We are working our way through Paul’s letter to the Galatians here on Sunday mornings. The letter has three main sections. There is an autobiographical section in the first two chapters, then there’s a theological section, chapters 3 and 4, and there’s a practical section, in chapters 5 and 6. And in recent weeks as we have been considering the first two chapters, we’ve followed Paul’s autobiographical account of his conversion, his call to the ministry, his early work in the service of the Lord Jesus.
And last week we looked together at chapter 2 verses 11 through 16 and considered Paul’s sharp disagreement with the apostle Peter when Peter came to visit Paul and the church in the city of Antioch. He and Paul disagreed because Peter had been enjoying intimate fellowship with the Gentile believers in Antioch until, that is, some visitors from Jerusalem showed up and, intimidated by them, Peter withdrew from the Gentiles. He returned to the ceremonies of the Mosaic law that mandated, among other things, that Jews should refrain from fellowship with non-Jews so as to avoid contracting ritual contamination. And so Paul was compelled to rebuke Peter publicly for his hypocrisy because the gospel of free grace in Jesus Christ that had been entrusted to Paul and to Peter both, to preach and proclaim to the world, had removed the ceremonies and ritual requirements of the Mosaic law so that actually nothing stood in the way of believing Gentiles enjoying all the rights and privileges of a member of the people of God. A person is justified, that is, God accepts them as righteous in His sight, Paul insisted, not because of their works of the law but only by faith in Jesus Christ plus nothing. That was last week.
And as we began to see, chapter 2, really beginning in about the fourteenth verse and running through the end of the chapter, what we have is likely a summary report of what Paul said to Peter during that confrontation in Antioch. It’s a paraphrase of Paul’s argument with Peter in Antioch which, as we’ll see, Paul will then develop in the next few chapters of the book of Galatians as he teaches the same truths to the believers in Galatia. And we began to look at the summary of Paul’s argument a little last time. This week we are returning to it, picking up his train of thought in verse 17. So Galatians chapter 2 verse 17. The central point, remember, the truth that Peter seems to have temporarily forgotten, is that a person finds acceptance with God only for the sake of the righteousness of Jesus Christ reckoned to our account and received by us on the basis of faith alone and not for any kind of work performed by us. That’s the heart of Paul’s message.
And in the verses before us this morning, we’re going to see Paul defend that message against the counter arguments of legalists. And as he does so, he will articulate two main ideas; two Gospel principles that we need to see. Look at the passage with me, Galatians 2. First of all, verses 17 and 18, principle number one – we must not rebuild what we have torn down. We must not rebuild what we have torn down. That’s what Peter was doing in Antioch when he returned to the ritual requirements of the Mosaic law with disastrous consequences. Do not rebuild what you have torn down. And then the second Gospel principle, verses 19 through 21 – we must die in order to live. We must die in order to live. We must die with Christ so that in union with Christ we might live unto God. We must not rebuild what we have destroyed and we must die in order to live.
Now before we read the passage and then look at those two principles together, let’s pause and pray and ask for the Lord to help us. Let us all pray.
O Lord, how we need You, Your ministry to us by Word and Spirit. Lord Jesus, help us to hear Your voice. Cut through every competitor for our attention now we pray. And by Your Spirit’s mighty work in our hearts, help us to tear down every method we build by which to assert our own righteousness and instead, Lord Jesus, help us to rest on Your righteousness alone for our acceptance before God. Do that we pray now by this portion of Your Word, for we ask it in Your name. Amen.
Galatians chapter 2 at the seventeenth verse. This is the Word of God:
“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, and we praise God for His holy Word.
We Must Not Rebuild What We Have Torn Down
Let’s look together at verses 17 and 18. Here’s the first principle that I want you to see in the passage. We must not rebuild what we have torn down – principle number one. And let me say up front, this is a very difficult passage so please will you hang in there with me as we try and unravel its teaching. Look at the text please. Paul is responding to an objection to his doctrine of justification by faith in Christ alone and he summarizes the objection there in verse 17, do you see it? “If, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin?” That was the accusation of the legalists as they reacted to Paul’s gospel. And as we try and understand their question, I think it helps us to remember the issue under discussion. At one point at least, remember, Peter had given up living his life according to the Jewish dietary and ceremonial rules. Before the visitors from Jerusalem arrived in Antioch, Peter ate with the Gentiles as if he was one of them without any hesitation or any restriction. As verse 14 put it, though Peter was a Jew by birth, he lived like a Gentile and not like Jew. And then notice verse 15. Paul himself uses the common Jewish way of speaking about Gentiles. Do you see his language in verse 15? He calls them “Gentile sinners.” That was how the Jews thought about the Gentiles because the Gentiles did not obey the ritual laws of ceremonial purity according to Moses. “We ourselves,” he says, “are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.”
But now, because the Gospel has removed all need to observe the ceremonial regulations of the law of Moses, Paul here is freely admitting that he and Peter, Jewish Christians though they are, having come to understand the Gospel, they really do now live like Gentile sinners. The ceremonial requirements of the Mosaic law no longer constrain them as they once did. And that’s where the objection of the legalists comes in. “If in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too are found to be sinners” – that is, we too are found to live just like Gentiles – “is Christ then the servant of sin?” If we are accepted in the sight of God not on the basis of our legal obedience and adherence to Jewish ceremonies but only on the basis of our faith in Jesus so that now we no longer observe the Mosaic rules and now we live just like Gentile sinners, doesn’t that end up making Christ the servant of sin? That’s what the legalists were saying. They wanted, remember, they wanted the Mosaic law to still be binding on everyone. They wanted Jesus and they wanted the law of Moses together to be the grounds of our acceptance with God. “We want to make Gentile sinners into obedient Jews.” That’s what they were saying. “But your doctrine, Paul, your doctrine would make Jews into Gentile sinners and therefore it would make Christ the servant not of holiness but of sin.” That’s their stinging critique of Paul’s message.
So how does Paul respond? Look at the end of verse 17 and verse 18. Does Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith in Christ alone without any need for the works of the law really make Christ the servant of sin? What does he say? Verse 17, “Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor.” What had Paul torn down when he embraced the gospel of free grace? Well, he tore down the whole misguided notion that the law of God was a means of self-salvation. He tore it down. The entire edifice of legalism that viewed the law of Moses, the moral and ceremonial law, as a way to merit the favor of God – he tore it down. And his point here is, “Having torn it down, if I now go back and rebuild it, I would not be restoring a correct understanding of the Law. I would be restoring a distortion of the law. I would be abusing the law and twisting it from its original purpose into a wicked, ugly perversion of God’s true design. If I returned to using the works of the law as a way to establish my own righteousness before God, that’s what would make me really a transgressor of God’s law because that’s not what God’s law is for.”
One preacher I read illustrates the two ways of using God’s Law by means of two images – the image of a train track and the image of a ladder. Originally, the Law of God was given to be a train track. It delineated the direction along which His people’s lives should travel in obedience to Him. But it was the grace of God not the Law of God that was to be the engine that pulled the train of our lives along that track. And faith in His promises was the coupling, if you like, that connected the train of our lives to the engine of God’s grace, that took hold of His grace and enabled us to follow the train tracks of God’s Law as we seek to serve Him. That’s how it was meant to be. It was never supposed to be a mechanism we would use to get to God under our own steam. Rather, it was to direct us in the way but grace through faith in the promise of God was the power to get us there.
But the legalists had a very different way of using God’s Law. They ripped up the train track and stood it on its end and turned it into a ladder and tried to climb, step by step, through their own law works, their own ritual and moral obedience to its precepts to climb to God to say, “By my accumulated works of the law, God will accept me and count me righteous.” And in effect here, Paul says, “Who is the real transgressor of the law? I used to be all about climbing the ladder of the law until I came to understand the Gospel,” he says. And then I tore the ladder down and put the law back where it belongs – not as a means to climb to God under my own strength, but as the track along which the engine of grace alone will pull me and direct my life to God’s glory. If I now rebuild what I tore down and put the law back in its wrong place and use it in this distorted and warped manner, that’s when I would become the real transgressor.
And so here’s the question we all ought to be asking ourselves right now in the light of that. How does religion operate in my life? I’m not asking what the right answer is; I’m asking what the true answer is. In your life, really, how does religion operate? How does your morality work? How does worship and coming to church actually function in your life? Is it a ladder I am using in order to try and climb my way up to God, hoping that with each good deed, each prayer prayed, each little work of mine I am somehow worming my way into His good books? Honestly now, is that why you are here? That’s not what the law is for, you see. It’s not what religion is for. It’s not telling you the rules by which if you would only keep them then God would owe you. God will be required and compelled to love you and accept you and welcome you. Sure, maybe you’d never say it out loud. Maybe you won’t even admit it to yourself, but is it possible that deep down you think your religion makes you good – not like these Gentile sinners?
Well Paul has news for you. If you use your morality that way, your religion that way, it’s not just the outsiders that are the sinners. “You prove yourself to be a transgressor,” he says. How about that for a kick in the teeth? You thought you were doing really well. You’ve turned over a new leaf. You thought you joined Team Jesus, cleaned up your act. You were feeling pretty good about things but here’s Paul’s point. If you have been trusting your religion and not Jesus, you’re worse off than you were before. You prove yourself to be a transgressor. It doesn’t matter how good you are, how moral and upstanding you are, how clean cut and devout you are. It does not matter one whit. If you think your goodness, your morality, your devotion makes God accept you – because the truth is, using your morality and your goodness and your devotion to leverage acceptance with God is actually an abuse of the good law of God that never calls us to win approval with God by our own law keeping. It never does that. Do you get that? Until you get that, you’re never going to find peace.
We Must Die in Order to Live
Well okay, how does the law work and how do we get right with God? That’s the second principle I want you to see here. First, we must not rebuild what we tore down. Don’t go back to climbing the ladder by your own strength when you ought to be pulled along the train tracks by the grace of God. And now secondly, we must die in order to live. Notice how in verse 19 Paul tells us part of how God’s law really is meant to work. You see it in verse 19. Look there. “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.” He’s changing the metaphor from tearing down the ladder of the law now to dying to the law. The point is still essentially the same. He came to a place in his life where his relationship to the law changed completely.
And don’t miss what it was that brought him to that point. Look at verse 19 again. “Through the law I died to the law.” God’s law was the means by which this decisive change took place. Here’s what Paul is saying. “Far from allowing me to climb up the ladder of my own good works to God, the harder I tried to keep the law, the more I realized how short I fell from that perfect obedience God requires. The law actually drove me to find another way, a different path to God. All the law of God did was expose my own utter inability to obey. And so I realized that if I am to find acceptance with God, I must find it by another means. Through the law, I died to the law.” Until you come to realize that you cannot fulfill God’s requirements with that perfect obedience necessary to secure your place before Him, until the law itself shows you your utter inability to obey as you must, you cannot be saved. “There is no one righteous, not even one. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Through the law comes the knowledge of sin. One of the central purposes of God’s law is to show you that your sin has destroyed your ability to keep the law and to bring you to the point where you die to law keeping; you die to the law as a means of self-salvation. Until you come to that point, all you will ever succeed in accomplishing in the sight of God is proving yourself to be a transgressor.
Well if we must die to the law as a way to get to God, what’s the alternative? Verse 20 tells us. “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.” Here’s what Paul says has happened in his own life and what must happen in yours. It is the only way of salvation; the only door open to you into the accepting embrace of God. Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ. The cross of Christ became the decisive turning point for my life. Because He died, and I am joined to Him by faith, I am no longer alive to the demands of God’s law as a way of salvation. I no longer live. Christ lives in me. I never can again be condemned by the law that I have broken because I am dead to that law and Christ now lives in me and He has perfectly kept that law and paid the penalty for all my disobedience of that law. And so now instead, there is a new principle animating my life every day. It’s not legal obedience as a means of justification. It is faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
Paul really is saying here everybody lives by faith. Everybody. The question is, “Where do you put your faith? In whom do you trust? Do you put your faith in yourself, in your own goodness, obedience, morality, religion, your law keeping? Or do you put your faith in Jesus Christ who loved you and gave Himself for you?” Those are the options. Do you trust yourself or do you trust Jesus Christ? It can’t be both. It must be one or the other. You must either die to the law of God and live by faith in Christ, or try to live by the law and die forever. The choice is that stark. There is no third way. We think that there is, don’t we? We try to live as though there was. Peter tried it in Antioch. The legalists try it in Galatia. We still do it all the time, truth be told. We say all the right things about Jesus, then we run right back to putting our confidence in ourselves. We comfort ourselves that we are not like other people, not like this sinner over here. We pray. We are good church folks. We tithe. We serve. But Paul is really saying to us we have to become like the tax collector in Jesus’ parable. Unlike the Pharisee who said, “I thank you God that I am not like other men, not like this sinner,” and the sinner said, refusing even to lift his eyes to heaven, “God be merciful to me, the sinner.” “God be merciful to me, the sinner.” That’s where our hope rests – in the mercy and grace of God and not in our own goodness. Have you come to the end of your own righteousness, have you? By the law, have you died to the law? There is no other way to live to God, you know. You must be crucified with Christ.
Now at the risk of confirming your impression of just how big a nerd I am, let me tell you about the grammar of verse 20 because it’s actually really very beautiful, at least being a massive nerd I think it’s beautiful. The English phrase, “I have been crucified with Christ,” six words in English, is only two words in Greek. “I have been crucified with” is one single Greek verb. It’s in the perfect tense. That means it is something that is completed once and for all, in the past, with ongoing implications for right now. So my union with Christ in His death is a once for all reality that can never change, but it’s a reality that is changing me every single day. So it’s in the perfect tense and it’s in the passive voice. “I have beencrucified with Christ.” I did not crucify myself. This is not another work that I accomplish, for which I take credit. I was crucified with Christ when I believed, when you believed in Jesus, His death as it were, became our death. His condemnation made satisfaction for our sin, our law breaking. God has united us to Christ by His grace and now He treats us as Christ deserves to be treated. He counts us righteous with the righteousness of Christ. Isn’t that amazing? He looks at you and He sees you shining with the beauty of the obedience of His Son and He accepts you.
You see, all of that helps us understand verse 21 doesn’t it? Look at verse 21. “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness” – or you could translate it better, “if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.” Grace is the basis of everything Paul is talking about. Grace is the antithesis of law keeping. Either you obey and secure your own justification or Christ obeys and bleeds and dies to secure it for you. The first is the path of legal obedience; the second is the path of gracious redemption. The first way is impossible. It’s impossible. You can’t do it. But the second way, the way of grace, is offered to you freely as a gift. God in His grace must unite you to Jesus in His death and resurrection as you believe the Gospel. In that moment, in the instant you trust in Jesus who loved you and gave Himself for you, in that instant you find you have been crucified with Christ and Christ comes to dwell in your heart forever by His Spirit. It’s not something you do for Him; it’s something He does for you and to you and in you by grace through faith in the Gospel.
And so then, the question becomes, “Has that happened to you?” As you sit here today and interrogate your heart, have you been crucified with Christ? As you alive to God because you trust in Jesus? It’s the difference, all the difference between a merely religious person and a true Christian, you know. On the surface, they look just like one another. They sound the same. They use the same vocabulary. They sing the same hymns, pray the same prayers. They serve beside you on the same committees. They support the same missionaries you do. But the legalist is trying to secure their own salvation by means of their religion, but the true Christian has died to all of that and now lives by faith in the Son of God. What kind of person are you? Which are you today? Are you the real deal – alive to God only by His grace as you trust in the righteousness of another, the Lord Jesus Christ?
You know, we are coming to the Lord’s Table in just a moment. I want you to understand, the Table is about grace. This is not another rung in your ladder. “You know I do communion, and that’s another little rung in my ladder as I climb my way up to God. He’ll be really impressed with my devotion and faithfulness.” The Lord’s Table is not sacrifice you are offering Him. It is a visible, tangible, edible promise spoken by Him to you saying, “By grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works.” This is a Table where God comes and says, “I have more grace for your need. My Son is sufficient for you. Enough for every burden of your heart, every trial of your life. Trust Him. Rest on Him. He is all you ever really need.”
Let’s pray together.
Father, forgive us for the incipient legalism of our hearts. We’re always trying to establish our own righteousness. Forgive us. Help us to shatter that idol. Why do we keep returning to it, distorting it, Your Law, as if it were some mechanism to impress You? O Lord, we bow now before You in repentance and grief over our idolatrous hearts, but we praise You for Jesus who has done what we could never. He has perfectly obeyed and secured for everyone who simply trusts Him, secured for us righteousness, perfect righteousness in Your sight. So we come now and renew our trust in Him, even as we approach the Table of the Lord, to feed upon His grace that we might live for Your glory, in Jesus’ name. Amen.