Word of Salvation – Vol. 53 No.3 – January 2008

 

“Jesus Only”; not “Jesus And”

 

A Sermon by Rev John De Hoog

on Galatians 3:1-14

Scripture Reading:  Genesis 15

Suggested Singing:  BoW 66; 150b; 238; 386; 514

 

Dear Congregation.

In his Letter to the Galatians, Paul is engaged in a strong argument against the false teachers who have come to Galatia. These false teachers are Judaizers – they are trying to impose the Law of Moses on the Gentile converts in the churches in Galatia – the churches in Pisidian, Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. Paul had preached, “Jesus only”. These false teachers had now come preaching, “Jesus and”. You need to trust in Jesus Christ and obey the Law of Moses in order to be saved.

Perhaps it would be good to clarify exactly what the issue was between Paul and the Judaizers. Why is Paul so passionate and so urgent in this letter in his opposition to the Judaizers? What really is the issue here? After all, there are many things over which Paul and the Judaizers were in perfect agreement. The Judaizers certainly believed that Jesus was the Messiah, the one whom God had promised throughout the Old Testament, the Son of God who is both God and Man. They also believed that Jesus had died and had really risen from the dead. They also believed that faith in Jesus Christ was necessary for salvation. Further, Paul agreed with the Judaizers that it was necessary for Christians to keep God’s law. The Judaizers were certainly Christians, Jewish Christians, and probably very moral and upright men at that. So if in all these things they agree, what is the issue for Paul? Why is he so passionate in his opposition to the teaching of the Judaizers?

The answer can be put very simply. The difference between Paul and the Judaizers was one of the logical connections between three steps.

Paul said that a person

(1) must first believe in Jesus Christ,

(2) then is justified before God,

(3) and then proceeds to keep God’s law.

The Judaizers said that a person

(1) must first believe in Jesus Christ,

(2) then must keep the law as best he can,

(3) and then eventually is justified.

It’s such a small difference! Why didn’t Paul just throw the great principle of Christian unity like a net over these Judaizers and embrace them as teaching just another aspect of the truth? After all, if the Judaizers had managed to impose the Law of Moses on the Gentiles in those cities, it really would have cleaned up those cities, especially compared to the paganism which characterised those cities at the time. The people would be living much holier lives, and embracing Christ as well! Why was Paul so intolerant? That wouldn’t happen today, would it! These days we want to apply the label “Christian” as widely as we can, we don’t want to be so narrow, do we?

But Paul did not embrace the Judaizers, and it is only because he did not that the Christian faith exists today! Paul understood clearly, and we need to understand clearly, that the difference between himself and the Judaizers was the difference between two entirely different forms of religion. It was the difference between a religion of grace and a religion of merit.

If Christ provides only a part of our salvation, leaving us to provide the rest, then all of us are still hopeless under the burden of sin. For no matter how small the gap might be that has to be bridged by us to win our salvation, we can’t bridge it! The conscience of a Christian has been awakened to see how wretched our attempts at goodness are. That conscience will never allow that any of us has done enough. We enter again into a hopeless bargaining with God – have I done enough, O Lord, have I done my part? And we are back under the old bondage to the law. We can’t contribute anything to our justification – either Christ does it all or he does nothing.

As a point of application for us today, notice the importance of clarity in our doctrine. This is not a popular concern in Christian thinking in our day. Paul’s insistence on what might seem a small matter in the face of so much agreement would not be popular today, not even on the very same point – justification by faith alone in Christ alone. Of course, it is important to pick your battles. You need to fight for the truth of what is really important, and not peripheral matters. The trouble is, the only way you are going to know what is truly important is through much clarity in your mind as to what you believe and do not believe – much clarity about doctrine. Let’s aim for clear understanding of essential truths so that we can pick our battles wisely.

So we see the argument that Paul is having here in the letter to the Galatians. Let’s enter into it here in Chapter 3 to see how he argues his case.

Paul begins by expressing the very essence of the gospel in verse 1. “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.” Here is the gospel in a nutshell – Jesus Christ, crucified. To want to add to the work of Christ on the cross is an offence to his work. As Paul says in the previous verse, in 2:21, “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

Christ crucified is the summary of what we must proclaim today. To many it seems like folly. As Paul notes in 1 Corinthians 1:22, “Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Notice how Paul summarises the gospel he preached to the Galatians – “Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.” The Greek verb is in the perfect tense, indicating a past action with continuing effects. Christ died once for all on the cross, and because he did so, his people can now be justified in God’s sight. They can be right with God, not because of anything they can do, but because of what Christ did once for all. The ongoing effect of his crucifixion, peace with God, justification before God, continues to be available today for all who believe in Christ.

This is our message. Jesus Christ, clearly portrayed as crucified. Make it clear that he was crucified, explain why he had to be crucified, tell people about the blessings that flow from this historical event.

Now in the verses that follow, Paul argues his case. He begins in verses 2-5 by appealing to the Galatians’ own experience of receiving the Spirit. Verse 2, “I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?” Verse 5 is the same question from God’s perspective, “Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?”

The answer is surely inescapable! The law-message of the Judaizers is powerless to grant the spiritual graces and gifts that come with and through the Spirit when people believe the gospel. The law-message simply enslaves all over again. It denigrates Christ, it denies the power and sufficiency of his work, it reinstates the impossible burden of trying to keep the law to be right with God. It leads to death. As Martin Luther said, to re-establish the law is to abolish the gospel.

From arguing out of the personal experience of the Galatians, Paul moves to arguing on the basis of the Old Testament. In verses 6-14 Paul quotes from six Old Testament passages to make his case. See how his argument unfolds on the basis of these Old Testament passages:

(Please show the following table on a data projector or overhead projector, or add this table as a note in your Bulletin.)

Passage

Argument

Genesis 15:6 – “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness”.

Since Abraham was justified by faith, only those who are themselves justified by faith are his true children.

Genesis 12:3 – “All nations will be blessed through you”.

The blessing for the nations God promised to Abraham was justification by faith. This is the gospel, and it was announced in advance to Abraham. So by faith you will be justified.

Deuteronomy 27:26 – “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law”.

If you try to keep the law for even a part of your salvation, you are cursed, for you must keep it all perfectly.

Habakkuk 2:4 – “The righteous will live by faith”.

Clearly then, no one is justified by keeping the law.

Leviticus 18:5 – “The man who does these things will live by them”.

The law is not based on faith, it is based on action. It is relevant to holy living, not to justification.

Deuteronomy 21:23 – “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”

So Christ was cursed, yes it is true. But he became a curse for us, to free us from the curse of the law.

Genesis 15:6 takes us back to God’s promise to Abraham of a son and a future posterity. Abraham was an old man and childless, his wife Sarah was old and barren. But God takes Abraham outside and tells him to look up at the sky and count the stars. “So shall your descendants be.” And Abraham believed God’s promise, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Abraham was justified, he was regarded as righteous by God. How? Because he had been circumcised and had kept the law? Actually, circumcision hadn’t even come in yet, and the Law of Moses was still 450 years in the future. No, Abraham was justified because he believed God’s promise about a son, and about many descendants, and ultimately about the Son – the Son of God – who would be crucified. Abraham didn’t know the details, but he believed the promise! All the faithful in the Old Testament were justified in the same way – justified by faith in Christ crucified. They didn’t know the details but they believed God’s promise. How much more should the Galatians, how much more should we, who know the details, be justified by faith in Christ alone!

The Judaizers were probably telling the Galatians that to be true children of Abraham they would have to be circumcised like he was. Paul counters by telling the Galatians they are already children of Abraham because they already share in his faith.

Genesis 12:3 takes us even further back. In this passage God speaks to Abram in Haran as he calls Abram to leave his country, his people and his father’s household and to travel on to an as yet undisclosed destination – “to the land I will show you”. Abram responds with faith and obedience and the Lord promises to bless all the nations through him and his descendants.

What was the blessing God was promising Abraham? From verse 8, which says that “Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith”, the blessing God promised would come to all nations through Abraham was justification by faith. Paul goes on to say in verse 8 that this promise to Abraham was an announcement of the gospel! And the conclusion? Verse 9, “So those who have faith are justified along with Abraham, the man of faith.”

Now just be sure you understand the great power of this argument. Paul is writing to Gentiles in Galatia. He is writing to Gentiles who are being urged by Jewish Christians to adopt the Law of Moses in order to be saved.

Paul shows, with a couple of devastatingly simple arguments from the Old Testament, that even those Jewish Christians who are harassing the Gentiles in Galatia must not think they can be justified by keeping the Law of Moses – if they were truly sons of their father Abraham they would realise that they can be justified only as he was, by faith in Jesus Christ! Since the Jewish Christians can only be justified by faith in Christ, how much more the Gentile Christians, about whom God spoke right at the beginning when he called Abraham from Haran! How tragic it would be for the Gentile Christians to be seduced into a system that is useless even for Jewish Christians!

In the next four quotations from the Old Testament, Paul takes on – head on – this matter of observance of the law. What does the Old Testament teach about observance of the law? Does the Old Testament teach that you can be justified by observing the law?

Again, Paul’s argument is devastatingly simple and clear. Deuteronomy 27:26 says, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law”. But that means that everyone is cursed, because no one can continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law! No one can do it perfectly! “Yes, that’s right!” says Paul. You’ve hit the nail right on the head.

Besides, God does make it plain how people can be right with God, how they can live before him, how they can be justified. Habakkuk 2:4 tells us. “The righteous will live by faith.” And remember, the law is not based on faith, the law is not another equally valid interpretation of how to be right with God. No, the law is all about doing things, it’s all about action, it’s not about faith. For as Leviticus 18:5 says, “The man who does these things will live by them”.

Paul quotes from Leviticus 18:5 to make the point that the law is all about action, not about believing. He is not holding out some alternative way of justification, that’s not the point at all in Leviticus 18. The point there is rather that by keeping the law the people of Israel, who have already been redeemed, have already been justified, can live faithfully before God in the land they are about to enter. Theologically, Leviticus 18 has to do with sanctification and holy living, not justification. Keeping the law has to do with sanctification, but it has no part in justification. Hence the crucial importance of keeping these separate.

In verses 10-12 then, Paul provides a crushing refutation to anyone who wants to add any kind of law-keeping to Christ for justification. If people wish to go that way, not only are they obligating themselves to obey a law they cannot possibly fulfil, thus falling under its curse, but they are also following a way that cannot possibly lead to salvation and will, instead, lead them away from it. To reinstate the law for justification is to abolish the gospel.

The final quotation from Deuteronomy 21:23 demonstrates the incredible and radical change in Paul’s understanding as a result of his conversion to Christ. In 1 Corinthians 12:3 Paul writes, “Therefore, no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus is cursed’.” We know that Paul was present at the death of Stephen, we know that Stephen preached in Jerusalem in the Greek-speaking Jewish synagogues, we know that Paul attended those synagogues. It is highly likely that as Stephen was preaching, Paul heard him preach, and when Stephen preached about the crucified Christ, Paul shouted out with the other Jews, “Jesus is cursed!” For Jesus had hung on a tree, and as Deuteronomy 21:23 tells us, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree”. “Jesus is cursed!” That’s what the Jews shouted when the gospel was preached. That’s why the cross is a stumbling block to Jews. Who can believe in a crucified Messiah!

But now, for Paul, that is the essence of the gospel. It’s what he preaches – Christ crucified! Why? Because now he understands that when God cursed Christ as he hung on that cross, he cursed Christ in our place, so that we might be set free from that curse. Verse 13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’ He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham (justification by faith) might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.”

[Pause]

Some applications for us today:

Brothers and sisters, this is the gospel message! Believe it! How foolish to think that we can make any contribution towards our justification! Even if we tried, our consciences would condemn us, for the law requires perfect action, and none of us can supply that. Trust in Christ alone for your justification.

Be clear about what you believe. Paul understood that even though he shared much with the Judaizers, there was a crucial point of difference that threatened the very salvation of the Galatians. Be clear in your understanding of doctrine, so that you can pick your battles. Some things do not matter so much; other issues are crucial. But how will you know, if your thinking is woolly?

Get your thinking about salvation in the Old Testament straight. Realise that the gospel message about justification by faith was first announced in the Old Testament. Don’t think that since Christ a new way of salvation has appeared. Don’t imagine that God’s purpose in Christ was to do away with the law as a defective way of salvation, a way that didn’t quite work out as God had planned it. The law was never a way of salvation. Paul’s dispute with the Judaizers is a dispute with a legalistic interpretation of the law, not with the law itself. Indeed, he uses the Old Testament’s own teaching about the law to refute the Judaizers.

Praise God for Jesus Christ! By faith in him, Abraham was saved. By faith in him, by believing the promise about him, all the Old Testament believers were saved. By faith in him, all the people of God were and are and always will be saved! He is the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by him!

Amen.