Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:07] My name is Eric Bolling, and I'm part of the preaching team here. And before I get rolling into the sermon today, one more little plug for the Forge fundraiser with the envelopes out there. I checked with Pastor Ryan, and here's a deal that they're running today, okay? If you take the million dollar envelope and it's there, it's all the way on the bottom, right.
[00:00:32] He has guaranteed you a free forged T shirt, and you can't just get those anywhere, so there you go.
[00:00:44] Matter of fact, if you buy that one, I'm pretty sure you can fund all the mission trips for a really long time.
[00:00:50] Well, today we are talking about the book of Galatians. It's a series we've been in. Today will be no different.
[00:00:58] We are going to be in Galatians, chapter 2, verses 15 to 21. So if you want to go ahead and turn there now, we'll pretty much land there and stay there for the sermon.
[00:01:10] But in order to set this up, I need to tell you there are three things we're going to be looking for from today's sermon. Number one is we are going to see that we are justified by faith alone. It's first thing we'll learn. Second thing we're going to learn is that returning to the law makes us transgressors against Christ. And then, number three, justification means living the crucified life where Christ lives in us and through us in his love and power. So that's where we're going to end up today. But in order to set this passage up, I want you to think through a scenario with me, okay? I want you to imagine that you are at an art gallery and you are observing a beautiful work of art, right? You see that with me, and you're there, and you're looking at it, and then something happens and you damage it.
[00:02:04] Now, some of you are like, well, what? I. I wouldn't damage that. I'm careful. I. It's imagination, so follow along. Okay, so you damage it. What are you going to do?
[00:02:15] Well, you're gonna fix it, right? So you think, man, I've damaged this painting. It's pretty visible. Everybody can see. So you take out your paints and your brush, and again, some of you are like, well, why do I have paint and brush? You have it, okay? It's there. And you are going to try to fix the painting. So you start, like, repainting over. Here's a couple problems, though. Number one, you're not that good at it.
[00:02:38] It's number one problem. Number two problem is it's not fixing it, it's making it worse.
[00:02:46] So what do you do? You double down, you keep going, you keep adding more, you keep trying, you keep hoping it somehow magically gets better. And then all of a sudden, you feel the presence of somebody behind you who's looking at you. You know that feeling, but you're still painting away. You're trying to fix it. That feeling doesn't leave. So you put your brush down and you turn and look behind you. And who is looking at you?
[00:03:18] The artist.
[00:03:22] Uncomfortable at best. Right?
[00:03:25] So as you're making eye contact, it's almost like you're locked in with the artist. He sees you. He sees what you did to the painting.
[00:03:33] You're probably waiting for anger, condemnation, someone to just maybe kick you out of the art gallery, maybe gonna make you pay for it. Like, you're waiting for it. You're expecting the worst outcome. And yet the artist looks and he says, it's restored, it's restored. Now the artist can make that statement because it's his art, and he says, it's restored.
[00:04:01] It's good.
[00:04:03] What do you feel in that moment? Elated, joyous, Grateful.
[00:04:08] But instead you think, no, no, that's not good enough.
[00:04:13] I'm going to keep painting. So you turn back around, you keep painting. Like, how ridiculous would that be?
[00:04:21] That's an imperfect analogy. To talk about kind of the human condition we find ourselves in, right?
[00:04:27] If we look at our lives and we think about the canvas of our lives, we try to add a lot to that. We see the holiness of God, we see who he is, we see who we are, and we try to fix it.
[00:04:41] And we try to fix it by sometimes just being good people.
[00:04:46] I think I would summarize it in we fix it by being. By doing more and being more right? I gotta do more, I gotta give more. I gotta be better. I have to do all of that. It's what we've been talking about this whole series is we create a false gospel, which is Jesus plus something else.
[00:05:08] And so when we talk to get to our passage today, we're gonna see that Paul is going to address this sort of human tendency to. To take what is damaged and fix it ourselves.
[00:05:23] The beauty of this is, is that if we're using this analogy and Jesus is the artist, he doesn't look at our scrubbing and say, keep going, you're almost there.
[00:05:36] Just a little more.
[00:05:38] Give $20 more, get that million dollar envelope, and you'll be good. Right? He doesn't say that and we're gonna talk today about justification.
[00:05:50] Jesus, when he died, didn't just give us a fresh start, he gave us a whole new reality. And so we're gonna define justification here. Cause it's gonna come up several times in these verses, and we're gonna define it and talk about what justification is so we can understand what Paul is talking about.
[00:06:07] So justification is God declaring you are right with himself.
[00:06:14] It's the best way to think of it. Okay, now notice there's a flow here. It is God who says to you that you are made right with Him.
[00:06:24] It's not me or you saying to God, I'm right with you now. Right? Because I did fill in the blank.
[00:06:32] And it's God's declaration over you that you are right with Himself. The term in the original language is a. It's like a legal verdict.
[00:06:43] It's like you were guilty.
[00:06:45] And yet legally, God has pronounced you justified. He's declared you to be righteous before Him.
[00:06:56] And so when we think about justification, again, we didn't earn it.
[00:07:02] We didn't do anything other than believe in Christ. And it's given. And there's some other nuances of justification that we need to understand. Number one, justification is part of the bigger gift of salvation.
[00:07:16] A lot of times we talk about salvation, and it is forgiveness of sins. That's exactly what it is.
[00:07:23] And if we think of salvation as a gift, the free gift that nobody could earn, you open the gift and there's salvation. There's forgiveness for sins. But then you keep looking in, but wait, there's more.
[00:07:37] There's justification. So at the same time that you are declared righteous through justification, you receive salvation. So you got to think of it as it's a gift that keeps giving. And there's sanctification in there as well. But justification is a part of this bigger gift of salvation. And it's immediate, it's instantaneous. You already have it. You don't have to go out and work and get it and try harder and do more and more. You have it. 2. It's a double exchange.
[00:08:07] What that means is this. As we are justified, we give Christ our unrighteousness.
[00:08:15] He gives to us his righteousness.
[00:08:19] We give to Christ our commendation. Or commendation. Yeah.
[00:08:25] Is that the right word?
[00:08:27] Thank you. Condemnation. Thank you, thank you. That didn't seem right. We give condemnation, he gives us our freedom. And we could keep going with that kind of metaphor over and over. So really, it's a terrible deal if we look at it from the perspective of Christ. But it's a fantastic deal for us. We get to take all of our unrighteousness and it's automatically transferred and we get his righteousness. It's credited to us.
[00:08:58] The last thing I would say is it's a finished work.
[00:09:02] Like, it's done. We've talked about this. You don't have to earn it. You don't have to go get it.
[00:09:08] Faith is not the reason that God has declared us right with Himself. Sometimes we get that twisted and we think, well, God saved me because I have faith in him.
[00:09:19] And that's really sort of like the reverse.
[00:09:22] You have faith because God has declared you to be righteous.
[00:09:28] We're justified because Jesus has already done the work through his life, death, resurrection.
[00:09:35] So when we think about this word justification, there's a lot packed into it and there's a lot more that goes on to it. But when we think about it as God declaring us right with Himself, it's a part of the gift of salvation. It's a double exchange and it's finished. That sets us up well to get into our text today.
[00:09:57] But before we get into Galatians 2:15-21, we need to set some context.
[00:10:04] Last week, Michael preached a great sermon on what happened right before this passage we're going to look at today. And I'm not going to take the time to go back through that. I would encourage you to go back and listen to that if you, if you haven't already, or just for a kind of a refresher on where we are. But in Galatians 2, verses 11 to 14, Paul has had a massive public confrontation with the Apostle Peter.
[00:10:33] And like, I think it gets lost on us a little bit, like how big a deal this would have been.
[00:10:39] I mean, this is Peter the apostle, the one who was one of the closest to Christ, the one to whom Jesus said, I will build my church on, like Jesus, the one that was there for every step of the way.
[00:10:53] And Paul has to have this public confrontation with him. And the reason he has to confront him is because Peter had previously been eating and worshiping and interacting with the Gentiles, who were the non Jews. Now that gets lost on us a little bit because we don't think about that. But in this culture at this time, true Jewish people did not interact with Gentiles.
[00:11:19] And yet here's Peter the apostle, and he's breaking bread with people and he's worshiping with people and he's engaged, and then all of a sudden he cuts them off. Well, why?
[00:11:30] Because there was a group of people called the Judaizers or the Circumcision Party. And what they were doing was they were preaching a gospel different than Paul. And they said, look, it's great that you follow Christ, but to be truly saved, you also need to be circumcised and follow the law. And for whatever reason, these men came and Peter became afraid.
[00:11:58] And so he cut off all of the Gentile believers that he was previously worshiping with, which led Paul to this public confrontation.
[00:12:10] So, matter of fact, in Galatians 2:14, Paul says this. Their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, because the issue is Peter was proclaiming a false gospel. And Peter had a lot of credibility. Peter had a lot of weight. He is an apostle.
[00:12:28] And so what he was saying was to be saved, it's faith in Christ plus obedience to the law.
[00:12:35] That's what equals righteousness.
[00:12:38] And again, as we read our text today, we need to understand there's a lot of emotion around this. Sometimes we read the Scripture and it reads a little flat to us. And there's a. This is a heavy thing. Like, this confrontation was probably not easy for Peter. It was probably not easy for Paul.
[00:12:56] And what, what Paul is going to say and what, and what we're going to look at today is he's giving the theological kind of background to why he had to confront Peter.
[00:13:06] And so it's important for us to keep that in context of where we are. So let's jump into the text here. Again, we're in Galatians 2:15-21, and it says this.
[00:13:18] We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. Let's pause there.
[00:13:24] Probably what Paul is talking about, he's probably talking about Peter, but. But he's also talking to a lot of Jewish people in the audience. And what he's saying is, he's saying, look, we ourselves had had a head start in being God's chosen people, like we were. We were first and then Gentiles. And he says, so, so we're Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. And then he gets into the main point. He says, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.
[00:14:00] 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.
[00:14:13] See, Paul's point is exactly what it sounds like. No one, Jew or Gentile is justified by works of the law.
[00:14:24] All are justified by Faith in Christ.
[00:14:28] Notice he says the same thing three times.
[00:14:34] He says, justified through faith in Jesus, not justified by works of the law. Justified through faith in Jesus Christ by works of the law. No one will be justified. Do you think Paul's making a point here?
[00:14:48] He's repeating himself on purpose to drive it home, to say, this is what it's about.
[00:14:54] Paul is essentially saying, look, the law revealed sin, but it cannot remove guilt.
[00:15:01] The law exposes need for salvation, but it cannot save.
[00:15:07] And so when we confuse performance with acceptance, we're essentially trying to make the law, if I could use that term, make us right with Christ.
[00:15:17] It's like, hey, thanks for the sacrifice, Jesus. I'll take it from here, though.
[00:15:22] And Paul's like, nobody is justified except through faith in Jesus Christ.
[00:15:30] Not Jew, not gentile, not apostles, not nobody.
[00:15:36] But what this would have done was it would have led to attention, especially for Paul's audience. Remember, these are people who have spent thousands of years following the law.
[00:15:47] And. And so here's Paul saying, look, it's not the law, it's faith in Christ. And it brings up a question, okay, well, if it's faith in Christ, does that mean that we now have license to just keep sinning?
[00:16:02] Are we making Christ a servant of sin? And if we don't understand context, that question is strange. Like. Like, why do we have verse 17 where it's like, well, why did they jump there? Remember, the law has been the guardrails for them. And now they're essentially saying, look, if we don't have the law and we just have this grace, then we're just gonna. We're just gonna sin.
[00:16:24] And Peter's gonna. I'm sorry, Paul's gonna address this. And he says this in verse 17, verse 18. And then verse 21, verse 17, he says this, but in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners. And is Christ then a servant of sin?
[00:16:43] Certainly not.
[00:16:46] Now, when we get to this part where again, sometimes we miss the emotion. This is a heavy statement Paul's making because he's talking about this confrontation with Peter, this public confrontation. Everybody who's listening to Paul now or reading the letter probably heard it and saw it. And sometimes we read it and he says, is Christ then a servant of sin? Well, certainly not. Well, that's not what he's saying. Matter of fact, the word that he uses in Greek is me genoito, which is like the heaviest way you can say, no, it's almost better translated, God forbid.
[00:17:24] And so what Paul Is saying is. He's saying, look, to ask that question, is Christ a servant of sin? Reveals a total misunderstanding of what Jesus has done.
[00:17:35] Like, it's the wrong question.
[00:17:37] It's not even what you should be asking. Like, you shouldn't even be concerned about that. Because if you think grace leads to sin, you haven't actually seen how deep your sin is or how powerful justification is.
[00:17:52] And so Paul starts off meeting that objection, and he says, wrong question.
[00:17:56] You shouldn't even be asking it. Christ clearly will not lead to a more ability to sin.
[00:18:04] But there's a real spiritual danger in going back to the law. Look at verse 18 with me. He says, if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. Now, transgressor is a strange word. When's the last time you've called somebody a transgressor? Don't raise your hand.
[00:18:24] It's a strange term. And here's what Paul is saying.
[00:18:29] You have to remember what Paul. Paul was a former Pharisee. Okay? So in Jewish culture, the Pharisees were the best of the best in terms of understanding the Torah, the Old Testament law.
[00:18:44] Matter of fact, Paul says in other of his books that not only was he a Pharisee, a best of the best, he was the best of the best of the best.
[00:18:54] And so when he starts making these kind of statements about, if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor, what he's talking about is, when he came to Christ, he tore down that system that he had created following the law, the dietary rules, the rituals, etc. He tore it down, and to rebuild it, he would be a transgressor. Which means it's almost like. It would be to, like, violently offend somebody.
[00:19:25] It would be egregious. And as the audience would hear that word, transgressor, they'd be like, whoa, that's bad.
[00:19:32] It would be like, again, he's violating what Christ has done. Yeah, I was thinking about, like, this. I. I had the opportunity to take a tour of Michael Jordan's house a couple months ago, right? The one with the big 23 on the.
[00:19:47] On the gates. And I was at an event. We got to tour his house. And I'm not gonna lie to you, it's big.
[00:19:55] It's big, and it's a little gaudy, okay? But we're in this house and, like, we're walking around. And part of this tour was you couldn't take any pictures, or else I would have showed it to you, but you couldn't take them. They were watching pretty close. But I mean, it's just room after room after room. Full size basketball court.
[00:20:14] It's got a, like a little like a putting green outside.
[00:20:18] He's got a full weight room that looked like Planet Fitness, right? I mean, movie theater that sat like 30 people. I mean, it's just, it's just blowing my mind. I'm thinking about. It's one of those tours where you go take it and you go back to your house and you find yourself going like, how do we live like this.
[00:20:40] Wait, this is, this is unreal.
[00:20:44] I'm going somewhere with this, so just hang with me.
[00:20:47] So we go toward this house and it would be like if somebody said to you, hey, you know what? That house, it's yours, it's yours. Here's the keys, free and clear.
[00:21:00] Move into it, live in it.
[00:21:03] And you said, you know what, I appreciate that, but I'm good.
[00:21:09] I'm going to build this house.
[00:21:12] Matter of fact, I'm going to tear that one down. And I, me personally, I'm going to rebuild a different one here. And unless you're a home builder, probably not a great idea.
[00:21:25] It would be offensive because someone gave you this gift, they said, this is for you, and you tear it down and then you try to rebuild something not as good in its place. That's what Paul's saying here in verse 18.
[00:21:37] For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor.
[00:21:43] He goes on, in verse 21, he says, I do not nullify the grace of God. For if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. Paul kind of, kind of takes another step and like, deepens what he's saying.
[00:21:59] He says, look, if the law could save, then the cross is a mistake and Jesus's death was unnecessary.
[00:22:11] That's heavy when you start thinking about that kind of language. And Paul's point that he's making here is he's saying, look, if the law, if following Christ leads to more sin, then we're rebuilding this system. The cross is a mistake. His death is meaningless. And obviously none of that is true.
[00:22:35] And the idea that I think we need to drive home here is the true gospel always points us back to the same truth, which is Christ is enough.
[00:22:46] And Paul, throughout these verses is just driving that home. He's saying it over and over. It's all about Christ.
[00:22:53] And so in order to not transgress, in order to not nullify the grace of God, he Says we need to follow Christ. So then what was the purpose of the law?
[00:23:06] Well, Paul now gets into in verse 19 and 20, the truth of the Gospel. And he's going to look at it in two different ways. He's going to look at it in sort of a negative light and a positive light. But he's saying something about the Gospel. Here's what he says in verse 19.
[00:23:22] He says, for through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God.
[00:23:27] So when he's answering the question, what was the purpose of the law? He's saying, look, the purpose of the law was to kill me.
[00:23:34] It was to get me to a place where I realized I was condemned other under the law. The law couldn't save me, the law couldn't justify me, the law couldn't give me life. And I had to Paul say I had to get to the end of my sin.
[00:23:51] Why?
[00:23:51] Because that showed me my true need for Christ.
[00:23:56] Because remember, Paul as a Pharisee, knew the Torah in and out.
[00:24:02] He was a learned man. He had a lot of knowledge, he had a lot of experience. And he's saying I had to get rid of that. I had to. The law had to show me how dead I am so I can live to Christ. And that's kind of the negative side. Here's the positive verse 20, and this one is probably the most familiar out of this section. He says this.
[00:24:24] I have been crucified with Christ.
[00:24:28] It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
[00:24:40] Well, Paul is saying this when he says, I have been crucified with Christ. Couple of things here. He's talking about who he used to be. He's talking about I as a Pharisee have been crucified with Christ. Crucifixion, just so we're aware, would be a very vivid metaphor to pick.
[00:25:04] Because at the time in this world, death on a cross was arguably the worst way to die. And, and they reserved it for the worst criminals.
[00:25:16] And so when Paul says I am crucified with Christ, you can almost hear the audience go, whoa, whoa, that is a strong metaphor he's building. And what he's saying is I died to the self centered, performance driven version of being a Pharisee that's trying to satisfy the unrelenting demands of the law.
[00:25:42] And so when we think about us, we think about, all right, the version of us that becomes Obsessed with, am I good enough?
[00:25:50] Am I doing enough?
[00:25:53] Am I being enough?
[00:25:56] Like Paul, we can say that is crucified with Christ, that is dead, that is gone, that no longer lives, that no longer has any legal standing over the authority of our lives.
[00:26:11] He goes on to say, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
[00:26:18] See, Paul's talking about this idea that it's not him, it's Christ in him.
[00:26:25] So when we think about this as an example, we think through, okay, if we have Christ and we've accepted him as Lord of our lives, then what does that mean? That means through him we now have the mind of Christ, the love of Christ. We understand the life of Christ like we can live that.
[00:26:47] Y' all remember the WWJD craze?
[00:26:51] Now, I liked that. Some people didn't, but I thought that was. Was a good idea, right? Made me think.
[00:26:58] It's essentially what we're saying is we're not saying, like, what would Jesus do? We're saying Jesus would. And then we can accomplish it not on our own, but because Christ lives in us.
[00:27:11] And so Paul is saying, look, I'm crucified with Christ. It's no longer me, It's Christ living in me. I have Christ who shows me, guides me, tells me, leads me all of those things. And then he wraps it up by saying, the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for. For me.
[00:27:33] Paul is saying, even though he still lives, a physical body, that idea of in the flesh, he's still human.
[00:27:41] He's still here.
[00:27:43] He's still trying to live life.
[00:27:47] And he probably honestly feels the temptation to earn righteousness. Paul says there's now a whole new way of relating to God. And the new way is this it. It's the constant, moment by moment, reliance on the finished work of Christ.
[00:28:05] And so Paul says, look, even though I live in the flesh, I live by and through faith in Christ.
[00:28:13] So that version of you and me, that sort of plays the game of we keep track of our spiritual stats.
[00:28:24] Ever done that where you look and you go, listen, I read the Bible 15 minutes this morning. That's good.
[00:28:33] But then I lied.
[00:28:35] That's bad.
[00:28:36] But then I took an envelope off that wall, and it's a big one.
[00:28:43] That's good.
[00:28:45] We've done it, right? Or maybe just me.
[00:28:48] And so we kind of keep track and we go, where am I at? What's the scoreboard? How am I doing? Paul says, look, that's what you need to do.
[00:28:57] You don't need to keep checking your spiritual stats. Why? Because we need to look at the cross.
[00:29:04] And when we look at the cross, we see Jesus, who, as Paul says, loved us and gave himself for us.
[00:29:12] I think that's the big point Paul's trying to make. He's trying to say, look, it's not about you or I.
[00:29:18] It's not about us being good enough and doing enough. It leads us back to the cross over and, and over and over and over. And that's a good thing, because at the cross, we had that exchange. We had salvation. We have everything that we need. Our security is based on his record, not ours.
[00:29:42] That's good news, because I'm going to tell you right now, if it's based on my record, we're not going far. Okay? It's based on Christ. And I know we get that and we hear that and we're sitting here and, and we're thinking, yeah, that's true. Like, I believe it, I want to. And then we leave and we go home and we go to our communities and we go to our jobs and we go. We go out to life, so to speak. And we're like, well, how do we. How do we practically apply this? Because that should change our perspective on a lot of different things, should change our perspective on who we are, our failures, successes, our purpose.
[00:30:22] But what does it look like? 2. So what's for us? Number one, we need to trust God's verdict over our lives.
[00:30:31] And this is a statement that kind of cuts two ways.
[00:30:35] Every human being has a verdict over their life.
[00:30:39] If you have not accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, then the verdict over your life is. Is guilty.
[00:30:51] And there's nothing you can do to make up for that guilt. You can't give enough, you can't do enough. You can't try hard enough. You can't do it.
[00:31:02] And so we need to trust the verdict. This the. The positive side of that. If we have accepted Christ, then the verdict over our life is not guilty.
[00:31:14] That's what Paul said. We're justified. God has declared us right with himself, and we need to trust in that.
[00:31:22] And it's just again, an encouragement to stop trying to earn or supplement or justify yourself. It's secure.
[00:31:32] You've got it. Trust it.
[00:31:35] When I was teaching high school Bible, I'd have kids come up sometimes and they say, Mr. Bolling, am I saved?
[00:31:43] It's a heavy question, right? And usually they'd ask it, like, right during passing period when we had like three, three minutes. And I'm like.
[00:31:51] And I think the point of that question is, am I saved? If you have accepted Christ, yes.
[00:31:58] If he's Lord of your life, yes. And we're going to talk about struggle, doubt, et cetera in a second. But yes, yes, trust that verdict. The second thing goes with this, and it's this, stay anchored into the true gospel.
[00:32:14] Martin Luther said, the human heart is a factory of idols in an unfortunate reality. I'll borrow Paul's language here, as we live life in the flesh is you and I are pretty good at making idols. Now, we don't talk about it, we don't maybe share it, but if we're honest, we look at our hearts, we're good at saying, look, I love Jesus, but I also try really hard.
[00:32:40] And that equals right standing or I love Jesus and I'm a really good person. On top of that, I didn't say what I was thinking.
[00:32:52] That makes me righteous with God. Or we might have a lot of religious knowledge.
[00:33:00] We know a lot about the Bible, we know a lot about Christianity, or we might be practice. It doesn't matter if it's Jesus plus anything else, it's not the true gospel, because the true gospel is Jesus plus nothing else.
[00:33:16] And so when we talk about being anchored in the true gospel, I just want to make a point of clarity. Here it is. Wrestling with doubt or struggling to believe is not a rejection of the gospel.
[00:33:31] Matter of fact, what I would argue is wrestling and struggling and going to the Word and seeking and talking to people is part of that gravitational pull of the Holy Spirit back to Christ.
[00:33:44] And it's okay to have questions, it's okay to have doubts if it's leading you back to the gospel.
[00:33:53] And so I don't want us to leave here feeling like, man, I'm wrestling, I'm struggling. I'm not sure because it's not again, about our performance.
[00:34:01] It's not about being perfect.
[00:34:04] What it's about is letting that gospel, the true gospel of faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone, keep us anchored.
[00:34:15] What I would encourage us to do is when we come up on things and we've created a false gospel or an idol, we confess it.
[00:34:24] Lord, man, you know, I'm trying again.
[00:34:27] Lord, I apologize, I.
[00:34:29] Whatever.
[00:34:31] And then we keep relying back on what we know to be true, that we're anchored in the true gospel.
[00:34:40] Here's what I'll say to wrap up.
[00:34:42] I think one of the big encouragement here is that we can stop trying to build a case for our own righteousness, like we no longer need to go to God and try to plead our case, so to speak.
[00:34:59] Why? Because through salvation we are justified. He's already said we are right with him.
[00:35:07] Maybe to say it this way is the debt is paid, the verdict is in.
[00:35:11] If you've accepted Christ, you're not guilty.
[00:35:15] You're not guilty.
[00:35:17] And we need to let that gospel, like we talked about, that gravitational pull, pull us back.
[00:35:23] Pull us back. Let's pray together.
[00:35:26] Heavenly Father, we thank you for the truth of this word. Lord Jesus, we thank you that it is you plus nothing else. Lord, just if we're followers of you, let us be grateful that we've been able to exchange unrighteousness for your righteousness.
[00:35:47] Lord, let. Let us be people that are grounded in the truth that we are right with you.
[00:35:55] We don't have to earn it. We don't have to do anything else, Lord.
[00:36:01] Lord, as we leave today and we go back to our homes and communities, Lord, I just ask that you would help us to be Jesus, what you call salt and light, that we are people that share this truth and this freedom of the gospel. Lord.
[00:36:18] People in our homes, people in our work, people at our schools, people wherever we are. Lord, this is such good news.
[00:36:26] Lord, we thank you again for your word and we pray this in your name. Amen.
