Galatians 2: 11-21 | June 20, 2010

Suppose someone came up to you and said this:  I want you to die. What?  Did I hear you right?  You might get angry offended or hurt.  How could you say such a thing!  But suppose it was a person you knew cared deeply about you.  What?

Now it’s time to quit supposing.  As your pastor.  I want you to die.  Please, before you storm out of here let me explain.  I’m not talking about closing your eye for the last time. I’m talking about the kind of death that the apostle Paul speaks of here.  It’s a kind of death each of us must experience to have the life God gives both now and forever.   In other words,

DIE TO LIVE
I.  Die of any hope to make yourself right with God.
II.  Live through faith in the One who makes things right.

The Christians in Galatia were confused.  First Paul preached the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.  At the cross, he canceled our debt.  He won our forgiveness.  His resurrection declares it is true.

But then came the Judaizers.  Sure Christ died for you, but there is more required of you Gentiles.  Things written in the Law of Moses.  You need to get right with these rules.  Only then can you be worthy.  Only then will God accept you.

Paul heard about this and a red flag went up in his mind.  They had stolen the good out of good news.  So Paul wrote this letter to try to undo the damage done in these congregations.

Here Paul pointed the people to an incident that occurred in Antioch some time before.  Antioch was a congregation of mostly Gentiles that had sent Paul and Barnabas off on their first missionary journey.  This happened while the apostle Peter was there.  Peter was a Jewish Christian. Most of these people were Gentile believers.  Yet Peter ate with them.  In Christ, they ate together as one.

But all that changed when the Judaizers came from Jerusalem.  Suddenly Peter began to separate himself from the Gentiles and didn’t eat with them.  Now to us it might sound like Peter had a case of bad manners. But Paul recognized something far more serious.

You see, Peter was one of Jesus’ apostles.  So people paid close attention to what he said or did.  Other believers followed his lead. And that’s what happened.  Other Jewish Christians like Barnabas stopped eating with the Gentiles also.

By his actions, Peter was saying to the Gentiles, there is something still not right about you.  Faith in Christ is not enough.  You need to become like us. You need to follow the law of Moses.     Peter did not believe that. God had brought him to understand that Jew and Gentile were both saved by grace through faith in what Jesus had done.  But he let the Judaizers intimidate him.  So his actions said something dangerous and different to the Gentiles than what he believed.

Paul stepped in big time.  ¹⁴ But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

¹⁵ We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; ¹⁶ yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

Peter had put his trust in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.  Yet by his actions he was putting a stamp of approval on those leading them away from Christ.  His actions threatened their certainty by pointing them in a hopeless direction.  Their own lives.  Their own obedience to the law. But the law does anything but give us peace with God.

We’ve all seen the point of a needle. To the naked eye, it looks finely polished. But put it under a microscope and it looks very different.  You see how rough and irregular it is.

Our lives are like that.  We may look at people we share this world with and think I’m pretty good.  But look at your life under the lens of God’s law and you see something much different.  The law holds up one perfect standard after another against our lives.  Love your neighbor as yourself. Love God more than anything or anyone.  His law reveals those dark corners of guilt in our lives we would rather keep hidden.  The lust that makes us adulterers. The anger that makes us murderers.

So you see the law gives us no hope.  It takes it away.  Look it square in the face and you will see. It is not smiling at you.  It is frowning.  That’s why Paul says.  Through the law I died to the law. The law drove a stake through the heart of that work righteous fool that lived in him.  Well that’s what needs to happen in you and me.  Before we can live, we must die.  Die of any hope to make ourselves right with God. Then we can live. Live through faith in the One who makes things right.

Paul had died that death.  But through the gospel he was raised to a new life in Christ.  The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. There are two kinds of life in this world. Paul lived them both.  Life without Christ and life with Christ.  Life without Christ is a life without God and without any real hope. It’s really no life at all.  It’s like being on a road with no exits that leads you ever closer to a big question mark.  Along the way, some are lucky and some are not.  The good times, the bad.  That’s just how it is.  No real meaning or purpose.  No real peace.

But life in Christ offers us a peace regardless of what comes our way.  We have peace with God, his perfect forgiveness. God promises that somehow its all connected to His love, no matter how it looks or feels.  For think of his love for you.  It’s a love bigger and wider than any we know.  It’s is a love that did not spare his own Son but gave him up for you.  And there is no question mark at the end of this life’s road.  Paul knew that.  There is no doubt as to what awaits us.  We have one who has promised us.  Because I live, you also will live.

Here Paul makes the mysterious remark, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. Some take this to mean a kind of invisible hand moving the levers of Paul’s life.  And yes, Jesus had turned Paul’s life around.  He’s turned ours around as well.

But Christ lives in me is  more than Jesus’ influence on our life.  Through faith, Jesus’ death for the sin of the world became Paul’s own.  Paul’s hope, his peace, his eternity was all about Jesus.  So is yours.  It was all about his cross, his empty tomb, his ascension into heaven.

The Galatians had their faith distracted.  The Judaizers had confused them.  Paul shifted their focus back to where it belonged.  The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

But what about when I get stupid? What about when I do and say stupid things. The same stupid things I’ve repented of time and again.  There’s another comfort here.  ¹⁷ But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! ¹⁸ For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. Jesus is no less our Savior when we get stupid, when we prove for the millionth that we are sinners.  His forgiveness is still there for us when we come to our senses.  There is still life for us in the One who makes things right.

But there is another kind of stupid we must avoid.  I’m thinking of a burning building, as fireman say, totally involved.  I am told that rescued sheep or horses sometimes foolishly try to go back inside.  Well don’t you try to go back inside.  You have died of any hope to make yourself right with God.  You now live through faith in Christ who saved you.

Don’t start thinking. We’ve been good Christians. We’ve done a lot for the church.  We’re been pretty good neighbors.  We’re religious people.  Stay out of that burning building. Instead put your trust where it belongs. In the Son of God, who loved you and gave himself for you.  Amen.