“We who are
Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, Knowing that a man is not
justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we
have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of
Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no
flesh be justified. But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we
ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God
forbid. For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a
transgressor. For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto
God. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of
the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the
grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.”
(Gal. 2:15-21)
In verse 15 Paul
gave a clarification of the law, reminding them not to add
Judaism to the gospel. Just because they kept the law as Jews did not mean they
still were not sinners just like the Gentiles. It doesn’t matter what race or
culture you may be. All of us are sinners. It is a sin problem, not a skin
problem. Paul stressed that Jews were sinners just as Gentiles, and that all
men and women are justified before God by faith.
The law is
important, but you can do everything you are supposed to do and follow every
rule you know of – and still split Hell wide open. Works alone justify no one.
The Bible says in Rom. 4:2, “For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath
whereof to glory; but not before God.”
Think about
Nicodemus in John 3. If any man had the right to point at his own good works
and say, “Look at me,” it was Nicodemus. But while men may applaud his good
works, God will reject him if He does not see his faith.
The works of the
law are outward in nature. We are not justified by that, but by believing in
Jesus Christ by grace through faith. James says that if are justified by Him,
there will be an outward expression of that. In other words, when we are
justified before God, our works will justify us before men. However, being
justified before God does not give us the right to do whatever we want. Grace
demands otherwise and motivates us to demonstrate to others that what we have
is real. There is no contradiction between the writings of Paul and those of
James regarding faith and works. They go hand in hand – faith toward God and
works toward men. You cannot show men your faith unless you show them your
works.
It is hard for you
to be a witness about the life-changing work of God when the things in your own
life are not life-changing. If Christ is working in your life, things should be
different. The law is not a bad thing; after all, it is about how we live.
There are still some things that are right in this world and some that are
wrong. God wrote a very important Book that, among other things, shows us how
to live.
The law is our
schoolmaster. It is not the goal, but a means to the goal, which is to glorify
God. We glorify Him in part by the way we live.
* The law cannot
save or justify us in or by itself.
* What the law
cannot do, only faith can do.
* Keeping the law
is a byproduct of faith.
If you are not
changed by the grace of God and a new creature, there is something wrong. You
still have the same flesh, and temptation is still a great enemy of the
believer, but there should be an inward desire to please God. If that is not
there, you can keep all of the rules and do all of the good things you want to
but you will still be the most miserable person in the world.
“Pastor, So-and-So
used to go to church here with us and now he is so far out in the world. What
happened?” He was never very far into Christ, and that is how he can get so far
out in the world. I am in favor of Christian education because I believe it is
a Biblical principle, but one problem with Christian education over the years is
that it educated the character of many young people without transforming their
hearts. They learned a lot of facts about the Bible without grasping what a
difference Christ can make in a person’s life. I got right with God at 21 years
of age, and it was a few years after that before I really got hold of what this
is all about and realized that it is not about being a programmed robot that
does this and doesn’t do that. It is about a relationship with a loving God who
does not get furious every time I mess up.
The idea that God
is pleased with you when you do good and mad at you when you do bad is just
wrong theology. He already demonstrated His love by sending Christ to die for
us. Nothing you do is going to make Him like or you hate you, because He has an
unconditional agape love that is so different than anything we understand in
the natural realm. He showed us His love when we were unlovable – and most of
us could admit that we are still unlovable.
Rom. 3:20 says, “Therefore
by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by
the law is the knowledge of sin.” The law cannot fix me, but the law can
show me some things I can continue to work so I will draw closer to the Lord.
Look in that same
chapter at verse 28. “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith
without the deeds of the law.” Did you know that a man can trust Christ and
go to Heaven having never had time to do good deeds by the law, yet God is
still pleased with Him? It is salvation by grace through faith that gets a
person to Heaven, not baptism or any other work.
You might say, “I
don’t believe in deathbed salvation.” Well, I do. All you have to do is repent
and believe (which is done in one fell swoop, by the way). It is not a process;
you turn from sin to receive Christ. It doesn’t matter at that point if you got
baptized or did anything else. I want you to be saved, baptized and growing in
the Lord, but you have to be saved first. That is the most important part.
For years in so
many of our churches we were concerned with the exterior and forgot to deal
with the interior. If Christ gets hold of a man’s heart, He will also get his
clothing, his attitude and his wallet. When I was running from God, there was
not much I wouldn’t try, but when I hit the altar and gave my life to Him it
was not difficult for me to take out my earring, cut my hair and straighten up
in general. There were some issues with my flesh because of strongholds I had
developed in certain areas, but I did not want to stay where I was. God had to
work through me and give me strength, but something inside me cried out, “I
want something different than this!”
This was possible
because when I was young, I was taught some things that laid a foundation in my
life. Even though I got away from that for a while, when God got hold of my
heart it was still there. Don’t throw the foundation away, and when the time
comes for God to work it will still be in place.
Verse 17 gives us
a question about the law. Now since we are not first-century Jews
we do not know exactly how they were thinking, but it was probably something
like this: “If we identify ourselves as sinners like the Gentiles, does God
receive the blame for our actions? We are children of Israel.”
Jews must be saved
like Gentiles to go to Heaven. They do not get a pass just because they are
God’s chosen people. They are the apple of His eye, but they must be born
again. There is a teaching today called separation theology that claims Israel
will always be separated, but that is not so. All men must go through the
cross.
But the question
here remains whether our sinful state is an indictment of God. I wish I had the
space to address it here, but God is getting quite a beating in some
theological circles these days for various things. “If God were a loving God,
there would be no tsunamis or earthquakes,” they say after a catastrophic
event. “I don’t know anyone could serve a God that would allow this to happen.”
The opposite end of that theology is the assertion that God is not made at
anybody, and everybody is going to Heaven. That is universalism, and it is the
source of a massive debate among some of our Southern Baptist friends because
of some new emergent church pastors.
Both ends of that
spectrum are wrong. First of all, the Bible says that God is angry at the
wicked every day. His justice demands payment. Love is not God’s only or
greatest attribute; holiness is. That is why you hear the words, “Holy, holy,
holy is the Lord God almighty.” You don’t hear, “Love, love, love.”
God is holding
sinners accountable for their choices. I believe that God puts in every one of
us an understanding that He exists, and His Word says that those who seek Him
will find Him. If someone on the darkest part of any continent looks up at the
stars and truly wants to know where God is, I believe that God will go to
whatever lengths necessary to make Himself known to that person.
On the other hand,
before we blame God for every bad thing that happens on the map, we must
recognize that if we acknowledge the presence of God we must also note the
active presence of His archenemy, Satan. A recent poll I saw indicates that 80
percent of students on college campuses claim to believe in God – not
necessarily the God of the Bible, but some sort of supreme deity. In that same
poll, fewer than 30 percent stated that they believe in a literal Satan. By his
own design, Satan has gotten himself identified with ghosts, goblins and things
that go bump in the night. One of the most notable lines from a popular film in
the 1990s was this: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing
the world that he doesn’t exist.” Even a growing number of evangelicals deny
the existence of Satan.
In this life we
are stuck with the effects of sin and its curse. Did God want any of that for
us? He designed this world perfectly, and it was perfect until sin appeared.
Satan set it all in motion in the Garden of Eden, and all that we see now is
the cause and effect of man’s choice to reject God. One day He will take away
all of this, but for now we have to deal with it.
All of this leads
us to Paul’s answer to the question in verse 17. The answer is, “God forbid.”
God did not make us sinners; each of us chose to be a sinner. Not one of us has
to sin, but we all choose it. James 1:14 says, “But every man is tempted,
when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” People do what they
want to do because they want to do it. Maybe they didn’t mean to do it in the
manner that they did. Perhaps they intended to start with just a little sin.
But the consequences of sin are incalculable and left only up to God.
A young man or
young woman might set out to please self a certain amount, but over time and
because the wiles of the devil, that person goes farther and farther until one
day ending up in a place no one ever intended to be. “I didn’t mean to do
that,” you say. Well, you did mean to sin; you just never expected it to take
you this far. No one ever became an alcoholic without taking that first drink.
If you are involved in something you never planned to
be involved in, that is not God’s fault. You are not in a mess because God
failed you or put in you some desire you cannot overcome. There is no alcoholic
gene or homosexual gene. Now I believe that there are certain predispositions
and common temptations or family issues that may come into play, but you will
never convince me that God is wrong and He made you in such a way that you must
sin. You can’t excuse your bad temper because you are Irish or your alcoholism
because you are a Native American. God is not responsible for our sinful state.
In verse 18 we
address the keeping of the law. Paul talks about this very intelligently
in legal terms, pointing out that after hammering home the point of it being
all about Christ, if he were to turn around and say it were something other
than Christ it would be a transgression of the law, which is sin. (By the way,
any transgression of the law is sin. Just like doctrine transcends generations,
so does sin. If it was wrong a hundred years ago, it is wrong today.)
The end of the law
is Jesus. It always leads you to Him, because when you come to the end of the
law you realize that it cannot save you and was never intended to save you. The
law is our teacher. Lester Roloff used to say, “Living the Christian life is impossible
outside the power of God.” When you realize that, it reinforces our need for
Jesus. The law is meant to point us to Christ, because in and of itself the law
never satisfies. The frustration that comes from not being able to live right
in our own flesh and under our own power is a constant reminder that we have no
hope of meeting God’s standard of righteousness apart from His grace and the
shed blood of Christ. In short, it is not about me. It is all about Him.
That brings us to
verse 20, which is the conclusion of the law. My life is all about the
grace and mercy of Christ, and what I do is not to impress anyone else or
because of some weak attempt to accumulate good works on my own. It is God
working in me and through me.
How many times
have you gone to the altar about some sin in your life, confessed it to God and
purposed in your heart to stop that particular sin, as sincerely as you
possibly can, only to get right back to it within a day? We have all done that,
especially me. Not only did I return to that sin, I began enjoying it again.
Here is what I
learned based on those experiences. I have to give myself to God the best way I
know how and say, “Lord, I can’t quit this on my own.” Instead of trying to run
away from whatever sin or problem is in my life at any particular moment, I
just have to start running toward Jesus.
If you went home
tonight and Jesus was physically sitting the car with you, and He walked into
your home with you to spend the evening, you would have a pretty good night.
Since that is not the case, we need to find people who best emulate Jesus in
their own lives and make them our most important influences. We should want to
be around people are more like Him and will draw us closer to Him than those
who would draw us away from Him. If so, we would find ourselves at more church
functions and safe activities that emphasize spiritual growth, which would help
us live more like we should.
As we focus less
on ourselves and our sin and more on Christ, we find that we are not living our
lives but Christ is living through us. Quit focusing on what you want to stop
doing and pay more attention to what you know you should be doing. When you do
that, in time Christ will take away the pull of that unwanted thing and give
you more of a taste for what He would have you enjoy. You will never stop if
you only think about stopping, because you think about it so much that you will
want to start again.
We have made
serving God so much about a list of requirements that no one can serve God
anymore. It became so difficult that people resigned themselves to the fact
that they couldn’t meet the requirements and just gave up. Not everyone is
going to be at the same level, but when people get involved at their own level
it helps them get victory over whatever needs conquering.
When you pour your
life into others and try to minister to them, you will forget about what was
troubling you and you will stop doing whatever was such a stumbling block
because you will be too busy serving others. Then the law is not a burden but a
blessing, because your life is no longer your own, but it belongs to Christ.
Let go of that burden and embrace the joy of serving the Lord.
