Embrace the True Gospel - Pastor Tom Loghry
In Galatians 2, Paul continues his defense of his own credibility and the credibility of the gospel that he preaches.
Transcript:
Good morning. Today's reading is from Galatians 2:11-14. When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them, all, you are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it then that you force Gentiles to follow the Jewish customs?
On September 12th, 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave a landmark speech at Rice University setting forth an ambitious goal. His words are widely remembered when he said, We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win. Inspiring words. In the course of his speech, he referred to the exponential progress of technology and the advances he anticipated that would make this ambition a reality. But imagine if instead of pointing forward, he embraced an older artifact of flight. Imagine that he unveiled this as the model for reaching the moon, a hang glider. Obviously he would have been laughed off the stage. The glider had its time and it's fine for recreation but it’s not taking anyone to the moon. If going to the moon is your goal, and all you have is a glider, then you're only going to be reminded of how tightly bound to the earth you are. You always return to the ground. The ridiculous nature of this proposal and the natural response to it serves as a helpful comparison. It gives us a taste of how Paul felt when the Galatians began embracing a false gospel. As we will see in Galatians 2, this is not the first time that Paul has had to stand against returning to the past. First, we pick up where we left off.
Paul received his understanding of the gospel firsthand from Jesus, not from the other apostles. He did not spend much time with the other apostles, and at this point, he has been away from Judea, serving the church in Antioch, a church that's been known for being made up of many Gentile Christians. Now, as we go along here, we'll see that this divide between Jew and Gentile becomes the sticking point requiring absolute gospel clarity. So beginning in verse 1 of Galatians 2. Paul says, then after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. I went in response to a revelation. And meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running my race in vain. Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. We did not give in to them for a moment so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.
So last week we talked about how Paul had received a number of revelations over the course of his life from Jesus Christ. He's received guidance from the Spirit. And once again here he receives revelation from God that he was to go to Jerusalem and meet with some of the apostles. And he was to meet with them to compare notes. He came to them and said, here's the gospel I'm preaching to the Gentiles. I'm sharing with them the good news that in Jesus Christ, they too can become the people of God. That's right, right? And so they're comparing notes. And he notes that along with him making this visit himself with Barnabas, that they took Titus along. And Titus was a man who was not a Jew. He was not circumcised. And Paul notes this because if it was the case that in order to be a member of Christ body,. if it was necessary to be circumcised to be a Christian, then Titus would have been required to be circumcised. And yet, he's not compelled to be. Apparently, Paul suggests that some controversy around this had arose because some people who were pretending to be believers had infiltrated their ranks and had been observing some of the allowances that they had made, including those that were non-Jewish, observing how they no longer felt compelled to uphold some of the rituals that were necessary under the Old Covenant. And Paul says in verse 4 that their object was to make them slaves. Now what he means by that wasn't that they intended to make them servants in someone's household, but rather that they would enslave Paul and the rest of the church, once again, to the requirements of the law, rather than walking in the liberty that was given them in Christ Jesus, a liberty that gives license not to sin, but that liberates us to live lives of righteousness, but no longer having to uphold these rules about being circumcised and dietary laws and these other things. Now, there are other occasions in which Paul does accommodate the people that he is trying to reach with the gospel, and he's sensitive to that. We see how in Acts 16-3 he circumcises Timothy. Timothy was the son of a Greek man and a Jewish mother. And so there would have been some expectation that, well, maybe Timothy should have been circumcised. Now, obviously in the gospel, because of what Christ has accomplished, that's no longer necessary. And so Paul could have said, no, we're not gonna circumcise Timothy, but he does. He accommodates for missional purposes. But here he does not accommodate. In verse five he says, we did not give into them for a moment so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. So what Paul is staking out here right at the outset is that by maintaining the expectation that believers would be circumcised, by maintaining any other sorts of expectations that were given under the law, we are actually adding and distorting the gospel by requiring those things. And so in order to preserve the truth of the gospel, Paul's not willing to give an inch.
Now, Paul continues in verse 6 with how the apostles responded to what he had to say. He says, as for those who were held in high esteem, whatever they were makes no difference to me, God does not show favoritism. They added nothing to my message. On the contrary, they recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised just as Peter had been to the circumcised. For God who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the circumcised was also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles. James, Cephas, and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.
So on the one hand, we see Paul here touting essentially this endorsement that he receives from three highly esteemed apostles, James, Cephas, which is just the Aramaic name for Peter, and John. So on the one hand, he's touting this endorsement. On the other, Paul makes it clear that he has his own right standing as an apostle himself, because he's received this revelation from Jesus Christ. And he points out the fact that God shows no partiality. God doesn't play favorites. In Deuteronomy 10:17 it says, for the Lord your God is a God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality, accepts no bribes. And we also hear in Paul's letter to the Galatians of how he observes the fact that God uses many people in order to progress the work of building the kingdom, sharing the gospel message. But that ultimately, at the end of the day, we're just instruments. It's God who gives the growth. In 1 Corinthians 3, he says, so neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything but only God who makes things grow. We have this human tendency to try to make a whole lot about people. And when you think about the apostles, you think, well, I mean, they're the apostles. You kind of make a big deal about them. But even here, Paul's reminding us they're still just humans. And they're not the ones who are transforming people's lives. This is all the work. of God. Now the apostles in hearing what Paul had to share added nothing to the gospel that he's preaching and they recognize the special calling that he has to preach to those who are uncircumcised. It's just another way to say Gentiles, it's just another way to say the whole rest of the world besides the Jews that Paul's been called especially to reach. And that on the other hand, Peter and the rest of the apostles are especially focused on reaching the Jewish people.
Now this is not a hard and fast division here, because we see Peter eventually here later in this passage in Antioch. Again, a very Gentile church. Tradition holds also that Peter made it to Rome. That's how you get the pope designated as the follower of the Jews. He falls in the line of Peter. So Peter was the bishop of Rome. So obviously, they weren't just limited to Judea, but there is a certain focus here that's being distinguished. And they're recognizing that Paul's work is good and right, and that God has called him especially to it. The only thing that they ask is that he remembers the poor. So they have this agreement together, they have this unity together, they've offered the right hand a fellowship, they're all on the same page, and they ask, just remember the poor. In asking Paul to do this, they're not asking him just to remember the poor generally. It seems that they're making an allusion to the poor in Jerusalem, particularly the poor Christians in Jerusalem. And Paul has done that, he's going to continue to do that through the course of his ministry. He notes that he was eager to do this and noting that he's once again reminding us he wasn't compelled by them to do anything, he's not getting marching orders from these apostles. They asked that he would do this, and he says of course this is exactly what I want to be doing, I want to be caring for the Jerusalem church as well.
Now at certain points here, Paul's maybe defensive, but we have to remember the context here, which is that the Galatians, for one reason or another, are doubting Paul's authority as an apostle. They're doubting his standing relative to the other apostles. This is what has led them to embrace a false gospel. What Paul is doing here is defending his unity with the other apostles. And he's also defending his equality with them. He's like, I'm an apostle in my own right. So Paul's equal footing and commitment to defending the integrity of the gospel appears especially on the occasion that Peter visits Antioch. And he relates this occasion in verse 11. It says, when Cephas, once again that's Peter, came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles, but when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy so that by their hypocrisy, even Barnabas was led astray. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, you are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile, not like a Jew. How is it then that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?
So once again, the situation here in the Antioch Church is one in which you have Jew and Gentiles together. It's a radical development, but it's a clear demonstration of the gospel reality, that Jesus has torn down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, made them one in himself. Now the controversy arises as there's a group of men that come from James, from Jerusalem, to the church at Antioch, and meanwhile, Peter has been sharing in fellowship with these Gentiles. The meaning of that is that he's basically been sitting at the table with them, eating food together with them. And as soon as these men arrive, Peter begins to draw back, because he knows that word could get back to the circumcision group, and he's afraid of that group. Now we don't know all the reasons why he's afraid of them. Whether it's just a point of pride of them looking down on him, which is kind of strange for us to imagine. It's like, you're Peter. You should be setting the agenda here, not these other people. It could be that. It could also be that the Jewish Christians were beginning to feel pressure back in Judea, because maybe rumors were going around that they were no longer insisting upon. following all the Jewish customs, customs of circumcision, the custom of eating kosher, you know, not eating pork. But it's more than that too, because there's more implied. It's not just not eating particular kinds of foods. Eating with Gentiles takes it a step further because the Gentiles have a certain reputation. They have a reputation for being sinful and in a particular way. by being idolaters. And you may have heard in some past sermons how I've talked about how very often the meat that people ate was sourced from sacrifices. The Jewish people ate the sacrifices offered to their God on occasions. And certainly in the pagan context, they offered these sacrifices to the God. The meat was basically barbecued. And then it went back to the market. And it was sold to people. So now you have to imagine that theoretically, Peter could be eating at the table with these Gentiles consuming meat that had been offered to pagan idols. Now he may not know one way or another, but when you're eating with a Gentile, that's a real possibility. And that's where the controversy arises.
Now there's nothing inherently sinful about that, Paul speaks elsewhere about that fact. And Peter knows better than this. He's had a vision himself of God dropping down this blanket with all these different animals and Peter saying, oh, I can't eat these unclean animals. And God tells him, no, take and eat. And then he sends him to the house of a Gentile to preach to the gospel to them. But the social pressure causes Peter to betray the gospel realities. Not just what you say, it's what you do. And that's why it's important for us as a church to remember it's not just what we say, it's how we act, how we live together as a church. And people will know the truth of the gospel based on how they see us living out our lives, especially collectively together. Now this was so bad that not only did Peter back off from fellowship with the Gentiles, Barnabas began to back off. And so now you have this possibility. Is Paul just going to follow in line with them? Is he going to back off? Because he's a Jew. He comes from deep roots. He knows all about the law. He gets the appeal. That's not what he does. Instead, he confronts Peter to his face in front of everybody. Imagine the guts it took to do that, to confront the apostle Peter. In verse 14 he says, you are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile, not like a Jew. How is it then that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? Now, the point that Paul is really getting at here isn't merely the fact of insisting upon these customs, because that's one thing to deal with, because in Christ that's no longer necessary. But what he's picking on here in particular is the fact that Peter hasn't been upholding all the customs. He has been eating with Gentiles, but now he's changing his tune. He's pointing out the fact that Peter's being a hypocrite here. He’s leading people astray. Now some of you are familiar with Christ's teaching in Matthew 18 where it says if your brother sins against you, you should go to him kind of in private, one-on-one, and address him on their sin. That's true. You should do that. But there are cases in which a public sin, especially as it's going on, as it's active, it needs to be addressed. publicly as well, especially in the case of a leader like this. Paul says elsewhere in 1 Timothy 5:19-20. He says, do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses. So you shouldn't entertain accusations willy nilly. But then he says, but those elders who are sinning, you are to reprove before everyone so that the others may take warning. So this is why. Paul's doing this. He isn't, he's not trying to embarrass Peter. He's not trying to harm Peter. He's trying to correct the collective harm that's been brought about because of the actions that he's taken because he's a public figure. He's a community leader. And so he addresses him in front of everyone.
Later on, it seems that things are fine between Peter and Paul. In 2 Peter 3, Peter refers to Paul's writings as other scriptures, so he recognizes the authority of what Paul has to say. In Acts 15:7-11, at the Jerusalem council, dealing with this issue with the requirements of circumcision and the Jewish customs, he says exactly what Paul says in terms of saying this needn't be required in Christ. So it seems they're in good terms, they're united. We don't hear the rest of the story here. We'd love to kind of hear the rest of the story of how Peter responded in that moment, but we don't hear it because Paul now moves beyond the personalities. to the heart of the matter, because that's what he's concerned about. He's not concerned about just telling stories about Peter. He's using this as an illustration, as an example. He turns to the heart of the matter, which his confrontation of Peter brings to the surface. So continuing on in verse 15. He says, we who are Jews by birth, not sinful Gentiles, know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by the works of the law, no one will be justified.
So Paul is speaking from experience here. He says, we who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles. So he's speaking from the position that he's coming from. that Peter's coming from and the position that other Jewish Christians would come from. They say, okay, we're not sinful Gentiles, but we know this: that no one is justified by the works of the law. No one can justify themselves before God and say, I'm all right, you should let me into your kingdom. Rather, he says, we who are Jewish Christians, what we've learned is that we can only be saved by faith in Jesus Christ. Paul's not denying that the Jews have received a certain blessing in receiving the law. The law is good, but the law cannot save. It's kind of going back to the glider analogy. The glider is fine, but the problem with the glider is us. We bring it down. We don't add any extra power to it. We can't take ourselves to the moon in it. We just bring it back down to the ground. And that's exactly what we do with God's law. God gives us his law, it's good, but we don't obey it. And so rather than taking us to the heavens, it condemns us because we don't live up to its standards. The law only points out that we're tied down by sin and that things are actually even more hopeless maybe than they even first appeared.
Now. In pointing out the state of our humanity, the state of our sinfulness, Paul is just pulling from the biblical testimony that's already been given up to this point. Probably in particular he thinks about Psalm 143 verse 2. It says, do not bring your servant into judgment for no one living is righteous before you. We've already heard him in some of his preaching in Cyprus. Acts 13:38-39, he says, therefore my friends I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is set free from every sin, a justification you were not able to obtain under the law of Moses. So Jesus brings forgiveness. Jesus makes it possible for us to be forgiven and justified. And that's something we couldn't get before Jesus. That's something we couldn't get just by knowing all the right things to do. Or. especially in the case of the Jewish people, of being part of the covenant people of God. Yes, they were part of God's covenant people, but they still were not living up to God's standard. He called them to be a holy people. They were not a holy people. Jew and Gentile like, all people stand equally condemned because of our sins. But the good news is that equal grace is also available to all of us in Jesus Christ.
In Romans 3, starting in verse 19, Paul says this, Now we know that whatever the law says, It says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law. Rather, through the law, we become conscious of our sin. So what Paul's saying here is like, you don't really know how bad you are until there's a standard. It's like. It's kind of like if you have a line, sometimes you think, oh, that line looks straight until you see an actual straight line. You're like, oh wow, I was really crooked. I thought I was good at freehand. I'm not good at freehand. That's the purpose that God's law serves. It shows us how far off we are, how far off the mark we are. And if that's all God did, that'd be pretty depressing if he just showed us how far off the mark we are. But that's not all he does, he does something more. Continuing in verse 21, he says, but now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, so we're all sinners on the one hand, on the other. And all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. By believing. and putting your faith in Jesus Christ, you can be forgiven of all your sins, irrespective of the fact that you're a terrible sinner, like all the rest of us.
See, what we like to do is try to judge ourselves relative to each other. We say we like to do that, but then sometimes it makes us feel pretty terrible about ourselves, because on the one hand, maybe you look at other people in this room, or maybe people in your workplace, just people you know, you think, oh wow, they've got it really put together. They're a good person. I don't really stack up to them. The truth is, is they're a sinner. That person is a sinner that needs God's grace. On the other hand, you might look at someone and say, oh wow, that person's a real mess. And you feel pretty good about yourself as like, I'm a responsible person. I'm a good person. I care about people. You're a sinner just like that person. Everyone is in need of God's grace. and he gives us that grace through his son Jesus Christ. And if we believe in him and put our faith in him, we are forgiven and welcomed into God's kingdom. Because the thing is, part of what God's tried to make clear to us all along is that we cannot save ourselves. In the garden, we decided we wanted to strike out on our own and try to be our own gods. That hasn't turned out well for us. God gave us his law and said, try to live up to this. We can't live up to it. And all along what God has been demonstrating is that we need him. We need him to be our Savior because we cannot save ourselves.
Continuing on in verse 25, Paul says this, God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed before unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. It is God who justifies us, not we ourselves and we need him to justify us because otherwise we're going to face judgment. That's the reality that Paul's pointing to here. God has rendered his final judgment and punishment because he's wanted to show us mercy. Because we've rebelled against God, because we've basically said to God, we don't really want you to exist, we want to be our own gods, we've become liable to punishment. We deserve to be destroyed. We don't deserve to exist because we've shown such ingratitude and rebellion to our Creator. We've spat in His face.in ways big and small, but all of them amount to, I want to be my own God, I want to make the rules, I don't want to submit to God. God has been patient. He dealt with us in order that at the right time through Jesus, he might make a way where everything could be set square between us. Because Jesus didn't live the life that all of us were supposed to live. And he offered his life as a sacrifice in a way that all of us are ultimately supposed to be offering our lives as sacrifices. It's not about the form, necessarily, a cross. That was important in terms of how God intended that specifically for Jesus to go to the cross and die. But the heart of the matter is that Jesus is offering his life completely unto God. even at the cost of great suffering. And we won't even offer our lives completely to God, even when things are easy, regardless if there was tons of suffering or anything. Jesus didn't deserve the suffering, and yet he offered himself completely to God. And so because of that sacrifice, things are made right between us, and we can start anew in him.
Paul has this great sense of anticipating rebuttals, and he preemptively responds in verse 17. He says, but if in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn't that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not. If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a law breaker, for through the law, I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing. So Paul's addressing a particular concern here. The Jewish Christians have been fraternizing with these Gentile Christians. And so, some observers might say, is, does Jesus promote sin then? Because we've already known the fact of how the Gentiles have been engaged in idolatry and all these other sinful lifestyles. And the answer is no. Clear and hard no. There's a distinction to be made here in terms of what changes under Jesus. Jesus simply sheds the ritual requirements of the law. Circumcision, dietary laws, animal sacrifices, because he's the one sacrifice for all. And the reason why he can just shed those things is because he fulfills the law's righteous demands. All those other things were just pointing, they were guardrails towards his end. He fulfills the righteous demands of the law in himself because he's the person that we're all supposed to be. And so this opens up a two-fold reality for us in himself. In Jesus, we can be accepted and forgiven. In Jesus, we can be transformed, liberated from the power of sin. And that's the order. First we're accepted in Christ and then we're changed. It's not that you have to change yourself first and then you're accepted in Christ. That's just going back to earning your salvation. You can't do that. But we should understand that our acceptance in Christ brings with us this great gift of a changed life, which Christ brings about within us. And Paul says, you know, to basically in verse 18, to run back to just trying to maintain the separation between Jew and Gentile, to maintain this division, would just be to say that you're trying to rebuild righteousness on your own terms. And once again, you can't live up to that standard. It would just indicate that you're a law breaker. Christ died on the cross in order to open up a new reality to us. So right now humanity has been under a curse, under the curse of sin. On the cross Jesus suffers that curse. He didn't deserve to suffer what he suffered, but he suffers the curse. In order to break that curse, to lift the judgment that stands over us. He dies in order so that we too might die in him and enter into a new life with him.
In Romans 7:4-6 he says, so my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code. See, Christ died so that we would have the law written on our hearts. When it's just a written code, we fail to live up to it. It just points out our faults. But by being joined to the death of Christ, we die to the power of sin so that God can begin making our obedience just simply a matter that springs supernaturally from our hearts. We begin to do what is right because we now want to do. was right. And that's something that's only made possible through Jesus Christ. We've been crucified in Christ in order that we might live life in Christ. We die so that we might be like Jesus. But us living like Jesus doesn't begin from within our own powers. It's only by the power of Christ, by the person of Christ. And so, in light of this, kind of pushing back on this idea that Jesus is promoting sin, Paul is basically saying a sinful lifestyle is incomprehensible, because that would be at complete odds with the purpose for which Christ came. Grace has been given so that we can have a new life.
Paul says in Romans 6:1-7, What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? As though like, well I just need lots of grace so I'm gonna sin a bunch. By no means! We are those who have died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father. we too may live a new life. So, when Christ dies on the cross, once again, we're shown this reality that He is suffering the curse that we deserve to suffer. He doesn't deserve to suffer it. And yet, He's offering His life as a complete sacrifice unto God. Also, in His death, He dies so that we might be joined to His death. so that we can also be joined to his resurrection. That's the beautiful imagery of baptism. And we're gonna be doing some baptisms in a few weeks here. When you go down in the water, it represents your union with Christ's death. And when you come out, it represents the fact that you're joined to the new life of Christ. Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father so that we too may live a new life. In fact, that we can be a new creation. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 and 21, he says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Once again, Christ didn't deserve to die and suffer on the cross, but he died the death that sinners deserve. The reason why he died that death, that he was counted among the sinners, is so that we might be accounted among the sons and daughters of God. So that we might become the righteousness of God. The old is gone. The new is here. That's the great joy we can have as Christians in coming to Christ. When you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you leave all the baggage behind. The past life is buried with Christ. Those things you were guilty of, you're forgiven in Christ. Those things that controlled you. Well, you might still need to deal with some of those things. but they no longer have power over you because a greater power resides within you. It's the power of Jesus Christ communicated through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit within you. It's like we have an advance notice. of the salvation that will be revealed in full at Christ's return. Yes, we're looking forward to the resurrection of the body when the rest of this earth will be healed and restored, but even today, here and now, Jesus is restoring lives. And we need to proclaim that strongly. It's not just about the hereafter. Jesus is restoring lives here and now today. And many of you here can testify to that reality. I can testify to that reality, that apart from Jesus Christ, my life would have been a train wreck. And you only know the half of it. My life would have been a train wreck. That's the complete picture of salvation. that Jesus offers to us.
Paul says in verse 21 essentially, if there was another way, if you could have just simply upheld the law and saved yourself by that means, what then would have been the point of Jesus? He would have died for nothing. So you can't say on the one hand, oh yeah, I believe in Jesus, but on the others be depending on being a good enough person. to get yourself into the kingdom of God. If you're still clinging to that, to that idea that I really am a good person, that I can stand before God and the scales will go in my favor, you're holding onto that. You're rendering the death of Christ completely irrational. What's the meaning of it? Why would the Son of God come and suffer and die if we were all right on our own? If we could have managed our salvation on our own? The Son of God came to us in the flesh, because there was no other options left. He alone can save us. There is no other way. It does not matter how fast we run. It does not matter if I climb to the highest mountains and take a giant leap. We will always descend with our gliders to the ground. Something else is needed entirely, a power that exceeds our own. that can carry us to the greatest heights. We need God to save us. The Son of God is lifted up so that all, Jew and Gentile, people from every nation, tribe, and tongue, all of them can go to Him and be saved. If you think that means a license to sin, then you don't even desire the salvation that Jesus offers. You see, he offers to save us from the dumpster. He grabs us from the flames of the incinerator so that we can be who God created us to be. And Jesus is the only one who can do it. The only one who can make things square between us and God. The only one who can make us a new creation. He does this for you. He does this for me. If we hang up our gliders and entrust our lives to him. Let's pray.
Dear Father, We come to you to confess that we are not able to justify ourselves before you. that your law, while it is good, only points out all our flaws and how short we come up in terms of being the holy people you desire us to be. Father, we give you thanks that you have offered us a way to be saved. Not by our power, not by our efforts, Father, but by your intervening hands manifested through the person of Jesus Christ, your Son. He died the death that we all deserved. He was hung on the cursed tree to reveal that he was suffering the curse for our sakes. in order to offer a sacrifice that could justify us before you. To make things right. Father, help us to trust ourselves completely to the work of Jesus Christ. It's in Him alone that we are justified and forgiven. That is, in Him alone that we are transformed into the people that you've desired us to be. And that all other efforts, whether it be by the law or self-help or anything, are completely paltry and insufficient gliders. compared to the power of Jesus Christ. who's came to save us. Lead us to trust completely in him, we pray. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from the Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us in person or virtually this Sunday as we continue our series through the Letter to the Galatians. It's our joy to welcome you into our community.
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)