Crucified with Christ | Galatians 2:17-21

through the Bible reading and you see the reference on the screen so if you're

able turn up your Bibles or your devices and follow along.

We're at the end of chapter 2 of Galatians from verse 17 to 21 if you're

using one of the Bibles provided on the seats you'll find it right at the bottom

of page 943. Galatians 2 from verse 17, but if in seeking to be justified in

Christ we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners doesn't that mean that

Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not. If I rebuild what I destroyed then I really

would be a law breaker. For through the law I died to the law so that I might

live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ

lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith in 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.

Good morning again church. Be handy to have your Bibles open with you this

morning as we will be in our text quite a lot but before we get into the

scriptures let's ask our Father to help us in understanding them. Would you please

pray with me? Father we do thank you for these words that have been breathed by

you and given to us. We ask that your word would be sharper than any double

edged sword in our midst this morning and that it wouldn't come back void. We

ask that your Holy Spirit would work among us and bring us to a better

understanding of what has been achieved by our Lord and Savior and we ask for

this in his name. Amen. Now I don't claim to be a doctor in any which way but even

I know that an infection is usually a presenting symptom of an underlining

sickness that shouldn't be ignored. Wisdom cries in the streets with this one

church. Ignoring an infection can be the worst possible thing to do for the body

because if the underlining sickness isn't dealt with the infection will

only get worse. Now I'm starting our time off with this

grotesque picture because it serves as a pretty good illustration as to the part

of Galatians that we find ourselves in this morning. There was a sickness that

had entered the body there in Antioch that threatened to infect the entire

congregation. That sickness was fear and the presenting infection was legalism.

You might remember it the Apostle Peter came from Jerusalem the church there to

the church in Antioch to fellowship with his brothers and sisters in Christ and

this was huge because historically Jews and Gentiles didn't meet in the same

place but Peter was happy to come to this church and fellowship with them

because in Christ the wall of Jew and Gentile had been torn down. Peter knew

this and he was happy to not just meet but eat with his brothers and sisters in

Christ because the gospel encouraged it. But then as we saw there in verse 12 a

group of guys came from a Jewish sect in Jerusalem and because of fear of what

they would think of him eating with the Gentiles and how fear gripped Peter's

heart he separated himself as well as all the others that had a Jewish

background. You might say a sickness had taken root and the infection was

spreading but as we saw last week the Apostle Paul he saw it for what it was.

The gospel wasn't leading the decisions being made. Fear was which was causing

his brothers to be infected with the stench of hypocrisy reverting back to

an old rule of segregation which they thought made them clean and righteous

before God. That's the context of what's going on here. A pillar of the faith has

not walked in line with the gospel. Fear drove him to act like a hypocrite and he

dragged others along with him in his hypocrisy. So instead of leaving this

infection to spread through the whole body Paul treats the cause, the illness if

you will, by bringing everyone's attention back to the gospel saying

people are justified before God by faith in Jesus not by works of the law. We see

that there in verse 16. That in a nutshell is the gospel Paul preached.

People are justified before God by faith in Jesus not by works of the law. Now you

might be here this morning and never heard that word justified. Well I think

it would be a good idea to see what it means as it's really going to help us to

understand the rest of the passage that we're going to be looking at this

morning. You see the word justified is a term that was used in the Greco-Roman

world which declared in the eyes of the law that you weren't just innocent but

in total right standing with the law. That's what the word justification means.

It doesn't mean just innocent it means totally righteous in the eyes of the

law. How does it come about? Well Paul's gospel that he received from Jesus as

he said in the first chapter of this book taught that God had made it possible

that we could be justified in his sight because he sent his only begotten son who

acted as a substitute a person in our place in that he took on the cross the

punishment for our sin. That preached Paul is the only way in which we can be

justified. It is that Jesus gave himself so that whosoever puts their faith in

him and not in their own efforts to keep the law might not just be declared

innocent but stand before the judge of the world totally righteous. Totally

righteous because we're clothed in the perfect work of the one who gave himself

for sinners. To put that as simply as I can by undeserved love Jesus traded

places with us. He gave us his wonderful riches and was crucified for our filthy

rags. That's a basic explanation of what's being said there in verse 16.

People are justified before God by faith in Jesus not by works of the law. This

morning we're in this same conversation however as you'll see Paul starts to

answer the arguments of the false teachers that had infiltrated the

congregations there in Galatia. The legalists who said yes Jesus is

important but you also must keep the law to be justified and these next few

verses are going to show us a couple of things about all of this. First in verses

17 to 18 we're going to see that we mustn't rebuild what's been torn down

and second in verses 19 to 21 that we must die to our own efforts in order to

truly live for God. Right so if you have your Bibles with you this morning let's

look at verses 17 and 18. We must not rebuild what's been torn down. We read

but if in seeking to be justified there's that word in Christ we Jews find

ourselves among the sinners doesn't that mean that Christ promotes sin?

Absolutely not. If I rebuild what I destroy then I really would be a law

breaker. Okay so going back to the context of this whole conversation this

whole thing is over the place of the law and the Christian life its relation to

it and I think a bit of context a bit of background is going to help us

understand the depth of what's really being said here because I must warn it's

pretty complicated. You see the Jewish people they had a special relationship

with God in that out of all the people of the world God chose and gave them his

law he revealed it to them that they were to follow which was designed to

make them different from the world because they had revelation they had

the law of the living God. This means that they wouldn't be like the Gentiles

because they followed their own imaginations made up idols or evil

spirits. The problem was however that as the Jews went to obey the law they

quickly found that they weren't able to. Now like the Gentiles they were found

to be sinners. Now this came as no surprise to God that's why he gave his

people a priesthood and a sacrificial system to engage in and for those who

loved God they knew that the sacrificial system was so very gracious but only a

preview of something much greater that would really deal with their sin

eternally. Looking back on the old covenant the preacher to the Hebrews he

says it like this the old system under the law of Moses was only but a shadow

a dim preview of the good things to come and not the good things themselves. The

sacrifices under that system were repeated again and again but they were

never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship. Instead

those sacrifices actually reminded them of their sin year after year for it's

not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. We find that in

Hebrews 10. Do you see what's being said there? God's people under the old

covenant were to see two things simultaneously. They were to see that

they couldn't keep the law perfectly and that the sacrificial system wasn't the

final solution for their sin. That's what the law was given for to show them that

justification couldn't come by their own law keeping but by God's mercy and

grace which he would provide for them in a perfect sacrifice someday. That's the

gospel Paul preached. People aren't justified by God through the works of

the law. No we're justified by faith in Jesus Christ. That's always been the way

but this was the problem. There were Jewish teachers that were coming into

the churches and essentially saying that if Paul's right that if people are

justified by faith in Jesus alone and not by their own law keeping then they'll

all be like Gentiles. They'll all be sinners. That's what Paul alludes to

there in verse 17. Essentially they said with this kind of doctrine Paul's Christ

promotes sin in that he's making law-abiding Jews like lawless Gentiles. To

put it simply these legalists were afraid. If people were justified not on

the basis of their own law keeping but on the basis of faith in Jesus then they

accused that everyone in the church would be like sinful Gentiles. No they

said Jesus is important but you need to keep the law yourself to be justified. So

we might ask the question. I think the question has been asked many times

through the years. Did Paul's doctrine of justification by faith alone make Jesus

the promoter of sin? Absolutely not says Paul. God forbid that King James renders

it. Embracing Christ alone by faith doesn't make me a lawbreaker. If I

rebuild what I destroyed that would make me a lawbreaker as he says here. That's

really interesting what he's saying. What would make Paul a lawbreaker? What would

make him unrighteous? Well he says here it would be going back to rebuild what I

once held on to. That's what would really make me a lawbreaker. So let's ask. What

did he hold on to? What did he tear down? Well as you read through the book of

Galatians we see that Paul torn down a whole mentality, a whole mindset that the

law was a means for self justification. That's what he torn down. So his point is

in light of the gospel I've got rid of that way of thinking. If I go back to

work for my righteousness by the law I'd be restoring a distorted view of why the

law was given. That's what Paul is essentially saying here. If I return to

using the law as a way to establish my own righteousness that that would really

make me a lawbreaker. Admittedly this is complicated but but I think this

illustration I heard the other day captures how the Jews got it so wrong in

this context. You see they viewed the law something like a ladder rather than a

train track. As I said before originally God gave the law to reveal to God's

people that they were to be different in this world but as we also saw as they

went about going to obey the law they quickly saw that they needed mercy and

grace to be driving the whole thing. Grace was what they needed to be pushing

the so-called train along the track not their own works. That was how the law was

meant to be received. It was never meant to be a ladder that they were to view as

a way to get to heaven. A way to get to heaven in their own strength. However

that's what the legalists push. That's what Paul had believed when he was a

rabbi. They understood and taught the law to be like a ladder that you had to

climb in your own efforts. They define those efforts with traditions their own

traditions. They said follow these and in the end God will justify you. Paul's

point is this. I once saw the law like that. I once saw it like a ladder to

climb up in my own strength. So if I try and grab that ladder and put it back up

and start walking up that thing in my own strength that that is going to make

me a law breaker. Church let's pause here for a moment and ask a question in

light of everything that Paul's saying here. Have you fallen into that mindset?

Are you relying on your own good works to justify you before God? Are you looking

to the good things that you do like a ladder that will eventually get you to

heaven? Do you strive to climb day by day your way up to God hoping that with each

good deed he'll owe you something in the end? If you're here this morning and you

think like that you've totally missed the point of why Jesus had to come and

give himself for your sin in the first place. Paul has news for all of us this

morning. We are justified by faith in Christ alone not by our own works. It

doesn't matter how good you think you are, how moral you believe yourself to be,

how devout you feel. If you think that your own good works are going to be the

thing that justifies you before the God of the universe then you have totally

missed the point of the cross. It's the first thing we see here. It's the first truth that Paul

brings to light. We're not to go back to what has been torn down. We're not to go

back and pick that ladder up and try to start climbing that thing in our own

strength to find justification. No, it's by the grace, the undeserved, the

unmerited love of God that we are justified and by his grace that we keep

on track. And that's the second thing I want us to look at. We must die to our

efforts in order to truly live for God. We read here in verses 19 to 21, through

the law I died to the law that I might live for God. I have been crucified with

Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the

body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I

don't set aside the grace of God for if righteousness could be gained through

the law, Christ died for nothing. Now you may have noticed as I just read that out

that we're still on this same theme, right? How the law relates to the

Christian life and I think what's going on here, I think what's going on is that

Paul pulls back the curtain on his own experience with the law when he lived

under it. To say that simply, way back when when Paul was an observant Jew under the

law, as he started to view himself in the light of it all, he realized that he fell

short. He tried to keep the law but in the doing he found that there was no way

to climb the ladder, no way to climb the ladder to earn justification by the

works of the law. So there had to be another way to be made right with God, a

way in which his works weren't the answer. So he had to die to trying to

keep the law because it kept condemning him. But what was he to do? If his works

can't save him, if his traditions were never going to justify him, what was he

to do? Well he tells us the answer to those questions in verse 20. He had to

embrace the work of another. He had to somehow receive the work of one who did

keep the law perfectly. He had to somehow be united to Christ's substitutionary

death so that the law would no longer condemn him. And that's exactly what the

gospel held out. That's exactly what we receive by faith in Jesus. We receive

Christ's perfect work on our behalf. Paul says there in verse 20, I've been

crucified with Christ, I no longer live but Christ lives in me. Hear that. Paul

discovered something about the way of justification that was revealed to him

by Jesus and it had nothing to do with Paul and his works but everything to do

with the Son of God who loved him and gave himself for him. Isn't that what the

law was given for? That's what Paul was meant to see in the first place. God's

perfect righteousness and our own utter inability to live up to God's perfect

standards so that we might embrace by faith the one who was always promised,

Jesus Christ. Church, I'd argue that's still the place of the law and what it

does. The law is still meant to show us our own utter depravity and our own

utter inability to keep its requirements so that we might behold Christ, the one

who kept it perfectly and call upon his name. Paul will say elsewhere it's through

the law that comes the knowledge of sin. Until you become totally frustrated with

your inability to live a righteous life in the face of God and like Paul died

trying to keep it in your own strength, the law, until you come to that point all

you will ever do is try and fail and try and fail and try and fail to climb that

ladder. The law was given to point beyond itself. It was given to point to our Lord

and Savior Jesus Christ. So important that we get what Paul is putting down

for us here. The only way to be justified before the judge of the universe isn't

by trying harder but by being united to God's Son by faith. That's what Paul's

holding out here. There's simply no other options. God has a law. Both Jews and

Gentiles have broken that law and we need to be saved from the penalty of

law breaking which is eternal death and damnation. This is the good news. This is

the great news. This is the wonderful news. Jesus sent his beloved Son who gave

his sinless life for the sin of his people. When we give up on trying to make

ourselves acceptable and all shiny and and nice by our own efforts and

embrace Christ by faith it's then and only then that we're united to Christ

and stand before the judge of the universe totally and utterly justified.

Like it's been said before Jesus gave us his riches and he was crucified for our

dirty rags and it's because of his riches given because of his life received

because of our eternal punishment being met the penalty of law breaking can

never be met on God's children ever again. I no longer live but Christ lives

in me. That's true of you this morning.

Do you see the wonderful truth of the gospel? Paul was a man who lived under

the law doing all he could to obey something but as he went to obey he saw

he simply couldn't. He saw that trying to live to the righteous requirements was

impossible and so when the cross of Christ was revealed to him it made all

the difference in the world because it was no longer his faulty works that he

was looking to but the perfect works of Jesus who he'd embraced by faith and

because Paul was united to Christ and his life and death by the Holy Spirit

given he was no longer able to be condemned by the law because he was

joined to the one who perfectly kept the law and paid the penalty for all his

sin and law breaking. Now as an aside knowing all of that that answers the

question of the legalists doesn't it? They accused Paul that faith alone in

Christ alone naturally leads to sin alone but in light of everything that

Paul has said this morning he answers that question. How could a person be

embraced by Christ be united to his perfect work by the Holy Spirit and then

live a life that's contrary to God's leading and guiding? God doesn't lead his

people into sin. God leads his people into holiness. That's what Paul said now

animated his life. What drove the train down the so-called track? He no longer

looked to the Lord to see how good he was doing like a ladder to climb. Now

what drove him was a life of faith in Christ who loved him and gave himself

for him. By grace Paul was a transformed man that lived by faith in what Christ

had done and not what he thought he needed to now do in his own strength.

Paul came to realize that we are saved by grace. It's always always been by

grace because there's nothing in and of ourselves that we can do for ourselves

or as Paul puts it there in verse 21 I don't set aside the grace of God for if

righteousness could be gained through the law Christ died for nothing. We're

reading about a transformed man here. He went from striving to gain righteousness

to realizing that he had to be rescued and God revealed to him in his infinite

mercy and grace Christ was sent to die in the place of sinners. It's little

wonder that we hold on to the doctrine so tightly that we are justified by

faith in Jesus and not by works of the law. Where do you put your faith this

morning? Would you say that you put your faith in your own works to try and twist

God's arm into owing you a place in heaven? Would you say but Michael I read

the Bible I come to church I serve the poor I love people around me that's

really why God accepts me. Or if you come to realize that Jesus did everything

that was necessary to justify you before the creator of the universe.

If our works could save us, if our own efforts could justify us, then Christ

truly did die for nothing. Think about this even our faith is a gift from God.

Make no mistakes dear ones each and every single one of us in this room will

meet God one day. You'll either stand before him totally condemned or totally

justified. You'll either die to trying to earn God's favor now and put your

faith in Jesus or you'll reject Jesus and you'll do all that you can to try to

earn God's favor and die forever. The choice is yours. So as we end our time in

this short but powerful passage this morning you can see why Paul bought the

gospel to bear on his dear brothers who were sin-sick there in Antioch. They were

guilty of going back looking for that ladder putting it up and trying to

climb it. So Paul reminds them of something so powerful something that we

all need to be reminded of over and over and over and over again. If you have put

your faith in Jesus then you died to the condemnation of the law when Jesus was

nailed to the cross. You died when you believed and put your trust in his

perfect work. His death somehow became your death so that his life might truly

be yours. That's something that we all need to be reminded of time and time

again. Because of the grace of God because of the work of the Holy Spirit

who has united God's children to God's Son, his perfect Son and his perfect

righteousness, God Almighty looks at you and me and sees the perfect obedience

of his Son and has justified us for all eternity. We have been freed from the

condemnation of the law so that we might live and breathe and have our being in

the beloved. Have you come to the end of looking to your own works for self

righteousness or are you totally trusting in Christ? There's only two ways

to stand before God one day with dirty rags or clothes in the perfect work, the

wonderful riches of the Lord Jesus Christ who loved us and gave himself for

us. Would you please pray with me?

Father God we thank you so much for the gospel. We thank you that you are the one

who is at work in us, that our life is before the throne even at this

very moment as Christ's. It's so hard for us to comprehend. Father this is a good

news, this is the good news that you have entrusted to your church. We ask that we

wouldn't sit here and bask in it but we would be a people used of you to go out

into this world, to go out into the byways, the highways, into the city of

Armidale and share what you have achieved in the Lord Jesus Christ. Father you know

every single heart and mind in this place this morning. I ask in Jesus name

that by your spirit you would work and lift all of our eyes no matter where we

are, where we fall, what sickness has come into our lives, what infection that

we're not looking at, that we would look to the Lord Jesus and that we would be

cured by the gospel. We ask for this in Jesus name. Amen.