Faith Alone!

Introduction

Do you guys know who this is?

This is a lady named Erin Patterson and this is a pretty famous court case going on right now. It’s happening in a very small country town in Victoria, but it’s actually become a global sensation and it’s now showing up in the news all over the world. And the reason is because this is a murder trial, but everyone in the world has become really fascinated at how this murder has allegedly happened!

So I think this case happened about around 1-2 years ago, and essentially, Erin and her family were a rather happy family, going about their normal lives. And Erin invited her husband’s parents, and her church pastor, and the pastors wife, and served them a very special dinner. Have you guys heard of beef wellington? It’s actually a really difficult dish to make.

Now after they had this lovely dinner, everyone who had the dinner started feeling really sick, vomiting, diarrhoea, really bad tummy pain, and they ended up in hospital. And when doctors examined them and did lots of testing, it turned out all of organs were beginning to fail, and they were rushed to the intensive care unit.

But what’s really interesting is although Erin said she had diarrhoea and vomiting as well, all her tests were ok, and she was otherwise completely healthy.

And what’s even more strange is that, for this specific dinner, for some reason Erin sent away her kids to watch a movie, rather than eating dinner together with the family.

And even more strange is that when Erin served the dinner, all the plates were the same colour, except one!

And it turns out that everyone who was really sick was suffering from deathcap mushroom poisoning. Deathcap mushrooms are a really common mushroom that grows in quite a lot of places, and even a small amount is really poisonous, and as the name suggests, it can kill you! And although Erin initially denied putting in deathcap mushrooms, later investigation showed that after this happened, she rushed to delete all her phone data, she had a dehydrator which she quickly got rid of which she used to dry mushrooms, and she later admitted to putting in mushrooms into the dish, although she denies that they were deathcap mushrooms.

And there’s a whole lot of other evidence as well - Facebook messages popping up about her saying how she hates her in-laws, cellphone data which showed that she actually in the areas were deathcap mushrooms were well known to grow.

But despite all this evidence, Erin maintains it was all an accident. And the court case is still going on at the moment, and we will know whether she is pronounced guilty or innocent by the court very soon. So it’s a really interesting case, and that’s why it has global attention.

Now the reason I’m telling you this case is because I want to ask you a question. How would you feel if the judge said Erin is innocent? She is cleared of all her crimes? She can go free, no punishment, she can go back to completely living a normal life? Wouldn’t that be crazy? Assuming that Erin really is a murderer, to suddenly say she is innocent and she can go free would be crazy, radical, umimaginable. But this is precisely what God does with us. Even though we are guilty, God, the judge in the courtroom, pronounces that we are innocent. And this is what the passage today talks about. So lets read through Galatians 3:1-14.

1. Christ Crucified!

Now let’s see how it is Paul explains to us how we as sinners who broke the law, are suddenly considered innocent in the courtroom of God.

Before Paul explains this, Paul reminds us the message that we have received. Read Galatians 3:1 “1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.”

Paul says ‘It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publically portrayed as crucified’. Part of his explanation of how we are suddenly considered innocent by God is by going back to the cross. Paul says ‘Didn’t I tell you and write to you before, time and time again, that Jesus Christ was crucified on the cross for us?’. And this is the gospel - Christ who died for us on the cross. It’s easy to think of Christianity and the gospel as how to live, how to live a good life. But first and foremost, the gospel is not about how we should live, but how Christ lived. The gospel is history - it’s talking about real events that happened in the past. That is, Jesus lived and died for us on the cross.

But it’s not just knowing those historical facts - if you read verse 1, Paul says ‘Jesus Christ was publically portrayed as crucified’. It’s not really expressed well in the English, but essentially what Paul is saying is ‘I have told you clearly, vividly, dramatically about Christ being crucified. I didn’t just tell you plainly, but I told you so passionately that when you heard, it was as if you saw Christ really crucified in real life with your eyes’. When you hear and read about Christ in the Bible, it is not just taking in the facts, but we are so engaged and gripped that it is like we see Christ in real life with our own eyes, that he really did die for us on the cross. It grips and captures and overwhelms our hearts and our minds. This is the message of the cross we believe - not just knowing the fact that Jesus died, but actually being gripped and changed by that reality, because we see that he did it for us. We see the meaning and significance of what he has done for us.

And we not only see, but we believe in it. Believing is not just believing the fact: ‘Oh yes, Christ died for us on the cross’. The believing the Bible is talking about is much deeper than that: it is not just believing the historical fact of Jesus on the cross, but also believing what that means and what it has achieved for you, and believing in it so much that you put all your hopes and trust in it, you throw your entire life into it. True believing according to the Bible, is not just our head/intellect, it involves our heart and our whole life.

2. Justification

So then what does seeing and believing in the cross achieve? It achieves justification.

Now justification is a term I’ve been throwing around a lot, and I don’t think I’ve explained it properly before. Justification is exactly what I talked about at the start of this sermon: it is being considered innocent by the judge in the courtroom, even though we have committed a crime and are guilty.

We don’t have time to go through it in detail today, but the verses today that we are guilty, and are criminals just like Erin Patterson, because all of us have broken the laws of God. But then Paul tells us something amazing. Read Galatians 3:6 “6 just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?”

It says Abraham was ‘counted as righteous’ even though he was a criminal just like the rest of us. Even though Abraham had broken God’s law like us and Erin Patterson, God considered him to be innocent. But notice how it doesn’t say Abraham was ‘counted as innocent’. It says Abraham was ‘counted as righteous’. What this means is that not only was Abraham considered innocent, but by God the judge, Abraham was considered even more than that, as righteous, which means someone who is completely good, who has obeyed all of God’s laws perfectly, even though Abraham didn’t do that.

And how is this possible? Paul goes back to the cross that we just talked about! Read Galatians 3:13 “13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—”

Abraham, Erin Patterson, and all of us who believe in Jesus Christ on the cross, are considered innocent despite our crimes, because Christ died on the cross for us. Look at the crazy words Paul uses - Christ ‘became a curse for us’. It’s really extreme language - Christ who had perfectly obeyed all of God’s law, and didn’t have any sin at all, he actually became a curse, and what’s even more amazing is that he became a curse for us.

So the reason we are considered not only innocent but righteous is because Christ became a curse for us when he died on the cross. When God the judge looks at us now, he doesn’t see our sin, but he sees Christ’s innocence, and Christ’s perfect righteousness and perfect obedience to the law, even though none of that belongs to us. And where does our guilt, sin, crimes go? To Christ. When God looks at Christ on the cross, he sees our guilt, our sins, our crimes, our disobedience, even though they belong to us. Christ takes all of that from us, and in exchange gives us his perfect innocence and righteousness.

This is the amazing truth of the gospel! Because of Christ, not only are we forgiven by God, but now we are seen as perfect, flawless in God’s sight. Our slates are wiped completely clean, we become perfect in God’s sight, and what’s most amazing is that we stay perfect in God’s sight, even though we continue to sin and disobey God in our lives.

This is justification! It’s a wonderful and beautiful term that should make us respond with thankfulness and joy every single day.

3. Trusting God, not ourselves.

But justification is not the thing that seeing and believing Jesus Christ on the cross achieves. The gospel of Jesus Christ crucified saves us from ourselves; it saves us from trusting ourselves and helps us trust in God instead.

The verses today keep talking about two pathways in life: trusting yourself, or trusting in God. Here’s one example: read Galatians 3:2–3 “2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”

We have seen that justification cannot come from ourselves. It is purely what God has done for us through Christ on the cross. All we can do is believe and trust in him. But so often in life, this is not how we live. We don’t trust in God, but we trust in ourselves. We trust in our own strength, abilities, efforts, to achieve meaning, significance, happiness in our lives.

We trust in our abilities and achieves to feel good about ourselves. How well we do at school, sports, our grades, our achievements, make us feel good about ourselves. It gives us self-worth.

We trust in our relationships for our self-worth as well. So often we let our relationships with other people define who we are, we need their love to feel worthy and valuable.

But the passage talks about how this is a ‘cursed’ way to live. Why?

What happens when our efforts, abilities, achievements, relationships fail? When we don’t achieve, don’t get that award, fail to get good grades, we don’t feel good about ourselves; we may even get depressed and feel worthless. We let those things define us.

What happens when our relationships fail? We don’t feel valuable, loved.

And perhaps most importantly, when we trust in ourselves to get right with God, to earn God’s justification and salvation, we are cursed because it’s impossible by ourselves - we need Christ.

That’s why the passage today says don’t take the path in life where you trust in yourself. Life is complex and everyone is different, but for the Christian, there are only two paths in life: trusting in yourself, or trusting in God. And this passage today tells us, trust in Christ alone. And how do we do that? Go back to the gospel that we talked about earlier - Christ crucified on the cross. Don’t trust in your efforts and achievements - God has already valued you so much that he thought it was worth it to get his Son to die on the cross for us. Don’t trust in your relationships - God has already loved you so much, that you don’t need anyone else’s love to be valuable.

And most importantly, don’t trust in your own efforts to get right with God - we need to rely on Christ alone, by believing in him and trusting in him alone, to be justified like we said earlier. But not only for justification: we need to continue to rely on believing and trusting in Christ alone, for our ongoing Christian life. So often, we think that once we are justified and seen by God the judge as righteous, then moving forward we need to just try harder to be a better Christian. No, even for our ongoing Christian life, we need to keep believing and trusting in Christ alone, just like we did for justification. We need to keep going back to the cross, being gripped by the wonderful love and grace that Christ showed for us on the cross, being constantly reminded, and it is only by faith in Christ crucified alone, that God brings about a change in us so that we actually live lives that match our new state of innocence and righteousness before God.

So we must always go back to the cross, Christ crucified, for all things in our Christian lives. He is the only one worth believing and trusting, even more than ourselves.

Discussion questions:

What does ‘believing’ mean to you? Is it just knowing in your head the facts about Jesus’s life and death? Or is it much deeper than that?

What is justification? Do you see how radical and amazing it is?

What are some areas in our lives where we trust ourselves more than God? Let us bring these things before God in prayer, asking him to help us surrender these things to Him.