveness and then we get back to trying to keep that law
and that in doing so then we are right with god But the only
way that we can be right with God is to be in a state of justification. We have to be justified. That's
the only thing that makes us right before God. And that includes
our sanctification. Our sanctification isn't us becoming
more holy either. In and of ourselves, the Bible
says that the flesh is flesh and it cannot do anything good,
that it's not pleasing to the Lord. And so our flesh, our person
does not become more and more holy. You can't get more holy
than what's already been given to us inside. The Bible says
that we have a new creation in us that is created in righteousness
and in holiness. Matter of fact, the Bible says
that that spirit that is within us, that's there in 1 John, it
says it cannot sin. The spirit of God that's in us
cannot sin. So we're made up of the flesh or the spirit. If
the flesh can't ever do anything good, and the Spirit can't do
anything bad, then what's becoming more holy? We're not. All we are is trusting in the
holiness of Christ as our host. He is our holiness. We are holy
because He is holy. We don't become holy. If we're
walking in holiness, it's by walking in faith that Christ
is our holiness. Because no one here is ever going
to be without sin until the day that we die. And no, we're not
becoming less and less and less and less and less and less sinful.
Matter of fact, if your experience is like mine, the more that I
study God's word and I see God's work, it seems the more that
I'm sinful. I see myself even worse because
I'm seeing things in the word of God. I didn't even know I
was being sinful in that area. I didn't even know I was trying.
But still, whether it's, you know, God's not keeping track
of which ones are which and all that stuff. It's this. Are you
trusting Christ for righteousness or are you trusting yourself
for righteousness? It's that simple. It's not simple
as did I do enough good or did I do enough bad? It's are you
trusting Christ alone for your righteousness and walking in
that? Or are you trusting in yourself for righteousness and
trying to walk in that and failing miserably, by the way? See, we
trust Christ alone for that. And so whenever it talks about
us being holy, it's us looking to Christ alone and trusting
him. What was the commands that Jesus
give us? To love God with all our mind, soul, and strength.
To love our neighbor as ourself, right? We are to trust in Christ
alone for our salvation. See, those things, and he said,
and all these, hang all the laws and the prophets. Whenever we are trusting in Christ,
And him alone, that's walking by faith. That's walking in faith. That is walking according to
the rule. In Galatians chapter six at the end of the letter,
Paul writes in verse 16, as many as walk according to this rule,
peace be on them and mercy and upon the Israel of God. Walking
according to the rule is the same as walking in faith. Or
as we've seen in our passages here, that we are walking according
to the truth of the gospel. All that's the same. It's walking
trusting Christ alone and not ourselves for righteousness.
And so Paul, in chapter 16, or excuse me, chapter two, verse
16, says, no flesh shall be justified. But in verse 17, he says, but
if while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves are found
sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin, God forbid. So, what he's basically saying
here is that if we live by faith alone, trusting Christ alone
for our justification, and we have found ourselves sinners,
is therefore Christ diminished to sin. What's he talking about?
Well, he's saying, is this a license to go out and sin? No. Even though Jesus covered every
sin, past, present, and future, That's not a license for you
to just go out and live the way that you want to live. We still
have the principles of Scripture before us that we strive to keep,
that we strive to walk in, that we strive to live in. Okay? We still desire those things.
And that desire will be in us if the Spirit is in us. Okay?
So it says here, if we ourselves are found sinners, is there for
Christ? So it's saying that Because Christ has justified us, that
doesn't mean that Christ now is working sin in us to just
go out and sin. No, he's working just the opposite. He is teaching
us. Because of that justification,
because of that new birth, because of that spiritual life that's
been given to us in us, it causes us to want to walk uprightly
before God. For if I build again the things
which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. Now, what's he
talking about there in verse 18? He's getting back to Peter. Remember, this is in the context
of him correcting Peter before, rebuking Peter. He's rebuking
Peter in front of the whole crowd. And what's he saying? This is
all about what Peter was doing. See, Peter had been preaching
grace alone, but now outwardly was showing that, oh, wait a
minute, we have to keep the law. And Paul is saying, for if I
build again the things which I destroyed, what was the things
that he destroyed? Remember what we talked about
earlier. Paul said, all those things that I did. I was the
Pharisee of Pharisees. I was learned more than anybody
else. I was of my own people. I was more knowledgeable of things,
and I kept the law. I did good. I even was zealous
that I was after the church, and I was persecuting the church. thinking that I was serving God,
that as far as religion was concerned, I was at the top of the list.
I was the religious man. But he said, all those things
that I counted as gain, I now count as loss, I count as dumb.
He counts as poop, you know? Now, does that mean that religious
things are bad? Not necessarily, okay? The Bible
instructs us that we are to come to church. The Bible tells us
that we are to pray, and that we are to sing, and that we are
to witness to one another, and the Bible tells us that we are
to edify one another, and to fellowship with one another.
Those are all good things, but if that is what our mindset is
on how we become righteous before God, then that's all wrong, okay? And so Paul was saying, you know,
I thought I was gaining a righteousness to God by doing all those religious
activities But now I realize that's all worth nothing because
the only thing that can make me righteous is Christ alone.
And so he's telling Peter here, he's saying, are you trying to
build again the things that we've destroyed? What have we destroyed?
We've destroyed the notion to all these churches that salvation
comes by law keeping. We have told them and destroyed
the wrong belief that these Pharisees have been teaching us all these
years. that we are gaining a righteousness before God based upon our fleshly
ancestry because we're Jews, we're gonna be saved, and by
keeping the law, we are gonna be righteous before God. And
so they thought because they were Jews and because they were
keeping the law, that they were gonna be saved. And he said,
listen, we need to destroy that again. That's starting to be,
these Judaizers are building that back up and it needs to
be destroyed. So he says, for if I build again
the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.
He says, if I am building by my gospel, if I'm preaching that
it is by law again, then I've made myself a transgressor, where
God has made me a saint. In justification, every one of
us has been made holy and righteous. And the Bible calls us a saint.
You know, we hear other religions and they talk about these people
that are saints because they did all these good works and
they make them saints, you know. Well, actually, every child of
grace that is ever born from above is a saint, even though
we're sinners, right? We're considered a saint by God.
Well, Paul here, he says, if I go back to that law system,
then all I'm doing is making myself a transgressor where God
has deemed me forgiven. God has deemed me righteous and
holy and justified, and that's all He sees me. So to go back
the other way is to go back into sin and to go back under the
law of sin, under the law of sin and death. We are to go back
under the curse. And so He says, for I through
the law am dead to the law that I might live unto God. See, actually, the only way that
we can live unto God is to come out from underneath the law.
to trust in Christ alone. In doing that, we keep the law. We become keepers of the law
whenever we quit looking at the law to be our righteousness,
our own works to be our righteousness. So it never can be faith and
works. It never can be justified and
condemned. The child of grace has been justified
from all eternity. God has looked upon them and
imputed the righteousness of Christ to them even before they
were born and ever make one sin. He already, in Christ Jesus,
had already declared them righteous before God. That's why the Bible
says that, in Ephesians, that he did all this that he might
be able to, he says, let me flip over here so I don't quote it
wrong. It says, blessed to be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings
and heavenly places in Christ, according as he has chosen us
in him before the foundation of the world, And here it is,
that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Before
the foundation of the world, God already declared us to be
just in Christ Jesus, so that we would ever, from moment one
till the end of time, or till we die, whichever comes first,
that we would be holy and without blame before Him. Now, I don't
know about you, But that is hard for me to understand because
I know I'm a sinner. I know that I have sinned. But
yet God does not look at me that way. He has never looked at me
that way. The Bible says, blessed is the
man unto whom the Lord imputeth not sin. There was never a time
that sin had ever been imputed. But I'm guilty of sin. That's
why Christ had to come. But God never counted that against
me. He always counted Christ's righteousness
for me. from the time I was born until
the time I die. Even before I come to even know
that. See, the salvation was there even before I knew it.
But yet, at conversion, Jesus come and is revealed in me, then
I realize my salvation. Ain't that a wonderful thing?
Well, brethren, I think we'll stop right there before going
on because we'll get into verse 20, Lord willing, next week.
Does anybody have any questions or comments or anything you'd
like to share. It was good to have you guys with
us today. We pray the Lord will bless you. We have some food prepared if
you guys want to stay. If you don't, we understand that
as well. But we usually have lunch together and everything. So you're welcome to stay if
you want to stay. But let's bow, if nobody has any questions or
any comments. All right, let's bow and have a word of prayer
in the witness. Father, we do thank you for Jesus once again.
We thank you, Father, for the justification that we have by
his blood, justification by grace, through the faith of Jesus Christ.
Father, we are so grateful that he lived that life for us, that
he died that death for us, and that he applies all that salvation
to our account. And gracious Heavenly Father,
we come and we ask that those that are here that may not have
yet to experience this, that by your grace that you might
give them eyes to see and ears to hear. That you might take
out that heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh. That you
might cause them to walk in your statues by giving them faith
and repentance. To turn from their dead works
of trying to keep the law for their righteousness. to looking
to you alone for the righteousness, Father. I thank you for these
that are here with us today, Lord, for Kevin and his wife,
Jacqueline, Lord, and their son. I pray, Lord, that you have blessed
them and that you minister to them. We're thankful for their
attendance here today. Father, we just pray that you
might continue to minister in and through us here in this church.
Lord, if it be your will that we find another building, we
ask for that as well. We ask, Lord, that you might
continue to keep us in the faith, that you might help us to continue
to stand for truth here in Joplin. We ask, Lord, that you just might
keep us faithful to your word. Lord, we are so thankful for
all that you've done for us and for the grace that we have in
Christ Jesus. We pray for our members that
are not here today, Lord, and we ask that you give them safety
wherever they are. Lord, in their travels, and we
just pray that you would bring them safely back to us again
next Lord's Day. And Father, again, we thank you
because of Jesus Christ, we can come boldly before the throne
of grace with our petitions, and we ask, Lord, that you just
might grant them according to your will. And as always, Lord,
we ask it to be your will, not our will be done, but that our
will be done. And so, Father, again, we are
grateful to be able to meet together as the Lord's Church and to be
able to offer up these things to you. And we pray that they've
been pleasing to you and that the Spirit has aided us in this
worship today. And it's in Jesus' name that
we pray. Amen.