To Live is Christ
Galatians 2:17-21
There is no higher pursuit than to be made right with God. Fortunately, we haven’t been left to devise a way of our own; the Bible tells us how to be made right with God. We must be justified through faith in Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul has been driving this point home in the second chapter of Galatians. Beginning with verse 17, he starts to unpack what this means.
John Calvin said, “Justification is the hinge on which all true religion turns.” For us, it’s the key that opens up the door of fellowship with God the Father, both now and forever. This morning we’re going to see what justification meant to Paul’s Jewish audience, and what it means to us regardless of our ethnic background. Turn if you would to Galatians 2:17-21. In honor of God and His Word, I invite you to stand for the reading of these verses.
17 “If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! 18 If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker. 19 For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
I. When you’re justified in Christ, the penalty for your sin has been removed (v. 17).
In this passage, the key word of the whole book of Galatians appears for the first time. The word “justified” occurs three times in v16… and once here in v17. Our understanding of this word is crucial to understanding the message of Galatians. Justification is the act whereby God declares a believing sinner “righteous” while the believer is still in a sinful state.
Note those words carefully. God declares the believing sinner to be righteous based on the merit of Christ, but the sinner is actually and in fact still in a sinful condition and will be until he enters glory. Paul is talking about the universal human predicament we all face as sinners standing before a just and holy God. We are no different from the Galatians in this regard.
The Jewish Christians in Galatia were tempted to approach the gospel from the basis of the Law, since it was all they knew about relating to God. And they had been taught that a person who fails to keep the Law of Moses (even the ceremonial laws and rituals added by the Pharisees), was a “sinner”. Therefore, Gentiles were automatically classified as sinners and Jews were not, because of the Law. We need to make clear that all have sinned and have fallen short of God’s glory. But a person is not a sinner simply because they didn’t keep all of the points of the Law. The Law merely demonstrated what has been true about humanity since the fall—we are sinners.
But in Galatia, there was the idea that you were only a “sinner” (like the Gentiles) if you didn’t observe the Law; otherwise, you could consider yourself “righteous” as did the Pharisees and Judaizers who wrongly supposed they were justified by works and law-keeping. So in verse 17, Paul says “If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not!”
Well, what is Paul saying here? The word “sinners” is being used here as the Pharisees and Judaizers used it. To them, a “sinner” meant someone who believed in Christ and no longer kept the ceremonial laws of Judaism. And Paul is making clear that even though the legalists consider them to be sinners, Christ is not the author of sin.
“It is not sin to free yourself from the ceremonial Jewish laws in order to walk in love toward Gentile Christians. It is not sin to stop depending on works.” The real sin is in trusting human efforts instead of the finished work of Christ. God has taken your helpless estate into His own hands, sending His own Son to die for your sins and accomplishing your justification without your help at Calvary. Justification is entirely the work of God alone.
Then in verse 18, Paul assumes their position and stacks the deck against himself; this is to show how futile their position is before God: “18 If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a law-breaker.” Here, Paul teaches that…
II. If you return to a works-based salvation, your own life condemns you (v. 18).
In what way is this true? In seeking justification through Christ, what had Paul torn down? Paul had torn down the law as a means of justification. We need to remember that the Law of Moses never taught justification by works… that was never the intention of the Law. Paul wasn’t tearing down Mosaic Scripture as revealed by God, but the cultural law as taught by the Pharisees and Judaizers, as a means of being justified. He says, “If I continue using the law as my standard for justification, I prove that justification is unattainable. I can’t do it.”
In a way, Paul is telling the legalists that their own rules have disqualified them from member-ship in the church; they can’t even meet their own standards, much less impose them on others. Since the purpose of the Law was to lead people to rely on grace through faith (as Abraham did), Paul tries to show the Galatians the futility of earning God’s favor through law-keeping. The law kills us and shows us that we are dead in our sins and in desperate need of resurrection and regeneration. As verse 19 says, “19 For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God.” His point is this…
III. When you realize that keeping the Law is impossible, you’re ready to live by grace (v. 19).
Paul says the Law showed him that he was dead so that he might receive the life God offers. The law wasn’t written to give us life, it was written to drive us to the Life Giver.
Like many, you may have read of Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler and been perplexed. It’s likely that you were perplexed by what Jesus told the young ruler to do to be saved. If someone asked you: “What can I do to inherit eternal life?” You probably wouldn’t refer the person to the Ten Commandments… but that’s exactly what Jesus did. The young man missed his cue. He thought he had kept the law since his youth. This was the cultural Jewish understanding of what it meant to observe the Law. The young man missed it. So Jesus directed His next statement at the man’s faith: “Sell all you have… and you will have treasure in heaven.” This put his faith on trial. Would he believe more in the future promises of God than in the present provisions of earth, or not? It says the young man became very sad. His faith didn’t pass the test. This young ruler didn’t understand what it meant to “keep” the law. Jesus’ first statement was tantamount to saying, “Be perfect in God’s eyes, and you’ll be saved.” This man didn’t get it; he said, “I’ve already done that, what else?”
Until we understand the utter hopelessness of our own spiritual condition apart from God, we will never appreciate the radical necessity of the grace of God. It’s important to remember that the purpose of the law is to bring us to despair of ourselves that we may cast ourselves on the mercy of God for salvation.
The young ruler should have told Jesus, I haven’t kept the law according to God’s holy standard, how can I have eternal life? That would have turned the conversation to the subject of God’s grace… grace for sinners who have fallen short of God’s glory. Those are the ones who recognize Jesus as Savior. When Jesus becomes your righteousness before God and your treasure before men, then it becomes possible to let go of everything else in order to follow Him.
For Paul, the law proved that he was dead when it came to meeting God’s standard. A person cannot fully understand the gospel until they understand their own sinfulness and their inability to meet God’s perfect standard apart from Christ. In other words, it’s impossible for a person to know what it means to be saved until they realize that they’re lost. Christianity is not about good people who want to become better people; it’s about dead people who have been made alive! Apart from grace, the sinner is unable to be willing, and unwilling to be able. Jesus was showing the young ruler that he was lost and poor and dead; and Paul says that’s what the law did for him when he saw what God required.
If verse 19 is true for you, then verse 20 will be exceedingly good news. 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 delivered Himself up for me. Here’s the point of verse 20…
IV. When Jesus draws you to Himself, it is an invitation to die to yourself and receive the exchanged life in Christ; the basis of this new life is unyielding faith in Jesus Christ (v. 20).
What does it say about your sin that the eternal Son of God, the glorious, righteous, all-powerful, Son of God willingly went to the cross to die a gruesome, humiliating, and ignominious death? The fact that Jesus offered Himself for our sins is the most extreme indictment of our hopeless condition that could ever be made. Think of it!
How horrible must our sin be that it required the death of God’s one and only Son to make atonement for it? If Jesus bore your sin on the cross, then you (that is, your old adamic nature) have been crucified with Christ. The old you in Adam no longer lives in that sense, it’s been crucified. Even though it still rants and rages against us, it is the ranting and raging of a crucified and dying nature. Christ now lives in you as a believer. The new regenerated you, who lives in the same old flesh, has a brand new faith in the Son of God. Your faith is in the One who loves you and delivered Himself for you. You can’t lose it, because it depends on Christ, not you.
But this new life that we must live in our old flesh must be lived by faith in the Son of God. We can’t live the new life according to the old fleshly nature. The old nature dies a hard death too. Old habits are hard to break because the flesh, though crucified, still screams for satisfaction. That’s why we need faith in the Son of God. Without faith in Jesus, we have nothing to stand against the demands of the flesh and the assaults of the devil. But with faith in the sufficient and satisfying promises of God, we can endure the raging of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Becoming a Christian and believing the gospel is much more than intellectual assent to a set of facts. Even the hosts of hell believe the facts of the gospel—and it makes the shudder. But a Christian is one who has died with Jesus and your new life is now mastered by Jesus.
I’ve learned that as we go through life, that there are always new areas that need to be crucified. There are new sins and new drives that were unknown before, but now they must be crucified. So it’s an ongoing act throughout the Christian life. When there is sin in your life, it grieves you because you know it grieves Jesus. You want to please Him and you know that sin displeases Him.
But more than that, Jesus hates sin because He knows what it is doing to you. It’s ruining your life; it’s draining the joy and hope out of your soul; it’s hurting the relationships you have; it’s leaving you weak against the snares and assaults from the enemy. Even worse, it’s driving a gulf between you and God, a gulf so wide that Christ died on the cross to bring the two sides together.
That brings us to verse 21.
V. When Jesus died for your sin, He did so because there was absolutely no other way (v. 21).
This is what Paul told the Galatians when they sought righteousness through the law:
21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, [then] Christ died for nothing!”
If there were some other way to save sinners, then Jesus would not have needed to die on the cross. Dietric Bonhoffer said, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” The way of the cross is not the easy way. There are many different religions that have an easy way, where the road is broad and the path is smooth. There are even some churches that make the gospel sound easy as if the Christian life will be an endless bed of roses and all your problems will vanish when you say the sinner’s prayer. But that’s not the gospel that Jesus preached.
Jesus said, “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me.” The way of the cross is not the easy way. But that’s okay… because it’s the only way.
Paul is defending the practical force of the grace of God. The Judaizers were annulling this grace by robbing it of the real life implications of living by God’s grace in everyday life. They were living as if the grace of God was an empty phrase… like a cliché they recite on Sunday morning. But they lived as if the Christian life really required much more than grace; as if it required “religious law keeping.”
So Paul takes them (and us) back to the Savior on the cross. Look at Jesus. He died for your sins. For what purpose did Jesus die on the cross if He expected you to save yourself through human effort? Paul says, if righteousness could be gained through any other way (like the Law) then Jesus died for nothing. So he says, I do not set aside (or nullify) the grace of God. He said this because his life was completely dependent upon the finished work of Jesus Christ and not because of his own efforts in legal observance. If you trust in anything besides the merit of Jesus for your justification, then you nullify the grace of God!
When Jesus died for your sin, He did so because there was absolutely no other way. Jesus is not one of many ways, or even the best of many ways; He is the only way to the Father. Therefore, do not build or rebuild some “other way” as a means of making yourself right with God. The work is already finished and all you can do (humanly speaking) is accept that work or reject it.
Billy Sunday was a former baseball player who became an evangelist before the days of Billy Graham in the first half of the 20th century. Sunday was more of a showman than anything. One of my favorite Billy Sunday stories took place back in the day when he was doing crusade evangelism in portable circus tents. He had been preaching every night for five nights in a row. And every night one young man would come in late, sit in the back, and leave before the invitation was given.
On the last night of the crusade, the same young man came and sat and left without responding. But he felt so guilty and was so miserable that he ran back to the tent late at night after the final meeting was over. The crowds were gone and all that was left were the men taking down the tent to move to the next location. The young man walked over to an older man as he was pulling up a giant tent stake to load it on the truck. The older man happened to be Billy Sunday himself. The young man realized who it was and said, “I just had to come back sir. I heard what you said and I didn’t respond, but now I’m ready. Tell me what I need to do to be saved from my sins.”
Sunday didn’t even turn around to look at the young man. He said, “I’m sorry, you’re too late, young man.” And he keep untying the knots to dismantle the tent.
The man said, “I can’t be too late. I ran all the way back here to be saved from my sins; there must be something, just tell me… tell me what I need to do!”
Again, Sunday said, “I told you son, you’re too late. There’s nothing you can do.”
The young man couldn’t believe his ears, but he turned and began to walk away into the cold night air. But as he did, Sunday called out to him and said, “Son, let me tell you something. I told you that you’re too late to do anything to be saved. That’s because everything that could ever be done to save sinners was finished 2000 years ago by Jesus Christ. All that’s left for you is to believe and follow Him.” That’s all that’s left for you and for me. Believe in Him. Receive the gift and follow Him.
(c) Charles Kevin Grant
2003