Galatians 2:17-18

We need to understand this in light of what Paul wrote here in Galatians 2:17-18, because I said he added something there to this statement that law keeping will not justify anybody. He says, "But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ [Notice he does not say justified by the law, but justified by Christ.], we ourselves also are found sinners [we are breaking the law], is therefore Christ the minister of sin?" In other words, does Christ think it is alright if we break His law? "God forbid," Paul says. "For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor."

And so Paul got baptized. He was buried. He was a dead man. Now we understand what he means in verses 17 and 18 of Galatians 2:

We are buried in baptism into Christ's death. We symbolically go through dying by getting baptized, and then we symbolically go through a resurrection to life again, and Christ is now our Lord and Master.

Is this man possibly saying that God's law is done away! No way! He gives absolutely no hint that the law of God is done away, but people twist it into making his words say something that is not there, and the unlearned, the untaught, will believe it and think that they do not have to obey God's law.

So it is the body of sin (meaning the "old sinning self") that was crucified with Christ through faith in Christ's blood, repentance, and baptism. It was spiritually destroyed so it could be resurrected and built again. Now does Paul want us to build again what we had just destroyed? Not at all. It has to be built again, but not by going back to sin. From the very beginning of Romans 6, as well as Paul's point in Galatians 2, his concern is that we should be aware that a course of life that does not consider sin as dangerous would defeat the very purpose of our life as believers.

Galatians 2:17-21

And we are. We just read that in Romans 3, that there are none righteous, no not one. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

If you remember the sermon on the "Justice of God," it showed that justification is clearly an act of God's grace, because what we deserve from what we have earned—that is, what we have done, the conduct of our lives, is death. There is none righteous, no not one. Since justification then cannot be claimed as a right because we have sinned, it must be received as a gift. It is its given-ness that makes it an act of grace.

Let me rephrase that and put it into a simple illustration. It is not our hanging on to Christ—that is, the keeping of the law—that saves us, but rather Christ hanging on to us. That is, it is not what we do, but it is what He does continuously as acts of grace, because we deserve death. If we can earn salvation through law keeping, Paul is saying in verse 21—let me read this again, "I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain." If we can earn salvation through law keeping, then Christ's sinless life and agonizing death were not necessary, because we can do it ourselves.