Sermon Transcript
Good morning, everyone. A little bit more than 3 weeks from now, it’s going to be October the 31st. You all know what that means, right? I’m in!
Hey, well, that’s great. We’re not advertising Family Fun Night right now, okay? You’re going to have to wait till the end of the service. But thank you. Glad that you’re in.
I’m in, too.
If you said it’s Halloween on October the 31st, I’d give you partial credit. It’s actually also another important day, and I think it’s appropriate today to just do a really quick brief history lesson on this day because it’s Reformation Day on October the 31st. How many of you knew that? Okay, shame on you if you did not know that. Now, it’s, it’s Reformation Day, and you’re not gonna find this on Fox News or on CNN.
Nobody’s talking about this. But Reformation Day marks the anniversary of when a man named Martin Luther, a German priest and theologian, a former Augustinian monk, who took some thoughts, he published something that we now know as the 95 Theses. He nailed them to the door of the church in Wittenberg in Germany. And this particular October the 31st marks the 500th anniversary of that date. Yeah, 1517.
So, none of us were around at that time, so I thought, what better way for us to prepare for this important day than for me to do a really, really quick, brief history lesson? And I used to have a history teacher who, whenever he would do a history lesson, he would sometimes dress up in different costumes. And I don’t have a whole lot of costumes, but I do have my Martin Luther hat. So, if you’ll please meet— I think one of the reasons why everybody looks so miserable in these pictures is because they had to wear these kinds of outfits. But this will be the world’s quickest history lesson.
500 years ago, 1517, Martin Luther used to be a person who thought he was going to go into law, that he was going to be a lawyer. That’s what his dad wanted him to do, but he decided, no, I want to go into the ministry. So, he became a monk at the age of 20. And what troubled him more than anything there in the Middle Ages was the influence of the Catholic Church. He thought that the church had lost its way.
And so, he said, because the church has lost its way, I’m going to start gathering my thoughts, because he was a person who was guilt-ridden. He was just full of guilt because the Catholic Church at that time had a stranglehold on people’s hearts and on minds to cause people, whenever they sinned, to feel like, have I done enough to please God, to earn back His favor? And so, what he frowned upon and what he wrote about in these 95 Theses and what he nailed to the door of the church there at Wittenberg was these thoughts that surrounded this idea of the selling of indulgences. You may have heard this term indulgences. Indulgences were essentially giving people access to this abundant treasure trove called the treasure of merit by which you could draw from people like Jesus and Mary and other saints who’d gone before, and you could draw from all their wonderful, bountiful good deeds, and then you could draw upon that so that then you could make penance or restitution for your sins.
And so priests from the Catholic Church would go around selling basically certificates of forgiveness to people, basically selling access. They’d go throughout the countryside saying, you need to make penance, you need to repent of your sins. Yes, indeed I do. Well, here’s how you can do that. If you want to draw upon the goodness of others so that you don’t spend as much time perhaps in repenting, or perhaps you can also get a loved one out of purgatory who’s sort of in this in-between state.
But essentially, they’re selling forgiveness. And Martin Luther was troubled by this and said, no, this is wrong. And so he wrote these 95 Theses to say, first of all, we believe in what he termed as sola Scriptura, this idea that Scripture alone is our guide for life. It’s our guide for how we are to live our life. Scripture alone, not the edicts of the Pope, not the church traditions.
It’s Scripture alone. And then he also introduced this phrase, sola fide, which is faith alone. A person is saved by grace, sola gratia, through faith alone, sola fide, in Christ alone, solo Christo. And so these Latin phrases became sort of part of the communication, and these were important things, and he knew that he was drawing a line in the sand. He knew that this was a hill upon which he had to be willing to die.
And Martin Luther was saying, I’m willing to go this route if I needed to. And sure enough, in 1521, he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church by Pope Leo X, who said, you can no longer participate in communion. He issued an imperial ban, and for the remainder of Martin Luther’s life, which was 25 years, after he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. 25 years he went into hiding and he did all these different things to try to hide because in addition to this imperial ban and from being excommunicated from the church, you had the Holy Roman Emperor who was Charles V who put out a death warrant on Martin Luther, giving anybody full permission to kill Martin Luther on the spot with no repercussions and no consequences. So Martin Luther went into hiding, but during that time, he translated the Bible from Latin, which nobody spoke except for the Catholic Church.
So people could not read the Bible for themselves. He translated it into German, and it started what is now known as the Protestant Reformation. They didn’t know that that was what was happening at this time, but this idea of Scripture alone and faith alone and God’s Word being for the common person, became something that just spread like wildfire. It went to people in Switzerland like John Calvin. You may know that name.
It went to Scotland, this guy named John Knox. You may know that name. It went into England where they had the English Reformation, this guy named Thomas Cranmer. Maybe you know that name. It spread to the Americas.
As European exploration spread out, so did this message, and the Protestant Reformation went forth. And so Reformation Day, October the 31st, 1517, 500th anniversary of that, commemorates a guy who stood against the opinions of his day and drew a line in the sand and said, no more. And he didn’t know what was going to happen, but we are very much in his debt. Here’s a little bit of trivia, and I’m gonna take off this hat because this is just too much for me, but I wanted to again help you to get the full experience. A little bit of trivia, you know what book of the Bible Martin Luther considered to be most important or more important than anything else?
Now, before you say Romans, a lot of people equate Romans with Martin Luther. It’s actually the book of Galatians. As much as he loved Romans and this idea that the just will live by faith, if you know anything about Martin Luther and about Protestantism, he loved the book of Galatians, so much so that he literally said this. He said that if it was possible to marry a book of the Bible, he would marry the book of Galatians. Now, you thought the hat was goofy, okay?
So— and he was also married, so I don’t know how his wife felt about his affection for the book of Galatians. But we’re going through the book of Galatians here. He said it’d be better to read Galatians 1,000 times before he read anything that he himself wrote. That’s how much he loved Galatians, because it explained not only what the gospel is, but what it is not. And this is why we’ve been going through this book of Galatians.
We’re going to continue to go through it today. And you know who Martin Luther reminds me a little bit of? The Apostle Paul, a man who stood against the messages of his day in order to say, we have got to hold to the truth of the gospel. Because as we talked about last week, and continuing in this series in Galatians, as we talked about last week, there was this group of people known as the Judaizers who’d come into the Galatian church, and had spread their message various places. And they got their name Judaizers because they, well, tried to Judaize people.
They basically said, you need to believe in Christ in order to be made right with God, plus you need to basically become a Jew. Men, you need to be circumcised. We all need to follow the Old Testament law and the dietary laws and all the ritual cleanliness and the ceremonies and all of that stuff. And Paul had a problem on his hand because he said, no, that’s not the gospel. That’s not the gospel that I taught you all, Galatians.
That’s not the gospel that Jesus taught. That’s not the gospel that the apostles were given. The gospel, as we talked about last week, a simple definition of this is the gospel is this: it is the good news of what God has done. So again, God did this, and it’s the good news, the announcement of what God has done through Jesus’ substitutionary death and resurrection. Through what Jesus— He substituted Himself for us on the cross in love so that we might be made right with God, that we might be brought closer to Him through Jesus’ substitutionary death and resurrection in order to make us right with God and to bring us into relationship with Him, in order to give us life.
We were dead in our sins and our trespasses. He came to give us life. And you’re either right with God or you’re not. There’s no neutral ground. And Paul said, that’s the gospel.
And Galatian church, these Judaizers or anybody else who preaches any other gospel is no gospel at all. Sounds a little bit like Martin Luther. So, we’re going to continue in chapter 2. I started a little sort of 2-part series last week called A Hill Worth Dying On. And we talked about how in our world today, there are plenty of hills that people are willing to die on.
Sometimes, as parents, we say, this is really, really important to me, or as people, we say, This is super important to me, and other things may not matter as much, but this particular issue, whatever that issue is for you, we stand strong and we stand firm, and nobody can move us from that ground. And for Paul and for us, hopefully, it is the gospel. It is the good news of what God has done. And so, we’re exploring this, and the truth of the gospel is at stake. The truth of the gospel was at stake then.
The truth of the gospel was at stake then. At stake in 1517. It’s at stake today. And we saw last week this Jerusalem conference of Paul with the apostles to agree to one another, or with one another, on the partnership that they shared in the gospel. They said, no, a person doesn’t have to be circumcised in order to be made right with God.
Yes, enemies of the gospel should be opposed, and they should be called out. Yes, we’re going to partner together. We’re going to support each other’s ministry. As apostles of Christ, and there’s going to be unity. There’s not going to be any competition.
There’s no rivalry, and we agree on that. And also, as a sign of our Gospel belief, we’re going to remember the poor. We talked about that last week, and you can watch that online if you did not see that. Well, once again, though, the scene’s going to shift here in verse 11 of chapter 2, which we’ll see here in a moment. It’s going to shift from Jerusalem to a place called Antioch, which is where that Gentile church got started.
But the truth of the gospel is still very much at stake. Let’s look at Galatians 2. We’re going to see this sticky situation that Paul found himself in and some of the implications of this particular event. In chapter 2 of Galatians, verse 11, Paul says, when Peter— remember Peter, the apostle, disciple of Jesus, who had been there at the conference just in those first 10 verses there of this chapter? He was there.
Peter was Paul’s brother in Christ, a man of God who very much believed in salvation through, through God’s grace, through faith, not through a person’s works. He agreed with Paul on that. When Peter came to Antioch, Paul says— we don’t know how often or how soon this was after the first 10 verses, but at some point Peter came to Antioch, and Paul says, I opposed him to his face. Well, hold on here, Paul. You just had this incredible summit meeting of agreement with Peter, and now you’re opposing him to his face.
Why? Because he was clearly in the wrong. He says, before certain men came from James— James being the brother of Jesus, James representing the Church of Jerusalem— certain men came to Antioch from James, or at least they said that they were from James.
Before that happened, Peter used to eat with the Gentiles. Even though he is a Jew, other Jews did not traditionally eat with Gentiles because they didn’t want to become ritually unclean. They didn’t want to become defiled in any way. You didn’t share— Jews didn’t eat with Gentiles. You didn’t sit in the same spot.
You didn’t share the same utensils. You didn’t eat of the same food. But Peter was doing that until certain men came from James, and he then began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because why? He was afraid. Peter was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group, these Judaizers, whoever they were, these people who supposedly again came from James.
We don’t, we don’t know for sure that James would have sent them, but regardless, Peter’s doing something here that Paul finds offensive. And so verse 13, as a result of Peter’s fear and drawing back from the Gentiles, even though he used to approve of eating with the Gentiles. Because again, a person is saved by grace through faith, not through their works, and that faith is available to Jews as well as Gentiles. Well, now Peter’s pulling back. Verse 13, look at the consequences.
The other Jews, because of Peter’s actions, joined him in his hypocrisy.
Peter was living like a hypocrite, and they joined him in his hypocrisy. The other Jewish Christians who were there So that by their hypocrisy, even Barnabas was led astray. Barnabas, who was at that Jerusalem conference just a couple verses before that we talked about last week. Barnabas, the son of encouragement. Barnabas, this pillar of faith, this highly respected person.
Even Barnabas looked at what Peter was doing and was led astray. And so, Peter is going to be called out by Paul. And we have to understand this before we get into what Paul’s going to be sharing here. In the latter verses here of chapter 2, which is really the crux of the gospel. And we have to, to understand that, but we have to also, in order to understand what he’s going to tell us here in the next few verses, understand what this situation was.
Peter drew back out of fear, much like you and I do whenever we make a declaration of faith here in a church setting. It’s one thing to profess faith in a doctrine, but then when we’re out in the real world, as many of us have done, we pull back. Why? Out of fear. It’s out of fear, isn’t it?
It’s the same reason that we don’t share our faith with others. It’s the same reason we don’t want other people to know that we’re Christ followers. It’s the same reason why we hide the light that is within us. It’s out of fear. And Peter is doing the same thing And Paul is saying, you’re a hypocrite, Peter.
What are you doing? You used to approve of being, you know, eating with Gentiles. You used to approve of this wall of separation that Jesus came to bring down, and now you’re just rebuilding this wall. What are you doing, Peter? Because by your example, you are dragging other people away, so that by your actions, you are essentially saying You need to be a Jew in order to be made right with God.
What’s happening with you, Peter? That’s what Paul is doing. He’s opposing him. So look at verse 14. This is what Paul’s going to do to oppose him.
And that word oppose is an important word that he uses there because it means to stand and to stop somebody from the direction that they’re going. So Peter is going in a particular direction and Paul wants to oppose him. He’s trying to stop Peter in the direction that he’s going. Verse 14. So when I saw that they— meaning Peter and all those who were following him, Barnabas and the other Jewish Christians— that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of all of them, you are a Jew, Peter, and you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew.
So how is it then that you’re forcing Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? How is it that you are compelling others to follow Jewish customs. And we looked at last week how Titus, this Gentile believer, was not compelled to be circumcised because you don’t have to be circumcised in order to be made right with God. Well, that same terminology is used here, that Peter by his actions is compelling or forcing others to decide to— am I going to be a Jew or am I going to be a Gentile? Am I going to be right with God or not?
And Paul is saying, stop that. That’s foolish. Foolishness. It’s not that Peter was being rude. It’s not that he was being unwelcoming.
Paul says it here in verse 14. He wasn’t acting in line with the truth of the gospel. And that phrase there is the phrase from which we get our English word orthopedia or orthopedics. And it’s this idea of if you go to an orthopedic surgeon, he’s going to try— he or she’s going to try to straighten you up. Something’s not in alignment with your body.
If you go to an orthodontist, they’re going to try to straighten your teeth because something’s not in line. Something’s crooked. Something’s bent. It’s not straight. And He’s saying, Peter, you are not acting in line with the truth of the gospel.
Verse 14, He says it right there, you were walking a straight path, and now you’ve gone away.
You’ve lost your way. And I don’t know if you’ve ever had a car or a vehicle that you’ve driven that is out of alignment. You’re drifting. That’s what Peter’s doing, and he needs to be realigned. And so Paul’s going to preach the gospel in the next few verses to Peter.
Of all people who should have known the gospel, Paul’s going to say, let’s get back to the gospel. This is a gospel matter. This isn’t about you being rude. This is about, Peter, the gospel. You’ve forgotten the gospel, Peter.
You’ve forgotten the warm welcome you received from Christ. In spite of your sins, by grace through faith, you were saved. You’ve forgotten that. You need to come back in line with the truth of the Gospel. So, in order for all of us, and for Peter, to get in line with the truth of the Gospel, Paul’s going to make a couple statements here, verses 15 through 21.
And I would argue that these 7 verses that we’re about to share was the crux of the Protestant Reformation, that these are some of the most important verses that Paul would ever write. And we’ve got to get this, but it’s in the context of this interesting confrontation. Verse 15, Paul says, we who are Jews by birth— Peter, he’s still talking to Peter— we who are Jews by birth, you and me, Peter, and not Gentile sinners, know that a man, verse 16, is not justified. Underline that word or circle that word there in your Bible. Are not justified by observing the law, but by what?
By faith in Jesus Christ. So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be— and here’s that word again— justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law. Because by observing the law, no one will be— there’s that word again— justified. Circle and underline that. Verse 17: If while we seek to be— for the 4th time— justified in Christ, It becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners.
Does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not. What is Paul saying here? Well, he’s talking about being justified. He’s talking about living by faith, and he’s saying that it’s through faith in Christ— and this is important— we are accepted before God.
Through faith in Christ, we are accepted before God. Not faith plus something else. Not faith plus your good deeds. Not just Jews, not excluding the Gentiles. Through faith in Christ, we are accepted before God.
And you don’t— you may not have had that word accepted in the Scriptures there, but he uses the term justified. And justification of faith is one of the most important doctrines that we have as Christ followers. This idea of justification of faith can be summed up in 4 words: your sins are forgiven. To be justified, your sins are forgiven. He’s saying you are accepted because you’re— you’ve been justified.
Your sins have been forgiven. And even more than that, to be justified means that we have been given— check this out— we have been given Jesus perfect record.
We are given credit as if we had lived the perfect life that Jesus had lived. Imagine that. That’s what it means to be justified. Your sins are forgiven, and it’s as if, Steve, you have lived the perfect life that Jesus lived. You have the same love from God the Father that Jesus has.
You have the same access to God the Father in prayer that Jesus had. Because you’ve been justified by faith, accepted before God.
And none of this is the result of anything that you or I do. Your sins have been forgiven by grace through faith, through the gracious act of God, through what Jesus did for us on the cross. Through faith, we are accepted before God. And Paul is saying here, we’ve got to get this right. Because you’ve been justified No longer can a charge of guilt ever be brought against you.
Because you’ve been justified, no payment will ever be required beyond that which Jesus has already paid for you and for me. And we receive that by faith, through faith in what Christ has done, not just simply intellectual assent and belief, but receiving it into our life. And that’s the way anybody can be made right with God. And Paul’s reminding Peter of this because he’s saying, Peter, you’ve forgotten this. Did you see that there in verse 15?
He was saying, Peter, we know this. We are Jews by nature, by birth. We grew up circumcised on the 8th day. We grew up with the law. We know this.
I’m not telling you something you don’t already know, Peter. We know this. We know that a person cannot possibly be made right with God by just following the law, by following God’s commandments. That’s, that’s not it, because we’ve lived under the law. The Gentiles, those Gentile sinners— and that’s in quotes there, he doesn’t mean that all Gentiles are sinners and that Jews are not.
He’s simply saying the Gentiles never put their hope and trust in the law because they never even had the law. But we who are Jews by nature have had the law, and so we’re not going to put our hope and trust in the law because we’ve lived under that that weight, and it’s not made us right with God. We should know better, Peter. But the Judaizers and others would say in verse 17 that we saw there, yeah, but if you do away with the law, doesn’t that mean that you’re condoning sin? Doesn’t that permit more sin?
And Paul is saying no, a thousand times no, absolutely not. He’s fired up about this. Why is he so apoplectic and indignant about what Peter did? Because he’s saying Peter, by your actions, you are now creating this barrier that Jesus came to tear down.
And you need to repent, and you need to get in line with the truth of the Gospel. You and I need to get in line with the truth of the Gospel. When a person is justified, they are being made right with God through faith. They’re accepted before God. But he doesn’t stop there.
He then goes on to verse 18. Again, such powerful and important words for us. Paul continues to speak to Peter on the heels of this confrontation and opposition. He says, if I rebuild, Peter, what I destroyed, I prove that I’m a lawbreaker, meaning Jesus came to tear down the wall of separation between Jew and Gentile so that anyone could be made right with Him. Anybody could receive this, and it’s as if we’re rebuilding it if we go back to the law.
We’re not going back to the law, verse 18, he says. Verse 19, for through the law I died to the law, Paul says. I died to the law so that I might live for God. Verse 20, I have been crucified with Christ. Some of you know this verse by heart.
I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I live in the body, the life I physically live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and who 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. He’s saying, Peter, there in verse 21, if we go back to the law, we are setting aside the grace of God.
We’re nullifying the grace of God. We are saying that Christ died for nothing. There was no reason for Him to have died. If we’re saved by our works, grace is no longer necessary.
But he’s saying Jesus did die, and He made us right with Him. And so, through faith, not only are we accepted before God— did you notice in verses 19 and 20? How many times he used the words live and life? Let’s go back to verses 19 and 20 so we can make sure that we get this second point. Circle or underline every time you see the words life or live here in verses 19 through 20.
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. 6 times in 2 verses, life and living.
He’s saying not only through faith are we accepted before God, but through faith, we are alive to God. Through faith, we are alive to God. And there’s different things that make up this idea of being alive to God, and he talks about it there in verses 19 through 20. One is, when you’re alive to God, in order to be alive to God, in order to have that eternal life, that abundant life that Jesus died to give us, first of all, You have to die to sin and to the law. He says it there in verse 19, I died to sin and to the law.
We’ve died to that if you’re justified with Christ. Maybe you don’t ever, when you made a profession of faith, ever remember dying, but he’s saying, no, I— no longer does the law have ultimate claim over my life. The law points out my sin. The law has some merit to it, but it can’t save a person. And so, Paul is saying, I died to the law.
And Peter, you know what? You died to the law, too. So, why are you going back to it? Why are you a slave to sin? We’ve been made slaves of righteousness so that we no longer have to live under the power and penalty of sin.
We are free to live for Christ because we’ve died to the law and to sin. And he says, on top of that, there in verse 20, he says that we have died to ourselves. He says, I no longer live. I no longer live. When Christ died, when you make a profession of faith— again, you may not have realized this when you made this profession of faith, but when Christ died, you died with Him.
Peter, you died with Him. I, Paul, have died with Him. Christ follower, you died with Him. You died to yourself. You were surrendering yourself, whether you realized that or not.
You were saying, I am no longer a slave to sin. I’m dying to myself. I’m dying to my ambition. I’m dying to my desires, and I’m dying to this control of my life. Maybe you’ve seen the bumper sticker, Jesus is my copilot.
That’s not total surrender. Jesus is no copilot. That’s not justified— justification through faith. Jesus is in total control when you make a profession of faith. He says, I no longer live.
I’ve died to myself. I’ve died to the law and to sin. And on top of that, I’m loved by Christ. That’s part of what that means to be alive to God is I am loved by Christ. You want to know why Jesus died for you?
You want to know why Jesus offers acceptance before God and why Jesus came? It’s because He loves you. Verse 20 says, Christ, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. And we lose that in the midst of this transaction. Some of us make a profession of faith because we want a get-out-of-hell-free card so that we can go to heaven, but it’s so much more than that.
We’re surrendering our life. We’re surrendering our agenda and our control. And Peter, you’ve forgotten that. You’re not living in line with the truth of the gospel. We are loved by Christ, and so we live our lives for him.
And in addition to these things, we are loved by Christ, we are also filled with Christ. We are empowered by Christ. He fills up our life because he says, it’s no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. Christ indwells me. We are indwelt by Christ so that it’s not, hey, I want to show God how much I appreciate him, so now I have to live for him.
That’s not what this is. This is about saying, Christ, you live through me. So as I look at the world around me and I look at the people that you’ve put around me, And I look at the conversations that I could have with these people or those people, or as I go about my faith, I’m to live it out. It’s not just to save me, but I live out my faith as You live through me. It’s no longer I who live, but Christ.
You live through me. And this important verse, verse 20 there, which many of us have memorized and have known for a long time, it’s interesting, that comes on the heels of the— or within the context of this confrontation with Peter. And we don’t want to miss that fact because Paul is saying, Peter, go back to the gospel. If you recognize that you’ve died to the law and to sin, if you recognize that you were loved by Christ, if you recognize that you died to yourself, if you recognize that you were indwelt by Christ, then you wouldn’t treat others the way that you were treating others. You wouldn’t act by your actions as if you belong and that they don’t.
Because we are accepted before God and we are alive to God. As I think about this passage and I think about my own life, I just recognize how easy it is for us to, again, make a confession of faith here within the safe confines of this church, and it’s so different out there in the world.
But the reason why this is a hill worth dying on for Paul It’s because of the radical transformation he experienced in his own life. And the reason why this is a hill upon which we as Christ followers must plant our flag and say we’re willing to die is because at no time in history— not 2,000 years ago, not prior to Jesus coming, not during the Protestant Reformation, and not today— no time in history has anybody ever been forgiven, made right with God, avoided God’s wrath by something that they did, by an act of goodness. It’s only through grace alone, through faith alone, and in Christ alone that a person is made right with God. And that’s the reason why we stand on this. We want all people to be made right with God.
And we want, by our actions, to not only receive faith, but to live But we also— I was thinking about this yesterday, and it hadn’t dawned on me before yesterday. This idea of dying on this hill, the Lord was reminding me of how the Gospel of Luke talks about how Jesus died on a hill called Golgotha or Calvary. Jesus cared enough for you and for me to die on that hill.
And so, we too are saying nothing is more important than this. It’s the gospel by grace alone, through faith alone, and in Christ alone. Let’s pray.
Father, I pray that we would return to the gospel and walk in line with the truth of the gospel.
That we would surrender our lives to You anew, recognizing that when we make that profession of faith, it’s no longer I who live or we who live, but You’re living in us and You make us alive. We were dead in our sins and our trespasses, and we’ve died to the law and to sin, and we’ve died to our good works, and we’ve died to ourselves, but we are made alive to live for You as You live through us. You empower us. You give us hope. You give us purpose.
And I pray, God, for any of us who are not living in line with the truth of the gospel, that You’d bring us back to this truth. I pray that by our actions that people would see that we are free, that we are free because of what Jesus has done for us.
God, give us opportunities to in our conversations with people who do not know You, or people, Lord, who do not follow You, or know who You are, or what You’re like. I pray, God, that You would give us opportunities to go back to the gospel and to share this important truth, that it’s only through Your grace that we’re accepted, and it’s only through faith that we can be made alive, so that it is no longer we, Lord, who live, but Christ who lives in us. And, Lord, we do not in any way want to nullify or set aside what Jesus has done. We celebrate what Jesus has done as He died for us on a hill. Lord, thank You for Him doing that.
And I pray, God, that as we go out, Lord, this week, that we would walk in the truth of the Gospel. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen.
