THE ACCUSATION AND ARGUMENT AGAINST JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH (Part IV)
KEY VERSE – 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. (Gal. 5:1) SECONDARY THEME VERSES: “A man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 2:16); “If righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing” (Gal. 2:21).
THEME: Salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone releases us from the yoke of the law, freeing us to live a life of love through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Legal (Imputed) Righteousness: We are justified by faith in Christ (Gal. 2:16). Imparted Righteousness: Immediate Moral Change at conversion (Gal. 6:15); Gradual Moral Change through the fruit-growing work of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22) which requires our cooperation (Gal 5:16-17, 25, 6:8). We cooperate by using CCRC (Concentration, Choice, Reflection, Confession/Thanksgiving. Foundational verse, “By one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” (Heb. 10:14)
Good Teachers: (1) Constantly re-evaluate what they are doing; (2) Set large goals; (3) Ask – “Does everything I do contribute to learning?”; (4) Prepare well; (5) Check for understanding; (6) Like teaching; (7) Get results from their teaching; (8) Have perseverance. Don’t give up.
TEACHING GOAL: Show that the old self has been dealt a death blow on the cross and thus love for Christ is the great motivator for personal holiness.
TEXT FOR THE DAY:
“But 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! If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am 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 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! (Gal. 2:17-21)
ACCUSATION AND ARGUMENTS AGAINST / FOR
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH
(Part 1)
1. The Accusation Against Justification by Faith
2. The Underlying Assumptions in the Accusation
PAUL’S REBUTTAL (Part 2)
Why We Can’t Go Back Under the Law
3. Rebuilding a System of Law Proves the Christian is a Lawbreaker
4. Seeking to Live By the Law Destroys All Hope of Salvation
PAUL’S REBUTTAL (Part 3-4)
Why I Can Live a Godly Life Apart from the Law
5. I Am Motivated to Godliness by Christ’s Love For Me.
6. I Am Liberated from Sin’s Power by My Death With Christ
7. I Am Indwelt by Christ and He is My Strength
PAUL’S REBUTTAL (Part 5)
Depending on the Law for Salvation Makes the
Crucifixion of Christ Meaningless
REVIEW
The accusation: Those justified by faith still sin. Thus if Christ teaches justification by faith it means that Christ promotes sin (Gal. 2:17).
This accusation assumes that fear is the only real motivation for living a life of holiness. The contra assumption – grace and love cannot motivate to holiness.
But, love not fear, is the motivation for holiness that God desires to see in our lives: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets. (Mt. 22:37-40, ASV)
First Argument: If I rebuild the law, I put myself under the law again and will certainly be a lawbreaker. No one has ever kept the law perfectly. What more by following the Jewish ceremonial law and separating myself from table fellowship with Gentile believers I will be breaking a greater law, the Second Commandment, loving my neighbor. (Gal. 2:18)
Second Argument: The law is impossible to keep. The law strikes at the sins of the heart, for example covetousness. Paul learned that he could not keep himself from covetous thoughts. The law overwhelmed him. Its demands killed him. (Romans 7:1-12) So Paul renounces the law and breaks his relationship with it. He realized that he could only live for God by dying to the law, not trying to use the law as a means of pleasing God. (Gal. 2:19)
THIRD ARGUMENT: The “heart” is the sum of our will, thoughts and emotions. A good synonym for heart – motivations. God wants to re-engineer our heart so that our motive for living a life of holiness will be our love for Him and Him alone! “The Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” “We love him because he first loved us. . . . .” “For Christ’s love compels us . . . that those who live should no longer live for themselves . . . “ (I John 4:9; II Cor. 5:14-15).
God loves me, “. . . he chose us in him before the creation of the world (Eph. 1:4). Of the multiple billions (50, 100 billion?) of people who ever lived on the earth, why would He set His love on me? Why would he choose me?
ILLUSTRATION: Jeff’s story of being chosen as a dance partner in a Junior High school dance in Cedar Rapids when he was a boy. How the young girl broke out of her group, walked across the gym floor and asked him to dance.
QUOTE: Dr. Karl Barth was one of the most brilliant and complex intellectuals of the twentieth century. He wrote volume after massive volume on the meaning of life and faith. A reporter once asked Dr. Barth if he could summarize what he had said in all those volumes. Dr. Barth thought for a moment and then said: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” (Nov. 1993 “Deep Cove Crier)
POEM: Love Bade Me Welcome (George Herbert, 1593-1633)
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back.
Guiltie of dust and sinne.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked anything.
A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah my deare,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My deare, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
ILLUSTRATION: “When Mao Tse-tung attempted to crush the church in China, things seemed very bleak. In 1972 however, a message leaked out which simply said: “The ‘this I know people’ are well”. The Communist authorities did not understand the message. But Christians all around the world knew instantly that this referred to the world’s most famous children’s hymn. Miraculously the Chinese Church, instead of being crushed, has boomed under persecution, growing from 1.5 million believers to 80 million by 1993.” (Nov. 1993 “Deep Cove Crier)
VI. I AM LIBERATED FROM SIN’S POWER BY MY DEATH WITH CHRIST
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live
INTERPRETING THE FIRST “I” IN GAL. 2:20
Who is the “I” who was crucified with Christ, the “I” who no longer lives?
This “I” is variously defined as: my ego, my natural self, the natural man, who I am by birth, the self that lives for self, the Adamic self, the Adamic nature, the Adamic man, the Adam-hearted man, the natural man whose whole life centers around self, the self-pleasing self, the old self, the old sinful self, the old nature, the person we used to be, the old man, the self loving self.
“For we know that our old self was crucified with him . . .” “As in Adam all die . . . “ The first man Adam was made a living soul . . . “ “. . . death reigned from Adam to Moses. . . “ (Rom. 6:6; I Cor. 15:22; I Cor. 15:45; Romans 5:14)
“SALVATION METAPHORS”: When we come to Christ we are a new creature, a new person, born-again, adopted into the family of God, reconciled with the Father, redeemed from sin’s slave market, cleansed by the blood of the lamb but the old self, the natural self , the Adamic nature is still there. It has not been eradicated.
QUESTION: What does the “old self” of a redeemed, child of God look like?
The old self loves the world and things of the world, that is the cravings of sinful man, the lust of the eyes, and he boasts about what he has done. (I John 2:15-17).
The acts of the sinful nature: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery (excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures), idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies. (Gal. 5:19-21)
QUESTION: List the fruit of the Spirit and also the characteristics of love and then have the class list to antonyms.
The opposite of the fruit of the Spirit: hatred, unhappy, anxious, impatient, harsh, selfish, faithless, mean, out-of-control. (Gal. 5:22-23)
The opposite of I Cor. 13:4-6 – impatient, unloving, unkind, envious, boastful, arrogant, rude, self-seeking, touchy, holds grievances, doesn’t find great joy in truth, not trustworthy, gives up on people and self.
What is important to remember is that “the old self” can still dominate the life of a redeemed child of God.
THE “OLD SELF”, THE “ADAMIC NATURE”, CAN STILL CONTROL A CHILD OF GOD
QUESTION: How many cabinet secretaries are there in the president’s cabinet?
Secretary of Defense – Self-Defense; Secretary of State – Self-Promotion; Secretary of Treasury – Self-Preservation; Secretary of the Interior – Self-Esteem; Secretary of Commerce – Self-Enrichment; Secretary of Justice – Self-Righteousness; Secretary of Housing – Self-Gratification; Secretary of Education – Self-Improvement.
Other Important “Self” Departments in the human heart: Secretaries of Self — Actualization, Absorption, Awareness, Confidence, Fulfillment, Image, Indulgence, Justification, Knowledge, Love, Pity, Reliance, Respect, Serving, Sufficiency, Understanding, Will, Worth, Validation.
ILLUSTRATION: Ayn Rand’s philosophy of life resonates with many in the human race because it so matches the longing of the human heart: Ethical Egoism = The normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest. It contrasts with ethical altruism which holds that moral agents have an obligation to help and serve others.
READING: The most pleasurable journey you take is through yourself . . The only sustaining love involvement is with yourself . . . When you look back on your life and try to figure out where you’ve been and where you are going, when you look at your work, your love affairs, your marriages, your children, your pain, your happiness – when you examine all that closely, what you really find out is that the only person you really go to bed with is yourself. The only person you really dress is yourself. The only thing you have is working to consummation of your own identity. (Shirley MacLaine, quoted in Henry Fairlie, The Seven Deadly sins today. (Washington: New Republic, 1978), 31-32
CHRIST BREAKS THE POWER OF CANCELLED SIN
So, what does one do? Remember the line from “O for a Thousand Tongues” – “He breaks the power of cancelled sin, He sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the foulest clean. His blood availed for me.” This happens because we are crucified with Christ.
Col. 2:14 – “He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away nailing it to the cross.” (KJV)
Rom. 6:12, 14 – “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies so that you obey its evil desires.” “For sin shall not have dominion over you . . . .” (KJV) or “Sin shall not be your master . . .” (NIV)
ILLUSTRATION: Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee. / Let the water and the blood from Thy wounded side which flowed, / Be of sin the double cure, / Save from wrath and make me pure.
I AM UNITED WITH CHRIST IN HIS DEATH
“I have been crucified with Christ . . . “
“. . . . the Christian has been crucified with Christ. It uses the perfect tense to show that this is something that really and truly happened, as if we were nailed to the very tree of Calvary. This is not a subjective experience [existing only in the mind] in the life of the believer, but an objective reality that is based on the believer’s relationship to Christ” (Ryken, 74).
“The experience of union with Christ as expressed here by Paul is a mystical experience in the sense that it transcends rational explanation: direct, intimate communion with God in Christ cannot be fully described. (Hansen, 75-76)
“. . . when a person exercises faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, he is placed in transcendent spiritual union with Christ in the historical event of His death and resurrection . . . (MacArthur, 58). [Transcendent = lying beyond the ordinary range of perception]
ILLUSTRATION: Just as a person who becomes a citizen of the United States has decided to live within the historical reality created by events in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, so the person who becomes identified with Christ has decided to live with the new historical reality created by the events of the cross of Christ and his resurrection. (Hansen, 76)
Our union with Christ in His death an objective, historical event that is beyond the ordinary range of perception. Though the fact of our union is historical it is mystical too, because it transcends rational thought.
When we are born-again we are automatically “Born Crucified.” His death simultaneously cancelled my sin (dying for me) and delivered me from its power (I died with Him).
QUESTION: How many times is “union in Christ’s death” mentioned or alluded to in Romans 6:1-13?
6:2 – we died to sin
6:3 – baptized into his death
6:4 — buried into death
6:5 – united with him in His death.
6:6 – Our old self was crucified with him.
6:7 – Anyone who has died
6:8 — If we died
6:11 – count yourselves dead to sin
6:13 – brought from death to life
I have been crucified with Christ . . . . Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature . . . . The cross through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world . . . . Buried with Him through baptism into His death . . . . united with him . . . in his death . . . Our old self was crucified with him . . . Anyone who has died has been freed from sin . . . .Now if we died with Christ . . . Buried with him in baptism. (Gal. 2:20, 5:24, 6:14; Rom. 6:4-8; Col. 2:12)
QUOTES ON BEING ‘CO-CRUCIFIED’ WITH CHRIST
“The moment I consider Christ and myself as two, I am gone.” (Martin Luther as quoted in Born Crucified, LE Maxwell)
Quote: “The Cambridge Puritan William Perkins (12558-1602) said, ‘We are in mind and meditation to consider Christ crucified: and first, we are to believe that he was crucified for us. This being done, we must go yet further, and as it were spread ourselves on the cross of Christ, believing and withal beholding ourselves crucified with him.’” (As quoted in Ryken, 73)
READING: In her book It Only Hurts When I Laugh, Ethel Barrett tells how four outstanding servants of God died to self and sin. George Mueller, when questioned about his spiritual power, responded simply, “One day George Mueller died.” D. L. Moody was visiting New York City when he consciously died to his own ambitions. And evangelist Christmas Evans, putting down on paper his surrender to Christ, began it by writing: “I give my soul and body to Jesus.” It was, in a very real sense, a death to self. John Gregory Mantle wrote, “There is a great difference between realizing, ‘On that Cross He was crucified for me,’ and ‘On that Cross I am crucified with Him.’ The one aspect brings us deliverance from sin’s condemnation, the other from sin’s power.”
Hymn: Dying with Jesus, by death reckoned mine; / Living with Jesus a new life divine; / Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine, / Moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine.
THE BIBLE IS ABOUT CHRIST:
As to the Gospel, remember that the Man who had no Adamic nature, no old self, who was not a natural man and did not live to please Himself but died for us.
Christ, on the cross provided salvation from sin. He canceled our sin debt.
Christ not only died for us but included us in His death. Because we died with Him sin’s power over us is broken.
Christ has freed us from both sin’s penalty and sin’s power.
SO WHAT???
1. The believer’s heart must be re-engineered so that the love of the Triune God is the main motivation for living a godly life.
2. Accepting Christ as Savior does not eradicate our Adamic Nature, our old-self.
3. The old man (old self) or Adamic Nature can still dominate and control a child of God.
4. Our union with Christ is his death an objective, historical event that is also mystical in that it transcends rational thought.
5. When we are born-again we are automatically “Born Crucified.” Christ’s death simultaneously cancelled my sin (dying for me) and delivered me from its power (my dying with Him).