Sermon Transcript
It’s a good thing that you’re here this morning because at some point every Christian, or really even every person who is considering Christianity, might bump up against a question. You might bump up against this question after you’ve been a Christian for decades and decades and decades, or you might just bump up into it when you are only considering Christianity. It goes something like this. If we get right with God, if we get on the right side of God by faith in what Jesus did and not by anything we do, then what’s the deal with all the rules?
Christianity, we are told, if we’ve been paying attention, Christianity stands alone as completely different from all other religions in the world because all the other religions in the world essentially say, be good enough, right enough, long enough, and you will get your treat from God. That treat might be heaven, it might be nirvana, it might be good karma, it might be enlightenment, it might be better reincarnation, it’s something, but in order to get it, you need to follow the rules. You need to be really good at following the rules. Christianity comes along and says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. In order to get the treat, you only need to have faith in Christ.
Okay, great, right? I mean, that certainly seems easier than following the rules, certainly seems easier than making sure my karma is on the positive side of the ledger. But then, here’s the confusing thing. If that’s the case, then what’s the point of all the rules in Christianity? If we are accepted by God through faith in what Jesus did on the cross, and not by behaving a certain way, then why have rules in the first place?
Why have the 10 Commandments, for instance, if following them isn’t the thing that keeps us on God’s good side? If following the rules has absolutely no bearing on how God views us, then what’s the point? That’s the question that we bump into. And we aren’t the first people to ask it. For the past several weeks, we’ve been working our way through this ancient letter Paul wrote to the Galatians, and he has been explaining, in this little letter, how we are made right with God through what Jesus did, and not by anything we do.
He said things like, clearly, no one is justified before God by the law. Justified means made right with God. It means you and God are on good terms. It means God will bless you instead of curse you. And Paul has already said, you are not justified by keeping the law.
In other words, no one will be made right with God by following the rules. So now he has bumped up against our question, and he needs to answer it. If keeping the law, if following the rules don’t get us blessings, don’t get us on good terms with God, then what in the world is their point. And that is where we pick up our scripture. This is Galatians chapter 3, beginning in verse 15.
If you want to start turning there in your own Bible or on your app, it’s in your bulletin insert as well, so you can follow along there. I’m going to be reading from the NLT version, probably for the first time in my life, because I think in this particular passage it just helps clear up some verses that may be a little bit cryptic in some other translations, and I’d just rather us spend our time talking about what it’s trying to say instead of decoding some phrases that might be a little bit awkward. So, Galatians 3, starting in 15 in just a second. But when we start reading, just so you know, Paul is first, before he gives an answer to this question, he is first going to give another proof of what the law does not do. He’s like an attorney.
He’s laying out his case, giving reason after reason following the law does not justify us. Does not qualify us for blessing, does not get us on God’s good side. So he’s going to give us yet another reason first, and then he’ll answer our question. So verse 15 through 18 to start with. Dear brothers and sisters, he’s writing a letter, right?
Here’s an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or amend an irrevocable agreement, so it is in this case. God gave the promises to Abraham and his child. And notice that the Scripture doesn’t say, and to his children, as if it meant many descendants. Rather, it says, to his child, and that, of course, means Christ.
This is what I’m trying to say: the agreement God made with Abraham could not be canceled 430 years later when God gave the law, or the rules, to Moses. God would be breaking his promise. For if the inheritance could be received by keeping the law, then it would not be the result of accepting God’s promise. But God graciously gave it to Abraham as a promise. So, we’ll stop here for a second and look what’s going on, and then we’ll keep reading.
God promised Abraham the entire world would be blessed through him. And more specifically, God promised Abraham the whole world would be blessed through one of his descendants. God was going to do something very special through someone related to Abraham that would bless the entire world. Later on, after Abraham, we begin to learn this blessed child is Christ, who comes to reconcile us with God. He rescues us from the penalty we deserve because of our moral failures.
So since that promise was made to Abraham, 430 years before law or rules were given to Moses, The law cannot be a condition in which to receive the promise. That’s what he’s saying. The law cannot be a condition in which to receive Christ. The law cannot be a condition in which to receive the inheritance that was promised to Abraham. Otherwise, God would be breaking His promise.
It’s kind of like if you promise a kid he can have candy after dinner. There are no conditions on this promise. You’ve simply said, you can have candy after dinner. But then maybe when you start eating dinner, the kid is not eating his dinner so well. So your more sinister parent side kicks in and you say, kid, in order to get the candy that I told you about earlier, you need to eat 3 more bites of chicken.
Right? Nobody’s done that, I’m sure. The kid could rightly justifiably, at this point, throw a fit and say, but that’s not what you promised! You’d be like, I know that’s not what I promised. I’m altering the deal.
Pray I don’t alter it any further. What the kid knows instinctively, what Lando Calrissian knows instinctively, if you add conditions to the promise at a later time, you break your promise. Candy is either given just because it was promised or candy is given because it was earned. It cannot be both. Paul is saying whatever the reason the law was added later, it cannot be to reconcile us to God or to receive the inheritance that was promised through Christ because those things were promised to Abraham before the law was given.
God is not a liar. So this means for us, this means, because I know people start talking about theology and most people’s eyes just kind of glaze over and they’re like, all right, whatever. For us this means, if you’re wondering what difference does this make for my life, right? For us this means receiving blessing from God does not depend on our performance. We are not reconciled to him or earn his favor through keeping the rules.
The pressure is off. That’s why we called this series Free. We are free. That’s what Galatians is about. By promising blessing, acceptance, forgiveness through Christ before there was ever a law, God puts the burden of giving those things to us on Himself as opposed to putting the burden on to earning them.
Like, if you promise the kid he’s going to get candy after dinner, the pressure is on you, the giver, to make sure that it shows up. If you tell the kid he needs to eat 3 more bites of chicken in order to get the candy, then the pressure is on the kid. God takes the pressure off of us by saying, it’s about my promise. It’s not about your performance.
Fantastic, right? But that just brings us right back to our question. Then why did the law come 430 years later? Okay, Paul, you’ve proved in yet another way salvation, forgiveness, reconciliation, the inheritance that we have in Christ did not come through our moral performance. To which we say, thank goodness.
But if that’s the case, then why put a performance standard out there? Why give the law at all? So, let’s keep reading. Galatians 3:19-25, he gives one answer to this question through kind of a multistage process with some other parenthetical explanation thrown in. But you should know before we read this, and some of you do know, that there is more than one answer to this question.
Given in Scripture. And there’s at least 3 purposes to the law given in Scripture. If you want to have fun, you can Google that later. That’s what I do for fun in my spare time. That’s how I ended up with this kind of job, right?
Because I’m like, oh, I wonder what some other purposes are. And some of those we’ll get to other places in Galatians. But this morning, in this text that we just read or just about to read, he only mentions one purpose. So, we’re only going to drill down into one one purpose of the law. We’ll read this section in its entirety, then we’ll go back through and explain some of it.
Verse 19, why then was the law given? Yes, that’s what we want to know. Thanks. It was given alongside the promise to show people their sins. You could underline that if you have a writing utensil with you, to show people their sins.
But the law was designed only to last until the coming of the promised child. God gave His law through angels to Moses, who was the mediator between God and the people. Now, a mediator, and this is some of the parenthetical information, and it’s just another way that the promise given to Abraham is better than the law and supersedes the law that was given to Moses later. A mediator is helpful if more than one party must reach an agreement. But God, who is one, did not use a mediator when He gave His promise to Abraham.
Is there conflict, then, between God’s law and God’s promises? Absolutely not. If the law could give us new life, we would be made right with God by obeying it. But the Scriptures declare we are all prisoners of sin. You can underline that too.
Scriptures declare we are all prisoners of sin. So we receive God’s promise of freedom only by believing in Jesus Christ. Before the way of faith in Christ was available to us, we were placed under guard by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak. Until the way of faith was revealed.
Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came. It protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. Some versions here say it was put in charge to lead us to Christ, or it was our tutor to lead us to Christ. And now that the way of faith has come, we are no longer— we no longer need the law as our guardian.
So, his multistage answer explaining one purpose of the law, and again, there are more purposes of the law, but his multistage explanation is the law was given, one, to show us our sin. That’s verse 19. The law was given, 2, to show us we are all prisoners of sin, verse 22. And finally, the law was given to lead us to faith in Christ, verses 22, 23, and 24. So, first, the law was given, verse 19, to show us our sin.
By looking at a moral standard, we realize we fall short of the standard. It’s that simple. We could think that we’re doing pretty well in morality until we look at any standard of how humans should behave. It could be the 10 Commandments, it could be something else, but we look at any standard of how humans should behave and we say, Huh, I have fallen short of that list. We say, uh-oh, was that a test?
Anybody? Was that a test? Was this standard of morality some kind of test? Because it looks like I’ve failed the test. Is there like some extra credit available?
Are there some makeup assignments I can turn in to get back on track? Like, I ran the wrong direction. For part of the race. Is that a big deal? Can I just run faster to catch up?
Like, I scored some goals for the other team. How bad is this? Can I just try really hard to score even more goals for my team? We look at Delall and we begin to realize, maybe I’m not as good as I thought I was. That’s the first step.
But our situation is really more dire than just that. He says the law shows us we are prisoners of our sin, verse 22. We are trapped in some kind of cycle where we continue to fall short of moral standards. It’s like we’re stuck running the wrong direction in the race. Even if there’s some extra credit available, we don’t do very well on the extra credit assignments.
He says the law cannot impart life, verse 21. Kind of like no matter how hard we try, we still end up falling short. Have you noticed this prisoner concept in your own life? So you can just forget the 10 Commandments for a minute, if you didn’t know them, that’s handy for you. We all have our own moral standards that we want to live up to, don’t we?
We all have lines we say we are not going to cross. I’m not going to go there again. I’m not going to do that again. We expect a certain standard for ourselves. I’m not going to say that again.
I’m not going to act that way again. I’m not going to be around those kind of people anymore. It’s not good for me when I am. Even if you don’t believe in God at all, I imagine this is true for you because we all have a level of morality we want for ourselves. We have a level of morality we want others to believe about us.
We want other people to say, oh, she’s not the type of person who would do that sort of thing. But here’s the deal. It’s just us in here, so you can be honest about this, at least in your own head.
We continue to fail even our own standards of morality. The things we want people to believe that we would never do, we still secretly do them sometimes, don’t we? The lines we said we’d never cross again, sometimes we cross them again.
If we let a standard of morality confront us long enough, we’ll realize we are, in a sense, prisoners. The trouble is we don’t want to stare at a standard of morality for very long because then we’ll have to admit we’re really quite a mess. When we’re confronted with the way we ought to be or we’re just confronted with the way we want to be ourselves, we either have to say— we kind of have 2 choices if we stare at a standard of morality long enough. We either have to say, Yes, I’m really pretty much a mess. Or 2, we have to come up with excuses.
We say things like, well, no one can really do that all the time, even though we want to do it all the time. We have to say things like, it’s okay, I did it this one time, even though we wouldn’t want our boss to do it one time, we wouldn’t want our spouse to do it one time, we wouldn’t want our mom to do it one time. We kind of just let ourselves off the hook when we may not be so generous to other people around you. Paul says if we don’t make excuses, if we don’t try to skirt around the issue, if we don’t ignore that nagging feeling that follows us around that says we should have done differently, if we don’t just kind of push that away, it says the law will expose our condition. We are trapped, always falling short of our moral standards.
Paul says the point of the law is to awaken us to that reality. The law makes us confess, I’m in trouble, and I’m in a type of trouble from which I cannot get out, because the more I try to do the extra credit, the more I realize I’m still running backward in the race. I’m still scoring goals for the other team. I’m a prisoner of my own immoral decisions. C.S.
Lewis said it like this. If you ever want to win an argument, just look up a C.S. Lewis quote. You’ve got it. No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good.
The 3rd part of Paul’s answer is the law should therefore lead us to Christ. Verse 22, the Scriptures declare we are all prisoners of sin so that we receive God’s promise of freedom by believing in Jesus Christ. Or if you’re reading the NASB, therefore the law has become my tutor to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. The law was a means to an end. Its purpose was not just to show us our depravity and then leave us there.
Like, well, you’re in trouble. Okay, good luck. Bye. Its purpose is to guide us to the answer for our problem. It guides us to the cure of our disease.
It forces us to look for rescue from our condition. Like when you go to the doctor and you get some scan that shows you have some kind of illness, the point of the scan doesn’t end there. It’s not like the doctor says, yep, you have it. You’re sick. You are really in trouble for sure.
Okay, see you next year for another scan. That’s not the point of the scan. The point of the scan is to point outside of itself to the cure. You have this illness, therefore, take this medicine. That’s the point of the scan.
The law diagnoses us and shows us our problem. It shows us, left to our own efforts, we are not right with God. We need rescue. We are prisoners of our immorality.
Like a scan though, the law is not the cure. Like any other scan, the rules are not in themselves medicine. They point outside themselves to medicine. This is important because we cannot get better, we cannot be cured, we cannot be reconciled with God We cannot solve our problem by following the rules any more than we can get better by getting more scans at the doctor’s office. When a test reveals you have some type of medical problem, the cure is never get scanned again and again and again and again and again.
Just hop in that MRI tube again, that’ll fix you up. Broken arm? Just keep getting X-rays. That’s all you need. Cancer?
Just get a few more PET scans, a couple more biopsies, you’ll be good to go. That would be crazy, right? The scan is not the cure, ever.
The scan just points to the cure. That seems painfully obvious, I know. Like, why are you spending so much time on this? But for some reason, we think if we keep going back to the law and trying harder and trying harder and trying harder, and I’ll do better following the rules this time, and if I could just be a little bit better, then I will be right with God. If I could just do a little bit better following the rules, then God would grant me favor.
Then God would bless me. But that’s just thinking the scan will cure us. That somehow getting diagnosed over and over and over again, we will be right with God, reconciled with Him, that He will bless us. That’s not the point of it. The point is to diagnose, not cure.
So, when you’re looking at your standard of moral performance long enough to admit that you are trapped in immorality and you have some sense that this puts you at odds with God, do not think Do not think, oh, I just need to try harder to follow the rules and then God and I will be cool. Don’t think that. Instead, think, oh, I need to receive God’s rescue. I need cure. I don’t need more scans.
The cure is Jesus. Takes the penalty we owe for our immorality and gives us the credit he deserves for his moral perfection. This is the blessing God promised to Abraham. God says, through Jesus, through Abraham’s offspring, I will provide reconciliation to the world.
We receive this cure because if you’re wondering like, yes, I do fail my moral standards, so how do I receive the cure. If you’re wondering how that happens, we receive this cure from Christ when we believe something like, uh, I am not right with God because of what I do, which that part should be just painfully obvious to everyone. I can’t think of a more self-evident thing in the universe. Obviously, I’m not right with God because of what I do, right? Obviously, because what I do is a mess, so of course I’m not right with God because of what I do.
That’s just like How could anybody argue with that? So when we receive this blessing, when we first believe, I’m not right with God because of what I do, but I am right with God because Jesus rescues me by taking the punishment I deserve and giving me the credit He deserves. That’s how we receive it, just by believing that. Then, of course, once cure arrives, there’s no need for the scan. Anymore.
Once your broken arm is healed, you don’t need to keep getting x-rays. Like verses 23 through 25 say, once faith arrives, there’s no need for law anymore. But I have found there is a sense in which I need faith to arrive every day. I need to be reminded nearly every day My actions and moral performance, moral failure, are not what determine my status with God. I need that message every day.
I’m right with God, God likes me, God will bless me because of what Jesus did and not because of what I do or fail to do. Every day I need to hear that. If you’re like me and you need to be reminded of that every day, it turns out that we’re in good company. The same guy who wrote these words in Galatians wrote another letter to the people living in Rome, and in that letter he describes what it’s like for a Christian to wrestle with the law on a continuing basis. If you read Romans 7, if you want to do that at home, it very closely parallels what we’ve been reading in Galatians.
It’s written by the same guy. He’s trying to explain the same concepts. He says, just like he does in Galatians, as Christians, we are no longer bound by the law. We are freed from it. But then, he describes this internal conflict between the good he wants to do and the evil he keeps doing.
The conflict between God’s law that he loves, because when you become a Christian, God writes His law on your heart. You delight in it. He actually says that. In Romans 7, he delights in God’s law, but there is this conflict between God’s law that he loves and the sinful actions which he does. He says, beginning in Romans 7, verse 15, and remember, this is the guy who wrote the majority of books in the New Testament.
This is this guy, like, oh, who wrote Romans? Who wrote Philippians? This guy. He writes, I do not understand what I do, For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, that’s what I keep doing. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I don’t want to do, this I keep doing. What a wretched man I am! Who will save me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord. This is a perfect example how the law continues to work on us, really, before and after we are initially led to Christ.
We know we ought to do certain things. We have a desire to do those things. We want to do right so deeply, but we try and And we fail. The evil we don’t want to do, we keep on doing. Eventually, that leads us to conclude, what a wretch I am!
That’s the law and its purpose right there. Here’s the standard. I’m not hitting it.
I’m not close. I’m a wretch. We cry out, who will rescue me from this body of death?
Then Paul gives the answer, and notice the answer isn’t, I’ll try harder. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Me, if I just try harder, if I keep working the rules, if I keep going in to get my scan, if I just get— if I keep getting told I don’t measure up, eventually I’ll be cured. No, that’s not what he says. Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord. He goes on to explain the delivering is Jesus taking the condemnation we deserve for falling short and giving us the credit that he deserves.
I imagine this is true for you too. When we don’t live up to the morality that we want for ourselves, We have guilt and shame. We say something like, what a wretch I am. Have you been there?
But then we are freed from that guilt and shame because Jesus takes it for us. He rescues us. He forgives us. He gives us His perfect status.
If you’re here and you aren’t a Christian, let Jesus take away the burden you feel to measure up to a moral standard in order to have worth or be right with God. Let Jesus take away that burden. You’re probably beginning to realize it’s hard, it’s impossible to achieve worth through moral perfection, because every time you try to meet the moral standard, you just realize again you don’t meet it. Trying harder to meet the moral standard will only lead you back to the conclusion that you’re a wretch, right? Drop that.
Receive rescue. Just tell Jesus right now in your head, Jesus, I can’t measure up to the moral standard. I can’t measure up to my own moral standard. Please take away my guilt and shame. Make me right with God.
And he does, just like that. He takes away your condemnation and gives you his worth. So now feel worthy. Don’t feel like a wretch anymore. His worth is now your worth, and his worth is Infinite.
We’ll have more on that next week. What is this worth that Christ gives us? What is this inheritance that Christ gives us? That’s next week. If you’re here and you’re already a Christian, here’s the question for you.
How often do you have Paul’s experience with the law in Romans 7, where you kick yourself for falling short, but then immediately receive freedom from condemnation through Jesus? How often does that happen? Is that ongoing like it was for Paul? Is it a normal part of your life?
2 types of Christians will say no. One group really isn’t letting the law scan them very well. That group makes excuses. You say things like, it’s not that big a deal. Other people are worse.
Everyone does it. No one’s perfect.
Stop it.
Stop making excuses.
Wrestle with the unyielding law, which is now written on your heart because you’re a Christian, that you love. Wrestle with it until you cry out in desperation, what a wretch I am! And not in some intellectual, religious, yeah, everyone’s a sinner type of way, but I have the answer. Not that. Business, in deep guttural devastation, I am a sinner, and then look to Jesus for forgiveness and restoration.
The other type of Christian who doesn’t experience Romans 7 very often understands the wretch part.
The law has devastated you. You are well aware you don’t measure up to the moral standard. You don’t see yourself as anything other than a wretch. The problem is you’re only having half of Paul’s experience in Romans 7. The scan shows you your brokenness, but for some reason you don’t reach to Christ for the answer.
You think, if I just try hard enough, long enough to be good enough, I won’t be a wretch anymore, or I won’t feel like a wretch anymore. You’re hoping more scans will heal you.
They won’t.
Who will save you from that body of death? Not your actions, not your performance. Christ saves you. His performance is credited to your account. There’s more on that next week again.
You are right with God because of what He did. Your guilt and shame are taken away. You are not a wretch. Listen, Christian who feels like a wretch, you are not a wretch.
You are glorious, holy, perfect, beloved, blessed, highly favored child of God. Not because of what you do, obviously, because of what Christ did for you.
Let’s pray. Jesus, thank You for providing rescue. Thank You for giving us the law which shows us we need rescue.
Lord, I pray that we would all turn there this morning. Whether we’ve been a Christian for a long time or we’re just thinking about Christianity, Lord, please let us turn to you to take the burden of our shame and guilt away. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
