211003 Galatians: Justified Through Faith in Christ Alone

Title

INTRODUCTION SLIDE 1

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Perfect is the enemy of good enough?”

“Perfect is the enemy of good enough…” what does that mean?

“Perfect is the enemy of good enough” is spoken of at the end of every over budget job. Every time the cost of a job goes beyond what the business owner wants to pay, they need to consider, “Is this good enough?”

Now, the customer will usually say, “No, I want the job done right. I’m paying you ‘X’ and I better get it on time and without a single cost overrun.” The business owner is already thinking of jobs they have to push back and the loss they will take on this one and they just want to finish the job and move on.

They are thinking, “this customer wants perfect, when this thing I have built does everything its supposed to… it just doesn’t do it very well… just good enough. They should be satisfied, it should be enough!”

Some of us have had jobs where the “customer” is never satisfied. Maybe it’s a spouse, maybe its a customer, maybe it is a boss. No matter what you turn in, no matter what you do it is not perfect. All we may be thinking is, “so what if it’s not perfect, it’s good enough!” But is it?

Well, my favorite answer as an accountant is, “it depends...”

Are you building a fence or performing open heart surgery? Are you wiring an Atlas V rocket or cooking stew? Who is your boss, what is the budget, what’s the expectation? Is good enough, good enough or is perfect required?

“Perfect is the enemy of good enough” is a paraphrase of a quote uttered by the french philosopher Voltaire. Voltaire, believed God basically built the world, gave people a sense of morality and then went on vacation. Which is massively ironic to me.

INTRODUCTION SLIDE 2

If you took a poll of every person in Vernonia and asked if they thought they were good enough to go to heaven, many of them, perhaps even most of them would say, “Sure, I’m better than so and so, I’m good enough.” “I haven’t broken any big laws, that’s good enough for me, it’ll probably be good enough for God.”

PAUSE “It’ll probably be good enough...”

PAUSE Is it? Are you building a fence or wiring a rocket engine? How tight do the tolerances need to be? How good is good enough? What is it going to take to make a person good with God? PAUSE

SPEAK SOFTLY The Bible tells us that God is holy, set apart, righteous, without sin, without any ability to tolerate sin. In this case, “Perfect is the enemy of everyone that thinks they are good enough.” There is no one who is righteous, there is no one who is good enough. It doesn’t matter if you are the nicest person, it doesn’t matter if you recycle or pay your taxes - God’s perfection is the antithesis, the enemy of the idea that good enough is good enough.”

People can never do enough good things to be right with God… If that is true, and it is… we have a very big problem and we do. Please open your Bibles to Exodus chapter 20. Exodus is the second book of the Bible and you want the very middle chapter of that book - chapter 20...

Take a look at the first 17 verses… Let your eyes pass over what is listed there… PAUSE WAIT 15 seconds

Have you ever lied? Even just a little bit, I have, a lot…? Have you ever stolen anything? I know I have.... What about coveting? Wanting something that didn’t belong to you? Yep, have you ever taken the name of the Lord in vain? Yep, again… Ever dishonored my folks, yep. Ever failed to keep the Sabbath? Uh huh… What about focus on something to the exclusion of God… We are required to worship God above all other things, I have failed here.

There is no, “good enough,” folks.

Perhaps we might comfort ourselves, that we haven’t broken the really bad commandments… “You shall not murder and you shall not commit adultery.” Those are really the worst… anyone who would do that, they are really bad… VERSE SLIDE

Jesus said in

Matthew 5:21-22 ““You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.”

VERSE SLIDE

Later in verse 27 He said, Matthew 5:27-28 ““You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

INTRODUCTION SLIDE 3

The situation is even worse than we thought… The heart is what God is after. He wants perfection even in our hearts.

PAUSE

Are you like me? PAUSE I have a rotten heart, despite what I may look like on the outside, I have a rotten heart... PAUSE and so do you… and because I do, because we do, we deserve death and to suffer God’s righteous wrath… PAUSE

God’s perfection, His holiness is demanded from His creation that He made. He made us and so He gets to tell us what He expects.... PAUSE We read what He expects… He expects obedience to His Law…He expects perfection - perfect is the enemy of people’s attitude that they are good enough. Only perfect will be accepted and none of us have it - we have a very big problem...

MAIN POINT

The main point of this sermon is simple and I think we grasp the first part of it, even if we kept most of the rules of God that would not be enough. MAIN POINT 2 All sin must be punished. MAIN POINT 3

But by accepting what God offers us, His only Son’s sacrifice, people become right with God and not only right but also MAIN POINT 4 cherished children of God.

If you agree that you are a sinner, having broken any of God’s Laws and agree with God that His only Son’s perfection is the only way to be right with Him, you can be adopted into the family of God and avoid the punishment you deserve.

Before I begin the sermon, let’s go to prayer. BLANK SLIDE

PRAYER

God, You have made us, You have told us what You require and the judgment that is demanded on those that reject You. You are perfect. You are holy. You are just. Perfect is Your standard. We have a big problem, Lord. Help us to see our sin for what it is... a cancer that will kill us and eat us from the inside out...

Lord, You made us and You gave us these good Laws. We all agree that murder is wrong, lying is wrong, stealing is wrong, - we agree that we have failed to honor You as we should - We agree that Your Law is good but we are now without hope. We are doomed to face Your wrath because we have all broken Your Law…

We need help Lord. We are doomed and we need Your mercy. All of this information has been bad news for us.

Ready us now to hear Your good news. The Good News of freedom from the penalty of sin. The Good News of perfection given to us, covering us, shielding us and making us pure and holy and right with You, cherished kiddos, loved by You… Ready us to hear of what You offer through Jesus Christ. It is in His name I pray, amen.

SERMON

Turn if you would to the book of Galatians. Galatians chapter 3. Galatians is in the New Testament about 4/5ths of the way from the end.

While you are flipping there let’s talk context

CONTEXT

Paul, is an apostle - meaning a special man selected by God to communicate the Gospel to the first century church. He is writing to the Christian churches that he started in Galatia. Galatia is not a city or town. It is a region. CONTEXT MAP A region he had traveled through on his first missionary journey. A region populated by the Celts or Gauls (LASER THE ROUTE). He had traveled through Galatia visiting the towns of Psidia Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and had planted churches in these towns.

You can read about this in Acts chapters 13-15. He has returned to Antioch (LASER AT ANTIOCH BY THE MED) and he has heard some bad news about these churches… Someone or some group of someones had followed behind him as he was planting these churches and convinced them that the only way they could be right with God was by obeying the Law and all the old covenant stipulations. The men of these churches were told that they needed to be circumcised like Jews. Needed to follow the feast schedule etc. After they had heard they could be right with God because of Jesus someone has told them they need Jesus and the Law… Well, word has found its way back to Paul and he has heard that these people that he loves are being deceived…

Paul is extremely upset, not only at this group that has contaminated the churches with their bad theology but also at the churches. They didn’t retain the critical component of the Gospel - which is that they were justified by faith in Christ alone. It is about 16 years after Christ rose from the dead and Paul is re-teaching them just what purpose the Law filled.

Again, the main point of this message is that keeping rules never makes anyone right with God, a Savior is needed, a Savior is offered and when accepted the believer is not only made right with God but is also adopted by God into His family.

SLIDE

I am going to begin in Chapter 3 verse 23

I. The Law Shows Us Our Need (3:23-29)

A. The Law shows that we are not good enough (3:23-24)

23 But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. 24 Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.

The whole point of the Law was to make excruciatingly clear that we can never be obedient enough, never be good enough. Perfection is the standard and that standard means that there is no “good enough.” We fall so short of God’s expectations. None of us could legitimately claim that we hadn’t broken at least one of God’s Laws and if we have broken even one of God’s Laws we are subject to eternal punishment… It’s actually worse than that… VERSE SLIDE

James 2:10 “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.”

The whole point of the Law was to make this one fact clear, we need help. Humanity needs help. If perfection is the standard it is impossible for us to meet that standard. We need someone to save us… but we look around and we are all sinners, who can save us? SLIDE

No one.... if we are going to be right with God it is going to have to be Him that does something about it, because we just can’t.

24 Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.

The Law makes it obvious that we need a Savior… Only perfection is acceptable and only God Himself is perfect. If we are to be right with God then we need God to give us His righteousness and perfection. That is what Jesus Christ did. The Son of God became a man, lived perfectly under the Law and died in our place, and God raised Him from the dead. He who believes in Jesus is not judged… He is justified, made right in God’s eyes.

That last phrase, What does that mean to be justified by faith, ἐκ πίστεως δικαιωθῶμεν

To have or possess faith or πίστεως means to own or possess a strong confidence that what God has said is true, it means to be persuaded at its legitimacy and trust it. That’s faith, faith isn’t a wish. It is a deep assurance, grounded in knowledge of God’s character - God has said it, I believe it and that settles it...

δικαιωθῶμεν or “to be justified,” that’s a legal term, having to do with the Law. δικαιωθῶμεν is a verb or an action describing a passive event that we give assent to in our mind, this is an intellectual thing, that we agree with and it means to be declared right with God and it is a status or a position. To be justified does not mean that the crime didn’t happen but that you are no longer under judgement for it.

Christ is how we are justified. We acknowledge with our minds that God says that this is true, we believe it and then God takes Christ’s righteousness and applies it to us. Making us perfect like Christ. This doesn’t mean that the crime didn’t happen but it removes the guilt from us.

Christians are righteous in God’s eyes, declared to be perfect in God’s eyes because they believe what He said is true. SLIDE

John 3.16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Do you believe that this is true? Do you give intellectual assent to this? Do you agree with it? If so, then the penalty for disobeying God’s Law, will not be directed at you forever in hell, but was instead heaped upon God’s own Son at Calvary.

Paul wants these Galatians to understand this because someone is telling them that they are still under Law. They are still beholden to its mandates and stipulations… EMPHATIC But that isn’t what God said! He said whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

If someone tells us that we need just one more thing other than Christ, that Christ - God’s own Son and His perfect sacrifice just needs one more thing and then we will be right with God, we will get points with God… If someone tells us that, they have not been reading Scripture and they are either a deceiver or are terribly deceived.

The purpose of the Law was to show, to teach, to guide us to the realization that we are unable to be righteous on our own. We need a Savior. Now that the Savior has arrived we don’t need to achieve righteousness with God through keeping rules. We have something better now, actual incorporation into God’s own family

Verse 25

SLIDE

B. Faith in Christ makes us children of God (3:25-27)

25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. 26 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

If you have your pen or pencil handy, underline verse 26

Everything that Paul has written in Chapter 3, verse 6 and onward points to verse 26 and everything that is written after verse 26 flows from it - all the way to the end of chapter 4.

Salvation is more than being declared legally justified by God. It is more than avoiding the penalty associated with our sin. It is more than avoiding hell and gaining access to heaven. Its more than that. Verse 26 says that those that possess πίστεως - remember confident assurance in God - they become sons of God through that faith.

Sons of God, what does that mean? What does it mean to be a son of God? It means to be a son, or offspring or descendant of God. It means to be a child of God. It means to be a loved child of God.

When we were under the Law, we were subject to the penalty for breaking the Law but the purpose of the Law was not to leave us without hope, unable to cope with the punishment that we deserved.... No, the Law pointed to Christ, to our need for a Savior, when He arrived and lived perfectly under the Law and transferred His righteousness to those that possess πίστεως - confident assurance - we were made a son of God, with all the rights and privileges to be expected as such.

ASTONISHED Think of what that means… It means you are no longer a rebel doomed to hell, it means that you have taken on a position similar to Christ the son of God. The sons are heirs, not enemies. The sons inherit, they are not rejected. If you possess πίστεως - confident assurance that God means what He says - then we are unified with Christ.

In verse 27 Paul says, For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

What does that mean? PAUSE This is the only reference to baptism in Galatians. Baptism here is in the aorist passive indicative. This is not something that we did, it is passive, it is something that God did and the Aorist tense gives us a picture of an event that has already taken place. ἐβαπτίσθητε, means to be dipped, washed, or immersed. Frequently, baptism is thought of in the process of pickling… Once you are pickled, you cannot be unpickled.

Believers are brought into the status, the position of sons by being baptized, cleansed, immersed into Christ. Unified with Him.

When God sees the believer, the ones that trust that His promises are good, God doesn’t see law breakers. He doesnt see rebels. He sees His only Son, cherished, loved. If you are a believer, you have this status and You can call God, Father. You are the beneficiary of amazing promises and you are no longer subject to His wrath - because Christ already suffered under it for you, and for me.

Verse 28 SLIDE

C. Faith in Christ unifies believers with Christ (3:28-29)

28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.

Remember the context, remember what Paul is addressing. Paul has in mind that someone or someones has followed behind him at all of these new churches and told them, “Yeah, Christ is good but you also need to follow the Law… If you only looked a bit more Jewish, acted a bit more Jewish, then you would be good with God... You also need to be circumcised, you also need to follow these traditions.”

Remember the context because it guides us in our understanding in what Paul is saying. SLIDE

He says that there isn’t a stratification in God’s eyes. There is no hierarchy. Believers are one in Christ. The John MacArthur’s of the Church are on the same plane as the recently converted believer still recovering from drug addiction. All of us are in need of a Savior and the words, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” has this in mind.

Sometimes, Christians will list their pedigree of accomplishments, “I have gone to church for so long, I was baptised, I have this position in the church and so on...” entirely forgetting that they are just as degenerate as the most recent convert.

These deceivers that crept into these churches were likely telling these new believers, “yep, Christ is good but getting circumcised is what God wants you to do as well. And make sure you keep up the traditional feasts, and don’t forget the washing rituals....” No! You cannot get points with God by doing this. Let me deviate just momentarily because one other thing needs to be said before we move on to chapter 4. SLIDE

Feminists in recent years have sought to twist verse 28 into a verse that allows them to enter the Clergy, that allows them to be ordained, a verse that basically says that they can be elders or pastors etcetera… That is not what it means in the context and taking this verse out of context pits it against other portions of Scripture against it that do not allow for it. If you would like to research this further I would point to Titus chapter 1 and 1st Timothy chapter 3.

Let’s continue on though in Chapter 4. Paul is switching perspectives here from being under Law to being in bondage or enslavement under Satan.

SLIDE

II. God's Great Generosity (4:1-7)

A. Redeemed from bondage (4:1-3)

1 Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything, 2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father. 3 So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world.

While we were children, we were in bondage, for all practical purposes equivalent to slaves - until the time deemed appropriate by the father. Who were we in bondage to? We were enslaved by Satan. Colossians 1:13 “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,”

God allowed this bondage for a time until the solution would be revealed in His Son. SMILE Now that the Son has been revealed and believers through faith in Him have become united with Him - we are no longer enslaved. We are redeemed, bought, purchased by God... No longer in bondage but privileged, favored, honored and adopted. Verse 4 SLIDE

B. Not just redeemed, also adopted (4:4-5)

4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, 5 so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

There is no higher honor available to any person than to be called a child of God. To be adopted is a legal status. Nothing changes physically when a child is adopted. They are the same as they were just before and yet everything is completely different. An adopted child takes on the name of the Adoptive parents. They become something they never were before, with new rights, new privileges, a new status.

SMILE If you have been made an heir of the Ruler of the Universe you have much to be grateful for, especially, when we consider that before we were made free, we were rebellious, haters of God, against Him in every way - His enemies. He has made us as perfect as His own Son, Jesus Christ. EMPHASIS We have much to be grateful for! Verse 6 as I begin to wind this message down SLIDE

C. Not just adopted, also indwelt by His Spirit (4:6-7)

6 Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.

Those that believe God are justified by faith in Christ alone. They are no longer slaves, no longer enemies, no longer doomed to hell for breaking the Law. Now you have been redeemed, purchased by Christ’s sacrifice, and made right with God.

But He is so generous that He didn’t stop there. He didn’t stop with making us right with Him, He also clothed us with Christ, unified us, immersed us, baptized us into Christ and gave us a new status - that of adopted sons!

He didn’t stop with giving us Christ’s own perfect righteousness He also empowered us to live lives as righteous as Christ did by putting into us His Son’s own Spirit. We now have the very Spirit of Christ within us, calling out to Father God, Abba… Abba is a familial term - equivalent in many ways to “father.” It is not the same as ‘daddy.’ Abba is a term used at that era that would have been used by adult children speaking of their father.

CONCLUSION SLIDE

In conclusion, Paul wrote to Gentile Christians in Galatia and affirmed for them that they need nothing more than Christ’s righteousness to be justified in God’s eyes. No amount of attempted Law keeping could ever make them perfect. They could never gain points with God, they just need Christ.

We deserved judgment through our breaking the Law but God has seen fit to provide not only to administer the remedy through Christ but also promoted believers into His family and granted us a new status as sons. We are justified through faith in Christ alone. We now have a relationship with God and because we are indwelt by the Spirit of His Son and we have been granted the luxury of being able to call Him, Father.

Please stand I and I will close in prayer