Galatians 3 1-14 The Righteous Live by Faith

Paul called Abraham to the witness stand as an expert witness in his plea with the Galatians. This must have been a shock to the Judaizers and some of the Jewish believers, because Abraham was their guy! They prided themselves on being the sons of Abraham. Jesus had told the Jews that if they were really sons of Abraham, they would be doing the works that Abraham did. What were the works Abraham did? There was only one that Jesus was referring to. God told Abraham to look at the stars and try to count them, because that was how many descendants he and Sarah would have, both in their 90’s, and her barren. And the Bible says, “And he believed the Lord, and he (God) counted it to him as righteousness.” What was the “work” of Abraham? He believed God. What did God do? He credited, he accounted righteousness to Abraham. Something that did not belong to Abram was given to him because he believed. Paul said of this Genesis account, “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” It is incredible but true that God justifies the ungodly. He saves sinners and calls them righteous even while we as saved sinners still battle with sin. That is the Great Reversal that Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 5 in the simplest of terms: “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” Our sin was imputed (transferred) to Christ on the cross, and Christ’s righteousness was imputed (transferred) to us. This is our only hope for salvation.  

Abraham is still on the witness stand with Paul, and he is asked again: “Are you saying sir, that you did nothing to please God? That all you did was…believe him?” “Yes.” And then Abraham, in my imagination, turned to the Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and Sikhs and every combination of Jesus-Plus-Works people in the world and said, “That’s all I did. I believed God. I didn’t just believe in God. Even demons do that and tremble. I believed God. He told me Sarah and I would have a child, and we were both as good as dead in that department. He even told me that in me, all the nations would be blessed, and I could not fathom how that would be so. But I believed God. Period.” Paul replied with Habakkuk’s powerful word, “The righteous shall live by faith.” The righteous doesn’t just become righteous by faith. He lives by faith. 

When Martin Luther first read Habakkuk 2:4, he was living in a monastery and he didn’t understand it at the time. Later he entered into deep depression and illness and believed he was under God’s wrath. He thought he was about to die and he remembered Habakkuk, and he started saying that simple truth over and over, “The righteous shall live by faith.” When he recovered from his illness, he went to Rome. And the pope at that time had promised an indulgence, a forgiveness for punishment of sins in purgatory for any pilgrim who came to Rome and mounted the tall staircase at a famous church. You were to pay your money, climb the staircase, and get either your punishment or someone else’s punishment in purgatory removed through this work. People were flocking to the staircase and climbing it on their knees, pausing to pray and kiss the stairs as they climbed. Luther’s son later wrote about that day: “As he (Luther) repeated his prayers on the Lateran staircase, the words of the Prophet Habakkuk came to his mind: “The righteous shall live by faith.” Thereupon he ceased his prayers, returned to Wittenburg, and took this as his chief foundation of all his doctrine.” Luther later wrote himself, “Before those words broke upon my mind, I hated God and was angry with him…but when, by the Spirit of God, I understood those words—the just shall live by faith!—then I felt born again like a new man; I entered through the open doors into the very Paradise of God.” 

The righteous shall live by faith. Believe it.  

Believe God. 

We had a covered dish lunch last Sunday at church. And everyone sat at tables in the fellowship hall wherever they wanted to sit. We didn’t have a section that was marked out for “people who had devotions every day this week.” They would have all been beaming with pride at each other. We also didn’t have a section marked out for “people who are gladly holding something against a fellow believer.” That would have been a sad group for sure, even if they didn’t know it. We also didn’t have a section for “those who like each other,” because we don’t need that sign. But many years ago in the church at Antioch, not the one in Elon, there was a covered dish meal and the Gentiles were asked to sit in the back room where no one could see them. And they were told they couldn’t go through the same buffet line with the real Christians. In fact, the Gentiles had to bring their own food. Everybody else was terrified to even touch their ham sandwiches and popcorn shrimp. 

The story in Galatians is a familiar one, but it is still shocking to me every time I read it. That Peter the apostle would give in to the fear of man and treat Gentiles with disrespect. Peter had already heard from Jesus that what goes into a man doesn’t defile him. He heard Jesus pronounce all foods clean. In other words, he had heard Jesus say in effect that He was the fulfillment of the ceremonial laws. Peter needed further convincing later so God sent him a vision showing that we should never call something (or someone) unclean that God had pronounced clean. Right after that he met Cornelius, an uncircumcised Gentile whom God was drawing to Christ. Peter preached to him and to all the Gentiles gathered in Cornelius’ house and they believed the Gospel and were filled with the Holy Spirit. Peter saw with his own eyes those whom he had considered to be unclean made clean by the same faith in Christ which had made Peter clean! Now here he was in Antioch, eating with the Gentile believers, enjoying their fellowship. And suddenly when “certain men came down” from Jerusalem, Peter forgot everything he had believed before about God not showing partiality. And he refused to eat with the Gentile believers. His hypocrisy set up a powerful scene, where Paul confronted Peter because of his sin. 

How did he do it? We are told he confronted him “to his face,” and “before them all.” Why didn’t he speak to Peter privately? Because this was a public sin that had affected others and led them into sin. It required a public rebuke. I saw a bumper sticker last week that said, “Caution: Blind Driver.” I was laughing at the joke, but also thinking about the damage that driver could cause to himself and others. It made me think about Peter’s deadly sin in Antioch. It was certainly a sin against the Gentiles. But it was also a sin against God and against the gospel. Paul knew that, too, and wrote that their conduct “was not in step with the truth of the gospel.” That could also be translated, “not in line with the gospel.” The prefix “ortho” means straight, or to make straight. We go to orthodontists to straighten our teeth. Orthopedists can straighten broken bones. We believe in orthodoxy because it is correct doctrine, truths about God and man and sin and salvation that are straight, right in line with Scripture. Paul sees that Peter is out of line, acting in a way that speaks lies about the gospel. And that Peter stood condemned because of this. The gospel cannot be changed or made crooked in any way by anyone. It must be preserved at all costs, because eternity is at stake.  

Paul saw Peter acting in a way that would lead the Gentile believers in Antioch to think that they were not accepted, that they were unclean, and Paul was not a little bit upset. He pointed out their hypocrisy, Peter and everyone else, asking, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?” In other words, “Peter, you have forgotten your welcome in Christ. And as a result, you have misrepresented the gospel in not welcoming the Gentile believers.”  

May God help us bring everything in line with the gospel, including our fears of man, our prejudices, our cowardice in the face of opposition, and our laziness in welcoming others as Christ has welcomed us.

Galatians-2-11-21-In-Line-with-the-Gospel.pdf

I remember hearing in my 20’s that some churches teach you are not saved if you don’t speak in tongues. Oneness Pentecostals, for example, believe this. When I heard that I remembered what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12: “Do all speak with tongues?” No. I also remember hearing some say that you must be baptized in order to be saved. That’s called “baptismal regeneration,” and it is taught by the Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, some Lutheran churches, and the non-instrumental Church of Christ denomination. My first thought was, “Surely Jesus did not lie to the thief on the cross!” This man believed in his final hours, and Jesus said to him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” I also believe what I see in the Word: baptism is a response that follows, not a cause that creates, salvation. In each of these cases, whole denominations are guilty of leading people into a false gospel, teaching that faith in Jesus is simply not enough. Teaching that you must add something to your faith, in order to be saved. Which means that not only is your faith not enough, but it means that Jesus is not enough. That struggle started as early as the first few decades of the church. And that struggle prompted Paul to write the letter to the Galatians.  

In the churches in the first century, there were false converts who were whispering into the ears of church members that they were not really saved. The gospel Paul preached, they were saying, is not enough. You must believe in Christ, but you must also keep the traditions and the customs of the Jews. These false brothers, Paul said, “slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus.” Why would they do that? Paul continues, “so they might bring us into slavery.” It is a reminder that not all who gather in a physical church building are believers. There are “false brothers and sisters” that may enter a church with the desire to bring people into bondage. They want to show us important traditions and works and regulations that they believe we must keep in order to be saved. That is the very definition of legalism. Anything added as necessary for salvation beyond grace through faith is a false gospel. How do we respond? Paul writes that we must not “yield in submission (to them) even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved.”  

In his book, What It Means to Be Protestant, Gavin Ortlund writes a great deal about the Reformation that took place in the 1500’s. “The heart of Protestant identity lies in two affirmations: justification is by faith alone (sola fide), and Holy Scripture is the only infallible rule for the church’s faith and practice (sola Scriptura). The first of these represents a material component of the apostolic deposit recovered by the Reformation; the second represents a formal principle by which we remain accountable to that apostolic deposit. The way I like to put it is that sola fide is the ‘what’ of the Reformation; sola Scriptura is the ‘how.’ The first is an object, the second a method. The first is a precious jewel; the second, the safe that protects it.”  

Sola fide eliminates the possibility for works-righteousness. 

We could argue that in the book of Galatians, Paul was doing a strike not only against the works-righteousness of the false teachers in the early church, but a pre-emptive strike against all churches and all denominations in future centuries who would elevate tradition and ceremony and works of any kind to the level of sola fide. To do so, Paul would say, is to invite people out of freedom and into bondage. 

What do we do when such teaching creeps into the church? Paul shows us by example: “to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment.” The saying goes that if you let the camel’s nose into the tent, his body is sure to follow. Don’t even let the nose of “works-righteousness” in. 

Galatians 2 1-10 The Gospel Tested

Galatians 1 10-24 From Terrorist to Evangelist

We know that the conversion of Saul, from terrorist to evangelist and from murderer to martyr, is one of the evidences in the Bible for the truth of the Gospel. It is almost Exhibit A in the New Testament that salvation is only by grace through faith, and not through good works. Why? Paul was a Pharisee of Pharisees, a young man who stood head and shoulders above others in his zeal for following the law, in his passion for doing good works for God. Paul writes to Timothy, saying, “I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent.” But, he said, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.” He is not saying that God showed mercy because of something He saw in Paul! But that Paul is a perfect example, like the rest of us, that there is no merit whatsoever in us but perfect merit in Christ who took our place. If you are in Christ, it is because God displayed perfect patience in calling you before you were even in your mother’s womb, and saving you at the time of His choosing. That’s the Gospel. 

Notice what Paul says about his conversion in Galatians. First, he says that Jesus set him apart before he was born. Before Paul entered his mother’s womb, God had ordained that Paul would know Jesus. And think of this. God endured with patience as Paul advanced in Judaism and in works-righteousness. And the same misplaced zeal that Paul grew skilled in to advance works-righteousness, the false gospel, would be employed by the Spirit, this zeal, in a new Paul to advance the Kingdom of God and salvation by grace through faith! I love the story CS Lewis tells in his book, Surprised by Joy of a teacher he had in school who was nicknamed “The Great Knock,” and “Kirk.” William Kirkpatrick was a brilliant tutor who trained Lewis as a young man in logic, clear thinking, and analysis. And Kirk was an atheist whose rationalism formed Lewis in that same mold. Until Jesus, who had set CS Lewis apart before he was born, gave the light of the Gospel to him. And then? Lewis’ training in logic and clear thinking prepared him well to become one of the greatest defenders of the Christian faith in his day. Here’s the truth, saints. Nothing is wasted with God and all that you have learned and all that you have suffered become the tools God uses in you to be salt and light in the world.  

Second, Paul says that not only was he set apart before birth but at the right time, God “was pleased to reveal his Son to me.” God revealed Christ to Paul so that He could reveal Christ through Paul. It is the same for you and me! Ironically, Paul was called by Jesus to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, the very people Paul would have avoided like the plague before his conversion. Notice also that your Bible may have a footnote that says the Greek there is actually “in.” God revealed his Son, not just to Paul, but in Paul. Salvation is only ours when we have Jesus in us. “Christ in us, the hope of glory.” 

You don’t have to be a terrorist to have a miraculous conversion. Any conversion of any soul is a miracle. Neither do you have to be “blinded by the light” to be saved. You just have to meet and surrender to the One who is light.  

Only Jesus. 

Thomas Edison said once, “I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.” That’s the way I feel about the 6 men I serve alongside as elders of our church. Many of us have walked together for more than twenty years, and the weekly meetings for prayer and discussion on Sunday morning are a highlight of my week. We meet together almost every Sunday for two hours before the service starts because we know that we need the Lord’s help to love the body well and to walk together as those who agree. The seven of us are different in many ways, from professions to personalities, but God has made us one.  

This past weekend was our annual Elders’ Retreat, which has traditionally been spent with our wives in the mountains at a conference center. Until last year when, because of icy roads in Black Mountain, we called an audible and met at one of our elders’ homes in town. This year, because of last year’s weather in the west, we booked a beach house on the Carolina coast. Who knew that the threat of a “major” snow and ice event would force us to pivot again to another of our elders’ homes? It was a wonderful day and a half together. 

When we gather for these retreats, the purpose is to build our relationships, assess the past year’s joys and challenges, and seek the Lord’s wisdom for the year ahead. One of the elders started the retreat with a few icebreakers. “Would you rather lead worship without any sheet music or preach a sermon without any notes?” Lots of laughter on that one. The second question was, “Would you rather debate theology or hear someone’s life story?” I was surprised at the number of theologians in our group who are ready to rumble! By the way, I recommend Jen Wilkin’s book, You Are a Theologian. She builds the case that if theology is the study of God, all who belong to Him are theologians, growing in our understanding of who God is and what He has said to us in His word. If the most important thing about us is what we think about God, the pursuit to truly know Him is primary in our lives.   

The ice breaker questions were followed by devotions and worship and a time of prayer. 

The rest of the retreat, when we weren’t enjoying great food and fellowship, was spent discussing the health of our body, the needs of the saints, and the plans for taking care of the growth the church is enjoying. We are outgrowing our facility and asking the Lord for wisdom. As we consider whether He is leading us to merge with another church that has more space, or to add on to the building that we are in now, our posture is prayer and our ears are open to what the Lord will answer. Our history of nearly 39 years bears the marks of His handprints as the Lord has provided a place for us to gather from the time we started with fewer than 50 until today. We have been in the same building for 23 years, and it is the tenth place where we have gathered for worship. What were the words of the hymn? “All the way, my Savior leads me.” Yes, and He has been faithful to provide. As we talked and laughed and sometimes cried this weekend, we did so as friends whom God has called together to love and lead. 

I don’t know any kings, and I don’t think any of our elders or their wives wear overalls, but I wouldn’t trade our friendship for any of the world’s treasures. 

The letter to the Galatians is considered by many to be a “capital epistle” of the Apostle Paul, along with 1 and 2 Corinthians and Romans, because of how clearly it sets forth the Gospel. Written around AD 50, just 20 years or so after the resurrection of Christ, Galatians is called by some the Magna Carta of Christian liberty. Martin Luther loved Galatians so much he called it “Catherine von Bora,” his wife’s name, because he said, “I am married to it.” Along with Romans, Galatians is the book that launched the Protestant Reformation in the 1500’s as it liberated that Catholic monk from works righteousness and helped him clearly see the doctrine of justification by faith alone. That is the central doctrine of Galatians, and in it we read, “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.” Do you see that? Not once, not twice, but three times in that single verse Paul insists that we cannot be justified (or, declared righteous) before the bar of God’s justice by doing the works of the law. The good news of the Gospel is only good news if it is the Gospel. Anything else, anything added, reverses the Gospel so that it becomes terrible news. 

The Gospel is this. Christ “…gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever.” Notice three things about that powerful truth. 

The Gospel tells us who we are. We are helpless and lost in our sins. That’s what the word “deliver” implies in that verse. What do we need more than anything else? To be rescued. Delivered. Other religions were founded by people who claim to have the knowledge we need that will set us free. They are here to teach us, they say, because that’s what we need most. Was Jesus a teacher? Of course. The greatest of all teachers. But Paul in describing the Gospel in its simplest terms makes no mention of Jesus’ teaching. Because that was not as important as rescue. A man who thinks he just needs to really understand the difference between Buddhism and Christianity is not looking to be rescued. He just wants to be taught. But when a person is drowning right in front of you in a pool, they don’t want you to yell to them how to do the breaststroke or toss them a manual on swimming. They need a rope. They need someone to deliver them, to rescue them. Jesus is first our rescuer before he becomes our teacher. 

The Gospel tells us what Jesus did. He “gave himself for our sins.” That is substitutionary atonement. He took our place because no one else could. Paul says it plainly also in 1 Corinthians: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” This is of first importance because there is no other hope, no other way, no other rescue. He did not die for all, but for all those who will believe. He said himself that he came to “give his life as a ransom for many.” He also did not die to just give us a “second chance” to do better, to get it right so we could be right and stay right with God. No! He did all that was needed to make us right before God, something we are helpless to do ourselves. And the Gospel means that if Jesus really paid for all of our sins we can never fall into condemnation and then have to…pay for our sins. It would be unjust for two payments to be made. Jesus paid it all. It was just for Him to die on the cross because He took our sins upon Himself. It is unjust for us to have to do anything to win God’s favor. Jesus won that for us. 

Third, the Gospel tells us what the Father did in the very first verse of this book. God the Father accepted Jesus’ perfect payment for our sins by raising Him from the dead. And He gave us grace and peace that was bought by Jesus’ precious blood. Why did the Father do this? Not because of anything we have done, but “according to the will of God the Father.” The Gospel begins and continues and flourishes for eternity because of the will of God. Not because of anything we did or could ever do. Salvation is pure grace.  

Are you living in and flourishing because of the Gospel? There is no other.