Don’t Nullify God’s Grace

One of the things my family looks forward to each summer is a special meal we can’t get during other parts of the year. It’s a simple meal, really, which is one of the best parts about it, at least for those who actually participate in preparing dinner in our home.

The protein part of the meal consists of a pan-fried slice of ham. And we supplement that with whatever summer vegetables we have on hand or can find available to us.

This is a traditional meal in my household, one that was introduced to us by my late grandmother, who lived with us most of my life.

But since Miss Lynn spent most of the year with her sister in North Carolina, we didn’t get to enjoy this family favorite this summer. And Annette told me a few weeks ago how much she’d missed it.

So, with Annette gone to visit her Aunt Rose in Nevada this week, it seemed like the perfect time for Mom and I to break out the ham slices. We had to use a mix of frozen vegetables, but it was still delicious.

And because I’m a good husband, I sent my wife a photo of my plate. She quickly replied, “Yummy,” by which I think she meant, “I can’t believe you guys ate that without me!”

But after preparing this delicious meal for us, Mom said something that I thought was very special: “I’ll be so glad to have Annette’s cooking back.”

As she explained it, Mom’s able to follow recipes OK. But Annette is the one who can open the refrigerator, pull some random things from it, and then create something delicious without any guidance at all.

She really is the best cook in the house, and Miss Lynn would be the first to say so. And so, we’ve decided that when Annette gets back home on Monday, SHE will be doing the food prep for us from now on.

Considering what we believe, this is really the only rational thing we can do. I’m sorry, Annette, but our conviction about your cooking skills compels us to trust in you alone to make our meals.

You see, what you BELIEVE should be borne out in what you DO.

And as we continue our study in the Book of Galatians today, we’re going to see the Apostle Paul lay the groundwork for a similar argument concerning the sufficiency of faith working through grace for salvation.

You’ll recall that Paul wrote this letter to the churches he’d planted in what’s now western Turkey during his first missionary journey.

After he and Barnabas had returned to Antioch of Syria at the conclusion of that journey, a group of Jews from Jerusalem had come to those churches with the message that the new Gentile believers there had to be circumcised and follow the Mosaic Law in order to be truly saved.

And, having heard that the Galatians were being stirred up by this false gospel, Paul wrote this letter.

First, he defended his apostolic calling and message, arguing that both had come from Jesus Christ, Himself. Then, he described a meeting with the leaders of the Mother Church in Jerusalem in which all agreed that salvation was by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

And finally, he described an incident in Antioch in which the Apostle Peter, who’d been part of the Jerusalem meeting, was visiting Antioch after that meeting.

Peter had eaten and fellowshipped with the Gentile believers in Antioch, treating them as true brothers and sisters in Christ.

But then, when some of the Judaizers from Jerusalem arrived there and began to pressure the Jewish believers to separate themselves from the Gentiles in the church, he and the other Jews had segregated themselves from their Gentile brethren.

And in the passage we looked at last week, we heard Paul ask Peter, “If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

Paul’s point was that Peter no longer placed his trust for salvation in his own ability to keep God’s commandments. Now, he understood that his salvation was by the grace of God, through faith in Jesus and His finished work at the cross.

Therefore, he was no longer living like a Jew. So, if Peter understood that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone — then, why had he expected the Gentile believers in Antioch to do things that had no power to save them?

As we said last week, Peter understood the basis of salvation, but he hadn’t yet worked out the details of what this would mean in everyday life within the Church.

Today, we’re going to look at the rest of chapter 2. But before we read this passage beginning in verse 15, I want to point out to you that Greek writing at this time didn’t include punctuation.

They didn’t have quotation marks, for one thing. Whenever you see quotation marks in the New Testament, they’ve been added by the translators.

And this is important here, because we don’t really know where Paul’s rebuke of Peter ends. Did it end with verse 14, as some translations have it? If so, then what we’re looking at today is the beginning of the doctrinal portion of this letter.

But if everything from verse 14 to the end of the chapter is what Paul said to Peter in Antioch, as the NASB has it, then what we’re looking at today is Paul’s explanation to Peter of the doctrine behind his rebuke.

For our purposes, the answer to the question isn’t really relevant, except for this: The rebuke and the doctrine are intimately connected.

Paul had rebuked Peter BECAUSE he was convinced of the gospel of grace. And he was frustrated with Peter, because he knew Peter believed in the gospel of grace, too, and he wondered why Peter’s actions didn’t reflect his belief.

It’s impossible to know whether this passage continues Paul’s rebuke of Peter or if it’s the beginning of his theological discourse.

And that’s appropriate, because your theology SHOULD inform your actions. What you believe about God will manifest itself in how you respond to that belief.

Conversely, how you act — the things you do and don’t do — tells the world a lot about just what it is you believe about God.

Indeed, there might be no better gauge of what you believe about God than what you DO with that belief.

Just as the conviction Mom and I have that Annette is the best cook in our home informed our decision to allow Annette to cook all our meals, Peter’s conviction that he’d been saved by grace should have informed his choices in Antioch.

And in today’s passage, we’ll hear Paul give the basis for the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in a passage that would’ve applied equally to Peter in Antioch AND to the Galatian believers — and one that STILL applies to the Church today.

Let’s read this passage together now.

Galatians 2:15–21 NASB95

15 “We are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles; 16 nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified. 17 “But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be! 18 “For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, 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; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. 21 “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”

The Judaizers had come to Galatia with a message that the new Gentile believers there were still sinners. In other words, they were still lost, even though they’d placed their faith in Jesus, because they hadn’t been circumcised nor adopted the Mosaic Law.

So, Paul ironically takes their own position in verse 15 in order to show how wrong it is.

Paul was still a Jew, but the risen Christ had appeared to him and helped him to understand exactly what that meant in light of the cross and the resurrection.

Now, Paul understood that all of the things he’d held dear as a Jew — the Law, the covenant, the temple, the sacrificial system — all of those things were intended to point the people of Israel to Christ.

And now that the Christ had come and given Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind, His life, death, and resurrection had illuminated God’s eternal plan for Israel and for mankind.

So, Paul is still proud of his Jewish heritage. But now, after Jesus’ appearance to him on the road to Damascus, he understands something that many of his Jewish brothers and sisters clearly don’t: that people are justified not by works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus.

Now, verse 16 is central verse to this whole letter, so it’s important for us to understand the terms Paul uses here, especially these three: justification, “works of the law,” and “faith in Christ.”

Let’s talk about justification first. Simply put, justification is a legal term that means to be declared righteous before God, to be acceptable to God.

“Justification should not be confused with forgiveness, which is the fruit of justification, nor with atonement, which is the basis of justification. Rather it is the favorable verdict of God, the righteous Judge, that one who formerly stood condemned has now been granted a new status at the bar of divine justice.” [Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 191–192.]

When we place our faith in Jesus Christ and His finished work at the cross, God imputes the perfect righteousness of Christ to us. He counts Jesus’ righteousness as our own, no longer counting our sins against us.

“On the cross the debt of sin has been fully paid, Satan has been unmasked, and hell has been put on notice that time is running out. In the meantime, between the No Longer and the Not Yet, God’s righteous verdict of justification has been pronounced upon all those who place their trust in the crucified and coming Messiah.

“This does not mean that Christians will be exempted from accountability, for ‘we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.’ However, it does mean that the basis of our standing before God has shifted from the future (last judgment) and the present (our moral strivings) to the past (the finished work of Christ on the cross).

“This was, of course, the very point that so irritated the Judaizers who wanted to make obedience to the law the prerequisite of a right standing with God.” [Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 193.]

The new thing Paul had come to understand in his salvation wasn’t so much that God judges sin. He already believed that as a devout Jew.

The whole sacrificial system was given to Israel to remind them, over and over again, that sin brings death. The sacrificial system was there to provide for the covering of sins by the substitutionary death of innocent animals in place of the guilty humans who gave them as sacrifices. So, God’s judgment of unrighteousness wasn’t anything new to Paul or to any of the Jews.

What was new to Paul’s understanding — and the thing Paul wanted the Galatians to understand — was the recognition that God had condemned the Law-keeping SELF-righteousness that tended to cause the Jews to rely on their own actions for salvation.

Misrepresenting the basis of justification would drain the gospel of all its saving power. As Paul puts it in verse 21, if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.

It’s faith in Jesus that justifies us, that makes us acceptable to God, that allows we sinners who have trusted in Jesus to stand before God and be declared righteous.

But what is faith in Jesus? It’s the proper response to what He did a the cross. It’s the trust that His life, death, and resurrection provide the ONLY way for we sinners to be reconciled to God.

But we have to be careful that faith itself doesn’t become just another of the “works of the law,” something we think we can do to earn God’s favor, as the Judaizers claimed with circumcision.

No, faith itself is a gift from God. It’s the evidence that the Holy Spirit has changed hearts of stone for hearts of flesh, that there’s a new creature, by God’s grace.

Not by works of the Law. In other words, not by all the moral and ceremonial commandments given by God to Moses when the people of Israel were at Mt. Sinai.

The Law was good, Paul will affirm in chapters 3 and 4, where he explains why it was given to Israel to begin with. But the Law never was intended to be a means of justification before God, because God always knew that people wouldn’t be able to keep the Law. We can’t be good enough to earn our salvation.

And in following Jesus, both Paul and the other Jewish believers had abandoned faith in the Law as a means to justification.

They had, as he puts it in verse 17, been found to be sinners, just like the Gentiles. And just to make sure nobody concluded, then, that their faith in Jesus had therefore led them into sin, Paul pulls out his favorite phrase of shock and dismay.

“May it never be!” Of course not….”

Remembering the situation in Antioch, the Judaizers who came there while Peter was visiting were essentially claiming that by sharing fellowship with people they considered sinners, the Jewish believers were effectively being led INTO sin by their faith in Jesus.

But as Timothy George replies to this charge in his commentary on Galatians, “Christ has not led us into sin, but his cross has revealed to us the depth of our own depravity.” [Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 196.]

In fact, Paul says in verse 18, it’s going back to the old ways of thinking about justification — seeking to rebuild that which has already been torn down — that is the sin.

Why would he — or the Galatians — ever go back to thinking they could justify themselves through the Law when they were now dead to the Law?

Paul DOESN’T mean here that the Law no longer has any relevance to the believer. That’s called antinomianism, and Paul will address it specifically in the last two chapters of this book.

And his conclusion there, in brief, is that, having been saved by the grace of God, followers of Jesus should then be compelled to act righteously, not unrighteously.

But to understand what Paul means when he says he’d “died to the Law,” it’s useful to note that in other places he wrote about dying to self, dying to sin, and dying to the world.

Those metaphors aren’t intended to suggest a complete break from self, sin, or the world. Believers still are themselves, they still sin, and they’re still in the world.

What’s different in each of those cases is the relationship we have to them as believers. Everything has been changed about how we see ourselves, how we submit ourselves to sin, and how we interact with the world.

And so, dying to the Law means that Paul’s whole relationship to the Law had changed. He no longer saw it as a means to salvation.

He was no longer identified by his own self-righteousness, but rather by the righteousness of Jesus.

In fact, he says, our identity in Christ is so significant that we can think of ourselves as having been crucified with Christ. We shared in His suffering and emerge from the death of our former selves as a new creation.

It’s no longer our own life that’s most important, but the life that results from the Christ who loved us and gave Himself for us now living in us as His followers.

As Warren Wiersbe puts it: “It’s not the law on the outside, but love on the inside, that makes the difference.” Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Ga 2:20, quoting Wiersbe.]

And Christ IN me should make a difference in how I live. It should make a difference in what I believe. It should make a difference in how I act.

We see the difference it made in Paul’s life in verse 21.

“I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”

I don’t want you to miss the irony in this verse. Paul, who would’ve been so intent on teaching Gentiles to follow the Law as a Jewish missionary, was now just as (or more) intent on teaching them that the Law could do nothing for them.

Peter had nullified God’s grace in his actions in Antioch. He’d put himself back under the Law, essentially telling the Gentiles there that “obedience must accompany grace in order to make it sufficient. If that were true, Paul ended, ‘then Christ died needlessly.’ It would then be obedience that saves, not Christ.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Ga 2:21.]

So, what does all this mean for us, we Gentile believers who’ve never been subject to the Mosaic Law?

If we believe that we’ve been saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, then THAT must be the message we share with all those who’ve not met Jesus and turned to Him in faith.

We MUST not add anything to this gospel of grace. We need to be bringing people to the foot of the cross in all their sin, just as they are, without suggesting that they need to clean themselves up first.

They couldn’t do that, anyway.

This doesn’t mean we don’t talk about sin. But what it DOES mean is that, instead of condemnation, what they receive from us is compassion. Instead of self-righteous judgment, what they receive from us is grace.

If we’re CONVINCED of salvation by grace through faith, then we need to COMMUNICATE salvation by grace through faith. Always and to everyone.

I am convinced that no sinner is too lost to be saved by God’s grace. So, let’s commit ourselves to sharing THAT message without nullifying it by trying to keep the gates closed to those we might otherwise consider to be irredeemable.

God’s grace is sufficient.