Galatians 2:15-21

I said to Cephas before them all, 

“If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?

“We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; 16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. 

“17 But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant [promoter, minister] of sin? Certainly not! 18 For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. 

19 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. 20 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. 21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.” 

One of my favorite televisions shows is Justified; it’s about a deputy US marshal, Raylan Givens who doesn’t mind dealing out justice by shooting bad guys.  The show does a great job of examining the grey area where good guys and bad guys know each other, even respect each other to some degree, and aren’t all that different.

In the pilot, Raylan Givens dares a Miami drug kingpin to pull the trigger.  Raylan is quicker on the draw.  The shooting is justified; but Raylan is transferred from Miami to his boyhood home in the backwaters of Kentucky where he continues shooting it out with bad guys.  Raylan Givens is on a quest to be justified and to make the world around him justified.  

All of us have very deep longings for everything around us to be right, to function correctly and within our control.  We have very deep longings for grace – something to cover over the mistakes we make in trying to perform up to standards.

That’s why I titled the message this morning, Justified: It’s Not Just a TV Show, because when Paul talks in this section about being justified he is speaking (whether we know it or not) about our deepest needs. If we begin to examine what gets us out of bed in the morning and drives us along through the day, why we value certain things, we will find ultimate question at the end of the day is: how can I perform so that my life will not be considered a failure?

Professor G.C. Berkouwer, for many years a professor of dogmatics at the Free University of Amsterdam and a highly respected theologian, wrote “The confession of divine justification touches man’s life at its heart, the point of its relationship to God.  …It defines the preaching of the church, the existence and progress of the life of faith, the root of human security, and man’s perspective of the future.”

The word justified defines our lives in a far greater way than we are often aware.  Justification is an act of God’s free grace to sinners, in which he pardons all their sins, accepts and accounts their persons righteous his sight; not for any thing [sic ] produced in them, or done by them, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them, and received by faith alone.

Our passage on justification this morning shows us:  (1) Law performance is a self-damnation project (2:15-16); (2) grace is a demolition project (2:17-18); and (3) crucifixion with Christ brings a resurrection project (2:19-21).  These projects are Christ at work in you, the hope of glory.

    1. SELF-DAMNATION PROJECT (2:15-16)
  • Wall of Performance
        1. This section begins, in vv. 15-16, “We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; 16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”
        2. This passage, vv. 15-21, is likely a continuation of Paul’s speech to Peter, Barnabas, and the Jewish believers of Antioch.  The original Greek texts did not have punctuation.  There are no quotation marks in Greek.
        3. It is the first time the word justified appears in this letter and it’s used four times in three verses.  Paul is saying that Peter’s refusal to worship with the Gentiles obscures the grace of God because “the Bishop of Rome” is seeking performance-based approval that obscures the fundamental doctrine of the Good News.
        4. Paul is saying that there is no other way to ensure a passing grade on your life but to trust Jesus’ declaration that everything has already been done for you.  Unless we are convinced that God alone is the justifier and we are the justified, we will spend the rest of our lives letting our sin nature try to beat back the fear of judgment from our own flesh, from other people, and from the enemy.  It is the fear that we have never done enough.
        5. Our sin nature lives its life seeking justification, the passing grade that says “I have performed enough penance, done enough good things, and gained enough approval from men and God.”  But that passing grade never comes by means of the flesh or by means of God’s Law or the laws we make for ourselves.
        6. There is a modern theological idea that the letter to the Galatians is very limited in scope.  It views the letter as Paul’s answer to a narrow question of whether Gentiles had to keep kosher and be circumcised, the ethnic boundary markers of Israel.  It’s very important to hold that position if you are teaching that salvation comes through faith AND faithful works.   
        7. Historic protestant theology presents a very clear Law-Gospel distinction, much of which is drawn from this letter and Jesus’ doctrine of justification which our Lord taught directly to Paul, and Paul teaches directly to us. One needs to obscure that distinction in order to teach justification by faith + faithful works or to diminish God’s Law to some level of keep-able societal norm.
        8. So Paul argues to Peter and company that even though Jews received God’s Law and strove to outwardly keep it (unlike the Lawless Gentile sinners), outward Law-keeping cannot meet our deepest needs, and it gives no point of contact between men’s hearts and God.
        9. God’s Law is FAR deeper and higher than circumcision, keeping kosher, not stealing your neighbor’s car, or being faithful to your spouse.  God’s Law condemns Jew and Gentile alike.  If by works of the law no one will be justified, then mere human Law-performance is a self-damnation project.  Jesus refers to outward Law-keepers as whitewashed tombs – pretty on the outside but utterly corrupt on the inside.
  • Drive to Escape
      1. Without Jesus’ perfection we are stuck in our self-damnation project.  No matter how hard we try to suppress God’s Law written on our hearts – and nobody suppresses all of God’s Law all of the time – we know down deep we don’t measure up.
      2. So we are all Galatians.  We naturally run after the slavery of self-justification by trying to appease the judge with hard work, getting better, being nicer, losing weight, being successful, being popular, getting good grades. Those are examples of the little “l” laws we make for ourselves in addition to God’s Law.
      3. Justification touches the very real, everyday concerns of our lives.  Paul knows that if we have confidence before God, we are free from slavery to self-salvation projects and from the nagging fear of never performing enough.  
      4. Paul uses this word justified to mean “put right – all outstanding bills have been paid in full” by Jesus.  God, in Christ Jesus, has “measured up” for us; we are fully and finally established forever because Jesus’ perfection and performance is credited to those to whom God gives trust into Christ.
      5. Col. 2:13-14 gives us a snapshot of the word justified, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”
      6. Not too many teachers today will proclaim that all Christian men need to be circumcised or all Christians (male and female) should keep kosher – though I have heard a very popular preacher tell his audience not to eat pork.  But we do get financial checklists, family checklists, personal inventory checklists, diet checklists, and political checklists to guarantee God’s affection and achieve personal prosperity.  We get laws to balance grace – because too much grace is assumed to be a bad thing.  After all, don’t we need law to make us better?  We’ll deal with that question in weeks to come.
      7. But for now, where does this text leave us with respect to God’s Law?  It leaves us in the midst of a demolition project according to vv. 17-18.
  • DEMOLITION PROJECT (2:17-18)
  • Dead to Sin and Law
        1. Rom. 7:7-10, “What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” 
        2. Paul spent the first 6 chapters of Romans writing that we have died to sin and died to law.  That raised the question as to whether the Law itself was sin, which Paul answers in Rom. 7.  It’s the same issue in our text where Paul addresses whether Jesus is a minister of sin. 
        3. Paul says to the Church of Rome that God’s Law is holy, just, and good.  God’s Law is God’s revelation of God’s nature: Be perfect because I am perfect.  God’s nature is not merely good; it is THE GOOD.
        4. To the extent the good Jew followed God’s Law outwardly he was distinguished from the Gentile sinners (v 15). Luther defined outward Law-keeping this way: “…when one serves God out of fear of punishment or because of the promise of a reward, does not swear by God’s name, honors one’s parents, does not kill, does not steal, does not commit adultery, etc. This is a servile righteousness; it is mercenary, feigned, specious, external, temporal, worldly, human. It profits nothing for the glory to come but receives in this life its reward, glory, riches, honor, power, friendship, well-being, or at least peace and quiet, and fewer evils than do those who act otherwise.”
        5. So, if Christ’s righteousness alone saves both Jew and Gentile and Law-keeping does not produce rightness with God, then does that make Jesus a minister [servant – deacon, not slave] of sin (v. 17)?  
        6. Paul makes a more succinct answer in Rom. 6:1-2, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?”  He will expound on this death/resurrection idea here in vv. 19-21.
        7. But the mere appearance of righteousness, without inward renewal, only serves to convince sinners that they are good when they are in reality, as Jeremiah proclaims, broken cisterns that cannot hold water (Jer. 2:13); it causes people to believe they are way better than they actually are (Jer. 2:23).  Reliance upon outside-the-cup righteousness has to die. It has to be demolished.
  • Building Up, Tearing Down (18)
      1. V. 18, “For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor.”
      2. Outside-the-cup righteousness is demolished in Christ.  Jesus’ demolition project is an inside out project, not an outside in project. It is not a “fake it till you make it” project.  The sin nature (which is convinced that rightness comes through performance) is being torn down.
      3. But the flesh, the sin nature, the old man doesn’t die at once.  Peter spent three years walking with Jesus, was a witness to the empty tomb, sat and ate with the resurrected Christ, and listened to his teaching; but Peter’s withdrawal from worshiping with the Gentiles was a re-building project.  It was the wrong kind of work.
      4. Luther makes a helpful distinction of the kinds of works people perform: “(1) Works of sin, which are done under the domination of lust, with no resistance on the part of grace; (2) works of the Law, which are done when lust is held in check outwardly but glows all the more inwardly and hates the Law, that is, works that are good in appearance but evil in the heart; (3) works of grace, which are done when lust resists, but the spirit of grace is nevertheless victorious; (4) works of peace and perfect well-being, which are done with the fullest ease and pleasantness after lust has been extinguished—as will be the case in the life to come. Here there is only a beginning.”
      5. So the demolition project that the Holy Spirit undertakes in the life of the believer is one that tears down works that appear good but are done out the desperate desire to put ourselves right, to gain approval and earn reward.
      6. The Christian life is a demolition project.  But Paul also describes it in vv. 19-21 as a death and resurrection project.
  • RESURRECTION PROJECT (2:19-21)
  • Dead to Law (19-20a)
        1. Paul writes in vv. 19-20, “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ.” 
        2. Paul could not truly live until he was dead to the law.  The innate desire to perform, to “give-to-get,” to earn God’s green stamps had to die.  The Law can no longer use Paul any more than a master can use a dead slave.  The irony here is that the Law was what had whipped Paul to death.
        3. In 2 Cor. 3:6 Paul writes that the law kills.  In Gal. 3:21 he will tell us the Law cannot give life.  The Law cannot give what it demands.  
  • Life in Christ (20b)
      1. 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.”
      2. Jesus, my substitute, has been crucified on my behalf.  His Spirit has come to live in me and change my desires from self-interest to Jesus-interest.
      3. “The spirit of faith… keeps the Law with love for the Law; that is, he fulfills the Law in the best way, even though by outwardly struggling with his sins he shows that he is a sinner.… Inwardly the man of the Law sins; outwardly he pretends righteousness. Inwardly the man of faith does what is good; outwardly he bears his sins and persecutes them.”
      4. “Through the law of faith… Paul lives to God inwardly. At the same time he is dead to the Law. In the flesh, however, he does not yet live to God but is being made alive to God. He is not yet dead to the Law but is being put to death to the Law while striving to extend outwardly … the same purity of the heart that comes from faith. Because of this endeavor he deserves to be considered entirely alive to God and dead to the Law…. For it is in the life to come that we live fully to God and are dead to the Law.”
      5. Vs. 21, “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.”
      6. “If we could produce a righteousness of our own, then Christ has suffered in vain; for the intention of his sufferings was to procure it for us, and what need was there that a work which we could accomplish for ourselves should be obtained from another? If the death of Christ be our redemption, then we were captives; if it be satisfaction, we were debtors; if it be atonement, we were guilty; if it be cleansing, we were unclean. On the contrary, he who ascribes to works his sanctification, pardon, atonement, righteousness, or deliverance, makes void the death of Christ.”
      7. If a person is made right by performing, then the God-Man’s death was utterly meaningless.  Who could possibly love Jesus and subtract from his person and work by seeking rightness, wholeness, peace, and comfort any place else than the cross?

(1) Law performance is a self-damnation project; it ministers death (2:15-16). (2) grace is a demolition project; it tears down the performance-demanding self. (2:17-18). (3) Crucifixion with Christ brings a resurrection project as the Spirit works life into a Law-murdered soul (2:19-21).  

Finally, notice the last part of v. 20 one final time: “…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.” (Emphasis added).  

Modern writers who diminish Galatians as merely a letter about ethnic barriers also teach that personal salvation is not important to the Biblical narrative; at best, it’s merely a by-product of Jesus building a kingdom through collectivist social justice.

I think that modern notion is entirely foreign to Paul.  Jesus loved ME.  Jesus gave himself for ME!   MY self-damnation is over.  MY sin nature is being demolished. MY life is lived by trust in the finished work of Jesus.  I live under a banner that reads “Done!” not “Do.”