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THE GOOD NEWS OF GOD'S GRACE KILLS AND MAKES ALIVEGalatians 2:17-21INTRODUCTION This last week a friend called me in great distress. She had failed to take a stand for Christ with a non-Christian friend and was feeling very guilty and ashamed. She said to me, “I’m such a failure as a Christian.” I told her, “You’re right. You are an absolute failure as a Christian and you always will be. It’s a good thing you know this. So go to Christ and trust in him. He never failed to live the Christian life for you and then bore God’s anger against you for your failure.” What I was telling her is what Paul told Peter and the churches of Galatia in 2:16. We know that no one is accepted by God or loved by God on the basis of their obedience to any law but rather, right standing with God is based upon our faith in the finished and perfect work of Christ. My need for a Savior will never end, for all of eternity. I will never be able to stand before God as righteous based upon my own performance of any law. I am always dependent upon the righteousness of Christ and his suffering the wrath of God in my behalf. However, doesn’t my response to her seem to be a little off? Doesn’t it sound like I’m telling her that it doesn’t matter how you live once you are a Christian? If we are declared righteous not because of anything we do or decide but by faith in Jesus then why should we care how we live? If we are not justified by “works of the law” of any variety then why should I worry about obeying any law? Or if I could ask the question the way that Paul does in v. 17, “If while seeking to be justified by Christ even we law-keeping Jews are found to be sinners, just like the Gentiles, does that mean that Christ serves the interests of sin, that he promotes sin?” Do you see what he is saying? In order for a law-keeping Jew to be justified he must first confess that he is not truly keeping the law, that he is a sinner because while he may be keeping part of the law, he has never kept the entire law. Every Jew who places their faith in Christ is saying that regardless of all the laws they have kept, they are no different from the Gentiles who do not have the law. They are sinners, just like the Gentiles. That means that the gospel of Christ declares guilty sinners who should be sent to hell forgiven and perfectly just, not because the sinner has done anything but because Christ has done everything. Therefore, doesn’t that seem then that Jesus is promoting sin because he actually says that the only people he is going to justify are sinners? He treats all men the same. He treats those who are trying to keep the law the same as though who do not care about the law. He is not impressed with law keeping and does not prefer those who seek to keep the law any different from those who completely disregard the law. He isn’t more likely to save someone who is sexually moral than he is to save someone who commits adultery. He isn’t more likely to save someone who always tells the truth than he is to save a habitual liar. So isn’t he promoting sin? Doesn’t the gospel teach men to totally disregard the law and doing right? All you have to do to qualify for justification by Christ is be a sinner. What motive is there to do right? When the gospel of God’s grace through Christ is clearly taught, then the charge that the gospel permits people to lead lives full of sin is made. Paul raised the question with Peter because he knew that was exactly what the “men from James” were saying. He also knows that this is one of the main charges being made by the false teachers in Galatia. This is the sort of charge that the opponents of the gospel have made throughout the history of the church. The charge is made that the gospel promotes sin because it says that God justifies the wicked. What reason can there be to seek to live a righteous life if I’m righteous without doing anything but by trusting in Christ to do everything for me? Therefore, what Paul is doing in this passage, after declaring that justification is based not upon human performance of any law but rather upon faith in Christ, is showing why it is that Jesus, by freely justifying sinners, is not a promoter of sin. Or to say it another way, Paul is out to show why it is that those who trust Christ for justification live an increasingly righteous life. He is showing why it is that Christians live a new and different life, even though they are not made right with God on the basis of living a new life. MAIN POINT Only Jesus is able to make us alive to God because…I. The law only proves I am a lawbreaker (v. 18-19a) To make sense out of vv. 18-21 you need to see how Paul is using himself as a representative of a believing Jew. This is a common method of communication. I use it all the time. When I am trying to make a point about the application of the Scriptures I will often use myself as a representative of all of us. That is what Paul is doing. In v. 18 he is saying, “If I, or any other believing Jew, like the “men from James” or the false teachers at Galatia, rebuild again what I or they destroyed, I, and they, whoever they may be, only prove that we are lawbreakers.” What is it that every believing Jewish person has destroyed and that they might be tempted to rebuild? Every Jew who believes in Christ has destroyed the law as the means of being made right with God. Paul renounced any righteousness that might be gained from keeping the law. In order to be a Christian, every human must confess that they are not righteous, have never done good, have never sought God. Every law-abiding Jew must acknowledge that their law keeping did nothing to bring them to God, to change God’s opinion about them. Just like we read in Isaiah 64, every Jew, every religious person must acknowledge that all of the “good deeds” that I have done are filthy rags, unclean and unacceptable before God. My circumcision, my keeping the Sabbath regulations, my tithing, my giving alms to the poor, my memorizing of the OT Scriptures, my not committing murder, my obeying my parents, my going to temple and offering of sacrifices, my keeping of vows made to God, all of these things are polluted and unclean and do not make me any different from Gentile sinners who do not have the law. This reliance upon keeping of the law is what every Jew, every person who is justified by faith in Christ must destroy. Now, what the “men from James”, Peter, Barnabas, the other Jews at Antioch and the false teachers in Galatia are all doing is rebuilding their reliance on the law. Each of these is acting as if God’s acceptance of them is based upon their keeping of the law. This is what my friend who called me this week was doing as well. It is the easiest thing in the world for proud sinners to do. We have such a difficult time believing that all of our righteous deeds are as filthy rags, that our acceptance with God depends entirely upon the work of another and not upon us at all. So we are continually trying to rebuild the way of law keeping to be accepted by God. Notice what Paul says at the end of v. 18. He says that when we live as though our keeping of the law is necessary to be loved by God we don’t actually change God’s opinion of us; we only prove that we are lawbreakers. Why is that? Because the only thing the law can do to a sinner is show him or her sin. That is the function of the law. The law was not given to make you righteous but to show that you are a sinner. Everyone who seeks to be made right with God based upon obedience to any law is misusing the law. The law cannot make you righteous, it can only show you your sin; prove that you are a lawbreaker. In v. 19 Paul says that it was through the law that he died to the law in order that he might live to God. The famous reformer, Martin Luther says about this verse, “This seems a strange and wonderful definition, that to live to the law is to die to God, and to die to the law is to live to God. These propositions are contrary to reason.” If you seek to be made right with God by keeping the law, you will be rejected by God and sent to hell forever. If, however, you die to the law, that is, renounce reliance upon the law, if you quit obeying the law as the means to be made right with God, you will be loved by God, accepted by him and rewarded with heaven. This is counter-intuitive, isn’t it? The only people who can be made right with God are those who do not seek to obey the law in order to be made right with God. However, Paul says that the law itself kills his reliance upon the law. How does the law do that? Let’s think for a minute about Paul’s conversion. Saul, the Pharisee was absolutely convinced that law-keeping was the means to be made right with God. He was so convinced of this that he made it his life’s ambition to destroy those Jews who were saying that it was only through faith in Christ that you could be made right with God, not through keeping the law. His devotion to the law led him to hate, torture, arrest and murder Christians. While he was doing this, he was convinced that he was right, that he was defending God’s honor and preserving the purity of God’s law. He saw himself as fighting against a perverted and dishonorable false teacher named Jesus, the horrible people who followed him and a wicked lie. The OT Scriptures, as far as he was concerned, confirmed his view and endorsed what he was doing. However, when the Lord Jesus Christ revealed himself as the Messiah, the Son of God, the fulfillment of the OT Scriptures in that burst of light on the road to Damascus he vividly saw what he had been blind to. He saw that his devotion to the law drove him to break the law in horrendous, blasphemous ways. While he prided himself in keeping the law he was breaking the law by murder and hatred. While he prided himself in believing truth he was fighting against the One who was the Truth. While he saw himself as fighting against an imposter, he found that he was the imposter and that he was combating the Messiah. He saw, when Jesus was revealed to him, that all of his “obedience to the law” was offensive to God because it was based upon self-reliance, not Christ reliance. By the work of the Holy Spirit, Paul realized that to rely on the law was to oppose Jesus Christ, the author and subject of the law. By the enlightening work of God’s Spirit he realized that the law could only condemn him and so, by the law, he died to the law as the means of being made right with God. His reliance on the law killed his reliance on the law as his reliance on the law only proved that he was a wicked sinner who deserved judgment. What was the source of his pride became the source of his greatest shame. Thus apart from reliance upon the law he was made alive to God. When you see yourself in the light of God’s holiness as revealed in his word, you realize that all of your pretensions to goodness and holiness are a sham. All of your confidence in your own goodness, your own “doing the right thing” is shattered when you see the perfection of holiness revealed in the Word of God made flesh. When God opens your eyes to what the law demands, absolute holiness, you cease relying upon the law and depend solely upon Jesus Christ. Through the law, you die to reliance upon the law, as you see that the law can only curse you and not in any way save you. Only Jesus is able to make us alive to God because…
II. All who trust Christ are dead and therefore alive (vv. 19b-20b) Paul says in the second half of v. 19 and v. 20 what he takes at least two and half chapters in his letter to the Romans to say. We are going to try to get the basic outline of how it is that Christians now live their lives “in the flesh.” That is the emphasis of this statement, the life he now lives in the flesh, in his physical body in this physical world, prior to the return of Christ. Paul is talking about how it is that Christians, while living in their physical bodies upon this earth, live to God. What he says here is that he, as an illustration of what is true for every Christian, is in some sense dead while he yet lives. First he says, “I have been crucified with Christ so I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” Through my faith in Christ, everything that happens to him, happens to me. I am in Christ and Christ is in me. I am united to him by faith. The emphasis here is upon our death with Christ. Every person who is united to Christ by faith was in some sense killed when Christ was killed on the cross and continues to be dead. In what sense were we killed with Christ upon the cross? Let me mention just three ways we were killed with Christ and continue to be dead. First, as this context makes so plain, we were killed in regards to the law. We died to the law as an instrument of attaining righteousness before God. Christ and his sufferings are what the entire law points towards. He is the goal or “end of the law.” So when Christ dies he fulfills all of the OT commands regarding the sacrifice of animals, the ordinances surrounding the priesthood and the temple worship. His death is the culmination or climax of all the laws regulating how sinners might approach God through all the ceremonies, cleanliness laws and sacrifices of the OT. This is the reason that we, as Christians, don’t obey the commands regarding animal sacrifice. It is the reason that we don’t have priests to represent us to God. It is the reason we don’t have temples or an altar or burn incense or put out twelve loaves of bread or keep the feasts of the Jewish calendar. This was the ground upon which Luther and Calvin and the other reformers rejected the Roman Catholic priesthood and Sacraments because we have been crucified with Christ to all of the rituals and performances of the law to gain right standing with God. However, we died to the law as the means of being made right with God, not only in its religious rituals but also in its moral obligations. Christ obeyed the law for us. He fulfilled the law in our place. When we died with Christ we died to the obligation to obey the law as the ground of our justification. Christ’s death was acceptable to God as the payment of our sin because he kept the moral law. Therefore, when we die with Christ we die to the obligation to keep the moral law, the 10 Commandments, in order to be made right with God. Second, we have died to the power of the law to condemn us. Because we are united to Christ by faith and have thus been crucified with him, we cannot die again. The law demands that we die for breaking it. Every breaking of God’s law demands the death penalty. Christ died for us and we died with Christ therefore we cannot be killed again. There is no double jeopardy in God’s court. You cannot be punished for the same sins twice. You and your sins were punished in the death of Christ; therefore we cannot be punished for these same sins again. For all who have been crucified with Christ we cannot die again, death no longer has any hold over us. Death is no longer an entry into an eternal hell but into an eternal heaven. There is nothing left to fear because we have been crucified with Christ. There is no more wrath left for us who have been crucified with Christ. We are loved by God and nothing can take that love from us. The debt has been paid, Christ has endured the penalty for us so that we are counted as having paid the debt and suffered the penalty already. Third, we have died to sin by being crucified with Christ. We don’t have the time to work out the entire relationship between sin and the law. Paul spends almost two chapters doing that in Romans. In Romans 6:6-7 Paul says, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him that the body of sin might be done away with that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.” Then in vv. 11-12 he says, “The death he died, he died to sin, once for all but the life he lives he lives to God. Therefore, consider yourselves dead to sin but alive to God.” We remain dead to sin’s power because we were crucified with Christ. Sin is no longer our master because dead slaves do not obey their masters any longer. We were the slaves of sin prior to our conversion. We had to obey our master’s voice. But now, by dying with Christ we are dead to our former master’s commands. We do not have to obey sin’s commands. So Paul says back in Gal 2:20, “I no longer live.” What “I” is he talking about? Quite clearly he is still living, so what “I” is dead? The “I” that seeks to obey the law in order to be made right with God; the “I” that is condemned by the law for breaking it; the “I” that is a slave to sin’s commands—this is the “I” that is now dead. However, just like Christ who died and rose again, so the Christian, while living in this body, lives a new life. This new life is the very life of Christ who lives in me. What makes the Christian distinct is not his life in the flesh. We live in the same kinds of houses as non-Christians, we eat the same food, we go to work, we wear the same kinds of clothes, it is not our external lifestyle that makes us distinct, as was the case with Jewish law-keepers who were separated from Gentiles by their religious observances. Rather it is our life of faith in Christ. Before I tell you what it means for “Christ to live in me” or “to live by faith in the Son of God,” let me tell you what it does not mean. There are many within the evangelical church who use this verse to teach a sort of mystical, magical Christianity. It’s a “let go and let God” approach to living the Christian life. You don’t do anything but stop relying upon yourself and wait for Jesus to make his life come alive in you. There is truth in what is said. If I perform any truly good act, it is not I doing it but Christ in me. However, it doesn’t happen by some strange mystical or mysterious process. Being a Christian is no different than being a non-Christian except for the object of your faith, what you trust in. Everyone lives by faith all the time. Every act of every human being is done according to what you believe you must have to be happy. The reason you look at pornography is because you believe looking at pornography will make you happy. The reason you yell at your kids is because you believe obedient children are necessary for your happiness and you are going to make them pay for not making you happy. The Christian trusts in Jesus Christ who loved us and gave himself for us. So then, faith in Christ is believing that we are going to heaven because of what Christ did, not because of what we do and believing that going to heaven is the best thing that could ever happen to a person. Therefore, we love to love others, to renounce anger and bitterness and resentment. We delight to reject lust and the fruits of it: pornography and homosexuality and premarital sexual contact and adultery. We love to tell the truth and to help the poor and the weak. We are generous with our time and money and self-controlled in our eating and drinking and spending. We don’t complain and argue but are grateful to God and depend upon him to provide for us all that we need. We are not proud, but humble. We live by faith in Christ. We believe we are going to heaven and so we live like we are going to heaven. We are taken up with all that God has given us in Christ and will give us in Christ. Christ himself is our life. We trust that every good thing comes to us by, with and through Jesus Christ and so we live upon him. Only Jesus is able to make us alive to God because…
III. The power of grace is released only in the crucified Christ (vv. 20c-21) At the end of v. 20 Paul describes what it is about Christ that makes him the object of faith. Why do I trust Christ and why does my faith in Christ make such a profound difference? “Christ loved me,” Paul says “and he gave himself for me.” I hope you hear the wonder in Paul’s voice. “I was a blasphemer, a persecutor and a violent man” but Christ loved me and gave himself for me. Even when I was an enemy of God, a sinner, acting as though I were righteous by my own law-keeping while violently disobeying that law, even then Christ loved me and his love for me, moved him to hand himself over to the torturers for me. Christ did not give himself for Paul or for any Christian because he saw some worthwhile thing in Paul or us. Christ did not die for us because we are valuable or because we are worth loving. It is a lie when modern therapeutic preachers say that the proof of our value is that God gave his Son for us. Christ loving me and giving himself for me does not show how great I am, it shows how great he is. He loves a sinner like me and he suffers and dies for a sinner like me. He dies because he chooses to love us in spite of who are, not because of who we are. This is the heart of the gospel, right here. This is what is supposed to capture us. Our minds are to be thinking about this all the time and our hearts are to be ravished by this. What is more astonishing than this, what could possibly be better than this, Christ loved me and gave himself for me? Do you actually believe that getting to watch your favorite TV program is better than this? Can having a husband or a wife who truly loves you be better than this? Not having to wait in line at the grocery store is more satisfying than this? The pleasure of drugs or alcohol is better than this? Being popular is more delightful than this? Having a large retirement account is more secure than this? If you can say, “Christ loved me and gave himself for me”, then you possess the universe because all that Christ possesses he is giving and will give to you. In spite of your law-breaking, God-despising life, God, in his infinite mercy and by his pure and holy good pleasure is going to give you everything for the sake of Christ. That is why the next thing Paul says is “I do not nullify the grace of God.” There are two ways that you can set aside the grace of God. First, you can say that the reason God loves you is because of something you have done or decided. You nullify the unmerited, free and sovereign grace of God when you say that Christ loved you and gave himself for you because of who you are or what you have done or decided. When you say that you must do something in addition to what the glorious Son of God did for you in order to be justified, then you reject God’s grace. Second, you set aside the grace of God when you live in and love the pleasures of sin even while you claim to be forgiven by Christ. It is only the gospel of Jesus Christ that does not nullify God’s grace because it teaches that we are accepted and given eternal life not because of us but because of Christ. It teaches that all who are united by faith to Christ now live a new life by their faith in Christ. This is not a life motivated by law-keeping, not by pride or fear, but motivated by faith in this Christ who loved me and gave himself for me. Paul ends this section in the most emphatic of ways. The “righteousness” that Paul is speaking of here is primarily that perfect righteousness that you must have to be accepted by God. Only perfectly righteous people can live with God. But also it refers to the fact that only people who have been made righteous by God can then begin to live a life of righteousness. There can only be one way of being made righteous. Either you are made righteous by your own efforts, by your own obedience to the law or you are made righteous by the work of Christ, by his life and death. If you are made righteous by the law, that is, by obeying the law, then Christ died for nothing. If, however, you are made righteous by the death of Christ, then the law, that is obedience to the law, has nothing to do with your righteousness. Either the law has no power or Christ has no power. There is no value in the death of Christ if it is possible for men to do something to attain right standing with God or for men to live righteously without him. He ends this section by posing this question, “Will you trust in the law and your ability to keep it or will you trust in Christ who loved you and gave himself for you?” The words of Martin Luther are helpful here, "The Law loved me not, nor gave itself for me. Rather it accused me, terrified me, and drove me to desperation. But I have now another who has delivered me from the terrors of the law, sin, and death and has brought me into liberty, the righteousness of God, and eternal life. Jesus Christ who loved me and gave himself for me.” Which will you say, that the law is useless or that Christ is useless? You cannot say both. You must rely upon one or the other to make you righteous in God’s sight and to enable you to live righteous once made righteous. Will you rest your hope of eternal life upon your strength or upon the strength of Christ? Only Jesus is able to make us alive to God because…
© Copyright
2005 John Swanson.
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