04 Galatians 3:1-14 Two arguments for justification by faith

Speaker: This is Wednesday in the Word, a women's ministry of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. Today is September 28, 2011. Our passage is Galatians chapter 3, verses 1 through 14, and our teacher is Krisan Marotta. For more talks in this series, please visit our website at www.wednesdayintheword.com. Today we are in Galatians chapter 3, verses 1 through 14. This is the kind of the third section of the book. So let me just review where we are for those of you who are new, and just because I like to help you remember the context. So in chapter 1, Paul introduced three main themes of the book, his three themes, which are his gospel, the gospel of justification by faith alone, his authority to preach that gospel, so who he is and how he got it, and then the freedom the gospel brings. And that that one we haven't hit yet. We'll get that more in chapters four and five. So he denounces those who are distorting the gospel and says that even if an angel from heaven preaches a different gospel, then he should be accursed. And he claims you can recognize the gospel by its substance, its source, and its result. So its substance is grace based on the blood of Christ, its source is divine revelation, and its result is freedom. So then in chapter 2, he reviews his biography and he argued that the gospel he preaches is not a man-made gospel. He got it directly from God. God revealed himself, and he reviews his biography to make that point that he didn't learn this at the feet of some rabbi, he didn't learn this from the other apostles, he was taught it by Jesus. And even when he and Peter disagree, as we looked at last week, Peter repented of his view, and Paul's view was vindicated. So now we get to chapter 3, and it begins, 3 and 4 are kind of a one, I in the way I outline it is one big section of the book. And I put the outline up here, it's on both boards. So if you if you want to write it down or if you just want to see where we're headed, so the section that starts in 3.1 and goes to the end of chapter 4, he's gonna give five arguments for justification by faith alone. And each one is based on something different. So we're gonna look at the first two today. In 3.1 to 6, he argues based on Christian experience. In 3.7 through 14, he argues based on scripture. That's his second argument. In 3.15 to 22, he gives his third argument, which is an appeal to common sense. And then there's a parentheses, he digresses from 3.23 to 4.11, and he answers what's the purpose of the law. So that's why that's in parentheses, that's kind of a digression. His fourth argument is in 412 through 20, and he argues based on the nature of his relationship to the Gentiles or to the Galatians, so based on their past experience together. And then his last argument, 422 to 31, he basically returns to Scripture, but he kind of argues on these great themes that run throughout the Bible. So that's where we're headed over the next uh two or three weeks. We're gonna look at those arguments and remember that each one he's arguing for justification by faith alone. And in each one of these, we're gonna see him take two ideas and contrast them. So he's gonna use different language, but he's all making the same point. So today he's gonna contrast the works of the law versus hearing with faith. We're gonna see him contrast the spirit and flesh, the blessing, the curse, the law, the promise, and sonship and slavery. You don't have to write all those down. They will be coming up as we go through. But in each one, what I want you to notice is he puts these two ideas in opposition to each other, contrasts them, and he makes the same point. We are justified by faith alone. So each of these dichotomies is kind of a different illustration or different nuance to argue that the gospel he preaches is not a man-made gospel. It was revealed by God. God spoke to us and revealed himself, and that what he said is you will be justified by faith alone and not anything else. So that's where we're headed. So we're going to look at what are we looking at today? The first two arguments, 3, 1 through 14. Alright, so uh if you turn to your text, if you have it on the Galatians site, it's page 15, or um, if you don't, there are Bibles on the back shelf. So he starts out and he says, You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? So this is, he's starting a new section, Galatians 3.1. He says, Look, you embrace the truth, and now you're turning away from it. Your actions no longer match what you believe. You have been seduced by the teaching of the Judaizers. So when you first heard the gospel, that is, we are sinners saved by grace alone, you believed it, but now you've been bewitched or fooled, and and you're uh been fooled into thinking that to continue in faith you have to keep the law. And he says basically, this is foolish. The language about before whose eyes Jesus was portrayed as crucified, I think he's saying you heard they may or may not have physically seen the resurrection, but he's saying you know about it, you heard what happened, and you know the significance of it. So you've seen that this gospel message was confirmed by the crucifixion and the resurrection. So it was validated, I think is the sense. So how could you be so foolish as to turn away from it? So that's kind of the thesis statement, and now he's going to give five arguments for why they it's foolish to turn away from it, and we're gonna look at the first two today. So let's look at two through five. He says, look, examine your own experience. And Galatians 3, 2. This is the only thing I want to find out from you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? So there's our two contrasts. Notice how many times these phrases come up today. So did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? Does he then who provides with you who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? So this is the first contrast. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? And it's important to make sure we understand what he means by the two options. This is how John Stott summarizes it in his commentary. He says it's important to be clear about the possible alternatives which the apostle terms by works of the law, i.e. obeying the law's demands, or by hearing with faith, believing the gospel message. This is the difference. The law says do this, the gospel says Christ has done it all. The law requires works of human achievement, the gospel requires faith in Christ's achievement. The law makes demands and bids us obey. The gospel brings promises and bids us believe. So the law and the gospel are contrary to each other. They are not two aspects of the same thing or interpretations of the same Christianity. So we're gonna we're gonna flesh those out a little bit. But you see, one says do this, and the other says Christ did it all. One says, obey fully, completely, the other says, believe. So they're two different options. It's a little very similar to his argument that we saw at the end of chapter two, where he was asking, How are you justified? What did do you do to receive the spirit? Now he's looking at a slightly different angle and he's saying, on what basis did God give you the spirit? Did he give it to you because you finally got your act together and you finally started, you know, cleaning up all the things that were wrong in your life, and because of your outstanding exemplary life and your ability to keep the law, he gave you the spirit. Is that what happened? And of course the answer he expects is no. So, to paraphrase two through five, it would be something like this: just tell me this. Did you receive the spirit? That is the sign and seal that God has accepted you. That's what he means by the spirit. You got the spirit when you were justified and God forgave you. So, did you receive that because you kept the Mosaic law on your own efforts, or because you believed the gospel that you heard from me? The gospel that God promised to justify you by Christ's death? Are you so foolish? How can you believe that a person who's been justified because of his faith will now be perfected by keeping the law? Did you suffer so many persecutions because of your faith only to reject it? Does God who gives you, this is verse 5, gives you his spirit and do miracles in your midst do this because you keep the law or because you've believed? So he's appealing to their experience and he's saying, look at your own life. Did the spirit take up residence in your heart because you finally got your act together? Because you started looking better and you changed the way you talked and who you hang out with on Friday nights, and you got better educated, or you or you started associating with a better class of friends, or you started reading the right books, or getting rid of all the bad stuff in your life. And the answer I expects is no, of course not. The Spirit came first. You got the Spirit, and then any changes that happened started happening. It was after the Spirit changed your heart that you may have changed who you hang out with on Friday nights, or you may have started cleaning up your act, not before. So God accomplishes all the changes in your life, and what did you contribute to it? Nothing. You believed. So you received the Holy Spirit because you believed, not because you kept the law. And if you were justified by faith, are you so foolish to think that you will now be sanctified by your own ability to keep the law? So that's his first argument. He says, look at your own lives, what was true in your own lives. And now he's going to say that experience is confirmed by Scripture. So let's look at 6 through 9. Even so, Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteous. So even so, just like your experience, Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, All the nations shall be blessed in you. So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham the believer. So I think this is actually a brilliant counter argument to the Judaizers. Because the Judaizers were in effect claiming, look, Jesus came after Moses. Jesus couldn't nullify what Moses did. So we know that Moses gave us the law. The law came first, Jesus came after. So we still have to keep the law because Jesus didn't change any of that. And so Paul's saying, okay, you want to go back? Let's go back. Let's go look at Abraham. Abraham came before Moses. And you want to be a child of Abraham, you want to be like him, one of his descendants. Let's look at who the real children of Abraham are. And he basically says, the real children of Abraham are those who have faith like him. So the question is, he's contrasting two different groups of people, those who are of faith and those who aren't, or those who are under God's blessing and those who are not. And he says, What makes the difference between those? Which one are you in? Are you in, do you are you a child of blessing because of your skillful ability to keep the law or because of your faith? And he says, it's because of your faith, and it's always been this way. Look what happened to Abraham. God promised Abraham the blessing would come to all nations through him. Abraham believed God, and God declared Abraham righteous because of his faith. So Abraham did nothing to deserve the blessings. He had not kept the law, the law had not yet been given. He was not yet circumcised. If you go through Genesis, you'll find that comes about 15 or so years after the promises are made. So God blessed Abraham simply because Abraham believed. And he's arguing the true sons of Abraham are those who share his faith. So the true sons of Abraham are not those who are physically, genetically related to him, but they are those who have the same faith he has. So let me paraphrase six through nine. He says, Even Abraham, the father of our nation, was justified by his faith and not by works. That's six. So seven. So be clear that it's not a matter of being a physical descendant of Abraham that makes you Abraham's child. Rather, it's being like Abraham, having the same faith he had. And verse eight, the Scripture predicted that God would justify the Gentiles by faith. The good news that God would save his chosen by faith was proclaimed to Abraham when the Scripture said, All nations will receive the blessing of justification and the Spirit by being among Abraham's people, that is, by having the same faith. So then any who have faith receive the blessing of being a part of Abraham's people. So he's he's argued by their experience. Now he says, Let's look at Scripture, and he says, Abraham was justified by his faith, and now he's going to take the converse of that in 10 through 14 and say, Those who live by the law are cursed by the law. If you're trying to be justified by keeping the law, you will fail and you will be under the curse. So let's look at 10 through 14. For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law and do them. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith. But the law is not of faith, rather, the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. Now, that's kind of hard to follow him through all that language. He's quoting a lot of scripture. But so let me try to see if I can go through his argument. Basically he's saying, if you think that your actions, so if you think your sincere, noble effort to keep the law is going to make you acceptable to God, consider the requirement. The requirement is don't even fail once. Notice 3.10, curse be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law. So that's the way the law works. If you succeed a thousand times in a row, and then you fail once because you're having a bad day, you lose everything. It doesn't matter how well you did before that, if you fail once, it was for nothing. The standard of the law is not reasonably close, it's all of it all the time, inside and out. So it's not just your outward actions, it's your inward motivations. It's not just that you've refrained from lying or murdering or cheating, it's also the flip side that you love the Lord God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and that everything you do comes out of that love. None of us can keep that standard. He says, that's why the law can never bring life. It only brings curses, because none of us is capable of keeping the law. So in verse 10, when he quotes, he's quoting Deuteronomy 27, 26, and he says, everyone who does not keep the law in its entirety is cursed is cursed. To curse means to reject. It basically means to reject what we talked about last week of God turning his back on us, to put up yourself, you become, you move under God's wrath. Now that sounds really harsh to us, I think, today, because we're used to hearing the message God loves you. You know, that's kind of the popular message over the airways and the televisions and in the books. And it is true that God loves you, but the message is not just God loves you. The message is God loves you enough to die for you while you were his enemy, while you were under the curse, while you were under his judgment. So scripture teaches that it does not teach that God is like Father Christmas or some sugar daddy who's just up there waiting to shower blessings on you for no apparent reason, but it teaches that God is a righteous judge who hates evil and hates wickedness, and that evil and wickedness and sin place us under God's judgment and bring death and condemnation, and that everyone, every human who ever lived, with the exception of Jesus, is under God's wrath. All of us have sinned, all of us have failed in the law, all of us are cursed. So Paul's argument is if you're trying to get to God and be acceptable by God by keeping the law, you will not make it. So the message of the gospel is not God loves you just the way you are, the message is God loves you in spite of the way you are, because you're under a curse. But fortunately, for us, there's an alternative, which he spells out in verses 13 and 14, and that is there's a way to escape that curse, and that is to put your faith in Jesus Christ, because he did for us what we could never do for ourselves. He kept the law perfectly, and that perfect life is counted on our account, and then he died for us, and his death pays the penalty for our sins, and therefore God can forgive us. Now he quotes Deuteronomy 21, 23 in what verse is that? Cursed is he who hangs on a tree. Let me just review what he's talking about there. Criminals who were sentenced to death under the Mosaic law were usually executed by stoning. But after they were dead, their bodies were staked to a tree as a symbol of the fact that they had broken the covenant and that they were under God's curse. So being staked to the tree was a symbol of the fact that they were rejected. So it's not because they were hanged or they were cursed. That's not the way it works. They were cursed because they broke the law, they broke the covenant, but then the symbol of breaking of that law breaking and that covenant breaking was being usually staked to a tree or hung from a tree. And now Paul's making an analogy there. Crucifixion is not exactly identical to the to being staked on a tree, but Paul's saying Christ's death can be described as being hanged on the tree because he died under a curse, a curse he did not deserve. He died cursed for our sins, not his own. And he took our curse upon it upon himself. Follow me through all that. So let me just summarize where we've gone we've gone through here. Paul says, look at your own experience. What happened in your own life? Did you receive the spirit because you finally got your act together and finally started keeping the law and doing a really good job? Or because you heard the gospel that Jesus died in your place and believed it? And he, of course, expects the answer, you received the Spirit because you believed. Then he says, and what does Scripture teach? Scripture teaches exactly what you saw in your own life. Go back to Abraham. Abraham believed, and God counted it to him as righteous. So from the very beginning, righteousness came through faith, and God promised that all those who had faith like Abraham would be blessed, and that those who fail to keep the law are cursed, but Jesus took the curse for us so we can be saved through faith. Now you're probably saying, okay, what about the law? Why would he give us the law then in between? And he's gonna, we're gonna get to that. He's gonna go through a whole digression of why did God give us the law then. So that's the passage. Now we're gonna say, okay, so what does this mean for us today? And we're gonna have another theology lesson, because I love them, and I hope you do too. And I have to warn you, in our fall session in Galatians, we're gonna tip a lot more heavily to the theology side, but after Christmas, when we get to James, we're gonna tip a lot more heavily to application. And that's one of the reasons we paired these two books together. Because James assumes you know all this theology that we're studying here with Paul, and then he says, if all that's true, this is what your life should look like. This is how it's gonna play out. So we're but Paul does he gets a little more application in five and six, but for now he's just trying to get the theology. So we're gonna tip a little more heavily theology this fall, but take heart if theology is hard for you. We're gonna tip more to application next uh after Christmas. Okay, so in our passage last week, you'll remember Paul defined justification by faith alone. And now in our passage today, he's giving us the first or two of his five arguments of why this is true and you cannot be sanctified by keeping the law. Last week we spent a lot of time defining justification. So this week I want to build on that and define atonement. What does atonement mean? So, or what does justification accomplish for us? When I say I'm justified, what have I gained? Okay, so atonement means simply means. The satisfaction or reparation of a wrong. So when you atone for a wrong, you put it right. Or when you atone for an injury, you make reparations for it. So to atone for something is to make amends or to compensate for a wrong. It's a legal term. And it means some crime has been committed, some debt has been incurred, some injury has been done, and to atone for it is to put it right. So when we say Christ's death was an atoning sacrifice, which you'll probably hear a lot, that's one of our Christian jargon phrases, it means that Christ's death legally compensated for our debt. It righted the wrong that we committed, or it satisfied our debt to God's justice. So atonement involves two things. And somebody asked this last week. Here you go. Propitiation and expiation. What's the difference between those? Here's the way I think of them. I always get these confused. Propitiation is the vertical part of what Christ did for us. So propitiation is directed at God the Father. Expiation is the horizontal part, it's directed at us. So propitiation means God, or Christ's action turned away God's wrath. So it refers to the part of what Christ did for us that satisfies God's wrath. So it's directed upward. Expiation is the part of what Christ did for us that removes our debt. So it means to compensate or to repay or to make amends for. So Christ's death did two things. On our side of the equation, it removed our debt. So expiation is directed at us. On God's side of the equation, it removed his wrath. That's propitiation. It's directed at God. So those are all your great theological terms. So here's another thing you can throw out in your Starbucks text. You know, ask someone what they think about that. You know. So atonement covers both of them. When we talk of aton about atonement, we're talking about both propitiation and expiation. Alright? Follow me so far? There's great theological words. So you don't have to go to seminary. You can just come to Wednesday and the Word. I'll throw it all out there in bits and pieces. Okay, so there are three theories of atonement in church history. You should probably know about. One view is that the atonement was not necessary. You can achieve salvation without grace and without the cross. This view was first put forth by Pelagius in the fourth century, and you may have heard about a fame the famous debates between Augustine or Saint who we call St. Augustine and Pelagius. He was condemned as a heretic very early on, and he's still thought of as a heretic today. So this view is almost universally seen as heretical. But it's em well, well there's let me just explain what he thought. He basically took the view that moral responsibility by definition meant moral ability. So he said, look, it would be unjust of God to require his creatures to be righteous and not give them the ability to be righteous. So he was his concern was try to try to prefer preserve God's integrity. So if God requires moral perfection in people, they must be able to achieve it. So he argued grace facilitated that quest for holiness, but was not necessary, and that a few individuals actually got there on their own without grace and without the cross. But for most of us, we need the we need grace to kind of help us along. So that's heresy. In fact, he was condemned as a heretic very early on, and he's still considered heretical today. So I'm not going to spend too much time on that view, just but just to let you know that it's out there and you may run into it. So that was the first theory of atonement. The second theory of atonement is what is called, is that it was hypothetically necessary. So Pelagius says it wasn't necessary. The second view is that it was only hypothetically necessary. And this is actually pretty popular today, but not the classical Orthodox view. So under this view, theologians and scholars would say, well, there were lots of ways God could have redeemed us. So he could have maybe there were a hundred different ways and means he could have redeemed us and solved this problem of his wrath, but he chose to reconcile us by the cross. So the cross is hypothetically necessary because that's the way God picked. So we have this problem of sin. This problem of sin must be solved. And God picked atonement through the cross of all the available options to solve that problem. So, for instance, he could have just chosen to look the other way and overlook our sins. But he didn't, he committed himself to this course of action through the cross, and once he committed himself, now it's necessary because he promised. And when God promises something, now it's necessary. So that's what they mean by hypothetically necessary. It's only necessary because God promised to do it this way. The problem we have with this, at least I do and a lot of theologians, is what are the available alternatives? And no one that I know of has has come up with an alternative that does not also raise a huge theological problem. For instance, the one we d discussed last week, could God just overlook our sins and say, that's okay, you failed, but we'll just look the other way. Most people say, well, how can a just God look at evil and sweep it under the carpet? Doesn't that compromise his holiness? Doesn't that compromise his justice? And I every argument people have come up with that says this is an alternative has a big problem like that. It compromises God's character. So I don't think anyone's come up with a possible alternative without a theological sticky wicket. So the first argument about atonement is it was not necessary, that was heretical. The second one is that it's hypothetically necessary. Most people disagree with that, but it's still out there. And then the third, and this is the classical Orthodox view, it's is that the atonement was absolutely necessary. And this is not just a reformed view, this is many different denominations hold this. So this view would say the only way anyone could ever be redeemed and forgiven and enter the kingdom of God is through the atoning sacrifice of Christ. There was no other way. There is no other alternative. This was the only solution, and God did it for us. So Christ's life and death were absolutely necessary. If anyone is to be enslaved, if anyone is to have redemption, it had to come through the cross. So let's let's review why. So let me just review. We talked about this last week, my my hand analogy, where where we are, if this is us, my left hand is us, and my right hand is God. We start in the garden, face to face with God, in fellowship with Him. The problem is we sin, so that's as if we turn our backs on God. And when we sin, there are two consequences. The first is now we experience death. All the fall and the brokenness enters the world. So the bitterness, the war, the anger, the frustration, broken relationships, uh, pain, suffering, tragedy, all that enters the world because we have now sinned. But the second consequence is that God turns us his back on us. This is what Paul means by we are now under a curse or we are under God's wrath. He says, this is not just unfortunate that you rebelled, this is wrong. You've committed a crime. There's a debt to justice that now must be paid. So this is our problem. How do we get back to God? If we could turn around and get our act together, that Paul says that would be one way, but nobody can do that. So we have to have this problem solved of God's wrath. And what Jesus does is he pays the penalty for our sins, which satisfies God's wrath, so that he can now turn around and once again offer us life and fellowship, and then he forgives us and turns us back to him. So justification is this act of satisfying our debt to justice. And the way we get to justification is atonement. Christ on our side removed our debt and on God's side removed God's wrath. And that that's the wait, propitiation and expiation. No, wait, this hand, propitiation. Whichever hand I can't remember now which one I chose. But you get the idea. So God has the authority to define right and wrong. He has the authority to impose obligation on us to say, you will be holy because I am holy. And when we fail to be holy, he has the authority to impose a penalty for that. It's impossible for us to pay back that debt, if you think about it, because how righteous and how moral are we called to be? Well, Paul just said in 3.10, completely. You have to keep all the law all the time inside and out. So if I'm called to be perfect and I sin once, what must I do to now become perfect? I mean, if you think about it that way, having failed, having sinned once, what do I do to make up for that? So if I become imperfect, what do I do to make myself perfect? How much interest or payment can I make in addition to the principle to overcome that debt? If you think of it economically, nothing. There's nothing I can do. Having become imperfect, I am now imperfect. I can't do the impossible and make myself perfect. Now, our culture likes to get around this and say, well, you know, nobody's perfect. We all deserve a second chance, and and um so you know, God will, you know, reasonably close is good enough. But now we have the problem of who says we deserve a second chance. That's not in the Bible. God never says second chance is deserved. In fact, mercy and grace by their very nature mean we don't deserve it. So it's ridiculous to say, why do we deserve a second chance? We don't deserve anything. And even if we did deserve a second chance, aren't we on like our millionth chance by now? I mean, two is just not gonna cut it. So it's not like we have this one tiny little blemish marring an otherwise noble and perfect character. Scripture says we are completely woefully inadequate. We have been or what reformed theology would say totally depraved. That is, sin infects every single corner of our being, and there is no part of us that is unscathed or untouched by sin. That's what they mean by total depravity, is not that you are the most wicked person you could ever be. It's that there is no corner of goodness. So there's no divine spark, or there's no, you know, little piece of your soul that has left, been left perfect and untouched. It's that through and through, inside and out, we are sinful. So second chances won't do us any good. We have a debt and it's impossible to pay. So the that's an important distinction to keep in mind. So if you think of it economically, we're the debtor, God is the creditor, he's the one to whom the debt is owed. And he is the injured party. Now think about that. Most of the time we think we're the injured party, we're the but we're the ones in the rebellion. We're the ones that broke the promises, but we walk around going, How could God do that to me? You know, why did he let that happen to me and my life? Doesn't he recognize I don't deserve any of this? You know, we we act as if we're the injured party and we rail against him for how could he let that happen? But the Bible says he's the injured party. We're the ones that broke the covenant, he's the one to whom the covenant was owed. He is not required to save us. We rebelled, he's the injured party. So if we're the debtor, God's the creditor, he's the one to whom we own the debt, just to give you one more economic analogy, you might hear in theology terms, Christ is the surety. And the surety is an economic term which means he co-signs the note. So if you're a parent and you're you buy your help your child buy a car, you might be the surety on that loan. That is, you agree to pay the debt when the child fails to pay. So the idea is that we have a debt, we cannot pay, but Christ has agreed to pay it on our behalf. So as mediator, then he stands in the middle, he reconciles us to God by bringing us back together, and um by paying our debt and by removing God's wrath. Now, a mediator assumes there's two parties and there's a broken relationship, so let's think about who's mad at whom in our broken relationship, because this is another point where I think it's instructive. There's a sense in which we're mad at God because we've rebelled against him and we've broken his covenants. But is it appropriate to say that God is mad at us? That that's not a very popular concept today. In fact, there's a whole movement called the emergent church which would like to just sweep the wrath of God under the under the rug or hide it in the theological closet because they don't want to talk about God being mad at us. But the Bible speaks very clearly of God's wrath, and that God's wrath is a real thing, that he despises sin, that he despises evil, he hates unjustice, and the righteous and just response to that sin is wrath. He's the injured party, he's justly angered by sin. Now you may hear the theory that some people try to get around this by saying, well, it's God the Father who's angry, but Jesus the Son is not. And Jesus so identifies with us and so closely understands our human frailty, and he's so long-suffering and compassionate that he sides with us and kind of calms the Father down who's kind of irrationally angry. You can find this. I think that's a distortion of what atonement is, and it introduces a split into the trim trinity, as if God the Father and God the Son could disagree over what the right thing to do is. But there is a theory of atonement that is Jesus kind of mollifies the Father because he understands how you know uh weak we are. The problem with that is who gave us the mediator? I mean, think about the most famous verse of the Bible. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. So who sent Jesus to solve this problem for us? God did. He's the one that that started this whole plan of redemption. Um the Bible doesn't teach that Jesus kind of had to get in between us to mollify God's anger, but that God loved us enough to figure out how to solve this problem to send his beloved son to save us, and they act in in unity. Okay. So where are we? We're running out of time. Okay, so in atonement, God is the judge, Christ is the mediator, and he he comes to be judged in our place. Now, this is where grace is so wonderful and so uh glorious. We've argued that the atonement was absolutely necessary. Someone had to pay the penalty for our sin, someone had to keep the covenant and live life the live life perfectly in obedience to the covenant. We were incapable of doing that. Christ did it for us, but here's the real kicker. Did God have to accept that? Did God have to take Christ's death in our place? The theological answer is no. He did not have to. Nothing required him to accept a substitute. But that's what grace is all about. That's what mercy is all about. It's that God judges the crime, establishes the debt that must be paid, and then in an incredible act of grace, which he never had to do, he agrees to accept someone else's payment on our behalf. And that's what makes grace so amazing. Because he didn't have to. There was nothing on our part that required it. He could have said, Good job, Jesus, you all should have lived up to what he did. Thanks, see you in hell, you know. But he loved us too much for that. His character is so long-suffering and so patient and so holy that he loved us enough to do that. So the atonement was absolutely necessary because justice had to be satisfied. It was the only way the covenant would be fulfilled, but we are unable to fill it. I'm going to skip that. And the overwhelming good news is that we deserve none of this. It's an act of grace and mercy. So God was not required to send his son to die in our place. Jesus was not required to willingly pay the price for our sins, but they both loved us enough to do this. And this is what Paul's arguing in 3 1 through 14. Christ's death was enough. It was enough to solve the problem. As verse 3 implies, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? So if this all came to you, this incredible, wonderful blessing came to you simply because you believed, what makes you think now you have to earn the rest of it? You don't have to earn the rest of it. So having been justified by grace alone and faith alone on the basis of Christ's righteousness alone, you are not now required to add something to it. So it's not now faith plus works, or Christ's righteousness plus ours, or grace plus merit. It's grace alone, faith alone, on Christ's righteousness alone. That's the point he's trying to make. Okay, let me stop there and give you some time to ask questions.