Dead to the Law but Alive to God
INTRODUCTION: Last week, we began a series on the
book of Galatians, which has been called a LION turned loose in the
arena of Christians...
QUOTE: Richard Longennecker in Word Bible Commentary on
Galatians made this very insightful observation:
"Paul's Galatians is, in fact, like a lion turned loose
in the arena of Christians. It challenges, intimidated,
encourages, and focuses our attention on what is really essential as
little else can! How we deal with the issues it raises, and the
teachings it presents, will in large measure determine how we think
as Christians, and how we live as Christ's own".
S.P.S.: Today, let's continue our expository review of this
important book...Today we will ask and answer the question, "Are
you DEAD to the LAW?"
I. Review of "Grace and the Gospel" (Part I of the series)
GAL 1:1 NIV Paul, an apostle--sent not from men nor by man,
but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the
dead-- {2} and all the brothers with me, To the churches in Galatia:
{3} Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ, {4} who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the
present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, {5} to
whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. {6} I am astonished that you
are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of
Christ and are turning to a different gospel-- {7} which is really no
gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion
and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. {8} But even if we or
an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we
preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! {9} As we have
already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a
gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!
{10} Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I
trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would
not be a servant of Christ.
II. Paul declares the SOURCE of his Gospel message--GOD, not man....
GAL 1:11 NIV I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel
I preached is not something that man made up. {12} I did not
receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received
it by revelation from Jesus Christ.
III. Paul gives a brief biographical sketch showing how INTO
the O.C. he was....
{13} For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how
intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it.
{14} I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and
was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. {15}
But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by
his grace, was pleased {16} to reveal his Son in me
so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not
consult any man,
Set apart from the womb....
Paul COULD have said, "WHY did God allow me to go through all
this LEGALISM???"
But GOD knows the end from the beginning...He has a PLAN...He
works out all things according to the purpose of his will....
Called by God's GRACE...not just unmerited pardon, but also
kindness and good will....
REVEAL HIS SON IN ME...this verse is a KEY which we will see
expanded in v.20....
COL 1:24 NIV Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you,
and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's
afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. {25} I
have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to
you the word of God in its fullness-- {26} the mystery that has been
kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the
saints. {27} To them God has chosen to make known among the
Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you,
the hope of glory. {28} We proclaim him, admonishing and
teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone
perfect in Christ. {29} To this end I labor, struggling
with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.
COL 1:24-29, New Living Bible: "I am glad when I
suffer for you in my body, for I am completing what remains of
Christ's sufferings for his body, the church. God has given me the
responsibility of serving his church by proclaiming his message in
all it fullness to you Gentiles. This message was kept secret for
centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to his
own holy people. For it has pleased God to tell his people that the
riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. For this is the
secret: Christ lives in you, and this is your assurance that you will
share in his glory. So everywhere we go, we tell everyone about
Christ. We warn them and teach them with all the wisdom God has given
us, for we want to present them to God, perfect in their relationship
to Christ. I work very hard at this, as I depend on Christ's might
power that works within me."
PREACH HIM...notice the SUBJECT of Paul's gospel again, JESUS...
IV. Paul explains his relationship to the leaders in Jerusalem & the Church....
{17} nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles
before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later
returned to Damascus. {18} Then after three years, I went up
to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him
fifteen days. {19} I saw none of the other apostles--only James, the
Lord's brother. {20} I assure you before God that what I am
writing you is no lie. {21} Later I went to Syria and Cilicia.
{22} I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that
are in Christ. {23} They only heard the report: "The man who
formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to
destroy." {24} And they praised God because of me.
V. Paul's 2nd Trip to Jerusalem...
{2:1} Fourteen years later I went up again to Jerusalem,
this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. {2} I
went in response to a revelation and set before them the gospel
that I preach among the Gentiles. But I did this privately to
those who seemed to be leaders, for fear that I was running or had
run my race in vain. {3} Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was
compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. {4} This
matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our
ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to
make us slaves. {5} We did not give in to them for a moment, so that
the truth of the gospel might remain with you. {6} As for
those who seemed to be important--whatever they were makes no
difference to me; God does not judge by external appearance--those
men added nothing to my message. {7} On the contrary, they saw
that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to
the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews. {8} For God, who
was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was
also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. {9} James,
Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the
right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace
given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they
to the Jews. {10} All they asked was that we should continue to
remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.
VI. Paul's confrontation with the hypocrisy of the Apostle Peter....
{11} When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face,
because he was clearly in the wrong. {12} Before certain men came
from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they
arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the
Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the
circumcision group. {13} The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy,
so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.
Hypocrisy is ACTING one way but BEING a different way really...
{14} When I saw that they were not acting in line with the
truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, "You
are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How
is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?
We see here that Peter was LIVING LIKE A GENTILE...
It doesn't say here, but could it be that Peter had been readily
indulging in lobster and shrimp and maybe even some octopus sauteed
in garlic butter?
In context, we are talking about EATING....
Remember Acts 10? Peter was given a vision of unclean
animals....he was told to rise and eat...He was told that the
distinctions between Jew and Gentile had been broken down....
We see here that Peter was trying to have the Gentiles follow
Jewish customs...
This shows that the subject at hand is NOT JUST
CIRCUMCISION...Circumcision was the INITIATORY RITE into the Old
Covenant...
GAL 5:1 NIV It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a
yoke of slavery. {2} Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let
yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.
{3} Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised
that he is obligated to obey the whole law.
{15} "We who are Jews by birth and not 'Gentile sinners' {16}
know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by
faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus
that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the
law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.
The THESIS STATEMENT of the whole letter...JUSTIFIED BY FAITH, NOT
LAW....
Justification is a FORENSIC TERM...a term indicating one's LEGAL
STATUS....
To be JUSTIFIED means to have a CLEAN SLATE before God...
{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.
Paul has just told HOW INVOLVED he was in trying to be justified
by the keeping of the Old Testament Law...
Paul had TRIED the LAW WAY and found that all it did was lead him
to a greater realization of how TOTALLY HELPLESS HE WAS....
Paul KNEW there HAD to be a NEW and BETTER WAY!
ROM 7:1 NIV Do you not know, brothers--for I am speaking to
men who know the law--that the law has authority over a man
only as long as he lives? {2} For example, by law a married woman
is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband
dies, she is released from the law of marriage. {3} So then, if
she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is
called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from
that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another
man. {4} So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the
body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was
raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.
{5} For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful
passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we
bore fruit for death. {6} But now, by dying to what once bound us, we
have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of
the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
QUOTE: The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians,
The Daily Study Bible Series, by William Barclay, pp. 21-22:
Paul speaks out of the depths of personal experience. For him to
re-erect the whole fabric of the law would have been spiritual
suicide. He says that through the law he died to the law that he
might live to God. What he means is this----he had tried the way of
law; he had tried with all the terrible intensity of his hot heart to
put himself right with God by a life that sought to obey every single
item of the law. He had found that such an attempt produced nothing
but a deeper and deeper sense that all he could do could never put
him right with God. All the law had done was to show him his own
helplessness. Whereupon he had quite suddenly abandoned that way and
had cast himself, sinner as he was, on the mercy of God. It was the
law which had driven him to God. To go back to the law would simply
have entangled him all over again in his sense of estrangement from
God. So great was the change that the only way he could describe it
was to say that he had been crucified with Christ so that the man he
used to be was dead and the living power within him now was Christ
himself.
{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!"
QUOTE: A.W. Tozer:
To be crucified means, first, the man on the cross is facing only
one direction; second, he is not going back; and third, he has no
further plan of his own."
VII. What does all this have to do with US today???
Are YOU and I dead to the Law?
What does it mean to be dead to the Law?
Are YOU and I crucified with Christ?
Do WE live by FAITH in the Son of God?
Do WE consciously or subconsciously keep a TALLY of our human
efforts and our human righteousness?
Are WE anything like the Pharisee who said, "I thank you,
God, that I am not like other men...I give tithes of all I
possess...etc???"
Or are WE more like the Publican who said, "God, be merciful
to me a sinner...."
At the end of the day, after all is said and done, are WE relying
on Jesus Christ or are we trying to somehow QUALIFY for the Kingdom?
Have we come to see our UTTER HELPLESSNESS to be righteous before
God apart from the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and his sanctifying work
of LIVING IN US through the Holy Spirit?
Sometimes I think we have to just GIVE IT UP! GIVE UP the idea
thinking we can somehow have the strength of character to tough it
out and overcome sin...
I didn't say we should NOT overcome sin...WE SHOULD...but if we
are continually LOSING THE BATTLE of sin, could it be that we are
actually FIGHTING THE BATTLE IN OUR OWN STRENGTH???
I have found in my life that when I finally give up my PRIDE and
ADMIT my HELPLESSNESS to God, THAT'S when HE makes me an
overcomer....
CONCLUSION: If we could be righteous on our own,
through observance of the Law, then we really wouldn't need the
sacrifice of Jesus Christ....That's what Paul says in Galatians...
Galatians shows us that we are to be DEAD TO THE LAW but ALIVE to
GOD...
The only way that can be done is through the SACRIFICE of JESUS
and HIS LIVING in us through the Holy Spirit...
THAT is how we are dead to the Law but alive to God...
Now that brings us to a number of very important questions:
What is the relationship now between the Law and the Christian?
Are we now ANTINOMIANS? Do we now turn the grace of God into
license?
What are the STANDARDS to live by under the New Covenant?
How are we to live our lives now if indeed we are DEAD to the LAW
and ALIVE to GOD????
Stay tuned...Paul ANSWERS all these questions in the book of
Galatians and elsewhere....
Next week, we will begin to see how Paul deals with the subject of
GRACE and the LAW...
The following sermon, I will show you how Paul deals with the
subject of GRACE and the CHRISTIAN LIFE....
PRAYER:
Thank you, heavenly Father, that we can indeed be ALIVE to you
through Jesus Christ.
To truly be alive to you, though, we must be DEAD TO THE LAW...We
can't rely on OUR efforts to keep the Old Covenant Law...
Like Paul, we must be CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST...
Help us to walk in the NEWNESS of the SPIRIT and not the OLDNESS
of the LETTER....
Open our minds to both the LIBERTY we have in Christ and the
RESPONSIBILITY to be SLAVES to RIGHTEOUSNESS...
Help us to EXPERIENCE Jesus Christ living in us more and more...