06 Why Christ’s Cross Is Enough to Save You (Galatians 3:1-14)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today we'll be studying Galatians chapter 3, verses 1 through 14, and this is the sixth talk in my series on the book of Galatians. Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below this podcast. You can also find them by going directly to Wednesdayintheword.com slash Galatians 6. Glad to have you along. Today we start the third chapter of the book of Galatians, and this is the main body of his letter. Just to review where we are, Paul wrote this letter to churches who are abandoning the gospel in favor of law keeping. A group called the Judaizers came to those churches and taught them that belief in Christ is not enough. They must also keep the law and live like Jews. And Paul is writing to correct that. In the first two chapters, Paul defended his authority to preach the gospel and the authenticity of his gospel. He argued that he did not invent the gospel, nor did he learn it from any other human being. Instead, he received the gospel through revelation from Jesus Christ. He was called and given authority by Jesus to preach the gospel, and so they can have utter confidence in the gospel he taught them. Now in chapter three, Paul's going to confront this issue head on. We're in a section of the book that starts in 3.1 and runs all the way through 431. And in this section, Paul gives five, I think, very persuasive arguments for the fact that we are justified by faith alone. And here's the outline of this section. You don't have to write it down. All of this is in the lecture notes. In Galatians 3, 1 through 5, he argues from experience. Then in 3, 6 through 14, he argues that their experience is confirmed by Scripture. His third argument is 3.15 through 22, where he appeals to common sense. After that, he gives what's kind of a parenthesis where he goes into an explanation of the purpose of the law. That section runs from 323 to 411. Then he gives his fourth argument in 412 through 20, where he argues based on the nature of his relationship to them. And then his fifth argument is 421 through 31, where he uses a story from biblical history as an illustration. Now we're going to look at each of those arguments in the weeks ahead. As we go through them, notice all the dichotomies. Paul puts two ideas side by side and contrasts them. And the overall contrast is between the true gospel and the false gospel. But he'll contrast justification by faith with justification by self-effort. We are told we have to choose between the works of the law and hearing with faith. He'll contrast the flesh and the spirit, the blessing and the curse, the law and the promise, sonship and slavery. And all these phrases are pointing to the same idea, and that is the difference between Paul's gospel and the false gospel of the Judaizers, or any other gospel that fails to understand the cross. Today we're going to look at the first two arguments, 3-1 through 5, which is Paul's argument from experience, and then 6 through 14, where he argues that that experience is confirmed by Scripture. We'll start in 3.1. O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. This is the point that Paul is going to support through the rest of these arguments. They are foolish because they are giving up something God has given them and they're getting nothing in return. Paul's saying, I thought you understood the significance of the cross, but now you're going back to law keeping. He asks rhetorically, who has confused you? How could you be so silly as to abandon the grace offered by the cross? And the significance of the cross is at the very heart of this dispute with the Judaizers. The issue on the table is whether the cross of Christ is enough to save us or whether we must also keep the law. The Galatians have been fooled by the teaching of the Judaizers. When Paul first taught them the gospel, that we are sinners, saved by grace through faith in Jesus, they believed it. And Paul explained who Jesus was, how he died on the cross, and how God accepted his death as payment for our guilt. But now they've been bewitched or fooled by the view that in order to be pleasing to God they have to be circumcised and keep the law. And Paul says, this is foolishness. The truth of the cross was plainly displayed before you. So to paraphrase verse one, he says, You foolish Galatians, why have you forgotten what you first believed, as though those who were troubling you had cast a spell on you? Especially since you heard the message about Christ's death and resurrection, how could you be so foolish as to turn away from it? And now Paul's going to give his first argument for justification by faith. And his main point is the cross of Jesus is enough to save us. We don't need to add anything to it. All we need to do is believe. And his first argument is basically examine your own experience. How is it you came to be saved? So let's read Galatians 3, 2 through 5. Let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by 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 who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? So Paul starts and he challenges them. Look at your own lives. On what basis did God give you the spirit? And I think he's using the Holy Spirit here as a sign and a seal of God's accepting them. On what basis did God give you the Spirit, I think is a shorthand way of saying, on what basis were you saved? So his first argument is look at your own life. Did God give you the Spirit because of your outstanding exemplary lifestyle and your ability to keep the law? Or did he give you the spirit because you recognized your sinfulness and put your trust in the finished work of Christ? And this is the first of our contrast. Did you receive the spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? And let's walk through these verses to get the logic of his argument. 3 2, let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or hearing by faith? He's saying, just tell me this. Did God save you because you kept the Mosaic Law by your own effort, or because you believed the message you heard from me, Paul, that God has promised to justify you by Christ's death? And then 3.3, are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? So he's saying, Are you so foolish? How can you believe that people who have been justified because of their faith can now complete their salvation by keeping the Mosaic Law? So this phrase in verse 3, perfected in the flesh, I think is a reference to circumcision. Just like he was using the Holy Spirit as a sign of belief, I think he's using circumcision as a sign of keeping the law. Circumcision is literally a mark on your body, and the Judaizers were teaching them that they couldn't be complete or pleasing to God until they accepted that mark on their body. And Paul's saying, stop and think about it. If God accepted you and gave you his spirit, why do you need a mark on your body made by human hands? Any human being can circumcise any other human being, but only God can give you his spirit. And if God has marked you with his spirit, why are you now seeking a mark made by human hands? God has spoken. God wasn't bothered by the fact that you weren't circumcised when he gave you his spirit. What makes you think that he wants you to be circumcised now? And then four and five, did you suffer so many things in vain? If indeed it was in vain, does he who supplies the spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? So in four, did you suffer so many persecutions because of your faith, only to reject that faith? People hated you and mocked you for your new faith. They persecuted you because you called on the name of Jesus. Are you going to reject that name now after you endured so much? And then five, did God miraculously give you his spirit and do miracles in your midst because you kept the Mosaic Law or because you believed his message of justification by faith? So Paul's whole point in this little section is look at your own life. How did you get accepted? How did God mark you as his own? Did God accept you because you finally got your act together? Because you changed the way you talked, where you hang out on Friday nights, because you got your act together and kept the law and became better educated and started associating with a better class of friends. You started reading the right books and getting rid of all that bad stuff in your life? No, of course not. The Spirit came first. Any and all changes that happened in your life came after the Spirit changed your heart, not before. God accomplished all those changes in your life, and what did you contribute to it? Nothing. All you did was believe. You received the Holy Spirit because you believed, not because you kept the law. If you were justified because of faith, how can you be so foolish as to think that now you have to please God by keeping the law? If he wasn't pleased with you, he wouldn't have given you his spirit. Because Jesus paid the price for your guilt on the cross, you were reconciled to God and God granted you his spirit. God did not give you his spirit because you kept the law, and he's not withholding his spirit now, waiting for you to start keeping the law. God gave you his spirit because you heard the gospel about the cross of Jesus Christ and you believed it. Now having invited them to look at their own lives and judge their own experience, he continues his argument by saying, Look, your experience is confirmed by Scripture. Let's look at three, five through nine. Does he who supplies the spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Know then that it is those 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, In you shall all the nations be blessed. So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. Now Paul is going back to Abraham as a brilliant counterargument to the Judaizers. Implicit in the argument of the Judaizers is this idea, well Moses came first. Jesus came after Moses. Therefore, Jesus can't change or nullify the law because the law of Moses came first, and therefore we still have to keep it. And Paul says, wait a minute, if you want to go back, if you want to look at what came first, let's go back to the beginning of Jewish history, to Abraham. Abraham lived before Moses. You want to be a child of Abraham? Well, let's just look at the children of Abraham. The real children of Abraham are those who have the same faith that Abraham had. Abraham believed and God justified him. God counted his belief to him as justification, as righteousness. Salvation has always been based on faith. And here again he's going to contrast two different groups of people, those who are under God's blessing in 6 through 9, and those who are under God's curse in 10 through 14. And the question he's challenging them with is what places you in one group or the other? Are you under God's blessing because of your skillful ability to keep the law or because you have faith? And Paul is arguing, salvation has never come by keeping the law, it has always come by faith. And we know this because this is what happened to Abraham. God promised Abraham that he would make Abraham a great nation. He would give that nation a land and he would bless all the other nations of the earth through Abraham. Abraham believed God. We know Abraham believed God, in part because when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham obeyed. Without Isaac, as far as Abraham knew, it would be impossible for God to keep his promise. And yet, Abraham was so convinced that God would keep his promise somehow, someway, Abraham obeyed. God declared Abraham justified because of that faith. Abraham did nothing to deserve the blessings. His actions demonstrated his faith, but he was still a sinner. He had not kept the law, the law hadn't even been invented yet. The law's going to come hundreds of years later. Instead, God blessed Abraham simply because Abraham believed. And the true children of Abraham, the true sons of Abraham, are those who share his faith. Salvation doesn't automatically flow to those who are his physical genetic descendants. Rather, it comes to those who, like Abraham, have the same faith. So that's an overview of this little section. Let me walk through the verses to show you how he gets there. So 3.6, just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, even Abraham, the father of our nation, was justified by means of his faith and not by keeping the law. Abraham believed the promises of God, and God counted that to him as justification. Then 3 7, know then it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. So to be clear, being a child of Abraham is not a matter of being a physical descendant of Abraham, but rather being like Abraham in having the same faith. 3.8, and the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, In you all the nations will be blessed. So in Scripture predicted that God would justify the Gentiles because of their faith, the good news that God would save all his chosen people by faith was proclaimed to Abraham when the Scripture said all the nations will receive the blessing of eternal life and the Spirit by being among Abraham's people, that is, by having faith like Abraham had. 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. So in this section, Paul's saying, Look, if you think all that law keeping is going to make you acceptable to God, then consider the requirement. The requirement of the law is no failure, not even one. Note 310, who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law and do them. That's the way the law works. If you succeed a thousand times in a row, but then you fail once because you know you're having a bad day, you're you're out. You lose everything. No matter how well you did before that, if you fail once, it was all for nothing. The standard of the law is not reasonably close. The standard of the law is you must be holy, all of it, all the time, not just in your outward actions, but also in your inward attitude and your motivation. That's why the law can never bring life. The law can teach us what it means to live a holy life, but the law can't change the fact that we're sinners. And the more we try to keep it, the more we realize how sinful we are. The law can only bring curses because it can't change the fact that we're sinners. In verse 10, Paul is quoting Deuteronomy 27, 26, which pronounces everyone who does not keep the law in its entirety cursed. To curse means to reject. And that sounds really harsh to those of us who are accustomed to hearing only the message God loves you. And it's true that God loves you, but that message alone is not complete. The more complete message is God loved you enough to die for you while you were his enemy under his wrath. God is not some Father Christmas or cosmic sugar daddy, rather scripture teaches us that God is a righteous judge who hates evil and wickedness. Being evil and being wicked and being sinners places us under God's judgment and brings death and condemnation. Every human being who's ever lived, with the exception of Jesus Christ, is under God's wrath. All of us have sinned, all of us have failed to keep the law, and if we're going to be judged by the law, we will be found guilty. No one can gain God's favor by keeping the law. The message of the gospel is not God loves you the way you are, the message of the gospel is God loves you in spite of the way you are, because you are evil, sinful, and unable to keep the law. But God loved you enough to provide another means to justify you, and that is grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Let's walk through the verses in this section. 310. 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 things written in the book of the law and do them. So everyone who tries to seek God's favor by keeping the law is cursed and falls under God's wrath, because the law tells us everyone who does not keep all of the law in its entirety is cursed. three eleven. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith. Since no one has ever been able to keep the entire law, and the law itself makes provisions for our guilt with guilt offerings, it is evident that no one will escape God's wrath by law keeping. Instead, as the Scripture says, those who have faith will be justified and escape God's wrath. three twelve, but the law is not of faith, rather the one who does them shall live by them. The law doesn't have any provision for how. Having faith. The law only says, keep all the law and you will live. Failure to keep the law places us under God's wrath. None of us are able to keep the law, so we are under his wrath. Fortunately, there is an alternative, which is in thirteen through fourteen. The only way to escape this curse is to put your faith in Jesus Christ, because Christ did for us on the cross what we could never do for ourselves. Then thirteen and fourteen, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is everyone who's hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive to the promised spirit through faith. So here Paul's quoting Deuteronomy 21 through 23, cursed is he who hangs on a tree. Criminals sentenced to death under the Mosaic law were usually executed by stoning and then staked to a tree or hanged on a tree as a symbol of divine rejection. So it's not that the criminal was cursed because he was hanged on a tree. He was hanged on a tree as a symbol of the fact that he was cursed. Now being staked to a tree in the law is different than a Roman crucifixion, but that's kind of irrelevant to Paul's point. Christ's death is described as being hanged on a tree to recognize the fact that he died under the curse. The crucial difference is Jesus did not die cursed for his own sins, he died cursed for our sins. So let me walk through the logic of twelve through fourteen. But the law is not of faith, rather the one who does them shall live by them. The law has no provision for faith. You have to keep all of it all the time. Failure is not allowed. If you seek to be justified by keeping the law, you must keep all the law, no exceptions, no second chances, a reasonably close, sincere effort is not enough. Then 13. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who's hanged on a tree. So how do we escape God's wrath? How do we escape being judged and found guilty under the law? Well, Christ rescued us, he paid the penalty for us, he took the curse on himself by dying in our place, and God accepted his death as payment for our sins. And 14, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith. Christ died for us so that Gentiles might receive the same blessing of eternal life that Abraham received. Because Jesus paid the price for our sins and rescued us from our guilt, reconciling us to God. Now we are in God's favor and he can give us his spirit, and all of this comes about by faith. So to summarize, Paul says, first, look at your own experience. How is it that you got the Spirit of God? How did He save you? Did He save you because you got your act together and finally started keeping the law? Or because you believed the gospel that Jesus died in your place? Well, of course, you received the Spirit because you had faith. And second, what does the Scripture teach? Well, the Scripture teaches that Abraham believed and God justified him because of that belief. From the beginning, justification has come through faith, and God promised that all those who had faith like Abraham would be blessed. By contrast, those who seek to be justified by keeping the law will fail and they are cursed. But Jesus took the curse for us so that we might be saved through faith. To close, I want to spend a little bit of time explaining the atonement or what justification accomplishes for us. This is going to be another kind of brief theology lesson, and if you're not interested, you can go ahead and fast forward to the end. But I think it's kind of interesting. First, let me define some terms. Atonement is the legal term for compensation of a wrong. To atone for something is to make amends or to compensate. So when we talk about Christ's death as our atonement, or we might say his death was an atoning sacrifice, we're saying that Christ's death compensated for or satisfied our debt to justice. Atonement involves both propitiation and expiation. Let me define those for you. Propitiation is the part of Christ's death, which is directed at God the Father. I like to think of that as the vertical part. Propitiation is the turning away of God's wrath. So it refers to Christ's work on our behalf, which satisfies the wrath of God. Expiation is the part of Christ's action that is directed at us. I like to think of that as the horizontal part of Christ's action. Expiation is the part of Christ's work that removed our debt to sin. So it compensated for our debt, it repaid our debt, it made amends for our death. So you might hear people say Christ's death expiated our debt to sin. Expiation is directed at us, propitiation is directed at God, and the concept of atonement includes both of those ideas. Now there have been three basic theories of atonement in church history. One view is that the atonement was not necessary. This view would claim that we can achieve salvation without grace and without the cross of Christ. And this view was put forth in the about the fourth century by a man named Pelagius. He had a very famous debate with Saint Augustine. And Pelagius believed that by definition, moral responsibility carried with it moral ability. In other words, he argued it would be unjust for God to require his creatures to do something we are not capable of doing. So if God requires moral perfection or holiness in people, Pelagius believed we must be able to achieve it. So he argued that grace facilitates our quest for holiness, but grace is not necessary to reach it. Now Pelagius' views were condemned as a heresy very early on, and they're still considered heretical today. So I'm not going to spend any more time on them. The second view of the atonement, so Pelagius' view that it wasn't necessary, is the first. The second view of the atonement is that it was only hypothetically necessary. Proponents of this view would say God could have redeemed us by any number of different methods. There are lots of them out there, but he chose to reconcile us by the cross. So we have this problem of sin that must be solved. And there are many possible solutions. And among all those many solutions, God picked atonement through the cross from all those options. Now the main argument against this view is what other alternatives are there? Every alternative to the cross that we have come up with so far also creates a theological problem. For instance, one idea is that God could just overlook sin. He could just say, okay, yes, you're a sinner, but I forgive you anyway. But that compromises God's integrity and his justice. I'm not going to spend time going through alternative theories of the atonement. I don't believe anyone yet has come up with a possible alternative to the atoning work of Christ that does not also create a theological sticky wicket. The first theory of the atonement is that it was not necessary, and that was condemned and still is condemned as heresy. The second view is that it's only hypothetically necessary, but that view has a lot of problems with it. And the third, and this is the classical Orthodox view, is that the atonement is absolutely necessary. The only way anyone could be forgiven and enter the kingdom of God is through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Christ's life and death and resurrection are absolutely necessary if anyone is to be saved and are in fact the only way God could bring about our redemption. Let's try to explore why. And this is going to be kind of a brief introduction to the topic. There are whole books written on the theory of the atonement, and if you're interested, there are lots of good ones out there to be read. I'm just going to give you the top-level view. So the atonement is absolutely necessary. Why? Well, sin is both an act of rebellion and a crime. And as we've talked about, there are two consequences to our sin. The first is that we will now experience death and evil and futility and all the corruption of this world. And the second is that we are under God's wrath. God gave us over to our sins so that we are prisoners of sin and death, and we are unable to escape sin through our own efforts. God has authority to define right and wrong. He has the authority to impose obligations on his creatures. And he does that. He gives us commands describing and explaining what holiness requires. And he has said that we need to be holy like he is holy. So in this relationship where we have rebelled, we are the debtors and God is the creditor. We owe a debt, we owe a penalty for our sin to God, but it is impossible for us to pay that debt. God calls us to be sinless and perfect, and we are not. If I'm called to be morally perfect and I sin once, what can I now do to become perfect? What do I have to do to become perfect after I have once been imperfect? I can't. I can't do anything. It's impossible. There's no going back in time and undoing it. Now our culture likes to say, oh, but nobody's perfect. We all deserve a second chance. But where does God say anyone deserves a second chance? Mercy and grace by their very nature are things we do not deserve. It's ridiculous to say on one level we deserve a second chance. We're sinners, we don't deserve anything. But even if we did, what good would it do? We used up our second chance a long time ago. We're on our millionth chance by now. It's not like we have one tiny little blemish marring our otherwise noble and perfect efforts. Scripture says we are woefully and completely evil and sinful. Theologians call this concept total depravity, and all that means is that the sin that infects us infects our entire being totally. There is no corner left unscathed. We are completely sinful through and through. There's no one pure corner of our soul, there's no divine spark deep within us that we can use to muster up some holiness. We are sinful through and through. Second chances won't do any good because we're sinful and we have a debt that is impossible to pay. Now, in our relationship, God is the injured party, and that's an important distinction to keep in sight. God is the injured party, not us. We are the ones in rebellion. We're the ones who broke our promises and failed to keep the law and turned our back on God and rejected him. God has never broken a promise to us. God has never treated us unjustly. Scripture uses the metaphor of God as the faithful, loving husband, and we, his people, are the adulterous wife. Now we say we believe this, but you meet people every day who are angry at God and say, How can God let this happen to me? How can God fail to recognize that I do not deserve this? But we have to recognize the Bible teaches that we don't deserve any blessings from God. He owes us nothing. He is not required to save us or rain down blessings upon us. We rebelled, he's the injured party. So people are the debtor, we owe a debt to God's justice, we're guilty, and the price must be paid. God is our creditor and Christ is the surety. Now surety is an economic term. To say Christ is our surety is to say he's the one who cosigns the note. He takes our debt on himself. So if a parent buys their child a car and co-signs the loan on the car, the parent is the surety. The parent agrees to pay off the debt when and if the child fails to pay. Well, we have a debt we cannot pay, and Christ is agreeing to pay it on our behalf. So the role Christ plays in our redemption is mediator. He stands in the middle between us and God. Now, mediation involves two concepts that are crucial to biblical theology. The first is reconciliation. One job of the mediator is to bring two estranged parties back together to heal the breach between them. Now remember, who's mad at whom? Well, there is a sense in which we're mad at God because we rebelled against him and broke his covenants. But more importantly, God is mad at us. We are under his wrath. Talking about God's wrath is not a very popular concept today. The American Church in particular would like to ignore the wrath of God and keep that doctrine safely hidden in the theological closet. But the Bible speaks repeatedly of the wrath of God. God despises and hates sin. His completely rational and justified response to sin is wrath. He is the injured party and is justly angered by our sin. Now some modern theologians try to dismiss God's wrath by saying, God the Father is angry, but Jesus Christ the Son is not. Jesus the Son identifies so closely with our human need and fallenness and is so long-suffering and compassionate that he sides with us and calms down the Father who's angry. So he mullifies the Father by offering himself in our place, as if the Father and the Son could disagree over the right thing to do. That can be a pretty popular understanding of Christ's mediation, but I think it distorts what the Bible teaches. The problem is whose idea was it to give us a mediator? Whose idea was it to send the Son? Well, the Bible is pretty clear on that point. Probably the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3.16, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish, but find eternal life. And there are other verses we could look at, but the Bible teaches that the Father is the one who sends the Son. It is God's idea to give us the Son for our redemption. Jesus Christ did not have to talk him into it. So the first job of a mediator is to reconcile the two parties. The second job of a mediator is to satisfy justice. In the atonement, God is the judge, Christ is the mediator. Before the ascension, Christ comes under God's judgment. He comes to be judged in our place. Now, is God obligated to accept Christ's death in our place? No. That's what makes it grace. God the judge has to agree that someone else can pay our debt, and he graciously agrees to accept Christ's death on our part. So God judges the crime, establishes the debt that must be paid, and then in an incredible act of mercy and grace, agrees to accept Christ's death on our behalf. So atonement was absolutely necessary because justice must be satisfied. In an act of amazing grace, God agrees to accept Christ's perfect life in place of our fallen life and his death in payment for our sin. Christ fulfills the covenant by living a perfect, sinless life in our place, and then his death on the cross pays the penalty for our sin. This is why Christ's death is often referred to as a ransom. When Jesus summarizes his mission, he says to the twelve in Mark 10, 45, for even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. A ransom is a payment made to set someone free. It was the price paid to release a slave from bondage or the price paid to free prisoners of war taken in military conflicts. And a redeemer is the one who pays the ransom. The question is who sets the price that must be paid? The price tag is not set by some neutral third party. The price tag is set by the victor, the military victor, the slaveholder, or in our case, the one harmed. It's up to the redeemer to pay that price. The redeemer must decide whether or not he's willing to pay the price that's been set. So God sets the price, he's the injured party. Jesus is the redeemer who pays that price, and that price is paid to the injured party, the one to whom the debt is owed, and that's the Father. He's the one we rebelled against. Ransom involves both substitution and satisfaction. Christ's death substituted for our own, and it satisfies God's wrath, and that brings us right back to expiation and propitiation. Expiation removes our guilt. Christ's death pays the price for our sin and that removes our guilt by paying the ransom for our sins. Propitiation removes the judgment against us. Propitiation is the satisfaction of God's justice or the satisfaction of his wrath that reconciles us to him. So you could think of expiation as the payment of the ransom and propitiation as the acceptance of that payment. Now, of course, the overwhelming, wonderful good news is we deserved none of this. This is all an act of grace and mercy. God was not required to send his son to die in our place, and Jesus was not required to willingly pay the price for our sin. But God loved us enough to ask Jesus to do this, and Jesus loved us enough to die for us. And that's what's so amazing about grace. And what Paul is arguing in Galatians 3, 1 through 14 is Christ's death was enough. We don't need to add anything to it. We can't complete it by keeping the law. The only thing we must do is believe, trust and accept Christ's death on our behalf. Nothing else is needed. It's not grace plus merit. It's not faith plus law-keeping. It's not Christ's righteousness plus our righteousness. It is grace alone, faith alone, in Christ alone. You've been listening to the Wednesday and the Word podcast. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means, but how we figure it out. Please follow, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast app. The more people who do that, the easier it is for others to find us. But more important than ratings and reviews, please tell a friend what you learned. And if you can, tell them where you learned it. You can hear all previous episodes in this series and find many other series on my website, Wednesdayintheword.com. Our theme music is graciously provided by my friend and favorite musician Reggie Coates. You can find his music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Chris Anmirata, and I hope I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word. In the meantime, I hope you find some time to visit my website, Wednesdayandheword.com, and take advantage of some of my free Bible study materials.