Justification by Grace through Faith

So, if you have a Bible with you, let me invite you to turn to Galatians chapter 2.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

We're looking at just two verses this morning.

And as you're turning there and thinking about what we're talking about this morning, let me give you a little anecdote, story, uh, and uh a little bit of wisdom as we get started.

When I started campus ministry years ago, uh, somebody said something that I thought, well, that's oversimplifying things.

And what this person said was 95% of problems in the Christian life come down to a misunderstanding of scripture, justification, or sanctification.

One of those three things.

And I thought that is really simplistic.

But after 30 years of ministry, I would say that 97% of problems in the Christian life come down to some sort of misunderstanding of scripture, justification, and sanctification.

Now, this is not a new idea.

Some of you are familiar with a pastor by the name of Martin Lloyd Jones, and he wrote a book years ago about spiritual depression, and he talks about that inner dynamic in our hearts and lives if we do not understand particularly what justification is and the radical nature by which God forgives all of our sins.

And so Lloyd Jones told a story about a man that came to faith in their church.

This man was 77 years old when he came to faith in Christ.

And he had lived a pretty uh, we would say, wicked and wild lifestyle with everything that he was involved in.

And so when he started coming to their church and sitting under the word of God and over time begins to be transformed by the gospel, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the church was completely overjoyed.

And so when he was baptized, the church rejoiced that this man at the age of 77 became a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And the day that he took his first communion in the church was a day of celebration for the church.

Everybody thought this is wonderful.

He thought it was wonderful, tears in his eyes.

He never thought he would be somebody after living the life that he had lived who would be received into the church and be able to come to the communion table.

Well, the next day, after his first communion, he showed up at the door of Martin Lloyd Jones, completely distraught.

Because he said when he got home that day, all of a sudden his mind was flooded with this one thing, this one thing that he had said 30 years previously.

So he's 77.

This is, you know, he's around 45.

He was with some buddies at a local pub, and they the topic of religion came up, and in a fit of anger, he said to his buddies there something that was uh a bad word that we're not going to repeat here, uh, but about the the fact that Joseph was not Jesus' biological father.

And he said, Jesus is a this.

And he said, he showed up at Lloyd Jones's door and said, I can't be forgiven for that.

There's no way I can be forgiven for that.

I had forgotten all about that.

And so he's just distraught, thinking, I've done this thing that has completely disqualified me from ever being saved and entering into heaven, entering into the presence of God through Jesus Christ.

This is the one thing.

And you know, Lloyd Jones was kind of remarking, said, after all the things he had done, the gambling, the licentious living, the you know, the fights, all of these things he's getting, this one thing is a holdup for him.

And Lloyd Jones said this.

He said, this is the case with almost all of us, is we have this thing, this one thing that we've done.

God can forgive everything else, but he can't forgive this.

And that's what disqualifies me.

Now, we're talking this morning about justification because as you know now, 95% of problems in the Christian life come down to a misunderstanding and of scripture justification, sanctification.

And in this sense, even us in here who've walked with Jesus for years and years, struggle at times with the sense of maybe not.

Maybe not, maybe just to the edges.

Maybe there's something beyond the pale of what Jesus has done.

Now, what we're looking at in Galatians is a different issue because for us, we wonder, is there something I've done that could completely disqualify me?

And what Paul is dealing with with the Galatians is the reality that there were people that were teaching, there's something you have to do that has to qualify you.

And for them, that was circumcision and keeping the Old Testament laws.

Yes, of course, Jesus saves you, but you have to do something.

There's something that you have to do besides believing in Jesus that qualifies you.

And so to answer both of those questions, we're going to look at Galatians chapter 2, verses 15 and 16.

Galatians 2:15

And if you will stand but for just a moment, this is a short passage, but we'll stand in honor of God and his word.

Galatians chapter 2, starting with verse 15.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.

Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of law.

Because by works of the law, no one will be justified.

It's very clear, it's very plain, but we have stubborn hearts.

So let's ask God to bless us as we look to this passage and ask him to teach us.

We're grateful for your word, but it is counterintuitive because it challenges the things that we assume that our culture tells us, that our hearts tell us, and sometimes that religious people tell us about who you are and what it means to belong to you.

And so our prayer this morning is for those who have not believed that they would encounter you and your grace.

And for those of us who have believed for a long time but still struggle with assurance that you would meet us.

But for all of us, we pray that you would show us your grace and your love and your mercy to sinners.

And as a person who is talking about holy and wonderful things this morning, I pray that you would focus my thoughts upon Christ and enable me to preach your word to bring relief, joy, and confidence to your people.

Bless us and be with us, we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please have a seat.

This is uh a pretty easy passage to get the main idea because he's so repetitive.

He repeats the three key ideas three times justified, not by works, and faith.

So you can imagine that's a really good outline for a sermon.

So that's where we're gonna go this morning.

Uh and first we're gonna talk about really the need we have for justification by grace through faith.

The need of it.

And this is what we read, Galatians 2, 15 and 16, again, and you're gonna hear this several times this morning.

This is worth memorizing for yourself and for the sake of other people.

Galatians 2, 15 to 16.

We ourselves are Jews by birth.

He's talking to Peter here and these other Jews.

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

So also, we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law.

Because by works of the law no one will be justified.

Now, Peter knew this.

Peter had taught this, but like you and me, he fell into a trap of thinking, well, there's something we have to do.

And the reason Peter was falling into this trap is because he was in Galatia and a group of people came from uh Judea, from James, and they were teaching and they were telling people, you have to be circumcised in order to be right with God.

And Peter fell into this, and Paul refers to this group in verse 12, if you have your Bible in front of you, as the circumcision group.

And they would say, Yes, Jesus died for our sins.

Yes, you have to believe in Jesus, but you have to show God how committed you are to him by being circumcised.

You have to show God it has to cost you something.

There's some effort, there's some religious activity that you have to do to show God how serious you are, and so you're gonna have to keep the whole law to be made right with God.

That's a prerequisite.

Jesus and keeping the whole law.

It's those things.

But what Paul saw was that at this point, the Jewish believers who said they believed in Jesus but said you had to be circumcised, withdrew from the Gentile believers who were not circumcised.

And seeing how destructive this was to the unity of the church, Paul publicly confronted Peter.

And this is what he said in 2.15.

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.

Now, uh, at least one person has told me that that really bothers them that he refers to Gentiles as Gentile sinners.

And so what is he talking about?

Well, what Paul is doing is he's stepping into the cultural, historical, and religious bias of the circumcision group.

He's not saying that you Gentiles out here are worse and the Jews just by being Jews are better.

He's saying, I'm gonna put myself in your shoes for a second, Peter, to help you see what you're actually saying.

And he's saying, Yes, you and I were born, we were by birth, we were Jews.

We were born Jews, which means we were born the best of the best and not the worst of the worst.

We had the law and the prophets.

We have the promises.

We know what we're supposed to do.

We know that we have the right God, we have the right word, we have the right means for being made right with God.

We have this whole temple system of sacrifice, this spiritually engineered place we can go and see our representation of our sins being forgiven.

We were born into this, and yet not a single one of us could keep this law.

Not a single one of us, the best of the best, could enter into God's presence by what we do.

And I don't think Paul could have been clearer with them.

Nobody has ever been or ever will be made right with God by their obedience, except for Jesus.

None of the rest of us.

Why not?

Because the law wasn't intended to make you right with God.

That's not what the law was intended to do.

The law was the law of God was never intended to be an obstacle course or a proving ground to prove to God how much you love Him, to get into a right relationship with God.

It was never intended for that.

And what it was intended to do was to point us to Jesus, who alone could keep the law for our sakes.

It was intended to show us that you need Jesus.

The law doesn't simply show you that you're inconsistent.

The law was meant to show you that you're incapable.

You can't do it.

And Jesus doesn't just make up the difference for where we fall short, he pays the whole.

So, in justification, your work doesn't play into it at all.

It's just Jesus' work that makes us right with God.

And you need someone to do it for you.

And Paul knew this.

Paul took obedience as far as any person could take it.

He was as fastidious as anyone, he ran harder than anyone, he was the most Pharisaic Pharisee, he was the Jewish Jew, he was the person who tried his best to do it and he couldn't do it.

And so the best of the best was no better than the worst of the worst.

The only way in is through Jesus.

And it would be easy for us to say, well, that can't be right.

But try it.

And it will make you one of two things horrible or horrified.

And what I mean by that is the legalistic mind thinks it makes itself righteous with God by observing the law, but it doesn't.

And the legalistic mind manifests itself in a condemning spirit.

And it's either condemning outwardly towards other people, or it's condemning inwardly toward yourself.

And so when the condemning mind, the legalistic mind is focused inwardly, a person is filled with self-loathing and shame and a sense of failure.

And a constant uh is constantly driven by duty and performance as a way of relieving their mental shame.

Not looking to the cross, but looking to their own performance.

I have to do this to be made right with God.

When the condemning spirit of legalism is focused outwardly, it is constantly criticizing other people, it's constantly feeling righteous by comparison, it picks the mistakes of others and constantly focuses on the problems of the world as if somehow they're better and don't fit into that.

It pretends to have a righteousness by comparing itself to others, uh the failures of others.

God gave the law to point us to Jesus, to say, if you want to see the law fulfilled, look to Jesus because with every single facet of his life, he did what the law was telling us to do.

He loved the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength.

He trusted in God, he was faithful to God, he delighted in God.

So the law is not a checklist of things you are supposed to do to be right with God.

The law is a checklist of things that Jesus has accomplished to make you right with God.

Now we'll talk later on about the obedience and obedience in the Christian life, but you have to clear the air because you will base your justification on your performance unless you realize that your justification has been completely won for you and earned for you by Jesus.

Right?

There's this saying, maybe you've heard it, 95% of problems in the Christian life come down to a misunderstanding of justification, sanctification, or scripture.

So God gave the law to point us to Jesus.

So Peter, Peter's, Paul is saying, we who are the best of the best know that we are not made right with God by what we do.

We never could be.

No one could ever have done it.

So Jesus did it.

God did it for us because he loved us.

Christianity was never about all these religious duties we do for God.

Christianity has always been about what God has done for us and the way that we respond to his generous grace.

So we need justification.

But the second thing he's talking about here is the nature of justification.

Again, we read verses 15 and 16.

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.

Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

Now, what is what is that?

It's a legal declaration.

Justification is a legal declaration that I have done all that is required and have done nothing that is forbidden.

All is well between us.

Justification's different in that it's saying that a person who's justified is saying everything is taken care of, and the law would, in the law, like human level, we'd say, I'm justified if I've done everything I'm supposed to do.

Theologically, justification is different because it's not saying that I've done everything that I'm supposed to do.

The law says, justification says Jesus has done everything I'm supposed to do.

So the Westminster shorter catechism gives us a good definition of what justification is.

Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone.

So the definition is catching for us, captures a reality is that justification is a once-for-all-time act.

And when a person becomes a believer, that's when they're justified.

Not at the end, when you've lived your life, but the moment you become a Christian, you are justified.

That means if you're 77 when you become a Christian, that means that the previous 77 years that you've lived are now forgiven, you're justified, and it means that whatever time you have left, you're also justified.

It means if your life was a 1,000-page book and uh you're on page 247, you still have 700 more pages to go in your book, the book of your life.

Jesus comes in and places the seal on the cover of the book, justified.

So that it's not just everything in the past, and then the rest of the chapter is up to the rest of the book is up to you, but the whole book of your life, you are justified and you're declared righteous with God.

So the definition captures that reality.

It's a one-time mag.

Jesus doesn't make up the difference, He pays the whole.

He's your qualification.

God accepts us apart from anything we do or apart from anything I have done.

It covers the whole of my life just because of Jesus.

Now, I usually do a t-shirt illustration where I have like justified and righteous and those kind of things.

I've done that in here before.

But I decided to let the Bible be the illustration for this.

And if you probably are thinking, well, there's got to be a good illustration in the New Testament for justification by grace through faith.

But one of the best illustrations of justification by grace through faith comes from the Old Testament, from the book of Zechariah, chapter 3.

Zechariah 3 · chapter mention

Now Joshua, the high priest, was standing before the angel, clothed with his in his filthy garments.

And the angel said to those who were standing before him, Remove the filthy garments from him.

And to him he said, Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments, pure garments, which he did.

And that's a gr I love that story from the Old Testament.

And God instructs the angel to remove all of the filthy garments.

So that's what Jesus is doing in our justification is all the sins that we are committed, all the crime, all the guilt, everything, is taken away so that we don't wear that.

We don't bear that anymore in the presence of God.

You may still sin, but God loves you as if you didn't.

He loves you as if you'd never sinned and lived a perfect life.

But then he does something else, which floors us.

He actually gives us the righteousness of Christ and dresses us in the raiment of Christ, so that when we enter into the presence of God, we are dressed as Christ.

We are dressed like him.

So I love the story.

Justification is God's righteous act of removing the guilt and penalty of sin while at the same time declaring the ungodly to be righteous through faith in Christ's work.

It's called the great exchange is my sin is given to Jesus, and Jesus' righteousness is given to me.

There's an exchange.

He gets all my sin, I get all his glory, and I'm with him, and I will be with him forever.

This is what the Apostle Paul writes elsewhere in 2 Corinthians 5 21.

For our sake, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us.

God made him had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Justification is a declaration that if you believe, has been pronounced over your whole life.

So that thing that you did 30 years ago, it's covered.

And the thing that you're gonna face in three months, four months, or two years, that's really hard and really difficult, and you're gonna fail and fall.

Jesus says, My sin will cover that too.

My sin will I my grace will cover that sin too.

I will hold you.

You're still mine.

Some of you are struggling with sin right now, and you're thinking, I've got to get this under control to be able to enter into the presence of God because you still think it's up to you.

Whereas what the gospel bids you to do.

First and foremost, is go to Jesus first to find the strength to be able to deal with the sin.

Go to him because he says, Come to me, I will help, I will be with you.

And this brings us to the last, which is how do we receive justification?

Not by our works, not by our efforts, not by our sincerity, but by faith.

Galatians 2, 15 to 16.

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

We receive justification simply by faith in Jesus.

And this is the crux issue in the book of Galatians, and it's the crux issue in our relationship with God.

Some of us really struggle to feel God's acceptance.

We never experience joy, we've never felt loved in our relationship with God because we feel there's always something I haven't done.

I'm disappointed with me.

So God must be disappointed with me.

The true struggle in the Christian life is not the struggle to be a better person.

The true struggle in the Christian life is to truly believe the gospel, that it's true.

This is what R.

C.

Sprohl wrote.

He says it's one thing to understand justification by faith in the head.

It's another to get it into your bloodstream, to let it flow into the lives of everyone you meet, so that it courses through your veins and it's lived out.

Remember, legalism is lived outwardly and it's lived out inwardly.

It's the same when we understand the grace of God.

We live that outwardly and we live it inwardly as we believe it.

So, how do you think God feels about you right now?

Does he have a clipboard?

Is he tapping his foot, waiting for you to get your act in gear?

Does he have a checklist of all the things you're not doing?

Is he shaking his head that you're not doing enough, you're not trying enough?

Does he find you to be so fickle and so annoying that you're so weak and he's disappointed with you?

Do you believe that?

I remember reading a book a couple of years ago about a woman, a married woman in Atlanta with two small children, and she told the author that she was certain that God was disappointed with her because she wasn't doing anything for God.

She said that she felt called to a soup kitchen ministry but struggled with leaving her children in someone else's care.

She was shocked when she was told that the call was not from God, but from her own ingrained legalism.

Being a good mother wasn't enough for her in her mind, and neither was it good enough for God.

That God was standing over her saying, do more, do more, do more.

But you should not imagine your feelings of shame, guilt, disappointment with yourself to somehow be a radar or radio receiver where you're receiving that from God.

Like God is somehow sending to you waves of his disappointment, and that's what you're feeling, right?

I remember this when my mother went through this.

Uh we would be in the middle of a restaurant and it would be cool, like it's cold in here today.

It'd be cool like that.

And all of a sudden she would start just like shedding her jacket and her sweater and just go, Oh my goodness, it's so hot in here.

She was having a hot flash.

And the temperature hadn't changed, nothing was different.

It was all inside of her, but she felt like somehow everything on the outside was projecting that towards her, like it's the temperature's changing.

Why did it get so hot in here?

It's not, it's you.

And when we talk about that kind of sense of disappointment, why do you why do we think that somehow we have a radio receiver from God, that what I'm feeling at this moment is how God feels about me?

Why do we think that?

Could it be that while you're wallowing in your guilt, that Jesus is standing victorious, saying, that one too.

That one too.

I paid for that one too.

Come to the throne of grace first.

We have it backwards.

We think if I get my life together, God will accept me.

If I feel good about me, then God will feel good about me.

We have it backwards.

It's we have to go to God first and see what he really says and thinks about us, and then we respond.

So some of us, we feel like we have to drum up and produce good feelings for God to accept us.

God doesn't like a sour puss.

I have to experience joy in order to draw close to God, to be acceptable to God, but it's the exact opposite.

We experience joy not in order to be accepted by God, but joy because we have been and are accepted by God.

We have it backwards.

I have to be sincere enough.

No, sincerity is a result of the gospel of grace.

And recognizing I don't have to hide who I am.

I can be sincere.

I can be me warts and all because I'm accepted by Jesus.

I have to repent enough.

I have to hate my sin enough.

No, we have it backwards.

Repentance is a result of the gospel, not a prerequisite for the gospel.

Jesus enables that when we come to him in faith.

I have to be willing to change my life enough.

No, life change is a result of the gospel, not a prerequisite.

I have to love other people and serve them.

No.

Love and service is a fruit of the gospel, not a prerequisite for the gospel.

I have to read my Bible and then God will accept me.

No.

If you believe that God accepts you, you want to read your Bible and spend time with Him.

God accepts us completely.

God accepts us perfectly through Jesus and only through Jesus, but you are completely acceptable through Jesus if you're acceptable apart from anything you do.

There's no qualifier, there's no glitch, there's no loophole.

We're simply justified by believing in Jesus.

So, what does it mean to believe?

Unbelief is this.

I've had enough of God.

I don't want God around.

I don't like what He stands for.

God is what's wrong with the world.

And unbelief can take many forms.

It can be false religion, it can be irreligion, it can be no religion, but all are types of unbelief.

Belief in the gospel is this.

Faith is accepting that God is just the kind of God who would save us fully, completely, forever, because of his grace.

And apart from what we do, that is who he is.

And I trust him.

I have faith.

I want him around.

I adore him and his vision for the world.

I can't get enough of him.

I want him for his own sake.

I love God and I believe that he loves me.

In 1570, 1636, there was a preacher by the name of John Rogers of Dedham.

I think we have a quote from him.

This is what he said.

Faith is a particular persuasion of my heart.

I'm convinced.

Faith is a particular persuasion of my heart that Christ Jesus is mine and that I shall have life and salvation by his means.

That whatsoever Christ did for the redemption of mankind, he did it for me.

That's faith.

Faith is saying, that goodness I hear about in Jesus, that he forgives our sins completely, I believe that.

I accept that.

And I walk that way.

So what would that look like?

What would that look like?

Well, we said earlier that the legalistic mind condemns outwardly and inwardly.

But what about the gospel?

Well, the gospel does change how we live outwardly and inwardly, how we relate to other people.

The Judaizers who came in saying circumcision saves you, they live they lived out that legalistic mind outwardly and inwardly.

And their division between them and other people and saying, Nope, you haven't done the things you're supposed to do to be right with God.

We've done these things.

But the gospel says, no, you're accepted only, ever, always, because of grace.

And when that settles in, it changes you.

I think I put this quote in your hand in the handout for this week because I wanted you to have it.

I think it's I think it's important.

The subtle power of spiritual abuse by David Johnson and Jeff Van Vonderen.

This is their quote.

How would you picture a Christian who is growing in godliness?

Would they convey restfulness, which comes from being comfortable and at peace with God?

Would they convey a sense of fulfillment, knowing that whatever spiritual work they were doing was in God's will, instead of feeling they had to keep striving for more perfection?

Would their advice begin by directing you to Jesus, or would it cause you to focus on yourself and your behaviors?

And ultimately, would this Christian bring with them a sense of life, which Paul describes as the sweet fragrance of Jesus Christ?

I think it's important for us to think about how the gospel changes us and it changes how we talk to people.

I had a student years ago, of course I did because I always talk about that.

And uh she started coming around our group, and she was nervous and kind of like she just couldn't keep, she was fidgety.

And as I was sitting with her, I was thinking, she's hiding something.

I don't know what it is, but she's hiding something.

We started talking, and you know, this is a 20, 19, 20-year-old college student.

And there were two things.

One is when she was in high school, like middle school, she had a Sunday school teacher who just put her under the law and said that any young woman who struggled with bad pictures was not a Christian and was rejected by Jesus forever.

And we sat there talking about it and talking about the gospel of that, and it wasn't helping her.

And then I realized, wait a second, she's the young woman who was looking at bad pictures online, and she felt ashamed because that is historically a man's sin, not a woman's sin.

And she found herself being addicted to it, and it was she just felt ashamed.

And we talked about the gospel and things, you know, not not practical steps that you can take for that, but just the gospel.

And there were two things that happened afterwards.

One was short term, one was long term.

She was in a Bible study that we were doing at our house that night, and she showed up that night after I shared the gospel with her, and I said, How are you doing?

She said, Well, Stephen, I gotta be honest with you.

I went home after our conversation and I danced.

I danced for joy that God could accept someone like me.

Now she still struggled, but about two months later, she came to me and she said, Stephen, the best thing that has ever happened to me happened.

I said, What is that?

She said, My computer broke.

She's like, I'm not gonna get another one.

Um so she needed to hear the gospel.

She needed some practical stuff too, like the death of her computer, but she needed to know that God's grace was for her and for others.

And we'll close with this quote from uh Stephen Nichols.

God's grace is not for the lovely.

God's grace is not for those who have it together.

God's grace is not for those who please him.

God's grace is for sinners.

God's grace is for miserable, unworthy sinners.

It's for those who recognize they do not have what it takes, but they recognize that in Jesus they have everything they need to be accepted by God and fuel for beginning to live a new life in Jesus.

Let me pray for us.