Galatians 2, Christ Justifies
Notes
Transcript
Handout
We all negotiate
We all negotiate
Most of our life is spent negotiating positions. We want something, find the price and then negotiate for it.
You may have something you have been searching for, a new tv, say. And you do all the research, you look at all the prices. and while we can’t negotiate with the big box stores directly, we negotiate through finding the lowest price. Or you wait until prime day. Or you price match.
We do this with objects, we do this with people. Its not about the best item it is about the best position. We want to make sure we come out of the deal with a good position.
We negotiate because we are not settled with feeling like we got a lower end of the deal, that we got swindled or taken. We want to know we got the best price or the best seats or the best position we could. We want to make sure we got the best opportunity possible in the situation.
Galatians deals with a sort of negotiation. Last week we looked at how Christianity is something given to us, it is revealed. It is not something we construct or build ourselves. It is a foundation we build our lives upon. Revelation is the lens through which we understand everything else. And the resurrection of Christ is the revelation for the Christian. Nothing else can compete with that. If we try to interpret our lives through Christianity and anything else, Paul says it is no Gospel.
But we try. We love to try to sneak in things that we think we can use. We negotiate with the revelation of the Gospel to try and get in our preferences or ideas. But every negotiation with the Gospel will end in a spectacular failure.
In chapter 2, Paul tells us a story with a negotiation. We will see how it ends.
Paul wants the church in Galatia to understand they cannot negotiate enough to whatever position they think they need. Paul says that position is actually found in what we understand as justification. This is where Christs work on the Cross and His resurrection is enough to make us (or justify us) before God. We are restored in the work of justification in Christ.
So if you are tired of negotiating for a better position (we all do it), then justification will be great news this morning.
But to begin, negotiation cannot lead to justification
But to begin, negotiation cannot lead to justification
The book of Galatians revolves around a conflict in church. It revolves around a problem.
Paul recognizes that we are bound to Christ by the work of Christ. We cannot add to it, we must act from it. But it is the adding to it that presents a problem for Paul.
Paul belongs to the Jewish ethnicity. And much of the New Testament is dealing with two groups of people: Jews and Gentiles. The Jewish people carried the prophecies of Christ and were waiting for a Messiah, someone to save them, to come.
Jesus shows up, lives a perfect life, is killed but God raises Him from the dead. And He is the bedrock of salvation for all who believe in Him. Not only to the Jews but also the Gentiles.
So people who are ethnically Jewish are trusting in the Messiah but also, people who are Gentiles, anyone coming from any other faith system. So you have two disparate groups, on either side of every aisle. And so the early church was constantly in tension with how to incorporate different kinds of people.
Peter, who was the first real leader in the church has ideas on how to invite people who are not ethnically or historically Jewish into the church.
Peter believes he can negotiate. He understands the Gospel but doesn’t like the Gentiles.
So he negotiates
This is the definition of the problem in Galatians.
When you hear the name Cephas, it is Peter.
But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, 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?”
The problem in the church in Galatia was formed around what Peter saw as moral contamiation by the gentiles.
Peter is concerned that Gentiles are not fully cleansed, meaning that they have not done enough to prepare themselves for God. He essentially states “the issue is you and not me”.
And the only way he states they can be removed from sin is to take on Jewish customs, here Peter says “do what is familiar to me” (Moo 143). Peter and other Jewish believers were demanding that Gentile believers meet them on their own terms. Not on Christs terms (Moo 151).
Peter is trying to get the groups to fit and comes up with what sounds like a halfway point in order to meet the gentile believers where they were. But as soon as Peter made the issue out what exactly they do and how they do it, the negotiation quickly slips to deception that necessitates into hypocrisy
The reality is that it is very hard to negotiate without slipping into some kind of deception. Because we have a position that we want to hold onto, and so we jockey for some kind of way that individuals can meet us in that position without us losing it.
So we will communicate what we feel needs to be communicated and we will leave out what we feel can be left out. We will ask people to do things that is not necessary, and have people take on burdens. They were never meant to bear.
It’s too easy, when left up to us, to define what is enough for people to be Christian.
The Church historically has always been a terrible negotiator.
During the middle ages, the church sold indulgences,
Originally, indulgences were granted for acts of genuine devotion or service, such as:
Going on a pilgrimage.
Giving to the poor.
Participating in the Crusades.
They were negotiating with the people you can trust Christ, but you also must trust our financial system.
It wasn’t enough for people to experience and trust Christ in community, it was only enough for them to feel the weight of someone else’s position and then have them pay into that negotiation which quickly became deception.
We do forms of this throughout history. We are still offering our own version of indulgences. Do it our way and you will be safe enough.
We end up creating rules for others that we ourselves could never live up to ourselves.
That is what happens here. Paul calls Peter and his group as being hypocrites. Of doing one thing but saying another.
We say we are saved by grace but then ask others to live differently. We impose things on others that is not about Gospel faithfulness but only about our own understanding of Christianity.
We know that people will never be able to perform their way into the Kingdom, that is the point here. But the amazing thing is that they couldn’t even perform their way into Peter’s Kingdom. Because they weren’t living the way Peter wanted them to, he distanced themselves from them. Until they were able to act the right way, live the right way, say the right things, were they going to be enough for him.
This is the problem. People already have to deal with the fact that they cannot rise up to God. I did. Many of you did. And so we have these things in our lives that don’t match up with God’s character, or His life, or His heart for us.
That is hard and creates all sorts of shame. The weight of sin bears down on people. They feel it. They live under it.
But instead of dealing with Christ they end up dealing with Christians who just place more and more burdens on people. We tell them to clean up act up, say this, don’t say that all because we think those things are part of being justified before Christ. But we forget that Christ does all that work on our behafl.
Paul is not just complaining or calling out hypocrites or falsehoods, he is providing the right direction and solution. He is providing the way forward.
Christ does in justification what we want in negotiation
Christ does in justification what we want in negotiation
Peter and this other group wanted the gentile Jews to take part in the religious ritual of circumcision. You can become a Christian as soon as you do this.
But that had nothing to do with being justified before Christ
We may not have people take part in that kind of ritualistic behavior but we sure have ideas about what we think it means to be a Christian. We think you have to act like us, or look like us, or vote like us. And as soon as you do you can be a Christian.
These things don’t have anything to do with being justified before Christ
What is necessary for you to become before you can become a Christian? What must you be before being a Christian? Who must you be before becoming a Christian, what must you do to be justified?
We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; 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.
It is Faith in Christ. Being justified is trusting that Christ is able to completely restore us and give us new life and place us in relationship with Him. And we trust that He can do it and we trust that He can do it for us personally.
Justification is the act of God declaring that you are in right standing with God because of Jesus’ work on the Cross. That is is nothing you can add to in order to be more justified. Christ has completed all the negotiations on yours and my behalf.
This is why Paul mentions it four times in this section. This is why theologian Eberhard Jungel calls justification indispensable and is “the article by which the church stands or falls”
Because We cannot do it on our own, we cannot place that burden on others. Peter had experienced the grace of Christ in being justified, declared in right standing with him. Peter would never have to negotiate with God. 1 because God doesn’t negotiate and 2 because justification states that we do not need to. Christ has done what we could never negotiate out of.
Look at Romans 5:1
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Negotiation is about hope. It is about the position that we always want. It is always the hope of a better position.
Justification is the assurance of a better position. And justification we are offered the position that we had always hoped for.
Justification in Christ is the promise and assurance of a better position. We can put down all of our tools and all of our tricks and we can trust that the very position we hope for is the very position that Christ offers.
If you understand, justification in Christ that you have been declared fully right by God.
If you no longer have to jockey for the best position. Because you have the best position.
And you understand that that best position is completed and done by Christ and his work and not by anything that we could do.
if we realize that we have been given the best position in Christ, that we no longer have to spend our time, money, and effort to jockey for the better position, meaning we can see from an entirely different vantage point, then we now get to act from that better place.
A couple weeks ago I told you about the concert that Asher and I went to. We saw the Oh Hellos in Boston. It was a general audience venue meaning that everything was mostly standing and that you bought tickets for the primary location in front of the stage and then you get there early enough to get good enough positions to stand for hours.
Well there were very few kids there and most people were adult size height so I knew Asher may have a hard time seeing. So I bought tickets in the upper balcony. But we got there early enough that we could test the general audience. So we walked into the middle of the room to see if he could see the stage. We were there early enough that we were only about 20 feet from the front of the stage. But Asher couldn’t see in front of all the adult sized people. So we could have pushed and jockeyed and tried to get a better angle. But instead, we went upstairs to the upper balcony and had a great view of the concert.
Christ offers the right view. We see differently from His perspective and we see better. But now, knowing we have followed Him and are declared righteous we recognize
If Christ has the better solution for the initial negotiation, then what isn’t He better for?
This is why Paul says
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.
Christ has shown us the right perspective, the better one. He Himself has saved us, and has shown us a much bigger world through His justification. If He is right about this, then He is right about so much more.
That is why Paul says He died to the law (negotiation) so that He can live to God.
He has set the entirety of His life upon Christ. I have been crucified with Christ. Christ lives in me.
He recognizes all the false negotiations in life, and sees that the life that Christ offers is the real thing. (Niebuhr 99).
We so thoroughly negotiate with the world that we see a better position as the end but we have to realize that the better position itself in justification in Christ for us is not the end but a beginning. That is how big the world is in Christ. Whatever we think we will be satisfied with as our end Christ is saying we are just getting started.
Go into the upper balcony with Christ. There is no need to negotiate. but once you are up there and you have the better view, you have life in Christ, then we begin to live. Then we make every decision from that perspective. From His life.
Therefore he became the way by which thou shouldest come. I do not say to thee, seek the way. The way itself is come to thee: arise and walk." 101 Niebuhr, quoting Augustine
Douglas J. Moo, Galatians. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 142–143
Niebuhr, Helmut Richard. 2006. The Meaning of Revelation. John Knox Press.
