First Presbyterian Church      Rev. Michael J. Imperiale

Salt Lake City, UtahFebruary 26, 2006

“The Way of Jesus”

Galatians 2:20 – 3:6

Introduction

He described them as having an infirmity: “they are fickle in their resolves, fond of change and not to be trusted.” They are frank, impetuous, impressionable, eminently intelligent, fond of show but extremely inconstant, the fruit of excessive vanity.

Much of the world would think he was talking about us Americans. But this is what Julius Caesar wrote of the Celtic race he encountered during the Gallic Wars around 50 B.C. A similar group of Celtic people inhabited the Galatian region that the apostle Paul evangelized in about 50 A.D.

So it’s no wonder that the Galatian churches experienced a volatile assimilation of the Christian faith. At first, they received the gospel of grace in Christ as preached by Paul and experienced by them in the Spirit of God but then they fell prey to other teachers who insisted on adherence to the old law as a requirement for salvation.

So Paul writes one of his most forceful, plain and pungent letters to help these new believers sort out their identity and life in Christ. The letter to the Galatians is still an essential corrective to our tendency to fall back into the bondage of legalism of one type or another. There is no shortage of religious demands out there for us to conform to rules and regulations, measurements of faithfulness, and evaluating one another. But the way of Jesus is uniquely different. The good news is a gospel of freedom from the bondage of proving oneself. God offers us liberty to live, really live the life he intends. Galatians has been called the “Bill of Rights” for the Christian life, the “Magna Carta” of Christian liberty, the “Emancipation Proclamation” from all forms of legalism and bondage in the Christian experience.

I. Critics of Grace (vs. 20-21)

We begin with Paul’s amazing statement, an important memory verse in the Bible, Galatians 2:20: “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.”

Every one lives and dies. That’s a fact of human existence. The question that the gospel poses is this: With whom or what are you going to die? With Christ and his love, forgiveness, and promise of new life? Or with the law of having to secure your own right standing before God through your own goodness, obedience and principles?

The next question is then obvious: With whom or what are you going to live? With Christ and his love, forgiveness, and promise of new life? Or with the law of having to prove yourself before God with your own goodness, obedience and self-righteousness?

To anyone who has accepted faith in Jesus Christ like many people in the Galatian churches did, the answer is quite obvious. Who in the world, after knowing the freedom of God’s grace, the refreshing presence of God’s Spirit, and the friendship of Jesus as Savior and Lord, would want to go back into the world of sin, condemnation, judgment and all the wreckage they bring? Which one sounds like good news to you?

Every once in a while you hear about counterfeit money being passed for authentic currency. Lacking in authority, a counterfeit bill doesn’t have the backing of the federal government. A good counterfeit can dupe some people into accepting it as legitimate. But eventually the fake money is brought before the authorities, it’s found to be false, and it’s sentenced to destruction. Apparently, in the Galatian churches, a counterfeit gospel was going around. Not only did it lack Christ’s authority, but it also had no saving grace as it lead to judgment and destruction.

Yet the argument persisted for Paul and persists for us. It is thought that justification through faith in Christ alone is a dangerous doctrine. It fatally weakens our human sense of moral responsibility. “What’s the point of being good if I can do as I like and live as I please knowing that faith in Jesus is all I need?”

Paul’s answer is that when someone is united to Jesus Christ, he or she is never the same person again. Not that Christians can’t and won’t sin (indeed we all do), but that anyone in Christ has a change of heart and mind. We don’t want to live under the curse of the law any longer. Paul tells how he tried keeping all the rules and worked his head off trying to please God, and it didn’t work. Then Jesus showed up. It’s no longer important that we appear righteous before anyone else or have their good opinion. Paul was no longer driven to impress God. “Christ lives in me,” he says. This way, the way of Jesus is categorically different from the way of religion.

Charles Schulz often shared his faith in his Peanuts cartoons. Lucy and Linus were looking out the window on a rainy day. Typical alarmist Lucy says, “Boy, look at it rain… what if it floods the whole world?” Calm and astute Linus says, “It will never do that… In the ninth chapter of Genesis, God promised Noah that this would never happen again, and the sign of the that promise is the rainbow.” Lucy says, “You’ve taken a great load off my mind…” To which Linus says, “Sound theology has a way of doing that!”

II. Religious Foolishness (vs. 1-5)

So Paul wants the Galatians and us to get our Christian theology right. “You foolish Galatians!” he writes. “Surely you must know better. Or has someone put a hex on you? After beginning with the Spirit, after receiving God’s saving grace in Christ, are you now going to try to attain your goal by your own human effort? Only crazy people would think that they could complete by their own striving what was begun by God.”

Here’s the difference: the law says, “Do this or don’t do that;” the gospel says, “Christ has done it all.” The law requires works of human achievement; the gospel requires faith in Jesus’ achievement. The law makes demands and bids us obey; the gospel brings promises and bids us believe.

When Paul writes how Jesus was crucified for us, he is very careful to use not just a simple past tense but the perfect tense. Jesus was crucified for us and his crucifixion continues a completed action and effect. The grace of Jesus on the cross is applied again and again. The benefits of forgiveness and salvation are forever fresh, valid and available. Sinners (and that’s all of us) can be justified before God and by God, not because of any works of their own, but because of the atoning work of Christ.

In water safety courses, I understand that a cardinal rule is never to swim out to a drowning person and try to help as long as he or she is thrashing about. To do so is to jeopardize both your life and theirs. As long as a drowning man thinks he can help himself, he is dangerous to anyone who tries to help. The correct procedure is to stay just far enough away so that he can’t grab you. Then you wait. And when he finally gives up, you make your move. Too exhausted to work against you, the drowning one will now let you help.

This is the way of Jesus. God knows we cannot save ourselves even though we frantically trash about throughout our lives. And even after we discover that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ, we tend to fall back into the old patterns of trying to do it ourselves again.

Conclusion

Whether churches begun by Paul in the region of Galatia in the cities of Antioch, Iconium, Derbe and Lystra or churches planted by Presbyterians in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Salt Lake City or San Francisco, we can match the description that Caesar ascribed to the Celts: “fickle in their resolves, fond of change, not to be trusted.” Jesus wants to change that. The Lord wants us to be firm in our resolves – sticking to the gospel principle of grace first and always; fond of the change that Christ brings to our lives; finding our trust in him alone of life and faith.

So, here are a few questions for us this morning. In what ways have you been trying to earn your way to God’s favor through your own efforts? If you are a self-made person who likes to see everyone “pay their own way” or “earn their fair share,” how does this gospel of unmerited favor strike you? What “Christian” rules seem to be important in your circles? What would you say to the person who thinks that keeping the Golden Rule or the Ten Commandments is enough to get right with God? And if you had to argue for the reality of the gospel by giving an example of how faith in Christ has changed you, what would you share?

In all of these things, God invites us to follow the way of Jesus.

Let us pray together.