Justification by Faith in Christ

Galatians 2:15-16
Gary Wassermann | Sunday, December 17, 2023
Copyright © 2023, Gary Wassermann

The book of Galatians has been called the charter of Christian liberty.  We are free in Christ Jesus.  In Jesus Christ we are free from the false and frustrating legalism, ritualism, and sacramentalism that dominates so much of other religions.  But the question is “how?”  We are free not by some sort of eastern mysticism that says that our guilt and our slavery are all an illusion.  There is good reason for the toiling that pervades the religious world.  We are sinners.  We know we have a problem.  And we are mortal.  How then can we be free?  That is what Paul addresses in our text this morning.

The answer is sola fide – by faith alone.  Solo Christo – in Christ alone.  Sola gratia – by grace alone.  Galatians 2:15-16 teaches this principle clearly.  Paul has been establishing his apostolic authority, and now he turns to the fundamental principle that everyone needs to know.

I have three points this morning: The goal, the ground, and the guarantee.

1. The Goal

Our need is to have God’s favor, that he might be with us to save us and defend us.  That is the goal.  The goal is “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”  The goal is “if God is for us, who can be against us?”  The goal is, in a word, “justification.”

The word “justified” appears for the first time in the book of Galatians in 2:16, and in this verse, it appears three times.  In the New Testament as a whole, the verb “justify” appears 40 times, the adjective appears 80 times, and the noun 102 times.  It is very important.  It is in the golden chain of salvation in Romans 8:29-30: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.  And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”  Martin Luther, who called the letter to the Galatians “my epistle,” said “if this article,” meaning justification, “stands, the church stands; if this article collapses, the church collapses.”  So it is very important that we understand what it means.

Justification is a forensic act, meaning that justification is an act of finding, or determining, or showing.  It is not an act of changing or constructing.  Even in ordinary English, we use this word in a forensic sense.  You have heard the saying, “The ends justify the means.”  We do not endorse that statement, but it illustrates the use of “justify.”  It says that the ends show the means to right or well-chosen, not that the ends cause the means to become different than they were.  So also in the Bible.  Proverbs 17:15 says, “He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the just, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord” (NKJV).  The judge who is condemned in this verse is the one who declares a wicked man to be righteous.  God would never condemn someone who causes a wicked person to repent and live a righteous life.

So the word “justified” is a word of judgment or evaluation, but whose judgment is in view, particularly in Galatians 2:16?  All three uses of “justified” are in the passive voice, so the one who is doing the justifying is not stated, but that is simply because it does not need to be stated.  This is a divine passive, meaning God makes the judgment.  God declares you are righteous or not.

Now here, I say, most people have the wrong goal.  Most people seek the approval of the wrong judge.  They aim too low.  Many look to themselves as judge.  This is self-justification.  We live in an age where people love themselves.  They seek to define themselves by constructing their own identity, whether that is LGBT or finding something else in themselves that associates them with a group.  That identity then gives them cover for everything they do – it flows from their identity.  Even those who don’t think out identity in clear terms declare, “I am a good person.”  You hear this when they are caught in a lie, “I am a good person,” or when they are caught cheating or in any other such thing that should be shameful.  Most of us would not be so blatant as to those words out loud, but the natural expression of our hearts is the same.  They are appealing to their own judgment.

There are those in the church who do the same thing.  They say, “My conscience is clear.”  “If my conscience approves, then who are you to say I’m wrong?”  Pastor Mathew said that conscience is the last refuge of the Christian scoundrel.  The problem is that you are not the judge.  Your judgment only matters as far as your authority and your power go.  And what are you?  You are a mist, here today and gone tomorrow.  You have nothing but what you have received.  So Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:4, “My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.”

At some point everyone must face his own weakness, so he moves on to seek the approval of people.  People and popular opinion becomes the judge.  Popular justification is just as much a problem today as self-justification.  It used to be that those who lived in immorality said they want tolerance.  Today, they demand whole-hearted approval.  You, too, can get in on this approval by wearing the right pin or ribbon or by putting pronouns or the right symbols in your online profile.

Again, there are those in the church whose aim is the approval of other people.  They are superficial.  Everything they do is done for men to see.  Jesus called out such people in John 5:44, “How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?”  There is no end to the pursuit of approval from other people – no finality, and no peace.

And why do people keep on pursuing approval whether from self or others?  It is because deep down we know that we have a problem.  We know there is something wrong with us.  We have a sense of guilt.  We have a longing for something to fill us and fulfill us.  And what makes this guilt and emptiness a serious problem is that we will one day face death.  Our own strength will give out, and we will face what follows.

This guilt and restlessness are because we have sinned against God.  God our creator created us to know him and do his will.  He made plain his will for us in his commands, and we all have violated his commands.  Zephaniah 1:17 says, “I will bring distress on the people and they will walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord.”  It is God’s condemnation that is our problem, and therefore it is God’s justification that we need.  Be wise and recognize that.  Seek God’s approval.  Romans 8:33 says, “It is God who justifies.”  If God justifies you, then no other word of condemnation or disapproval from anyone else matters.

And what is God’s standard?  What standard of righteousness does God use for justification?  He does not use the world’s standards.  Luke 16:15 He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.”  His standard is not wealth or appearance or conformity to societal norms.  His standard is conformity to his holy law.

So seek God’s justification.  Don’t chase after the approval of the crowd.  Don’t assert yourself in self-justification.  God is the ultimate and final judge, and if he justifies you, your problem is solved, and you can have peace.

2. The Ground

So the goal is God’s justification, but on what grounds will we get it?  This is the point of contention between Paul and the Judaizers.  The Judaizers taught justification by works of the law.  Paul taught justification by faith in Jesus Christ.  We will examine each of them in turn.

By works of the law

The law here means the sum total of all God’s commandments, and the works of the law are acts done in obedience to it.  The Judaizer’s position was: “The only way be justified is by sheer hard work.  You have to toil at it.  The work you have to do is the works of the law.  You must do everything the law commands and refrain from everything it forbids.”  That starts with the Ten Commandments.  You must have no other god’s before the Lord.  You must not make idols or use the Lord’s name in vain.  You must keep the Sabbath holy and honor your father and mother.  You must not murder or commit adultery or steal or lie or even covet.  Then on top of that there is the ceremonial law.  You must be circumcised and join the Jewish church.  You must do works of devotion such as fasting and praying and giving alms.  If you do all these things and do not fall short in anything, you will be good enough.  God will accept you.”

This was the prevailing view among the Jews of that day.  There is an epitaph from a first century tomb that reads as follows:

Here lies Regina… She will live again, return to the light again, for she can hope that she will rise to the life promised, as a real assurance, to the worthy and the pious in that she has deserved to possess an abode in the hallowed land.  This your piety has assured you, this your chaste life, this your love for your people, this your observance of the Law, your devotion to your wedlock, the glory of which was dear to you.  For all these deeds your hope for the future is assured.[1]

The shorter term of those who seek justification by works of the law is self-righteous.  The self-righteous Jews of Jesus’ day inevitably looked down on other people.  They saw themselves as superior before God over those who did not live according to every regulation that they so scrupulously followed.  They hated any blessing or sign of approval from God toward anyone who did not strive to live according to their standard, because that was a threat to everything they staked their hopes on.  That is why they hated Jesus.  Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, and he received sinners who came to him.

Luke 15 says that tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear him.  But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  They were angry.  They did not have to be angry.  Jesus went on to tell them three parables, the Parable of the Lost Sheep, the Parable of the Lost Coin, and the Parable of the Lost Son, and in all of them he said there is rejoicing when the one who is lost is found.  These teachers of the law should have rejoiced, or if they did not rejoice, they could have been neutral.  But they were angry because by welcoming people with a sinful past, Jesus was rejecting the whole foundation of the self-righteous.

Again in Luke 18 Jesus addressed those “who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else.”  He told the parable of “two men who went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men–robbers, evildoers, adulterers–or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’”

You see basic obedience to the Ten Commandments is not enough.  It does not set you above ordinary guilty people to say you have not murdered.  The Pharisee does not mention such things.  You must go further.  Fast twice a week.  The Roman Catholic Church has a doctrine of supererogation – this is the teaching that you can do works beyond what God requires that then accrue merit before God.  And not just that, you must be very scrupulous in the smallest details of the law – give a tenth of everything including garden herbs and spices.  Surely that is more than worthy in God’s sight.  This man went up, up, up.  He went up, he stood up, and he looked down on the tax collector.

There was just one problem.  The tax collector who would not look up, but prayed, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” he went home justified.  The Pharisee went home condemned.

It is often said, and I agree, that the prevailing heresy of the Christian church today is the antinomian heresy, the heresy that the Christian has no obligation to obey God’s commands.  At that is what prevails In terms of what is taught.  But when you look at the fruit of legalism, which is self-righteousness, looking down on others, anger and envy when someone else is embraced or elevated, it is clear that legalism is still alive in the church world today.

Now included in the works of the law is circumcision.  That was one of the prominent issues that the Judaizers were pushing in the Galatians churches.  Circumcision is, in a way, a strange sort of “work of the law” because it is not really a personal achievement.  Jewish baby boys were circumcised when they were eight days old – something they would not even remember.  Even converts to Judaism would not take any pride in the ordeal of being circumcised, but only in the end result, the status of being circumcised.  So the works of the law includes this sort of status or group association.

Some people are proud of the color of their skin.  They think that being white makes them superior, or being black, or anything else.  Considering the religious perspective, there are many people who think that because they are American and they celebrate Christmas and they are not Muslim or Hindu, they are Christian.  That counts for something before God.  We can think that same being part of a church, as though my church membership makes me fit to be a Christian.  Or we can think that way because of our family name.  I am a part of this family, and I have this last name, so I have an advantage in salvation.  But Romans 3:9-10 says that “Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin.”  Americans are under sin just as much as anyone else.  The church-goer and the non-church-goer are under sin.

The ground of justification in this scheme of “justification by works of the law” is you.  You will get the credit for yourself.  You will stand on your own two feet.  This is the way most people think.  It is not just natural to think this way.  It is popular.  And it is popular because it is flattering.

But it is ultimately fruitless.  It is a lie, and it is propagated by the father of lies.  The lie is that if we just try a little harder, we can keep the law perfectly.  We may indeed get a perfect record in a very superficial sense.  We may appear to many people to be very righteous.  But even the man who most earnestly tries to keep the law will find, if he is honest, that sin rises up with him.  Murderous thoughts or adulterous thoughts or covetous thoughts arise, and such thoughts and motives make us lawbreakers in the sight of God.  Your sin is in God’s clear view, and that nullifies everything else that you may have to your credit.

But it is not only your bad deeds that you are ashamed of that condemn you before God.  Even your good deeds done apart from God are offensive in God’s sight.  Many people live mostly clean lives, and they think it is only in details that they go wrong.  Not at all.  Anthony Fauci was recently asked why he does not practice the Catholic faith given that he identifies as Catholic.  His said that his “personal ethics on life” are so strong that to practice religion “seems like a pro forma thing that I don’t really need to do.”  In other words, “I am so good, I don’t need God – the God who made and sustains me, the God without whom I can do nothing, the God to whom I owe thanks and service.”  Anthony Fauci just put into crass words the thinking that is behind so many people’s complacency in their own goodness.  It is an offense in God’s sight.  God will condemn all such people for their stinking pile of self-righteousness.

By faith in Jesus Christ

The Apostle Paul taught an entirely different grounds for justification.  The ground is Jesus Christ.  None of us have kept the law, but Jesus Christ did.  Jesus Christ was a real man, just like us.  He was born.  He grew up.  He faced the same world, and the same hardships as we do.  Hebrews 4:15 says, “He was tempted in every way as we are, yet was without sin.”  The difference is that in fact he was tempted even more severely because he never gave into the pressure.  In the face of every temptation, he persevered in righteousness until the temptation itself collapsed.  After his baptism, he fasted forty days in the desert, and the devil came to him bringing temptation after temptation.  Every time Jesus said, “It is written” and quoted the Scripture until the devil gave up for the time.

What about when men treated him mercilessly?  1 Peter 2:22-23 says, “‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’  When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats.  Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”

He never sinned.  He challenged his adversaries to prove him guilty of sin in John 8:46, but they could not.  Now man cannot see the heart, but God can, so what was God’s judgment?  When Jesus was baptized, God spoke from heaven and said, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased” (Lk 3:22).  The Father approved of him.  But the ultimate approval came after Jesus Christ died on the cross.  God raised him from the dead, because death is the wages of sin, and Jesus had no sin.

Christ’s righteousness was not the self-righteous moral perfection that sinful man strives for.  He depended on God his Father.  He learned from his Father what to say and how to say it.  His food was to do the will of his Father, so his Father delighted in him.

But there is something more to Christ’s righteousness, because there is more to who Christ is.  He was fully man, but he was not only man.  He is also almighty, eternal God.  On earth, he lived a holy life as a man, but everything he did he did as a whole person.  So his righteousness has divine quality.  It is called “the righteousness of God” in Philippians 3:9.  It measures up to the requirements of a full, perfect, and irrevocable justification.

Now this is all to the glory of Jesus Christ, but it is not just a righteousness for us to stand in awe of.  We don’t simply look upon him as though we were standing below the Matterhorn looking up at this majestic sight.  He is not a hero to be admired.  His Father’s will for him was to accomplish our salvation.  He came as a man to be our Redeemer and Savior.  That is what made is necessary, and that is what makes it meaningful for us.  Romans 5:18 says, “Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.”  Christ’s righteousness consisted especially in his presenting himself as a perfect sacrifice and dying the death we deserved.

Now that is solid grounds for justification.  It is certain.  The Father has already declared his complete approval of his Son, Jesus Christ.  It is open.  Jesus Christ did this for us.  The only question is how we may be justified by God on the basis of Jesus Christ.

The answer is by faith in Jesus Christ.  This faith is intelligent.  You will find in the world the notion that faith is the rejection of knowledge or the rejection of evidence.  It is exactly the opposite.  Faith understands who Jesus Christ is.  Faith understands the nature of his person and the work that he did, such that we understand that Christ is worthy of our complete confidence in the matters of life and death, and of this age and the age to come.

Faith also recognizes our own need.  It recognizes that the depth of our need and the extent of our need matches up exactly with what Christ provides.  This means that faith includes conviction.  I need Christ.

And faith includes trust.  I know Christ, and I know that I need him, so I entrust myself to him.  Faith is the abandonment of confidence in our own or any human resource in a total act of self-commitment to Christ.  I, as it were, transfer myself from standing in myself, over to standing in Christ.  Faith is the abandonment to Christ as Lord and Savior against all concerns, even to the deepest and most ultimate.  So the function of faith is to unite us to Jesus Christ.  That is why 2 Corinthians 5:21 can say, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  By union with Christ, we become partakers of his righteousness to the extent that we are identified with it.

So these are two grounds of justification: works of the law and faith in Christ.  But the Judaizers in Galatia may perhaps have objected that they were arguing for a third option.  They would have said that there is an intersection between these two options – an intersection in the Venn diagram.  They would have said justification is by a combination of faith and works.  There are many in the world of Christianity today who say the same thing.  In some versions it is that God saves us by grace after all that we can do.  In others it is that we receive Christ, but we must complete his work by something we do.

Is there then such an option?  This verse certainly knows no such option.  It is one or the other.  There is not “both.”  But beyond that, it goes against the nature of faith as the instrument of justification.  Fundamentally, faith rests completely on another.  Faith looks to Christ and his righteousness and mentions nothing else.  So faith involves complete self-abnegation.  Any notion of faith that includes self is not biblical, saving faith.

God will not share his glory with another.  We read in Romans 4 and Romans 11, “the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace… and if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.”  Grace requires that justification come by faith.

3. The Guarantee

So those are theoretically the two grounds of justification: “by works of the law” and “through faith in Jesus Christ,” and there is no middle ground.  Three times over Paul gives us this guarantee: that God’s way is the second, not the first.

The first is a general statement: “We… know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.”  No one in particular is in view, and of course, “a man” means any man, or any woman.  Many people have tried very hard to be justified by works.  John and Charles Wesley both knew of Christianity from their godly mother, but by their own account, they were both unconverted while they were students at Oxford.  During their time there, the organized a regular meeting for Bible reading and prayer, and they stressed a strict schedule for living in order to gain salvation through works of holiness.  God allowed them to continue on that way without conversion for several years to show them that they would not get to him that way.

There is no need to continue trying that experiment.  “We know,” Paul says.  He has spent the first part of his letter establishing and defending his apostolic authority, and now he puts the full weight of that authority behind this statement.  It is not his opinion.  It is not his preference.  It is not his feeling.  It a fact he knows and has been commissioned as an apostle to preach.  Peter, a Jew by birth, knew this too.  The faithful disciples of Jesus Christ all knew it.

The second statement is personal: Not only do “we know,” but “we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ.”  Many of you here have heard this doctrine many times before, and you know these things.  But intellectual knowledge is not enough.  We have to prove it personally by our own experience.  That is what Paul did.  He is declaring a doctrine that he himself put to the test.

He says so here, and he says in Philippians 3:8-9, “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.”  That is not just aspiration, he has done it.  “I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ–the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”

Paul was a mighty warrior for this truth because he knew whom he had believed.  Everywhere he went he spread the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ, because he knew Christ.  He had the righteousness of Christ, and to him, that was fragrance of life.  It brightened his eyes.  Paul was not alone in this.  “We, too.”  That includes Peter.  He also had put his faith in Christ Jesus for justification.  And God invites us also in Ps 34:8 to, “Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.”

The third statement is scriptural.  Paul had stated it as a principle and he told of his personal experience, and now he confirms is by Scripture.  He quotes Psalm 143:2: “by observing the law no one will be justified.”  He quotes this in Romans 3:20 also, where he establishes the case that all have sinned.  The Bible is the ultimate authority for faith and practice.  We can form reasonable beliefs based on our observations and based on our experiences, but the Scripture is God’s revelation to us.  He has given it in propositional form so we can know central truths with certainty.

This verse is, in fact, even more emphatic in Greek than what we have in English.  It says, “all flesh,” mankind without exception.  Whatever our religious upbringing, educational background, social status or racial origin, the way of salvation is the same.  No one can be justified by works of the law; all flesh must be justified through faith in Christ.

See how forceful these verses are.  This guarantee is established by the apostolic teaching, which the apostles confirmed by their own experience, and it is declared also in the Old Testament.  What more do you need?  What more can you ask?  God wants to make this principle very clear to everyone, and particularly to us who follow him now so that we will not turn aside.

So I have four exhortations.

1. Do not lose sight of the goal. We see ourselves in the mirror. We see our friends.  We see the world out there.  But don’t live by sight.  None of these is the judge.  They are all fallen and mortal.  There is one judge everyone of us will stand before.  He is the living God.  He is eternal, and his judgments are final.  Seek his approval.
2. Be clear in your thinking that faith in Christ Jesus is the only way to be justified. Mix in works of penance; mix in legalism, ritualism, and sacramentalism, and you have eviscerated faith. You have cut yourself off from Christ.  Faith must reject all of self and rest entirely in Christ.
3. True faith strives for holiness and obeys Christ. Faith rejects self. In rejecting self, you reject your own will.  You reject your own understanding.  You reject your own ends and your own glory.  Faith gives over all of these things to Christ.  The believer submits to Christ’s will, receives by the truth Christ has revealed, and lives for Christ’s glory.  Holiness is essential to the nature of faith.  It is justification that comes first upon believing in Christ, but holiness follows.  Also it is the goal of faith to be delivered from sin and its condemnation, so the believer will not go on in the way of sin.  There are those who teach that for a Christian to obey Christ is always legalism.  This is a serious error.
4. And given the threefold guarantee we have in our text in Galatians, accept the biblical doctrine of justification. It is not just because of confusion that people add works into the way of justification. It is the push of the flesh.  It is the desire of natural self-righteousness to have something to boast about.  Say no to that, and get something far better.  Get righteousness in Jesus Christ.  He will never fail.  He has already done the hardest and the biggest part by his death and resurrection.  He will save completely.  Put your faith in him.

[1] Ryken, Philip Graham. Essay. In Reformed Expository Commentary, 62. P & R Publishing, 2005.