We are back in Galatians chapter two for message number nine in the book of Galatians. We’re still in this second chapter and it’s a wonderful chapter. We’re enjoying it a lot for all that is in it. It’s a narrative. It’s very personal between Paul and Peter, confrontational even between them. But very applicable to all of us to our Christian life. In verses one through 10, Paul reflected back to the time that he went to Jerusalem to the Jerusalem Council and there defended the gospel of grace that it’s not by the works of the law, but it’s by faith alone. And then beginning in verse 11, we have this personal story about Paul hearing or watching Peter do something that is uncharacteristic of him and that is to back off a little bit from the message because of what people were thinking of him or other things.
And so Paul is seeing that and Paul confronts him. And so we first took the first few of those verses from 11 up to 14. And I’ve pointed out that it’s in verse 14 that the quotation begins. If you being a Jew live in the manner and you see those words, that will go all the way through verse 21 where we’re going to end up today. In verse 16, last week, we emphasize the justification.
Remember the word justification. The first time Paul uses it in his writings, but he will use it a number of times. As a matter of fact, three times in that verse he uses it. And in this book, he’ll use it a lot. That means when we were saved, we were justified the day we got the moment we got saved. God forgave us of our sins. He made us a child of God. He covers us with the righteousness of Christ. And though we are still sinners in this world, sinners saved by grace, God can look on us as if we have never sinned, justified.
Then we have this quotation that he begins to confront Peter about. And he will introduce, as he does throughout these verses, also the life that we live. Not only are we saved by faith without the works of the law, but we live our life also by faith without the works of the law. Now that doesn’t mean we don’t have rules in the Christian life. That is, grace demands things of us. But it means that those things are accomplished in us through the power of Jesus Christ, not by our efforts to keep the law of Moses. And so that’s where he’s still on that context and that message here.
So I thought as I was sitting in my son’s house in Colorado, and I’m going over these verses and thinking about how do you illustrate justification and also sanctification? And outside his house in the back area where he lives, Colorado has all of these trails. You can walk him, you can ride your bike, you can take your dogs out there.
And I’m watching people go up and down this trail in the back of his behind his house. And I don’t know how many people have dogs that have to walk him, but I tell you there’s a bunch of them. And so people are out here walking their dog. And some of them have these leashes that go how 20, 30 feet. These dogs go way out there, but they can’t go further than that. And I’m thinking about I’m watching these people walk these dogs down this trail. And I thought, you know, on the one hand, this dog is attached to that owner and that’s it, just like we’re attached to Christ.
He saves us, he controls us, he assures us of who we are. But then some of those leashes go pretty far out. And I’ve noticed that some dogs walk real close, you know, some like to wander off in the weeds, you know, until they get pulled back. And in our Christian life, we’re kind of on a leash like that. We’re still attached to our owner. We still belong to him and he’s not going to let go of us. But he allows us to go here and go here, but with his control. And so one is kind of like our justification. We’re tied to our owner, but one is kind of like our sanctification that we have to go over here, we have to go over there, and we have to do it under his control and the control of the spirit.
Now, I wrote out some thoughts that I want to give you in an introductory manner here. There are people even today that are saying we should follow the Mosaic law. I guess there have always been those kinds of people. There surely were in Paul’s day because some didn’t want to think that the law was done. Some of them didn’t believe, of course, that Jesus was the Messiah.
So the law would still be in effect. We have people like that today. But today people will say, well, we know that we’re saved by grace. We know that we’re saved by faith and that part has changed. Jesus came and fulfilled the sacrificial system and so forth.
And so, yes, we have to be saved by grace. But then they will say, but for sanctification, we should be keeping the law. We should be doing those things that the law points out, which would be everything from Sabbath keeping to maybe dress codes to food, dieting, and depending on which group you’re with. There are Seventh-day Adventists, of course, that not only say we should worship on Saturday on the Sabbath, but we should keep dietary laws and so forth. There are people called Theonomists or Dominion Theology that say the law is still in effect and we still have to keep this law.
So we have this problem today. Now, here’s a key difference between what they’re saying and what we’re saying. They would say that the law is still in effect unless the New Testament says you don’t have to do this anymore.
Now, that sounds good, doesn’t it? If the law, if the New Testament says it. The difference is that we would say when Jesus Christ died on the cross, all of the law was done, every bit of it. Now, there’s the civil part of it. There’s the ceremonial part of it.
There’s the moral part of it. The law is usually divided into those three things. The civil part has to do with the governing parts. The taxes, the things that you had to do for the temple.
The ceremonial part was more of the sacrificial part. And then there’s the moral law. All of the moral laws, the Ten Commandments, for example. So do we still have to keep all of those? What we’re saying is, no, all of the law ended. As a matter of fact, look with me in chapter 3, verse 19. What purpose then does the law serve? I want you to notice two words in this verse.
It was added. So first of all, there’s a beginning to the law. And that beginning was with Moses in 1400s BC.
It was added because of transgressions. And the next word is until or till. In other words, there’s an end to the law. There’s a beginning and there’s an end. Till the seed should come.
Notice the capital S on that word seed. Who is that? Jesus Christ. How long did the law last until Jesus Christ came? To whom the promise was made. And it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator. Now look at chapter 5 and verse 18 for a quick statement then. Paul will go over this a number of times in this book. If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. If you are saved and you have the Holy Spirit living in you, then you are not under the Mosaic law.
That dog leash that I described, tried to use as an analogy, that’s not the law. That’s the Holy Spirit guiding you and telling you how far and what you can do. So they may say, let’s use the Sabbath as an example. They would say we should keep the Sabbath, we should worship on Saturday, and maybe the dietary laws too because the New Testament never said don’t keep the Sabbath anymore. But we are saying Jesus said don’t keep any of the law anymore unless it’s reiterated in the New Testament. And so do we have any command in the New Testament to keep the Sabbath?
We do not. That doesn’t mean that there weren’t Jews doing it. Paul even went into the synagogues on the Sabbath day so that he could preach, but he went and met with the Christians on Sunday. And so what the New Testament says is Sunday is the Lord’s day. Sunday is the first day of the week. This is when the disciples came together. So the command about the Sabbath ended with the Old Testament and it’s never restated. That’s an important point. The theonomous, 70 Adventists and so forth, have a principle that they call abrogation.
In other words, it’s got to be ended by a certain statement. But we have an affirmation principle and that is the Sabbath is never affirmed in the New Testament, but the day of the Lord is. Okay, so that being said, if you can keep that difference in mind, And Paul was kind of talking about that in the first century also. And we’re still talking about it in many ways today because we have many groups that are telling us you have to keep the law.
It’s still there. I’ve heard some, you know, I’ve used this illustration with you before I know, but some people will say, well, it’s in the Bible. We’re supposed to keep the Bible.
And so if those things that we read back there in the Bible, aren’t we supposed to do them? And I’ve used this kind of illustration. If you work for an employer and you have always done your job this way, you run a machine or you put things together or you have computer program or you always have done it this way. And then your employer comes in and says, now, I know we’ve always done it this way, but from now on, I want you to do it this way.
And he changes it. Now what should you do? Say, no, we’ve always done it this way. I’m sorry. I can’t change anymore.
No. If your boss says, we’re not doing it that way anymore, you’re doing it this way, you change, don’t you? And you do it that way. That’s exactly what the New Testament has done. And we do it that way. So I want you to notice my three points for these last verses from 17 to 21.
There were some that were rebuilding the law. We’re going to talk about that. And that’s what Paul is objecting to here. Then there is the principle of about the law being fulfilled. And then he’s going to get into the fact that we are leaving the law behind.
And as we go into chapter three next week, he really gets into this idea of our sanctification and how we live our lives. So the Judaizers, those who believe we had to still keep the law, even to be saved, they were seriously wrong about justification. You have to have the works of the law even to be saved. But they were also seriously wrong about how to live the Christian life. We have to do things in the law to live the Christian life. And Paul will say, not at all.
That is not what we do. In some kind of interesting language here. So let’s begin in verses with 17 and 18 about the fact that he’s saying, now, if we’re trying to keep the law, here’s the situation. So notice my three points.
I kind of have three thoughts that are connected. If while we believe we keep the law, then we denigrate the work of Christ because lawkeeping is for the unsaved, not for the saved. That’s basically, I think, what he’s saying in these two verses. Let’s read verse 17 first. But if, I have to put this footnote in there, keep in mind verse 16. What did verse 16 say? We know that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. Three times he’s going to say that in verse 16. Then he says, but if while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners. Is Christ therefore a minister of sin? God forbid, or certainly not.
So here’s my first point. Paul knew he was saved. Peter knew he was saved. They knew they were justified by faith. So he says, if Peter, while we seek to be justified by Christ, Peter would say, yes, Paul, that’s what I believe.
Yes, I believe that. Then he says, but then why are we continually found sinners according to the law? If you eat with the Gentiles, you’re sinning? Who said that? The law says that.
Why are you doing that? Now, there’s an important, well, we’ll get down to the word justified, especially in the word crucified in verse 20. Justified has been defined for us in verse 16. We know what that means.
Justified by our faith. You didn’t work for it. There’s nothing you could do to gain it. You could only place your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, which is not a work. It is simply how you connect to the work that Christ has done. So then we begin sanctifying ourselves by the law.
That’s what he’s asking here. You’re justified by faith, but now in order to live the Christian life, you’re going to start keeping the law. You’re going to separate from the Gentiles. You’re not going to eat with them and maybe insisted believers be circumcised or keep feast days and all of that. So what he means when he says, we ourselves are found sinners would mean, if you’re going to start keeping the law, you’re going to find out you can’t do it.
If you’re going to start keeping the law, guess what? You’re a sinner, aren’t you? Because you’ll never do it well. You’ll never do it right.
You’ll never do it completely. Wouldn’t you like to say that you are saved and you are saved forever, that your sin, all of it is forgiven past, present and future? That’s what we have in Christ. But what Peter is demonstrating, which he really doesn’t even believe, and Paul’s pointing that out to him, you’re saved by faith, but you’re going to live by works in order to stay saved? No, that can’t be.
So notice then the second statement and we go to the second point of my outline. If we do that, we denigrate the very work of Christ. Is Christ therefore a minister of sin?
Certainly not. I found that statement one of the most difficult statements in the book of Galatians. What does he mean by that? So I’m going to bore you a little bit with three or four points of view, okay? Because I enjoy reading some good men, and you know what? There’s, I’ve read four different men here, and I have kind of four different takes on this, because it’s difficult. But they’re all in the same ballpark.
So here it is. Here’s what, what he may mean by is Christ therefore a minister of sin. Linsky, whom I love to read, said, if we have dropped to the level of Gentile sinners by eating with the Gentiles, then hasn’t Christ done a sinful thing by luring us away from the law? I’m paraphrasing him, but that’s what he’s saying. Christ is the one saying, you don’t, you don’t have to keep the law anymore, but you’re saying you do. Who’s wrong? You are Christ.
Maybe you’ve, maybe Jesus is wrong. This is kind of a point. Robert Gromacky from a generation ago said, this is hypothetical. We Jews who have put faith in Christ are sinners if the Judaizers are correct, and therefore faith in Christ makes Christ a participant in our sin. If the Judaizers are right, then even Jesus is wrong. MacArthur said it this way, then they all are sinners by eating with Gentiles. Christ also taught and ate with Gentiles. Therefore Peter is opposing Jesus Christ. Douglas Mew said, they have believed in Christ and admit they are sinners like Gentiles. Christ therefore is not the minister of sin, but of grace.
And he had some other things I won’t bore you with because he’s pretty boring. I’ve had this statement in the margin of my Bible for a long time. If while we are justified by Christ, we start keeping the law, don’t we force our high priest, Jesus Christ, to be a type of Old Testament priest? We say we have a high priest, but we have to keep the law.
Then as our high priest, an Old Testament priest, a priest of the Mosaic law. So it is a difficult statement, but maybe here’s just the gist of it. How in fact has Christ become a savior to you? Is his work complete or is it not? Is he still a priest of sin? Is he still a savior of sin? Is he even a minister of sin?
No. Is he, is your faith in Christ complete in Christ for what he did or is it not? All right, with that thought, let me go to verse 18, which I think is connected to the same idea of rebuilding the law. If I build again those things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. Why does he use the word destroy? It’s a pretty hard word here because faith in Jesus Christ, the whole work of Jesus Christ has destroyed the law. Now, Jesus said, I come not to destroy it, but to fulfill it, right? So what does the idea of destroy here mean? It means it’s done.
Put it on a shelf. It’s God’s word. It is profitable for you to read and to study, but it’s the same way as if somebody said, well, you know, God flooded the world once and as it will be in the days of Noah, so it will be in the coming of the Son of Man, we need to build an ark. Let’s go build an ark. And you said, why should we build an ark? Because Noah built an ark?
How do you answer that? God even said, I’ll not do the same thing again that I did once. That was for Noah’s day and for Noah’s time.
It’s not for our day and our time. Jesus Christ is our ark, right? He is the door that we’ve entered into safety from. Okay, you understand it.
You’re getting it. So Christ destroyed the law in the sense that he put an end to it. Why do you want to rebuild it? Why do you want to keep the Sabbath? Why do you want to keep the dietary laws? Why do you want to keep all of the food laws and the laws of government out of the mosaic law?
Why do you want to do it? The purpose of the law was to convince sinners of their need of a Savior. Now we’re going to cover that in this book and I’ll go over it here in a minute. The law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. The law was to train us. And in a real sense, what the law told Israel is, you can’t be saved by the law. You can’t be saved by trying to keep the rules.
You’ve got to be saved by faith in Christ. I’ve used the illustration of the court, you know, because to be justified is to be pronounced righteous by the judge. And we know that Jesus Christ paid our fine, right? Jesus Christ said I paid the price Put that on my account well if you stood before the judge and you owed a certain debt and Somebody paid it and the judge says your debt is paid.
You can go free Don’t keep going back to the judge trying to pay your debt. Why do you keep going back saying? Well? Here’s here’s my thousand dollars or here’s you know, no, it’s been paid. It’s been paid. I know but I think I need to pay it Quit doing that Save your money and Take advantage of what the person who paid your fine did for you and that’s what Jesus Christ did So I call this first thought here rebuilding the law Paul is saying to Peter Peter. You know better than this You you were saved by faith. You were justified by faith quit trying then to live by the law live by faith also so Fulfilling the law one verse kind of a small verse verse 19. I think takes us to this thought I Through the law Guide to the law That I might live to God You see these three thoughts here through the law Yes, what did the law do for us the law? First of all in chapter 4 and verse 2 We are under guardians and stewards or the old version will have school masters until the time appointed by the father We have a babysitter Who babysits us until the time that we don’t need a babysitter anymore?
Till the time appointed by the father the father appointed this time when Jesus Christ would come And so the school master has done its job. We don’t have it anymore Or we have the fact of the deeds of the law listen to Romans 3 20 Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Oh I find out that I’m a sinner and that I can’t save myself So I need Jesus Christ Chapter 3 verse 10 of our book here will say for as many as our of the works of the law are under the curse Oh, what is that? There’s there’s a curse to the law. Well, here’s what it is for it is written cursed as everyone that Continuous not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them You say you want to live by law you say you want to be justified or sanctified by the law guess what?
100% If you can do the law 100% of the time then that would happen But what does Romans conclude all of sin come short of the glory of God? There’s none righteous. No not one No one could no one has except the son of God himself Who fulfilled all of the law so that you and I don’t have to do it? We can have his righteousness as our own so first of all By the deeds of law by this curse as a matter of fact Romans 7 7 I haven’t I have what shall we say then is The law sin is the law bad and he says God forbid I had not known sin But by the law I had not known lust except the law said thou shalt not covet So Paul says I didn’t even realize what I was doing I didn’t even realize that I was a covetous person Until I went to those to the commandments and I went to the Old Testament and I realized That doing what I’m doing is covetousness and covetousness is sin and therefore I’m not a lawkeeper. I’m a lawbreaker That’s Paul’s testimony in Romans chapter 7 so he says here. I’m dead to the law. He died to the law Go with me to Romans 7 real quickly would you Romans chapter 7 and Let’s look at let’s look at verse 7 start there. What should we say then is the law sin? Certainly not on the contrary. I would not have known sin except through the law now in other words Is the law then a bad thing?
No folks. God wrote the law God dictated it at Sinai The problem with the law is it is perfect And you are not It’s not the other way around it’s not that the law is so terrible, but you’re so wonderful Paul’s gonna say the problem is the law is holy just and good. I’m the problem I can’t keep it so he says in verse 7 for I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said thou shall not covet oh I’m not supposed to do that notice this sin Taking opportunity by the commandment produced in me all manner of evil desire What does he mean by that? I thought I was so wonderful. I thought I was so good.
God would get a wonderful prize if he got me. But I read the law and what I found out is, all of a sudden, all of the ugliness that’s in me came out. I could see myself for what I really was.
And when that happened, well, we’ll see. Sin revived and I died. But at the end of verse 8, for apart from the law, sin was dead.
I was alive once without the law. Man, I was going along great. I was living saying I’m a wonderful person. God, you know, when I get to heaven, he’ll be glad to have me in heaven because I’ve never read the Bible. Then someone came along and preached the gospel to me and it destroyed me. I never felt so bad in my life because sin revived as it should have. And I died as I should have. I’m dead before the law.
I have no hope before the law. Verse 11, sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceive me and by it, killed me. And again, verse 12, therefore the law is holy. The commandment is holy, just and good. But what was good became death to me.
Let’s stop there and go back to Galatians. So you get the idea, right? That’s what the law is for.
That’s the purpose of the law. And so what is this dying with Christ saying? Jesus Christ came and fulfilled all of the law. There was no curse upon him because 100% of the time Jesus kept the law and fulfilled the law. And so he didn’t need to die. He didn’t need to die in himself by his own conscience like Paul did. So what did Jesus do and why did he come? Because someone needs to fulfill the righteous standard of God for sin. So Jesus Christ took your failure and mind and of the whole world, put it upon himself, went to the cross and died not for his own sin, but for yours. So that you now being a sinner can say, I will accept that payment paid. I will accept what Jesus Christ did for me, his righteousness. He took your sin, you take his righteousness.
That’s how you then died with Christ, died to your sin with him. Someone pictured it kind of like, you went to the death bed from this side of the bed. You crawled into the death bed and died, but got up on the other side alive. You came to the death bed with Christ and died with him the moment you asked him to save you. I’m a sinner. I’m dead in my sin.
I cannot do anything about it. And in that sense, you died with Christ. And Jesus said, I give you my life, my resurrected eternal life.
And you got up on the other side and walked away. So that is what is in picture here, even in verse 19, I through the law died to the law that I might live to Christ. Now I can really live. I can do what is pleasing to God, alive to God. So now we have these kinds of verses, Romans 8 1. Therefore, there is now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Romans 8 4, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.
You know how the law is fulfilled in you? Do what Jesus did. If Jesus walked on this earth and always fulfilled the law, what do you have to do?
Just walk as Jesus walked. Now he forgives you of your sin past, present and future. You’re doing it by the power of the spirit that now dwells in you. And what is your path? You should walk whatever Jesus walked. That’s what I walk.
Wherever the spirit leads, that’s where I go. Do what he did because he always fulfilled the law. And Romans 6 7 6 says, but now we are delivered from the law that being dead, wherein we were held that we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. So again, our verse 19, I through the law died to the law that I might live to God.
Now, third point, leaving the law then. I have been crucified with Christ. How did Jesus die? He died by crucifixion. He died on that cross.
He did it for you and for me. What is your death bed as I use the analogy? Being crucified with Christ.
Christ. Now the verb tense here, here’s your grammatical detail for today, the verb tense here is correct in this version knowing, or excuse me, verse 20, I have been crucified, a perfect passive. Now the perfect tense means something happened at one time in the past and it has continuing results. It’s not just a past tense, I did it and that was all.
I did it with continuing results. I have been crucified. In other words, I died with Christ then and in essence I still am dead with Christ. I’m still in Him. It’s still His life living in me.
I go on that way the rest of my life. I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, or excuse me, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. And so you have this death with Christ, you died. In the book of Colossians you have this analogy carried through in its fullness. Colossians 1.20 says, wherefore if we be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why is though living in the world your subject to ordinances?
And he’s kind of saying the same thing about the law. If you died with Christ, why go back to that old life before you died with Him? Then it says, Colossians 3.1, if you be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Okay, I’m risen with Him. How should I walk the way Jesus did and the way Jesus wants? And then in Colossians 3.9 and 10, lie not to one another, seeing that you’ve put off the old man, that old life, with his deeds, and have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. And we even have Ephesians 3.17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.
So here we have this union with Christ secondly. Now notice again in our verse, verse 20, Christ lives in me. Again, Ephesians 3.17, that Christ may live in your hearts by faith. Christ lives in me and the life which I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God. We call this having a union with Christ.
In other words, it’s illustrated in the New Testament in these ways. Jesus Christ is the shepherd and you are the what? Sheep. He’s the shepherd, we’re the sheep. He is the vine, we are the what? We’re the branches. He is the head, we are the what?
The body. As a matter of fact, he’s the foundation and we are the house. All of these kinds of analogies in the New Testament picture our union with Christ.
We can’t be separated from him anymore than your body can be separated from the head. You’ve got to have it and the building has to have the foundation and the sheep have to have the shepherd and and the vine can the branches can’t exist without the vine. All of these things speak of our union with Christ.
We have no life apart from him. Now let me make this application to Faith Baptist Church that I’m speaking to. We are the family of God and not just us, every believer that knows Jesus Christ as Savior. So you know why the New Testament emphasizes what we’re doing right here, this gathering together. We’re family.
As a matter of fact, these unions that we have with one another right here are even more serious than the unions you have in your earthly family. God is our father. Jesus Christ is our older brother and we are brothers and sisters in Christ. We come here for healing. We come here for encouragement. When the rest of the world may let us down, we come to God’s family where the spirit lives and where regenerated people are.
This is our union together as part of that body of Christ. Now I say in verse 21 we have a defense then to be made. So he says here, I do not, I think here Paul’s going back to Peter.
Okay, he’s kind of given his lecture here about justification, sanctification, crucifixion and so forth. Now he goes back to Peter. I do not set aside the grace of God.
You are Peter. You’re setting aside the grace of God. Oh well, for right now I’m going to live by the law. For right now I’ll put the grace over here on the shelf but I need to do what these Judaizers say I need to be doing. I do not, I do not, he says, Paul says, set aside the grace of God. If righteousness comes through the law, is that what you’re trying to do Peter? You’re trying to live a righteous life by keeping the law that has been done away that Jesus fulfilled?
Is that what you’re trying to do? Then let me ask you this Peter, why did Jesus die? What advantage is that that Jesus died for you? you. And that’s what he asks. It’s in vain.
He didn’t need to do that. You do it. You live for yourself. You live for your sins.
You live to have a righteous life. It’s quite a chapter, isn’t it? Colossians chapter 2 to say all of this, and then you have end of quotation. And after we have this little historical passage about what the Bible says Paul is saying to Peter, Peter and Paul both will live by this. I love Peter’s attitude in this because he’s a humble man and he’s a knowledgeable man. And as soon as he sees what he’s done wrong and he’s corrected by a loving brethren, we never again see Peter acting like that.
And even in his own books that he writes, wonderful books, saying the same things that Paul is saying. We can follow Peter’s example here by the way because how many of us kind of go down the wrong path sometimes? How many of us get wrongheaded and wrong thinking about something? We need to be corrected by somebody like Paul, somebody who loves us, somebody who cares about us, and then we do the right thing and we say, thank you.
I needed that. And Paul also. Paul’s kind of the hard guy. He had an argument with Barnabas too, and Barnabas is kind of the soft-hearted guy. Paul’s kind of the no messin’ around type of guy. But you know what? You need those guys too.
You know those guys who aren’t afraid to say it, who say it plainly and say it even to you when you need to hear it. Okay. So he did. Here are three important times in your life that we’ve learned from chapter two, and I’ll end with this. First of all is your repentance. You came to the end of yourself. I’m speaking to believers now, but you came to the end of yourself. You came to a time when you heard the gospel and you heard about sin and you realized you were on your way to hell, the place where sinners go.
And you said, I’ve got to do something about this. The second time in your life was your salvation. Then when you understood that Jesus Christ died in your place and took that sin for you, and that if you accept him by faith, you give him your sin and he gives you his righteousness, that was the moment you got saved. You were justified before the judge at that moment. Now the third important time is your Christian life which you’re living now.
So I’d lump that all together. You are going to walk as Jesus walked. You are going to do the things that Jesus and the Holy Spirit within you leads you to do. And we find that basically in the New Testament. We find that in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We walk as he walked.
And even Paul will say, you follow me as I follow Christ. He’s in the family too, you know. He’s our older brother too.
He’s our perfect example. Not as the law necessarily, but as the law fulfilled her, as the one who fulfilled it all and did perfectly. And all of that is by faith in what Jesus has done for you. And you’ll find your life successful. You’ll find your life fulfilling hardships and hard times and illnesses and all the rest will not affect you because you’re walking with Christ who suffered all of those things also for you.
That’ll be a great life and I hope you know it. Stand out with me if you will. And let’s pray and let’s ask the Lord to search our hearts with these words from this chapter and respond in the way God would have us respond. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for the words of this second chapter of Galatians. Thank you for Peter and Paul, the church at Antioch, for Barnabas, for those good people who made a mistake, found out that they did and did the right thing. Thank you for that. May we always be people like that too. And then Father, help us to see all of the riches that we have in Christ as we continue through this book and see all that Jesus has done for us and see how to live and follow him in that life. We pray, Father, you would bless us and grow us and help us, Father, to be better servants of yours. So now, Father, speak to our hearts in the way that we need, the way that you have impressed on our hearts today. Cause us to confess our sins before you. Cause us to cry out to you for help in our Christian life. And Father, I pray you would bless us in these things and we would ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Again, I’m always here while we’re singing a song or as the services are closed, if you need help from the scripture, you see me and let’s get this thing taken care of before you leave today.