Did Christ Die In Vain?

Today's message is on the subject,
Did Christ Die in Vain? Did Christ Die in Vain? Now,
if you take your Bibles and turn to Galatians chapter 2, verse
20 and 21, we'll use that for our text. Now, there isn't a
stronger statement to be found anywhere in God's word on salvation
by grace than this verse of this statement which Paul made to
Peter in Galatians 2. Listen to what he said, I do
not frustrate the grace of God. If righteousness comes by the
law, then Christ died in vain. That's powerful, isn't it? That's
a strong statement. If righteousness comes by the
law, Now, in the church at Antioch,
there were Jews and Gentiles. Christ, our Lord, had been to
the earth, died on the cross, buried, rose again, ascended
back to glory. He had accomplished the work
of redemption. Our Lord had fulfilled the ceremonial
law. He fulfilled the moral law. He
fulfilled the ceremonial law. He fulfilled the law of circumcision. the law of meats and drinks,
he had fulfilled the law of special days, he had fulfilled the law
of feasts and sacrifices, he had fulfilled the atonement,
and he had granted repentance and faith, the scripture says,
to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews. And the Jews and the
Gentiles were one. God broke down that middle wall
of partition between them and made them one in Christ. So in
Christ there is neither Jew nor circumcised or uncircumcised,
male or female, born or free, there is in Christ we are one.
And these people were in the church at Antioch. But certain
Jewish leaders came down to Antioch from Jerusalem. They came, the
scripture says there in Galatians chapter 2, they came from James
who was the pastor at Jerusalem. And these men who came down,
some of these Jewish leaders were still in bondage to this
ceremonial law. They were still in bondage to
the meats and drinks, to the special days, to the Sabbaths,
to the holy days, to the feasts. They were still in bondage to
these Jewish ceremonial laws about meats and drinks and so
forth. And they were, they held to the
fact that if Gentiles could be saved, they had to become Jews.
They had to be circumcised and eat certain meats and abstain
from other meats and keep certain holy days and certain feast days.
These men held to these ceremonial laws, their pride wouldn't let
them turn loose of these ceremonial laws. Now when they came down
from Jerusalem, Peter, I see them talking about the Apostle
Peter, the man to whom Christ said, Thou art a little stone,
on this rock I'll build my church. The man who said, We believe
that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. the man
who preached at Pentecost, we're talking about him, the man who
was put in prison for his faith, that strong, gallant man of God,
the Apostle Peter. Now, before these men came down
to Antioch, he was fellowshipping with the Gentiles, everything
was going fine. He was fellowshipping with them, he was eating with
them, he was taking part in worshiping with them, but when these men
came down, who were still in bondage to this ceremonial office,
Paul said, Peter withdrew from the Gentiles. fearing those men
who came from Jerusalem of the circumcision. He withdrew from
these Gentiles. He separated himself from them,
and many other people were drawn away with his dissimulation.
He caused a rift in the Church, a split between the Jews and
the Gentiles, and even Barnabas, the sidekick of the Apostle Paul,
went with Peter. And that's when Paul said in
Galatians 2, back a few verses, I withstood Peter to the face,
because he was to be blamed. And this is what Paul said to
him. He said, Peter, a man is not justified by the works of
the law. Whether it be a moral law or
a judicial law or a ceremonial law, a man is not justified by
the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. And Peter,
verse I do not frustrate, I do not despise, I do not make void
the grace of God. Peter, if salvation, righteousness,
comes by the works of the Lord, your Savior died in vain. Jesus
Christ died in vain. What a powerful sermon. You see
how strong this is? You see how powerful it is? You
see how it strikes at the very foundation? Peter was undercutting
the very foundation of what we believe. He was taking away all
of our hope. And this is what Paul is saying.
He's saying, Peter, I do not reject the grace of God. I do
not make void the grace of God. I do not frustrate the grace
of God. What grace is he talking about? Well, he's talking about
the grace of God that redeems sinners. He's looking back yonder
to that eternal sovereign grace, wherein our Lord said, I'll be
merciful to whom I will be merciful, I will be gracious to whom I
will be gracious. God has been gracious to sinners
from before the foundation of this world. Whom he foreknew,
he predestinated. Whom he predestinated, he called.
Whom he called, he justified. Whom he justified, he glorified.
What shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who can be
against us? If God is for us in redemption,
if God is for us in substitution, if God is for us in salvation,
if God is for us in eternal mercies and grace, who can be against
us? Who can lay anything to the charge
of God's elect? It is God that justifies. That's
the grace he's talking about. I don't despise that grace. I
don't frustrate that grace, I don't make void that grace through
my works and merit and righteousness, Peter. What grace is he talking
about? He's talking about that incarnate
grace. He wrote about it in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. You know the grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ, how that though he was rich, yet for your
sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might be
rich. He laid aside the glory of his possessions, the glory
of his father's love. He laid aside the glory of eternal
heaven and came down here to this earth. He became poor, born
in a manger, worked in a carpenter's shop, lived in a little old village
called Nazareth, walked this earth, went to the cross and
anointed himself, died even the death of the cross, and was laid
in a tomb. He became poor. You know the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? That's the grace we're talking
about. We're talking about his redeeming grace. Listen to Paul
in Ephesians 1, 7. In whom we have redemption through
his blood, the forgiveness of sin according to the riches of
his grace, of his great redeeming grace, forgiving grace. I don't
despise that grace. I don't make more of that grace.
What grace are we talking about? We're talking about his revealing
grace. God who separated me, Paul said,
from my mother's womb and called me by his grace. By his grace. I was injurious. I was a persecutor. I was a blasphemer. But God stopped me on my road
to Damascus. God stopped me on my road to
hell and revealed his son in me. Paul was a religious man
before he met Christ, before he was called by grace. Paul
was a man who kept the ceremonial law, circumcision, meats and
drinks, Sabbaths, holy days, all of these things he kept.
Like that rich young ruler who said, I kept these from my youth
up, what lack I yet? Paul said, I don't despise the
grace of God. I am what I am by the grace of
God, by the grace of God. If we're in his family, redeemed
by his love, saved by his Son, if we have any knowledge, any
faith, any hope, any love, it's by his grace, by his grace. Peter, I don't despise the grace
of God. I don't frustrate the grace of
God. I don't make void the grace of God. I don't cover it up so
you can't see it. I don't fix the grace of God
so a man will be confused whether he's saved by the grace of God
or by his own works. I don't confuse it. Now listen
to this. If righteousness comes by the law, Peter, I don't despise
the grace of God if righteousness comes by the law. If that justifying
righteousness whereby man is declared acceptable to God, if
that comes by the law, if that sanctifying righteousness whereby
man is made holy, unreprovable, unblameable in the sight of God,
if that heavenly righteousness by which a man is declared fit
for glory, If that righteousness comes by words, if it comes by
our deeds, if it comes by our church membership, if it comes
by our morality, if it comes by our baptism, if that's the
way a man gets that justifying, sanctifying, heavenly righteousness,
if that's the way it comes, Christ died in vain. Boy, that's what
Paul said. And that's the message to us
today, that's the message to me as a preacher, and you as
a deacon, a Sunday school teacher, and an elder, and a member of
the church, and a professing Christian. If you're saved by
your works, if you're justified in the sight of a holy God by
what you do, by your morality, and your good deeds, and your
charity, and your church membership, and your preaching, and teaching,
and tithing, and keeping the Sabbath, if that's the way you're
justified, Jesus Christ died in vain. If he died to bring
in a righteousness that can be secured by my works, he died
in vain. If he died on the cross to redeem
a people who might have been redeemed by their own goodness,
he died in vain. If he died on the cross to satisfy
the justice of God which might have been satisfied by our merit
and by our good works, he died in vain. If salvation is by law,
if it's by works, if it's by church membership, if it's by
walking an aisle, if it's by being baptized, if it's by even
having faith, if that's the way a man's saved, by what he does
for God, then Jesus Christ died in vain. There was no reason
for him to come to this earth. We could have got along without
him. There was no reason for him to be tempted and tried and
tested, go through the turmoil of living thirty-three and a
half years on this terrible corrupt, depraved, wicked world. There's
no reason for that. He could have sent somebody else.
Why did he do that for? There was no reason for him to
go to the cross and bear the nails in his hands and in his
feet and the crown of thorns in his brow and the whip on his
back and the jeering and mocking and laughter of the crowd and
the awful wrath of a holy God. There was no reason for that.
Why, we could be justified by our works. We could be saved
by our goodness and our morality. No reason for him to die. He
died in vain. He died in vain. Now Spurgeon
called this salvation by works a criminal doctrine. It's a crime,
he said. It's a crime, first of all, against
the Holy God. It makes light of His righteousness
and His justice and His holiness and His wisdom. It says, God,
you're foolish to send your son to subject your son to the awful
wrath of Calvary when you could have done it some other way.
God, you're foolish. That's a crime. And then it's a crime against
Jesus Christ. It's saying, Lord, you shed your
blood in vain. We didn't need you and we don't
need you now. Well, it's a crime against Jesus
Christ. It heaps all manner of indignities upon his holy person
and upon his work to say that salvation is by any other means
than his death. And I'll tell you this, the great
crime, Right along with being a crime against the Father and
the Son, those who preach salvation by works are committing a crime
against their heroes because they're giving their heroes a
false refuge. Our Lord said, You've come from
sea and land to make one proselyte for your religion, and isn't
that what men do today? They're going out here trying
to convince men to be Baptists or Methodists or Presbyterian
or something else. make him proselytes to our religion,
and after you've made him a proselyte of your religion, your creed,
he's twofold more the child of hell than you are." That's what
Christ said. Those are harsh words, but that's what he said.
That's what he said. And when we go out and try to
win converts by their works and by their deeds and by their own
efforts to enter the kingdom of God, we're giving them a false
refuge. And they're going to die trusting
in that false refuge. I tell you this, there are several
reasons why we must continually insist on salvation by grace.
This is the reason Paul said this. The reason he withstood
Peter to the face is because Peter was hacking at the roots
of the tree of life. He was digging at the foundation
of that holy temple of our Lord Jesus Christ when he was undercutting
the grace of God and making it appear that acceptance with God
is by deeds and works and ceremony and not by grace. First of all,
the reason we must continually insist upon salvation by grace
is because salvation by works is so persistent. It's so persistent. Now, in his heart, don't you
know Peter knew better than that? Don't you know the apostle Peter?
Look at his own failures. Look at him there sitting there.
Well, he certainly couldn't be saved by his works, by his faithfulness,
by his loyalty, by his good deeds. Look at him sitting there with
a fire warm in his hand. And those people come up and
say, why, you're one of the apostles, and he curses and swears and
says, I don't even know that fellow. I don't even know him. It doesn't look like he could
be saved by that kind of work, does it? And then look at him
up on the top of that roof there that day, and the Lord sent the
sheep down full of animals and said, Peter, rise, kill, and
eat. And he rebuked the Lord. He said, why not so, Lord? I
won't do it. Why, I've never eaten anything that's common
or unclean. God said, Peter, don't you call anything common
or unclean that I've cleaned. Peter was an impulsive, reckless,
sometimes impudent individual. Well, he knew he couldn't be
saved by his works. He knew that. And yet, no matter
how much he knew it, no matter how often we rehearse and preach
and go over Salvation by Grace, boy, I think this old flesh,
it's so proud, it's so arrogant, it's so haughty, it's so boastful,
it just wants to have some part in the redemption. It's so persistent.
And I'll tell you this, once salvation by works gets a foothold,
it makes great advances. You have to keep putting it down.
You have to keep crying, by the grace of God I am what I am.
For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourself.
It's the gift of God. It's the gift of God. I'll tell
you something else about salvation by works. It seems so useful
and practical. Now listen, if we preach law
and works, and morality for salvation. It will encourage men to live
moral lives. That's what people say. If you
preach the law and tell people that if they'll keep it, then
God will honor them and God will bless them, well, it will encourage
people to live moral lives. It will encourage them to be
virtuous, it will encourage them to be honest. Now, if you go
out here and preach salvation by gift and salvation by grace
and salvation not what you do for God but what he does for
you and salvation totally and completely in the work of Jesus
Christ, it will preach you to make people careless. Now, doesn't
that sound practical? Doesn't that sound reasonable?
Doesn't that sound useful? And listen, if you go out here
and preach rewards, if you tell a fellow if he will preach for
40 years, God will give him a crown with a lot of jewels in it when
he goes to heaven. If you tell people they'll win souls and
God will give them some jewels and crowns and yo-yos in heaven
and God will reward them. Now you see, if you tell people
God will reward them, if they tithe, God will reward them.
If they go to church every Sunday, God will reward them. If they're
faithful, God will reward them. Now isn't that practical? That
appeals to the flesh. And you can get people to do
more for reward than you can for love? Huh? You can get people to do more
for reward than for love? not a saved man. The love of
Christ, Paul said, constrained me. When I've done everything
God commanded me to do, I am still an unprofitable servant. We preach because we love him.
We give because we love him. Somebody says, Lord, if you'll
heal little Susie and make her well, I'll go to church every
Sunday. Well, you'd better go whether Susie lives or dies.
Isn't that right? You mean you're driving a bargain
with God Almighty? Oh, me, salvation by work is
so practical, isn't it? But it's deadly. It's as deadly
as a coiled serpent. And I'll tell you something else,
salvation by work is natural to fallen men. Salvation by work
is the essence of all false religion. You take any false religion in
this world, I don't want to call names of religion, but any cult,
any sect, any false religion, and the very foundation of it,
that which every one of them has in common, is this. serves God and he merits heaven. He goes to heaven by serving
God, by doing good. Good works get you to heaven.
That's the essence of all false religion. The idol worshipper,
he tortures his body in order to gain heaven. The loyal religionist,
he follows his duties so he'll go to heaven. The moralist restrains
his passions so he'll go to heaven, so he won't go to The legalist
does his good deeds, why? Well, he wants to go to heaven.
And my friends, there are only two religions in this world.
You can call all the different names, it's just two religions.
Those who believe that we're saved by what we do, by work,
and those who believe that we're saved by what God did. Salvation,
some say, is what I do for God. The Bible says salvation is what
God does for me. It's the gift of God. It's by
the grace of God, and it all heads up. Every false religion
heads up in one doctrine, salvation by works. And all true religion
and true faith and true dependence on Christ Jesus heads up in one
doctrine. By the grace of God, I am what
I am. In the next place, salvation
by works arises out of ignorance. It thrives on ignorance. You
know what, our Lord? Those people came to Him with this question. They said a woman had 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 6 or 7 husbands, they all died,
one right after the other. Now they said, who's going to
be our husband in the resurrection? Now listen to the Lord. He said,
you do err, you're in error, you're in error, that's what
he said. Two reasons why you're in error, not knowing the scriptures
and not knowing the power of Men are in error not knowing
the scriptures. Oh, they've memorized a few verses,
make a joyful noise unto the Lord, or the Lord is my shepherd,
or John 3, 16, for God so loved the world he gave his only begotten
Son. That makes them experts on the Bible. That makes them
authority on God's Word. They've memorized two or three
verses of scripture. But Christ said the reason you're
in error is because you don't know the scriptures. All scripture
is given by inspiration of God, not just three verses. And all
scriptures profitable for doctrine, for correction, for reproof,
for review, for instruction in the way of life, that the man
of God might be mature, full-grown in Christ Jesus. And men believe
and preach and trust in salvation by works, because they're ignorant
of God's words. God's word says it's not by works
of righteousness, which we've done, but by his mercy he has
saved us. But men do not know what the
scripture says about the fall. What does the Bible say about
the fall of man? As in Adam all died, by one man's disobedience
we were all made sinners, by one man's disobedience judgment
and condemnation came upon all men. That's what scripture says. Out of the heart proceeds evil
thoughts, murders, adulteries, blasphemy, these are the things
that defile a man. Not what he takes with his hands
or eats with his mouth. That's not what defiles him,
what comes out of his heart. Being ignorant of the scriptural
holiness of God's law. To offend in one point is to
be guilty of the whole life. James says, if you show partiality,
you commit sin. Did you know that? You don't
have to shoot a fellow to be a sinner. Just show partiality.
Between any person. Just prefer one person above
another. And you're being partial. You're respecting a person. You're
a sinner. We sin by thought and by imagination. We sin in dreams.
We sin in talk. We sin in attitude. We sin in
motive. Men are ignorant of how God can
be just and justify the ungodly. Old Job asked that. He said,
How can man be just with God? How can he be clean that's born
of a woman? Look at the heavens. They're not clean in God's sight.
The moon, it shineth not. How much more vulnerable is man,
filthy, that drinks iniquity like the water? Men are ignorant
of the new birth, what it is to be born again. as ignorant
as Nicodemus was, he said, well, how can these things be? Christ
talked to him about the new birth, and he said, how's that now,
Lord? Do I enter my mother's womb and be born again? Isn't
that something? And our Lord said, are you a
master in Israel, and you don't know these things? You're a master,
you're a Bible scholar, you're a teacher of the scriptures,
and you don't know anything about the new birth? Ignorance. And
salvation by works is based on ignorance, and it feeds on pride. Salvation by works makes light
of sin and robs God of His glory. If you go back to verse 20, here
is the essence of salvation by grace. Look at verse 20. Let's
just look at it briefly. First of all, I'm crucified with
Christ. This is the grace of God. This
is the way we're saved. Now, not literally. Only two men were
crucified with Christ literally, those two thieves. But I'm crucified
with Christ. He was my representative. bone
of my bone and flesh of my flesh, and I lived in him, and I obeyed
the law in him, and I went to the cross in him, and I died
in him, and I was buried. When he was buried, I was buried.
When he rose again, I rose, and I'm seated with him on the right
hand of God, being one with him. The two are one by God's decree,
God's covenant. We're one. And what he did is
reckoned as what I did. I'm crucified with Christ. Nevertheless,
I live. Yet not I. Yet not I. Paul said,
I'm not the same fellow I was. I'm not Paul the persecutor,
Saul the persecutor, Saul the blasphemer. I'm not Saul the
Pharisee. I'm Paul the believer. I'm a new person. And it's not
I. It's Christ that liveth in me.
And if you behold, Paul said, any love in me, it's not I. It's
Christ. If you see any grace in me, it's
not I. It's Christ. If you see any joy in me, it's
not I. It's Christ that liveth in me. And the life which I now
live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God. I live by
faith in the Son of God. I look to Him for everything,
my pardon, my righteousness, my wisdom, my every need. And
He loves me. Also, I'm not going to brag about
loving Him, but I'm going to brag about Him loving me. My
love for Him is so frail, so small, but I do know this. His
love for me is everlasting. His love for me is free. His
love for me is personal. He loved me. He loved me, and
He gave Himself for me. That's grace, that's grace. Love
sent my Savior to die in my stead, why should he love me so? Meekly
the Calvary's cross he was led, why should he love me so? Nails
pierced his hands and his feet for my sin, why should he love
me so? He suffered oh so much my salvation
to win, why should he love me so? Oh how he agonized there
in my place, why should he love me so? Nothing, nothing withholding
my sin to efface why I should have loved myself. I don't reject
the grace of God. If righteousness comes by works,
Christ died in vain. If you'd like to have this message
on cassette tape, write to me. The address will be given to
you in a moment. Join us next week for the broadcast. Until
then, Henry Mahan, bidding you a very pleasant good day.

Did Christ Die In Vain?

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Did Christ Die In Vain?

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