Let's look at Galatians chapter 3 and let's start in verse 10 and I'm going to read down to verse 25. Galatians 3 10 to 25 and let's pray before we do look at this passage. Father we thank you for your word it is the truth and we thank you that you have revealed it to us that you have taught us truth and that you have instructed us in the truth and that you have given us the spirit of truth so that we can understand the things that have been freely given to us by God and we thank you father that you have showed us our need for Your Son and showed us more of who He is in all of His redemptive glory. And we pray that You would help us tonight, Lord, that You would establish us in the truth, that You would establish our minds and our hearts, that You would open the eyes of our hearts that we might see the the riches that we have, the inheritance that awaits us, and the power that is ours in Christ. Lord Jesus, we pray that you would forgive our sin. Forgive us for keeping truth in our minds and not for taking it out and living it out and spreading it as we ought. And so we pray that this would be a time that we grow both in knowledge and also that you would motivate us and empower us. and that we would be conformed more to the image of Christ. We pray these things in his name. Amen. All right, Galatians chapter three, and let's begin in verse 10. Paul has mentioned the blessing of the Abrahamic covenant and how it's always been of faith, and that the Abrahamic covenant came before the Mosaic covenant and the giving of the law at Sinai. This is part two of the Mosaic covenant in Christ. And so it's fitting that we go to a passage that really defines for us the purpose of the law in redemptive history. Paul says there, for as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written, cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for the just shall live by faith. Yet the law is not of faith, but the man who does them shall live by them. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree, that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Brethren, I speak in the manner of men, though it is only a man's covenant, yet if it is confirmed, no one annuls or adds to it. Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He does not say, and to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to your seed, who is Christ. Remember, we've already said all the promises of the Bible are given to Abraham and Christ. And they're really passed down to Jesus, who is the covenant keeper, who then gives them to us by faith. And Paul says, in this I say that the law which was 430 years later, that is 430 years after the Abrahamic covenant and promise, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect. For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise, but God gave it to Abraham by promise. What purpose, then, does the law serve? And there, I think when he speaks of the law, he's speaking of the whole Mosaic economy. He's not just talking about the Ten Commandments or the dietary laws. He's talking about the totality of the Mosaic legislation. What purpose does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions. till the seed should come to whom the promises were made, and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator does not mediate for one only, but God is one. Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not. For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. But the scripture has confined all under sin that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith, which would afterward be revealed. Therefore, the law was our tutor or pedagogy to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. Now, as I said last week, when we entered in on this discussion that when we come to talk about the law of God, there's so many categories that we have to deal with when we talk about the Mosaic Covenant, especially. in redemptive history, this is where a lot of difficulties arise. There's tons of disagreement on how are we to understand the Mosaic Covenant, how are we to understand our relationship to it, how are we to understand its relationship to the Abrahamic Covenant, how are we to understand the Mosaic Covenant in relationship to the New Covenant, to the Church, How are we to understand all those laws in the Old Testament? What are we to make of the language of not being under the law and yet the law being established by grace? What are we to do with all that? There's so much biblical data. I have to say here, while we've already started and we've considered the Mosaic Covenant and the law in the Mosaic Covenant in redemptive history, and we've considered the three-fold division of that law, remember it was moral law, civil law, ceremonial law, and all the laws in the Mosaic legislation could be categorized in one of those three categories. And we talked about the redemptive historical purposes of dietary laws. Why did God give the nation of Israel these things in the Old Covenant? And we said that in all of that, there was this redemptive foreshadowing that it was all preparing. If you think about the Mosaic Covenant, as a preparatory thing, that it's preparing God's people and us for understanding the gospel better, and showing them and us our need for Christ, you get it better. If you think of it as some pathway to acceptance with God, you don't get it. Now so many of the Jews distorted the law and that's why Romans and Galatians are written. It's why part of Colossians or why Colossians in part is written. It's why Hebrews is written in part. You see how the Jews had a propensity to trust in the law. That's why that phrase works of the law is used. Anyone trying to establish themselves before God in righteousness by what they did in accord with what the law commanded, failed to understand the purpose of the law. And in that sense, they perverted the law and made it the perfect rule of self-righteousness rather than the perfect schoolmaster to drive them to Christ and guide to show them the sphere in which sanctification occurs. Here's where it gets tricky. We talked last week about the demand for perfect obedience, that that was a pretty big deal. And we proved it from Galatians 3, where Paul says, cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things written in the book, panta, all. And he's taking that out of Deuteronomy. Paul's lifting that verse out of the law. And he's showing that the law demanded perfect obedience. And we talked last week about how God demanded perfect obedience with Adam and then, you know, gave the law to Moses and Israel and Sinai and demanded perfect obedience. And yet, what else did God give with those commandments in the Mosaic Covenant? What did He give them besides just laws? What did He give them? Grace. And in what? What was the grace typified in? The sacrifices, the temple, the priesthood, the festivals, even some of the laws themselves were typifying the grace that was to come in Christ. The law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, Jesus comes, And we talked, the last time we were together at the very end, we talked about the fulfillment of the law in Christ. Remember Jesus said, it's fitting for us to John the Baptist to fulfill all righteousness. Galatians 4 says he was born under the law. that he might redeem those who are under the law, that he's driven out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, clearly is the second Adam, the true Israel, obeying where Adam and Israel failed to obey. That becomes crucial. That becomes crucial in our understanding of justification, that Christ keeps the demands of the law perfectly, never sins. It's not just that he could be the spotless sacrifice. Yes, that is the big thing, that he's the lamb without blemish and without spot, that his holy, harmless, perfect soul could be made an offering for sin, but that God's law had to be kept, that it had to be obeyed, that righteousness had to be established. And Jesus did that for us as our representative. Now, that does not become as evident, and here's where I'm going to pick up on last week's now, that does not become as evident when we come to something like the Sermon on the Mount. As we talk about Christ and the fulfillment of the law, you might read something like the Sermon on the Mount, and you might read books about the Sermon on the Mount, and you could get the sense very easily that it's about what you do, not what Christ did. Christ very clearly calls his disciples to a life of obedience in the Sermon on the Mount. That's just super clear. We're not trying to get around that. We're not trying to lay that aside. That is clear. Whoever hears these words of mine and does them shall be like a wise man who built his house on the rock, but he who hears these things and doesn't do them, foolish man, builds his house on the sand, the winds come, deep, low, house falls. Very clearly, just like the book of James, there's a call to action, but that action is not for justification. What is Jesus doing on the mount there in Matthew 5-7 at the beginning of his ministry? Now, in order to answer that question, we go back to the beginning of Matthew. And in Matthew 1 through 4, we have a series of occurrences that are showing us how Christ came to fulfill everything. So in Matthew 1 and 2, you'll see that phrase, that it might be fulfilled by the prophet what was spoken saying. And then in that one instance, out of Egypt, I called my son. He's the true Israel, Hosea 11.1, Jesus is true Israel, goes down into Egypt, out of Egypt. We've talked about this a lot. He comes out of Egypt, and then he goes through the water of baptism, into the wilderness, and then up on the mountain. And he is recapitulating Israel's history. Now when he's on the mountain, whose ministry is he realizing as the anti-type? Who is Jesus the anti-type of when he's on the mountain? Moses. And what did Moses do on the mountain in the Old Testament at Sinai? He gave the law. God gave Moses the law. Moses mediated that law. What is Jesus doing as the God that gave Moses that law? He is not mediating that law in one sense. He is the God who gave it. And he is doing several things, actually. One, he is correcting misinterpretations because remember the Pharisees, they wanted to make the law more manageable in their minds. They wanted to make it more in accord with their traditions. They wanted to, in a sense, shape God into their own image by taking the law and shaping it to what they wanted it to be. So as long as I don't swear by Jerusalem, I'm good. As long as I don't swear by this, I don't have to keep my oath. It's trickery. It's spiritual trickery. And you know, Jesus is constantly saying that the Pharisees were externally righteous. They were like whitewashed sepulchers. They were like cups that were outwardly clean, but inside were full of greed and wickedness. That everything that they did publicly they didn't do privately and Jesus said that you know They were hypocrites and that on the day of judgment. Nothing's going to be spoken in secret It's not going to be proclaimed all the secrets of the heart all of their greed all of their filth all their idolatries But what they were doing with God's law is they were using it and shaping it for their own sinful, wicked, self-righteous purposes. And so when Jesus comes and he says, you've heard it said, but I say to you, he is not correcting the law of Moses. That's a huge misunderstanding. He is not saying, well Moses told you this, but I'm telling you it's different. Moses said don't commit adultery, but now in the New Covenant, if you look at a woman in lust, that's adultery. No, it was always adultery to look at a woman in lust. And so Jesus is taking the Pharisee's misinterpretation and he's giving the true intent. By the way, John Murray in his book Principles of Conduct has a great little appendix where he talks about the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus's correcting the misinterpretations of the Pharisees. And it's really helpful because he goes through rabbinical literature from Second Temple Judaism and shows all of the perversions of God's law and what Jesus is probably interacting with. Really helpful. Probably the most helpful thing I've read on that. Jesus is doing something further on the Mount though. As he has come to fulfill it to fulfill the law and the prophets which he says in Matthew 5 20 17 through 20 is where he really talks or 17 5 17 through 20 where he talks about the righteous our righteousness needing to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees and But the Lord is doing something further. In one sense, he is ripping away the earthly veneer of the Mosaic economy. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, we talked last week about the civil laws. So if a man did A, then B would be the consequence. And B was usually get stoned, pay back, more sheep for the sheep you stole, all those things. Well, Jesus comes on the Sermon on the Mount, it's really quite remarkable that he doesn't talk about any earthly consequences. He doesn't talk about civil consequences. He talks about eternal punishment. He says that if you even call your brother a fool, you're in danger of hellfire. You see what Jesus is doing is he's taking what the Old Testament law had contained in itself with that national civil principle, and he's saying it was never only about getting civil punishment. It was always about judgment before God. It was always about the judgment to come. And so adultery, murder, theft, false oath-taking, all of the things that he mentions there, judging your brother wickedly, all of those things, deserving of hell. So what Jesus is doing is he's taking the law, he's showing what the original intent is. It was always about heart motivation. If you look at a woman to lust, you've already committed adultery, so lust and adultery are in the heart. And then the consequences, judgment. In the Old Testament, you commit adultery physically, you get stoned. Jesus is like, that's a picture of hell. That's what he's doing in the Sermon on the Mount. He's saying, your sin is much bigger than you think it is. The consequences of sin are much greater than you think they are. The Pharisees would have been happy with, let's just stone the adulterer. They would never be happy with, the adulterer deserves to go to hell. And oh, by the way, if you look at a woman, you're an adulterer. So, look at a woman to lust. Let me say that carefully. So, I think there is already a schoolmaster use of the law, even on the Sermon on the Mount, that sometimes is often overlooked. Why do you think that is? Why do you think the schoolmaster use to drive men to Christ as Savior is oftentimes overlooked in the Sermon on the Mount? There's a reason. Overlooked by those who critique it? or even by a lot of reform guys that write on it. It's downplayed, maybe I should say, instead of overlooked. Downplayed. Practical use of it? The application part? Yeah, I think, I mean, Jesus is clearly talking about his disciples. Here's life in the kingdom. Blaster the poor in spirit. Blaster those that don't have righteousness but who hunger and thirst for it. Blaster those that mourn over their sin. Blaster those that want to be pure in heart. Blaster those that want to be peacemakers. This is not how you become a Christian. These are marks of Christians. And so the Sermon on the Mount is very complex, because as I understand it, everything in Matthew 5-7 is either going to be used to drive you to Christ as Savior, if you're unregenerate, or to encourage you to walk faithfully as His disciple in union with Him. as a redeemed person. So there's that multi, and we'll talk about this at the end of this lesson, the threefold use of the law, but there's definitely a twofold use going on. So if you're unregenerate and you read the Sermon on the Mount, you shouldn't be saying, well, I'm going to try not to look at lust. That would be the improper use of the law on you at that point. And that's what I was going to say. It can kind of seem like a form of legalism. It could, if it's not driving you to Christ at the front end, and then you abiding in him by faith throughout. Yes, it could very easily. This is why the liberals loved the Sermon on the Mount. 20th century modernism was built around, we'll take Jesus's ethics. Oh, yeah, here's his ethic. If you look at a woman in lust, you're going to go to hell. There's his ethic. So go do that. And I think the point is, okay, so taking those two things that the Sermon on the Mount has a two-fold usage. One, it ought to drive men to Christ for justification. Two, it ought to promote sanctification in the life of believers. But you have to know where you are spiritually in that. Are you trusting him? It never bypasses Jesus. Now, in Matthew 5, 17, Jesus says, not one jot or tittle of the law will pass away until all is fulfilled. I did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. Now, if you read books on this, it's going to drive you crazy. It's going to drive you crazy. You're going to have 20 authors telling you what they think the word fulfill means. Does it mean confirm? Does it mean the goal to which it should have reached? Does it mean that he's going to show us what the real intent was? Does it mean he obeyed it for us? What does it mean? D.A. Carson, I think, is most helpful here, where he says, actually, there's probably multiple meaning in the fulfillment idea. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. He does realize its intention. He does confirm that the law of God is good and holy and right, and he confirms the right usage. But he also comes to fulfill it to keep it. He comes as the law keeper. We can't dismiss that because we think somehow that's going to say, OK, you don't need to obey. That's not a free pass for you not to obey, but it's one of the grounds of the gospel that Jesus came to fulfill the law in himself, to keep it, to obey it. It's part of his saving work. So, in Matthew 5.20, when Jesus says, I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you'll by no means enter the kingdom of God. Now, when Jesus says that, I take that to be a two-fold righteousness. Now listen very carefully. Because most reform writers are going to say, he's talking about practical righteousness that we get in sanctification, not imputed righteousness for justification. Almost all of them, Lloyd-Jones. I think maybe even Sinclair Ferguson would move this way a little bit. Verne Poitras certainly does in Shadow of Christ, The Law of Moses. I mean, the majority of Reform commentators are going to say, when he says, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you'll by no means enter the kingdom. He means there has to be a practical righteousness in your life, because there wasn't in the Pharisees. Now, I'm going to say that's putting the cart before the horse, and that when Jesus says that, It's true. You have to have practical righteousness. 1 John says, he who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he was. But we don't get justified. We don't get a right standing with God by practicing righteousness. We get a right standing with God in Jesus Christ. by imputed righteousness. When we believe in Jesus, his righteousness is imputed to us. And as our friend Ron Weeks says, quoting Luther, only a just man can do justly. It's a great quote. Only a just man can do justly. So if Jesus is putting some emphasis on the practical, you have to have justification and sanctification. Both have to be there, and I think he is. And let's say he's even weighing heavier on the, is your life in conformity with your profession? Nevertheless, the foundation of that is that you're accepted in Him by faith alone because He fulfilled the law for you. And you're not trusting your own righteousness. We would have to take the Sermon on the Mount and we would have to put it behind the lens or in front of the lens of Philippians 3. And we'd have to read where Paul says, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness of God by faith. And Romans 3, now apart from the law, the righteousness of God is seen being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. And so you could see how subtly you could become imbalanced here. If you say the righteousness Jesus is talking about, in Matthew 5.20 that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees is only His imputed righteousness. You are not going to be able to deal faithfully with all the calls to Christian living in the Sermon on the Mount. If you say it is only practical righteousness in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus is speaking about, I think you could come dangerously close to falling into trusting in your performance alone, instead of abiding in Jesus by faith and living out the life in the Spirit that He has called you to live out. So it's a very difficult subject. When you come to the Sermon on the Mount, it's not easy. It's a very difficult subject, actually. And I've wrestled with this for a decade. And I think the best way to take it is that we need Christ. And it's the Christ on the mount giving the sermon that we need. And he's going to go from one mountain to another mountain, isn't he? He's going to go from one mountain to another mountain to pay for your violations of what he commands on the mount in the sermon. So whoever looks at a woman to lust, well, I've done that. I need a Savior." He's going to go from one mount to another mount to pay for the violations of that law that was given to Moses, that was then expounded by Jesus, and he's going to pay for that at the cross. J. Gretchen Machen has a great statement. He says, the Sermon on the Mount, like the rest of the New Testament, leads straight to the foot of the cross. The Sermon on the Mount, like the rest of the New Testament, leads straight to the foot of the cross. Gerhardus Voss will say something very similar about, he'll say, if we have but eyes to see, we will find the Savior in the outdoor scenes of the gospel as much as we'll find him in the walls of the school of the letter to the Romans. It's a beautiful statement. If we have but eyes to see, we will find the Savior. Remember, he's speaking about Christ in his saving work. We will find the Savior in the outdoor scenes of the Gospels as much as we'll find him within the walls of the school of the letter to the Romans. So what we read in Romans is not detached from this, but it helps interpret this. And it's the same Savior. And if it was only, if Jesus was merely saying, you have to be better than these people to go to heaven, and it's not about Him and His saving work as the foundation, well, He didn't have to be incarnate. And he didn't then have to go to the cross. And so what you start to see is that in the fulfillment of the law, it's so much richer and fuller in Christ. Now, Jesus doesn't do away with the law as if there's no more law. at all. And this is a mistake some Christians make, sadly, because they get grace, they get faith alone, they get Christ alone, they get the glories of the doctrines of grace, they get that they are not justified by the law and they will not be condemned by that law. And the Westminster Confession, actually the Westminster Larger Catechism, question 97 says that those that are regenerate, born again, are delivered from the law as a covenant of works so that they're neither justified nor condemned by it. So if you're in Christ, on Judgment Day, the law is not going to condemn you. If you're in Christ, you can't try to work for justification by your obedience. You and the law are separated for justification. But that doesn't mean there's no more law for the Christian. Let me say one more thing, and then I actually may stop tonight on the fulfillment of the law. I may actually end as we look at Hebrews just a little bit, and then maybe the next time we can talk about uses of the law. I knew I might have to do this in three parts, but When we talk about the Mosaic Covenant, so sometimes I'm saying law, sometimes I'm saying Mosaic Covenant, and it's not really fair because the two are not necessarily synonymous, even though the law was so bound up in the Mosaic Covenant. But when we talk about the Old Covenant, the mistake some people make is anything before Jesus. So sometimes you'll hear people say, well, that was Old Covenant. Well, was it part of the Mosaic Covenant, the Mosaic economy? Okay, I agree. That's Old Covenant. That's when the writer of Hebrews is speaking in the Old Covenant when he says that the Old Covenant is passing away and it's becoming obsolete. He's talking about the Mosaic Covenant and the Mosaic economy. He's talking about that covenantal administration that lasted from Moses to Jesus, basically. The sacrificial system the temple the priesthood so Specifically those cultic things that pointed to Jesus those things. So he is the tabernacle John 1, right? The word became flesh and Tabernacled among us and we beheld his glory John chapter 2 Jesus said destroy this temple and in three days I'll raise it up Colossians 1 says in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Maybe that's chapter 2 of Colossians And so Jesus is the temple, he's the tabernacle, he's the priest. Remember, he's a priest after the order of Melchizedek. He is the sacrifice, he is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He is the Passover lamb. He ends all sacrifice by the sacrifice of himself. He offers himself once for sin, and then he rises and ever lives to make intercession as the priest in the heavenly temple. And so all of that stuff that was preparatory in the Mosaic covenant, has been fulfilled in Christ, realized in Him, we still go to the temple to worship. not a physical building. We go to Jesus and we go to the heavenly Jerusalem in worship. We enter into heavenly worship on the Lord's day when we gather together in worship. We go to a heavenly priest. We don't say we don't have a priest. We do have a priest. It's Jesus. We celebrate Passover, not with a physical little lamb, but with Jesus and the gospel. So he fulfills all those things. And that's a major part of his fulfilling the law, is fulfilling those cultic things. So when the writer of Hebrews contrasts the Old and the New Covenant, He is contrasting largely those worship law rituals of the old covenant with the realization and fulfillment in Christ. But it's in the book of Hebrews that the new covenant is spoken of. Now, I'm not going to get into baptism with you tonight. I will when we get to the new covenant. But what I want to talk about briefly is part of Jesus' work of fulfilling the law is not just His keeping it for our justification, but His keeping it and then giving us His Spirit and writing it on our hearts for sanctification. So one of the promises in the New Covenant is, your sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more, I will write my law on your heart and put it in your mind. I will be your God. You will be my people." So that that law that we once really hated because it made us want to sin, now we love and don't want to sin. So before when I heard, you shall not commit adultery in my natural depraved state, that makes me want to go commit adultery. In my regenerate state, though my flesh may want those things, my spirit and my mind, Romans 7, don't because God has written that law in my heart. And I want to be obedient to my Savior. And with David, we say how I love your law. So part of Christ fulfilling the law is fulfilling it in himself and then pouring his spirit out and writing it on our hearts. This is how I understand Romans 8. You know that tricky passage in Romans 8, verse 4, I think, where it says, that those who walk in the Spirit will live. There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. And then Paul will say, so that the righteous requirements of the law are fulfilled in us who walk by the Spirit. Now, there are a lot of Reformed theologians that try to say, well, see, the righteous requirements of the law were fulfilled by Christ. And that's what that means positionally for us. But I understand Romans 8 to be talking about life in the spirit, the spirit of Jesus and his people. And so while it's true that he did fulfill the righteous requirements of the law, he did keep the law, only he kept it perfectly. Only he could really fulfill the righteous requirements of the law. Nevertheless, they are being fulfilled in us through union with him by faith. So that as we are being sanctified, we are being sanctified in accord with God's moral standard of holiness. So I like to think of the Ten Commandments as boundary markers. So like, I like to think of them as boundary markers or like property markers. Instead of thinking them as something like you're trying to keep to be good enough, thinking this is the sphere in which God is sanctifying you. It's a huge field, and God is saying, here are the boundary markers, and you are free to run and enjoy everything in here. Now, everything's going to break down. Any illustration's going to break down. But now that I'm in Christ, and we'll talk about this more next week, now that I'm in Christ, God saying, Yeshahom, no other gods before me is a good thing. It's not a bad thing. That doesn't kill me. Now, there are many times it convicts me because I put other gods before him and I still have to go back to Christ and confess and be cleansed and forgiven and ask God to make me hate that and not to put other gods before him. You shall have no other gods before me is not It doesn't come to my ear as a hard Thing like it did when I was an unbeliever You shall not commit adultery is good. That's good for god's people um You know I had a pastor once he said this michael jackson was still alive and the whole scandal At his mansion was going on and I had a pastor who said to the kids in the church once he was talking about how When your parents tell you, no, you can't go here, and they have a good reason for that, they're seeking your best interest. And he said, children, there is a very big mansion with a lot of toys out in California. and you would like to go to that mansion and play, but your mommy and daddy know that's not good for you." And I remember being like, that is a great illustration. In a sense, God's law is like that for us in Christ as he is fulfilling it in us. When God says you shall not commit adultery, he's saying, my son, that is not good for you. When he says you shall have no other gods before you, my son, that is not good for you. Before I'm in Christ, that's just going to come as a schoolmaster to drive me to Him because I think, oh, that's what I want, and that's what I'm running after. And that's what my heart is bent to. So God's law functions in the fulfillment it has in Christ in a way that there's a graciousness to it. Now, it doesn't put us in any better standing with God. We're not justified or condemned by it. And it doesn't give us any power to obey. And we'll talk about that. But what I want to say is that in the new covenant, in the fulfillment of all things, Jesus not only keeps the law for us, but then he writes it on our hearts by his Spirit. And that's a really important thing, because you don't ever want to minimize this. It's the foundation. A pastor friend of mine, Roland Barnes, says, I like to think of justification as the platform that you're standing on. And while you're standing on that platform, God is sanctifying you. Rather than, okay, you're justified now, sanctification. You're always standing on the platform of Christ's perfect obedience and atoning death and resurrection. You're always standing on justification. You're always standing on Christ. And while you're standing on his finished work, he is sanctifying you by his spirit. And the law then is not an indifferent thing. God doesn't redeem us so that we can be lawless. He redeems us so that we'll walk in paths of righteousness. Now we're going to fail, and we're going to go back to him. Let me say this. This is really wonderful. The Westminster divines in that larger catechism 97, they asked the question, Of what use, and now I'm already getting into the uses, but of what use is the moral law to the regenerate? And they say, though they that be regenerate are delivered from the law as a covenant of works, so that they're neither justified nor condemned by it, nevertheless it's of special use to them in that it shows them how much they are bound to Christ for keeping it. for taking the curse in their place and for their good, and then out of gratitude to stir them up to greater endeavor after obedience. But what I love about that question is they say, what use is the Ten Commandments to you if you're a believer? I mean, you knew what use it was to you before you were a believer, to drive you to Christ. But once you're a believer, what use is it? And what I love about this question is, they start off by saying, it continues to show you how much you need Christ who kept it for you and took the curse of it for you. Because you still sin. And I still sin. And until we're sinless, we need the commandments to show us and point us to the one that kept them for us. The law still shows us our sinfulness. It doesn't function the same way as it did when it first drove us to Christ, but it continues to show us the depths of our sin and the greatness of the redemption we have in Jesus. And we can never lose sight of that. Not in a zeal for obedience. You can never lose sight of the fact that Christ keeping it and taking the curse of it for you is still beneficial to you as a believer. When I sin, I'm just going to close with this. When I sin and I feel guilty, the only resting place I have is that if we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. What is John saying? John is saying Jesus was the righteous one. He obeyed it. He is our advocate. He is our justification. He is our lawyer in heaven who represents us so that if we sin, not only do I have a sacrifice, I have an advocate who perfect life atoning death for me as a Christian. You see, so I think what we want to say as we close this one is that we don't want to lay the law aside. Now we talked last week how the civil and ceremonial laws have been done away with in a sense. They're not binding on the new covenant church. We don't want to lay the moral law aside. But we never want to look at it in relationship to us apart from Christ. We never want to examine ourselves against the law without looking at what Christ has done in regard to that law. Does that make sense? That if I look at the Ten Commandments, and I look at my life, and I don't look at Christ, I'm just going to be condemned, even as a believer. Or I'm going to be tempted to become self-righteous if I lower the standard. And so we always want to put Christ and his finished work, his fulfilled work in redemptive history, in between me and how I view the law. We need him as mediator between us and that law. I think the most beautiful picture of this is Colossians 2 where it says, the handwriting of requirements that was against us was taken out of the way and nailed to the cross. And so that when Jesus was nailed to the cross, our offenses of that law, even the ones we haven't committed yet, were nailed with him. And so you're free from the curse of the law. There's never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever gonna be a curse of the law on you if you're in Christ, ever. And next week we'll talk more about the uses of the law, and especially what we call the third use, and just trying to help us understand that better. Is this helpful? There's so much we could go over. Is this helpful? One of the things that helps me when I think about justification and sanctification is obviously, I guess in Greek, they use the word save and the different types of save. And so sometimes as we want to reduce everything to the you know, distinct, you know, theology, which is good, we sometimes lose the, miss the forest for the trees. You know, we miss, because we are studying it and getting so detailed, but we miss that it's all salvation. Right. It's all. And it's all in Christ. Right. And so you, there's no, Yeah, that's a great point. God didn't save you to justify you. And that's it. Right. I mean, he saved us for good works. It's all, not just for good works, but saved for good works. I mean, it's all part of the same thing. That's an outstanding point. And what we would say there, Steve's point is huge, that what a lot of people do is they over-systematize. So when he said, miss the forest from the trees, We could, we could, we could walk out to the redwoods in California and there could be like this massive just forest of redwoods and then there's this really big one right in the middle. That's justification. We're like, look at that redwood. And, and, and we just spend like three hours just looking at that one and then we're like, well, I'm out of time. I gotta go home now. And you miss like the spectacular panorama of redwood forest, you know. And the benefits of salvation are like that. God has given us more than just justification in Christ. He's given us adoption and sanctification and glorification. We're to see how Christ has redeemed us for all of those things. And we've got to be careful not to reduce everything to justification. And there's a danger. Why is there such a danger for that? Because justification is enormous. I mean, you are accepted by God, by faith, alone, on the basis of what Jesus did. I think, like, you know, it even, again, it is helpful, um, but being mindful that how Romans 5 Oh, yeah, obviously, yeah, there's a logical yeah, yeah because that justification plays a major role in my understanding the sanctification because it frees me up and glorification Even when you are getting the Hebrews chapter 10, I love verse 14 because it does what it says on It says for by a single offering he has perfected for all times, those who are being sanctified. Yeah, definitive sanctification. Yeah. So, you know, just really, really resting. We've been in our Hebrews 10, man. He is our sanctification. Right. Just really resting. And the fact that He was telling it at all angles, yet without sin, knowing how to perfectly intercede on my behalf, giving me what I need to make it through whatever temptation that I may be facing at that time, and truly understanding, like, you know, I cannot marry anything, either I'm working or I'm resting in Christ. So, yeah, it's just resting in the finished work. Because He said it from the cross, it is finished to tell the story. Yeah, and he is, I think this is why Christ-centeredness, when we talk about, why do we have to talk about Jesus so much, is because he, like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1.30, of God the Father, we are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. so that he becomes the justified one, he becomes the sanctified one. In a sense, even, he becomes the adopted one, though he's the eternal son. He becomes all those things covenantally through his work for us, so that when we abide in him by faith, all those things are ours by union with Him. Where Steve's point is actually very, very good, and I think a lot of people make the mistake of reading the Sermon on the Mount as only sanctification or only justification, precisely because they're not focused on Jesus. for justification and for sanctification. And if you would focus on Christ and understand who he is and what he's doing, and then read his teaching in light of that, and in light of your need for him and where you are spiritually, you would see. So if you keep him central, everything else kind of makes sense.