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Well, you can open up your Bibles to Galatians Chapter two. We're gonna be looking at Galatians Chapter two this weekend. And last weekend, Pastor Rob kicked off our Galatians series looking at Galatians Chapter one. If you missed last week's message, make sure you go back and you watch that message and make sure that if you are not in a small group right now, you get into one of our Galatians small groups. We've got 10 different small groups that are happening around this series digging a little bit deeper into God's word on the book of Galatians. And so make sure you get into one of those. And I loved last week's message. I just love when we can get back to the basics and back to the essentials of the gospel. And that was the point of last week's message, that there's not another gospel out there. The gospel doesn't need any flavor additives. It doesn't need any extra seasoning. The gospel is enough on its own that Jesus plus nothing equals everything. The gospel is all that we need. And so we're gonna actually just continue this same idea, the same conversation on the gospel. Looking at Galatians chapter 2. The Bible wasn't written in chapter and verse. Just in case you didn't know that. This was just one letter that was written to these people. And so it's just a continuing thought as we look at Galatians Chapter two. So if you're like, man, I feel like this is very similar talking about the gospel again to last week. You are correct. And if you get sick of hearing about the gospel, you might need to check your heart, because the gospel's amazing. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Paul says it's the power of God unto salvation. We need to be reminded of the power and simplicity and magnificence of the gospel. So we're gonna read Galatians Chapter two, just one verse, and then we're gonna go kind of through the chapter, look at some key verses. We're gonna start with verse 20. Galatians chapter 2, verse 20. It says this. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. The title of this message is Another Identity. Another Identity. And as I've been praying and preparing for this, really what I'm believing we're gonna speak to. And God's word is gonna speak to us about is an identity crisis that we have in the church. There's an identity crisis, and so we're gonna get into this. Lord, I thank you for your word. I thank you that you promised that it will not return void, that your word is alive and it's active and it's powerful, and it's able to do spiritual surgery in our life. And so, God, I pray that it would do just that. Things that need to be trimmed away, cut away, done away with illuminated. God, shine a light on those areas and do the work that only you can do in our lives. Help us to respond with obedient hearts. We love you, Jesus, and it's in your name we pray. Amen. Amen. Growing up, specifically in my adolescent years, my teenage years, especially middle school and high school years, I lived most of my life grounded. I was pretty much in timeout the whole time. If there was something that I loved, it was probably taken away from me. And this is just. I was a bit of a rascal. I had a hard time learning from my mistakes. I like to learn things the hard way. And there were a lot of talks that my parents had with me, usually down in the basement, my mom and dad and me in the basement. And it got so frequent that one of my sisters was certain that I was gonna be put up for adoption. Like, she thought for sure. I don't know if that was wishful thinking, but I do know that she was concerned about that. It was so constant. And I, in the moment, obviously did not like those times of discipline. I did not like those basement conversations of correction. And I did not enjoy, as the captain of the track team in high school, getting dropped off by mommy because I got the truck taken away again. You know, I did not enjoy that. You know, having to borrow everybody else's phone because mine got taken away. You know, all those things. I did not enjoy that. But as an adult, I am very grateful for the conversations that my parents had with me. I just think specifically about my dad, the way that he would talk to me in correction, the way that he would talk to me as I was being disciplined. It was less about correcting my behavior as a teenager and more about reinforcing my belief about who I am and whose I am, that I am a child of God, that I don't need to just live a certain way because it looks good on my parents, but I need to live a certain way because of what Jesus has done in my life. And this, I believe, is kind of an overarching theme in galatians chapter two. That it's a new identity, that it's no longer me who lives my own way, but Christ is alive inside of me. This theme of knowing who we are in Christ, that you are not your personality, you are not what you're good at, you're not what you're bad at, you're not what people say that you are. You are who God says you are, and you are his child. The context of Galatians, as we talked about last week, I'm not gonna dive too deep, since Pastor Rob did a great job sharing the context of Galatians. But you have this. I mean, the beauty of a blended family of God coming together. You have the Jews and the Gentiles. The Jews are. They lived their lives around Jewish law. Their identity was this Jewish law. It was the sacrifices and circumcision and Sabbath and. And food laws and all the different celebrations and feasts. And their whole identity, their whole culture was built around this system. And then you have the Gentiles coming in just straight out of paganism. They know nothing of these things. They know nothing of these traditions. And you've got this beautiful blended family of God. And it works because Christ is the center of all of it. And what Jesus did for the Jewish person and what Jesus did for the Gentile is the same that he saved us from our sins and gave us new life. But then in the mix of that, you have these Judaizers or what Paul calls false believers, who are trying to add laws and rules and regulations to the Gospel and saying that they have to be circumcised in order for them to truly be Christians. And, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts about this. My first thought is, how could they tell? My second thought is just, there is real transformation taking place in people's lives. And there's this group of people saying that isn't enough, that it's Jesus plus circumcision plus the law equals salvation. But that's not the truth of the Gospel. The Gospel doesn't give us a list of do's and don'ts. The Gospel gives us new life and new identity. And our identity is received not through things that we earn and do, but it's received through Christ. Tim Keller said this. In religion, you obey, therefore you are accepted. But the Gospel says, you are accepted, therefore you obey. This distinction is absolutely everything, and it's what separates us from a lot of other religions. I remember sitting at the table of this family from Afghanistan that had fled the conflict there, and they were Living in the city here, and my family and I were having dinner there, and it was during one of their celebrations, one of their fasting times. And they invited us over to eat, but it was the middle of the day, so they were not eating. And so we were just asking questions like, why do you do this? And the father, the head of the household, answered by saying, we do this, and we fast and we do this perfectly, hoping that God will have favor on us. And I'm just so grateful that we are not saved by our fasting. We are not saved by our works. We. We are saved by the grace of God. Paul says this to the church in Ephesus, in Ephesians 2. For it is by grace you've been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves. It is a gift from God, not by works that no one can boast the grace of God. It's a gift to us. And I don't know if you've ever had to work for the Christmas gift or work for the birthday gift. I'm thankful that I'm from a family that at Christmas and at your birthday, you get a gift. And how do you get a gift? You simply just receive it. You need to just put your arms out and receive the gift of grace. Receive the new life, receive the new identity. It's not something that we work towards or work for or try to outwork other people so that our standing can be better than theirs. It's a gift that we receive from God. And in Galatians 2, we see Paul's conviction of this truth in. In how he deals with Titus. And so we're gonna continue on. In Galatians, chapter 2, verses 3 through 5, it says, yet not even Titus, who was with me, Paul says, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ and to make us slaves to make us abide by their law. We did not give in to them for a moment so that the truth of the Gospel might be preserved for you. So there's Titus. He's a Greek. He's not from this Jewish tradition, and he's accepted by the believers even though he's not circumcised. But then there's this group of false believers, Paul calls them, who are infiltrating this faith community and spying on the people, spying on the gathering, and they're trying to add laws and regulations to salvation. I just want you to picture what that would be like, here, somebody gives their life to Jesus, surrenders their life to the Lord, and they have new life. That's what we believe. They've responded to the gospel and they're up here sharing their testimony. And there are people in our seats that are only here for one reason, and that's to check up on their background. Check. Check up on their Instagram history, their Internet history, their job history, to make sure. Man, are they really saved? Could they really possibly be a new creation? There's no way. That would be absolutely terrible. And I'm just thankful that my salvation doesn't rely on my past. It doesn't rely on all the good or bad things I've done, that it has to outweigh the good, has to outweigh the bad. But I'm saved by grace. And the Gospel is enough that Jesus plus nothing equals everything. And I think it's. It's strong what Paul says in Galatians, chapter two. There's a lot of strong language from Paul, which isn't surprising, but there's some strong language that he calls those who want to add to the gospel. Add regulations and rules. He calls them false believers. And I want to make sure that I'm checking myself first to say, have I added things to the gospel? Am I putting expectations on other people's lives to prove something? Or am I adding things to my own life that are causing me to drift away? I love the language that Paul used in verse. In verse five, he says, we did not give in to them for a moment so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. It's so intense. It's like we didn't give into him for a moment. Like, you gotta. They were trying, and we didn't let. They didn't stand a chance. We weren't giving in for nothing. I love his intensity. Not a moment. It's not like there's no leniency. There's no. I could see your perspective. Sure, sure, sure. I think there's a lot of that these days. It's like, yep, we gotta. Yep, we gotta give. We gotta validate their belief. They're got to validate that even though they're. They're wrong and they're speaking a false gospel. Yep. Let's validate that. There's no leniency. There's no wiggle room. He said, we didn't give them a moment. We didn't give into him an inch. And why does he say that? He says it so that the gospel might be preserved for you. He's talking to the Galatian believers, but he's also talking to you and me that the gospel, the purity, the truth of the gospel is being preserved by us not giving, giving in to these false believers who want to add on to the gospel. I believe this, that there are generational consequences to us deviating from this doctrine, that I'm here today being able to proclaim the purity and truth of the gospel. Because for generation after generation after generation, parents and preachers and pastors and teachers and Sunday school volunteers and kids workers and youth leaders have not given an inch or a moment or any wiggle room to any other gospel but the gospel of Jesus Christ, that we've been saved by grace, through faith, not by our works. It is a gift from God. And we stand here today needing to make a decision for ourselves. What gospel are we gonna continue to share with the generations to come? We need to be vigilant to preserve the truth of the gospel. Paul says it this way. He was so firm on this all throughout the New Testament. He says it this way to the church in Corinth. He says, for I resolved to know nothing while I was among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. If we aren't vigilant about this, how we receive our identity in Christ, our identity will start to drift, and our identity will ultimately be stolen. And I don't want to be a believer with a stolen identity. There was one time my identity was kind of stolen. Although, as I tell the story, you're going to realize that I kind of gave it away. I did receive a phone call one time, and they were so convincing that they needed this specific information from me. And I was like, what's. What's your what? Who are you? Who are you from? Wells. You said Wells Fargo. Okay. I looked up their number, and, like, it seemed legit, and. Excuse me, it seemed legit. And, you know, I did all the stuff, and they're just asking me for information. And a few weeks later at home, we get some mail, and there's a new person added to our phone bill, and there's a new person added to our bank account. And so, Fanny Avila, wherever you are, the gig is up. We gotcha. But how did that happen? Because you're an idiot. That might be true, but it happened because I just believed little lies of the other person on the other end of the phone. It seems so convincing. It seems so legit. They said all the right words. They knew things about me. You know, I just believed little lies over, over again. And we do the same thing with our spiritual identity. We believe these little lies from the enemy. And over time, those little lies, we start to believe a completely different identity. That we are no longer who we are in Christ, but we are who the world says we are. We are what our behavior looks like, or we are fill in the blank. This shouldn't be a surprise that the enemy is called the father of lies. That's what Jesus calls him in John 10:10. He says, the enemy comes only to steal, kill and destroy. And I have come that you may have life and have it to the full. This is what the enemy wants to do. He wants to steal our life. And that word life is the word, Zoe, which is this eternal spiritual life that we have only in Christ. And this is what the enemy is after. And he will tell lie after lie after lie until we start to believe it. And we will slowly drift and deviate from the truth of our life. There's this law or rule in aviation called the 1 in 60 rule. And it's this, that if you're off course by just one degree after 60 miles of travel, you'll be one mile off your intended destination. It doesn't sound like much, but an error compounds. But the error compounds with distance. Go 600 miles at the same 1 degree, and you're now 10 miles off course. The terrifying part is that the 1 isn't the 1 degree. It's that at the moment of departure, a 1 degree error is invisible. You can't see it, feel it, or measure it. Without instruments, the pilot who drifts one degree off course looks identical for a long time to the pilot flying. True. The drift only becomes undeniable once it's already cost you money, miles. You can't get back without a hard correction. Man, aviation is preaching. It's this little drift that we don't even see right away. And it seems legit. It's just one degree. And without this correction and this turning, which sounds a lot like repentance, but without this, we drift and we get dangerous position that will cost us something. Just one degree. One lie. One, you're not enough. One, you're not loved. One, you've gone too far. One situation or circumstance that you find yourself in. When I was a little kid, there was something really unfortunate that happened to me. Shouldn't ever happen to anybody. And it put me, when I was a kid, in one degree, one degree off course. And it was the kind of situation, without getting into detail that it was so overwhelming my entire life to try to believe the truth. And it was way easier to believe the lies. And I just, over time, find myself drifting, find myself off course. And it wasn't until 30 years after that incident that it just all. It all kind of came out. And I had to get it out. I had to share with people that I loved and trusted with what happened. And I'll never forget sitting across from a therapist, and it was that first session. And if you've ever seen a therapist, you know that first session, you're like, I don't know why I'm here. I don't know you. What are we doing here? And he closed his book. We had, like two minutes left. I was kind of discouraged. And he looked at me and goes, I just need. I need you to know that there's nothing wrong with that little boy. He was talking about me as a little boy. And I just believe that there are some people that there may be something that happened to you, that God had intended for you to be in alignment this way, but by no fault of your own, and even in your own innocence, it set you off course, and you've been fighting for your life to get back on course. Just in the. In the middle of this message, I just want to pray for anybody that. That might be your story. So, Lord, I just. It's only. It's only through an intervention of the power of the Holy Spirit that can bring us back into alignment. And sometimes the correction like we're about to read is strong and firm and intense. And sometimes the correction is gentle to bring us back to our rightful place. God, I pray that that would happen for people right now. There would be a gentle correction to bring them back into alignment with who you already made them to be. I pray that there would be healing from the inside out in people's lives that it's not too late to live a life of abundance spiritually, to live a life secure in our identity in Christ, to live a life confident and congruent with who you created us to be. So, God, would you do this? The ministry that only you can do in these lives today? In Jesus name. In Jesus name. Amen. And amen. I think this. This moment in Galatians 2 is so powerful and significant because there's a boldness that. That in our. In our culture today can look mean and rude, but it's a boldness from Paul that is so unbelievably loving. And Peter, it turns out, is, like, scared of some of these other people that are coming into the scene. And so he kind of Says, you know what? It does need to look a certain way. It does need to be Jesus plus this equals salvation. And so look at this correction that Paul brings. In verses 11 through 14, he says, when Cephas or Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face. That's awesome. Because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. Peter used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and to separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. So he used to call them false believers. Now he just calls them the circumcision group. That's not a group. That's just a tough title. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so now he's leading other people astray, so that by their hypocrisy, even Barnabas was led astray. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the Gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, you are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it then that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? Whoa, man, I love. I love his boldness, his intensity, because he cares, man. I need that kind of boldness in my life that I believe so firmly and so strong in the truth and the purity of the Gospel that when in the church with other believers, with other brothers and sisters in the family of God, I see a deviation that I'm willing to call it out. This boldness is not a personality type, by the way. He wasn't just an extreme extrovert. It's a boldness that comes from the Holy Spirit. Acts 4:13 says, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, they perceived that they were uneducated common men. They were astonished, and they recognized them as the people that had been with Jesus. When you're with Jesus and the Holy Spirit's inside of you, you have a boldness to bring correction to things that need to be corrected. And Paul isn't mean here. He's loving and he cares about the church, and he cares about Peter, and he cares about other believers. And we need to do a better job at giving and receiving correction in the church and having healthy confrontations. Some of you just got real nervous. So I'm gonna go down the row, and I'm just gonna start. I'm kidding. That'd be crazy. But I just know too many Christians that are walking around as victims of church hurt. And there might be some of that true, but I know too many of them that all they heard was a correction that they didn't want to hear. And before you categorize something as angry, as mean and chalk it up to another church hurt victim, maybe there are some eyes of love behind that person to bring correction to your life and help you to be the person that God says you are. Because true biblical correction, when we're like what Paul is doing, it doesn't bring condemnation and make you feel less than a child of God. But true biblical correction should bring encouragement and remind you of your citizenship in heaven, of your identity as a child of God. Hebrews 12:6 says, for the Lord disciplines those he loves and he punishes each one he accepts as his child. So what Paul is doing is incredible. It reminds me of what my dad did for me growing up and it's how our identity is restored. Paul doesn't just correct Peter's behavior, but he corrects his belief because Peter was acting this way because he had an incorrect belief belief about the gospel. So as you go to these last few verses, look at what it says in verse 16. Know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law. Because the works of the law no one will be justified. He just said the same thing three times in three different ways. Like he's trying to say, hey, we need to get this right, that we are not justified by the works of the law. We are justified by what Jesus has done for us. Well, okay, some of you might be thinking, what about, what about James when it says in James 2 that faith without works is dead. Yes, but works are a byproduct of our salvation, not the way that we earn salvation. We are not justified by the works of the law. We are justified by faith in Jesus. Verse 20. This is the verse that we started with. He gets his attention off of Peter and talking kind of at and to these people and starts to talk about himself and he says, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life that I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Paul is not describing some self improvement program. He's not describing Jesus as the first century Tony Robbins just get 1% better every day. No, he's Saying that when you encounter Jesus and you encounter the truth of the gospel, you become completely transformed from the inside out. Jesus describes it as being born again, new life, new life. Final verse, verse 21. I do not set aside the grace of God. I'm not going to put it aside. I'm not going to diminish the grace of God. For if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing. There's no middle ground. There's no middle ground in what we believe. Either Christ secured your identity or you will spend your whole life trying to secure it yourself. But he did. And he did it for us. Neil Anderson says this. The more you reaffirm who you are in Christ, the more your behavior will begin to reflect your true identity. You know, there are people in the world that's like. It's like you gotta re. You gotta have these affirmations, you gotta have these vision boards. You gotta, you know, write the goals down. You gotta have the. All these things to keep yourself in alignment with who you really are. Your true you. Do you boo, boo, like get the thing, like get, get the picture of the Lambo up on the wall, like that's what we're all the different things and that's all great, but it's not who you are. We believe what scripture says, that you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. So with every head bowed, every eye closed, I just wanna speak some truth over you from God's word. If you would just open up your hands like you're ready to receive this gift of grace. There are about 90 in Christ statements in the New Testament that declare who we are and what we're capable of. Because we are, in Christ, a new creation. I'm not going to read all 90, but I do want you to receive these. And this is not positive goal setting or manifestation. This is believing the truth of God's word. In Christ, I am a new creation. The old is gone and the new has come. In Christ, I am God's child. In Christ, I have been justified, declared righteous once and for all. In Christ, I am free from condemnation. In Christ, I cannot be separated from the love of God. In Christ, I am complete, nothing added, nothing missing. In Christ, I have been redeemed and forgiven of all my sins. In Christ, I am a citizen of heaven. In Christ, I am confident God will complete the good work he started in me. In Christ, I can do all things through him who strengthens me. And I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who lives but Christ who lives in me. God, I pray that we would receive the truth of your word, the truth of the good news of the gospel, and whether people are in this room or watching online, that there would be a reaffirming and realigning of our identity as your children. We are not what we do. We are not who people say that we are. We are who you say that we are your children. God and I pray that it's out of that place that we would live our lives. The overflow, the overflow of what the Holy Spirit is doing in our lives would cause us to live a different way, would change our appetite, would change the way that we see the world, would change the way that we see others. And God, I'm not even gonna ask that you would do it. Because when we encounter the gospel, it's what happens. In Jesus name, in Jesus name.