"By Faith In Christ"

(Galatians 2:15-21)

INTRODUCTION:

I read a story, I'm not sure where, about two newspaper editors who had been involved in a bitter feud of words and ideas for years. When one of the editors finally died, the other one took the opportunity to get in one last dig: he published the first editor's obituary under "Public Improvements."

Controversy has always been around, especially in religion and theology. Someone once said that if you put two theologians together in the same room and ask them a question you wind up with three different opinions.

This passage from Galatians proves that controversy even touched the life of the early Church. It deals with one of the oldest controversies that the Church faced. This passage deals with issue of the Law versus faith. The question was "by which are we justified?" The answer Paul gives became a watershed decision which shaped the future of the Church.

I. THE LAW VERSUS GRACE:

A. What was going on here? Well, to boil it all down, Peter couldn't decide how he was supposed to live. When he was with the Jewish Christians, he followed all the Jewish laws and customs. But when he was with the Gentile (non-Jewish) Christians he didn't. That doesn't seem like too big of an issue at first, does it? Peter did have that vision about reaching out to the Gentiles. And he did that. But the issue grew because of the expectations of both groups. The Jewish Christians expected all Christians to be like them and to follow all the Jewish practices.

And their argument makes some sense. All the disciples were Jewish. Jesus was Jewish. They all followed Jewish customs and practices. Therefore everyone else should, too. And that meant following the letter of the Jewish law.

But the Gentiles didn't know the customs and didn't understand the customs. Besides, they had accepted Christ, experienced the forgiveness of their sins and been baptized without the law. Why should they turn around and suddenly have to have something new and strange thrust upon their relationship with God. It would sort of like us saying to new members three months after they join, "Oh, by the way, we forgot to tell you, that after your first 90 days you have to shave your head and memorize a chapter of Revelation a week until you have the whole book memorized." Ridiculous, isn't it? (By the way - that letter goes out to new members next week.)

The issue was really, how do you become a Christian. Is it through following the Law or is it through faith in Christ. The Jewish Christians were saying it was through following the Law. And Peter was arguing on their side.

Paul was on the other side, arguing for faith and grace. Basically he says, "Look, I was a Pharisee all my life. No one knew the Law better than I. I obeyed the law in all things. I was a Pharisee's Pharisee. But it didn't work.

Instead of getting me closer to God it only showed how much further away I had drifted. It wasn't until my encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus that I understood the significance of faith and grace in my relationship with God."

B. Paul goes on to say, "No one will be justified by the works of the law." We are "justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law." So what does Paul mean?

When we try to experience salvation through "doing the works of the law" basically what that means is that we've developed a check list of sorts. A check list full of those things that we have to do or accomplish in order to be saved or assure our place in salvation. Once we finish the list, then we're done. Our place is assured. Unfortunately, with the Law, it almost seems that for each item you check off the list, ten more appear. So you find yourself running around in circles, out of breath, out of steam, never able to know whether or not you've made it or if you're even close to making it. Your faith becomes a chore.

C. Paul then goes on to say that if our salvation IS based on a checklist of "doing the works of the law," then why did Jesus die on the cross? Either Jesus died so our sins can be forgiven and the relationship between us and God healed or we can do the check list thing and save ourselves through "doing the works of the law." But, we can't have it both ways. It really has to be one or the other. Is it the Law or Grace through Faith in Christ? Is it the Cross or the check list? It can't be both. We know where Paul stood. He said, "if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing."

So, how did this controversy turn out? Look at the altar. You don't see a check list, you see a cross.

II. JUSTIFICATION:

A. We are justified through grace by faith in Christ. Justification is a printers term and an old legal term. In printing you can see it today in Word Processing programs and in the newspaper. Notice the newspaper columns and how smooth the edges are of each column are. The text has been justified. All the rough edges have been straightened out.

In old legal terms it means to absolve or for the unrighteous to be made righteous by the judge.

Through our faith in Christ, the Grace of God smoothes out our rough edges and evens up our ragged edged lives. Through our faith in Christ, the Grace of God forgives us and absolves us of our sin and declares us righteous. It is not us who does this but God through Christ who does it for us.

B. Let me see if I can explain it this way. I grew up in a dog family. Mom and Dad both liked dogs. Mom always wanted a pretty little house dog. A "foo foo" dog as my wife calls them. Dad always had hunting dogs. He loved to hunt rabbit and quail. At various times we had Beagles or we had bird dogs or both. Dad believed that his dogs had to be purebred and that meant they had to have papers. A dog just wasn't a good dog unless it had papers.

About two weeks after school let out, the summer I was 12, I woke up, walked into the dining room but no one was around. I looked out the window into our backyard and lo and behold, there sleeping in one of the lawn chairs was about a five or six month old puppy. I grabbed a couple of pieces of bacon from the plate on the table and went outside. What I didn't know was that Grandma, who was living with us at the time, went to get my Dad so he could run this dog off.

When I approached the puppy he hardly moved at all. His tail started wagging but he just lay there, content in the lawn chair. When I presented the bacon he finally lifted his head and then I fed him the bacon, one piece at a time. And that was when it happened. I looked into that puppy's eyes and he looked in mine and something clicked. Poochie and I were bonded for life.

My folks weren't very thrilled about it at first. I don't blame them. This dog had seen better days. He was dirty. It looked like he'd been on the losing end of a fight. He had one chewed up ear and couple of cuts on his hind quarters. He had a piece of rope for a collar. And he didn't have papers. Mom and Grandma both thought he was the ugliest thing they had ever seen. Grandma even tried to get me to name him "ugly" instead of Poochie.

But to me, Poochie was the most wonderful dog in the world. He was the most beautiful dog I had ever seen and despite their best efforts, Poochie and I became inseparable. He went everywhere I went. His favorite game was fetch. Poochie loved to chase the ball and bring it back to you. He even became our center fielder when we played baseball and would bring the ball to whoever was at second base. He wasn't supposed to sleep in the house. He wasn't supposed to sleep on my bed, but after awhile he slept on the foot of my bed every night. He became a part of the family and would curl up next to me when I laid on the floor watching television.

The only time Poochie's place was ever in jeopardy was when he ate my little brother's rocking chair. He didn't really eat it. He just chewed up the end of one of the rockers while he was still teething. Well, actually he chewed OFF the end of one of the rockers. My Dad had to replace it because my brother kept falling over.

Poochie's story isn't a faith story but it illustrates what happens through our faith in Christ. You see, Poochie was nothing but a scraggly old, lop eared mongrel. A stray fit for the pound. He was worthless to my Dad because he didn't have papers, he wasn't purebred and he couldn't hunt. He was worthless to my Mom and Grandma because they thought he was so ugly. But in my eyes he was the greatest dog that ever lived; a cross between Lassie, Rin tin Tin and Benjie.

And that's what counted. That's what was important and made all the difference to my parents. They judged him harshly because he didn't meet all the criteria of their check lists. But I looked at him through my heart. In a sense I was Poochie's savior. It was my heart that bought Poochie's salvation. It was my heart that changed their hearts and the way they looked at Poochie.

CONCLUSION:

And that's exactly what Christ does for us. Looking through the eyes of the Law, we can never measure up. We're just mongrel's without papers or training. Looking through the eyes of the world we're ugly, scraggly, and lop eared. We don't measure up to even the lowest level of acceptability. We can't even begin to check off all the checks on those check lists.

But through our faith in Christ, God's heart is changed. God sees us through the eyes of the Son. God's sees us and loves us because Christ loves us. We are "justified by faith in Christ." We are forgiven and made right with God and called righteous through that faith. That is both a very private and a very public improvement.

Trust in Christ. Have faith in one who changes God's heart.

This is the Word of the Lord for this day.