Not What It Was Meant For
By Rev. Res Spears
Galatians: Be FREE! • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Transcript
OK, I need to give you a heads-up that I’m about to do something that might cause some of you some distress. I’m about to erase the prayer board.
Now, first of all, let me make sure you understand that I’ve taken a photo of it, and we’ll get all the names added back to it this week. So, you can all breathe again.
And you need to understand that I’m not making some kind of theological point by erasing these prayer requests. Instead, I want you to see something that’s hard to notice with all the names on here.
So, here goes.
OK, let’s let that sit there for a moment.
Now, let me ask you something: Have you ever tried to use something for a purpose it wasn’t made for? Well, I have.
Yesterday, when I was trying to come up with an illustration to lead with this morning, I asked Annette if she could remember a time when I’d done that. She laughed and said, “Which time?”
After I’d settled her back down, she asked whether I’d ever used a permanent marker on a white board.
And it turns out that I have. Right here in this church, in fact.
A few years ago, when we were still doing Wednesday night Bible studies in person, I had this white board set up in our classroom and began that week’s lesson — I think I was teaching about prayer, appropriately enough.
And when it came time for me to put some notes on the board, I grabbed the nearest pen and started writing, only to realize that I’d grabbed a permanent marker, rather than a dry-erase marker.
And here is the result. This is my absent-mindedness on display for all to see, forever — or at least until we get a new white board.
See, dry-erase markers aren’t interchangeable with permanent markers. They were made for different purposes.
But as it turns out, my mistake makes for an excellent object lesson connected to today’s passage in our continuing study of the Book of Galatians.
Perhaps you’ll recall that Paul wrote this letter to the churches he and Barnabas had planted in what’s now western Turkey during their first missionary journey.
After they’d left Galatia, Jews had come from Jerusalem teaching the new Gentile believers in those churches that their faith in Jesus wasn’t sufficient to save them.
They needed to be circumcised and follow the Mosaic Law, in addition to their faith, to be truly saved, these Judaizers said.
In the first couple of chapters of this letter, Paul defends his position as an apostle and the authority of his gospel of salvation by grace through faith by pointing out that both his apostleship and his gospel message had come from Jesus Himself.
And in chapter 3, he moves into a theological argument to show that salvation has always been by grace alone, through faith alone, and that it could never be otherwise.
Those who place their faith in Jesus as the only way to be reconciled to God are the true spiritual sons and daughters of Abraham, he said in the passage we studied last week.
And he’ll talk a lot more about Abraham later in this letter. But in the brief passage we’ll study today, he makes a detour from his main argument to begin to help us to understand the true purpose of the Law God gave to Moses.
The problem the Judaizers had was that they were using the Law for a purpose for which God hadn’t given it. They were hoping to be justified — to be declared righteous before God — based on their obedience to the Law.
But Paul’s point throughout this letter is that this was never the purpose of the Law.
And when you use something for a purpose for which it wasn’t made, you shouldn’t be surprised when something breaks. Or when — as is the case with this white board — it’s defaced completely.
We’re going to study verses 10 through 14 this morning. So, let’s look at them together, and then we’ll dig in to see some of the treasures within them.
10 For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them.”
11 Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, “The righteous man shall live by faith.”
12 However, the Law is not of faith; on the contrary, “He who practices them shall live by them.”
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”—
14 in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
Last week, we heard Paul’s argument FOR justification by faith alone in verses 6-9. Today, we’re going to hear him argue AGAINST the alternative the Judaizers had been preaching: that justification before God depends upon our works.
And, perhaps because he’s countering the arguments of people who were trusting in their own ability to keep the Mosaic Law for salvation, Paul goes right back to the Law to make his argument.
Indeed, the portion of this verse in quotation marks comes from the passage of the Book of Deuteronomy that lists the blessings the people of Israel could expect for obedience and the curses they could expect for disobedience.
“Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the Law, to perform them,” he says, quoting from Deuteronomy, chapter 27.
This is a highly legal section of a highly legal book. So, Paul’s using the very text of what would have been one of the legalists’ favorite books of the Old Testament to destroy their argument in favor of legalism.
And his point in quoting this verse is that every one of us — Jews and Gentiles, alike — are under the curse of God for failing to meet His perfect standard of righteousness.
The only way any of us could stand before God in our own righteousness would be for us never to have sinned. But, as Paul put it in his letter to the Romans, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
The Law gives us a pass-fail test. And it can only be passed through perfect obedience, which means we all fail.
J. Vernon McGee has a great illustration to help us understand.
“Suppose, [he says,] I had kept all of the laws of Pasadena, which is my home city, for twenty years. Then I wait at my house for the officials of Pasadena to come and present me with a medal for keeping those laws. Let me tell you, they do not give medals for keeping the law in Pasadena. If I had kept every law for twenty years and then stole something or broke a speeding law, I would be arrested. You see, the law does not reward you. It does not give you life. The law penalizes you.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Ga 3:10, quoting McGee.]
The Law wasn’t given to reward those who kept it. There’s no reward for doing what we SHOULD do anyway, nor is there one for NOT doing what we SHOULDN’T do.
Instead, the Law reveals for us what we’re being saved from: the curse that results from disobeying God. And if we don’t understand the curse, we’ll never understand the blessing.
That’s what makes this passage so relevant to us today, even though we’re not Jews and were never given the Law.
But Paul’s not through with his appeal from the Old Testament. Look at verse 11. Here, in order to show that our works were never a means to justification before God, he quotes from the prophecy of Habakkuk: “The righteous man shall live by faith.”
His point is that the whole of Hebrew Scripture spoke with one voice in telling the Jews that it righteousness and justification come only by faith.
In other words, there is nothing we can do to save ourselves. All of us are sinners — we’ve all failed in large and small ways to mirror the perfect righteousness of the God who created us to be like Him.
And those failures, whether great or small, have placed us under God’s curse, unable to earn His favor, powerless to break free from the sin that binds us.
Our salvation cannot come from anything WE do for ourselves, Paul’s saying here. It can only come from faith in the one whose works were perfectly righteous.
In his gospel account, Luke records a familiar interaction between Jesus and a lawyer, a man who was an expert in the Mosaic Law.
The lawyer asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus pointed him back to the Law, asking him what he thought it said about his question.
The lawyer responded that he understood the Law to be wrapped up in two commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and [love] your neighbor as yourself.”
But when Jesus told him he was right, the lawyer then asked, “Who is my neighbor?” And the text in Luke, chapter 10 says he was trying to justify himself, which was a big red flag for Jesus and should be for us, too.
And then, Jesus responded with a parable that we’re all familiar with. Let’s read it together, beginning in verse 30 of Luke, chapter 10.
30 Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead.
31 “And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
32 “Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
33 “But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion,
34 and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him.
35 “On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.’
36 “Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?”
37 And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”
Now, normally when we study this parable, we want to identify with the Good Samaritan. He understood that this injured Jew, who would have considered him an enemy, was someone to whom he should show compassion and love.
And that’s certainly PART of what Jesus was trying to get across to the lawyer. But I think there’s more going on here than that.
Who were the men who passed by the injured man? A priest and a Levite, both of whom represent the Law in this parable. Neither of them stopped to help this dying man. Indeed, the Law is UNABLE to bring life.
But the Samaritan DID stop to provide aid to this man who was helpless to save himself. He showed grace and mercy to one who would’ve gone through life hating him and everyone like him.
“Unlike the lawyer whose question prompted the story, this man knew that he could not ‘justify himself’ but had to receive a new standing and a new life from a source outside of himself.” [Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 235.]
I wonder whether the lawyer ever understood this point. As much as he wanted to justify himself, that’s something he never could have done. He could only be justified before God by faith in the work of another, Jesus Christ.
Or maybe, like the Judaizers in Galatia, he went away thinking that he’d be saved by faith PLUS works. But Paul anticipated that idea in verse 12.
The Law is not of faith, he says. In other words, the Law is not based on faith. It’s based on works, on “doing them,” as Paul puts it in the second part of this verse.
Paul’s point here is that you can seek to be justified either by doing the works of the Law OR by faith.
But if you’re trying to be justified — to be acceptable to God — by your works, then you’d better be perfect, because even the smallest sin puts you under God’s curse.
Remember, I can be a law-abiding citizen for 50 years, and I won’t get even a gold star for it. But the minute I go out and rob a bank, I can expect to be arrested, because our laws are there to remind us what’s right and what’s wrong and to provide for punishment when we disobey.
And so, we’re all under God’s curse, because we’ve all broken His Law. We’ve ALL fallen short of the glory of God. We’ve ALL failed to be what He made us to be.
So, then, are we all without hope?
Of course not!
Because GOD has provided the way — through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus — for us to be justified before Him.
And that’s through faith, which simply trusts in God as one who keeps all His promises, including the promises of forgiveness and eternal life for all who turn to Jesus in faith.
And Jesus is able to justify us in HIS righteousness, because His righteousness is perfect. HE is the man — the only one — who perfectly kept God’s statutes and judgments.
He kept the Law perfectly. And because of His perfect obedience, He could bear the curse of the Law for others.
HE wasn’t cursed by the Law, because He’d kept it perfectly. But when He took upon Himself our sins at the cross, He BECAME the curse for we who HAVE sinned.
And because of that, through faith in Him, we can be justified apart from the Law. He was cursed so WE could be blessed.
And “only the Christ who bears the curse can be the bearer of the blessing.” [Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 229, quoting Eberling.]
Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the Law in His life of perfect obedience to His Father. And then, at the cross, He took upon Himself the sins of all mankind, as well as the curse we were under for our disobedience. He became a curse so the curse could be lifted from those who turn to Him in faith.
21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
And lest the Jews miss the point that Jesus had borne the curse in our place and on our behalf, Paul reminds them that Jesus died on a tree, on a wooden cross.
And that’s significant, because hanging from a tree was one of the means of capital punishment prescribed under the Law for those whose sins warranted the death penalty under the Law.
Jesus wasn’t cursed by God because He died on a tree. Rather, He died on the tree because He was cursed by God.
Jesus became the curse of God on that cross to show that He’d borne the Law’s curse for us. He redeemed us from the curse of the Law. He bought our freedom from the curse with the blood He shed on Calvary’s cross.
And when He did this, He made two important blessings available to all who’d follow Him in faith.
First, just as Abraham was, we are now justified before God because of our faith. And second, we receive the promised Holy Spirit — the presence of God Himself — within us.
The Holy Spirit is given to us as a seal of the New Covenant, the covenant of grace. He is God’s downpayment on His promise of eternal life for all who turn to Jesus in faith.
He is both the one promised to us and the one who guarantees the fulfillment of God’s promise of eternal life.
And all of this comes to believers by God’s grace, through faith in Jesus. Not by works of the Law. Not by our own righteousness.
Now, it’s important to note that Paul wasn’t saying “that the Mosaic Law is valueless for Christians. The Mosaic Law is a part of the Old Testament, all of which is profitable for Christians. He was saying that obeying the Mosaic Law never results in the justification or sanctification of anyone, because no one can obey it completely.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Ga 3:14.]
And even though, as Gentiles, we weren’t given the Law, God still expects us to mirror His righteousness, a task that we all fail to accomplish.
And so, we, too, are under a curse. And it’s a curse that can only be lifted through faith in Jesus.
Maybe you’re sitting here today, thinking, “Gosh, Pastor Res. I’m a pretty good person. I’ve never committed adultery or murder. I’ve never stolen anything. I feel pretty confident that when I stand in the presence of God, He’ll see what a good person I’ve been and open the gates of heaven to me.”
That’s what the lawyer who confronted Jesus was thinking in that passage we looked at earlier. He was seeking to justify himself.
But remember that you’re the injured man in that parable. You’re the one whose sins — inconsequential as they might seem to you — have incapacitated you, wrecked you, and left you dying on the side of the road.
You can’t help yourself any more than that man in the parable could. Your good works won’t save you any more than the priest and the Levite saved the injured man. You are desperate for someone ELSE to save you, and only Jesus can do that.
He already DID the only work that COULD save you. All YOU can do — all He ASKS you to do — is to place your faith in Him and His finished work at the cross.
This Good Samaritan is standing by you now, offering salvation. Will you accept this gracious gift today?
