Justified Through Faith in Christ
Galatians · Vern Peterman · Jul 1, 2007
Galatians (2007), No. 11
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926031432677

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

get us all on the same page. Recall last week we were looking at Galatians 2 verses 6 through 10. And as we did that, rather than go through this, I want to kind of get the short version. And this is on the first slide in your handout, page one. When Peter came to Antioch, which is this city that I have pointed out on the arrow from the satellite view, and that would be really cool if they could have seen the satellite view. I think that would have been neat, but you'll have to enjoy it.

Here is Peter, and Peter had been for the better part of a decade living alongside the Gentiles, living as if there was no difference between the Gentiles who believed in Christ and he, Jew, who believed in Christ. Paul looked at this and he said, this is not consistent. This is a problem. And so he openly opposed Peter to his face, right in front of everybody. And he called it twice, as we saw in last week's passage, hypocrisy.

Peter the Jew had been eating right alongside these believing Gentiles, and now all of a sudden he was drifting into a separation and leading others with him. Here's Peter, since he's an apostle, others had been drifting away and sitting with Peter, and you began to see, not by open declaration, but by shift and drift, the Jews separating themselves from the Gentiles. The pressure was on for the Gentiles then to behave like Jews. Peter had been the one to give the gospel right there, so Peter himself understood what the issue was.

Somehow it was getting clouded in his mind. He wasn't seeing it until Paul brought it up, until Paul confronted him in love. One of the things we pointed out last week is that when Paul confronted Peter, in one point it was a time of great danger. You could have had Peter and Paul at odds with each other and heading off in other directions and a great schism and split.

But what happened was not only something that turned out really well, it turned out really, really well. It was really great how it ended up because Paul and Peter both ended up respecting each other's place as apostles, continuing their partnership. We mentioned last time that Peter acknowledged that Paul was writing scripture as he wrote his letters.

Here in Acts 15 verses 7 through 11, and it's on page one of your handout there, Peter, after there had been some debate over the question of should we have these Gentiles be under the law, he stood up in the midst of them and he says it this way, which tells us Peter did get it. Peter did end up understanding Paul's point.

And here's what he said, Brethren, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, and that by my mouth, so he recognized it was God's choice that he present the gospel to the Gentiles, by my mouth the Gentiles would hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God who knows the heart, testified to them, giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us. And He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith. Now therefore, why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? Verse 11, but we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus in the same way as they also are. Peter understood. Peter got it. The confrontation that Paul did in love turned out very well. Real well. And it's evidenced here in the words that Peter spoke. Verse 11 could just as well have been said by Paul, couldn't it? They both agreed on what the gospel was. We believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus in the same way as they also are. No distinction. No reason for us to be separating ourselves out by diet or any other earthly distinction.

So here in Galatians 2, 15 and 16, Paul is continuing it and it's interesting, various people who look at this debate, is Paul continuing to say this to Peter or is Paul just explaining? It's not abundantly clear, but in the end it doesn't matter because he's spelling out the truth for us, isn't he? He could well have continued saying these very same things to Peter and it would have made sense. It sounds like, however, he's talking to us. So let's take a look at it. Paul stated briefly here what he explained more fully in a couple other passages in Romans 9 verses 4 and 5. And in Ephesians 2 verses 11 and 12, you don't have it on your handout, but let's look at those references here.

First in Romans 9 verses 4 and 5, the Israelites to whom belong the adoption as sons, the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the temple service and the promises, all the things that have been given explicitly and directly to Israel, whose are the fathers, that is, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, those of the book of Genesis, and from whom is the Christ.

Notice it's the Messiah. When you see the death in the article, that's pointing to not just Christ, as we often see him, but the Messiah, the Jewish Messiah. According to the flesh, the Messiah who comes, qualified by his lineage, born of Mary of the house of David, qualified in every way. who is over all, God bless forever. Amen. Here is the advantage of the Jew.

Paul also says, in Ephesians 2.11 and 12, the disadvantage of the Gentile. Until. Until. Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by the so-called circumcision. Uncircumcision, the Gentiles. Circumcision, the Jews. which is performed in flesh, made by human hands.

Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ. Separated from Him. Excluded from the commonwealth of Israel. Outside of Israel. You weren't among them. You were not of that ethnic and religious group. And strangers to the covenants of promise. The covenants were made with Israel. Israel got the covenant of the land. Israel was the one who who had a king named David, who was told, your descendant will reign over the house and the throne and the kingdom. Having no hope and without God in the world. This is the position of the Gentile as they are directly. Without God is atheos. Atheistic in the world. Isn't that something? Without God in the world. Now, let's look at this first line. This is verse 15. A rather stunning thing for Paul to say. Paul stated briefly the truths that we see here in this verse. What he also explained in more detail in those passages we just saw in Romans 9, 4, and 5, and Ephesians 2, 11, and 12.

The Jews' advantage and the Gentiles' disadvantage, spiritually speaking, is what he explained. The Jews abused that advantage. We saw it when we were studying the end of Isaiah. Isaiah talked about, you are a light to the Gentiles. But is that what they did? Not so much.

This abuse, let's take a quick look at it. The Jews were prone to look upon their privilege with arrogance. They looked upon their privilege with arrogance. The Jews would look down upon the Gentiles. We're the circumcised, you are the uncircumcised. We are God's chosen people, you are the dogs.

There's two words for dog primarily used in the Greek language. The word they used was the rough one, kuon. It's a word that doesn't mean a nice little cuddly puppy. It's a word that means a mangy, diseased, unowned, vicious, uncared for animal that will attack you if it thinks that you're going after its disgusting food. That's the word that they use to describe the Gentiles. Okay? Not a puppy. Not a cuddly thing. And so here That was their manner of looking upon Gentiles.

I give you one example. Dogs, they had other words. I won't repeat them. As we look in verse 16, we notice that this word justified comes up three times, at least here. And it's important we take a look at it. This word justified is not giving a lot of excuses. And now I'm done giving excuses.

The word justified means to be declared righteous by God. as God sees us. Important point, as God sees us. The book of James uses the term in terms of how man sees us. This, however, is talking about how God sees us. To get an idea of what justified means, think of this. We're going to walk our way through this, alright?

Let's say that you were held captive. by a mountain of debt. And by the way, that's the way the Jews pictured sins. Sins against God were viewed as debt. That's why what's commonly called the Lord's Prayer is sometimes said, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. It's referring to sins. It's not just a monetary thing. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement for the Jews, looks upon sins as debts. The Jews oftentimes would picture sins in that way, as a debt.

And here you are being held captive until this debt, this ransom, is paid off. And just to make sure it's outside of anyone's reach, let's call it four trillion dollars. I had somebody ask me yesterday, because they happened to see, how big is that number? Because you look at it, it's a little tough to envision. That's four trillion dollars, and I'm sure it's outside of most of us here. A few of us may be an exception, but we'll let it ride. Four trillion dollars. It's not something any of us can touch. And so if the demand is you pay the four trillion dollars or you're not getting out, we're pretty well stuck there. We're stuck behind bars, imprisoned. But guess what? Somebody graciously comes along and says, I'll pay for everybody that's in that prison, everybody that's in that boat.

And the way scripture paints the picture, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Or as Isaiah put it, all we like sheep have gone astray. Every single one of us is in a position of owing a debt, to put it in financial terms, of having a mountain of debt. to the Lord that we cannot pay. We cannot touch it and can never hope to.

Graciously, the offer comes, I'll pay the debt for every single person that's under this bondage, that is under this pile, this mountainous pile of debt. I'll pay the debt. And so the check comes in to each person. All you've got to do is, do you believe it? Can you turn it over, sign it, and walk out the door? Will you take advantage of the free offer of payment of that debt, of the four trillion dollars for each one of us? So that's the question. And scripture puts it this way.

We have been redeemed, bought out from, that captivity that held us, that mountain of debt, and forgiven that debt, forgiven the sins by payment. All we did was believe. We turned the check over and said, yeah, I believe this, and walked out the door free. We took advantage of the grace, not because of anything we did, but only because we believe the payment has been made. So this forgiveness of sins and redemption are then offered. And we walk free.

The word justified that's in this passage here is based on the forgiveness and the redemption. It includes these two things, forgiveness and redemption. We're going to see redemption show up in the next couple of chapters in Galatians as we continue our study. Justification includes the forgiveness. Justification includes that redemption that comes by believing that through the Lord Jesus Christ, that price has been paid. That's what justified means. That's what justification is.

Declared righteous, forgiven and redeemed all in one word. Galatians 2, where we're at now, 2.16, contains this word three times. We're going to see it again in the next chapter, chapter 3. It's a word that is critical, essential for believers to understand. The Lord has declared us righteous. It's a done deal. Adoption of sons is one we're going to see in the next couple of chapters, too.

We'll get to that and explain why that's parallel to justification, redemption, and forgiveness, plus more. Now, a chiasm is a mirror image in written form. So this chiasm shows up, we've talked about the whole book of Galatians, is a mirror image in written form. Also, this verse, as you'll see on page two of your handout, this verse is a small chiasm.

It starts off with saying that we're not justified by works of the law, and it ends with we're not justified by works of the law. In the middle part is faith in Christ, faith in Christ, and believing in Christ Jesus. That's the middle part of the sandwich, so to speak. This first part here and the last part is about denying that we can be justified by works of the law at all. And central there in the middle of it is faith in Christ. Believing is the basis for justification.

Now, looking at this verse here, neither the law of Moses, which certainly the Jews knew that they had specifically, nor any hand-picked selection from it Because it's a favorite, I'm afraid, among a number of Christians to hand-pick from the law. I like this law, but I don't like that one. You get the arm-twisting about tithes. You ever heard that? You get the arm-twisting about you'd better tithe. They forget that the verses right before that say don't eat shrimp and lobster.

They like to hand-pick them. It doesn't matter how, whether you take all the law of Moses or you handpick from it or come up with another system that's your favorite. There's nothing about the law or the principle of law or approaching thing from a law viewpoint that has the ability to make us righteous. And part of the problem is that the law asks us to do something, and even the principle of law asks us to do something, but does not give us the provision. A little over six years ago, I sang a song, which I'll sing to you again. Do this and live, the law commands, but gives me neither feet nor hands. A better way His grace doth bring. It bids me fly and gives me wings. Huge difference. Massive difference.

The law doesn't get there. The law is moral. The law of Moses was from the hand of God. But it gives no provision for its fulfillment. Something else to point out in this verse, you have it on page two of your handout on this slide. All of these, the definite articles, the works of the law, which that phrase occurs here several times, those definite articles are not in the original language. Isn't that interesting? So it's actually, nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by works of law. By works of law.

In Galatians 2.16, we find a statement that's repeated with an additional insight very succinctly in Romans 3, verse 20. This is the first part of the verse.

Because of the works of the law, no flesh will be justified, and that we've seen there in Galatians 2.16, right? The additional three words are powerful. It's in his sight.

It always means that, but he underscored it here in Romans 3.20. It's how does God see it. It's not does everybody else think I'm good enough. It's no measure if anybody else thinks I'm a good enough guy. It's how does God see it. One of the things Nancy and I were talking about, really, not everyone is equally bad.

I mean, you look at certain people and we almost have in our minds, if I said, think of a world-class example of bad people. You could probably think of some pretty quickly, couldn't you? Some that are either alive now or, you know, have been alive in history. And when you think of, you know, this guy or that one, boy, those were awful people. Those were really bad. But we're all equally bad off.

If I have an instance where I say, OK, I'm going to ask John here, and I'm going to also ask Dave, and I'll pitch in too. And what we're going to do, we're going to swim across the Pacific Ocean. One fell swoop. No sleeping, no breaks. Now, I have no doubt, but I'd probably come in third. But guess what? John isn't going to come in first. None of us would make it, would we?

The reality is, you can look at people and say, that guy's really bad, and that guy's not so bad, and you know, gee, comparatively speaking, I might think I'm good. None of us has the capacity to do what it takes. None of us has the capacity to be justified by the law.

In God's sight, in God's sight is what justification is measured by. When it comes to righteousness, it's not a how do you see me and how do I see you, it's how God sees us. God is the one who makes the declaration. Our relative standing really doesn't matter.

You ever seen a curve like this? In school, you might even think that's a pretty good thing to have. So the question, does God grade on the curve? What do you think? Your report card will be in the mail tomorrow, right? No, I think not. The reality is God does not grade on the curve. The standard is the righteousness of the person of Jesus Christ. And fortunately, the question of our salvation does not depend on our attainment of that standard, but our being in Him. Salvation is only by faith in Christ. Period. Faith is dependence upon what God has done in Christ. Faith is dependence upon what God has done in Christ. We can't do anything to add to or enhance God's declaration that we're righteous.

See, nobody in this room, myself included, can say, my salvation is a little better than yours. Nobody can make a comparison and say, hey, I got a pretty good salvation. It's just a tad better because I've worked on it. No, it doesn't work that way, does it?

The gavel comes down from heaven and by faith in Christ, bang, righteous. The declaration comes from God. It's in His sight. That's what matters. Faith isn't even the doorway that allows us to work for a right standing with God. That's not what it is. We can't even hope to prove to God that we're worthy. Lord, I really worked on this really, really hard. And compare those other folks, man, I'm really way ahead of the pack. And based on that, no. Scripture doesn't lay it that way, does it?

By faith in Christ. One of the things that's critical in this and starting point is the initial salvation. Paul has spelled out in 1 Corinthians 15, about the first 11 verses, the core of the gospel. And let me read it just so it's abundantly clear. Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you. So here's the gospel, okay? By which you are saved, for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, point one. That he was buried, proving his death, and that he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures, and so you believed.

That's the gospel. Do you believe it? Then you're saved. That's the bottom line. If you believe it, then you're saved. If you know it, you can tell somebody else. Somebody says, what's the gospel? That's the gospel. And guess what? There's nothing I did in that, except believe, and that's not for credit, and that doesn't enhance the gospel. I can only believe in the content of the gospel, which is centered upon the work and person of Jesus Christ. Now, I want to tell you a little story here.

There was a time when this fellow by the name of Ray Steadman was at this church that I was at since I was a little kid. Okay? And we'll get that picture out of the way quick. He was an assistant to Harry Ironside. Some of you may recognize that name. was a youth pastor under J. Vernon McGee, so you recognize that name. And it's my understanding that Hal was attending at J. Vernon McGee's church, so just to give you some connection and history there.

John Walvard had been the one who they had spoken to over the phone and had recommended Ray Steadman to the church that I went to when I was a kid. And you may recognize that name as one who was co-author or the most recent editor of the major Bible themes book that we've studied here at Colley Hills. And I got to go spend some time at John Walvord's house a few times when I was down in Texas before I went home to be with the Lord.

And interestingly enough, when I was about eight years old, roughly, Miles Stanford wrote back and forth with this fellow, Ray Sedman, as well. So anyway, there's a number of connections there, and you may certainly recognize some names and faces. So you may wonder, why in the world is Vern talking about this? Let me go back to this.

This guy Ray Steadman was the pastor of this church, and he had been teaching there since actually before I was born. And as he was teaching away, about the time that Miles was writing to Ray Steadman, There was a fellow in the congregation that I'd seen every week.

I mean, he was faithful. He came with his wife, Betty. His name was Ben. Came with his wife, Betty, and saw him there every week for, it seemed like, several years. After Ben had been there for four years, Ben realized, you know what? I've been coming in this place for four years.

And just in the same way that being in a garage doesn't make you a car, coming to church doesn't automatically make you a Christian. Ben realized, you know, I'm not saved after listening to Ray Steadman for four years. Here you have this teacher with all these great connections and background. The bottom line is if you don't believe the message, you're not there. You gain no advantage from it. You're just standing in the garage. And it's a key thing for us to realize that it's not who we rub shoulders with or whose words we listen to.

In the end, there's a gospel message there. Do we believe it? And just like Ben had to come to recognize, there isn't any way around it. I need to believe this message. And I need to understand it. Okay, here we are in verses 15 and 16. And one of the things that he says there twice, and it's important to underscore, and don't stone me immediately, okay?

Our faith does not directly save us. You are not saved solely and completely just because you have faith. Even that you just sort of have some kind of a faith that there is a God. That doesn't do it. Notice the way Paul puts it here. Through faith, by faith. Our faith does not directly make us righteous or earn us anything. Faith is dependent upon God's salvation through Christ. It's through faith, but not by faith itself alone. The faith itself alone is not what saves us.

It is by faith. God uses faith as the means That's what it means by or through. Faith is the means to apply all of Christ's work to us. It's by faith. It's through faith. We don't earn something with faith. We don't get something directly just by having faith. It's faith being a dependence upon what God has done. Faith is not a work. It's not something I get credit for or merit for. It's God's instrument. by which Christ's work is applied to me.

Now, we're going to go on to the next couple of verses here. I want to give you a kind of a heads up and a caution. All right, you ready for this? I'm going to go through some logic, some of the reasoning that Paul is going through here. And in the middle of it, you may think, what is Verne saying? Okay? I want to give you assurance that there's light at the end of the tunnel. I want to assure you that when we're all done, that we'll have a kind of a summary that will be understandable, even if the logic is a little tough. All right? So you're ready? Can you handle this? Okay? Don't despair in the middle. I don't want anybody running out in tears. Okay? We'll get there. All right. First part.

But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? What's he saying here? If those Jews who believe in Christ, this includes Peter, Paul, Barnabas, the others that were there at Antioch, then go on to abandon, because they say I'm justified by faith in Christ, they abandon the law, or parts of it even, as Peter and these Jewish Christians did at Antioch, was this forsaking of the law actually counted as sin? By trusting in Christ, did Christ cause me to sin by abandoning the law? That's the question he's asking here. His response? May it never be!

Now this is an expression that they've been seeing multiple times in Romans. And I see Roger nodding his head, so yes, they have. And it's once in 1 Corinthians and twice more in Galatians. Interestingly, the three books in the New Testament that it's in are all churches that have a strong Roman connection. So I haven't figured out what that's all about yet.

Paul used these words to put a do not enter wrong way sign on a line of thinking. That's what his point was. Every time he used it, he would have somebody going down a certain line of thinking and they'd say, may it never be. Stop. Do not enter. You're going the wrong way. Wrong path of logic.

That's his reason for using this term. We're going to see it some more here in this book. Verse 18. If I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor. Paul uses himself as the hypothetical example. The logic, of course, applied to Peter, Barnabas, and the rest of the Jews there who were indeed making this switching back and forth, this vacillation. I'm a Jew.

Ah, but I can eat with the Gentiles. No, I better not. Okay? Inconsistent. Here it goes. If, after disregarding the law, I try to put it all back in place, I'm admitting that the period of time that I disregarded it was sin. Was a whole streak of sinning. Because I was inconsistent. Here's Paul's logic.

If, since Peter had presented the gospel to Gentiles, the Jewish believers had set aside the law of Moses Because they saw that being justified was only by faith in Christ, and they've eaten alongside the Gentiles, so now they set the law aside. I'm justified by faith in Christ. I don't need to abide by all these separation rules. Then those believers later go back to trying to live by the law of Moses, and they stop eating with the Gentiles.

What are they doing? The Jewish believers conclude that it was a mistake all during that time, and it's years, all during the time they ignored the law, they said, I must have been under sin because I've got to go back to the law. See that? The inconsistency. Now, if I have not gotten it across, if that still seems foggy, here's the light at the end of the tunnel. Okay? Alright. The bottom line of these verses is this.

It's radically inconsistent for a person to be declared righteous by faith in Christ, which is by grace alone, and then to turn back to the law, which will not declare anybody righteous. It can only condemn you. 2 Corinthians 3, it's a ministry of condemnation. It can only condemn you. It's a ministry of death. It's not declared righteous, it's declared condemned. That's all the law can do. Paul was saying in verses 17 and 18, to vacillate back and forth is to be inconsistent. It's not to understand the gospel of grace.

We have in here what we call expanded and explained. And we've begun this since the beginning of our time in Galatians. We did it through portions of our study of Ephesians and Colossians and in its entirety for Philippians. And so we will continue to accumulate these. I won't go through this now. Certainly feel free to do so. What I'd like to move to here is what is true of our salvation.

We are each saved, and that includes forgiven, redeemed, and justified, entirely, completely, totally by faith. Faith and death for our sins, and his burial and his resurrection. Got that? Died for our sins, his burial, proving his death, and his resurrection to life, so that we have life too. That salvation is also entirely by God's grace, completely.

Nothing we can do to earn it, merit it, or make The Lord feel like, oh yeah, he's worthy. Salvation isn't something we can enhance, we can make it to be secured, we can't pay it back. I use the picture of the four trillion dollars. Can't pay it back, can't touch it. There's nothing that we can do to enhance it by doing something or even refraining from doing something. It can't be threatened by anything we do or fail to do.

Isn't that good news? John 10 28, okay? You can't even lose it of your own doing. And Jesus also used ume which means not a chance. Not a chance you can lose it of your own doing. Salvation is God's accomplishment by or through faith. We don't add faith. And faith doesn't add anything at all. It's by faith. It's through faith. But faith isn't something that enhances it. We don't add faith to it in order to come up with our salvation. Why do I have this picture of a flame on the right side? Let me tell you a brief story.

When I was in college, there was a friend of mine who got a hold of about a pound of sodium. Pure elemental sodium. It was kept in a jar of kerosene. not water. It turns out that if you take pure elemental sodium, I'm not talking about the sodium chloride like in salt, but pure element sodium, and you drop it in water, it does something like this. Well, he went up in the mountains to a small lake with his approximately one pound of sodium. The whole lake looked like this.

Boom! It's not stable. You do not end up with your sodium. And by the way, you don't end up with your water either. Now, why am I telling you this story? If you try to mix grace and law, you don't end up with either. There is something of the character of grace where grace and law together, not a combination that you can consider stable. And you certainly don't want to hang around and it's not a good time to go swimming. It is critical to understand that we do not mix law and grace. That's why we don't preach grace and then go and remind you every Sunday about the offering slot. As we look at this here, adding faith to your works or seeking to merit anything sets aside God's grace.

Ephesians 2.8 and 9, For by grace you have been saved. And by the way, that's in the perfect tense. The perfect tense means a completed past action, ongoing results in the future, implying permanence. For by grace you have been permanently saved with ongoing results in the future. Through faith and that salvation, that being saved, is not of yourself. It is the gift of God. Not as a result of works so that no one may boast. Nothing to boast about. I didn't add to it. I didn't enhance my salvation. It is all Christ's work for dying for us, buried and resurrected. It's His work that saves us.

So what do we do? Certainly, we have the personal assurance from Scripture regarding this once-for-all salvation. The truth that's spelled out here impacts even our church body, us right here. You might say, well, yeah, we're saved by grace. Yeah, but more than that. It was clearly God's intent that we be and remain united in Christ and not be divided in any way by principle of law. Not at all.

We gave you last week, page four of the handout, and by the way, I'm going to make that available to you again and again. The principle of law versus principle of grace. We said, you know, put that under your pillow at night, soak it up, we'll get there. But the key thing we want to look at here, what do we do with what Paul just said?

It is to recognize God's amazing grace. If we feel a need for law, perhaps we haven't yet realized how amazing God's grace is. Until we're amazed by God's grace, that draw of the law will stay with us. We must be amazed by God's grace. then we just begin to understand. Because we're supposed to grow in it, right? Grow in the grace.

And Ephesians 2.7, it's going to take eternity for God to reveal it all. So, no, we're not going to understand it all here. But it's a great place to get started. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for your marvelous, yes, amazing grace. We thank you that as we look at this passage, as we look at how we have been justified, declared righteous before a holy and infinite God, that is indeed amazing. We give you praise. We give you thanks. In Jesus' name, amen.