Justified Not Improved

The Danger of a False Gospel

We started our series in Galatians last week. Dom spoke about Paul’s warning in Galatians chapter one not to accept a false gospel. He showed us that Jesus plus anything else equals a false gospel.

Today’s passage is from Galatians chapter two. Here, Paul is talking specifically about how “Jesus plus the law” is a false gospel. Now, don’t get me wrong—the law is still important. The Old Testament is important. It’s important that we know it and understand it. But Paul is showing us in this passage that the law is not where salvation comes from.

So I’m going to pray, and then we’ll read the Scripture.

Lord, I pray that as we open your word together this morning, you would speak to each of us. Would you encourage us? Would you bring us closer to you this morning? Lord, I pray that as I speak, anything that is of you will stick, and anything that is not will blow away with the wind.

Thank you, Jesus. Amen. Amen.

Justification by Faith Alone

We’re reading from Galatians 2:15–21:

“We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles know that a person is not justified by the works of 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 the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.

For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing.”

It’s quite a complex passage in parts and very straightforward in others. Paul takes us on a journey through this piece of Scripture, and I’m going to pull out three points—almost like three stopping points on that journey for us this morning.

The journey we’re going to go on is this: no one is made righteous by the law. Instead, we are justified through faith in Christ, which then leads us to a new life in Christ and for Christ.

As I was reading, I realised it might be helpful for us to understand a bit more about what “justified” means. It’s one of those very “Christianese” words that we just throw around. Justified means that we are made right again with God, brought back into right relationship with Him. So when I’m saying “justified,” that’s the concept I’m talking about.

So, this first point: that no one is made righteous by the law. Paul makes this point really clearly, because he literally says, “By the works of the law no one will be justified.” He says it twice in the first two sentences: “A person is not justified by the works of the law… By the works of the law no one will be justified.” It’s quite straightforward. I could probably sit down!

But what is he talking about here? What is “the law”? What does he mean?

Many of you, especially if you’ve been Christians for a while, might have come across an evangelism method where you run people through the Ten Commandments. It was very popular a while ago, and probably still is. You go through the Ten Commandments with people, and it becomes clear very quickly that all of us have broken at least one of them. One of the main ones people usually accept is that you shouldn’t steal and shouldn’t lie, and most of us have done those things—and we’ll admit we’ve done them.

But the Ten Commandments are only a very small part of the law as a whole. The law consists of 613 commands. Some of them are things you should do; some are things you shouldn’t do.

I worked out the maths—because any of you who know me know that I love maths. If we break one of the Ten Commandments, we are breaking less than 0.2% of the law. That doesn’t sound like very much, does it? But firstly, most of us have likely broken more than one of the Ten Commandments. And secondly, we’ve probably broken more than one of the other 613 laws as well. I don’t want to put that on you, but I think that’s probably true.

However, Scripture says that if we break even one part of the law—even that less-than-0.2%—we are guilty of breaking all of it. So in that sense, it doesn’t matter that it’s “only” one out of 613. We see this in the book of James, chapter 2, from verse 8:

“If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself,’ you are doing right. But if you show favouritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ also said, ‘You shall not murder.’ If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.”

So we can see that in reality—and this is the basis of that method of evangelism I mentioned a moment ago—it is not possible to keep the law perfectly. Each one of us will have broken at least one of the Ten Commandments, and as we do that, we are guilty of breaking the whole thing. It’s not possible to keep the law, and so none of us can be made righteous by the law, because none of us can say we’ve kept it.

What the law does is make us aware of our position as sinners. That’s not very popular language, is it? But it’s the word I’m going to use this morning. The law makes us aware that, according to the righteousness God explains in Scripture, each one of us falls short. We read that in Romans 3 as well: that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

This is the constant diagnosis, the purpose of the law, if you like. It shows us; it holds up a mirror, or puts a magnifying glass on us—whichever analogy you prefer. It highlights the fact that we are not righteous according to what God has laid out. We are all sinners.

It is good that we acknowledge our sin, and it is also good that we acknowledge the consequence of it. The consequence of our sin is separation from a holy God, who sets out what righteousness looks like. It’s important that we sit with that for a moment—but it’s also important to say that’s not where we’re staying.

Jesus says that He came to save sinners. In Matthew 9:12–13 it says:

“On hearing this, Jesus said, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’”

We know that Jesus came to save everybody, and He can save all of us, because in fact we are all sinners—we’re all included in that category. But if we don’t acknowledge ourselves as sinners, if we think we’re in the “righteous” camp in our own strength, then we won’t come to Him to save us.

Jesus can save all of us. I want to make that really clear. But we need to acknowledge our position as sinners. We need to acknowledge it so that Jesus can do His transforming work in us.

Justification Through Faith in Christ

And that brings us to our second stop on our journey. If we’re not made righteous by the law, what are we made righteous by? We are justified through faith in Jesus.

I’m going to read from 2 Corinthians 5. I’ve used the New Living Translation for this, so it will probably be slightly different to what’s behind me, but the wording is a bit different and I think it helps us this morning:

“For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”

There is one person who has never broken the law of Moses, and that is Jesus.

I feel like I mention this every time I get up to preach, so apologies to any of you who have heard me speak before and have heard this explanation. But I think it’s helpful to get us all on the same page, while also not spending the entire sermon talking about it, because it could easily be a whole thing on its own.

I want to talk about the idea of the sin offering, so we can understand what it is that Jesus is doing for us.

Christ the Fulfillment of Sin Offerings

In the Old Testament, when the Israelites were under the law and constantly breaking that law—as we’ve talked about, just like we all do—God, in His grace and mercy, provided a way for them to be justified again, to be made right with Him. That way was through sin offerings.

They would take a member of their livestock—a goat, or birds like pigeons and doves—and bring them to the temple to be sacrificed. The shedding of that blood would atone for what they had done wrong and restore them to righteousness before God.

But the problem is that the sheer amount and depth of human sin cannot ultimately be covered by the blood of animals. It doesn’t fully bridge the gap between us and a holy God. Something more was needed for us to be brought fully, completely, and forever into relationship with Him.

Because Jesus was without sin—like those animals that had to be without blemish—He was able to be a sin offering for us. That’s the role He took on.

Now, that’s not the only reason it had to be Jesus who was sacrificed for us. Jesus is fully God and fully human, and that’s really important. I won’t go into that here, because it takes a bit longer to unpack, but we do need to know this: because Jesus was without sin, as we read in 2 Corinthians, He became the offering for our sin.

He became the offering for our sin. And because of that, He can cover and cleanse the sin of all of us—everything we have ever done, everything we are doing now, and everything we will ever do—once and for all, into eternity.

Repentance as the Fruit of Faith

So what does it require from us?

We read in that section in Galatians: faith. Faith in Jesus is what it requires from us. Paul mentions it four times – faith in Christ Jesus, faith in Christ Jesus, “I live by faith in the Son of God…” He’s making it very clear. He’s repeating it over and over: it’s faith in Jesus that justifies us. Nothing more, nothing added – but also nothing less than that.

Because our faith can sound like not very much, can’t it? But faith in Jesus is not nothing. Having faith in Jesus for our salvation actually demands a lot from us. It demands our life from us, and it demands repentance from us.

Now, repentance isn’t something we add to the gospel. I’m not saying it’s “Jesus plus repentance” that makes the gospel, because repentance in itself is not what justifies us. Repentance is not the thing that makes us righteous. Jesus is the one who makes us righteous.

But repentance is like the other side of faith. Not in the sense that it’s opposite, but in the sense that it is intrinsically and inextricably linked to our faith in Jesus. Flowing from our faith in Jesus is our call to repent.

Repentance, as you’ve probably heard many times, is a military term that means to turn fully away from something and move in the opposite direction. So when we put our faith in Jesus, we turn towards Jesus for our salvation. We face him and move toward him. And in that same movement, we are turning our back on everything that is on “this side” – everything that separates us from God.

That’s why faith and repentance are inextricably linked. We turn to face Jesus and move towards him, and at the same time we are turning our back on everything behind us.

In Acts 20:21, Luke records Paul’s words: “I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.” It’s all one thing.

Because repentance without faith – if we’re just turning our back here – is really saying, “If I try hard enough, if I turn away enough times, if I do what I think I should be doing often enough, then I will find righteousness and salvation.” But we’ve already seen that no one is made righteous by the law, no one is made righteous by the things they do. You can’t do it enough. It’s already too late.

But faith without repentance is saying, “Jesus forgives me, but he doesn’t change me.” That’s what Dom spoke about last week, what’s often called the “cheap grace” gospel – this idea that Jesus can forgive us, but we don’t have to do anything, we don’t have to change, we aren’t changed by that fact.

If we truly grasp what Jesus has done for us, how can it not change us?

Repentance, as I’ve said, doesn’t justify us. But it proves that we’re no longer trying to justify ourselves. It shows that we are turning away from that self-justification and turning towards Jesus.

The thing is, that turning is constant and repetitive, because we are human. We are constantly drifting back this way. We keep being drawn to turn back, and so we have to keep turning to Jesus, keep repenting, keep turning our back on what’s over here and turning towards Jesus, putting our faith in him.

All of this leads us to a new life in Christ and for Christ.

At the end of that section in Galatians, Paul writes, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

This decision to repent, this decision to turn and put our faith in Jesus, is, as Paul writes, like a death. We have been crucified with Christ. It’s the death of our old self, the death of our old ways, the death of anything we’ve been trying to do to move closer to God in order to make ourselves acceptable to him.

I don’t mean a death to wanting to grow in relationship with God – to know him more, to love him more. That’s good and right. I mean the death of this idea: “If I do more of this, if I do less of that, then God will love me more, or God will let me into heaven if I do these things.” It’s us turning our back on that and dying to all of it. It’s a death to trying to justify ourselves and make ourselves right with God, because only Jesus’ sacrifice can do that. Any attempt to do that ourselves has to die. That’s what Paul is saying.

If we’re not careful, what can end up happening is that we put ourselves back under – if not “the” law – then at least “a” law. We start deciding, “These are the things I must and mustn’t do.” Now, this is tricky and it’s a fine line, because there are things we should and shouldn’t do. There is still sin. There are still things we know are wrong. Those are the very things we are turning our back on.

But the motivation is what’s important here.

When we understand who God is – his holiness, his desire for justice – and when we understand the weight of the sacrifice Jesus made for us, then we should want to remove all this stuff from our lives. It is not a bad thing to want to do what God wants us to do. That’s a good thing.

The question is: are we doing or not doing what God says because we think it will make us right with God? Or are we doing and not doing those things because we love God, because we’re grateful for what he has done for us, because we understand the weight of it and we want to live a life that shows we love him and honour the sacrifice Jesus made for us?

Those are two very different motivations. And that is what matters. God knows our hearts. He looks at our hearts.

Paul says, “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul knows that Jesus loved him and sacrificed his life for him – and that is why he now lives his life for Christ.

So for us, if we have our faith in Jesus, we too should know that Jesus loves us, that he gave himself for us. And that is why we should want to live a life for Christ.

It would be easy at this point to say, “Well, putting our faith in Jesus looks like doing or not doing all of these specific things.” But that risks pulling us back into simple behaviour modification, rather than real Holy Spirit transformation of our hearts – a genuine desire to follow after God, rather than a desire to justify ourselves by doing the right things.

We have to walk a careful line here, because God hates sin. He hates the stuff that’s over here. Jesus had to die to deal with it. That is a big deal. Grace is not cheap.

So I’m not, in any way, advocating for a gospel that says, “Jesus saves you – but stay as you are.” I’m advocating a gospel that says: Jesus gave his life to save me from an eternity without him. Full stop. Jesus plus nothing else is the gospel.

But my acceptance of that fact leads me to live a life that is being transformed, from one degree of glory to another, into the likeness of Christ – because I am so overwhelmingly grateful, and I know that his sacrifice was not cheap.

The Call to Grateful Obedience

So where do we go from here? How do we respond to this?

I think it depends on where we are on that journey we’ve been talking about this morning. On my notes, I’ve got it in bold on the first page: no one is made righteous by the law; we’re justified through faith in Christ; and that leads us into a new life in Christ and for Christ. Where we are on that journey shapes how we respond.

Maybe you’re right at the start. Maybe you’re beginning to realise that you are separated from God, and that nothing you can do yourself can fix that. Maybe God is starting to reveal to you that Jesus being a sin offering for you is the only way back to God. Today could be the day you turn your back on everything “over here” and put your faith in Jesus. Today could be that day.

In a few moments we’re going to pray a prayer that walks us through that. It’s helpful for all of us to pray it every so often, but for some of you this might be the first time you really mean it. That’s one possible response this morning.

Or maybe you’re more in the middle of that journey. You’ve put your faith in Jesus, but you find yourself drifting back towards the things that separate you from God. If you’re listening later on Spotify or something, you can’t see the little turn I keep doing, but I’m trying to picture that slow drift back. And maybe you need to remind yourself again to put your faith in Jesus and repent—to turn your back on those things.

Sometimes we need to almost put ourselves back in the place we were when we first realised we needed salvation, when we first realised we needed Jesus. We need that mindset shift again: “I need to put my faith in Jesus and turn my back on this stuff, because that is the only way.” That is the only way.

Maybe that’s where you are. You keep drifting back, and you need to turn again. Often we don’t really want to admit that’s what we’re doing. We avoid looking at it directly. But sometimes, in order to address something, you have to look it in the face. Not go and do it again, but acknowledge it: “This is what I’ve been doing. This is the thing I keep turning back to. And I know I need to turn my back on it and turn to face Jesus.”

Perhaps that’s what you need to do this morning. There’s something you need to look at honestly and say, “This is the last time I’m turning back to this. I’m repenting, and I’m turning to Jesus.” As we conclude, I want you to think: is there a specific thing for you that you keep turning back to?

We’re going to pray that through this morning. You might not want to do that with the person sat next to you. You might want to do it on your own. Or you might want to come and speak to the prayer team after the service and pray it through with them. I understand it’s not always easy to turn to the person next to you and say, “I’ve got this sin in my life that I keep going back to. Will you pray with me?” It would be amazing if you felt able to do that, but I appreciate you might not. That’s why the prayer team is here—to walk through that with you.

Or it might be that you’re at the third part of the journey: you want to live this new life in Christ, but you keep slipping into feeling like you have to justify yourself. You find yourself striving to get close to God in a “justification” sense—trying to prove you’re good enough—instead of striving to get close to God in a relationship sense.

Because real transformation comes as we grow closer to God in relationship. As we draw near to him, we begin to want to do the things he wants us to do, and to be repulsed by the things he doesn’t want us to do. That begins to happen almost naturally as we get closer to him.

Years ago in our connect group—what we now call life groups—we used to joke that the answer to every question was, “Read your Bible and pray.” Whatever the question was, that was the answer. And it’s a bit of a running joke, but it’s a stock answer for a reason: it’s true.

How do we get closer to God? We read our Bible and we pray. We should be eagerly seeking after Jesus—not just turning our back on sin and facing the right direction, but actually running towards him. Eagerly seeking Jesus. Eagerly desiring spiritual gifts, just as Angela encouraged us during worship this morning—seeking the gift of tongues, the gift of prophecy, all these things.

We should want to get closer to Jesus. We should be devouring our Bibles, loving time in prayer, talking with him. We should be investing our time and our effort in our relationship with Jesus. That’s how we draw closer to God—not by “doing better” or “being better,” but by investing in our relationship with him.

Recommitting Our Hearts to Jesus

There might be some of us here today who need to recommit to our relationship with Jesus. Not just what we’re doing for Jesus, not just what we feel like our behaviour should look like, but our relationship with him. We need to die to striving. We need to die to the law and instead draw closer to Jesus and allow his Holy Spirit to transform us.

So that’s a third way that you might feel you want to respond this morning.

I’d love it if you could close your eyes and bow your heads, and I’m going to pray.

Lord, I thank you. I thank you for the law that we read in the Old Testament. I thank you, Lord, for everything that it is, and I thank you that it helps us to understand our need for you, Jesus.

So this morning, as we think about where we are on that journey: are we right at the start? Are we just starting to understand, “Yes, I do feel separated from God. I do feel like that’s true, and I’m understanding now that Jesus’ sacrifice is the only way; that putting my faith in Jesus, turning my back on everything that was before, that that is the only way”?

Maybe that’s where we are. And if that is you this morning, I would love for you to raise your hand, and in a moment we’ll go through the prayer that I mentioned. I just want to give a moment.

And, Lord, maybe we’re somewhere on that second step: we have put our faith in Jesus, but we keep finding ourselves drifting back, spinning back. Lord, I pray that you would illuminate for us the areas that are pulling us backwards, turning us around, areas that are pulling us away from having our faith firmly in you, Jesus. I know there will be something for all of us—something that is distracting us from you, pulling us away from you, turning us back around.

If that’s you this morning, and you feel comfortable to do so, I ask that you just put your hand up and I will pray over you. I’m not going to ask anyone to gather around you if you’re not comfortable with that. If you’d rather, I would ask that you go and see the prayer team afterwards, and they’ll pray with you. No one’s going to wonder, “Why are they getting prayer? What have they done?” No one’s going to be thinking that. There are lots of reasons we go for prayer. So if you feel comfortable to do that, I invite you to raise your hand this morning.

Lord, as you are shining a light on things in our hearts and in our lives this morning, I pray that you would remind us that you love us and that you gave yourself for us. As we turn towards you, Jesus, we turn our back on those things, those things that seem to have a hold on us. We know, Lord, that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. It’s not so that we would be enslaved to these things that pull us backwards, but that we would be free from them and free to pursue our relationship with Christ and turn towards you, Jesus.

So, Lord, I pray in your name this morning that you would be breaking those things off people, that you would be freeing us from the chains of sin that continually seek to ensnare us; that we would remember what you have done for us and what that means for us, and that we would turn to you, Jesus.

Finally, for those of us who feel like we just need to recommit to our relationship with Jesus—we need to recommit to time in prayer, to spending time reading our Bible; that we need to die to striving to get closer to God, and instead just enjoy being with Jesus and allow his Holy Spirit to transform us—I’m going to pray. Actually, I’m going to pray for all of us, because I think this is true for all of us, whether we actively want to respond or not.

Lord, I thank you that you are not a God who is far off. You are not a God who is distant. You are not a God who created this world and left. You are a God who wants a relationship with each one of us, who loves us, who died for us, who gave himself for us.

So, Lord, I pray that you would remind us this morning of how amazing it is that we can have a relationship with the God who made us, the God who saved us, the God who is saving us. I pray that you would rekindle in our hearts that joy and that excitement to spend time with you, to get to know you, and, importantly, to allow your Holy Spirit to change us because of the faith we have in you—not in order to gain anything from you.

We thank you, Lord, for your goodness, your grace and your mercy.

In Jesus’ name, Amen. Amen. Amen.

Praying the Prayer of Salvation

Have we got the salvation prayer? I’d love it if we could just pray through that together this morning as we close. We’re going to spend some time in worship.

We may not have it on the screen, but I’ll pray us through a version of it, as best as I can remember.

Lord God, I thank you that you came to save each one of us. This morning, we commit our hearts to you, Jesus. We acknowledge that we have sinned against you. We acknowledge the sin in our lives, and we ask that you would forgive us. As we put our faith in you, Jesus, may we be justified by that faith in you, Lord.

In Jesus’ name, amen.