Freed Through Faith
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Freed Through Faith, Part 2
Dr. David Platt
12/7/08
If you have a Bible, and I hope you do, I’m going to invite you to open with me to Galatians 2.
Galatians 2, we’ve got a great Word to study today. Not that we don’t have a great Word every week, but I am hoping, I am praying that this chapter will just come alive in this room and in our hearts and transform our lives, and transform even our just understanding of Christianity. So toward that end, I want to pray for us.
Last week we talked about how we were freed by grace. We’re gonna jump right and one truth that we reiterated over and over and over again was that God’s pleasure in you is not based on your performance for Him.
God’s pleasure in you is not based on your performance for Him. We talked about that a lot from Galatians 1, and in one sense, that is a freeing truth. In another sense, it’s a frustrating truth because you start to think, “Well, I want to please God, so if I can’t please God with anything I do, then how do I please God?”
And you go to places like II Corinthians 5, I Thessalonians 2:4, I Thessalonians 4:1 – different places in the New Testament that talk about how we live to please God, how our goal is to please God, and so it begs the question, “If God’s pleasure in me is not based on my performance before Him, then how in the world can I please God?”
And that’s where Galatians 2 is going to help us. What I want you to see, want us to see is three different pictures here in Galatians 2. And we’re gonna take them one at a time, and then camp out on the last one. But I want us to read each of these, and they’re separate pockets, so to speak, that’ll help us to understand the chapter as a whole.
We’re gonna go all the way through Galatians 2, but let’s start with the first picture. What we’ve got is two episodes, and then an explanation at the end. Those are the three pictures we’re gonna see.
So we’ll start with the first picture; it’s an episode that happens in Galatians 2:1-10. Follow along as Paul writes this to the churches in Galatia. He says, “Fourteen (14) years later, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along, also.
“I went in response to a revelation and set before them the Gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. But I did this privately to those who seem to be leaders, for fear that I was running or had run my race in vain. Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek.
“This matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the Gospel might remain with you.
“As for those who seem to be important – whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not judge by external appearances – those men added nothing to my message. On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews.
“For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. James, Peter, and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me.
“They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews. All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.”
Galatians 2:1-10. This is a picture of legalism – legalism. This is much of what we talked about last week – legalism. And I’ve defined it there as right behavior with wrong belief.
Here’s what was going on: The scholars debate exactly when this meeting that Paul’s talking about here happened. The majority of scholars, biblical scholars, think that this is referring to the episode in Acts 15, the Jerusalem counsel, where they had a big gathering of Church leaders, and they made a formal statement from the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem, that the Gentiles would not have to be circumcised – that’s what the majority of scholars have said that’s what this is referring to.
Then there’s a minority over here that says it was before that, before Acts 15. And just for the record, so to speak, not that anybody cares, but I would fall in line probably with the minority over here, which is not always – there’s a lot of people that are smarter than me that disagree with me.
So you can fall in line either way, but it really doesn’t matter in the end when this happened, because the whole point is that there was a problem in the Church because of these Judaisers, we talked about this some last week, who were saying that you needed to do certain things, you needed to obey certain Jewish laws or Jewish customs in order to be saved – most notably, you needed to be circumcised.
And this is where Paul talks about how Titus, himself a Gentile, went with him to this particular meeting, whether it was Acts 15 or not, went to this particular meeting and was not compelled to be circumcised.
And this was huge, because if Titus had been compelled to be circumcised, that’d been a huge victory for the Judaisers and a huge affront to the Gospel of grace, because it would have said that you have to do these things, you need to be circumcised in order to be accepted before God.
And so what we’ve got is this picture of legalism that we talked about last week. Remember, legalism is working in our own power, or according to our own rules. But ultimately, legalism is working to earn God’s favor – do these certain things and you will experience favor before God; you will be accepted before God.
And that’s exactly what is countered here in Galatians 2:1-10. Now remember, this is important, we don’t talk a lot about circumcision today; we don’t talk a lot about Jewish laws, this or that, but I want you to think about this definition here – right behavior with wrong belief.
What the Judaisers, don’t miss this, what the Judaisers were saying needed to be done – be circumcised, follow Jewish laws – those were not bad things. Be circumcised was important for the people of God all throughout history up to this point, so that’s certainly not a bad thing.
And following the laws that God had given His people in the Old Testament, is that bad? No, these are not bad things in and of themselves. But they became bad things when they were accompanied by a belief that in doing those things, one would be accepted before God, or have approval before God.
Let me repeat that – good behaviors became bad things when they were accompanied by a belief that by doing them you were accepted before God, or had favor before God. Now translate that a couple of thousand years later into our context.
We’re not talking about circumcision or following Jewish laws, but what are the things that we do – good things? Maybe a quiet time; Bible study; coming to worship, like you’ve done some time; serving people – good things, these are very good things, they’re very good behaviors to give our lives to.
At the same time, as soon as they are accompanied by the belief that doing those things makes us more favorable before God, we’ve missed the point. It’s right behavior with wrong belief, and we have to be careful to avoid legalism, avoid thinking if we’ve had good quiet times all week, that we sit in here with more favor before God than the person sitting next to us who’s not prayed all week long.
So we’ve gotta be careful in good behaviors, good things, not to equate those with a belief that says that makes me more favored before God than someone else. So that’s legalism, that’s the picture in Galatians 2:1-10.
Second picture, Galatians 2:11, follow along and here what happened there. Paul says, “When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles, but when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles, because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.
“The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy, even Barnabas was led astray.” The first part of this chapter, a picture of legalism. The second part of this chapter is a picture of hypocrisy – hypocrisy is right belief with wrong behavior.
Let me interpret, explain what just happened in Galatians 2:11-14. It’s one of the most dramatic, one of the most intense episodes in all the New Testament, because this is the apostle Paul publically confronting the apostle Peter. Can you imagine the tension in that room? Paul calling out Peter, who preached the first Christian sermon, the head of the disciples, so to speak, and Paul’s calling him out? This was very intense right here.
So what was happening? Well, I want you to hold your place here, and I want you to turn back to Acts 10, and while you’re turning there, I want to start to give you a little bit of background. The Church at Antioch is what’s being talked about here in Galatians 2. The Church at Antioch was filled with mostly Gentiles, people who were non-Jews.
And Peter had gone to them, and Paul said when Peter went to them, before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. Now that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but that was a huge deal for Peter to eat with the Gentiles. It was huge for a couple of different reasons.
First of all, Jewish people were known for their strict separation from Gentiles. And it’s something God had told them to do all throughout the Old Testament. He had warned them against intermingling with the nations around them in a way that would bring them into those nations’ idolatry and immorality.
And so He had put some strict rules for separation there. Not only that, but there were many Jewish laws that were dietary laws that dealt with, “Don’t eat this particular food,” or, “Don’t eat this particular food.” Gentiles didn’t follow those laws, and so Gentiles ate food that was unclean according to the Jewish law.
And so as a result, to sit down at the table and to eat the same food with the Gentiles was on two different level big – and I want you to see how big it was for Peter. Look in Acts 10. There’s a guy in the beginning of this chapter named Cornelius. Cornelius is a Gentile; he’s a God-fearing Gentile, and he has a vision one day.
An angel comes to this guy named Cornelius and says, “Cornelius, you need to send some of your men to go get a man named Peter and ask him to come to your house.” Cornelius doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, but when an angel appears to you in a vision, you do what he says.
And so he sent for Peter to come. While his men are coming to get Peter, look at what happened in Acts 10:9. The Bible says, “About noon the following day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof, his roof, to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance.
“He saw Heaven open, and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. Than a voice told him, ‘Get up, Peter, kill and eat.’ ‘Surely not,’ Peter replied, ‘I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.’”
Peter identified, “These things are unclean.” Verse 15, “The voice spoke to him a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’ This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to Heaven. While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon’s house was, that’s where Peter was staying, and stopped at the gate.
“They called out, asking if Simon, who was known as Peter, was staying there. While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, ‘Simon, three men are looking for you, so get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them.’
“Peter went down and said to the men, ‘I’m the one you’re looking for. Why have you come?’ The men replied, ‘We have come from Cornelius the centurion. He is righteous and God-fearing man, who is respected by all the Jewish people. A holy angel told him to have you come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say.’
“And Peter invited the men into the house to be his guests.” Peter’s thinking, “What in the world is going on?” So second part of Verse 23 says, “The next day, Peter started out with them, and some of the brothers from Joppa went along.
“The following day, he arrived in Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them, and had called together his relatives and close friends.” So it’s not just meeting with one Gentile, it’s meeting with a whole host – the whole family’s coming over for dinner.
“As Peter entered the house, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet in reverence. Peter made him get up. ‘Stand up,’ he said, ‘I’m only a man myself.’”
Talking with him, Peter – you can kind of get in Peter’s mind. He’s wondering, “What in the world is going on? I’m going in this house of Gentiles; this guy’s bowing down to me; what’s happening?”
And Peter goes inside, finds a large gathering of people, and he says this, now pay attention close, Verse 28, “You are well aware that it’s against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile, or visit him. So what I’m doing is against the law of God, but God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.
“‘So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?’ Cornelius answered,” and Cornelius begins to explain about the vision he had. And so what Peter does is he starts preaching the Gospel. Look in Verse 34, “Peter began to speak. He said, ‘I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts men from every nation who fear Him and do what is right.’”
He preaches the Gospel. All the way down to Verse 44, and listen to what happens, “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.
“And Peter said, ‘Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.’ So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.” This is monumental.
The majority of us in this room are Gentiles, and this is the entrance of the Gentiles into the Church here. This is a mega moment in the early Church, and I want you to see how significant it was, based on the reaction of Acts 11:1. “The apostles and the brothers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the Word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him.”
Follow this, the Jewish believers criticized Peter and said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and you ate with them. You broke both those rules; you don’t do that.” They’re criticizing Peter.
“Peter began and explained everything to them, precisely as it has happened,” and he explains it all to them. Then you get down to Verse 17, and he concludes, “So if God gave them the same gift as He gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?”
And Verse 18 says, “When they heard this, they had no further objections, and praised God, saying, ‘So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.” And then what you see right after this is the Church at Antioch described.
It says, even down in Verse 26, “The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.” So what you had was the entrance of Gentiles into the Church, and you’ve got this picture of Antioch, a church filled with Gentiles. Before, you wouldn’t even eat with them, you wouldn’t sit at the same table with them, and now they’ve been brought into the Kingdom of God.
So Peter comes back to Antioch, come back to Galatians 2. Peter goes to Antioch, and at first he’s eating with the Gentiles; he’s having a good time with them; he’s spending time with them, but then – don’t miss it – these Judaisers, these false teachers, they come visit Antioch.
And slowly, Peter starts backing away from the table, until before long, he’s not even eating with the Gentiles any more. And he’s not spending that time with them. Why? Why was he now giving in to what these Judaisers lived like, instead of eating with those Gentiles? And this is what Paul calls him out on.
The key phrase in Galatians 2 is there in Verse 14, “When I saw that they,” because Peter and the apostles – and the others were doing it, including Barnabas, who had been part of starting the Church at Antioch, and he says in Verse 14, “When I saw that they were not,” listen to this phrase, “acting in line with the truth of the Gospel,” right belief, wrong behavior.
Peter knew the Gospel, he believed the Gospel, but his life was not reflecting the Gospel. He knew that all men are accepted before God, regardless of whether or not they’re circumcised, Jew or Gentile, whether they eat this food or that food – he knew that they were all accepted before God.
But he was living like only the people over here, the Jewish people, are accepted before God, and he doesn’t need to be with those Gentiles when they’re eating. Now, again, the danger here – we can’t just keep this 2,000 years ago. Bring this into our context today.
We probably don’t have a lot of quandaries when it comes to eating with this group or that group, or eating certain foods. But are there inconsistencies when it comes to our lives and the Gospel we claim to believe?
And this is where we dove into that whole radical series, really for this purpose, because if we believe in a Savior who came to preach good news to the poor and the powerless, and yet our lives are not spent for the sake of the poor and the powerless, then our lives are out of step with the Gospel; they don’t match up with the Gospel.
There’s an inconsistency there. In the same way that if someone is living in sexual immorality and giving themselves to sexual immorality day, after day, after day, after day, then someone would say to them, a brother or sister in Christ would say to them, “Your life is not lining up with the Gospel.” It’s biblical to confront this. It’s not legalism to confront that, it’s Christianity, because there’s hypocrisy there.
And so what we have to do, as the people of God, is avoid both of these. We have to avoid legalism, thinking if we have these behaviors right, then everything’s okay, accompanying these behaviors with the belief that we’re right before God because of what we’ve done.
On the other hand, we have to avoid talking about believing in a Gospel of grace and believing in a God who loves us no matter what we do, and then living our lives just like the rest of the world. Hypocrisy on one side, legalism on the other. And we have to avoid them both, and the Word helps us to avoid them both.
We need the Word to help us in this, and we need to be able to look at each other – you to look at me, for me to look at you and say, “Here’s the Gospel, and your life, or my life, is not lining up with that, and let’s help each other line up with that.”
I want to throw out just a side note here, too, that as I was studying and as I was praying through this passage this week, the Lord – I trust it was the Lord who brought this to my mind. Looking at this picture and the early Church, the first century Church, there was – there was a real danger of developing a two-tiered system of Christianity – Jews and Gentiles.
And this idea that was coming about was that Jews had favor before God because they did certain things, and Gentiles were more like second-class Christians. And there was this two-tiered system of Christianity. And though it’s not as much a Jew or Gentile type thing today, I want us to always be on guard against any kind of two-tiered system of Christianity based on what anybody does.
We don’t ever need to become a Church that says, “Well, there’s Christians in Brook Hills who go on mission trips, and there’s those who don’t. There’s Christians who give 2 percent, or those who don’t. There’s Christians who drink, and there’s Christians who don’t. There’s Christians who do this and that.”
And all of a sudden, this group of Christians, because they do this or that, is elevated as having more favor before God, and this group of Christians, because they do less, is denigrated, so to speak, because they do less before God.
And we need to be careful. We are together in this thing. We are a body of Christ together, walking through the Word, wanting to avoid legalism, wanting to work like any one of us could have more favor before God than another. At the same time, we want to avoid hypocrisy; we want to help each other keep our lives in line with the truth of the Gospel.
How do you do that, though? How do you avoid legalism and hypocrisy? And this is where the last picture comes in, and it’s a picture of faith. A picture of faith – right belief with right behavior.
How do you bring right belief and right behavior together? And the answer is faith, and I want you to hear it in Galatians 2:15 through the end of the chapter. Listen to what Paul says. After talking about these two episodes, he gives this explanation: “We who are Jews by birth,” Verse 15, “and not Gentile sinners, not Gentiles, know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.
“So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law, no one will be justified. If while we seek to be justified in Christ it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not. If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker.
“For through the law, I died for the law so that I might live for God. I’ve been crucified with Christ, that I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith, and the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing.”
You see the key word mentioned? Three times there in Verses 15, 16 – circle it. “We who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, know that a man is justified by observing the law – not by observing the law,” but by what? Faith – circle it, faith in Jesus Christ. “So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus so we may be justified by faith.”
Over and over again, faith. There in Verse 16 and down in Verse 20, “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Everything Paul says, everything in this passage, everything in Christianity revolves around faith. Not faith plus something else, but faith alone – faith alone.
And I want to show you in this text two incredible results, two incredible fruits of faith. Not faith plus anything, faith and faith alone. Fruit or result number one, through faith in Christ – here’s the result, through faith in Christ, we are accepted before God. Through faith in Christ, we’re accepted before God.
This is what Paul is saying to Peter here in Verse 15 and 16. He’s saying, “Peter, we’re Jews. We didn’t come to know God through observing the law, we came through faith in Christ. If we could have come, apart from faith in Christ, we would have had that down; we would have followed the law, we would have made it. We wouldn’t need the cross at all.”
That’s what he says at the very end of this chapter, that Christ would have died for nothing, but we needed Christ to die, so that when we placed our faith in Him, we would be justified before God. And that’s the other key word that’s mentioned here. It’s mentioned a few different times, in Verse 16 and 17.
“We know that a man is not justified by observing the law.” You might put a square, or just a different shape just to – I don’t know, it makes it colorful in your Bible -
“justified by observing the law. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by observing the law, because by observing the law, no one will be justified.
“If while we seek to be justified in Christ,” and he uses it one more time in the very end, Verse 21, when he says, “If righteousness could be gained through the law,” that word righteousness is actually the same word that’s used for justification earlier in this passage.
So what Paul is saying is, we are justified by faith. Now this word, justified, is a golden nugget, so to speak, in Scripture. It is translated all throughout the New Testament as justified, just, justify, justification, righteousness, right, righteous. It is one of the most important words for any one of us as a follower of Christ in this room to understand.
Luther said, “The doctrine of justification by faith,” make sure – he said, “Faith alone,” “The doctrine of justification by faith alone is the doctrine upon which the Church stands or falls.” Calvin said, “It is the hinge upon which everything turns.” It was the heart of the reformation, it’s the heart of New Testament Christianity.
Luther said this, he said, “This is the truth of the Gospel. Justification is the truth of the Gospel. It is the principal article of all Christian doctrine, wherein the knowledge of all godliness consists. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.” Ha, beat it into each others heads, justification. Just beat each other with justification.
That seems what Paul’s doing – justify, justify, justify. Why is this so important? What I want to show you is a definition of justification that needs to be central in any – any Christ follower in this room, in our understanding of Christianity, must revolve around a biblical understanding of justification.
So we’re gonna take this definition kind of word by word, because every word is important. Justification is the gracious act of God. So start there, the gracious act of God. It is something that God does by His grace. In Chapter 2, Verse 16, at the very end of that verse, he says, “Not by observing the law, because by observing the law, no one will be justified.”
He’s quoting there from Psalm 143:2. We don’t have time to turn there. Psalm 143:1 and 2. The psalmist is crying out, “Hear my cry for mercy, because there is no one living righteous. There’s no one living just before You.” It’s the same picture we’ve got in Romans 3, “There is no one who does good, not even one.”
There is nothing in anyone on all earth who has anything in them that necessitates, or causes, or initiates God to justify. It is entirely from Him by His grace. Now this is important. We talked about this a good bit. We talked about how salvation is all of grace, that we’re only saved by grace.
This is where we have to be very careful not to even look at faith as a work of the law, so to speak – at faith and say, and this is the danger, it’s why we talk sometimes about the danger of praying a prayer because we’ve got this picture, we say these magic words, that’s the work you do in order to be saved.
The reality is justification is the gracious act of God. It is not based on us, it is based completely on God and His grace, because there’s nothing in us that could cause it to happen. In fact, everything in us says it shouldn’t happen. Everything in us says it shouldn’t happen, and we’ll get to that in a second.
Justification is the gracious act of God, by which God declares – key word there, declares. Justification is a declaration. The word picture in justification is that it’s a legal term, a forensic term, where a judge is declaring a judgment on someone. When the judge doles out his judgment and makes that declaration, that’s the language that’s being used in justification.
It’s not a – it’s not a process, it’s an act. It’s something that happens at a point in time. This is huge. We can’t be more justified tomorrow than we are today. We can’t be more justified next year than we are today. It’s something that happens at a point. We are justified.
Romans 5:1, Paul says, “Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God.” We have been justified; God has made a declaration. It’s a once for all declaration that happens in our lives. Now that declaration involves, next in that definition, declaration involves a sinner.
Justification is the gracious act of God by which God declares a sinner – this is a picture in justification of God the judge dealing with man the sinner – guilty man before a Holy God. This is so big, especially for Paul. When Paul met Christ, when he came to faith in Christ, we need to remember this was a guy who was zealously giving his life to obeying God.
Yes, he was persecuting the Church, but why was he persecuting the Church? He was persecuting the Church because he thought that honored God, because the Church was giving these false teachings against the old covenant, so to speak. And so he was zealously obeying God, doing everything he could to be the best person he could.
And when he met Christ, he was confronted not only with the inadequacy, because of his wickedness in his life, he was confronted with the inadequacy of his goodness. All the things he had given his life to, good things, following the law of God – all of that still was nowhere near enough.
And the Gospel confronted him in his sin, not just in wickedness, the things that we would equate with sin, but even the best things we have to bring to the table – all our righteousness like filthy rags the Old Testament talks about. Confronted as a sinner before God, trying to be good, but the more he tried, the more he saw that he was falling short.
And so here’s the picture. What you’ve got is guilty man standing before the Holy Judge of the universe. What happens is in justification, it’s the gracious act of God by which God declares a sinner righteous. Justification is the gracious act of God by which declares a sinner righteous.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is one amazing truth. That the Holy God of the universe, the Holy Judge of all would look upon you or me as we stand in willful rebellion against Him, with absolutely nothing in us that deserves anything but condemnation. Totally guilty in our sin, totally guilty.
Not just because of what we’d done, but because of who we are at the core, guilty, and this Holy God would look at you or me and say, “Not guilty, righteous, accepted, peace before Me.” This does not make sense. How could it happen?
It’s why in the reformation people looked at Luther and Calvin, and others, and said, “That’s legal fiction. You’re making this up, there’s no way that’s how the God of the universe would design salvation for His people. Based on nothing you do? Those who are declared – those who are guilty in their sin, deep in their guilt, deep in their condemnation, all of a sudden declared not guilty?”
That’s the Gospel. How does that happen? Solely on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ. Solely on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ. That’s the only way. How can a sinner be declared righteous in God’s sight? And the answer is, God has to take the righteousness of Christ and credit it to that sinner’s account.
God has to take the very holiness and righteousness that Christ had and take all that He had and attribute it to that sinner, and take all that that sinner had and attribute it to His Son. This is II Corinthians 5, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us.” Don’t miss it – God took all that was in your account, all the sins and willful rebellion, idolatry that was in your account, and He put it on His Son.
He didn’t just sweep it under the rug and pretend like it’s not there. He put it on His Son. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us. All – all of our sin, all of it’s penalty, death, wrath of God to that sin, poured it out on His Son, so that we might become the – what? Righteousness of God.
So that the righteousness of Jesus Christ would be attributed, accredited to you. So that you and I would stand before God, and in the same way God looked at His Son and said, “This is my Son, whom I love, with whom I am well pleased,” totally pleased. Now He looks at us and says those same words.
Righteous, right, peace with God, accepted before God, solely through faith in Jesus Christ. And this is why Paul is vehemently opposing Peter in this sense, in this instance, and anybody else who tries to undercut the Gospel of grace by adding to works, because God has already done all the work for us, that all it is – all it is to receive that is faith, is believing on Him.
Listen to the – it’s question number 60 in the Heidelberg catechism, it explains the Protestant understanding of justification by faith. I want you to listen to what is says. “How are you righteous before God?” That’s the question, how are you righteous before God? How would you answer it? How are you righteous before God? The catechism says, “Only by true faith in Jesus Christ.”
In spite of the fact that my conscience accuses me that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God and have not kept any one of them, and that I am still ever prone to all that is evil, nevertheless, God, without any merit of my own, out of pure grace, grants me the benefits of the perfect sacrifice of Christ, imputing to me His righteousness and holiness, as if I had never committed a single sin, or had ever been sinful, having fulfilled myself all the obedience which Christ has carried out for me, if only I accept such favor with a trusting heart.
Wow, as if I had never committed a single sin? That’s how God looks at me? A wealthy Englishman bought himself a Rolls Royce. And they were advertising this was the car of all cars, it would never break down, you would never have any problems. And so he took his Rolls Royce to France with him. When he got to France, his Rolls Royce broke down.
And so he called up the Rolls Royce people, and he said, “Your car broke down.” And they said, “I’m sure that’s not the case.” So they sent a mechanic, flew him on a plane to France to fix the car, cause it indeed had broken down. And then the mechanic went back. Weeks went by, and the wealthy Englishman had not gotten a bill from Rolls Royce, and he was wondering why not.
He knew he could pay the bill, that was no problem, and so after a few months, he wrote the people at Rolls Royce, and he said, “I need you to send me my bill for fixing my car.” And they sent him a note there in France, and the note said, “Sir, with all due respect, we have absolutely no record of anything ever having gone wrong with your car.”
Ladies and gentlemen, can I remind you that the God of the universe has absolutely no record of anything ever having gone wrong in your life? What an amazing truth. This is the Gospel. No record – and not because He swept it under the rug, because He poured out the record of your sins and my sins on His Son, and there’s no record that we’re accountable for any more.
Justification is a good thing; it’s a great thing. Through faith and Christ, we are accepted before God. Now you can see why people during the reformation were saying, “That’s too easy. Well, what about how you’re gonna live? What about people’s lives? They just trust – that’s all?”
So the Judaisers were saying, “Aren’t you undercutting obedience to the law?” And we’re gonna talk more about the law next week in Galatians 3, “But aren’t you undercutting life?” And Paul says, “No, through faith in Christ we are accepted before God, number one; and number two, through faith in Christ we,” and this is where it gets really, really, really, really good, “through faith in Christ, we’re accepted before God, and then through faith in Christ, we are alive to God.”
Paul’s telling Peter, “You don’t trust in Christ; you’re not justified by faith and then start living like your acceptance before God is based on the law.” He says, “These Gentiles, their acceptance before God is not based on the law, so why are you living like they’re not accepted before God?”
“It changes your life,” is what he says in Verse 18, 19, “If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I’m a lawbreaker. For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. Died to law so that I might live for God.”
What if faith is not just the only way we’re accepted before God? What if faith is also the only way we can live to God? Paul is saying we are justified by faith and we live by faith. We live by faith. Paul is leaving no room here for a one-time decision, pray this prayer, and move on like nothing happened. “It’s not possible,” Paul says, “It’s not possible. Not faith in Christ, it’s not what faith in Christ is about. We live by faith.”
And he gives us that loaded verse in Verse 20, and I would encourage you, if this verse is not hidden in your heart, to hide it there this week. I’ve been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I live by faith.” What an amazing verse. “I’ve been crucified with Christ.”
What does that mean? We know that when Jesus went to the cross, there was a sense in which what He did on that cross He alone could do, and that He was alone in, as the Son of God, perfect Son of God, taking the payment of sin upon Himself.
But what Paul is saying here is the same thing that he says over in Romans 6. He says, “We’ve been baptized into His death; we have died with Him.” Puritan William Perkins said, “We are in mind and meditation to consider Christ crucified. First we are to believe that He was crucified for us. This being done, we must go yet further, and as it were spread ourselves on the cross of Christ, believing, and with all beholding ourselves crucified with Him.”
Spread yourself on the cross. You have been – Christian, you have been crucified with Christ. Now what does that mean – are we dead or alive? Dead and alive? How does this work? It’s both – we die to sin. In our crucifixion with Christ, being crucified with Christ, we die to sin, that’s the point. He takes all of our sin, past sin, present sin, future sin, and all of it is put on the cross – all of it. Christ has taken all of it.
This is why justification is so important to understand, because justification is different than forgiveness. They’re related, but when you ask for forgiveness, then you go out and do something else wrong, you ask for forgiveness. Justification – you’re justified, declared not guilty, you do something wrong, God is still looking at you, saying, “Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty.” There’s no condemnation, no guilt for those who are in Christ Jesus.
The law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death. Not guilty – over and over and over and over again. We die to sin. All of our sin is put on the cross, and our justification is sealed before God. We have peace with God. We die to sin, but not just sin – it’s more than that.
We die to ourselves. Paul says, “I’ve been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live. I no longer live.” This is where the easy believeism that is being sold as the Gospel in our culture today is completely undercut. This is not mere intellectual ascent, “Well, yes, I believe that Jesus died on the cross.” Demons believe this.
The phrase – even back up earlier in Galatians 2:16, when it says, “Faith in Jesus Christ,” that word “in” Jesus Christ literally is “into” Jesus Christ. It’s a picture running into Jesus Christ for mercy and throwing ourselves upon Him. We die to ourselves.
And Paul says, “I’ve been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live.” In other words, I, the I that was captive to sin, the I that was captive to the pleasures and preferences that I have in this world, the I that said, “This world revolves around me,” the I that lived for self-esteem and self-confidence and self-justification and self-glorification – that I is dead. It’s gone; that heart of stone has been shattered.
That layer of pride, thick layer of pride, has been shattered. I’m a broken man – I have died, I know longer live. We die to sin and we die to ourselves. And Christ lives in us, but Christ lives in me. What does that mean? It means He covers our sin. If Christ lives in me – we’ve talked about this – His blood covers over our sins.
Romans 5:8, 9, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Then Verse 9 says, “Since we have now been justified by His –” anybody remember? We’re justified by His blood. His blood is the means of our justification. The way in which our sins are covered, they’re not swept under the rug, they’re covered by blood, the blood of Christ. He covers our sin.
And not just covers our sin, He changes our lives. That’s the beauty of this word, “I’ve been crucified.” I want you to follow with me here, a little Greek grammar. I promise you it’ll be worth your time. “I have been crucified.” It’s a perfect verb – have been crucified, a perfect tense verb.
What that means is, it’s something that happened in the past that has continuing results in the present. That’s good. That was worth three years of Greek right there. Something that happened in the past that has continuing results in the present. “I was crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” My life is different because Christ is living in me. He’s changed my life. I am dead to that old I, and I am trusting Christ to live in me every moment of every day.
And this is where we come back to truths that we’ve talked about before. We are not in debt to Christ. We’re not in debt to Christ. This is how we normally view Christianity. Look at what Christ – look at what Jesus did for me, He died on the cross for me. Jesus’ work for me is in the past. Look at what He did for me, now what can I do for Him?
How many sermons, how many times do we think, do we say, “Look at all Jesus did for you. Look at all Jesus did for me. The least I can do is this – the least I can do is this. What can I do for Him now?” The reason that’s wrong thinking, the reason that’s not Christianity is because Jesus’ work did not stop for you or me in the past. He did not die then, and that was His work, so now you can live for Him.
Instead, He’s still doing in your life. At this very moment, in every single moment of every single day, Christ is working. We’re not paying Him back, because He’s still paying us. He’s still working in us. It’s not just past action; it’s past action with present continuing results. The picture is, Christ is living in me now, at this moment, at this very moment, Christian, Christ living in you.
We are not in debt to Christ, we are indwelt by Christ – and that is a word, it is a word. My small group said, “It’s not a word.” I looked it up, it’s a word. We’re indwelt by Christ. (And you can check it out.) Christ is in you. What if – what if the Christian life is not a matter of us living for Christ, but it’s actually a matter of Christ living for us, and in us, and through us?
You say, “Well, what do I have to do with that?” Christ has everything to do with it, and in the end, Christ gets all the glory for everything good that comes out of it, everything. He lives in me. We’re indwelt by Him. And this is – faith is – faith is the key by which we’re accepted before God and alive to God, because we’re attached to Christ, and He lives in us.
Luther said, “By faith you are so cemented to Christ, that He and you are as one person, which cannot be separated,” isn’t this good news? “– cannot be separated, but remains attached to Him forever.” Calvin said, “The Christian does not live by His own life, but is animated by the secret power of Christ, so that Christ may be said to live and grow in Him.”
And it’s not just the reformers. Ian Thomas worked – the leader with Inter-Varsity – he would go into the slums in London and serve there. And he talks about a moment in his Christianity where everything changed, where he had trusted in Christ it seemed for salvation, but there was no victory there. And I want you to listen to this, cause I’m convinced this describes the experience of so many Christians – likely many Christians in this room.
Ian Thomas said, “I had been reduced to a state of complete exhaustion spiritually, until I felt that there was no point in going on. And then one night in November, just at midnight, I got down on my knees before God, and I just wept in sheer despair. I said, ‘Oh, God, I know that I am saved. I love Jesus Christ. I am perfectly convinced that I am converted. With all my heart I have wanted to serve thee; I have tried to my uttermost, and I am a hopeless failure.’”
“That night,” Ian Thomas said, “things happened. I can honestly say that I had never once heard from the lips of men the message that came to me then, but God that night simply focused upon me the Bible message of Christ who is my life.
“The Lord seemed to make plain to me that night, through my tears of bitterness, ‘You see, for seven years, with utmost sincerity, you have been trying to live for Me on My behalf the life that I have been awaiting for seven years to live through you.’” He said, “I got up the next morning to an entirely different Christian life.”
George Müller, we’ve talked about him, helped multitudes of orphans in a ministry based completely on prayer. He was asked one time what the secret was to his life and ministry, and he said, “There was a day when I died, utterly died.” And as he spoke, his biographer said he bent lower and lower until he almost touched the floor. I died to George Müller, his opinions, preferences, tastes, and will; died to the world, it’s approval, or censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren and friends, and since then I’ve studied only to show myself approved unto God, crucified with Christ.
Christ living in Him. Hudson Taylor, his biography is Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret. What was his spiritual secret? He said, “Oh, it is joy to feel Jesus living in you, to find your heart all taken up by Him, to be reminded of His love by His seeking communion with you at all times, not by your painful attempts to abide in Him. He is our life, our strength, our salvation. I am no longer anxious about anything, for He, I know, was able to carry out His will, and His will is mine, and His resources are mine, for He is mine, and He is with me and dwells in me.”
Let me share one last quote – this is why Ian Thomas, who I mentioned before, said this, and I want to share this. This is a warning, it’s a caution to us in this room, to myself, “Beware, lest even as a Christian,” he wrote, “you fall into Satan’s trap. You may have found and come to know God and the Lord Jesus Christ, receiving Him sincerely as your Redeemer.
“Yet if you do not enter into the mystery of godliness and allow God to be in you, the origin of His own image, you will seek to be godly by submitting yourself to external rules and regulations, and by conforming to behavior patterns imposed upon you by the particular Christian society that you have chosen, and in which you hope to be found acceptable.
“You will in this way commit idolatry in honoring Christianity more than Christ and perpetuate the pagan habit of practicing religion in the energy of the flesh.” Ladies and gentlemen, this is the key, it is faith; it is faith in Christ – not just faith when you prayed that prayer, or signed the dotted line, or whatever it was for you in your life, but faith right now at this moment, trusting that Christ is alive in you.
Your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness, and the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you. Romans 8 says, “He is living in you.” And faith is trusting Him moment by moment, day by day, to be everything you need in every single circumstance and every single temptation.
It is believing in Christ; it’s not mustering up, trying to do better next time. It’s trusting in Christ that He’s good to do it. And going to Him – it’s when we walk through a series, like we did that radical, and we see these tough commands, we don’t walk away saying, “Legalism – if I do these things I’m more acceptable before God.”
We don’t walk away ignoring those truths, cause that’s hypocrisy. Instead, we walk away with our hearts running to Christ, saying, “Christ, I need more of You in my life. I need You to take care of these areas of my life that are not in line with Your Gospel.” Same thing whenever we’re tempted to sin, struggles with sin, individual sin in our lives in this room.
It’s not an issue of you trying harder next time, it’s an issue of you trusting Christ, trusting Christ moment by moment, day by day. God, give me the faith – this is where we started – we’re freed by grace, freed through faith. We started by saying, “Well, how do we please God, then?” II Corinthians 5; 1 Thessalonians 2:4. We talk about pleasing God. How do we do it? How do we obey those radical commands in the New Testament?
And here’s the answer – you have got to have Christ to do it. You’ve gotta have Christ. You gotta have His presence, you gotta have faith, trust in Him every single moment. You’ve gotta have Christ to do it, cause God’s pleasure in you is not based on your performance before Him. God’s pleasure in you is based on Christ’s performance for you.
That’s the startling truth – that Christ lives in me. Not just His performance on you in the cross 2,000 years ago, but His performance in your life at this moment, and later today, and tomorrow morning when you wake up, and every single moment this week, trusting Him to do it in you. This drives you to Christ, this makes – this causes us to cling to Christ. This is where the Word gives us tough commands. And it’s not intended to cause us to go out and try to do it on our own, self make our Christianity.
It’s intended to drive us to Christ, where we cling to Christ and say, I need more of Christ, I need more of Christ. And the question that begs is, “How do we know that He is going to give us what we need? How do we know that He’s gonna come through when we’re tempted. How do we know that He’s gonna give us everything we need, all of our sufficiency and all of our strength, love, joy, or peace – or whatever it is that we need.
And Paul says, “We know this because He loves us, and He gave Himself for us.” This is where Paul gets extremely personal, in Galatians 2, in what may be one of the most moving texts in all the New Testament, and he says, “He loves me, and He gave Himself for me.”
And I want to remind you, based on that truth. God in Christ is passionate about you. He loves you. We talk a lot, here at Brook Hills, about God’s love for and passion for the world, and all peoples and all nations. And we talk about that, cause that is thoroughly biblical. But I do not want us to lose sight of the fact that God is passionate – yes, about all peoples and all nations, but He is passionate about you.
The God of the universe is passionate about you, and He has paid a price for you – for you – for you. He has died for you. He has given His life Himself for you, and He gave Himself for you so that all that He has, all that He has, with all of its present and eternal benefits, would belong to you.
This is the grace of Christ that comes only through faith in Christ. This is why we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
Freed Through Faith, Part 2
Dr. David Platt
12/7/08
If you have a Bible, and I hope you do, I’m going to invite you to open with me to Galatians 2.
Galatians 2, we’ve got a great Word to study today. Not that we don’t have a great Word every week, but I am hoping, I am praying that this chapter will just come alive in this room and in our hearts and transform our lives, and transform even our just understanding of Christianity. So toward that end, I want to pray for us.
Last week we talked about how we were freed by grace. We’re gonna jump right and one truth that we reiterated over and over and over again was that God’s pleasure in you is not based on your performance for Him.
God’s pleasure in you is not based on your performance for Him. We talked about that a lot from Galatians 1, and in one sense, that is a freeing truth. In another sense, it’s a frustrating truth because you start to think, “Well, I want to please God, so if I can’t please God with anything I do, then how do I please God?”
And you go to places like II Corinthians 5, I Thessalonians 2:4, I Thessalonians 4:1 – different places in the New Testament that talk about how we live to please God, how our goal is to please God, and so it begs the question, “If God’s pleasure in me is not based on my performance before Him, then how in the world can I please God?”
And that’s where Galatians 2 is going to help us. What I want you to see, want us to see is three different pictures here in Galatians 2. And we’re gonna take them one at a time, and then camp out on the last one. But I want us to read each of these, and they’re separate pockets, so to speak, that’ll help us to understand the chapter as a whole.
We’re gonna go all the way through Galatians 2, but let’s start with the first picture. What we’ve got is two episodes, and then an explanation at the end. Those are the three pictures we’re gonna see.
So we’ll start with the first picture; it’s an episode that happens in Galatians 2:1-10. Follow along as Paul writes this to the churches in Galatia. He says, “Fourteen (14) years later, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along, also.
“I went in response to a revelation and set before them the Gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. But I did this privately to those who seem to be leaders, for fear that I was running or had run my race in vain. Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek.
“This matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the Gospel might remain with you.
“As for those who seem to be important – whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not judge by external appearances – those men added nothing to my message. On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews.
“For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. James, Peter, and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me.
“They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews. All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.”
Galatians 2:1-10. This is a picture of legalism – legalism. This is much of what we talked about last week – legalism. And I’ve defined it there as right behavior with wrong belief.
Here’s what was going on: The scholars debate exactly when this meeting that Paul’s talking about here happened. The majority of scholars, biblical scholars, think that this is referring to the episode in Acts 15, the Jerusalem counsel, where they had a big gathering of Church leaders, and they made a formal statement from the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem, that the Gentiles would not have to be circumcised – that’s what the majority of scholars have said that’s what this is referring to.
Then there’s a minority over here that says it was before that, before Acts 15. And just for the record, so to speak, not that anybody cares, but I would fall in line probably with the minority over here, which is not always – there’s a lot of people that are smarter than me that disagree with me.
So you can fall in line either way, but it really doesn’t matter in the end when this happened, because the whole point is that there was a problem in the Church because of these Judaisers, we talked about this some last week, who were saying that you needed to do certain things, you needed to obey certain Jewish laws or Jewish customs in order to be saved – most notably, you needed to be circumcised.
And this is where Paul talks about how Titus, himself a Gentile, went with him to this particular meeting, whether it was Acts 15 or not, went to this particular meeting and was not compelled to be circumcised.
And this was huge, because if Titus had been compelled to be circumcised, that’d been a huge victory for the Judaisers and a huge affront to the Gospel of grace, because it would have said that you have to do these things, you need to be circumcised in order to be accepted before God.
And so what we’ve got is this picture of legalism that we talked about last week. Remember, legalism is working in our own power, or according to our own rules. But ultimately, legalism is working to earn God’s favor – do these certain things and you will experience favor before God; you will be accepted before God.
And that’s exactly what is countered here in Galatians 2:1-10. Now remember, this is important, we don’t talk a lot about circumcision today; we don’t talk a lot about Jewish laws, this or that, but I want you to think about this definition here – right behavior with wrong belief.
What the Judaisers, don’t miss this, what the Judaisers were saying needed to be done – be circumcised, follow Jewish laws – those were not bad things. Be circumcised was important for the people of God all throughout history up to this point, so that’s certainly not a bad thing.
And following the laws that God had given His people in the Old Testament, is that bad? No, these are not bad things in and of themselves. But they became bad things when they were accompanied by a belief that in doing those things, one would be accepted before God, or have approval before God.
Let me repeat that – good behaviors became bad things when they were accompanied by a belief that by doing them you were accepted before God, or had favor before God. Now translate that a couple of thousand years later into our context.
We’re not talking about circumcision or following Jewish laws, but what are the things that we do – good things? Maybe a quiet time; Bible study; coming to worship, like you’ve done some time; serving people – good things, these are very good things, they’re very good behaviors to give our lives to.
At the same time, as soon as they are accompanied by the belief that doing those things makes us more favorable before God, we’ve missed the point. It’s right behavior with wrong belief, and we have to be careful to avoid legalism, avoid thinking if we’ve had good quiet times all week, that we sit in here with more favor before God than the person sitting next to us who’s not prayed all week long.
So we’ve gotta be careful in good behaviors, good things, not to equate those with a belief that says that makes me more favored before God than someone else. So that’s legalism, that’s the picture in Galatians 2:1-10.
Second picture, Galatians 2:11, follow along and here what happened there. Paul says, “When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles, but when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles, because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.
“The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy, even Barnabas was led astray.” The first part of this chapter, a picture of legalism. The second part of this chapter is a picture of hypocrisy – hypocrisy is right belief with wrong behavior.
Let me interpret, explain what just happened in Galatians 2:11-14. It’s one of the most dramatic, one of the most intense episodes in all the New Testament, because this is the apostle Paul publically confronting the apostle Peter. Can you imagine the tension in that room? Paul calling out Peter, who preached the first Christian sermon, the head of the disciples, so to speak, and Paul’s calling him out? This was very intense right here.
So what was happening? Well, I want you to hold your place here, and I want you to turn back to Acts 10, and while you’re turning there, I want to start to give you a little bit of background. The Church at Antioch is what’s being talked about here in Galatians 2. The Church at Antioch was filled with mostly Gentiles, people who were non-Jews.
And Peter had gone to them, and Paul said when Peter went to them, before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. Now that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but that was a huge deal for Peter to eat with the Gentiles. It was huge for a couple of different reasons.
First of all, Jewish people were known for their strict separation from Gentiles. And it’s something God had told them to do all throughout the Old Testament. He had warned them against intermingling with the nations around them in a way that would bring them into those nations’ idolatry and immorality.
And so He had put some strict rules for separation there. Not only that, but there were many Jewish laws that were dietary laws that dealt with, “Don’t eat this particular food,” or, “Don’t eat this particular food.” Gentiles didn’t follow those laws, and so Gentiles ate food that was unclean according to the Jewish law.
And so as a result, to sit down at the table and to eat the same food with the Gentiles was on two different level big – and I want you to see how big it was for Peter. Look in Acts 10. There’s a guy in the beginning of this chapter named Cornelius. Cornelius is a Gentile; he’s a God-fearing Gentile, and he has a vision one day.
An angel comes to this guy named Cornelius and says, “Cornelius, you need to send some of your men to go get a man named Peter and ask him to come to your house.” Cornelius doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, but when an angel appears to you in a vision, you do what he says.
And so he sent for Peter to come. While his men are coming to get Peter, look at what happened in Acts 10:9. The Bible says, “About noon the following day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof, his roof, to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance.
“He saw Heaven open, and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. Than a voice told him, ‘Get up, Peter, kill and eat.’ ‘Surely not,’ Peter replied, ‘I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.’”
Peter identified, “These things are unclean.” Verse 15, “The voice spoke to him a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’ This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to Heaven. While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon’s house was, that’s where Peter was staying, and stopped at the gate.
“They called out, asking if Simon, who was known as Peter, was staying there. While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, ‘Simon, three men are looking for you, so get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them.’
“Peter went down and said to the men, ‘I’m the one you’re looking for. Why have you come?’ The men replied, ‘We have come from Cornelius the centurion. He is righteous and God-fearing man, who is respected by all the Jewish people. A holy angel told him to have you come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say.’
“And Peter invited the men into the house to be his guests.” Peter’s thinking, “What in the world is going on?” So second part of Verse 23 says, “The next day, Peter started out with them, and some of the brothers from Joppa went along.
“The following day, he arrived in Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them, and had called together his relatives and close friends.” So it’s not just meeting with one Gentile, it’s meeting with a whole host – the whole family’s coming over for dinner.
“As Peter entered the house, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet in reverence. Peter made him get up. ‘Stand up,’ he said, ‘I’m only a man myself.’”
Talking with him, Peter – you can kind of get in Peter’s mind. He’s wondering, “What in the world is going on? I’m going in this house of Gentiles; this guy’s bowing down to me; what’s happening?”
And Peter goes inside, finds a large gathering of people, and he says this, now pay attention close, Verse 28, “You are well aware that it’s against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile, or visit him. So what I’m doing is against the law of God, but God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.
“‘So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?’ Cornelius answered,” and Cornelius begins to explain about the vision he had. And so what Peter does is he starts preaching the Gospel. Look in Verse 34, “Peter began to speak. He said, ‘I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts men from every nation who fear Him and do what is right.’”
He preaches the Gospel. All the way down to Verse 44, and listen to what happens, “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.
“And Peter said, ‘Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.’ So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.” This is monumental.
The majority of us in this room are Gentiles, and this is the entrance of the Gentiles into the Church here. This is a mega moment in the early Church, and I want you to see how significant it was, based on the reaction of Acts 11:1. “The apostles and the brothers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the Word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him.”
Follow this, the Jewish believers criticized Peter and said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and you ate with them. You broke both those rules; you don’t do that.” They’re criticizing Peter.
“Peter began and explained everything to them, precisely as it has happened,” and he explains it all to them. Then you get down to Verse 17, and he concludes, “So if God gave them the same gift as He gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?”
And Verse 18 says, “When they heard this, they had no further objections, and praised God, saying, ‘So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.” And then what you see right after this is the Church at Antioch described.
It says, even down in Verse 26, “The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.” So what you had was the entrance of Gentiles into the Church, and you’ve got this picture of Antioch, a church filled with Gentiles. Before, you wouldn’t even eat with them, you wouldn’t sit at the same table with them, and now they’ve been brought into the Kingdom of God.
So Peter comes back to Antioch, come back to Galatians 2. Peter goes to Antioch, and at first he’s eating with the Gentiles; he’s having a good time with them; he’s spending time with them, but then – don’t miss it – these Judaisers, these false teachers, they come visit Antioch.
And slowly, Peter starts backing away from the table, until before long, he’s not even eating with the Gentiles any more. And he’s not spending that time with them. Why? Why was he now giving in to what these Judaisers lived like, instead of eating with those Gentiles? And this is what Paul calls him out on.
The key phrase in Galatians 2 is there in Verse 14, “When I saw that they,” because Peter and the apostles – and the others were doing it, including Barnabas, who had been part of starting the Church at Antioch, and he says in Verse 14, “When I saw that they were not,” listen to this phrase, “acting in line with the truth of the Gospel,” right belief, wrong behavior.
Peter knew the Gospel, he believed the Gospel, but his life was not reflecting the Gospel. He knew that all men are accepted before God, regardless of whether or not they’re circumcised, Jew or Gentile, whether they eat this food or that food – he knew that they were all accepted before God.
But he was living like only the people over here, the Jewish people, are accepted before God, and he doesn’t need to be with those Gentiles when they’re eating. Now, again, the danger here – we can’t just keep this 2,000 years ago. Bring this into our context today.
We probably don’t have a lot of quandaries when it comes to eating with this group or that group, or eating certain foods. But are there inconsistencies when it comes to our lives and the Gospel we claim to believe?
And this is where we dove into that whole radical series, really for this purpose, because if we believe in a Savior who came to preach good news to the poor and the powerless, and yet our lives are not spent for the sake of the poor and the powerless, then our lives are out of step with the Gospel; they don’t match up with the Gospel.
There’s an inconsistency there. In the same way that if someone is living in sexual immorality and giving themselves to sexual immorality day, after day, after day, after day, then someone would say to them, a brother or sister in Christ would say to them, “Your life is not lining up with the Gospel.” It’s biblical to confront this. It’s not legalism to confront that, it’s Christianity, because there’s hypocrisy there.
And so what we have to do, as the people of God, is avoid both of these. We have to avoid legalism, thinking if we have these behaviors right, then everything’s okay, accompanying these behaviors with the belief that we’re right before God because of what we’ve done.
On the other hand, we have to avoid talking about believing in a Gospel of grace and believing in a God who loves us no matter what we do, and then living our lives just like the rest of the world. Hypocrisy on one side, legalism on the other. And we have to avoid them both, and the Word helps us to avoid them both.
We need the Word to help us in this, and we need to be able to look at each other – you to look at me, for me to look at you and say, “Here’s the Gospel, and your life, or my life, is not lining up with that, and let’s help each other line up with that.”
I want to throw out just a side note here, too, that as I was studying and as I was praying through this passage this week, the Lord – I trust it was the Lord who brought this to my mind. Looking at this picture and the early Church, the first century Church, there was – there was a real danger of developing a two-tiered system of Christianity – Jews and Gentiles.
And this idea that was coming about was that Jews had favor before God because they did certain things, and Gentiles were more like second-class Christians. And there was this two-tiered system of Christianity. And though it’s not as much a Jew or Gentile type thing today, I want us to always be on guard against any kind of two-tiered system of Christianity based on what anybody does.
We don’t ever need to become a Church that says, “Well, there’s Christians in Brook Hills who go on mission trips, and there’s those who don’t. There’s Christians who give 2 percent, or those who don’t. There’s Christians who drink, and there’s Christians who don’t. There’s Christians who do this and that.”
And all of a sudden, this group of Christians, because they do this or that, is elevated as having more favor before God, and this group of Christians, because they do less, is denigrated, so to speak, because they do less before God.
And we need to be careful. We are together in this thing. We are a body of Christ together, walking through the Word, wanting to avoid legalism, wanting to work like any one of us could have more favor before God than another. At the same time, we want to avoid hypocrisy; we want to help each other keep our lives in line with the truth of the Gospel.
How do you do that, though? How do you avoid legalism and hypocrisy? And this is where the last picture comes in, and it’s a picture of faith. A picture of faith – right belief with right behavior.
How do you bring right belief and right behavior together? And the answer is faith, and I want you to hear it in Galatians 2:15 through the end of the chapter. Listen to what Paul says. After talking about these two episodes, he gives this explanation: “We who are Jews by birth,” Verse 15, “and not Gentile sinners, not Gentiles, know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.
“So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law, no one will be justified. If while we seek to be justified in Christ it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not. If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker.
“For through the law, I died for the law so that I might live for God. I’ve been crucified with Christ, that I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith, and the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing.”
You see the key word mentioned? Three times there in Verses 15, 16 – circle it. “We who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, know that a man is justified by observing the law – not by observing the law,” but by what? Faith – circle it, faith in Jesus Christ. “So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus so we may be justified by faith.”
Over and over again, faith. There in Verse 16 and down in Verse 20, “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Everything Paul says, everything in this passage, everything in Christianity revolves around faith. Not faith plus something else, but faith alone – faith alone.
And I want to show you in this text two incredible results, two incredible fruits of faith. Not faith plus anything, faith and faith alone. Fruit or result number one, through faith in Christ – here’s the result, through faith in Christ, we are accepted before God. Through faith in Christ, we’re accepted before God.
This is what Paul is saying to Peter here in Verse 15 and 16. He’s saying, “Peter, we’re Jews. We didn’t come to know God through observing the law, we came through faith in Christ. If we could have come, apart from faith in Christ, we would have had that down; we would have followed the law, we would have made it. We wouldn’t need the cross at all.”
That’s what he says at the very end of this chapter, that Christ would have died for nothing, but we needed Christ to die, so that when we placed our faith in Him, we would be justified before God. And that’s the other key word that’s mentioned here. It’s mentioned a few different times, in Verse 16 and 17.
“We know that a man is not justified by observing the law.” You might put a square, or just a different shape just to – I don’t know, it makes it colorful in your Bible -
“justified by observing the law. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by observing the law, because by observing the law, no one will be justified.
“If while we seek to be justified in Christ,” and he uses it one more time in the very end, Verse 21, when he says, “If righteousness could be gained through the law,” that word righteousness is actually the same word that’s used for justification earlier in this passage.
So what Paul is saying is, we are justified by faith. Now this word, justified, is a golden nugget, so to speak, in Scripture. It is translated all throughout the New Testament as justified, just, justify, justification, righteousness, right, righteous. It is one of the most important words for any one of us as a follower of Christ in this room to understand.
Luther said, “The doctrine of justification by faith,” make sure – he said, “Faith alone,” “The doctrine of justification by faith alone is the doctrine upon which the Church stands or falls.” Calvin said, “It is the hinge upon which everything turns.” It was the heart of the reformation, it’s the heart of New Testament Christianity.
Luther said this, he said, “This is the truth of the Gospel. Justification is the truth of the Gospel. It is the principal article of all Christian doctrine, wherein the knowledge of all godliness consists. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.” Ha, beat it into each others heads, justification. Just beat each other with justification.
That seems what Paul’s doing – justify, justify, justify. Why is this so important? What I want to show you is a definition of justification that needs to be central in any – any Christ follower in this room, in our understanding of Christianity, must revolve around a biblical understanding of justification.
So we’re gonna take this definition kind of word by word, because every word is important. Justification is the gracious act of God. So start there, the gracious act of God. It is something that God does by His grace. In Chapter 2, Verse 16, at the very end of that verse, he says, “Not by observing the law, because by observing the law, no one will be justified.”
He’s quoting there from Psalm 143:2. We don’t have time to turn there. Psalm 143:1 and 2. The psalmist is crying out, “Hear my cry for mercy, because there is no one living righteous. There’s no one living just before You.” It’s the same picture we’ve got in Romans 3, “There is no one who does good, not even one.”
There is nothing in anyone on all earth who has anything in them that necessitates, or causes, or initiates God to justify. It is entirely from Him by His grace. Now this is important. We talked about this a good bit. We talked about how salvation is all of grace, that we’re only saved by grace.
This is where we have to be very careful not to even look at faith as a work of the law, so to speak – at faith and say, and this is the danger, it’s why we talk sometimes about the danger of praying a prayer because we’ve got this picture, we say these magic words, that’s the work you do in order to be saved.
The reality is justification is the gracious act of God. It is not based on us, it is based completely on God and His grace, because there’s nothing in us that could cause it to happen. In fact, everything in us says it shouldn’t happen. Everything in us says it shouldn’t happen, and we’ll get to that in a second.
Justification is the gracious act of God, by which God declares – key word there, declares. Justification is a declaration. The word picture in justification is that it’s a legal term, a forensic term, where a judge is declaring a judgment on someone. When the judge doles out his judgment and makes that declaration, that’s the language that’s being used in justification.
It’s not a – it’s not a process, it’s an act. It’s something that happens at a point in time. This is huge. We can’t be more justified tomorrow than we are today. We can’t be more justified next year than we are today. It’s something that happens at a point. We are justified.
Romans 5:1, Paul says, “Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God.” We have been justified; God has made a declaration. It’s a once for all declaration that happens in our lives. Now that declaration involves, next in that definition, declaration involves a sinner.
Justification is the gracious act of God by which God declares a sinner – this is a picture in justification of God the judge dealing with man the sinner – guilty man before a Holy God. This is so big, especially for Paul. When Paul met Christ, when he came to faith in Christ, we need to remember this was a guy who was zealously giving his life to obeying God.
Yes, he was persecuting the Church, but why was he persecuting the Church? He was persecuting the Church because he thought that honored God, because the Church was giving these false teachings against the old covenant, so to speak. And so he was zealously obeying God, doing everything he could to be the best person he could.
And when he met Christ, he was confronted not only with the inadequacy, because of his wickedness in his life, he was confronted with the inadequacy of his goodness. All the things he had given his life to, good things, following the law of God – all of that still was nowhere near enough.
And the Gospel confronted him in his sin, not just in wickedness, the things that we would equate with sin, but even the best things we have to bring to the table – all our righteousness like filthy rags the Old Testament talks about. Confronted as a sinner before God, trying to be good, but the more he tried, the more he saw that he was falling short.
And so here’s the picture. What you’ve got is guilty man standing before the Holy Judge of the universe. What happens is in justification, it’s the gracious act of God by which God declares a sinner righteous. Justification is the gracious act of God by which declares a sinner righteous.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is one amazing truth. That the Holy God of the universe, the Holy Judge of all would look upon you or me as we stand in willful rebellion against Him, with absolutely nothing in us that deserves anything but condemnation. Totally guilty in our sin, totally guilty.
Not just because of what we’d done, but because of who we are at the core, guilty, and this Holy God would look at you or me and say, “Not guilty, righteous, accepted, peace before Me.” This does not make sense. How could it happen?
It’s why in the reformation people looked at Luther and Calvin, and others, and said, “That’s legal fiction. You’re making this up, there’s no way that’s how the God of the universe would design salvation for His people. Based on nothing you do? Those who are declared – those who are guilty in their sin, deep in their guilt, deep in their condemnation, all of a sudden declared not guilty?”
That’s the Gospel. How does that happen? Solely on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ. Solely on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ. That’s the only way. How can a sinner be declared righteous in God’s sight? And the answer is, God has to take the righteousness of Christ and credit it to that sinner’s account.
God has to take the very holiness and righteousness that Christ had and take all that He had and attribute it to that sinner, and take all that that sinner had and attribute it to His Son. This is II Corinthians 5, “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us.” Don’t miss it – God took all that was in your account, all the sins and willful rebellion, idolatry that was in your account, and He put it on His Son.
He didn’t just sweep it under the rug and pretend like it’s not there. He put it on His Son. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us. All – all of our sin, all of it’s penalty, death, wrath of God to that sin, poured it out on His Son, so that we might become the – what? Righteousness of God.
So that the righteousness of Jesus Christ would be attributed, accredited to you. So that you and I would stand before God, and in the same way God looked at His Son and said, “This is my Son, whom I love, with whom I am well pleased,” totally pleased. Now He looks at us and says those same words.
Righteous, right, peace with God, accepted before God, solely through faith in Jesus Christ. And this is why Paul is vehemently opposing Peter in this sense, in this instance, and anybody else who tries to undercut the Gospel of grace by adding to works, because God has already done all the work for us, that all it is – all it is to receive that is faith, is believing on Him.
Listen to the – it’s question number 60 in the Heidelberg catechism, it explains the Protestant understanding of justification by faith. I want you to listen to what is says. “How are you righteous before God?” That’s the question, how are you righteous before God? How would you answer it? How are you righteous before God? The catechism says, “Only by true faith in Jesus Christ.”
In spite of the fact that my conscience accuses me that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God and have not kept any one of them, and that I am still ever prone to all that is evil, nevertheless, God, without any merit of my own, out of pure grace, grants me the benefits of the perfect sacrifice of Christ, imputing to me His righteousness and holiness, as if I had never committed a single sin, or had ever been sinful, having fulfilled myself all the obedience which Christ has carried out for me, if only I accept such favor with a trusting heart.
Wow, as if I had never committed a single sin? That’s how God looks at me? A wealthy Englishman bought himself a Rolls Royce. And they were advertising this was the car of all cars, it would never break down, you would never have any problems. And so he took his Rolls Royce to France with him. When he got to France, his Rolls Royce broke down.
And so he called up the Rolls Royce people, and he said, “Your car broke down.” And they said, “I’m sure that’s not the case.” So they sent a mechanic, flew him on a plane to France to fix the car, cause it indeed had broken down. And then the mechanic went back. Weeks went by, and the wealthy Englishman had not gotten a bill from Rolls Royce, and he was wondering why not.
He knew he could pay the bill, that was no problem, and so after a few months, he wrote the people at Rolls Royce, and he said, “I need you to send me my bill for fixing my car.” And they sent him a note there in France, and the note said, “Sir, with all due respect, we have absolutely no record of anything ever having gone wrong with your car.”
Ladies and gentlemen, can I remind you that the God of the universe has absolutely no record of anything ever having gone wrong in your life? What an amazing truth. This is the Gospel. No record – and not because He swept it under the rug, because He poured out the record of your sins and my sins on His Son, and there’s no record that we’re accountable for any more.
Justification is a good thing; it’s a great thing. Through faith and Christ, we are accepted before God. Now you can see why people during the reformation were saying, “That’s too easy. Well, what about how you’re gonna live? What about people’s lives? They just trust – that’s all?”
So the Judaisers were saying, “Aren’t you undercutting obedience to the law?” And we’re gonna talk more about the law next week in Galatians 3, “But aren’t you undercutting life?” And Paul says, “No, through faith in Christ we are accepted before God, number one; and number two, through faith in Christ we,” and this is where it gets really, really, really, really good, “through faith in Christ, we’re accepted before God, and then through faith in Christ, we are alive to God.”
Paul’s telling Peter, “You don’t trust in Christ; you’re not justified by faith and then start living like your acceptance before God is based on the law.” He says, “These Gentiles, their acceptance before God is not based on the law, so why are you living like they’re not accepted before God?”
“It changes your life,” is what he says in Verse 18, 19, “If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I’m a lawbreaker. For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. Died to law so that I might live for God.”
What if faith is not just the only way we’re accepted before God? What if faith is also the only way we can live to God? Paul is saying we are justified by faith and we live by faith. We live by faith. Paul is leaving no room here for a one-time decision, pray this prayer, and move on like nothing happened. “It’s not possible,” Paul says, “It’s not possible. Not faith in Christ, it’s not what faith in Christ is about. We live by faith.”
And he gives us that loaded verse in Verse 20, and I would encourage you, if this verse is not hidden in your heart, to hide it there this week. I’ve been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I live by faith.” What an amazing verse. “I’ve been crucified with Christ.”
What does that mean? We know that when Jesus went to the cross, there was a sense in which what He did on that cross He alone could do, and that He was alone in, as the Son of God, perfect Son of God, taking the payment of sin upon Himself.
But what Paul is saying here is the same thing that he says over in Romans 6. He says, “We’ve been baptized into His death; we have died with Him.” Puritan William Perkins said, “We are in mind and meditation to consider Christ crucified. First we are to believe that He was crucified for us. This being done, we must go yet further, and as it were spread ourselves on the cross of Christ, believing, and with all beholding ourselves crucified with Him.”
Spread yourself on the cross. You have been – Christian, you have been crucified with Christ. Now what does that mean – are we dead or alive? Dead and alive? How does this work? It’s both – we die to sin. In our crucifixion with Christ, being crucified with Christ, we die to sin, that’s the point. He takes all of our sin, past sin, present sin, future sin, and all of it is put on the cross – all of it. Christ has taken all of it.
This is why justification is so important to understand, because justification is different than forgiveness. They’re related, but when you ask for forgiveness, then you go out and do something else wrong, you ask for forgiveness. Justification – you’re justified, declared not guilty, you do something wrong, God is still looking at you, saying, “Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty.” There’s no condemnation, no guilt for those who are in Christ Jesus.
The law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death. Not guilty – over and over and over and over again. We die to sin. All of our sin is put on the cross, and our justification is sealed before God. We have peace with God. We die to sin, but not just sin – it’s more than that.
We die to ourselves. Paul says, “I’ve been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live. I no longer live.” This is where the easy believeism that is being sold as the Gospel in our culture today is completely undercut. This is not mere intellectual ascent, “Well, yes, I believe that Jesus died on the cross.” Demons believe this.
The phrase – even back up earlier in Galatians 2:16, when it says, “Faith in Jesus Christ,” that word “in” Jesus Christ literally is “into” Jesus Christ. It’s a picture running into Jesus Christ for mercy and throwing ourselves upon Him. We die to ourselves.
And Paul says, “I’ve been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live.” In other words, I, the I that was captive to sin, the I that was captive to the pleasures and preferences that I have in this world, the I that said, “This world revolves around me,” the I that lived for self-esteem and self-confidence and self-justification and self-glorification – that I is dead. It’s gone; that heart of stone has been shattered.
That layer of pride, thick layer of pride, has been shattered. I’m a broken man – I have died, I know longer live. We die to sin and we die to ourselves. And Christ lives in us, but Christ lives in me. What does that mean? It means He covers our sin. If Christ lives in me – we’ve talked about this – His blood covers over our sins.
Romans 5:8, 9, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Then Verse 9 says, “Since we have now been justified by His –” anybody remember? We’re justified by His blood. His blood is the means of our justification. The way in which our sins are covered, they’re not swept under the rug, they’re covered by blood, the blood of Christ. He covers our sin.
And not just covers our sin, He changes our lives. That’s the beauty of this word, “I’ve been crucified.” I want you to follow with me here, a little Greek grammar. I promise you it’ll be worth your time. “I have been crucified.” It’s a perfect verb – have been crucified, a perfect tense verb.
What that means is, it’s something that happened in the past that has continuing results in the present. That’s good. That was worth three years of Greek right there. Something that happened in the past that has continuing results in the present. “I was crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” My life is different because Christ is living in me. He’s changed my life. I am dead to that old I, and I am trusting Christ to live in me every moment of every day.
And this is where we come back to truths that we’ve talked about before. We are not in debt to Christ. We’re not in debt to Christ. This is how we normally view Christianity. Look at what Christ – look at what Jesus did for me, He died on the cross for me. Jesus’ work for me is in the past. Look at what He did for me, now what can I do for Him?
How many sermons, how many times do we think, do we say, “Look at all Jesus did for you. Look at all Jesus did for me. The least I can do is this – the least I can do is this. What can I do for Him now?” The reason that’s wrong thinking, the reason that’s not Christianity is because Jesus’ work did not stop for you or me in the past. He did not die then, and that was His work, so now you can live for Him.
Instead, He’s still doing in your life. At this very moment, in every single moment of every single day, Christ is working. We’re not paying Him back, because He’s still paying us. He’s still working in us. It’s not just past action; it’s past action with present continuing results. The picture is, Christ is living in me now, at this moment, at this very moment, Christian, Christ living in you.
We are not in debt to Christ, we are indwelt by Christ – and that is a word, it is a word. My small group said, “It’s not a word.” I looked it up, it’s a word. We’re indwelt by Christ. (And you can check it out.) Christ is in you. What if – what if the Christian life is not a matter of us living for Christ, but it’s actually a matter of Christ living for us, and in us, and through us?
You say, “Well, what do I have to do with that?” Christ has everything to do with it, and in the end, Christ gets all the glory for everything good that comes out of it, everything. He lives in me. We’re indwelt by Him. And this is – faith is – faith is the key by which we’re accepted before God and alive to God, because we’re attached to Christ, and He lives in us.
Luther said, “By faith you are so cemented to Christ, that He and you are as one person, which cannot be separated,” isn’t this good news? “– cannot be separated, but remains attached to Him forever.” Calvin said, “The Christian does not live by His own life, but is animated by the secret power of Christ, so that Christ may be said to live and grow in Him.”
And it’s not just the reformers. Ian Thomas worked – the leader with Inter-Varsity – he would go into the slums in London and serve there. And he talks about a moment in his Christianity where everything changed, where he had trusted in Christ it seemed for salvation, but there was no victory there. And I want you to listen to this, cause I’m convinced this describes the experience of so many Christians – likely many Christians in this room.
Ian Thomas said, “I had been reduced to a state of complete exhaustion spiritually, until I felt that there was no point in going on. And then one night in November, just at midnight, I got down on my knees before God, and I just wept in sheer despair. I said, ‘Oh, God, I know that I am saved. I love Jesus Christ. I am perfectly convinced that I am converted. With all my heart I have wanted to serve thee; I have tried to my uttermost, and I am a hopeless failure.’”
“That night,” Ian Thomas said, “things happened. I can honestly say that I had never once heard from the lips of men the message that came to me then, but God that night simply focused upon me the Bible message of Christ who is my life.
“The Lord seemed to make plain to me that night, through my tears of bitterness, ‘You see, for seven years, with utmost sincerity, you have been trying to live for Me on My behalf the life that I have been awaiting for seven years to live through you.’” He said, “I got up the next morning to an entirely different Christian life.”
George Müller, we’ve talked about him, helped multitudes of orphans in a ministry based completely on prayer. He was asked one time what the secret was to his life and ministry, and he said, “There was a day when I died, utterly died.” And as he spoke, his biographer said he bent lower and lower until he almost touched the floor. I died to George Müller, his opinions, preferences, tastes, and will; died to the world, it’s approval, or censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren and friends, and since then I’ve studied only to show myself approved unto God, crucified with Christ.
Christ living in Him. Hudson Taylor, his biography is Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret. What was his spiritual secret? He said, “Oh, it is joy to feel Jesus living in you, to find your heart all taken up by Him, to be reminded of His love by His seeking communion with you at all times, not by your painful attempts to abide in Him. He is our life, our strength, our salvation. I am no longer anxious about anything, for He, I know, was able to carry out His will, and His will is mine, and His resources are mine, for He is mine, and He is with me and dwells in me.”
Let me share one last quote – this is why Ian Thomas, who I mentioned before, said this, and I want to share this. This is a warning, it’s a caution to us in this room, to myself, “Beware, lest even as a Christian,” he wrote, “you fall into Satan’s trap. You may have found and come to know God and the Lord Jesus Christ, receiving Him sincerely as your Redeemer.
“Yet if you do not enter into the mystery of godliness and allow God to be in you, the origin of His own image, you will seek to be godly by submitting yourself to external rules and regulations, and by conforming to behavior patterns imposed upon you by the particular Christian society that you have chosen, and in which you hope to be found acceptable.
“You will in this way commit idolatry in honoring Christianity more than Christ and perpetuate the pagan habit of practicing religion in the energy of the flesh.” Ladies and gentlemen, this is the key, it is faith; it is faith in Christ – not just faith when you prayed that prayer, or signed the dotted line, or whatever it was for you in your life, but faith right now at this moment, trusting that Christ is alive in you.
Your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness, and the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you. Romans 8 says, “He is living in you.” And faith is trusting Him moment by moment, day by day, to be everything you need in every single circumstance and every single temptation.
It is believing in Christ; it’s not mustering up, trying to do better next time. It’s trusting in Christ that He’s good to do it. And going to Him – it’s when we walk through a series, like we did that radical, and we see these tough commands, we don’t walk away saying, “Legalism – if I do these things I’m more acceptable before God.”
We don’t walk away ignoring those truths, cause that’s hypocrisy. Instead, we walk away with our hearts running to Christ, saying, “Christ, I need more of You in my life. I need You to take care of these areas of my life that are not in line with Your Gospel.” Same thing whenever we’re tempted to sin, struggles with sin, individual sin in our lives in this room.
It’s not an issue of you trying harder next time, it’s an issue of you trusting Christ, trusting Christ moment by moment, day by day. God, give me the faith – this is where we started – we’re freed by grace, freed through faith. We started by saying, “Well, how do we please God, then?” II Corinthians 5; 1 Thessalonians 2:4. We talk about pleasing God. How do we do it? How do we obey those radical commands in the New Testament?
And here’s the answer – you have got to have Christ to do it. You’ve gotta have Christ. You gotta have His presence, you gotta have faith, trust in Him every single moment. You’ve gotta have Christ to do it, cause God’s pleasure in you is not based on your performance before Him. God’s pleasure in you is based on Christ’s performance for you.
That’s the startling truth – that Christ lives in me. Not just His performance on you in the cross 2,000 years ago, but His performance in your life at this moment, and later today, and tomorrow morning when you wake up, and every single moment this week, trusting Him to do it in you. This drives you to Christ, this makes – this causes us to cling to Christ. This is where the Word gives us tough commands. And it’s not intended to cause us to go out and try to do it on our own, self make our Christianity.
It’s intended to drive us to Christ, where we cling to Christ and say, I need more of Christ, I need more of Christ. And the question that begs is, “How do we know that He is going to give us what we need? How do we know that He’s gonna come through when we’re tempted. How do we know that He’s gonna give us everything we need, all of our sufficiency and all of our strength, love, joy, or peace – or whatever it is that we need.
And Paul says, “We know this because He loves us, and He gave Himself for us.” This is where Paul gets extremely personal, in Galatians 2, in what may be one of the most moving texts in all the New Testament, and he says, “He loves me, and He gave Himself for me.”
And I want to remind you, based on that truth. God in Christ is passionate about you. He loves you. We talk a lot, here at Brook Hills, about God’s love for and passion for the world, and all peoples and all nations. And we talk about that, cause that is thoroughly biblical. But I do not want us to lose sight of the fact that God is passionate – yes, about all peoples and all nations, but He is passionate about you.
The God of the universe is passionate about you, and He has paid a price for you – for you – for you. He has died for you. He has given His life Himself for you, and He gave Himself for you so that all that He has, all that He has, with all of its present and eternal benefits, would belong to you.
This is the grace of Christ that comes only through faith in Christ. This is why we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.