The following message was given at Emmanuel Baptist Church, Coconut Creek, Florida. You'll join me in your Bibles in Galatians chapter 2. Galatians chapter 2. This evening we'll be looking at verses 17 through 19. In John Bunyan's classic tale, The Pilgrim's Progress, the main character is a man by the name of Christian. And he meets many people along the way in his journey. And one of the men that he meets is a man by the name of Faithful. Now at some point in the story, Faithful recounts to Christian something that happened to him when he found himself at the foot of what was called the Hill Difficulty. And as Faithful stood staring up Hill Difficulty and deciding whether or not he would begin the ascent up the hill or if he would take the easy way around, he met an old man from the town of Deceit whose name was Adam the First. And this man promised to give faithful all sorts of great pleasures in life, one of which was to marry all three of his daughters. And his daughters' names were Lust of the Flesh, Lust of the Eyes, and Pride of Life. Now at first, Faithful was very pleased to hear what was being offered to him and he was inclined to go with this man, Adam the first. However, wisdom prevailed and fighting the good fight, he was able to break free from the temptation and instead begin to ascend hill difficulty. But it wasn't long on the journey until he saw someone running after him. And in his words, he was running swift as the wind. This man knocked Faithful out cold with one blow. Eventually Faithful came to and he asked the man why he was treated so harshly. The man responded that it was because Faithful had a secret inclination toward Adam the first who he had met earlier. Then the man hit Faithful hard in the chest and he continued to beat him until Faithful recounts he was nearly dead at the man's feet. Once he had come to again, Faithful cried out for mercy, saying, oh, wretched man that I am. But the man responded, I do not know how to show mercy. So once again, he knocked Faithful to the ground. And were it not for another man who would come, Faithful would have been beaten to death. Now as Faithful is retelling his story, Christian explains to Faithful that the man who was beating him was a man by the name of Moses. And that Moses does not know how to show mercy to those who break his law. Faithful recognizes this to be true right away and acknowledges that he had met Moses once before back when he was living happily in the city of destruction. There, he recalls, Moses threatened to burn his house down if he remained in it. Then Christian asked, who was it that made Moses stop? And faithful replied that while he didn't know who it was at first, once the man passed by, he noticed holes in his hands and in his side and concluded that it was the Lord. Now in this story, Bunyan is portraying the law of God through this man that we find out is Moses. And he illustrates for us the way in which the law works. While once he lived in the city of destruction, the law functioned in faithful's life as that which threatened to burn his house down. It drove him away from the city of destruction to the celestial city. This is the first of what we call the three uses of God's law, driving sinners to see their own demise apart from Christ's righteousness. But what's interesting in the story is that faithful rejects the wooing of Adam the first. He didn't go with him and yet he still leveled nearly to death by the law on hill difficulty because he was inclined toward Adam the first. In other words, faithful at this point on his journey, he was a Christian, but he was being tempted to live his life dependent upon the law. He was wanting to be dependent upon Adam, dependent upon the covenant of works instead of living upon the righteousness of the one who eventually came to his rescue, who we know to be Adam the second, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, prior to becoming Christians, the law of God rules us, enslaves us, beats us, and threatens us because we know nothing else. Our lives are locked into an orientation of works. The entirety of our lives lived at that point are an attempt to justify ourselves through law. This is why people will readily tell you that they think they're good people. They've justified in their minds that they are because after all, look at all the things that I've done. And let's face it, I've never killed anybody. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked by a person what I do for a living. And then when I tell them I'm a pastor, it's almost instinctively, that almost immediately in one way or another, they will tell me I'm a good person. It's the built-in response from someone when they think maybe they're about to hear the gospel or in their minds they're thinking that I'm judging them because they aren't Christians, but in reality they know. Their conscience tells them that they are a sinner, that they have the law written on their heart and they know profoundly that they are not living up to the perfect standard that God has set. But we are blind in our pre-salvation state, aren't we? We are completely unable to see and to understand our legal-hearted orientation that cannot save us. But more powerful to me, and more to the point for Christians this evening, is that in Bunyan's allegory of a pilgrim's progress, he illustrates the undeniable reality that even for those of us who are already justified in Christ, even as Christians, we sometimes continue to be beaten by the law because of the secret inclinations of our hearts to view and to use the law in the wrong way. We have a secret orientation to our former way of life based upon the law instead of the grace of God. But one of the primary moves in the Christian life as we grow in Christ should be away from our old legal orientation toward a life lived more consistently upon our new gracious orientation. The old man wants to be resurrected, to live upon self, instead of allowing the new man to live upon Christ. And as we get into our passage this evening, Paul begins to unpack for the Galatians what life lived by faith in Christ looks like. Since we have been justified by grace through faith apart from works of the law we are free in Christ to walk by grace as new men as new women who need not justify ourselves by our works but instead by our works we display the fact that we are justified. This is really one of the main things that Paul is seeking to clarify for the Galatians, namely the right way of understanding how law and gospel relate to one another. He's laid out in his letter to the Galatians all that he is teaching them about law and gospel, how they work perfectly together and how we don't discount one for the other. And so he is laying this out in such a way that we can see that chapter 1 and chapter 2 up to verse 14 of chapter 2, it was written to lay a historical foundation for the theological foundation that begins in chapter 2 and verse 15 all the way to the end of chapter 4. And then in chapters five and six, when we get there, we'll see the ethical outworkings of all that he has written. So this evening, we're at the very beginning of Paul's theological argument in verse 17 of chapter two. Let's begin reading there. But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, Is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not. For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law, I died to the law, so that I might live to God. The first thing we see in our text this evening in verses 17 and 18 is that Christian unity and fellowship is found in Christ alone. When we read the scriptures, it's always good to take a few minutes to consider all of the implications of what we're reading. And in this case, there are several different things that we can draw out. But one important thing for us to consider as we work through the entire letter to the Galatians is this. If salvation were in any way based upon works of the law, why would anyone ever turn from Judaism to Christianity? Especially when you consider someone like Paul. He makes known elsewhere that he was the Hebrew among Hebrews. In the eyes of the Jews, he was a man who was blameless when it came to his understanding of and his practice in law-keeping, and yet now he is proclaiming this gospel of free grace to all of the Gentiles that he can find. Why would he do that if it still had some element of law keeping attached to it in order for one to have true salvation? But we know what the gospel is. We know what Christ has taught. For anyone to have a right standing before God, they must be justified by Christ alone, not by the works of the law that the Jews so vigorously sought to fulfill and were consistently falling short of. So how is one justified? Justification is an act of God's grace whereby our sins are imputed to Christ. In other words, our sins are put upon Christ in his suffering on the cross. And in return, Christ's righteousness is imputed to us. The righteousness of Christ is credited to our account as if we had never sinned because he paid the penalty And the record is cleared. So we are pronounced righteous in the sight of God. Another way to say this is what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5 21 where he tells us that God the Father made God the Son who knew no sin to be sin that in him we might become the righteousness of God. In other words the penalty of my sin is given to Christ who stood condemned in my place, while his righteousness was credited to me, that when I stand before God on the day of judgment, I can say, not what I have done, but Christ. It is not my righteousness upon which I stand, but his." The last thing you want to tell God on the day of judgment is, I was a good person. Because you know, and I know, and everybody knows. And you better believe that God knows better than anybody that it is simply not true of any of us that we are a good person. Now Paul's language here in verse 17 can be a bit confusing. But here's what he's saying. In our justification by faith alone, were we found to be sinners, is Christ then causing us or is he leading us to sin? Now you have to think back to what we saw previously in chapter two and the issue, remember, of Peter sitting with the Gentiles and having table fellowship with them. And when Peter sat with the Gentiles, he was making a very clear point that the unity shared amongst God's people is not based on their keeping of the law, was not based on their ethnic identity, but it was found in Christ alone. So Paul is now saying Christ is the one who led us to this truth. Christ is the one who taught us that we are all one in him. He is the one that brought Jews and Gentiles together. He tore down that division, that dividing wall that existed between us. So if you're going to say, that having union and fellowship with our Gentile brothers and sisters is no longer acceptable and it is a sin, you are saying that Christ himself has led us into this sin. There was this wall between Jews and Gentiles and Christ removed that wall. And so if we're going to continue to live as though that wall were necessary, we live in such a way that calls Christ a liar because in Jesus Christ, all who have trusted in him are one and the wall has been torn down. So Paul asks rhetorically, did Christ lead us into sin? And he writes, as he so often does, very emphatically, certainly not. By no means, no way, God forbid. Christ has not led us into sin. How Jews are saved and how Gentiles are saved is one and the same. There is no difference. Both are sinners, both are helpless to bring about their own redemption, both are in need of faith in Christ alone to be saved. And it is for this reason, Paul is arguing, that we all need to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we can hear, perhaps in this passage, that Paul's conversation with Peter, although not here in quotation marks, may actually be carrying over a bit into what he's writing here. He's telling him, as Jewish Christians, We can share table fellowship with Gentiles as our brothers and sisters in Christ, and it doesn't make us sinners unless we're saying that Christ has led us into sin, but it cannot be. But now in verse 18, Paul turns the issue to say that Peter, and remember, not just Peter, but also other Jews in Antioch, he pointed out even Barnabas, Because they're pushing away from the table as to not fellowship with the Gentiles, they're actually seeking to rebuild the wall that Christ has already torn down. And in so doing, they're transgressing the command of God. The very law that they're seeking to uphold, they're breaking. Christ took the division away, but by their actions they're reestablishing that division, and so they are transgressors. Paul even uses the first person here as to not exclude himself, if he too is to make this error. If I do this, I prove to be a transgressor. If I rebuild this wall between Jews and Gentiles, I am trying to reverse the gospel, and all that Christ accomplished was for naught. John Stott writes of other Christians outside of our own circles, and he says, if God has accepted them, how can we reject them? If he receives them to his fellowship, shall we deny them ours? He has reconciled them to himself. How can we withdraw from those whom God has reconciled? I emphasized this in a previous sermon, but I want to highlight this point again. However many differences there may be between ourselves and other Christians, and there may be many, the shared blessing of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, makes us one as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that means in our relationships with other Christians, we ought to give practical expression to that unity. God has accepted every believer in Jesus Christ simply because he or she is a believer in Jesus Christ. And our doctrine of justification by faith alone challenges us to make that visible by doing the very same thing. And I'll be the first to admit there have been times when in a time of spiritual pride or maybe a particular disdain for a certain theological position, I've willingly built a wall between myself and another brother or sister from another church forgetting all along that Christ has already removed that wall. Our unity with other Christians is not first and foremost founded on absolute, across the board, 100% doctrinal agreement. Our unity with other Christians is founded upon Christ alone. Now, I'm not saying that doctrine doesn't matter. It does. I'm not saying that our differences aren't important and significant. They are. But we cannot start with where we differ. We must begin with where we are the same. If we believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I want to emphasize that because that's crucial. I recognize there are many who call themselves Christians or churches that call themselves churches, but they really aren't. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about those Christians who believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. If they believe and they preach the gospel as the gospel given to us in the scriptures, we are standing on the same solid ground of Christ and his redeeming sacrifice on our behalf that our brothers and sisters are. Even though we may have significant differences with them on particular issues. But remember those words of the Lord Jesus Christ. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Or remember his prayer for his people in John 17. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. Brothers and sisters, he wasn't praying about Reformed Baptists. He was praying about all true Christians. Let them be one. Now, I believe there may very well be a day in our lifetime when God's people in America are forced to go underground, as is the case in many other parts of the world, perhaps. And at that point, what we will see is that all the fakers will fall away. Those who claim the name of Christ because they're trying to gain something other than Christ. Those who think they're Christians but have never been truly transformed. So-called churches that actually despise the gospel and its implications and make very little of the word of God. They will all fall away. Our faith is not something they will be willing to be persecuted for. Believing in Christ will not be something they will willingly die for. So they will just fall away. There's a reason why you don't see groups calling themselves Christians in places like China meeting underground so that they can fly a rainbow flag and talk about how open and progressive and welcoming they are to anything and everything. The last time I checked, Unitarian Universalism isn't on the rise in North Korea. And when you're faced with the real possibility of dying for your faith all of the sudden what you really believe starts to matter a whole lot. But then when persecution comes westward, what will we do? We'll be left with true Christians. And what are we going to do? I believe persecution is one of the very means used by the Lord to bring his people into greater fellowship with one another, fulfilling the very thing that Jesus prayed in John 17. Instead of finding ways to divide over non-essential issues of doctrinal differences, like, by the way, to check ourselves, Reformed Baptists have always been really good at doing, we will likely be searching out other Christians, seeking to find true fellowship that we once enjoyed out in the open. Now look, again, please don't hear me saying our differences aren't important. The implications of our doctrine are very important and we want to get that right. It makes a huge difference in how we live and how we worship. But please do hear me saying that at this point in my life and ministry, having read enough church history to see it, there's a lot of time spent among Christians determining where the lines will be drawn to make sure that we are divided instead of doing, as Paul is saying here, and recognizing that this wall has been torn down. There are no shortages of church splits, denominational controversies, or individuals with unresolved conflicts in the church. And I can say ashamedly that I've been involved in each of these. There are times when these divisions are necessary because there's a vital departure from the word of God to the extent that the gospel itself is lost. There is unrepentant and persistent sin, or the moral foundation of God's law has been completely obliterated. That happens and we must divide from that. However, amongst those who are faithful and true to the word of God, to his gospel, God's intention for his people bears down on my heart with a thousand pounds of pressure forcing me to ask, should we not be more patient with one another? Should we not sharpen one another as iron sharpens iron instead of sharpening our instruments as weapons of war? I'm afraid, brothers and sisters, that across the board in America we have two kinds of tables for evangelical fellowship. Either the table is so large that there's no way to actually experience true fellowship at all because the distance between one end of the table and the other is so far that we're in completely different zip codes altogether when it comes to what is true and important. or the table is so small that we're consistently driving others away who are trying to take a seat, but we don't wanna make any room. At this point in our history, I believe that God's people are far too comfortable in America. And we need to rethink our unity in light of God's word lest we all find ourselves sitting alone at our own end of the table only to realize that we're sitting at a completely different table altogether. Now, I have surely been convicted in many ways as I've thought through this. And one of the ways I've been convicted is thinking about what it takes to get there. I don't believe it's wrong for us to worship in different local churches. When we lived in the Savannah area, we had neighbors who we liked. They were also Christians. They went to a different church. And the more I thought about that, I thought about how our houses were right next door to each other. And we even came together and we split the cost to build a fence that divided our two properties. And it wasn't because we didn't like each other. It wasn't that we wanted to keep away from each other, but we realized that a good fence will make for good neighbors. We have our yard, you have yours, but I assure you that I will watch your house, I know you will watch mine. If you need anything, I'm here for you. We can think of other churches that way in terms of our differences. We may not live in the same house. but we can still love one another, we can still care for each other, we can still pray for each other, we can still watch out for each other and be willing to serve one another because at the end of the day, we live on the same block in the same town with the same king. But that's a big ask. So how do Christians get to the place where there is real unity based upon the gospel, knowing that this wall of distinction has been torn down? And I believe Paul provides us with the primary answer in verse 19. Paul shows us that Christians must die to our old legal way of life. In order to understand what Paul means here in verse 19, It's important for us to grasp what God was demanding when he gave the law. At creation in the garden, God established a covenant with Adam that we call the covenant of works. And in that covenant of works, God made his law clear to Adam with the requirement of do this and live. Now, of course, after the fall, Adam was no longer able to fulfill the requirements of the law because of his sinful nature. At once, he put on a flesh of rebellion and unwillingness to submit to the law of God. Adam had a heart that inherently desired to do the exact opposite of everything that God commanded. And you and I, we thought about this this morning, when we are born, We are born into this covenant of works and God has not lessened the force of his command. All mankind is born into a responsibility to fulfill his law perfectly. He has given his law and his requirement is perfect obedience to all of its moral demands. And to fall short in one area of the moral law is to transgress the entire moral law. So it is right to say that the obligation to the law in perfect obedience remains on all mankind. And if anyone were able to hypothetically keep the law perfectly, he would obtain eternal life. However, as we know, as the children's catechism says, we are all born in a state of sin and misery. And only Christ fulfilled the law of God perfectly, making each and every one of us guilty and without excuse before God. And so in that sense, we can say that we are under the curse of the law. And we're gonna see that later in chapter three. So, We are born with this covenant responsibility to fulfill the law of God to perfection. But we cannot because we are born in Adam with a sinful nature. And our sin grows and grows before God and it all hangs over our heads like a mountain ready to collapse on us when the weight of the law is applied to it, declaring that we are guilty, we are condemned, we are worthy only of condemnation. And so now, one of the ways the law functions, I mentioned this earlier, we call it the first use of the law. It is to convict us of our sin and to show us our absolute need for Christ. Because under the law alone, we stand condemned in this covenant of works, which we cannot fulfill. So how does the law do this? It does it by irritating our sinful nature. The law to the unconverted person is like a grain of sand in the shoe and it rubs and it grates and it causes a sore and eventually that sore opens up and it bleeds and it gets infected and it begins to ooze pus and it gets bigger and wider and deeper and more grotesque. And the sinful nature is irritated in one of two ways, either by trying to fulfill the law in some way in an unconverted state, but continuing to fall short, or we just rebel against it completely. And Paul illustrates this for us. If you remember from Romans chapter seven, verses seven and eight, he writes, what shall we say then? Is the law sin? May it never be. On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the law. For I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, you shall not covet. But sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment produced in me coveting of every kind from apart from the law, sin is dead. So sin is in our hearts. And once the heart hears the law, And the law says, don't do it. What does sin do? Sin rises up and wants to do it. If you're a parent, you've seen this very thing in your children. If you have maybe two kids playing together, maybe they have a toy and that toy has gone untouched for weeks or months. Perhaps it was lost under the bed somewhere. But one of them rediscovers that toy and they pick it up to play with it and instantly what happens? Now they both want it. A war breaks out. Suddenly this thing that was lost and nobody thought about is the prized possession in the household. And I want it because the other person has it and I don't. They get to play with it and I don't. So I must do what I can to get it from them. It will be mine. But we see the same thing in ourselves, don't we? What is your natural instinct when someone tells you to do something. Or when someone tells you not to do something. Or when you're told to do something that you don't want to do at all. Even as Christians, we can respond wrongly because the law is rigid and unbending and the natural desire of the flesh is to try and bend the unbendable. So we run up against it and it burns us inside. We get more enraged, we get more opposed. So you see how the law can actually serve to stir up sin within us. And this is particularly the case for those who are not Christians. The law is designed to be like salt in the wound of our sinful nature. When I'm in sin, what's the last thing you wanna hear when you're in the middle of sin? Someone coming to you and telling you that you're in sin and you need to repent. You don't wanna hear that. Only a regenerate person can hear that and respond appropriately. But even then, we can only respond appropriately when we identify our inability to live up to God's legal demands. And when we do what Paul is saying here, when we die to the law and we live fully and completely in Christ. You see, when we're seeking to live a life of works righteousness, when we're seeking to earn God's favor through law keeping, we deny the truth about ourselves and our own sinful nature. So we just pretend to be something we're not. And that's to only add sin on top of the sin that's there already. Any attempt we make at earning God's favor through law-keeping is hypocrisy. When we get self-righteous, what do we do? We turn up the self-effort, we crank up the self-discipline in the power of the flesh, and we seek to resolve our sin issues by being more rigid with ourselves. or on the other end of the scale, we convince ourselves that God's standard is just too high and I am a man too low, therefore I just need to loosen up. Stop being so uptight about holiness. But you see, both of these responses are completely wrong. Both responses are the very thing that Paul is calling us away from in this one verse. And so Paul tells us we must die to the law through the law that we might live to God. What in the world does that mean? It means that the law shows me by its demands that I cannot uphold its demands. Therefore, I need to die to my insistence that I can uphold this in my own will and my own strength. and my own righteousness, and see that it has been fulfilled finally and completely in Christ alone, thus making me able to live to God when I rest in Christ alone and trust solely in his righteous standing before God in my place. But see, for Christians, here's the problem. And remember, Paul's writing to Christians. So this gets right to the heart of our own issues. And we've all got issues. Our legal hearts really only like to put some of the flesh to death. This is a constant battle, why? Why not be slain completely and totally by the law that we can live fully and completely in Christ? Well, because we still want to hold on to some irrational way of life that is founded upon self-love and self-reliance. Why do you think one of the largest sections of every bookstore is self-help? And so when the law comes once again, and makes a demand of me, and it presses me into an area I don't want to be pressed into, instead of relying upon Christ, instead of trusting in his strength, and his obedience, and his presence, his escape from temptation, To continue to sin, I've left myself the option of resuscitating my legal-hearted way. I can resuscitate myself back to what I once was so that I can justify my sin instead of repenting of my sin. We fail so often to realize that our greatest experience of true joy and true freedom only comes from being slain to our old legal way of life, our old works oriented way of life. We know that sin only brings greater guilt and pain and misery into our lives. We can grow more paranoid. We have far less joy and contentment. We begin to treat others more harshly when we're living in sin. We try to push it away. We try to tamp it down. We try to justify it. We try to lessen the reality of it. But we do it anyways because we have convinced ourselves that maybe this one time, maybe this time, this sin will actually be all that it's cracked up to be. And the trail of tears and pain that follows behind it won't be what it always has been. Maybe once. But as Christians, we know that when we put to death the old self and we live upon God, we experience the true power of God that is available to us that we might walk in holiness and obedience because Jesus Christ was perfectly holy and obedient for us. But so often, something arises. We just wanna be self-justified instead of relying on Christ. And so what do we do? We get down on our knees and we get down there and we try to give that old man or that old woman that was already put to death, we want to give him or her mouth to mouth resuscitation. That's our old dead self. We're trying to breathe life back into him or her. Now think about that, there is nothing pretty about the image of giving mouth to mouth to something that God would have seen as a lifeless corpse. Whether the corpse is a week dead or 40 years dead, however long ago the Lord saves you, it's no more a pretty picture. It's always grotesque, but that's what we do. We're trying to renew the old self so that we can draw life from the flesh instead of being dead to our old legal ways and using the instruments of God to empower us and to fill us with life in Christ. And then what happens? The spiral downward continues because the world and the flesh and the devil are all at work to convince us that God himself is legal and his demands too rigid. Or that his heart toward us is too small and too restricted and he would never actually enable us to do the things that he demands. But Christian, you know those things are all lies. As a believer in Christ, you have what you never had apart from Christ. You have a non-obligation to sin. In other words, as a Christian, you don't have to sin. And you have all that you need in your life to be free from it. Now let me be clear, you will sin, You do sin, and before your life ends on this earth, you will not be free from sin, but in Christ, you are enabled with the ability by the power of the Holy Spirit within you and the directives of God and his word to not sin. So believing the lie that God is too legal or that God doesn't enable us to walk in obedience to his commands, that's believing a lie. And believing such lies about God turns us into ourselves and closes our hearts against God and against others. And so there's never any way we could actually have true unity with anyone else. So I hope you're seeing why Paul has said this in verse 19, right after dealing with this issue of fellowship amongst believers. If my life is oriented on works, if my way of viewing all that God sets before me in the circumstances of my life is through the lens of works, I will deal with others in the same way that I assume God is dealing with me. Not through grace, but through law. I will place unending demands on other people. They're impossible to fulfill because my standard is perfection. I cannot fulfill the demands myself, but I expect everyone else to do that because I am dealing with them on the basis of law instead of grace. And so what does that cause? It causes bitterness and envy and resentment and hostilities and a never ending desire to see others live in my debt because the law we hold others to is unbending. That was Peter's problem with the Gentiles, right? He had all the doctrinal knowledge. Peter knew the gospel. He knew the implications of the gospel. And he knew that in the gospel, there was no greater uniter. It was the very thing that brought down the wall of separation between Jew and Gentile, but he struggled to work out the liberating power of God's free grace in his own life. And so he dealt with the Gentiles on the basis of the law. He resuscitated the old legal heart and he began to operate in the comfort of his old legal ways. So let me try to summarize all of this for us. Paul shows us in verse 19 that in order for us to live to God, to have true life in communion with God, we must die to the law. The law is the very thing that God designed to bring about our death. And that's why Paul says, through the law, I died to the law. However, we must also know that there is no power in the law itself to bring about this death. Remember the man who beat up faithful on the hill difficulty? He could only condemn, he could only beat him. All the power that is needed to die to the law is only found in the gospel. It is found in the man who comes with the holes in his hands and his side that causes the beatings to cease. It is only in Christ that we can die to the law. And yet, we must also recognize that the gospel does not stand on its own. What I mean by that is that the law is not what causes our death. It accuses, it terrifies, it threatens, it beats, it bruises, and it condemns. But it's not the cause of death, it is the occasion of death. We are urged by the law to flee to Christ, who is the only true cause of death to the law. There is nothing that any of us can do in ourselves to fulfill the law or die to the law. Christ has fulfilled the law and in our lives he has provided all the necessary power for us to die to the law for all who are in him. And once that happens, we see the operation of what we now call the third use of the law. Instead of it beating us, instead of the law threatening us, What does it become? It now becomes something sweet that we love and that we long for because that is our way of life. Out of thankfulness for what God has given us in our redemption through the Lord Jesus Christ, we want to live on to God in obedience, utilizing all the means that he has provided so that we can live free from sin, free from the feeling or the notion that we're condemned. And in the Christian, the spirit of God uses the law to apply those precepts to our hearts. And this is when we finally see that there's nothing good in us. We cannot be right before God by keeping the law and we realize by faith what each of us must realize in order to die to the law so that we might live to God. Remember in Romans chapter 10, verse four, Paul writes, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. It's impossible for us to satisfy the just demands of God in order to be right with God. Christ must satisfy them for us. Well, we made it through three verses. We'll pick up in verse 20 next time. But before we close, I wanna address those who are here tonight who are not living upon the righteousness of Christ. Now there's no doubt in my mind that in some way in your heart right now, if you're not a Christian, you assume that you have some form of goodness within you. We've all been there. You look at your deeds, you look at your love for other people, maybe you look at what you haven't done and you think yourself a good person. At the very least, you can think of some other person who's living a life that is more immoral or even criminal when compared to yours, based on social standards. And so you can justify everything and say, well, at least I'm not like that guy. And so you're living upon yourself. You're living upon law. You're living upon a legal heart. Your confidence is in your own flesh. Your hope is in your own works. But God demands of you something far greater than anything you can ever fulfill. He demands perfection when it comes to living upon the demands of his law. And I must tell you, friend, you have already fallen far short. Here's the reality of what the Bible teaches from beginning to end. Every single sin that has ever been committed must be punished, every one of them. Either a sinner will pay an eternal penalty in hell under the just judgment of God because he is an eternal God that we have rebelled against, or that penalty is paid in Christ whose blood is sufficient to cover the sins of mankind that by faith in him alone we can live free from the dread of condemnation. God isn't legal in the way that we are. God is gracious and merciful, and he has provided a way for you to escape the penalty that is yours for transgressing his law. And so if you're not in Christ, he calls on you. Turn to him. Turn to Christ. Look to Christ, the perfect law keeper that you might live. Rest in Christ. Rest in his perfect obedience and sinner's death in the place of men and women like you and me. Die to your legal-hearted self and live on to God. Look to Christ by faith alone and live. And Christian, what about you? What about us? In what areas of life are you trying to breathe life back into that old flesh? What ways are you seeking to live upon your own self-will and self-justifying works? Remove your mouth from that corpse. Stop trying to breathe life into it. Stand up. Walk in Christ. Give it up, rest in Christ, die to the law that you might live to God. And all that he is for you in Christ Jesus is far greater than anything you can provide for yourself. Anything you can provide for yourself. It has a lot of promises, but it never delivers. Only Christ will deliver what your heart truly longs for. Amen. Let's pray together. Father, we are so very grateful for the clarity of your word, for the power of your word that instructs us, that convicts us, and that helps us to see the problem that we all have. Lord, our natural disposition, you have taught us, is toward the law, is toward works, is toward trying to earn something that we simply cannot earn. And so I pray, Lord, for all of your people here tonight, anyone who hears my voice, oh God, that we would no longer be inclined in any way to Adam the first, but that all of the inclinations of our hearts would be toward Adam the second, that we would rest fully, completely, and totally upon the righteousness of Christ alone, so that when we look at your law, we don't look at it as this terrible, wicked, unbending thing. But rather we look at it with delight, with joy, with thankfulness, because our God who has loved us, who has sent his son to die for us, who has sent his son to give us a righteousness that we can never earn on our own, he also told us how it is that we might live to bring glory unto you and that we might walk in the greatest amount of peace and joy and satisfaction that we could ever find in this life. And so may we use your law appropriately. And in so doing, may it bring us to be more gracious and loving with others. May you give your church greater unity, greater faithfulness, greater trust in the Lord Jesus. Lord, may our hearts grieve over the many differences that keep us divided from your people. And may you resolve those differences by helping us to understand together what is right and true. Lord, help us to never compromise those things which we know to be right and true from your word, but help us be willing to be teachable, help us to be willing to learn, help us to be willing to grow, help us to see that if there's anything that is not in your word that we have believed falsely that it would fall to the ground and we would be humble enough to admit so. And that we can walk in greater unity with our brothers and sisters in Christ that far too often we have been divided from. And so Lord, we want to be a people who takes the prayer of our Lord Jesus seriously. That our love for one another would be the very thing that the world would see. And that our unity as one, as one body of Christ, Jew and Gentile. that we would come together and walk faithfully for the purpose of our God, to the glory of our God, and to the good of the advancement of the kingdom to the ends of the earth. And we pray you would do all of this for your glory and for our good in Jesus' precious and holy name. Amen. We hope you were edified by this message. For additional sermons, as well as information on giving to the ministry of Emmanuel Baptist Church, and on our current building project, you can visit us online at ebcfl.org. That's ebcfl.org.