03 Galatians 2:11-21 Paul confronts Peter

Speaker: This is Wednesday in the Word, a women's ministry of the Presbyterian Word, and Charles over Jones. Today is September 21st, 2011. Our passage is Galatians chapter 2, verses 11 through 21, and our teacher is Krisan Marotta. Our passage today is Galatians chapter 2, verses 11 through 21, and it's quite a switch from last week. Last week we went over Paul's autobiography as he defended both the authenticity of the gospel that he preached and his authority to preach it. And he took kind of great pains to show that the gospel he received was not man-made. It was not something he invented or learned at a rabbi's feet or a hu a human teacher. Instead, it was revealed by God. So God revealed himself to Paul, to the other apostles, and therefore we can have absolute confidence that this is the actual, real, true gospel. And then after reviewing that history, he went on to say he later went to Jerusalem, met with the other apostles, and they confirmed that what he was teaching was the same gospel. They agreed with him and gave him the right hand of fellowship. So last week we were in Jerusalem, which was the center of the Jewish church. This week we're going to be in Antioch, which is the center of the Gentile church. Last week you had Paul visiting Jerusalem with Peter, James, and John there and receiving the right hand of fellowship. This week we're going to see Peter visit Antioch, and Paul and Peter are going to have a disagreement. Paul will oppose him to his face. So it's like the exact opposite of what we're doing. So you have two apostles, two godly wise men, both of whom knew what it was to be forgiven a lot, a great sin, both of whom knew Christ. They were both given a special office and an authority to preach the gospel. They were both known for their leadership, Peter to the Jews and Paul to the Gentiles. They've both been used by God, and now they're in open public conflict. So this isn't supposed to happen in the church, right? We're not, especially not at the apostolic level. We're not supposed to see this kind of disagreement. And if it does happen, that's the kind of thing we want to kind of hide under the rug, you know, or maybe hide in the closet and say we don't want to broadcast it in a letter to multiple churches, right? So why is Paul doing this? That's the question we're going to try to answer. What did he think that we should learn from this kind of conflict? So the questions we're going to look at today is we're going to look at both Paul and Peter and ask, what did he do, why did he do it, and what was the result? So we're going to ask those three questions. What did he do? Why did he do it? What was the result? And then we're going to say, why air this disagreement in public? What did Paul expect the Galatians to learn from it? And therefore, what are we supposed to learn? So that's where we're headed. And we're just going to go through, as my favorite way to go through a passage verse by verse, and we're going to take it in chunks. So we're going to start with Peter and look at verses eleven through thirteen. But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with Gentiles, but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. Let me just pause for a minute. Does everybody have a booklet? And when if they're if you are new and didn't get one, they're on the back table. And there's a Galatians side and a James side. So make sure you're on the Galatian side. Page 12 is where we are. Okay, so here, Cephas is another name for Peter. I I we mentioned that last week, but just in case you didn't know, it's just another name for Peter. So Peter comes to Antioch, which is the center of the Gentile church at this point in history. And he is eating with Gentiles. So the verb in verse 12 he was eating implies this was a habit. This was a regular practice of his. And the meals probably included both the ordinary kind of like dinner or supper meals as well as communion or what we are the Lord's Supper. So he is freely associating with the Gentiles, and then a Jewish delegation comes from Jerusalem, and Peter stops eating with the Gentiles. Now, most likely these men were part of the Judaizers. This is the group we've been talking about who were teaching at this time that if a Gentile came to faith, that was great, but now they have to keep the law. So faith is the starting point, but now they have to keep the law of Moses. That includes being circumcised and includes the dietary laws, which is why Paul calls them the circumcision party. They're the group that believes you have to keep the law. Now the phrase from James most likely means from Jerusalem. It's a shorthand for Jerusalem because James at this point was the head of the church in Jerusalem. And it I don't think it means that James believed what this party believed, and we know this primarily because of last week's passage where Paul and James are in complete agreement. Paul says he went to Jerusalem. It's prior to this. He meets with James, John, and Peter, and they say, we absolutely agree with your message. We also know this from Acts 15, which is the Council of Jerusalem. If you don't, there's a whole bunch of Bibles on the back shelf if you want to look this up. I keep referring to Acts 15, so I thought it was time we actually read it. So if you have a Bible, turn there keep your finger in your book and then turn to Acts 15 for a minute. This records what's known as the Council of Jerusalem, which was basically a meeting of all the leaders of the church to settle this issue. So I'm going to read you Acts 15, 1 through 6. But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. So that's a summary of the circumcision party's view. They were saying, if you want to be saved, you have to keep the law of Moses. And after Paul and Barnabas had no small discussion and debate with them, which has to be a huge understatement, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. So being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, It is necessary to circumcise them in order and to order them to keep the law of Moses. The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. So the debate between these two groups has become so fierce that they decide we're going to have to meet and settle this. So they're having like a a council. Paul and Barnabas and the others go to Jerusalem to meet with the leaders of the Jerusalem church, which included James, Peter, and John, and they say, okay, we've got to settle this once and for all. So Acts 15 then goes on to give us Peter's speech. And do you want me to read this? Yeah. There is a Chevy cavalier with their lights on in the parking lot. So you might want to go get it. It's locked. So you can get home today. Thank you. Yeah, this would be the day because you that early morning fog. Okay, so Acts 15 then goes on to give us Peter's speech, where he argues against this practice, argues against the necess the necessity of being circumcised, and then it closes with James speaking, um, and he specifically disagrees with this passage. So from those that bit of evidence, we can assume that the men from James in Galatians 2 are from Jerusalem, but that James does not agree with them. So they are from James in the sense that they came from the area where he was ahead. Alright, so we're back in Galatians 2. So Peter's been sharing meals with the Gentiles. Um then the men from Jerusalem come and he stops. And the question is, why does he stop? So prior to this event, we first I want to say we know what Peter believed on the issue. We have in Acts 15 his record of his speech where he says, There's no more barrier between Jew and Gentile, the law is not necessary. And prior to this this event, Peter was given a direct special revelation on this very subject, which is in Acts 10. So if you want to look at Acts 10 while you're still in Acts, Peter is praying on the rooftop when he has a vision and the sky opens up and a sheet or an object like a sheet filled with all kinds of animals appears, lowers down and God tells him to eat, and Peter says, I can't eat. Those are unclean. I've never eaten anything unclean. And Acts 10, 15 and 16 says, and again a voice came to him a second time, what God has cleansed no longer consider unholy. And this happened three times, and immediately the object was taken up into the sky. So after this vision, Gentile messengers appear at the gate and they say, We were told by vision and revelation to come and get you and to bring you to the home of Cornelius, who's a Gentile. Now the dietary laws were so strict that Peter could not have entered this man's home, let alone eat with him. But he's just had this vision. He goes to the home of Cornelius, he stays with him, he preaches the gospel to him, and at the end he summarizes what he's learned. So this is Acts 10, 34, and 35. And opening his mouth, Peter said, I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears him and does what is right is welcome to him. So we have two recorded instances from Peter's own mouth that he believes that the barrier between Jew and Gentiles no longer applies, the laws that separate them no longer implies, what God has cleansed is no longer unholy. And he has been living this out. He has been eating with Gentiles, so why does he stop? If he hasn't had a theological change, why does he stop? Well, I think the clues are in Paul's speech, which we're going to look at in a minute. Paul accuses Peter of hypocrisy. So he's saying, you believe one thing and you're doing another. You're not living what you believed. And that's what Paul challenges Peter on. So his offense is not living in line with what he believes. He withdraws from fellowship with the Gentiles, not because suddenly he's changed his mind about what theology is proper, but he's afraid what these people are going to think of him. So these people from Jerusalem come and he fears their reaction, so he stops doing what he knows is right. He still believes the gospel, but he's failing to practice what he believes. And the result then is in 213, the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisies. So other people follow Peter's example, including Barnabas. So one commentator described it as the young Christian church was in danger of having one Lord but two tables, which I thought was a great way to picture it. So we have one Lord, but we have this kind of separate but equal divide where the Jewish believers have one table and the Gentile believers have another and we're separated. And that, of course, would have serious implications for the future. So Peter, here's what he did. He was leading with Gentiles. He stops because he fears what men will think of him, and the result is people are carried away by hypocrisy. So now let's look at what Paul does. This is verse 14. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cebus before them all, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? Okay, that's kind of a lot of Jew and Gentiles let's sort that out. So Paul takes a stand. He opposes Peter to his face publicly and says, You are clearly in the wrong. Now, think about that. Think of who Peter was and who Paul was. Paul does not hesitate, even though he knew that Peter was one of the pillars of the church, as he described him last week. He knew that Peter had been an apostle before him. He knew that Peter had seen the risen Lord, and also walked and talked and studied with him while before his death and resurrection, an opportunity Paul had never been granted. He most certainly knew that Peter was one of the inner circle, one of those closest to Jesus during his time on earth, and yet Paul still opposes him. None of that deters him. He says, No, I will speak publicly and openly to Peter. So why did he do this? Is you know, he's just being kind of a rabble rouser or something. He tells us himself in 2.14, when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel. So he's saying the very heart of the gospel is at stake. This is not a trivial philosophical question. This is the heart of the gospel. So this is not a debate over, you know, should we eat meat or be vegetarians or should we have this kind of music or that kind of music? This is a fundamental issue of salvation. And the image he uses is literally walking straight. So the idea is if you have this straight line and they are no longer walking on it, they have deviated from the path. So that's what this not in step with the truth of the gospel, the metaphor he's using is they have deviated from the path. So the result of his actions in confronting Peter, we're not told explicitly, but I think we can assume that Peter repented. It's implied. And we know from later history Peter did continue to eat freely with Gentiles, and he cited against the Judaizers at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, so I think we can safely conclude that Peter recognized the error of his ways and repented. Now there is some debate. Did Paul write this letter before or after the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15? And my own I mean, you can read pages and pages in the commentaries on that, but my own conclusions is that this must have been written before the council. That it anticipates this debate growing stronger, but it the meeting has not yet happened. Some scholars think Paul was actually en route to the council while he was writing this letter, that they were that close in time. I don't know, but I think they were pretty close. The fact that Paul does not mention the council, I think means it hasn't yet happened, and the fact that at the council Peter is back walking in the straight line, I think makes it likely that this letter comes first. Because once the issue has been settled, why would Peter fear the party of the circumcision? He would have that behind him to say, but the issue's been debated publicly at the church and this side has won. So I think all the events that Paul's writing about now must have happened before the council. Okay, so now we're going to spend the rest of the time looking at Paul's reasoning because I think that's where we're clearly that's where we're going to learn what he expects us to learn. So in 214 he says, if you, though a Jew, live like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? So got that perfectly clear, right? What he's saying is law-keeping didn't get you anywhere in terms of salvation. So why are you now going back to it? So if you were a Jew, you were from the people given the law, taught the law, given that advantage of understanding God's law and his character, and you learn through that experience, it doesn't work. I can't please God by keeping the law on my own, then why would you require the Gentiles to try it? You know it doesn't work. See that? So he's basically saying you tried law keeping and it failed. And if you as a Jew tried it and it failed and had to give it up and look for a better way and learned you can't please God through keeping the law, how can you now ask the Gentiles to try to keep the law? So he goes on to explain what we call the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And this is the outline. So 14, 15, and 16 he gives his main point. He's going to define justification by faith. And 17 through 21, he's going to give an objection to that view and answer that objection. So that's where we're headed. So let's keep looking at his reasoning in 15 and 16. We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. 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. Okay, so let me f paraphrase that one for you. So we ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. We were born into a culture which knew God. So from birth, we had the advantage of being born into a culture which knew who God was and was taught to seek God. We were not born into a pagan culture, the Gentiles, that had no knowledge of God. So we had this advantage from birth, and yet we learned that no one can please God by keeping the Mosaic covenant. So we learned that the only way to be justified is by having faith in Jesus Christ. So if even we who had this advantage of knowing the law and knowing God through the law learned that we had to trust in Christ, since no nobody can be justified by law-keeping. Now notice the word justified is used three times in that in that one verse. He contrasts justified by works with justified by faith. So in order to, we have to make sure we know what he means. What is justification? What does it mean to be justified by works of the law and justified by faith? So let me give you my my famous hand picture here. It's not famous at all, but I like to call it that. So if my what is this, my left hand is us and my right hand is God, before the fall, we're in face, we're face to face with God. We're in fellowship with him, we're reconciled to him. And so I have my hand. For those of you in NP3 land, I have my palms facing forward facing each other. So we start face to face with God, but the problem is we rebel. So we turn our backs on God, so I've turned my hand away. And we say, look, I want I don't want you to be God and tell me what's right and wrong. I want to be God of my life. I'm going to decide right and wrong. And that's that's the fall. That's our rebellion. There are two consequences of that. The first consequence is we now experience death. So death in all its forms strife, bitterness, brokenness, uh, loss, pain, anger, uh, war, office politics, you know, all the bad stuff. So life is now broken and fallen. That's the first consequence. But there's a second consequence, and that is God turns his back on us. So now I've got my hands back to back. God says, what you did is not just unfortunate, it is wrong. It is morally wrong, it's a crime, and justice must be paid. So now we have a big problem. Now we're now we're back to back with God. There is no life. So the Bible uses the term God gave us over to our sins, or God made us prisoners of our sin and death. So that if we could now, I don't believe we could, can, apart from God's grace, but if we could turn around and face God at this point, we still have this problem that He's not offering life anymore. There's a price that must be paid. So there is a legal crime that is committed and a legal remedy must solve it. So this is the wrath of God. So the natural consequence of our sin is death. The judicial consequence is we are now prisoners of our sin and death. God's justice must be satisfied. Okay, follow me so far? So justification is to have this debt satisfied so that God can turn around. So it's to be in right standing with God. So to be justified is to have our debt to justice paid so that God can turn around and face us once more. So it's to have that legal problem solved. Fortunately for us, you know the answer to this. Christ solves that for us, and then God draws us back to Him. So we are back in grace and peace and reconciliation. So to be justified then is to have that debt to justice paid for you, or to have that criminal penalty solved. And you are now once again in right standing with God. The question is, how do you get there? How does you get that penalty paid? So it's clear you have to be justified. The question is how? And in Galatians 2, Paul says you've got two options. You can be justified by works of the law, or you can be justified through faith in Christ. And he's just told us option one doesn't work. The law doesn't work. If you're counting on that to get you there to solve this problem, it will not work. So by justified by works of the law, Law, he means keeping the entire law, the sum total of all God's commands. So you have to do everything the law commands and refrain from doing everything the law for forbids. So it's not just the Ten Commandments, it's all the dietary laws, the ceremonial laws, be circumcised, join the Jewish church, inside and out. So it's not just how you look on the outside, it's how you are on the inside. And if you do all those things all the time without failing, then it'll work. Good luck with that. And the problem is it only takes one mistake. So it's not like you get 99% of it done, and but oops, that 1%, sorry. God says the standard is perfection. One mistake disqualifies you. So a sincere, noble, reasonable effort is not good enough. And if you are seeking to be justified through that, it will not work. Now, when we were little, uh when we were little, when my kids were little, we tried to explain this to them, and we the thing we came up with is they have broken choosers. So the thing inside you that makes you choose right from wrong is broken because we're in this position where we're under God's wrath. He's the only one that can teach us life and right and wrong and goodness, and he's not doing it anymore because the judicial penalty must be solved. So I can't just decide now I'm going to choose good because my chooser is broken. It doesn't know right from wrong. It doesn't know what's truly good. It chooses selfishness over sacrifice and selfishness over love. So we cannot keep the law because we're it's theologically impossible, it's metaphorically impossible, it's intrinsically impossible. We don't have what's in the we don't have what it takes because our chooser is broken. The only person who can fix our broken chooser is God. So you can never be justified by keeping the law on your own efforts. And notice how Paul repeats this in verse 16. He repeats it three times and he changes it slightly each time. He says, We know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus. So we have the generic a person, anyone, any person, any man, woman, or child. Then he says, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by the law. So he changes it to the personal. We have believed, we've seen this in our own experience. It's more than a theological argument. We have seen it ourselves, tried it in our lives, and we know it to be true in our own experience. We've put it to the test in our lives and found it true, and then he summarizes, because by the works of the law no one will be justified, and there he is quoting Psalm 143.2. So he has this general principle confirmed by personal testimony and backed up by scripture. And the idea is all mankind without exception, no one can be justified by the law. So it doesn't matter your social standing, your educational background, your societal privilege, or your lack of privilege, your race, your occupation, doesn't matter. No one can be justified by works of the law. Okay, so then he goes into the argument against him. It's one of the arguments his critics were using, and he's going to refuse it. So in 217, but if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not. So his critics say, wait a minute, if we don't have to keep the law, then we can go sin boldly. We can just go sin all we want, and God will forgive us. And that means Christ is a minister of sin. Your gospel is actually promoting sinful behavior, and we know that a holy and righteous God would not promote sinful behavior, so your gospel must be wrong. That's the charge he's answering. That's what he means by is Christ then a servant of sin? Is he promoting sin? So if the burden of keeping the law no longer is on our shoulders, can we just act as we please? And Paul says absolutely not. And this is his answer to that. 18. For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. So if I rebuild what I tore down, if I go back to trying to keep the law, if I go back to trying to just prove that I am justified by keeping the law, all that happens is I prove I'm a sinner because I will fail. And once again, so what's the result of law keeping? I can't do it 24-7-365 inside and outside, so I will fail. For through the law, I died to the law that I might live to God. That's verse 19. So the law taught me that I was not righteous. Trying to keep it showed me my repeated failure, so I died to the law. That is, I gave up that kind of life. I quit trying to please God by keeping the law. That's what he means by I died to it, and now I live for God. That is, I put my faith in Jesus as the way to please God. So I gave up that lifestyle, and I'm now seeking a different way. I'm seeking faith in Jesus. Verse 20. I've been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I live now I live in the flesh. And the life I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So I've agree I've been crucified with Christ. That is, I agree that the penal that sin deserves death, that the penalty for sin is crucif is death on the cross. I agree with that. I recognize I'm a sinner. I I would be there. That is that is the just and righteous response of God to my sin. That's I think what his metaphor is. I've accepted that. I no longer, um, how did I paraphrase this? So I've accepted that Christ died on the cross in my place, and I no longer try to please God by keeping the law on my own. Instead, I trust that Christ will produce life in me, that God will change me from the inside out. So any law-keeping that I do now is a result of God working in my life, not the cause of God working in my life. So I'm trusting that he will make me righteous through his process of changing me, not that I have to make myself righteous in order to gain his blessing. So that's I think what he's talking about, the life I now live, I live by faith. I'm seeking to holiness through faith, not through my own efforts. I'm counting on the Son of God who loved me enough to die in my place. So this is well, his argument is basically, you think that justification is like a criminal who gets off on a technicality and says, Great, now I'm going back to my life of crime. But the metaphor is more the prostitute has been freed from slavery and despair and now is free. So the gospel doesn't mean that I cannot sin again. It means I don't want to sin again. I agree with that life, that that life is horrible. I want it, I agree that I should have been crucified. I no longer want that kind of life. Instead, I want a whole different kind of life. So we, as Jesus says, we now hunger and thirst for righteousness. We have the desire for goodness and holiness. We've been freed from that prison. So why would I pursue sin? The very thing I want to get off my back when because when part I'm getting lost in my own sentence, part of the gift is that I no longer want to sin, that now I want holiness and righteousness. So now when I sin I grieve over it as opposed to just saying, well, that's how it goes. So we have metaphorically died to that way of life. Everything is different because we are different, because we have been given the desire to love God, to be freed from sin, the hunger and thirsting for righteousness, and miracle of miracles is now it will work. Because God is in the process of changing us from the inside out. So because of Christ's death on the cross, God can now turn back to face us. He calls us to him, gives us his Holy Spirit, and begins the process of making us righteous. So now we're back in this position of grace and reconciliation, of grace and peace. And the great news is it works now because we have what it takes. We have the Holy Spirit working within us to change us from the inside out. Okay. So let me just review where we are in the book, and then I'm we're gonna have a little theology lesson as our application. So remember, Paul started this book this letter by saying, You Galatians, you're turning away to a different gospel. And what are you doing? There's only one gospel, and if even an angel from heaven preaches a different one, he's wrong, let him be accursed. Then he argues that the gospel he received was from God, so we can trust it. He argues that when he went to Jerusalem, the other apostles agreed with him that uh he was teaching the right gospel, and when there was conflict with one of the apostles and open public conflict, he was again vindicated. Peter repented and his gospel was again vindicated. So, having laid that foundation and now defined doc this doctrine of justification by faith, the next two chapters he's gonna spend arguing for them. So, to get what's coming in three and four, we have to make sure we understand justification by faith, and that's why I want to spend our last couple minutes on giving you uh a small theology lesson because it's the foundation. To move on, this is what we need. So it's central to Paul's argument in our passage today, and it's gonna be central in the next two chapters. So we're gonna talk about justification by faith alone, or if you want the Latin term, I put it up here, it's sola fide. Sola is Latin for alone, and fidee comes from the word fidelis, which means is the word for faithful or faith. And I give you that so you can impress your friends, you know. It's fun to know the Latin for all these theological terms. So we're gonna have a couple more, so the next time you know you're out in, you know, like at Starbucks having coffee with your friends, you can say, oh, on Wednesday when we were discussing forensics justification, and just throw that out and see what they say. It's a lot of fun. So this is important, solafide or the justification by faith alone. It was the central assertion of Martin Luther that provoked the Reformation or the 16th century debate, which led to what we call the Protestant Reformation. It's one of the main themes of Reformed theology, though it is shared by many, many other theologies. So this is and this is not a debate over, you know, how many angels can dance on the head of a pen. This is the central issue of salvation. So Luther called this the article upon which the church stands or fails. If we lose this, we lose everything. Calvin said this was the doctrine, he called this doctrine the hinge on which everything in the Christian life turns. So if we get this wrong, we've we have turned the wrong direction, we've missed anything, everything. And in our own day, J.I. Packer described this doctrine, he likened it to Atlas, the mythical figure who had the world on his shoulders. And his analogy was this is Atlas carried the world on his shoulders, so this is the doctrine upon which everything else rests. If we miss this, we've missed everything. It touches the very heart of the gospel. So I think it's important to spend some time on it. Even though it may be familiar to you, it's so central to the faith that I want to make sure you know what it is and what it isn't. So the fundamental question it that this doctrine tries to answer is how can an unjust person stand before a just God? Or as David says in Psalm 133, if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? In other words, if God's gonna keep track of sins and count them up, good or bad, our failures and our iniquities, who will be blameless? And it's a rhetorical question, no one will be blameless. No one will stand. So the flip side, which we're also going to look at, is how can a just God accept a sinner? So how can God turn around and accept sinful people? Isn't that a compromise of his holy character? How can he say, oh, well, we'll just overlook that sin? Isn't that uh violating his integrity? So those are the two questions this doctrine tries to answer. God can't overlook sin. He can't just sweep criminal behavior under the rug without compromising his holy character, he can't throw out his standards, he can't call wrong right and still be a perfect holy God. So, how do we get to this position of justification in a way that both forgives us and does not compromise God's character? So, here we go into theology. So this doctrine is sometimes called forensic justification, which I've written up there. Now you probably are familiar with the term forensics. Um it's usually in criminal trials or in legal settings you'll hear like forensic evidence or forensic medicine. And the word refers to legal declarations. So something that has been legally declared either evidence or true. So forensic justification means that God has declared legally that we are righteous. So we are in right standing with God legally. So it's God's ruling that he is considered or deemed or reckoned or regarded a person as just in his sight. It's a legal ruling. Now, Luther's very famous summary of this. I put the Latin up here again, you can throw this out in your coffee conversations. It's similustis et peccator, which is simultaneously just and sinner. I put it down. This is the word for justice. This is where we get simultaneously. So his phrase that he summarized is we are simultaneously just and sinner. Now, that's important to understand because that sounds like saying we're simultaneously black and white. You know, it's a c it sounds like a paradox or a contradiction. How can God declare a person just who is sinful? Well, what Luther's trying to get at, and we're going to see, is the glorious, wonderful news of the gospel is that you don't have to make yourself perfect in order to gain justification. That while you are a sinner, you can gain justification. So it's in that sense that you're simultaneously just and still a sinner. Now the charge leveled against Luther was, okay, this is legal fiction. How can you say that God is calling someone righteous and therefore just who is in fact not righteous? Doesn't that compromise his his integrity? Isn't that kind of a fraud or legal fiction? So he's saying legally we're justified, legally we're righteous, but in actual fact we're not righteous. So isn't that like God winking at sin or looking the other way? So Luther answered this charge by saying you're correct. A person must possess righteousness in order to for God to justify him, and it would be legal fiction for God to declare a person righteous who in fact possesses no righteousness, and God's integrity would be compromised. But the crucial question is how do you possess righteousness? How do you acquire the necessary righteousness? And the answer is by faith alone. God reckons or counts you righteous because you possess Christ's righteousness, not your own. So because of what Christ did on the cross, God counts people as righteous who put their trust in Him. So on the basis of whose righteousness are you declared just, it's not your own, it's Christ's. So on the cross, Christ paid that full measure of our debt to justice so that we can now be in right standing with God, but the righteousness that saves us is not our own, it's that that's uh it's Christ that's been given to us. So the last crucial question then is how do we get Christ's righteousness? And again, because we're scholars and theologians, there are two options greatly debated. So I'm going to give you the two options. And these are the other two terms you can throw out in your coffee chats. The two options are you are called uh infusion or imputation. So you can be infused with righteousness or you can be imputed with righteousness. And reformed theologians land on the imputed side. Non-reformed would say we are infused. So we have to possess righteousness in order to be justified, whose righteousness justifies us and how do we get it? On the one hand, theologians claim that Christ's righteousness is infused into our soul, and then we stand cleansed and in a state of grace. So that would be the non-reformed supposition of the Roman Catholic Church. So if you think of like pouring red food coloring into a glass of clear water, the color diffuses or is infused throughout the water, turning it all now red, and now you are in fact righteous. So they would say Christ's righteousness is infused into your soul, and that's what saves you because you now are in fact righteous. You're not just legally righteous, you are in fact righteous, and you are now in a state of grace. The problem with that theology is why do we still sin? If we have been infused in that sense with Christ's righteousness, why do we still fail afterwards? And how do we get that problem solved? So after receiving Christ's righteousness, how do we then deal with the sins afterwards? And that's where you get all the, you know, the moral mortal sins and the venial sins and all the things that the Roman Catholic Church has built up to try to solve that problem. Well, what Luther and the reformers said is you have the wrong understanding. It's not infusion, it's imputation. And he claimed that a righteousness is outside of us, not inside of us. So the term he used was righteousness does not adhere in us, it is earned for us. And that's an important distinction. It doesn't adhere in us, it is earned for us. So Christ's righteousness is not infused, it's imputed, and imputed means simply it's counted on my side. So it is something that is now attributed to me or credited to my account, if you will. So it's not legal fiction, it's the legal application of righteousness. It's saying Christ did this and it's now counted as if I had done it. It's now credited to my account. That's what imputation means. So not only does his death pay the penalty for our sins, his perfect, sinless life is imputed to us. So Christ not only died for us, he lived for us. So his death, if only his death was necessary, he could have just come down from heaven and gone straight to the cross. But he didn't because he also had to live a perfect life, fulfilling the Mosaic covenant, fulfilling the law, and that perfect life lived is now counted on my side and your side. So Christ fulfilled the law in my place and took the penalty for my sins. So imputation has two sides. God imputes something to me that is Christ's righteousness, and he does not impute to me my own sinfulness. So instead of my sinfulness being counted against me, Christ's perfect life is counted for me. Instead of my needing to pay the debt the penalty for my sins, Christ's penalty is counted on my side. That's what Luther meant by simultaneously just and sinner. So I am still sinful. There is still part of me that will fail and is broken, but I have now been freed from that prison. And the ability to keep the law is now possible in a way that was never possible before because now I have something I didn't have before. I have the Holy Spirit inside me, teaching me, changing me, fixing that broken chooser, so I now know right from wrong, and I begin this lifelong process of moving closer and closer to righteousness. So I haven't earned it. I haven't credited it to my own account. I've been given it as a gift. A free and incredibly wonderful gift. God does for us what we could never do for ourselves. So, follow me through on that. Amen. So the message of the gospel is not love wins, the message of the gospel is Jesus saves. Through his death on the cross, he paid this penalty so that God's legal justice is satisfied, and God in his grace and incredible mercy did something he didn't have to do. He counts that on our side and draws us back to him so we back are back in grace and peace with God. All right. And that is good news. Because think about having to try to work this up on your own and get to that state of perfection in order to gain God's blessing. The good news is while you're still sinful, you have that blessing. It's yours simply based on faith alone, no law keeping required. Okay, let me pray for us and then I'll give you a chance to ask some questions.