Announce Text: Gal 2:11-21. This will be my second sermon from Galatians.

Background: The last time I preached here, we saw that there were false teachers
known as Judaizers who infiltrated churches that the apostle Paul had started in the
region of Galatia. They were teaching that for a person to be right with God, faith
in Christ alone was not enough; a person also had to do the works of the Law of
Moses. So Paul writes to the churches of Galatia, and says that anyone that would
dare preach or teach this false Gospel should be cursed by God.
Read Text, Pray
Intro
Recently I read an article about a High School in Mississippi that has
segregated proms. In other words, Blacks and Whites who attend the same High
School nevertheless go to separate proms even though segregation was outlawed in
1954. But the reason that these proms could still be segregated was because they
were organized by parents, not the school. Now, the Black proms were never
segregated. White students could always go to the Black proms, but they never do
because of fear. One person said that “some white students were frightened of
what their families might do if they were friends with black students.”

And we see something similar to this going on in or text today. The apostle
Peter, who was a Jew, didn’t want other Jews from Jerusalem to see him eating
with Gentiles, because this was thought to be a violation of the Law of Moses.

Yet, even though Peter knew that the Gospel had destroyed all barriers
between Jew and Gentile, when he saw other Jews approaching him, he separated
himself from the Gentiles—he stopped living in a way that was consistent with the
truth of the Gospel because he was afraid of what others might think about him.

So the apostle Paul confronts Peter, and reminds him that the Gospel is
something that changes the way we live. And the transforming reality of our text
today is that: We are justified by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ
alone so that we might live our lives by faith in Jesus Christ alone. There are 2
points we’ll look at today: the Core of the Gospel; and the Control of the Gospel.

I. The Core of the Gospel: The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that God
has determined to save sinners through the life, death, burial and resurrection of
Jesus Christ. Now, there are a number of foundational truths that must be believed
related to the Gospel: The Trinity, Jesus is fully God and man, Jesus’ death on
cross, and His bodily resurrection. However, the false teachers that Paul confronted
believed all of those things, yet Paul says they were preaching a false Gospel.

1
 So we must ask the question, what is the core, or the very heart and center of
the Gospel, that if it be denied, we no longer have the “Good News” of the Gospel?
Well, when Paul confronts Peter, he tells him in very specific terms just what the
core of the Gospel is. Look at v. 16. Paul says “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.”

Paul here tells us clearly that the core of the Gospel is the simple truth that
justification is by faith in Jesus Christ alone, and not by the works of the law. And
this raises the question: what is this doctrine of justification all about?

The term “justification” is a legal term. It has to do with the law and issues
of justice, guilt, and righteousness. One way to think about it is to just think about
our legal system here in our country. When a person is accused of breaking the
law, he’s brought before the Judge. After the Judge reviews all the evidence, he
then renders a verdict of guilty or not guilty. If the person is found guilty, the
Judge then sentences the person to the appropriate punishment.

The doctrine of Justification works pretty much the same way. God is the
Supreme Judge of the Universe who has given us His law, such as in the 10
commandments, and because He is holy and perfect and just, He requires that we
obey His law perfectly in word, thought, and deed, and if we don’t, if we are found
guilty of having broken His law at any point, we must suffer the penalty and
punishment that Justice demands.

But how did this all come about? Well, to answer that question we need to
go back to the beginning, to our first parents, Adam and Eve. It was there, in the
Garden of Eden that God entered into a covenant of works with Adam. In that
covenant, God promised life to Adam and his descendants, upon the condition of
perfect and continuous obedience to God’s law. So, God required perfect
righteousness. If Adam met that requirement, man would live forever. But if
God’s law was broken at any point, he would suffer the penalty of physical and
spiritual death, meaning that man would be alienated from God, under God’s curse
forever.

Well, as we all know, Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s law by eating of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And when Adam and Eve disobeyed God,
they plunged themselves and all of their descendants after them—us—into a state
of sin and misery and condemnation.

2
 And so now everyone born after Adam has inherited both the guilt of
Adam’s first sin, as well as a corrupted sinful nature. And what this means is that
man’s entire being: his mind, emotions, will, has been radically corrupted to the
core by sin. We are conceived in sin, born in, and we are slaves of sin; sin
dominates and controls everything we do; all of our desires, all of our choices, and
all of our actions. Man is, as the Scriptures make clear, spiritually dead and blind
and deaf to the things of God so that he is unable to obey God’s law or to respond
savingly to the Gospel. This may sound harsh, but listen to Word of God:

Romans 3:10-12 "There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who
understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside…
There is none who does good.."
Rom 8:7 “the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor
can it do so.”
Ephesians 2:1-3 “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and
sins...Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.”

I know we don’t hear about this very often especially on so-called Christian
TV, and there are many other Scriptures that could be mentioned. But we need to
hear the bad news, and just how serious our dilemma is before a Holy God before
we will ever understand the Good News of the Gospel! And the bad news is that
even though we are born in sin and incapable of keeping God’s law, the Scriptures
teach that God’s requirements haven’t changed. He still requires perfect obedience
to His law.

Some people might think that God should lower standards, because all
people would be doomed. But you see, God can’t lower His standards. If He did,
God would no longer be holy, or perfect, or just. God’s law has been broken, and
Justice must be satisfied. And the whole point of God’s law is to show that we are
doomed, and are in desperate need of Savior!

As you all know, I am currently attending seminary, and I remember this

past semester, I took a quiz, and I only ½ a point. That’s 98%, an A+! But let’s
suppose for a moment that I had to get 100% in order to pass? As good as my
score was I would have failed. And now let’s suppose that I had to get a score of
100% on every quiz and every test that I ever had to take. Needless to say, I would
be doomed to failure. And this captures a little bit of our dilemma before God.
Because God is absolutely holy and perfect, He requires nothing less than 100%
perfection. 99.9% isn’t good enough. God’s standard is absolute 100% perfection.

3
 And the kicker for us is that not only is achieving a score of 100% with God
impossible in terms of keeping God’s law, but, when we factor in all of the ways
we break God’s commandments in word, thought and deed, our score is actually in
the negatives. And there is nothing we can do in and of ourselves to make it better.
As a matter of fact, our situation only gets worse for us with each passing sin that
we commit. As Rom 2 says, we are just storing up wrath for the Day of Judgment.

Do you feel the weight of this? Do you really grasp just how horrifying our
situation is before the face of a holy God? (PAUSE) Most of us don’t. We’re
masters at distraction. We do anything we can just so that we don’t have to
contemplate the horror of standing before an absolutely holy God with nothing
between us and His justice and wrath. But, the inevitable plight for every human
being is that we’re all going to die, and after that, we’re going to face the Judge.
These things are frightening. And frankly, they should be.

But, by God’s grace, this is not the whole story! God, in His grace, was
pleased to make a second covenant, called the covenant of grace. In this covenant
God freely offers sinners life and salvation through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

But in order for that to happen, Divine Justice still had to be met. God’s
justice requires perfect obedience to His law, and demands that those who break
His law must suffer the penalty due their sin. And so Jesus comes and fulfills
everything that God requires, and He succeeds where Adam and we failed: He
obeys God’s law perfectly on our behalf.

But not only this, Jesus also pays the penalty for our law-breaking. So when
we trust in Jesus Christ alone to save us, we are forgiven because Jesus has paid
the penalty for all of our sins on the cross, and Jesus’ perfect record of law-keeping
—His righteousness—is credited to our account.

And this is what the doctrine of justification is all about. The Westminster
Shorter Catechism really sums it beautifully when it states that 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, there are three things we need to see here: first, justification is act of
God’s free grace. In other words, we don’t deserve it, and we can’t earn it; it is not
according to our works, as Paul has made crystal clear in our text. Second, in
justification, God pardons us of all of our sins, past, present and future.

4
 So, we stand before the Judge, and He pronounces as not guilty. Now as
wonderful as that is, if we are merely pronounced as “not guilty,” we would still
not have eternal life. Remember, Adam and Eve weren’t guilty before they sinned,
yet, they still didn’t have eternal life—they needed to have a positive record of
perfect righteousness because that’s what God requires for us to be in His
presence. And this is precisely what we have now in Christ. Not only are we
declared “not guilty”, but, we have a positive righteousness before God. We have
the righteousness of Jesus Christ credited to our account, and God now declares as
righteous, that is, He looks at us as though we have kept His law perfectly in word,
thought, and deed, because Jesus’ record of perfect obedience is now ours forever.

Maybe this illustration will help us get a picture of what God has done for
us: Let’s suppose for a moment that every detail of my life: all of my thoughts,
words, and deeds; everything that I have ever done and ever sin I’ve ever
committed is recorded in this book, which we’ll just call my Record Book of Sins.
What God did was that He took my Record Book of Sins, and placed it on Christ
on the cross, so that Christ paid the full penalty for all of my sins, past, present and
future. But that’s not all. God also now gives me a new book, and stamped on the
front cover of that book is “Forgiven and Righteous in Christ Forever.” So
when I do stand before the Supreme Judge of the Universe, He will have before
Him that book, and it will be on the basis of that book that I will be judged, and the
judgment will be “not guilty” and “righteous” and He will say 'Come, you who are
blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since
the creation of the world.” (Matt 25:34)

And so, we have seen then that the core of the Gospel, is that Justification,
or being right with God, is by grace alone, through faith alone, in and because of
Jesus Christ alone, and not by our own works. But now we must ask, what
difference does this truth make in my every day life? This takes me our 2d point:

II. The Control of the Gospel: When the apostle Paul confronted the apostle
Peter, the problem wasn’t that he and the others with him were denying the Gospel
by their words; rather, they were denying the Gospel by their actions. So when
Paul confronts Peter he reminds him about the truth of the Gospel, and how it is to
affect how we live our lives. Look at vv 19-20. Paul says: “For through the law I
died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is
no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh
I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not
nullify the grace of God, for if justification were through the law, then Christ died
for no purpose.”

5
 Paul’s point is that in Christ he has a new identity which defines everything
about him, and he’s not about to compromise that for anyone. Paul identifies
himself so closely with Christ and His work that he says here in v. 19 that he has
been crucified with Christ. In other words, Paul is saying that he is completely
united to Christ in His death and resurrection, and because of this intimate union
with Christ, he has been set free both from the penalty and condemnation of the
law, as well from the bondage of trying to earn God’s favor on the basis of keeping
the law.

And all of this directly affects how he lives his everyday life. Paul says that
the life that he lives, he lives by faith in the Son of God. In other words, Paul
doesn’t live his life as if he is trying to earn God’s favor or acceptance through the
works of the law. Instead, Paul says that he lives his life trusting and resting in
Jesus Christ, the one who delivered him from the curse of the law, and the one
whose obedience to the law has been credited to Paul’s account.

And then Paul just hammers home his point in concluding his thoughts to
Peter when says in verse 21: “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if justification
were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.” In other words, if we live
as though our right standing and acceptance with God depended on our own
performance and good works, instead of on God’s grace and the work of Christ on
our behalf, then there would be no need for God’s grace, and the horrible death of
Jesus on the cross would have been an absolute waste.

But lest we come down too hard on the apostle Peter, the fact is that this
truth that Paul is speaking about is very difficult for all of us to grasp. You see,
many us think that the Gospel is only something that we preach to unbelievers so
that they might be saved. And after we’re saved, we put the Gospel on the shelf,
and then the hard work of the Christian life begins. In other words, the common
view that most of us have is that initial salvation, or justification, is by the Gospel
and the grace of God, but sanctification, that is, the life that we live as Christians
and our growth in Christ, is all by the works of the law and dependent totally upon
my performance, and we live as if we need to earn God’s favor and acceptance.

So for example, you begin to think that if you do certain things, then God is
going to bless you. You think that if you give more money, if you go to church
more, if you read your bible more, if you do a lot of good works, then God will
accept you and be pleased with you, and you can fully expect to receive only the
best from God.

6
 Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do all of those things. We should!
The problem though is that we end up doing those things and looking to those
things as the basis of our acceptance and favor with God. Our faith then turns
away from Christ and what He has done for us, to what we are doing, to our own
performance and our own good works.

We begin to put our trust in the things that we do instead of in Christ, and
the Christian life becomes something that is based entirely on our performance
and how well we perform whatever list of do’s and don’ts that we create. And
then, we begin judge other Christians to see if they measure up to our standards of
self-righteousness, and if they don’t we puff ourselves up, thinking that we are the
spiritual giant, while the others are spiritual weaklings.

Theologian and Pastor Dr. Greg Johnson really captures the truth of this
when he says: “There are two religions calling themselves…Christianity today:
Strength Christianity and Weakness Christianity. Strength Christianity is that
religion which places both feet squarely on the Bible and proclaims, “I am strong.
I sought the Lord. I’m a believer…I read my Bible and pray every single day. I’m
for God!” Weakness Christianity, by contrast, places both knees squarely on the
Bible and says, “I am weak, but the Lord has sought me. I believe, but help now
my unbelief. I fail and am broken by my continued sinfulness. Have mercy on me,
Lord…for apart from you I can do nothing. Those who pursue Strength
Christianity will never find joy in God, for they will never find God. Our Father
refuses to be approached in that manner. They will find only increasing religious
pride and secret hardness of heart. On the outside, they will project a picture of
righteousness. They’ll have it all together. They’ll be spiritual. But only on the
outside. For those who stumble across the rare jewel of Weakness Christianity,
however, there is provision beyond what we can possibly imagine. Our suffering,
our failures, our weaknesses and disappointments all gain an incredible spiritual
significance. God never says he’ll be glorified in our religious accomplishments.
But he does promise that his power will be made perfect in our weakness.”

So the Gospel is not just for unbelievers, it is for believers, because as

believers, we will never cease being weak and needy people. And this is what Paul
makes clear when he says that the life that he now lives, he lives by faith in Christ.

7
 But what does it mean to live by faith in Christ?

It means that we live recognizing that in and of ourselves, we are weak and needy
sinners who left to ourselves deserve nothing except the wrath of God for our sins.

It means that we recognize that apart from Christ we can do nothing.

It means that we look away from ourselves and live with an absolute reliance upon
Christ and His work on our behalf.

And here’s the thing: when we stop trying to impress God with our good
works, and we live trusting in Jesus Christ alone; we will obey God’s
commandments. We will pursue holiness. We will read our bibles. We will go to
church. We will give money to the church. We will do good works. When we live
by faith in Christ, we will hate our sin, but, we will also rejoice at the truth that all
of our sin and all of our guilt was nailed to the cross.

And when we live by faith in Christ, we will do all of those things with the
right motive. The motive for doing our good works won’t be so that we can exalt
ourselves, or so that we can get something from God.

Rather, when we live by faith in Christ, the all consuming passion of our
lives will be that God alone would be glorified in all that we do. When we live by
faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us, we will live lives of
self-sacrifice and service to others, not to gain acceptance or favor with God, but
because we are already accepted and have favor with God. When we live
recognizing that we have been crucified with Christ, we will do things not to get
anything from God, but, because we already have everything we could possibly
imagine in Christ.

And so, we do things that please God, not to gain righteousness, but because
we have been declared righteous in His sight. We do things that please God, not to
gain favor with God, but because we already possess the complete favor of God.
We do things that please God, not to get a blessing from God, but to be a blessing
to others for God because Christ is our treasure, He is our reward, and in Him we
are already blessed beyond measure!

8
III. Conclusion

Well, today, we have seen the Core of the Gospel. The very heart of the
Gospel is that we are right with God forever by God’s free grace, through faith in
Jesus Christ alone. But God has promised to eternal life to everyone who turns
from their sins and trusts in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation. And so the
application here is related to a simple question: What are you trusting to get you to
heaven? If you were to die today and God asked you, “Why should I let you into
my heaven?” what would you say? Let me encourage you this day to agree with
God, that you’re not perfect; that you are a sinner who need to be saved. Turn
from whatever it is that you are trusting in for your right standing with God, and
place all of your trust in Jesus Christ alone.

Next we say the Control of the Gospel, and the truth that what God has done
for us in Christ is to control every area of our lives. And the application for us
today is to realize that we never outgrow the Gospel. Not only did the Gospel save
us, but, it is the Gospel that is needed for our every day lives, and what we need to
do is that we need to preach the Gospel to ourselves everyday.

In other words, we need to remind ourselves of the wonder of God’s

amazing grace, and the incredible work of Christ on our behalf. We need to
remind ourselves that before the Judge, we have been pardoned from all of ours,
and are counted as righteous in His sight because of the righteousness of Christ
that has been given to us. We need to remind ourselves of our desperate need for
Christ every waking moment of the day.

And so let us then meditate on the Good News of the Gospel and how it
affects our lives on a daily basis. Are there ways that we may be denying the
essence of the Gospel by our actions? Do we live in a way that we are trusting in
our own good works for God’s approval, and we are in turn casting a judgmental
on others when they don’t live up to the standard we have created? Let us, with
Paul, say that the life I now I live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me
and gave Himself for me. I do no set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness
comes by the law, then Christ died in vain.

We are justified by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, so
let us now live our lives by faith in Jesus Christ alone, trusting in who we are
in Christ and what He alone has done for us, all to the glory of God alone.

Amen.