We're going to Galatians chapter
two and I would like to read a few verses from verse 15 through
to verse 19. So Galatians chapter two, verse
15 to 19. And Paul is writing to the Galatians
again and he says, with respect to Peter and Barnabas and the
Jews at Antioch, he's writing to them, he says, we who are
Jews, or he's writing of them, concerning them in the verses
that he had just quoted, 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
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. 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, for if I
build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a
transgressor. For I, through the law, am dead
to the law, that I might live unto God. Amen. May the Lord bless to us this
reading from his word. Paul has been relating to the
Galatians how closely aligned his gospel was to Peter's gospel
and to the gospel of the other apostles. There was no difference. It was all the gospel of Jesus
Christ. It was all the gospel of God.
the gospel to which Paul had been called and to which Peter
was obedient. Paul's ministry had been accepted
and respected on numerous occasions by the apostles in Jerusalem. And he himself had been welcomed
and warmly received by them. But now there was a group of
Judaising preachers and they were trying to confuse the Gentile
churches and sow discord amongst gospel preachers. And it was
in order to combat these troublemakers that Paul wrote his letter to
the Galatians. Keep that in mind, it was in
order to combat these troublemakers that had come into that area
of what is now modern day Turkey, that area of Galatia where Paul
had been preaching, where Paul's missionary journeys had taken
him and where he had established a number of churches in order
to combat these people who were following him around. troubling
the churches. He relates this story, he recounts
this occasion when Peter had erred while in Antioch. A story only told because it
proved Peter and Paul's unity in the truth and gave the Apostle
Paul another opportunity to confirm the fundamental truths of the
gospel which was the purpose of this epistle and of course
his whole ministry. And Paul refers in this opening
verse that we read together, he's referring to those Jews
who were Jews by natural descent and he is calling upon them in
that capacity to show how they had never, despite their heritage,
despite their history, despite their upbringing, despite their
training, they had never been able to keep the law of God or
obtain any righteousness by it. Neither Peter nor Barnabas nor
any of the Jews at Antioch had been able to do that. Now These
men would all readily admit that no one is or ever can be justified
by the works of the law. Peter had not been suggesting
that he could when he offended the Gentiles by withdrawing from
them. But that action in dissembling
from the Gentiles, not eating with them, as it had been previously
described in the verses that we looked at last week, it could
have been used, had it gone unchallenged, it could have been used by the
Judaizers as ammunition with which to attack the doctrine
of free justification by grace. And Paul knew that, that was
why Peter's action was so dangerous. Paul describes it here as being
justified by the faith of Jesus Christ and Paul knew that this
justification had to be all of grace and no justification come
by the law. And I think in these few verses
that we have before us here, there are really many important
lessons, but I just want to pick up three, which is my practice,
I guess, the three important lessons for us all to draw from
the words of the apostle. And I think if we're ever going
to have peace and security in our Christian faith and in our
Christian experience, then we have to understand these points
that I want to bring before you today. And the first one is this,
and it's really just picking up the words that the apostle
uses and then perhaps describing them a little bit. A man is not
justified by the works of the law. That's what Paul says. A
man is not justified by the works of the law. Now, just to make
it a little bit easier if I can, if we were to insert righteous
or good instead of the word justified. So that we might say a man is
not righteous by the works of the law. Or a man is not good
or made good by the works of the law. Then that would carry
the meaning that Paul has here. It might help us to understand
the meaning of the apostle if we were to insert righteous or
good instead of justified. Justification is God saying or
declaring that we are good in his sight, that we are righteous
in his sight. And understanding this fact is
key to our understanding the gospel. It's key to understanding
God's covenant purpose, Christ's accomplishments on the cross. That's why he went to the cross.
He went to make us good. He went to make us righteous.
He went that we might be justified before God. It'll help us to understand the
regulating principle of a believer's Christian walk. Because we want
to be good in the sight of God. That a believer wants to be righteous
and wants to live in a God-honouring way. And therefore, understanding
that a man is not justified by the works of the law is key to
understanding the gospel and how we live under the gospel.
And this doctrine is central to the whole Christian faith.
If we are wrong here, we are wrong everywhere. And we shall
not know Christ properly. And we shall not know ourselves
properly. Let me say it like this. The
law cannot make a man righteous. The law cannot make a man good. All men and women are born in
sin. Adam's legacy to us and our inheritance
as children of Adam is sin. We are born going astray. David says in Psalm 58, the wicked
are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they
be born, speaking lies. And thereafter, no amount of
good works can cleanse that which is already polluted. The law
was never a means of making men righteous. It is a reflection
of God's holiness. It's a measure of our unrighteousness
and it reveals how far short we have fallen by our sin and
how correct and deserved is God's wrath and punishment against
our sin. As far as sinners are concerned,
the law is a measure of our unrighteousness and never a means of righteousness
or a measure of our holiness. And let me say this too, the
fact, that fact is true before conversion and afterwards. Some people tell us that we are
justified by the blood of Christ and sanctified by our obedience
to the law. As if the law can make us more
holy in God's estimation and more pleasing in God's sight
than the work that the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished. And that's
just wrong. A man is neither justified nor
sanctified by the works of the law. A man gets no holiness from
the law. No child of God gets peace or
joy from the law. Only a self-righteous hypocrite
can delude himself that he is holy in God's sight by his supposed
good works and his supposed obedience to the law. So that's the first
point that I want to just unpack a little bit. A man is not made
good, made righteous, justified by the works of the law. The second thing is to take Paul's
next statement. We are justified by the faith
of Jesus Christ. And remember what we said there
a little earlier. Justification is being declared
righteous or being declared good because God has made us righteous
and God has made us good. And I want just to, with a little
aside here, mention something else if I may. God declares us
righteous because he makes us righteous. He declares us good. He declares us justified because
he justifies us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now there is a teaching
that goes around in Protestant circles, in some churches, that
believers are righteous in an as-if kind of way. So that God regards us as being
righteous. God thinks about us as being
good. When really we're not, God pretends
that we are justified. and then we are to pretend that
we are as well. Well that's not a very good righteousness. All our righteousness, all our
acceptance, all our peace, all our pardon, all our reconciliation
and every gift of God's grace and goodness is real. And it
comes to us by the real work and the real merits of Jesus
Christ on the cross. He really suffered. He really
died. He really shed his blood. He
really rose again. And God really makes us righteous
in Jesus Christ. He declares us to be so because
we are so. We are righteous in him. And there's nothing we can do
to deserve or obtain or entitle us to righteousness. This is
why we call it free grace. There's nothing we can do to
deserve these things. except what the Lord Jesus Christ
has done for us on the cross. He alone in his death performed
the one single act of obedience that gained for his elect every
good gift of grace and ultimately of glory. No spiritual blessing
that we possess has been worked for, earned or merited by legal
obedience or good works. On the contrary, all and any
who subject themselves to the law to earn God's pleasure and
imagine that they do so, actually rob themselves of spiritual blessings
and they repudiate the goodness and kindness of God because they're
repudiating grace for works. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the
focus of the Father's attention. He stands in covenant office
as our substitute for sin and our surety for all our debts
and obligations. I don't know if this is going
to come as a surprise to you, but Jehovah God does not look
for anything from you at all. He looks for nothing from you
at all. Everything that is required is
already supplied. He knows what we are and how
that even our best good works are filthy rags. Every duty,
every obligation, every debt and liability falls to our surety
because we are bankrupt and helpless. Christ has paid the price and
he's paid it to the full. Nothing remains outstanding.
Nothing remains undone. Nothing is required from you
or from me to please God. He is reconciled. He is satisfied. He's well pleased with us for
the sake of his own dear son. And hear this, hear this. Anything
that we aspire to add to Christ's work or try to alter in that
divine transaction only diminishes and demeans the glory of Christ's
sacrifice and the wonder of God's plan of salvation. What can we
add to perfection? Any addition is a subtraction. Indeed, if we for a moment countenance
the notion that we can add some kind of luster to the work of
Christ by our obedience to the law, or surpass the worth and
efficacy of his atoning death for us, we are actually despising
his labour, and we're treading Christ and the blood of the covenant
under our feet. It's that serious. The Judaizers
amongst the Galatians were infected with a God denying principle. It was a gospel robbing, a peace
killing, a joy expelling and rest denying sickness that these
men had. If the Galatian churches caught
this disease, It would bring on a soul-chilling formalism
that would seriously corrupt their gospel faith. And the last
point I want to make is this, and then I'm done. Paul says,
I through the law am dead to the law. And I want us to be
clear on this because I fear that there are too many churches
and too many preachers who only give lip service to this gospel
truth, our gospel liberty. Believers in Jesus Christ are
dead to the law. The law of God has no more demand
upon us. It comes to judge. It finds Christ's
perfection. It retires satisfied and content. The law itself considers a believer
dead to its curse and dead to its demands because it's fully
satisfied. Its curse is drawn by Christ's
sacrifice. Its demands are satisfied by
Christ's holiness and perfect obedience. Many tell us that
the law is a believer's rule of life. Well, Whether you use
the word their rule, whether you use the word rule in the
believers rule of life as meaning a measurement of our holiness
like a ruler that measures. Well it's not because Christ
has given us a perfect holiness and that can't be improved. or
whether you use the word rule as meaning the regulator of our
conduct. Well, it's not that either because
believers walk after the Spirit, not after the flesh. And the
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free
from the law of sin and death. or whether you think of rule
as meaning the power that has dominion in our lives, well,
the law's not that either, because Christ is our king and his reign
shall never end in the life of his church and people. This is
the rule of the new creature and the new creation. Paul will
later tell the Galatians in chapter six, verse 16, as many as walk
according to this rule, what rule? The rule of the new creation. Peace be on them and mercy and
upon the Israel of God. For the believer, every grace,
every blessing, every good gift of God comes not from obedience
to the law, but by faith in the completed work of our Jesus Christ,
our Redeemer. This was Paul's gospel, it was
Peter's gospel, it was Christ's own gospel and I trust it is
our gospel. It is the gospel of free grace
and it's the only gospel that we'll ever need. Amen.