Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Galatians 2:15-21

Housekeeping Stuff & Announcements:

Welcome guests to the family gathering, introduce yourself.

Thank the band.

Invite guests to parlor after service.

CareNet’s Annual Walk for Life video.

In September, we are hosting two events on back-to-back weekends for women:

Aspire Women’s Conference, an evening full of laughter, learning, stories & music.

This is the third year that we have hosted Shine.

This year, it will be on Friday, September 13, from 7 to 10 pm.

You can get tickets in the church office, or online at aspirewomensevents.com.

Flyers are available in the foyer on the Get Connected Table.

The REAL Women’s Conference will be held the following weekend, and it is a two-day conference to encourage, inspire, and equip women to shift their focus from “Why is this happening?”

to “I wonder what God is working through this?”

It will be Friday and Saturday, September 20 and 21, 6-9 on Friday night, and 8:15 am to 3 on Saturday.

You can get more information in at getrealwithgod.com,

and cards are also available on the Get Connected Table.

Opening

Pray

In the last couple of weeks in this series called “Dear Church,” we have looked at a couple of related issues: two weeks ago, it was legalism: Right actions without right belief.

Those under legalism believe that through the things that we do, we earn salvation or earn merit with God.

Last week it was hypocrisy: Right belief without right actions.

We specifically looked at hypocrisy in relation to the church, by considering a conflict that arose between Paul and Peter about eating with those who weren’t Jews.

The issue wasn’t just that Peter had stopped eating with the Gentile believers in Antioch… It was that his reasons for doing so did not line up with the Gospel being for all people as God had revealed to Peter in Acts 10 and 11, and that his doing so was hypocritical: Peter knew better because of the work that God had performed through him.

Now, there is some question as to where what Paul started saying in verse 14 ends.

Some translators would place the quote in verse 14 only.

Some end it after verse 16.

Some take it all the way through verse 21.

Ancient Greek did not have quotation marks.

I personally am fine with it being just 14, or all the way through 21, because regardless, what we see in our focal passage today is Paul making an argument, and whether that argument is directly to Peter or directly to the Galatians is unimportant.

We have to keep in mind that Paul is using this argument to address the issue at large in Galatia: the issue of legalism.

So it doesn’t matter whether this is a continued quote from his conflict with Peter or not: the intended result and meaning is the same.

In this passage, we find a concept about which Martin Luther said:

And this is the truth of the Gospel.

It is also the principal article of all Christian doctrine, wherein the knowledge of all godliness consisteth.

Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.

(Luther, Commentary, 206)

This concept is “justification,” and it will be our focus this morning.

First we’re going to see Paul’s declaration of the doctrine of justification, and then Paul’s defense of it.

We’re going to be looking at a lot of Scripture this morning as we consider this core doctrine of the Christian faith.

Justification or being justified is a legal concept.

The word is the opposite of condemned.

When I was a freshman in high school, one night a couple of friends and I made some very poor choices and we found ourselves down at the police station in Silver City.

After that night, I ended up having to go with my parents to meet with the district attorney to see if they were going to press charges against me for the crimes I had committed that night.

The DA ended up saying that their office had decided that I would not be prosecuted for my actions, and that I was to make different choices in the future.

It was such a relief.

Now, did the DA say that I did nothing wrong?

No.

In fact, just the opposite: he knew I had, and so did I.

What the DA said was that I was going to be allowed to have a right standing in the community despite the fact of my wrongdoing.

The idea of justification is that we have a right standing before God not because of what we have done, but because of what Jesus has done.

I really like the definition of justification that David Platt and Tony Merida use in their commentary on Galatians:

Justification is the gracious act of God by which God declares a sinner righteous solely through faith in Jesus Christ.