Galatians chapter 2 and verse
11. Galatians chapter 2 and verse
11. Perhaps you will recall with
me that the Apostle Paul has been writing to the Galatians
and conveying to them something of the history of his own experience,
both of discovering Christ and preaching the Lord Jesus Christ,
preaching the gospel of grace and peace, as he calls it in
the early verses of this book in his introduction. And he is
continuing here on that theme as he comes to chapter two, verse
11, and he's writing about an incident that happened between
him and the apostle Peter, at the city of Antioch in Turkey. But when Peter was come to Antioch,
I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.
For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the
Gentiles. But when they were come, he withdrew
and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. and the other Jews dissembled
likewise with him, insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away
with their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked
not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto
Peter before them all, If thou being a Jew livest after the
manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou
the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? 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 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. 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. I do not frustrate the grace
of God. For if righteousness come by the law, then Christ
is dead in vain. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. It is noticeable, I feel, how
large the fact and the force of the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ weighed upon the mind of the Apostle Paul. The message
of grace and peace that he refers to in verse three of chapter
one, where he says, grace be to you and peace from God the
Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, immediately led him to
refer also to the means by which that grace and peace became the
possession of these Galatians, these Galatian brethren and believers. It was through the death of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, he says, who gave
himself for our sins. that he might deliver us from
this present evil world. And that, of course, according
to the will of God his Father. All these things come within
the sovereign purpose of our holy God. And God had willed
the salvation and deliverance of his people, the redemption
of his people, out of this present evil world. And the Lord Jesus
Christ, in obedience to the will of his Father, remember what
we talked about a few days ago, how that two, if they are to
walk together, they must be agreed, according to the prophet Amos.
So there was a unanimity, there was a purpose, there was a covenant
agreement. into which the parties of the
Godhead, the persons of the Godhead entered, party to this covenant,
that God the Father had a people chosen that He loved from before
time began, from before in the beginning, and He committed them
into the charge of Christ. And Christ willingly, voluntarily
undertook to come to this world and to sacrifice himself, to
lay down his life, to give himself, says Paul, for the sins of that
people. And God the Holy Spirit would
take the preaching of the gospel and apply it to the hearts and
lives of those that God the Father had chosen and those that God
the Son had redeemed, such that they would be born again and
brought into a knowledge and experience of their sins forgiven
by the Lord Jesus Christ. This was what was front and foremost
in the mind of the Apostle Paul when he preached the Gospel.
That was the central message that he declared. The message
of grace and peace, if there is to be grace, it must be on
the back of the Lord Jesus Christ's death on the cross. If there
is to be peace, it must be because we come into the experience of
sins forgiven because Jesus Christ took those sins away. Grace and peace require Christ
crucified. and Christ crucified brings the
experience of grace and peace. The two cannot be separated and
Paul understood this. Paul could say indeed to the
believers at Corinth in another epistle that he wrote to them,
he said, when I preached, I determined not to know anything among you
save Jesus Christ and him crucified. Nothing except Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. Did you hear what he said? I
determined. I wasn't going to be diverted. I wasn't going to be distracted. I wasn't going to answer questions
about things that are unimportant. I was coming to you with one
message and I determined within myself before I began to speak,
before I even came to you, that this was the message. that I
would declare I wasn't going to stand for anything else. I
wasn't going to represent any sect, any group, any denomination,
any particular tradition. I was going to preach to you
wholly and exclusively Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And in Galatians 6.14, we're
going to come to that a little bit if we get the opportunity
to study a little further through this book. He says, God forbid
that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul saw how central and important,
how much of the essence of the gospel the cross was. We could say that the cross was
crucial. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ
is crucial. Do you know that that word crucial
comes from cross? It comes from crucifixion. Because that's where the two
things come together. That's where the decision has
to be made. That's where we have to decide
what it is we're going to say, what it is we're going to do,
what it is we're going to believe. It's at the cross that the crucial
work of God was accomplished and it is at the cross that we
must come to that place of deciding what is this Christian faith
that I believe and what has Jesus Christ done on the cross. The first mention that the Apostle
Paul made of the Lord Jesus Christ in this epistle to the Galatians
was, our Lord Jesus, Christ who gave himself for our sins. And here at the end of chapter
two, the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me is
once again at the forefront of the Apostle's attention. The
Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. In this church,
we preach Christ and we preach Christ crucified. For many years,
in fact in the place where probably I have preached more sermons
than anywhere else, for many years I preached under a banner
that was above my head in the pulpit which said we preach Christ
and him crucified and The congregation were facing that all the time
they were sitting, listening to what I was saying. So in a
sense, there was a structure, a pattern there being set for
us that what emanated from this pulpit better be what was declared
on that wall. Well, we don't have the banner
here, but I can assure you that the same principle applies. We preach Christ and we preach
Christ crucified, not as a good man, not as a moral example,
Not in some way that he's going to teach us how we should live
and give us, by the way in which he loved people and the way in
which he spoke and treated to people, some sort of indications
as to how we should live, but Christ crucified because that's
the crux of the matter. That's what's crucial. And Paul
knew it, and therefore he says, look, anything else is dross. Anything else is unimportant.
Anything else has to come subsidiary to this principle of Jesus Christ
crucified. And that's a fine testimony for
the apostle. And it's a fine testimony for
any preacher and any congregation. It's the best practice for all
preachers. I wish this was the way that
it was done. Paul knew that the cross was
the heart of the gospel and so he preached it as such. The Lord
Jesus Christ's death on the cross was the very purpose why Christ
came. It is the effectual means of
the salvation of men and women. It is the way that people are
saved. It's the highest expression of
God's love for his church. Paul writes to the Romans, People want the love of Christ,
the love of God, without the cross of Christ and without the
death of the substitute. But it cannot be. The love of
God only comes in the context of the death of Christ. That
is why we neither teach that Christ died for everyone, because
if he did, then everyone would be saved. Such was the effectualness
of Christ's work. Neither do we teach that the
Lord God loves everyone, because the love of God comes to us through
the Lord Jesus Christ's death. God commendeth his love towards
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Only in the cross of Christ can
we see the satisfaction of divine justice. Only in the cross of
Christ can we see the accomplishment of the church's redemption. It was then, and it is important
still, because holiness demands satisfaction for sin. Sin demands judgment. and but for a substitute, and
but for a representative before God, we each all must bear the
consequences of our own sin and our own transgression. That's
how important this message of the cross is. That substitute,
that representative is the Lord Jesus Christ. The death, sacrifice,
and cross of Christ is the means whereby the redemption of the
saints was accomplished, such that Peter, the apostle, could
say, for Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for
the unjust. that he might bring us to God. 1 Peter 3, verse 18. Kind of a long introduction, really,
because what I am driving our thoughts towards here is that
this central message of the cross is what caused Paul such anxiety
amongst these Galatians, these Gentile believers that lived
in this province of Galatia in modern day Turkey. The centrality
of the cross and the death of Christ was the way by which justification,
being made right with God, obtaining pardon for sin, being placed
into that position whereby the righteousness of God might flow
freely to the people of his choice was all predicated upon the death
of Christ, the cross of Christ. And this matter is foremost in
the mind of Paul as he addresses the situation that has arisen
amongst the Galatians. What situation is that? That
there were false teachers. They had followed Paul around
in his missionary journeys, and everywhere that Paul preached
the gospel and lifted up the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and then moved on to the next place where he was going to preach,
they came in and said, well, that's all very well, but in
order to fully please God, you've got to trust in Christ and obey
the law of Moses. You've got to trust in Christ
and you've got to be circumcised. You've got to trust in Christ
and you've got to live a good life and perform good works and
do these various things. It really doesn't matter whether
it's mosaic law, circumcision, good works, good conduct, what
you do, what you don't do, how you dress, what you eat. It doesn't
matter what it was. They were adding something to
the death of Christ. And you see, they found, here's
the irony, they found willing listeners. You know that you're a willing
listener to that sort of preaching too? And I'm a willing listener
to that sort of preaching. You know why? Because it pleases
the flesh. We like to think that there's
something we can do to honour God, something that we can do
to please God, something that we can do to make God more amenable
to us, to earn his blessing. If we serve him, won't we prosper? If we do his will, won't we stay
healthy? If we praise him and worship
him and attend to his church and to his service, won't he
bless us with temporal blessings in this world and cause our light
to shine in this community? That was what was on offer. That was what these Judaizers,
these legalists, these law enforcers, these works religionists were
bringing to the table. And they were saying, yes, you've
got to believe in Christ, but you've got to do these things
too. and they were bringing in all the old systems and all the
old practices and all the old traditions. And the Apostle Paul
says, I can hardly believe that you've gone back to that when
it is so clearly stated in my gospel that Jesus Christ's death
alone is the ground of our peace and grace from God. So the apostle, knowing that
these Galatians are being led back to law and works as a means
of pleasing God, he argues the incompatibility between the true
gospel, the gospel of Christ's death on the cross, and anything
else that is added to that. In fact, he says it as bluntly
as this. He says, If it was possible to
please God by any other means at all on the face of this earth,
do you think God would have sent his own son to the cross? Do
you think God would have slain his own dear son and shed his
blood on the cross? Would the father have slain the
son? And that's what brings him to
that statement right at the end of our passage in verse 21. He
says, I don't frustrate the grace of God. If righteousness come
by the law, if righteousness come by works, if righteousness
come by any other means, any fleshy contribution whatsoever,
then Christ's dead in vain. That's what this amounts to.
That's how serious this matter really is. Paul tells the Galatians
that they're not the first to have erred in this matter because
he knows just how subtle this teaching is. The subtlety of
works righteousness pervades the church of Jesus Christ constantly. It is always nipping at us. It's the reason why we struggle
with our assurance. It's the reason why we get depressed. It's the reason why we wonder
whether or not we're doing well enough and whether God's pleased
with us. The devil uses this works righteousness,
this whole idea, this whole notion to encroach upon our peace. He drops in little temptations,
little doubts. He says, you've got to be more
dedicated than that. You've got to be more committed
than that. You've got to work harder than that. You've got to be better
than that. How can a person like you, who thinks the way you do
and says the things you say and acts the way you do, how can
you possibly imagine that you're going to get to stand in front
of God someday? And it's to do with the flesh,
it's to do with works, it's to do with law, it's to do with
this other being brought into the equation whereby the grace
of God towards his church and the peace of the church ebbs
and flows according to how clearly we see the uniqueness of the
death of Jesus Christ and the alone efficacy of his blood to
cleanse us from sin. As I say, Paul knew that the
Galatians weren't the first to fall for this trick, to succumb
to this notion. And he tells the people that
there was a time that Peter himself was guilty of this very same
thing. This work's righteousness is
so attractive to man's flesh, so attractive to our ego, that
it went right to the top, even in the earliest days of the church. Antioch was a Gentile city. It was a place where the apostle
had gone to preach. It was an important city. Indeed,
it is reckoned to have been the third most important city in
the Roman Empire. I assume Rome was first, don't
ask me what was second. But the point is this, that here
where Christianity had taken such a hold at Antioch, this
was the place where the believers were first called Christians.
And it had been the place where the gospel went out to other
parts of the Gentile world, where Paul's own missionary work was
founded and supported and encouraged. And Peter had come to Antioch. And there had been a confrontation
between Peter and Paul because of the role of the law. Peter
had come and he had been received graciously. The Gentile church
in Antioch had welcomed him and he came and he received their
fellowship. They shook hands together, they
embraced, they sat down at table, they ate meal together, they
broke bread. The Apostle Peter was there in
sweet fellowship with the believers at the Church of Antioch, as
he should have been. But then these troublemakers, these
Judaizers, these people that followed Paul around, they came
as well. They came and they brought with
them this idea that the Old Testament Jewish rules and regulations
about eating with Gentiles ought to be observed. And Peter should
have rebuked them. He should have said, no, that's
not what we understand. with respect to the gospel, not
what we now have learned with respect to the uniqueness of
the death of Christ and the alone centrality of the blood of Christ
to cleanse from sin. These things have been done away
with. These things have gone. But he didn't. He didn't. Why, Peter, why? Paul says, it
was the fear of man. It was the fear of man. What
is it? Not that they were going to hit
him on the head, but they might sully his reputation. They might
take tales back to Jerusalem about what Peter's doing with
those Gentiles up in Antioch. Do you know what we saw him doing?
And Peter became concerned. The opinions of men And do you
know what he did? He put on a show. Peter put on a show. That's what that word dissimulation
means. A pretense, an act. These people came from James.
That means they came from Jerusalem. It does not necessarily mean
that they came with James' knowledge or James' authority or to say
the things that James had sent them to say. Nevertheless, Peter
was concerned. And this show of righteousness
or false righteousness or self-righteousness, this pretended holiness, it shocked
Paul. Why would he do that? Why would he embarrass these
Gentiles that just until recently he had shared fellowship with?
Why would he imply that now because these Jews had come, they were
second class citizens? Why would he leave them behind
and break fellowship with them to go and sit with these people? And it shocked Paul as well because
something else happened at this time. his friend Barnabas, who
had gone with him and preached the gospel, the same gospel that
Paul preached. They'd stood shoulder to shoulder.
They'd faced the bricks and the bats and the abuse, the whippings. Together, Paul and Barnabas.
And they both stood for this same gospel. And you know that
even Barnabas was drawn in by this show, this pretense, such
that he separated himself as well. There had before been the enjoyment
of apostolic fellowship, and now the Gentiles were left outside
as Peter's action provoked confusion, separation, elitism, discrimination,
hypocrisy, but most of all, an attack on the very gospel itself. Grace and peace with God came
from what you ate, when you ate it, and who you were sitting
beside when you were having your dinner. That's what it amounted
to. That's what it amounted to. Peter
had got it so wrong. And Paul had to stand up for
the sake of the gospel. He had to say to that man, this
won't do. Peter, this is not good enough. Peter, Barnabas, Paul, they knew
better than that. As Jews, they knew that a man
is not justified by the works of the law. Verse 16, but by
the faith of Jesus Christ. And furthermore, that wasn't
simply theoretical. because they had tasted the grace
of God. They had felt the peace of God
in the gospel. By trusting the Lord Jesus Christ
alone for their righteousness, they had proved that this was
the case. Why would they go back now? Paul is explicit and he is emphatic. Believers in Christ are justified
by the faith of Christ. The ground of our pardon, the
peace and reconciliation that we have with God is in the Lord
Jesus Christ's work. I've said it before, I'll say
it again a hundred times. Christ saved. He didn't make
salvation possible. He saved his people from their
sins. It was the obedience of Christ
in going to the cross. It was the shedding of his blood,
which God regards as precious. Let me be clear too, as Paul
was, we are not justified by faith as an act of ourselves. Don't think that it's your believing
that justifies you. Don't think that it's your faith
that justifies you before God. Yes, we believe in justification
by faith, but we need to think about whose faith that is. Paul's
very clear here. He says, we are justified by
the faith of Christ. It's not our faith that justifies
us. God doesn't change because I
do something, because I believe. We learn the blessedness of what
God has done for us. We experience the grace and peace
by believing when we are converted, when we are brought to that place
of acknowledging our sinnership before a holy God and receiving
in our souls, in our spirit, that new life by which we are
able to appreciate the blessedness of the new creation. and we trust
in Jesus Christ and the efficacy of his work. That's what is ours. God doesn't change. The eternal,
unchangeable, immutable God doesn't change in his view towards me
because today I believe and yesterday I didn't. Rather, we are justified by the
faith of Christ. It is Christ's work in every
way. That is the fulfilment and the
completion of our well-being and standing before God. He is
the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is
the author and the finisher of our faith. We're justified by
God upon the merits of Christ's sacrifice. We experience, we
enjoy, we rest, we dwell in the blessedness of that state by
faith. Faith is a gift from God. He gives it to us and we enjoy
the blessings that flow from that. This faith of Christ is important
It's one of the reasons why I believe that the authorised version,
we were speaking about that the other day to the children, it's
one of the reasons why I believe the authorised version is such
a significant and important version of the Bible. You know that you
don't find that phrase, the faith of Christ, in modern translations?
They've taken it out. They've taken it away. They talk
about the faithfulness of Christ, or they talk about faith in Christ,
or they talk about the Christian faith. But what our translators
translated here teaches us of the faith of Christ, the faith
that Christ had, the faith in his father's purpose, the faith
in his father's promises, that union which bound them together
in the everlasting covenant of God's grace and peace for his
people. Paul does not say that we are
justified either by our own works or indeed by the legal obligations
and obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. On the contrary,
he says, by the work of the law shall no man be justified. Now, if the law is the highest picture or presentation of the
holiness of God, then every other work that we could possibly do
must be of lesser importance and of subsidiary value to that. So if there is no justification
by the works of the law, then there's no justification by works
at all. It must be from Christ. Our justification
flows to us from the faith of Christ and we are righteous by
the free gift of God in Christ. These blessings the blessings
of covenant grace and peace, they flow to God's people through
the fulfilment of the obligations that were laid on Christ in the
covenant of grace. Yes, he was obedient to the Moses
law, he was, and that showed him to be an able saviour. But he didn't gain our righteousness
by being obedient to Moses' law. He gained our righteousness by
fulfilling the covenant terms that were set before him in that
eternal covenant of peace. These everlasting promises of
God. God says, I have a people that
I love and I'm committing them into your care and your keeping. You need to do everything for
them that is necessary. And Christ said, I'll do it.
I'll do it willingly. I love them too. I'll do it voluntarily. I'll go. And God prepared a body
for him, we're told in Hebrews. And he came into this world and
the angels announced to him, this is Jesus Christ. He shall
save his people from their sins. Call his name Jesus. And so the
Lord Jesus Christ accomplished everything in his death that
we could ever possibly need for our peace with God and our eternal
happiness and our presence in heaven. We are dead to the law. In Christ,
when he died, we died with him. We are united to him in his crucifixion. When the law came and judged
the Lord Jesus Christ, when the wrath of God for our sin fell
upon the Lord Jesus Christ, we were there in Christ. What is
it? Isaiah says, he shall see of
the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. We were the travail
of his soul. We were the reason why his soul
travailed. We were with him there on the
cross. He died for us. And that union that he has with
us is so close that Paul says, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me. So that we died with Christ on
the cross, but now the resurrected Christ is alive with us in our
life. The Lord Jesus Christ lives with
us in our hearts, in our souls. We are a new creation. We are
bound together in the new man with him. The flesh profits nothing. but that new man is holy in Christ
and we are united together with him. 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. For the gift of God and the free
grace of God is everlasting life to his church and to his people. The blessed apostle Labouring,
Paul, Paul, Paul, what a blessing we had Paul. What a blessing
the Lord gave the church when he gave us the Apostle Paul.
Paul had to stand so often alone in this world. And he stood alone
when other believers that had been with him turned back and
went back. Demas left him, John Mark left
him, Barnabas left him, Peter he had to contend with. And he
was fighting against these Judaizers, he was fighting against these
heathen religious people, he was fighting against the temptations
of the devil. There were so many people ranged
against the Apostle Paul. And yet we are blessed that his
testimony has come down to us. For the very same problems that
the Galatians had are the problems that we have today. And had it
not been for the problems of the Galatians being so addressed
by the Blessed Apostle, we wouldn't have the wisdom of his words
here today. The blessed apostle concludes
his argument by reminding the Galatians, and he reminds you
and he reminds me and every believer of this fact. I do not frustrate
the grace of God, for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ
is dead in vain. Do you want to be righteous with
God? Do you want to be holy before
God? Do you want to be at peace and
reconciled with God? What did we say that God did
on the seventh day? He rested from all his labours. He taught us that all the works
have to cease and we have to rest in Christ. And that's where
our righteousness in its totality and its completeness is to be
found. Is Christ dead in vain? Was the
death of our Saviour a waste of time and effort? Can our obedience
to law render grace unnecessary and make peace obtainable by
another means? Never. The love of God has arranged. The sacrifice of Christ has accomplished. The quickening power of the Holy
Spirit has applied. Salvation of God to his people
in time and for eternity. I have no other argument. I have
no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died
and that He died for me. Amen.