Latest / Reformed Thinking / Crucified with Christ: The Heart of the Christian Life (Galatians 2) | F. F. Bruce

Transcript

Crucified with Christ: The Heart of the Christian Life (Galatians 2) | F. F. Bruce · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to Reformed thinking. I am your host, and today we
• 0:03
  were sitting down to tackle a text that is well.
• 0:07
  It is the bedrock of everything we believe.
• 0:10
  We are opening up the hood of the New Testament to see the
• 0:13
  engine that drives the Christian faith.
• 0:16
  It is so good to be here and you are right about the states.
• 0:19
  We are looking at the 2nd chapter of Paul's epistle to the
• 0:22
  Galatians. It sounds like a like a Dusty
• 0:25
  theology lesson on the surface, but if you look closely, this is
• 0:28
  a courtroom drama, a spy thriller, and a family feud all
• 0:33
  rolled into one. Yeah, that is a great way to put
• 0:35
  it. And for our listeners, we are
• 0:36
  using FF Bruce's commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians as
• 0:39
  our primary guide for this deep dive today.
• 0:42
  Bruce is, I mean he is a legend in biblical scholarship.
• 0:46
  He is meticulous, he is careful, and he understands the
• 0:49
  historical texture of the 1st century better than almost
• 0:51
  anyone. He really does.
• 0:53
  And just to set the table for you listening right now, we are
• 0:55
  approaching this from a specific vantage point.
• 0:58
  We are looking at this through the lens of the Protestant
• 1:00
  Reformation adhering to the Westminster Confession of Faith.
• 1:03
  Which is really the best way to understand what Paul is doing
• 1:05
  here? Galatians 2 is the battleground.
• 1:08
  This is where the early church had to decide if Christianity
• 1:11
  was just going to be a small Jewish sect or a global faith of
• 1:15
  grace. The central tension here is
• 1:17
  between grace and law. It is the definition of solified
• 1:21
  justification by faith alone. If Paul loses the argument he
• 1:25
  makes in this chapter, the gospel is lost.
• 1:27
  That is a heavy thought. If Paul blinks, we do not have
• 1:31
  the Christianity we know today. So let's get right into the
• 1:33
  text. Paul begins this chapter by
• 1:36
  mentioning a trip to Jerusalem, he says.
• 1:38
  Then after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem.
• 1:41
  Now 14 years is a long time. Why does he start with a
• 1:44
  calendar update? He is building a case for his
• 1:47
  independence. You have to remember the
• 1:48
  context. The Galatians were being told by
• 1:50
  false teachers that Paul was a second class apostle.
• 1:53
  They claimed he was just a deputy of the real bosses in
• 1:55
  Jerusalem, Peter and James. They said he got his message
• 1:58
  from them but watered it down to make it easier for Gentiles.
• 2:01
  Paul has to prove that his message came straight from Jesus
• 2:04
  Christ by revelation, not from a committee meeting in Jerusalem.
• 2:08
  So the timeline matters because it shows he wasn't constantly
• 2:11
  checking in with headquarters. Precisely.
• 2:13
  He spent years preaching the Gospel before he ever sat down
• 2:16
  for this formal meeting. But there is a massive debate
• 2:19
  among scholars about which visit this actually was.
• 2:23
  And this is where FF Bruce puts on his detective hat.
• 2:26
  I want to dig into this because it feels like a technicality at
• 2:29
  first glance, but Bruce spends a lot of time on it.
• 2:32
  Most study Bibles will tell you this meeting in Galatians 2 is
• 2:36
  the same event as the Jerusalem council in Acts 15.
• 2:39
  That is the big famous council where they decided Gentiles did
• 2:42
  not need to be circumcised. That is the standard view, but
• 2:46
  Bruce looks at the text and sees some problems with that.
• 2:49
  If Galatians 2 is the same as Acts 15, then Paul's behaving
• 2:53
  very strangely. In Acts 15, Paul is sent as an
• 2:56
  official delegate by the church in Antioch.
• 2:58
  But here in Galatians, Paul says he went up by revelation.
• 3:02
  So 1 is an official church business trip and the other is a
• 3:04
  movement of the Spirit. Right, and there's the issue of
• 3:07
  the outcome. In Acts 15, the council issues a
• 3:11
  formal letter, a decree telling the gentiles they do not need to
• 3:14
  be circumcised. If that letter existed when Paul
• 3:17
  wrote collations, why on earth did he not mention it?
• 3:20
  It would have been the ultimate trump card.
• 3:21
  He could have just said hey look at this signed letter from Peter
• 3:24
  and James but he never mentions it.
• 3:26
  That is a glaring omission if he had it in his pocket.
• 3:29
  So where does Bruce place this visit?
• 3:32
  Bruce argues very convincingly that this visit happened
• 3:36
  earlier. He aligns it with a famine
• 3:37
  relief visit in Acts 11. Bring to mind what that was for
• 3:40
  us. In Acts 11 there was a prophecy
• 3:42
  of a great famine. The church in Antioch, which was
• 3:45
  full of Gentiles, collects money and sends Paul and Barnabas to
• 3:48
  Jerusalem to help the Jewish believers.
• 3:51
  Bruce believes Paul took that opportunity while he was there
• 3:53
  delivering the money to have a private behind the scenes
• 3:56
  meeting with the leaders about his gospel.
• 3:59
  This changed the narrative completely.
• 4:01
  It means this meeting in Galatians 2 happened before the
• 4:04
  big public blow up in Acts 15. It does.
• 4:08
  It means Paul was proactive. He wasn't waiting for a crisis.
• 4:11
  He went up privately to secure the handshake of the leaders
• 4:14
  before the public controversy ever started.
• 4:16
  It shows a level of strategic wisdom in Paul.
• 4:19
  He wanted to make sure he and Peter were on the same page
• 4:22
  before things got messy. Speaking of things getting
• 4:25
  messy, let's talk about his traveling companions.
• 4:27
  He takes Barnabas, which makes sense.
• 4:30
  Barnabas is the son of encouragement, a Jewish Levite,
• 4:33
  A trusted man. But then Paul says he took Titus
• 4:36
  along also. Titus is the theological grenade
• 4:38
  in the room. I have heard him described as a
• 4:40
  test case. He is more than a test case, He
• 4:43
  is a provocation. Titus is a Greek, he's a
• 4:46
  Gentile, and crucially, he is uncircumcised.
• 4:49
  Paul walks into the heart of Jewish Christianity, Jerusalem,
• 4:52
  where the Temple is standing, where the law is revered, and he
• 4:55
  brings an uncircumcised Gentile right into the meeting with the
• 4:58
  apostles. That takes some serious nerve.
• 5:00
  It feels aggressive. It is aggressive.
• 5:03
  It is Paul saying we are not just talking about theory here.
• 5:06
  Here is a man, Titus. He is full of the Holy Spirit.
• 5:09
  He is saved, he is my brother, and he has never kept the law of
• 5:12
  Moses. Do you accept him or do you not?
• 5:15
  And this is where the drama kicks in.
• 5:17
  Paul mentions false brethren who were secretly brought in.
• 5:21
  That sounds like espionage. The Greek words Paul uses there
• 5:25
  are very specific. They imply spies or
• 5:27
  infiltrators. Bruce notes that these people
• 5:29
  were smuggled in to spy out the freedom believers have in
• 5:33
  Christ. What were they looking for?
• 5:34
  Were they checking to see if they were eating bacon?
• 5:37
  They were checking specifically for circumcision.
• 5:39
  They wanted to see if Paul was really encouraging Jews to
• 5:42
  abandon the law or if he was letting Gentiles into the fold
• 5:45
  without the covenant mark. They wanted to drag these free
• 5:48
  Christians back into bondage. Bondage is a strong word.
• 5:50
  What kind of bondage are we talking about?
• 5:52
  The. Bondage of the ceremonial law.
• 5:54
  The belief that you're standing before God depends on your
• 5:57
  adherence to a checklist of rituals.
• 5:59
  They wanted to reshackle Titus. They wanted to force him to get
• 6:02
  circumcised. Imagine the pressure in that
• 6:04
  room. You have the pillars of the
• 6:06
  church there, Peter, James, John.
• 6:09
  You have these spies whispering in the corner.
• 6:12
  You have Titus probably standing there wondering if he's about to
• 6:15
  undergo a painful surgery. And Paul says to them, we did
• 6:19
  not yielding submission even for a moment.
• 6:22
  Not even for an hour, he says. This is the stubborn loyalty BC
• 6:25
  in Paul. Bruce points out that if Paul
• 6:27
  had given in here, if he had said, OK, look, just to keep the
• 6:31
  peace, let's circumcise Titus. It's a minor procedure.
• 6:34
  The gospel would have been destroyed right there.
• 6:36
  Why? Why is a minor surgical
• 6:38
  procedure such a big deal? Why does the whole gospel hang
• 6:41
  on Titus's status, to be blunt? Because it is about sufficiency.
• 6:45
  The moment you say you need Jesus plus anything else to be
• 6:48
  saved, you have destroyed grace. If Titus has to be circumcised
• 6:52
  to be a real Christian, then Christ's death was not enough.
• 6:56
  You were saying that the cross gets you 90% of the way there,
• 6:59
  but you need to finish the job with your own obedience to the
• 7:02
  law. Paul saw that this was a Cliff
• 7:04
  edge. If he stepped off, he lost
• 7:05
  everything. So Titus remains uncircumcised.
• 7:08
  He stands there as a living monument to the fact that grace
• 7:11
  is enough. Now how did the pillars, James,
• 7:14
  Peter and John react to the standoff?
• 7:18
  Did they side with the spies? No, and that is the victory,
• 7:21
  Paul says. They added nothing to him.
• 7:24
  They didn't hand him a theology textbook.
• 7:26
  They didn't tell him to correct his sermons.
• 7:28
  They recognize the grace that was given to him.
• 7:30
  Paul's attitude toward them is interesting though.
• 7:32
  He calls them those who seem to be something and says what they
• 7:35
  were makes no difference. To me, God shows no partiality.
• 7:39
  He doesn't seem very impressed by their title.
• 7:41
  He isn't. Paul is respectful of their
• 7:42
  office, but he's not intimidated.
• 7:45
  He knows that his authority comes from the same place theirs
• 7:47
  does the risen Christ. He is not their subordinate, He
• 7:51
  is their peer. And they recognize that we get
• 7:53
  this beautiful image of the right hand of fellowship.
• 7:56
  It sounds like a treaty. It is a recognition of separate
• 7:59
  spheres of operation, not separate gospels.
• 8:01
  This is a key distinction Bruce makes.
• 8:03
  They agreed that Peter would focus his ministry on the
• 8:06
  circumcised, the Jews, and Paul would focus on the
• 8:09
  uncircumcised, the Gentiles. But they are preaching the same
• 8:12
  message. Absolutely.
• 8:14
  Same Lord, same cross, same empty tomb, just different
• 8:17
  audiences. The Holy Spirit who empowered
• 8:20
  Peter to preach at Pentecost is the same Holy Spirit empowering
• 8:24
  Paul to preach in Galatia. It is a unity of mission with a
• 8:28
  diversity of strategy. There was 1 stipulation though.
• 8:31
  They asked Paul to remember the poor.
• 8:34
  Which Paul was eager to do. This circles back to the famine
• 8:37
  relief we discussed earlier. The Jerusalem church was poor.
• 8:40
  They were suffering likely because of persecution of the
• 8:43
  famine. Paul was already bringing money
• 8:45
  to them. Bruce suggests that the poor
• 8:48
  might have even been a technical title for the Jerusalem Saints.
• 8:51
  But the point is, while they were debating high theology, the
• 8:54
  heart of the Church for the vulnerable was consistent.
• 8:56
  They locked arms on charity immediately.
• 8:58
  So if the story ended here, it would be a happy ending.
• 9:01
  The Jerusalem conference is a success.
• 9:03
  Handshakes all around. Titus is safe, The gospel is
• 9:06
  preserved. But history is rarely that tidy.
• 9:09
  No, it is not, because now we have to move the camera.
• 9:12
  We leave Jerusalem and travel N to Antioch, and this is where
• 9:15
  things fall apart. Antioch is a different world
• 9:17
  from Jerusalem it is a cosmopolitan city.
• 9:20
  The church there is a mix of Jews and Gentiles and Cephas
• 9:25
  that is. Peter comes for a visit and at.
• 9:27
  First, it is beautiful. Peter is living out the freedom
• 9:30
  of the gospel. He is eating with the Gentiles.
• 9:33
  We need to pause on what eating with means here in the 1st
• 9:36
  century. This is not just grabbing a bite
• 9:37
  at a food court. No table fellowship was a sign
• 9:40
  of full acceptance for a strict Jew.
• 9:43
  Gentiles were ritually unclean. To eat with them, to use their
• 9:47
  utensils, to eat their food which might not be kosher, was
• 9:51
  to become unclean yourself by eating with them.
• 9:54
  Peter was publicly declaring the ceremonial well is dead.
• 9:57
  These people are clean because of Christ.
• 9:59
  The wall of partition is down. He was acting on the vision he
• 10:02
  had in Acts 10, the sheep coming down from heaven with all the
• 10:05
  animals. What God has made clean do not
• 10:07
  call common. He was.
• 10:08
  He was walking the walk until the men from James arrived.
• 10:11
  The villains of the second act, Who are these guys?
• 10:13
  We don't know if James actually sent them to spy or if they just
• 10:16
  claim to be from James to throw their weight around, but they
• 10:19
  represented the circumcision party.
• 10:21
  They were the hardliners who believe Jews should not mix with
• 10:24
  Gentiles. And when they walk in the room,
• 10:26
  Peter changes. He crumbles, the text says.
• 10:29
  He drew back and separated himself.
• 10:31
  He stops eating with the Gentiles.
• 10:32
  He moves to the Jewish table. Why?
• 10:35
  This is the man who walked on water.
• 10:36
  This is a man who stood up to the Sanhedrin.
• 10:39
  Why does he fold now? Paul gives us the reason,
• 10:42
  fearing the circumcision party. It is the fear of man.
• 10:46
  It is peer pressure. It is the terrifying feeling of
• 10:49
  being judged by your own tribe. Peter could handle persecution
• 10:53
  from the outside, but disapproval from his own Jewish
• 10:55
  brothers that broke him. And his action has a ripple
• 10:59
  effect. It is not just Peter sitting by
• 11:01
  himself. That is the tragedy of
• 11:03
  leadership. When the leader falls, he takes
• 11:05
  people with him. Paul says.
• 11:07
  The rest of the Jews acted insincerely along with him.
• 11:10
  And then the knife twist. Even Barnabas was LED astray.
• 11:14
  That has to hurt. Barnabas was Paul's partner.
• 11:16
  They've been in the trenches together.
• 11:17
  It shows how strong the social pressure was.
• 11:20
  If even Barnabas, the son of encouragement, the man who
• 11:23
  welcomed Paul when no one else would, if even he started
• 11:26
  treating the Gentiles like second class citizens, the
• 11:29
  situation was critical. Paul calls it hypocrisy.
• 11:33
  That is a charged word. Why does he use that specific
• 11:36
  term? Because Peter knew better.
• 11:38
  That is the definition of hypocrisy, acting against what
• 11:41
  you know to be true. Peter knew the Gentiles were
• 11:44
  accepted, he knew the food laws were gone, he had just been
• 11:46
  eating with them. But he acted as if he believed
• 11:49
  the opposite, just to save face. He was play acting.
• 11:52
  Paul doesn't take Peter aside for a private chat this time.
• 11:55
  He doesn't do the Matthew 18 go to your brother and private
• 11:58
  thing, he rebukes into his face before them all.
• 12:02
  Why the public scene? Because the sin was public and
• 12:05
  the scandal was public, Peter's action was publicly shaming the
• 12:08
  Gentile Christians was telling the whole church these people
• 12:11
  are not really fully part of the of a family unless they become
• 12:14
  like us. If Paul had whispered to Peter
• 12:16
  in private, the damage to the Gentiles would have remained.
• 12:19
  He had to publicly vindicate the truth of the gospel.
• 12:22
  Paul uses a really interesting phrase here.
• 12:23
  He says they were not walking straight according to the truth
• 12:26
  of the gospel. The Greek word is orthopodeo.
• 12:29
  It means to walk on a straight path is an orthotic metaphor.
• 12:32
  Just have to lay back into place.
• 12:38
  His argument to Peter is a logic trap.
• 12:40
  He says if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like
• 12:44
  a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?
• 12:48
  It is unanswerable. Peter had already been living
• 12:51
  like a Gentile by eating with them, so for him to now withdraw
• 12:54
  and obsessively demand that Gentiles adopt Jewish customs is
• 12:57
  absurd. You cannot have it both ways.
• 13:00
  Either the law is binding, in which case Peter was sinning
• 13:03
  before by eating with them, or the law is not binding, in which
• 13:06
  case he is sinning now by withdrawing.
• 13:08
  Paul exposes the total inconsistency of legalism.
• 13:11
  This confrontation in Antioch acts as the launchpad for the
• 13:14
  rest of the chapter. Paul moves from the story, the
• 13:16
  narrative of what happened to the theology.
• 13:19
  He pivots from Peter you are wrong to here is how a human
• 13:22
  being is actually made right with God.
• 13:24
  This brings us to Section 3, justification by faith alone.
• 13:29
  This is the theological core of the letter.
• 13:31
  Paul starts by granting the premise of the Jewish worldview.
• 13:34
  He says we ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.
• 13:39
  That phrase Gentile sinners sounds derogatory.
• 13:42
  He was common Jewish parlance. It meant those outside the law.
• 13:45
  Paul is saying, OK, let's look at us.
• 13:47
  We are Jews. We have the law, we have the
• 13:49
  history, we have the covenants, but even we know that a person
• 13:52
  is not justified by works of the law.
• 13:54
  We need to stop and define justification.
• 13:57
  It is a word we throw around in church, but what does it
• 13:59
  actually mean in the Reformed tradition?
• 14:01
  It is a forensic term. It comes from the law court.
• 14:04
  De Caillou in Greek does not mean to make someone morally
• 14:08
  good on the inside. That is sanctification, which is
• 14:10
  a process. Justification is a verdict.
• 14:12
  It is a judge baying the gavel and declaring righteous.
• 14:16
  It is about your legal standing before God.
• 14:18
  So Paul is saying that doing the works of the law, keeping the
• 14:20
  Sabbath, eating kosher, being circumcised, or even being
• 14:23
  morally upstanding can never get a not guilty verdict from God.
• 14:27
  Correct. By works of the law, no one will
• 14:30
  be justified. The law is a mirror.
• 14:32
  It shows you the dirt on your face, but it cannot wash it off.
• 14:36
  It demands perfection, which no fallen human can provide.
• 14:39
  So if works do not work, what does?
• 14:41
  Faith, specifically faith in Jesus Christ.
• 14:45
  Now, Bruce Stock's here to look at a grammatical debate that has
• 14:47
  been raging for decades in the Academy.
• 14:50
  It involves 2 Greek words. Pistist Cousteau.
• 14:54
  This is the objective genitive versus subjective genitive
• 14:57
  debate. The phrase can literally be
• 14:59
  translated faith of Christ. The subjective view says this
• 15:02
  refers to Christ's own faithfulness, his loyalty to the
• 15:05
  Father, his obedience and going to the cross.
• 15:07
  Which is true theologically, We are saved by his obedience.
• 15:10
  Absolutely. That is a solid Reformed
• 15:12
  doctrine. But Bruce argues that in this
• 15:14
  specific text, Paul means the objective, genitive faith in
• 15:17
  Christ. Christ is the object of our
• 15:19
  trust. Why does Bruce land there?
• 15:21
  Why does it matter? It matters because of the
• 15:23
  contrast poll is setting up. He is contrasting our works with
• 15:27
  our faith. He's saying you don't get saved
• 15:29
  by working, you get saved by believing.
• 15:32
  If you were talking about Christ's faithfulness, the
• 15:34
  contrast would be slightly different.
• 15:37
  Bruce argues that Paul is focusing on the necessity of us
• 15:39
  looking away from ourselves and placing our full confidence in
• 15:43
  Jesus. We are the ones doing the
• 15:45
  believing, even though the faith itself is a gift.
• 15:48
  So it is about where we point the camera.
• 15:50
  We don't point it at our own performance, we pointed at.
• 15:53
  Him spot on. It is a radical abandonment of
• 15:56
  self-reliance. And Paul backs this up with the
• 15:58
  Old Testament. He quotes Psalm 143.2.
• 16:01
  Enter not into judgement with thy servant, for in thy sight
• 16:04
  shall no man living be justified.
• 16:06
  That is a masterstroke. He is reminding Peter that even
• 16:09
  David, the great King David, knew he couldn't stand before
• 16:13
  God based on his own record. If David couldn't be justified
• 16:16
  by works, certainly Peter can't, and certainly we can't.
• 16:19
  This leads us into the deep waters of Section 4.
• 16:23
  We move from the courtroom to something more mystical, union
• 16:26
  with Christ. But first Paul has to deal with
• 16:28
  an objection. The objection is the same one
• 16:31
  religious people always throw the gospel of grace.
• 16:34
  If you tell people they are saved by grace alone, won't they
• 16:38
  just go out and sin? Doesn't this make Christ a
• 16:41
  minister of sin? It is a logical question, if I
• 16:44
  do not have to keep the law to be saved, why not just break all
• 16:48
  the rules the? Legalists argue that by
• 16:50
  abandoning the law, Paul was turning Jews into sinners like
• 16:53
  the Gentiles, so Christ was effectively leading them into a
• 16:56
  sinful state. And Paul's response is emphatic.
• 16:58
  Mid genoit though. By no means, God forbid.
• 17:01
  It is the strongest negative in the Greek language.
• 17:04
  Paul is horrified by the suggestion.
• 17:06
  How does he explain that leaving the law isn't a sin?
• 17:09
  He flips the logic on its head. He says if I build up again
• 17:12
  those things which I destroyed, I prove myself a transgressor.
• 17:15
  He is saying to Peter, the real sin isn't leaving the law for
• 17:18
  Christ. The real sin is what you were
• 17:20
  doing going back to the law after you already found Christ.
• 17:23
  To rebuild the wall of legalism is the transgression because it
• 17:26
  insults the work of Jesus. Then he drops this dense
• 17:30
  theological statement for through the law, I died to the
• 17:33
  law so that I might live to God. That sounds like a Riddle.
• 17:37
  How do you die to the law? Through the law.
• 17:40
  Think about what the law does. It pronounces a death sentence
• 17:43
  on sinners. The soul that sins shall die.
• 17:47
  When Christ died on the cross, He took that death sentence for
• 17:49
  us. He satisfied the law's demand.
• 17:51
  So the law executed its judgement on him.
• 17:54
  And because I am united to Christ, the law executed its
• 17:57
  judgement on me. I am legally dead.
• 17:59
  The law has no authority over a dead man.
• 18:01
  It is like the marriage analogy Paul uses in Romans 7.
• 18:05
  Death dissolves the contract. The law did his job.
• 18:07
  It killed me in Christ, and now I am free from it.
• 18:09
  So I could be married to another, to the risen Lord.
• 18:12
  This brings us to Galatians 2.20.
• 18:14
  This is the summit. I have been crucified with
• 18:16
  Christ. It is no longer I who live, but
• 18:19
  Christ who lives in me. This is the doctrine of union
• 18:21
  with Christ. This is where the Reformed faith
• 18:23
  becomes experiential. It is not just that Christ did
• 18:26
  something for me 2000 years ago. It is that I am mystically and
• 18:29
  legally connected to Him right now.
• 18:31
  I have been crucified with Christ.
• 18:33
  That is a violent image. It is the death of the ego.
• 18:36
  It's the death of the eye that thinks it can run its own life
• 18:39
  and earn its own salvation. That old self was nailed to the
• 18:42
  cross. But Paul is still alive.
• 18:44
  He is writing a letter. He is physically alive, yes, but
• 18:48
  the operating system of his life has been replaced.
• 18:51
  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
• 18:54
  The Christian life is not me trying really hard to copy
• 18:57
  Jesus, it is Jesus living his life through me by the Holy
• 19:00
  Spirit. And then he makes it incredibly
• 19:02
  personal. He says the life I now live in
• 19:04
  the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and
• 19:07
  gave himself for me. That shift to the singular
• 19:10
  pronouns me is incredibly touching.
• 19:12
  Paul usually talks about us and we, but here the theology lands
• 19:17
  on his own heart. He realizes that the atonement
• 19:19
  wasn't just a general amnesty program for the world.
• 19:22
  It was an act of specific personal love for Paul, the
• 19:26
  persecutor, the Sinner. Bruce mentions Charles Wesley in
• 19:29
  the commentary here. Yes, the great hymn writer
• 19:32
  Wesley said that reading Luther's commentary on this
• 19:35
  specific verse was the turning point for his own conversion.
• 19:38
  He wrestled with this idea. He knew Christ died for the
• 19:41
  world, but could he say Christ died for me?
• 19:45
  When that clicked, that the love was personal, it set his heart
• 19:49
  on fire. It highlights the active role of
• 19:51
  Christ, too. He gave himself.
• 19:53
  It wasn't an accident. He wasn't a victim of
• 19:55
  circumstance. He was a voluntary sacrifice.
• 19:58
  And that leads us to the final argument, the logical Cliff that
• 20:01
  Paul pushes the legalists off. Section 5.
• 20:04
  The sufficiency of grace. Paul writes in verse 21, I do
• 20:08
  not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were
• 20:10
  through the law, then Christ died for nothing.
• 20:12
  Christ died for nothing. The Greek word is durian.
• 20:15
  It means freely, gratuitously, without call 'cause for no
• 20:19
  purpose. That is a staggering claim.
• 20:21
  Walk us through the logic. It is a harsh either.
• 20:23
  There are only two options. Option A we can save ourselves
• 20:26
  by being good, obeying the rules and keeping the law.
• 20:29
  Option B we cannot save ourselves and we need a savior.
• 20:32
  If option A is true, if there is any way for a human being to be
• 20:36
  righteous through their own effort, then God made a terrib
• 20:39
  mistake. He sent his beloved Son to
• 20:41
  suffer the torture of the Cross, the shame and the infinite wrath
• 20:45
  of the Father for absolutely no reason.
• 20:47
  If we could have done it ourselves, the Cross was a
• 20:49
  waste. It was unnecessary.
• 20:50
  That is the ultimate insult to God, isn't it?
• 20:52
  To say I need to add my works to Jesus is essentially saying
• 20:57
  Jesus, what you did was nice, but it wasn't quite enough.
• 21:00
  You wasted your time dying because I needed to finish the
• 21:02
  job. It nullifies grace.
• 21:04
  You cannot mix them. As soon as you add a single drop
• 21:08
  of human merit to the ocean of grace, it is not grace anymore.
• 21:11
  It becomes a wage because a dead God owes you.
• 21:14
  And Paul refuses to go there. He says I will not insult the
• 21:16
  cross by trying to save myself. So the Reformed conclusion is
• 21:19
  simple. Jesus plus works equals nothing.
• 21:23
  Jesus plus nothing equals everything.
• 21:25
  You nailed it. That is the equation of the
• 21:27
  gospel. We have covered a massive amount
• 21:29
  of ground today. We started with the spy thriller
• 21:32
  in Jerusalem, moved to a cafeteria confrontation in
• 21:35
  Antioch, and ended up at the cross.
• 21:38
  Try to summarize the key insights before we sign off.
• 21:41
  Historically, we saw the victory of the gospel.
• 21:44
  The Jerusalem conference in the Antioch rebuke secured the fact
• 21:47
  that Gentiles do not have to become Jews to be Christians.
• 21:50
  That is why we are here today. And the theological victory?
• 21:53
  Justification is by faith alone. We are declared righteous not
• 21:58
  because of what we do, but because of who we trust, and
• 22:01
  this leads to a life of Christ living through us.
• 22:04
  I want to leave you, our listener, with a provocative
• 22:07
  thought. We look at Peter and the false
• 22:10
  brethren and we think, how could they be so silly?
• 22:12
  Of course we don't need circumcision, but are we safe
• 22:15
  from this air? Think about the modern
• 22:17
  requirements we slip into our churches.
• 22:19
  We are. Constantly tempted to add
• 22:21
  conditions to the gospel. Maybe it is a specific political
• 22:24
  stance. Maybe it is a style of schooling
• 22:26
  for your kids. Maybe it is a set of cultural
• 22:28
  behaviors. We do this all the time.
• 22:30
  When you look at other Christians and think, well they
• 22:33
  say they believe in Jesus, but they don't do XY or Z, so are
• 22:36
  they really part of the team? That is the spirit of the
• 22:39
  circumcision party. We are acting like Peter at
• 22:41
  Antioch. We are rebuilding the wall.
• 22:44
  We are creating second class Christians based on our own
• 22:46
  preferences. We need to be very careful about
• 22:49
  that. And the final reflection goes
• 22:50
  back to verse 21. If you rely on your performance,
• 22:53
  even your religious performance, your quiet times, your church
• 22:56
  attendance to make you right with God, you are practically
• 23:00
  saying Christ died for nothing. We need to wake up every morning
• 23:03
  and preach the gospel to ourselves.
• 23:05
  I am accepted only because of Him, not because I am good, but
• 23:09
  because He gave Himself for me. I've been crucified with Christ.
• 23:13
  That is the only place to stand. Amen.
• 23:16
  Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into Galatians 2 with
• 23:18
  the help of FF Bruce. We encourage you to not just
• 23:21
  take our word for it. Open your Bible, read Galatians
• 23:24
  2 again with this context in mind.
• 23:26
  See the drama, feel the tension, and rejoice in the freedom you
• 23:30
  have in Christ. It truly is the charter of
• 23:32
  Christian liberty. Thanks for listening to Reformed
• 23:35
  Thinking. We will see you next time.