Galatians 2:17-21
Amen. You can be seated. Please
turn in your copy of God’s word to the book of Galatians, chapter
two, 17 to 21. If you’re using the pew Bible,
that’s on page 973. While you’re looking for that
passage of scripture, I’ll mention a couple of things just by way
of context. Remember last week we said that
verses 15 and 16 were Paul’s thesis statement of the letter
to the Galatians. We are justified by faith in
Jesus. Today, we want to think about
17 to 21, where he had talked about justification by faith. Now he’s going to talk about
our union with Christ. And in your Sunday school class today,
you looked at union with Christ with Sinclair Ferguson. I think
your fifth lesson or so, sixth lesson. And he zeroed in on Galatians
2.20, which is one of our passages, one of our several verses for
today. He zeroes in, zooms in on verse 20. Today, we’re going
to zoom out on verses 17 to 21, but we’re also going to look
at the reason or the argument that Paul makes for refuting
the accusation that comes to the Galatians. So we’ll touch
on verse 20. But, but y’all, boy, y’all took a deep dive.
That was a good study. And, uh, if you didn’t hear it,
you ought to perhaps look it up online. Um, but it’s a, it’s
a good one. Uh, now remember where we are
in Galatians. Paul is defending the gospel
to the Galatian church. They’ve had false teachers come
in. He’s not only defending the gospel, which he says, I got
directly from Jesus, not from men. He’s also defending his
apostolic authority, which he also got from Jesus and not from
And just to help us read through this passage well, Paul is, remember,
a well-educated man. He was educated under the Greeks,
the Romans at Tarsus, and he would have learned the laws of
good reasoning, good arguments. And so when we read our passage,
verse 17 is going to be the false premise that the Galatians make. And then he’s going to make two
arguments, one in verse 18 and 19. Another one in verse 20,
and then in verse 21, he’s gonna give you his conclusion why the
Galatians are wrong. And this passage is a mind twister. Peter writes to Christians, some
things in Paul are hard to understand. And he probably has this. section
in mind. It’s hard for me to understand,
and I hope by God’s grace to make it clear to you. So let’s
give our attention now. Galatians chapter two, beginning
at 17, Paul says this, but if in our endeavor to be justified
in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then
a servant of sin? Certainly not. For if I rebuild
what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. 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 righteousness were through
the law, then Christ died for no purpose. Amen. The word of the living God for
us, his children. I’ve mentioned a number of times
to y’all that we are getting good at learning about the nuts
and bolts of the Christian life. If you have been in the men’s
confession of faith study or the women’s confession of faith
study, if you sat through our study in Sunday school a year
and a half, two years ago on the order of salvation, the young
adults are going through it now in Sunday school. Perhaps you’ve
been through it with us on the Sunday nights back in 2015 and
2016, we went through the order of salvation. Perhaps you’re
becoming an expert on the nuts and bolts of the Christian faith. And that’s a good thing. We want
to be sophisticated in our understanding of what God in Christ has done
for us, is doing for us, and will do for us in the future.
I was telling somebody, Recently, maybe the Sunday school class
earlier, when I was 16, I had a Jeep, a very basic Jeep Wrangler,
one of the ones without the top. It was a little four-cylinder,
no power steering, straight drive, no door locks. I mean, it had
a cloth top. It didn’t even have a radio in
it until I put one in. I had to hot wire it directly
to the battery. So you had to turn it off every
time, because otherwise it would draw the battery down. But it
was a very basic vehicle. And I went to the auto parts
store Haynes manuals. So it told me how to fix it.
And I remember a man in the church showed me how to change the spark
plugs and all those sorts of things, but it helped me keep
it running. And that’s in a sense, what we
want to do as we study all of these things in our confession
of faith, our Christian ed hour during Sunday school, and in
these sermons on Galatians, we want to understand the nuts and
bolts of the Christian life. And that’s really over and against
How simplified we’ve made the Christian life or the gospel
in our culture. Maybe this isn’t very nice, but
this is at least how I thought of the gospel till I read my
Bible and my theology. You often think of the gospel
as a get out of hell free card, right? We play Monopoly. and
you land in jail and you pick up your orange or whatever color
card it is, get out of jail free. Well, we, we think very often
because the church has said it too often come to Jesus and you
won’t go to hell. Well, that’s true, but you come
to Jesus and you get all kinds of other stuff like justification
and adoption and sanctification. You get assurance, you get perseverance,
you get glorified, of course, uh, But we treat it sometimes
like a get out of hell free card or what another Christian theologian
has well said of the way we treat Christianity. We take our pagan
or our earthy lives. Right? We, we just kind of bumping
along in life and we, we hear you need Jesus. And so we, we
take Jesus like one of those magic shakers of spice and seasoning. You know, they advertise it on
TV, make your burgers great, make your chicken tasty. All
the neighbors will smell your grill and come over. And so we,
we take Jesus like he’s this magic bottle of spices and we
dump them on our pagan life and say, how great that’s not it
either. And so by God’s word and by God’s
spirit, we want to come to understand the language of salvation. That’s
why we think through Galatians. That’s why we think through the
confession of faith. That’s why we think through the
order of salvation. And we begin to realize the language
of salvation in the scriptures, in the Pauline epistles, in the
book of Galatians is rather wonderful. We think of salvation as past.
God has saved us. We have been made saints. We
think of salvation as present. God is at work in each of us.
He’s saving us now, just as he saved us in the past. We think
of future. He’s going to come get me and take me to heaven
to be with him forever. So we think of salvation, past, present,
and future. We think about salvation as already. We’ve got some down payments
on glory now. We’ve been raised up with Christ.
We will be, that’s the not yet, raised up with Christ and glory
forever one day soon. So we think of salvation, past,
present, future, already and not yet. Then we think of the
gospel in its indicatives. In language, it tells us true
things. God loves you. God sent his son to save you.
God has given you everything you need for life and for godliness.
These are the indicatives of the Bible. And then the imperatives,
the do things of the Bible come. We don’t do the imperatives to
be saved because the indicatives tell us that’s been done in Jesus.
But when we hear God loves us, therefore we should love him
back. We’re able to. The indicatives drive the imperatives. When we hear God loves you, now
love others as Christ loves you, we can do that. The indicatives
drive the imperatives. And then we think of the active
and the passive parts of salvation. There are things that you are
passive in. God does them for you. Only God
can do them for you. Then there are things that we
actively do. Work out your salvation with
fear and trembling. That’s the sanctification part.
That’s the knowledge, build up your faith through this word
and the spirit part. And then we think of the implications,
the therefores of the gospel and the implications or the therefores
of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ or what we are
dealing with today. We have a sophisticated view
of salvation. If we’re in Christ, we’ve put
off our old nature and are putting on the new nature. But somehow
the Galatians have accused Paul of preaching a gospel that says
this, this is false, but this is their accusation. Paul, you
preach justification by faith. You say it’s just as if I’ve
never sinned because My sin is pardoned in Jesus. You say it’s
just as if I’ve always obeyed because the righteousness or
the obedience of Jesus is credited to my account or imputed to me.
We say the implication of that, remember this is false. We say
the implication of that is that that leads a person to sin more
because they know they’re forgiven in Jesus. And Paul’s going to
say, no, that’s not it at all. And he’s going to begin to tell
his answer in verses 17 to 21, but he’s going to spend the rest
of the Galatians letter explaining how we’re to live. Those are
the imperatives, right? Based on the indicatives, what
God has done for us in Jesus Christ. I hope you’ll bear with,
I hope you’ll lean into this. It’s good to have a sophisticated
view of our Christian life. It’s good to know the nuts and
bolts, the inner workings of our soul, because we can do two
things. We can better live for God as we walk the Christian
life, but we can also be better worshipers. Let me give you an
example of the better worship. We just sang a few moments ago
how marvelous, how wise, how wonderful, how great to contemplate
Jehovah’s Saving plan, the nuts and bolts of salvation. In that
hymn, James Montgomery Boyce, who was on his deathbed, he had
been given a terminal diagnosis, cancer, and he didn’t live much
longer, but he wrote about a dozen hymns during that period where
he focuses on who God is and what God has done and how that
benefits the Christian’s life. We have five or six of those
hymns in our hymnal. There’s at least double that.
You can go down the hall in the resource room and look at those
those hymn books. I think there’s a couple in there,
a little paperback, but understanding the nuts and bolts of the Christian
life will make you a better Christian. Understanding what God is doing
in your life, but it will make you a better worshiper. Remember
the final stanza of that hymn, what have I now to do? I’m just
making it up. I don’t remember the words perfectly,
but what now have I to do? He says, but to worship that
God. And so this is a worthy exercise.
And we want to think through the argument that Paul makes
to the Galatian accusers. Their premise is this, verse
17. He’s restating in his own words,
if our endeavor to be justified in Christ, if in our endeavor
to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners,
is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not. Here’s their accusation. You say you’re justified by faith
in Jesus. You say Christ obedience is yours.
Christ righteousness is yours. Pardon is yours. That leads to
just sinning because you can just ask Jesus forgiveness. And
so the way Paul answers this, if in our endeavor to be justified
in Christ, we too were to be found sinners, This is their
accusation. Sinners, because you’re free
in Jesus and don’t have to follow the dietary laws. That’s the
context, right? Then Christ is a servant of sin.
He just makes it as absurd as possible, doesn’t he? If what
you say is true, Galatians, Jesus has freed us from the law and
pardoned us and given us his righteousness. Now, because we’re
eating barbecue, Right? Now, because we’re not following
the strict old covenant laws, you’re saying we are sinners.
And I’ve just told you in the first two chapters of my letter
that I got this gospel that I both preach and live. I got it from
Jesus. And you’re saying that Jesus
is now a minister. That’s the other word for servant. You’re saying now Christ ministers
sin. And he gives us certainly not. Now y’all know Paul is going
to get nastier to the Galatians. It’s going to come up in a couple
of sermons, I suppose, but he gives here a certainly not, not
a well, maybe, or, well, you’ve got a point there. We should
think about it. No, it’s false. It is wrong. Absolutely not. No way. It’s the wrong conclusion. It’s from poor reasoning. It’s
from sinful reasoning. Antinomianism is what they’re
accusing. Anti, against, nomos law. You’re
saying God has freed us from the law. We can send our brains
out and Jesus will just forgive us. That’s not at all what the
gospel teaches and proclaims. You know, the hymn of the antinomians
is this. Oh, what is it? Oh, I can’t even
remember the good hymn. Free from the law, O blessed
condition, I can sin all I want and still get remission. That’s
what the Galatians are accusing Paul of preaching. And he says,
no, that’s not it. It’s October now, Martin Luther. Maybe saw in the email I sent
out to the church yesterday. You can watch the documentary
as we march towards October 31st, Protestant Reformation. Justification
by faith alone was a big, big emphasis for Luther. And he says,
which would be against the Galatians accusation here, when a person
is justified by faith, it will be a lively faith, a faith that
leads to good works. And James chapter two, I believe
it is, says, you show me your faith, I’ll show you my faith
by my works. A fruitful, faithful Christian
will do good things. Our motive for obedience is no
longer law-keeping. It’s Christ-pleasing. We please
God by doing what he commands, and it’s done out of that new
heart spoken of in Jeremiah 31. I’ll write the law on your heart.
You’ll quit disobeying the law on tablets and stones that came
from scary Mount Sinai, and you’ll obey out of the heart that has
been circumcised in Christ. Paul is going to say, if justification
is by faith and we don’t have to keep the law, that would make Christ a minister
of sin. That is not the case at all. And so this is their
premise, it’s false. Paul is gonna prove it more and
more. And there’s another argument that pops up in verses 18 and
19. Paul says, if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to
be a transgressor. For through the law, I died to
the law that I might live to God. Remember Paul was a law
keeper. before Jesus met him on the Damascus
road. Remember when he tells his pedigree
in the scriptures, he says, I was circumcised on the eighth day.
I was an Israelite from the tribe of Benjamin. That’s the kingly
line. Remember I was a Hebrew of Hebrews. I was a Pharisee.
And then he says, I was so zealous. I persecuted people who thought
they were free in Jesus, but wouldn’t keep the law. And that’s
when Jesus met him. And remember he even says as
to the law, which he thought could attain him to righteousness,
he was blameless. Paul is saying, I tore this down. I tore this down when I came
to faith in Jesus. Faith in Jesus tears down the
law. And to go back to it would be
to rebuild what was torn down. And so Philippians 3 is a wonderful
explanation of Paul to that church where he says, whatever gain
I had, all that law keeping, I count it as a loss for the
sake of Christ. because of the surpassing worth
of knowing Jesus as my Lord. He says of all his past works
and all the perfection, he thought he had them. It’s rubbish. It’s
for the garbage heap. It is not acceptable. I accept
Christ and his obedience. I accept Christ and his death. He is my righteousness and it
comes through faith. And so be careful, dear Christians,
if you begin to think Christ is not sufficient, Maybe this
comes to you in your daily living. Lord, I haven’t been perfect.
I haven’t kept your law. I haven’t had my quiet time.
I haven’t, you know, you go through the list. Remember that you are
hidden with Christ in God. Your righteousness is not from
your law keeping. It’s not from your works doing.
That would never measure up in God’s sight. You simply receive
Jesus and rest in him alone for salvation. Now we’re going to
talk about the Christian life in Galatians. We’re going to
talk about your struggle, our struggle with remaining sin.
But if you ever begin to think that Christ is not sufficient
and you want to cut and you want to run and you want to try and
you want to do, you will fail. If you go back to the law, if
you go back to the law, Paul says, you will be a transgressor. And so he begins to tear down
the argument that the Galatians are making. And he’s easing towards
his answer. If you’re beginning to wonder,
what’s his answer to the Galatians? Well, he’s easing towards it.
He’s building his argument and then he’s going to give them
the boom, the big punch, the yardarm on the ship is going
to clear the deck, as it were. You say, Galatians, you say,
Galatians, justification by faith. leads people who live by faith
into sinning more because they’re not keeping the law. You say,
Galatians, that going back to the law keeping makes one right
before God. Paul says, no, Jesus is not a
minister of sin. He wouldn’t preach a gospel that
made people sinners. And he also says, I’m not going
back there. I’ve been there, I’ve done that.
I’ve got the T-shirt. In fact, Paul’s got the gold
watch, doesn’t he? He’s got the gold watch that
says you did it all right. Well, except he didn’t. That’s
why Jesus said, you need me. And if you look at verse, Oh, which verse is it? Well,
look at the next verse. If I rebuild what I tore down,
I proved myself to be a transgressor for through the law, I died.
Verse 19, for through the law, I died to the law so that I might
live to God. He’s ended his relationship with
the law at the cross. If he was under the law, he would
die, but Jesus paid that death penalty. So he died to the law. The law is no longer over them.
And so he begins, to lead towards his next argument against the
Galatian accusers. And you find it in verse 20.
And this is beginning to get to the answer. If you’re justified
by faith in Jesus, what’s to keep you from sinning? Well,
he says, I’ve been crucified with Christ. That’s what. It is no longer I who live, I
who would keep sinning, but it’s Christ who lives in me. And then he goes on to say, the
life I now live in the flesh. Now that’s not remnant sin flesh,
that’s his real skin. You gotta decide, and Paul, is
he talking about the skin, the life, the body, or is he talking
about the remnant sin, the corruption, remaining sin? Here he’s talking
about the body. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by
faith, and I live it in the Son of God who loved me and gave
himself for me. So you wanna accuse me of preaching
justification leads to libertinism. Justification leads to, antinomianism,
he says, absolutely no. Now there’s an old spiritual
from the early years of the American history, old spiritual. Were
you there? See, some of y’all are homing it already.
When they crucified my Lord. And the song goes on. Were you
there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they
nailed him to the tree? Were you there when they laid
him in the tomb? Were you there when the stone was rolled away?
And it’s one of those we call contemplative sort of songs. We think about true things. It
stirs up in our heart and we sing over and over. Were you
there? Were you there? Were you there? And it’s one
of those rhetorical questions, right? Rhetorical questions you
don’t answer out loud. But this is a question that needs
to be answered. Were you there when they crucified
my Lord? And Paul’s answer is, yes, you
were there. And I think those of you in the
Sunday school class this morning would have heard that loud and
clear. Yes, you were there by union
with Jesus. If you are baptized into Christ,
If you are in union and communion with Jesus, you are in union
and communion and participate in what He did at the cross.
This is explained in our passage today. It’s very clear in Romans
6. What Jesus did at the cross by
your union with Him by faith, you did as well. If He died, you died. If He rose,
you will be raised again. I read a interesting book this
week that said four things were nailed to the cross. The first
thing nailed to the cross was Jesus. We know that from the
gospels. They took him outside the city
to the place of the skull, Golgotha. And Luke says, and they crucified
him. The second thing nailed to the
cross was the accusation placed over his head, king of the Jews. The third thing nailed to the
cross, according to Colossians chapter two, is your sins, your
trespasses, the record of your debt. I remember one of the first
things I ever underlined or highlighted in my copy of God’s word was
Colossians 2.14. The record of my debt, the record
of my sin was nailed to the cross. That gives you great hope, doesn’t
it? The record of sin was nailed to the cross. The fourth thing
that was nailed to the cross. And Paul says it here in Galatians
chapter two, you were. You were spiritually by your
union and communion with Jesus Christ. Paul says in verse 20,
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but
Christ who lives in me. Our participation in Christ,
our union, our communion, our baptism makes us united to his
death and united to his resurrection. Were you there when they crucified
my Lord? Yes, you were. And the record
of your debt was nailed to the cross. And so Paul is beginning
to clearer and clearer and more clearly and more clearly answer
the question of the Galatians. Does justification by faith alone
lead one to send their brains out because Jesus will forgive
them? No. They were crucified with Christ
at the cross. They died with Jesus. They died
to the law. They died to the sin. God made
an end of it. And now as they’re raised with
Jesus, they’re raised to new life. in him. And you see how
his argument is annihilating their silly reasoning, their
faulty conclusion. Paul goes on to say, in 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. When I was a young kid, my
dad left the mainline denomination and started a church. And we
were sort of the hippie Jesus movement church. And you wonder
about me now. We used to sing the Bible songs
that came out of the Calvary church movement out in California.
And one of the songs we always sang on Wednesday night during
prayer time, I can remember singing it. I can remember which Elon
student played the guitar. I can remember all the details
of it. It didn’t sink in until years later, but we would sing,
I am crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but
Christ who lives in me. And we would sing that over and
over and over. And it meant nothing to me then, but doesn’t it mean
everything to us now? The life. I live by faith. I live in the son of God who
loved him. loved me and gave himself for
me. Brothers and sisters, why don’t
we sin once we are justified and know that we have pardon?
It’s because we are living the resurrection life. You know,
you hear all this prosperity business on TV, have your best
life. Now you pray to God, you sow
a seed and you’re going to get prosperity. Friends, I don’t
want riches. I want spiritual riches. And
that’s where that’s where God takes us. He says in Ephesians,
when we come to Jesus, he’s given us everything we need from the
heavenly places to live a heavenly life now until he takes us home.
And that’s echoing, isn’t it? The words in the teaching of
Jesus, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him. He loved you. He gave himself
for you. And so you don’t have to try,
you don’t have to do, and you don’t have to fail because when
you’re united to Jesus, you get all of him. And that’s greater
than the prosperity that is peddled today. Do you want all this world
offers you or all that Jesus offers you? And if you’re living
the worldly life, which we are very prone to do, and you want
to sprinkle a little Jesus on it from that magic canister of
you know, spices and mixes. That’s not how it works. He takes
the world out of you and puts heaven in. And that’s the reality
that Paul gives as his argument to the Galatian people. You say
we’re justified by faith. Therefore we can send our brains
out because we’re forgiven. Paul says, no, no, no, no, no.
You died to Jesus or you died to sin. You died to the law. You died to following the prince
of the power of the air and the ruler of this world. In his conclusion,
his punch comes in verse 21. I do not nullify the grace of
God. For if righteousness were through
the law, if you could obey the law and be righteous, then Jesus
died for no purpose. You can’t argue with that, can
you? If they had microphones, then would have done a mic drop,
right? If he had had a hammer and a desk, he would have hammered
the gavel and said, ruling made. Judgment decided. But the Judaizers
at Galatia persist. They persist in saying Jesus
plus law keeping. And sometimes we persist, don’t
we? Jesus plus something. I’ve got to do something, Lord.
I want to contribute something to my salvation. Now preachers,
I’ve been told are allowed to say in conclusion three times. And Paul has really concluded
the thing, hasn’t he? Justification by faith leads
us to die to sin and live to righteousness. So why do we obey? Why do we live for God? Why do
we look at his death? Why do we, why do we, Why don’t
we keep our eye on it? It’s sufficient, right? It’s
complete. It secures your justification. You’re united to Jesus. At the cross, your debts were
nailed. Your sins were forgiven. The law was ended. The sacrifice
was accepted. Jesus has been raised up and
has secured your raising up. You, dear Christian, if you have
come to Jesus by faith, are dead to sin, and alive to God. Now we’re going to talk in the
weeks to come about the struggle we still have with remaining
sin. But you are dead to sin, alive to God, and you have a
real spiritual life where Jesus is the vine, you are the branches,
and you live by faith and march heavenward. Don’t ever let anyone
cheapen justification. Don’t ever let anyone accuse
you of libertinism or antinomianism unless it’s true of you. I’ve
been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but
Christ who lives in me. May it be so, let’s pray together.
Lord, what a mind twister, what a tongue twister, but what a
soul comforting passage this is to know that if our lives
are hid with Christ in God, we have everything we need for our
standing before you, We have everything we need for giving
us life and fuel for the Christian journey. But Lord, we quench
your spirit. We turn away from your word. We get out of your church. Our
eyes latch onto the things of this world and we start doing
what Paul said he would never do, which is rebuild what was
torn down. Help us to never go back to the
law. Help us to never go back to Adam. Help us to never go
back to sin, but die daily picking up our cross and following you,
living by your word and spirit. This is no small prayer, but
you’re a great God of great power. So work in every one of us. We
do pray for your glory, our good, and to the praise of Jesus, the
great Savior. We ask this in his name. Amen. We want to