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In the book of Galatians, Paul confronts Peter. And it's not a personality conflict.

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It's been brought about by Peter's refusal to allow gentiles who weren't obeying the Jewish kosher laws to be included within the family of God. And he's introduced a damnable plus, it's faith in Jesus plus obedience to the law. And Paul is now explaining that theologically. And he's saying, it's never about our obedience. Our justification can never be about our obedience.

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When it came to the Gospel, the Apostle Paul didn't back down. God's plan of salvation was worth fighting for, even if it meant confronting a brother in Christ, one of the leaders of the church in Jerusalem. That kind of approach makes 21st century Christians nervous. Would you? Would I be that bold? Welcome to this Saturday edition of Renewing youg Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham. Today we come to the end of our time in the book of Galatians. On Saturdays, you've been hearing messages from Derek Thomas series no Other Gospel. So for the final time, not to be repeated, next Saturday, we'll send you the complete series on DVD along with digital access to the messages and study guide, plus a hardcover copy of R.C. sproul's commentary on Galatians. When you donate in support of Renewing your mind@renewingyourmind.org before midnight tonight, I'll be sure to remind you again at the end of today's message so you don't miss this resource offer on its final day. Well, here's ligonier teaching fellow Dr. Thomas to show us why it's critical that we defend the one true gospel.

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Welcome back. This is session number four and we are in the second half of chapter two from verses 11 through 21. And as I was saying at the end of the previous session, this is like a pistols at dawn moment between Paul and Peter. There was a sci fi series when I was young many years ago, and it was called Doctor who and it's been revamped since then. And it has a time machine, so called tardis. It's a police box. You enter in and you can go back in time and so on. And I often wondered if I could go back somewhere to a certain point. And of course excluding meeting Jesus, let's put that out of it. Where would you go? What event would you like to sort of see? And I think I would love to be a fly on the wall in Antioch when there was a showdown between Paul and Peter. And he tells us here that he, withstood Peter to the face. Let's look at this. And Paul tells us in the first half 11 to 14, he gives us the historical narrative of what went down. And then in 15 to the end of the chapter, he gives us a theological reflection on why this event happened and why it happened in the way that that it happened. And the issue involves Peter and the church in Antioch. The church in Antioch was the mission center once persecution had come to Jerusalem. And some of the Christians fled from Jerusalem and some of them end up in Antioch and to the north. And it's from Antioch that the first missionary journey gets sent from and so on. And it's to Antioch that Paul will report after each of the missionary journeys. So Jerusalem is no longer the center of Christendom, but Antioch and eventually Rome will become more and more of the sort of base from which Christianity will see itself. And the Antioch Church was much more Gentile than, of course, the Jerusalem Church. And the Jerusalem Church was almost exclusively Jewish. Jewish Christian. And therefore, the issues that we saw in the previous lesson with Titus and Titus, circumcision was of particular significance in the Jerusalem Church. In Antioch, it's a little different. It's not the issue of circumcision, it's the issue of food. Peter is in Antioch and he's becoming all things to all men. And he's eating shellfish and prawns and ham sandwiches and bacon along with his gentile buddies until the heavyweights from Jerusalem, people like James and so on, until they come up from Jerusalem to investigate what's going on in the Antioch Church and whether the Antioch Church has become too liberal or whether the Antioch Church has lost touch with its Jewish roots and base. And so there's. It's almost like an inspection committee coming up to Antioch. And as soon as the men of James, as Paul refers to them here, come from Jerusalem, all of a sudden Peter isn't eating with the Gentiles. He's only eating at the tables with his fellow Jewish Christians. And it's all kosher food and so on. And Paul sees, once again, like Titus, he sees this. This is not just a matter of Christian liberty whether you should eat bacon or not eat bacon or whether you should just eat kosher food or not kosher food. Does it really matter? It's up to each individual to do whatever is right in his own conscience. It's gone way beyond that. This was now seen as a violation of the very gospel itself, a violation of justification by faith that your behavior can undermine your belief, that your behavior can undermine the credibility of your belief. And so when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. And for before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles. But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing what Paul now calls the circumcision party, because that's what they were in the incident with Titus. Even though this, I think, is more about food loss and so on. And he wants them to understand that in insisting that Gentiles only eat kosher food, they're making the Gentiles become Jews rather than allow the Gentiles to be Christians. And so there's an important theological principle at stake, and I want to examine that principle, and I want us to skip down to verses 19 through 21, which is the heart of it. For through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God. For if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. It is clear for the Apostle Paul that the Gospel and the purity of the Gospel is at stake in the. The behavior of Peter here in Antioch and in analyzing the theological importance of justification, justification by faith alone, apart from the works of the law. The Gospel is by grace, through faith, and there must be no damnable plus. And the damnable plus in this case is ceremonial obedience to the kosher food laws. And Paul wants them to understand what justification actually entails. That there is an implied loss in the insistence on complying with ceremonial food laws, that there is the implication, the subtle implication, that they are not otherwise truly justified. They are not otherwise in a proper relationship in terms of the righteousness of God. So Paul wants to say, what exactly are you when you trust in Jesus only? And so he makes three statements here that unpack how Paul understands the radical nature of the Gospel. The first, in verse 20. I have been crucified. I have been crucified with Christ. I have been crucified with Christ. You know, four things were nailed to the cross. Jesus was. Was nailed to the cross. There was a plaque in Aramaic and Hebrew and Greek that read, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, according to Colossians, Chapter 2, the Record of debt. Like a bill, like a telephone bill, an electricity bill, or your mortgage. It was nailed to the Cross, that record of debt, death was nailed to the cross. And here in this latter section of chapter two, Paul says, and I was nailed to the cross as a Christian, I view myself as having been nailed to the cross. All of you, who you were as a child of Adam, who you were when you first came into this world, that identity, that Adamic identity has been crucified. It was nailed to the cross. That Adamic self is gone. That Adamic self has died, all of you, body and soul. So that at the truth of the Gospel is the issue of union and communion with Christ. I have been crucified, crucified with Christ. I am no longer who I once was. Paul is no longer the Saul of Tarsus. That person is dead. That person is gone. I might not always believe that. I might not always behave as though that is the case. But the reality of the case is, who are you? It's an important question to ask. Who are you as a Christian, as somebody who believes in the Gospel, as somebody who is justified, as somebody who wears the spotless robe of the righteousness of Christ. And first and foremost for Paul, I am no longer the person I used to be. That person is dead. That person is gone. It's an important contemporary issue, the issue of identity in a culture that isn't sure of one's identity, one's sexual identity, for example, and the whole issue with Facebook and the like, and that there can be 64 different categories of identity. And young people and teenagers are supposed to find their identity, and no wonder they're lost, and no wonder they're in a mess, because it's impossible to know what your identity is if it's based on whims and fancies and not on the solid truth of God and the principles, say, of creation and God creates us, male and female. Well into that culture, Paul is addressing what is a Christian and a Christian is somebody who is no longer in union with Adam. That Adamic self is gone. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live. That old I, that old me is gone, but Christ who lives in me. Union with Christ. I am a man in Christ. That's who I am. I am somebody who is in union and communion with the risen, ascended Christ. It is at the heart of Pauline theology. He uses that little phrase, en Christo in Christ 67, 68 times in the course of his writings. I sometimes think if we were to find, for example, one of the lost epistles that Paul wrote to the Corinthians in between 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, he mentions another letter that isn't 1 Corinthians, and we don't have that letter. And I sometimes wonder, how would you know if that letter were to be discovered? Say, archaeologists would uncover this scroll, and it's the lost letter of Paul to the Corinthians. And there may be more than one. Some scholars say there are two last letters to the Corinthians. Some say there are more than that. How would you know? And one of the things that you would look for is En Christo in Christ because it's at the heart. Paul can't write, Paul can't think, he can't move, he can't breathe, he can't preach without mentioning the fact that he was once in Adam, but now he is in Christ. He's a new man in Christ. That's his idea. Identity. We ended, I think, the last session by saying we should preach the gospel to ourselves every day. And part of that gospel is to remind ourselves of who we are. You go into the bathroom in the morning, you look in the mirror, mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? And you say, jesus is. And when you look into that mirror, you see Jesus. Because you are in union and communion with Jesus. That's who you are. That's your identity. And you shouldn't be in doubt as to your identity. Well, that's the first thing. I have been crucified. And then go back a verse to verse 19. I died to the law, for through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God. Now, we could read this verse and interpret this in a way that Paul didn't intend for it to be interpreted. Paul isn't saying here everything that one can possibly say about the law. He's speaking about the law in the context of a discussion about justification, in a context of a discussion about how a person can be right with God. And the answer to the question, how can I be right with God? Is not through my obedience to the law. Now, if you are asking a different question on a different occasion, in a different context, are Christians meant to obey the law? Yes, the Christians are meant to obey the moral law, the Ten Commandments, not in order to be justified, but because we are justified, because we are filled with gratitude and thanksgiving for all that God has done for us in the Gospel. But here in Galatians, the context is right with Godness. The context is justification by faith. And in justification, my obedience to the law has no part to play whatsoever. Now, that's not to say that obedience to the law doesn't play a part. It's not my obedience to the law, it's Jesus obedience to the law. He obeyed the law so that I don't have to obey the law. And the fact of the matter is that my attempts to obey the law have been ruinous. One of the aspects of the law is that it's given in order to convict us of sin. The law was added because of transgressions. It was added to reveal, to show to us, to magnify the fact that we cannot obey the law, to magnify our sin. What does the law say? What is its modus operandi? Well, the law says, do this and you will live. Go back to the Garden of Eden. That was what God said in the negative to Adam and Eve. So long as you obey this law, that you don't eat of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil, under probation, your position will be solidified. You will, you will be in a right relationship with me forever. But they disobeyed. They didn't obey. And Adam was our federal head. And as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. The law shows no mercy. The law is a taskmaster. The law is utterly demanding and it demands that you obey it to the full. The slightest infringement of the law brings penalty. Well, Paul says, I died to the law. There came a moment in my experience where I died to the law. I died to its demands. I died to its threats. The law could threaten me no longer. I couldn't obey it. So I died. I didn't try nothing. In my hands I bring. I didn't bring to God any of my obedience, any of my attempted ways of obeying the demands of the law. What is the function of the law? Well, one of its functions is a pedagogic function. It's to teach you, to show you, to reveal to you that you are a sinner, that you have fallen short of God's glory, that you have broken his commandments. That's what the law did. So that the law, Paul says in Romans 7 makes me out to be exceeding sinful. It exacerbates the sense of sin that I have about myself. Well, this is all very countercultural, of course, because those who are theists in our culture, let's ignore those who are non theists. They have other problems. But those who are theists think that, you know, God is nice. That's the prevailing view. Surveys will reveal again and again that people's view of God is that he's nice and that he wants us to be nice, and everything will be nice and everything will be peaceful. And so just don't get too worked up about it. And here Paul is saying, no, our very salvation is at stake. And in order to be saved, the law has to be obeyed. You can't obey it, I can't obey it, but Jesus obeyed it. And so Paul is saying, how do I view myself as a Christian? Well, I view myself as someone who is in union with Christ. I view myself as someone who has died. There has been a death in my existence, and it's the death of my Adamic self. I've come to understand that through the doings and works of the law, there is no justification, there is no salvation. So I died to the law. I died to its demands. I died to its threats through the law. I died to the law so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. You remember that that's how Paul began the Epistle to the Romans in the very opening verses, when he says that Jesus was somebody who was given for us, given in death, given as a substitute, given as someone who met the law's demands in all of its fullness where we could not. And then in verse 19 again, and go back to the second half, through the law, I died to the law, so that I might live to God. We're asking the question, how should you think of yourself as a Christian? It's been brought about by Peter's incident with Bacon in Antioch and his refusal to allow Gentiles who weren't obeying the Jewish kosher laws to be included within the family of God. And he's introduced then a damnable plus, it's faith in Jesus, plus obedience to the law. And Paul is now explaining that theologically. And he's saying, it's never about our obedience. Our justification can never be about our obedience. But I live to God, he says at the end of verse 19, yes, as gratitude for the grace that has been displayed to me in the Gospel. The law showed me that I could never make myself acceptable to God. So I quit trying. But now that I have been justified, now that I'm in a right standing and relationship with God, now I live for God. I live to obey him, not in order to be justified, but because I know that I am already justified. I'm a child of God and an heir to of God and a joint heir with Jesus Christ. He loved me, he gave himself for me. He lives in me and I, in response, live for him. Reverse those two and you've upset the entire narrative of the gospel, the entire balance of the gospel. You are justified apart from works, but we we are sanctified by obeying God's law out of gratitude for grace that has been received.