Introduction/Big Question

What brings people together?

What brings people together? Or another way to ask that question would be, how do we determine where we belong? Culture says you belong if you perform, if you fit in, if you signal the right virtues. In the church, things can be similar. You belong if you behave. We can believe this. We belong If we clean up first, if we come from the right family or do the right thing, serve in the right ways. And yet both are the same move with the same motive, building our belonging based on our record. You can tell what you believe makes you belong based on what you're building it on. When you fail, are you sad or do you feel condemned? When you're criticized, do you feel humbled or do you feel erased? When you are excluded, do you feel disappointed or do you feel panicked? These are more than just emotions. They are a way for us to see where our standing is before God. What is our verdict system? What determines in our own hearts what we believe about where we belong?

Galatians 2 is Paul saying that your belonging isn't built on your record, is built on something more. If our verdict is built on this, we will either become people who are crushed, people who are proud. And yet, either way, we won't have peace with that. And then Paul says something that's really shocking. In order for us to feel like we're in, in order for us to actually be in, our focus has to be on admitting that we're outsiders. Stop trying to get in by law keeping. What brings people together? And fortunately, the Bible has an answer for us.

So keep your Bibles open to Galatians 2, as we see two primary movements in this passage.

1. 2:15-16 — The Shared Problem: No One Is Justified by the Law

2. 2:17-21 — The False Inference Rejected: Grace Does Not Promote Sin

Paul is going to do two things here. He's going to tell us how people are made right God, and then he's going to protect that gospel from the most common misunderstanding that humans make towards it. In this section, what we'll see is that justification comes through faith in Jesus Christ because righteousness is not by law keeping, and to try to do so actually nullifies and denies the death of Christ.

This passage that we're in today is a bridge between last week and next week. I think we could say that about all passages in this series, but specifically between Paul making a case for his apostelship to next week, what we're going to see is the truth of the gospel really clarified and explained.

A Shared Problem: No One is Justified by the Law - Galatians 2:15-16.

Galatians 2:15 says this, We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. I want to stop there. What Paul Paul is talking about, he's saying this ironically, he's saying to the Gentiles or to the Galatians, the way that you've been looking at this difference between Jew and Gentile, who can sit with who during mealtimes, is you look at them like Gentile sinners. That's what they would say about these Gentiles. Paul is saying, We're not like them. We are Jewish people, and yet we're going to see something here. And yet this is how the human heart works. It doesn't just break rules. It tries to use rules to create divisions among people. Rules are a way that we can say, Well, at least we're not like them.

We don't break those rules. If you love rules more than you love what they're protecting, what you're doing is you're trying to use them in a way to leverage people. You're trying to leverage the law over people. It's a ladder for you to step above them, to get higher than them. If you're first instinct when you sin is not confession, but comparison, then you've turned the law into a tool for self-justification.

The solution is not to hate the law. It's to see it correctly. God gave us the law in order to reveal who he is. Paul is not anti-obedience. He's not anti-law. He's anti-earning our salvation. Paul is essentially saying here, the the law is a good mirror. It's a good mirror. It's a terrible savior. The solution here is to see the law as good, and yet to see ourselves correctly as people who are law breakers. And that's what we see in this first part in Galatians 2:16. Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith. Paul saying, Even though we were Jews, no one is justified by the law. And that's the core message of this letter, this epistle, is that of justification.

Justification or being justified is a legal term. It was used in courtrooms. It still is used in courtrooms. And yet today, outside of the courtroom, outside of church, the word to justify something largely carries a negative connotation. Really, what it means is, and how it's used commonly today in culture, is to excuse bad behavior, to allow someone to get away with something that they shouldn't. You might say it in this way, somebody justified his friend's adultery because he, I don't know, fill in the blank. I don't know why there would be a good way to justify someone's adultery, but using it in that way.

And it sounds like God is allowing bad things to go unpunished. When we read this word, it can seem like it's carrying this connotation. And yet this is what the Bible says, a good definition of the law or of what justification means. God declares a sinner to be righteous in his sight, not because the person has become morally perfect, but because God forgave their sins and counts them righteous on the basis of Jesus Christ. Justification is not a feeling. It is not a motive. It is not an emotion.

It is a verdict. It is a declaration. It is a pronouncement over you. So the law, and what Paul is saying is the law is not something that can put you in a right standing before God. But why? Why is that? Why is it that we talk about the law cannot be something that we add onto scripture or it cannot be something that saves us? Well, first, no one can keep the law. We see that throughout scripture, but we see it in our own lives. We cannot even keep the laws that we make. If you had a tape recorder or someone had a tape recorder and they followed you around for your life, and they recorded every time you said, You should, whatever that fill in the blank is afterwards. You should eat your vegetables. You should obey the speed limit. You should, whatever. You would not be able to keep your own laws that you tell other people to keep, let alone the laws that God gives for us. The second part of why we can't use the law to save us is that the law, by its nature, is not something that saves us.

It can't. Laws are there, whether by God or human laws. Laws are there not to save people. They are there to convict. They are there to reveal wrongdoing and evil. They show us when we've crossed the line. They don't bring us back towards it. See, God is pleased when we obey him, and yet when we obey him out of a heart of love. It's just like parenting. You love when your kids obey you the first time, when they do it out of a right motive, when you don't have to argue with them, when you don't have to try to twist their arm into doing the right thing. It's the same with God. Obedience can't reverse the damage that we've caused. It would be like speeding and getting into a car accident. Going the speed limit after that. There isn't an amount of going the speed limit after that that can reverse the damage done to your car. We need someone to take care of it. We need someone to fix it for us. Obedience can't reverse the damage. We don't need a second chance. We need a substitute. We need someone who will come and fix what we could not.

We need grace. We need the gospel to rescue us. And that's why Paul continues on in verse 16, But through faith in Jesus Christ, so that we have also believed in Christ in order to be justified by faith in Christ, not by works of the law, because by works of law, no one will be justified. It is in faith in Christ that saves. And so what is faith? It might feel like this is another work, that this is something that we're adding on to Jesus, that faith is something that's required. No, faith is not a payment. Faith is not leverage. Faith is not a way for us to earn good standing with God. It's not impressing God with our sincerity or with our devotion. Faith is going to God with empty hands. Faith is saying, I'm spiritually bankrupt. I have nothing to offer. I have nothing to bring. I need to be saved. I need to be raised from the dead. Faith is what allows us to reach to God after we've been resurrected, after we've been raised from the dead, to be able to wake up and receive the grace that God has given us.

It's why Jesus says in the Beatitudes, blessed are those who are poor in spirit, who have spiritual poverty. Because it's only then that we can realize that we need a savior. If we think that we're good, if we think that we have it figured out, if we think that there's anything that we can offer God to make him want us, to make him desire us on our own, we don't have it. We've lost it. We have to say, God, there's nothing that I bring. Faith is not a work. It is a response to God's grace. It is a response to his grace. And anytime we think that we can add anything to it, we start to determine who gets to be in and who gets to be out. And that's the problem that the Jewish people had. That's the problem that we see in this book. The Jews thought they knew who was in, and they were sure that it was them. They knew that they could follow the law, that they could do whatever. They had the right relationship with God. And they knew that Gentiles, they were sinners. They were out. Yet the gospel says the opposite, not about Jews and Gentiles, but about that mindset.

If you believe that you're in, you're out. If you know that you're outside, you're an outsider, you're in. If your confidence is in, well, I'm basically a good person, and I take my faith more seriously, or I take my devotion to God more seriously than others, I'm from the right background, I'm from the right family, I've cleaned up my behavior, God knows that I'm trying really hard and I do the right things. If that's where your confidence is in, then you're using the law like the pharisees used it, not to repent, but to essentially Collect a case together for yourself to try to declare your own verdict, to try to twist God's arm into seeing, See, I really am innocent. And that's not how justification works. If that's how you see your standing before your God, you can't come in. But if you know that you have no hope before our heavenly Father, if you see your identity outside of Christ, if you see your identity as As with the Gentiles, as a sinner, if you feel crushed by the weight of your sin so greatly that you believe you have no hope to get into heaven, then you're in.

The doorway into Christ is not competence, it is confession. The only people who Jesus can justify are the people who stop trying to defend themselves, stop trying to be their own lawyer, their own advocate, and accept the advocate of the Holy spirit. If it sounds like what we were talking about earlier, that God is justifying or allowing sinful people to go unpunished, you're half right. God does let sinful people go, but he doesn't let them go unpunished. He does justify the ungodly, but he doesn't erase sin by just sweeping it under the rug or letting it go. He erases sin by placing it not on us, but on his son, where justice is satisfied, where mercy is sealed. The moment that we say free grace, the moment that we talk about free grace, there are two fears that commonly come up. The first is that the moral person feels chaos and that the guilty person will feel condemned. Paul answers both. He says, First, grace is not permission to sin. And second, grace is power to change. Charles Spurgeon says it this way, If Christ has died for me, then I cannot trifle with the sin which killed my best friend.

The false inference rejected: grace does not promote sin - Galatians 2:17-21.

In Galatians 2:17, Paul continues on. He says, But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners. I'm going to stop right there. Our natural posture of our heart is to put people into two camps, good guys and bad guys. It's always how we've seen the world. It's a human problem. We've always done this. We put two groups of people. It's us versus them, this group versus that group. Regardless of whatever group you find yourself in, the group that you're in is always the good guys, right? No one ever puts themselves in the bad guys side. Whatever side you are on, it doesn't matter what you've done or what your group has done, you're the good guys. Yet God is telling us, We cannot look at the world this way. This is not how the world operates. Every other works-based religion says, You can divide up the world into good and bad people because it is based on what you do. Christianity says, The whole world is running directly towards hell.

We are all sinful. Verse 17 says, Whether you are Jew or Gentile, we too were found to be sinners. All of humanity is sinful. Sin is the great equalizer. It puts us all on the same playing field. It's the beautiful thing about Christianity. It's what makes Christianity different from every other works-based religion. See, if you're a Mormon, those outside of Mormonism, those are the Gentiles. If you're Muslim, everyone else is an infidel. If you're a modern day Jew, everyone else is goyam. If it's based on works, our salvation, our right standing with our creator, then they're There is a divide. There are good and bad people. There are people who obey the law, and there are people who don't. Christianity says, That is not how this works. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. Christianity says, Everyone is an outsider. No one gets in. We are all running directly away from God. If you are a Christian, it is not because you are a good person. You are a Christian because Christ has died for your sins. You are not a Christian because you grew up in the right family or in the right church or said a special prayer at summer camp, whatever it is.

Our right standing with God is not based on an I statement. It is based on what he has done for us. Christians are the only people who can say, We are getting into heaven without bragging about it. It is not a boast. It is not prideful to say that we get to be in heaven because we did nothing to secure our ticket into heaven. Christians are the only people who say, I get into heaven, and it's not because I'm a good person. It's because I've admitted I was a bad person and I was saved by an even better savior. So now the question is this, and that's what we see in the second part of Galatians 2:17, If Christ saves by faith, is Jesus then promoting sin? It says, Is Christ then a servant of sin? Paul goes on to answer, Certainly not. For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. Paul emphatically answers, No. Christ does not promote sin. In no way does he do this. Jesus already tore down the dividing wall of hostility, the barrier that was set up between the Jews and the Gentiles in the temple.

Jesus tore it down. There was a literal wall that said only Jews could get closer to the Holy of Holies. Gentiles had to stay out. When Jesus died on the cross, he tore down that dividing wall for Christians, for the church. This is what the Galatian church misses, had missed so clearly. They this unity that Christians can have, this unity that the church has that is second to none. There's nothing that unites people, that brings people together, that makes them belong in the way that Christ does. There's a mission trip that I was on when I was a youth pastor. We were working on a 30-foot roof. We were putting metal roofing up on this. I don't remember if it was rainy or had rained earlier that day, or if it was early in the morning, they were still due on the roof, but there were places where we couldn't step because it was too slippery. I was at the bottom of this. I was on a ladder, and I was reaching to grab some screws out of my tool belt, and all of a sudden I heard three noises is three kids sliding down.

They had stepped where they shouldn't, and they were coming directly at me. I grabbed the gutter. I had nothing else to grab, and it knocks me back. I almost fell. But we stopped these three kids from from falling. I mean, off of 30 feet, it would have been tragic. We sat down afterwards and just realized how scary that moment truly was. I don't want to say it was a near-death experience, but it was something It was something nearly dramatic at minimum. Of the kids I stay in contact with, I like to stay in contact with a lot of the students that I've had the chance to pastor, those kids, those three kids that fell, are some of the three closest kids I stay in contact with. And I would like to say we just had a better relationship, but I think it's largely due to that moment. It's true with men when they get out of the military. There is a relationship that they have with men that they've served that almost no one else can understand because the brothers that they serve with are some of the only people on Earth who understand exactly what they went through.

There's nothing like a near-death experience that brings people together. And yet, as Christians, we don't have a near-death experience. We have a shared death experience. That's what Paul talks about in this passage. We have all died. We have all gone through the excruciating pain of died, crucifying ourselves, putting ourselves to death. What Jesus says in Matthew, that we go and sell everything we have to buy the treasure hidden in the field. We let go of all the passions that we once had. We let go of all the things that we held on to so tightly, and we've sold it all. There's something excruciating in that. But now we've been raised with Christ. That's what it says in Galatians 2:19, For through the law, I died to the law so that I might live to God. Might be that I might live to God. Galatians 2:20, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life I now live, I live in the flesh. I live by faith, sorry, in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. This is all set in faith, not faith in faith, but faith in a person, faith in the one who loved me, faith in the son of God.

Look at the motivation here. The motivation is love. It's not a global love, although God absolutely loves the world. This love that we see here is individual. It lands on specific people. It lands on you. Christ loved you. God loved you. Not because we were lovable, not because we've cleaned ourselves up first, not because we've earned it, not because we bring anything inherently within ourselves. We don't have any special talents within ourselves that makes God go, Well, okay, he's got this How can I get it? Well, that makes me love him more. No. Love came first, and he gave himself for me, not merely as a teacher, not merely as a martyr, not merely as an example. Christ came as our substitute He came to take our place, taking what we deserve. So when you hear that grace promotes sin, that this theology that we believe gives us a license to sin, It gives us the ability to just say, Well, if I sin, well, Christ will forgive me. It'll be fine. That is clearly wrong. That's what Paul is saying. Absolutely not. No, certainly not. Grace does not lead to sin. If you believe that, you don't understand what grace is.

Grace is not permission, it is power. Grace unites us to God. That leads right into Paul's Closing Line, Galatians 2:21, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. You can nullify grace without denying Jesus out loud. You can nullify it by adding something to it. Jesus plus effort, Jesus plus law keeping, Jesus plus an improvement plan, Jesus plus my spiritual resume. If I can add to God, if I can add to Jesus, then I could have saved myself. There's no reason for the cross. If I can add one thing, if I believe that Jesus took me to the one yard line, he's handed me the ball, and he's saying, You go score. If it's just one yard, right? Because it's a Super Bowl Sunday. If it's one yard that I can do, then it needed to be on me the whole time. Then I could have saved myself. Then what Jesus did on the cross Essentially was divine child abuse. If I can save myself, if I have the ability to save myself, then it's on me the whole way. It's not just the last step.

If I can get right with God by my performance, if my obedience can declare my verdict, then I need to be the one to make it right. Then Christ died for no purpose. The cross becomes unnecessary. It becomes an add-on. It becomes optional. Instead of Jesus being my own only hope, he becomes one of them. He becomes one way. And Christianity just becomes another ladder. It becomes, how obedient are you? How good are you? It makes our only boast not in Christ, but in ourselves. Paul's point is this, you do not get You get wholeness by climbing a ladder. You get wholeness by living out your union with God, dying to yourself and becoming alive in something better, in something new, alive in Christ. So the false inference is rejected. Grace does not make Jesus a servant of sin. Grace makes sinners new, and he makes Christ central. That leads us to our main idea.

Main Idea:

We are justified by faith and alive in Christ.

We are justified by faith and alive in Christ. The gospel is not what we offer God. The gospel is what we receive from God. We don't seal the deal. Christ sealed it when he said, It is finished.

There is nothing we add on. Jesus didn't get up on the cross and said, Well, now I've got it started. That wasn't his last breath. Jesus said, It is finished. To add anything on to Christ after that is to make him a liar on the cross. This is the wonderful part about being a Christian. If you feel like you've done too much, too much evil, if you feel like you're an outsider, congratulations. The good news of the gospel is that it's not on you. Whether you were good, whether you were born in the right family, you did everything right, or you lived the most morally corrupt life you could have. It's not on you. There isn't a single thing you can do to make you outside of the love of Christ that he has for you. This is the good news of the gospel, that we don't even hold ourselves to Christ, that he is the one who holds us to him. It simply does not matter what you have done. Paul was a murderer. Paul was a murderer. I mean, look at every character in scripture. God does a great job of painting every character, except for one, in a negative light.

There isn't a single person in here besides Christ who isn't a total screw-up. If you think that he can't use you, he used Paul, a murderer. The Son of God loved you and gave himself for you. There isn't a sin that the blood of Christ cannot redeem, cannot make right. And that's a call for us as a church. There's something here, an application before we get to our application, for us as a church, because if Christ receives sinners by grace, we as a church cannot demand people to get themselves cleaned up before they can start worshiping with us, for people to start earning their seat before they sit down. We do not clean people up and bring them to Christ and bring them to Jesus. We don't clean them up first. We bring people, and Jesus cleanses them. Every church is tempted in two directions. First, to make people pretend they're clean or to invite people to become brand new. Church, we have to be that second church. We cannot force people to act like us, to do X, Y, or Z, to dress like us, to sing like us, to perform a certain way in order to be accepted here.

Except for the gospel, which we will never move away from. We will never dilute the gospel. As long as I'm your pastor, that won't happen. We will never move from this. We will never lower the bar. But as a church, we can't ask people to perform. We can't ask people to pretend like they're not messy. If we demand that people aren't messy in order to come worship with us, Sunday morning, we'll have zero people. I won't be able to be here. We are all a mess. I'm not saying that we all have to dress a certain way. We don't have to all lower our dress standards. Sometimes I like wearing a suit and tie. I mean, I'm weird. I understand that, but sometimes I like it, okay? But we cannot pretend that dressing up, that looking clean on the outside, doesn't mean that we're not messy. One of my favorite things about this is my grandpa was one of the men who had faith that I aspire to. He was an incredible man. He was a farmer. And during harvesting season, he would come in straight out of the combine with a hat on, with overalls on, and he would be dirty.

He'd be a mess. He'd be dusty. And I remember thinking, how awesome is that? He He would have looked at himself and gone, I don't have the right clothes on. I still have a hat on. I haven't showered today. And yet he said, I'm going to take an hour, I'm going to take an hour and a half to be here on Sunday to worship. If you have to debate whether you're going to be here because you feel like you're too messy. If you're wondering whether you need to... If you're running late and you're going to show up, you're going to miss the first part of worship, come. I'd love for you to be here for the whole thing. I think the whole thing is worth it, but come. If you're coming in your overalls out of the field, come. If you haven't showered today, If you're physically messy, come. If you're spiritually messy, even more of a reason to come. I would so much rather you come messy and experience Christ, experience the worship here, experience the God that we see in scripture, than to try to stay at home and fix yourself. That leads us into our points of application.

Use justification as a weapon against guilt and pride.

Justification means God's verdict over you is settled. It is God banging the gavel and saying, Innocent. It is not up for renegotiation today. So this gospel hits on two two opposite sins. It hits on guilt that says, I am condemned, and it hits on pride that says, I am better. When Satan comes and assaults you this week, when he comes against you and he says, I know what you've done, and you call yourself a Christian. I saw you in high school. I saw you in college. I saw what you did then. I saw what you did last week. How dare you call yourself a Christian? We can say, Satan, you're absolutely right. That was the old me. That was the old Mitchell. But I am raised in Christ, and you have no longer a claim over me. The gospel sets sinful people free, sets sinful people away from the condemnation that we feel from the judgment that we feel from the enemy. Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer 60. The answer says this, part of the answer says this, Although my conscience accuses me, yet God, out of mere grace, imputes to me Christ as as if I never committed any sin.

What beautiful language that encapsulates the gospel here. When your accuser comes and says, You are not good enough, we can say, Absolutely, I wasn't. But Christ was good for me. When your heart says, Prove that you're worth loving this week by trying harder, being better, you can say, If righteousness were through me We're through the law. Christ died for no purpose. Absolutely not. I will not try to make my obedience pay Jesus back. I could never pay him back. I will not nullify grace by doing it that way. And when your pride shows up by saying, Well, at least I'm not like them, you can say, We, too, were found to be sinners. I, too, was found to be morally corrupt, to be It's an absolute mess. The beauty of the gospel is that the cross is at a level playing ground. It is at eye level for everyone. We are all equally convicted of sin before God. It is only because Jesus was my substitute that I have even the faintest hope of being right with God.

Live in union with Christ as the engine of Holiness and unity.

Union with Christ means dying to the old self and living with Christ. So Holiness is not Earning acceptance. Holiness is living from acceptance. Use the gospel for your Holiness. When tempted to say, I will try harder and be better, tell yourself. That is not who I am anymore. I've been crucified with Christ. Fight sin from identity. Fight sin from identity, not for identity. Use the gospel for unity. Stop ranking Christians as somehow on a different letter, on a different rung in the ladder. There aren't JV Christians. In fact, there is no such thing as a good Christian. It's my least favorite heresy that when people say, Oh, so and so is such a good Christian. There's no such thing as a good Christian because a Christian is not based on what you do.

If someone asks you why you're a Christian, you cannot answer in the first person. You cannot answer by saying, It's because I grew up in a Christian home, or I went to Bible camp and I said a magic prayer, or because I decided I wanted to get baptized. No, you are a Christian because Christ, because he. You must answer it in the third person.

You cannot be a good Christian. Christianity is not based on what you do. Therefore, it cannot be based. You can't be good at it. You are either a Christian, you are either in Christ or you aren't. We are all justified the same way, so we cannot despise one another. We can't put each other into categories of good Christians and bad Christians. We are all equally in the same category. We are sinners, and some of us have accepted and received the grace that Christ offers. This is why the church has always had a radical unity. It's why some of you might have Some of you might have a struggle with people, even in your own family, connecting deeply with them, where you can connect with someone across the country, across the world, maybe even someone who doesn't speak the same language as you. You have nothing in common with. And your own brother or sister, your own father or mother, you cannot connect with them on that level because you have a shared death experience with that person who you may have never met. You can't talk about that with maybe even someone in your own family.

We are called, we are bonded, we are unified in something radical. Why is it that we can be alive in Christ? Because Christ came to be death for for us. Through the law, I died to the law, meaning that the law could never save me. It put me in the grave, but God did not keep me there. The gospel is not, Try harder, be better. If that's at all what you've heard, get your hearing check, because that is not what this says nor what I have said. The gospel is, Jesus came to die for your sins, to be your substitute, to raise you from death to life. He came to be what sin deserved, to be death, to be the separation, to be judgment for us so that we could be what grace received. We can be life, forgiven and accepted. Christianity is not a moral betterment program. It is not behavioral modification. It is life transformation. It is a new source of life and identity. So here's why you can be alive, because he entered death for you, because he took your verdict, and now he shares his life with you. The gospel is not work your way to life.

The gospel is: die with Christ and be alive with Christ.

We are justified by faith and alive in Christ.

Let's stand and pray and respond in worship for the God who has raised us in him in newness of life. Father God, we praise you and thank you that we are no longer dead, that we no longer are ourselves. God, that Satan has no longer a claim on us because we can say, We are alive in you.

Father, I pray that we would live as renewed people, that we would live as transformed people, whether we've heard this the first time today or we've heard this a hundred times before. God, let this be a well of living water bursting out of our souls. God, let us declare in this next song that you are holy, holy, holy as people who have been radically transformed. Let us love one another because you first loved us. It's in your name we pray. Amen.