On Sunday mornings we are looking together at Paul's letter to the Galatians, and this morning we come to the closing part of chapter 2. So I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Galatians chapter 2. If you're using the Pew Bible, you will find this on page 824. Now most of our time this morning is going to be spent on just one verse, verse 20, but I want us to begin our reading at verse 15. And here the Apostle Paul is addressing a fellow apostle, the Apostle Peter. But in order to really think our way into this. We need to remember that it's being done publicly and that there are lots and lots of other people present as Paul speaks these words. And what he says is not merely for the benefit of Peter by any means, but also for the benefit of the others who are listening in. We who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners know that a man is not justified by observing 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 observing the law because by observing the law no one will be justified. If while we seek to be justified in Christ it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not. If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker. For through the law, I died to the law, so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside or nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing. We're going to begin this morning by taking the wrong road. And we're going to do so because there is something that I want us to see. Now, we were thinking about the wrong road last Sunday morning. You're driving along, and you come to an intersection, and you must make a choice. Will I go this way, or will I go this way? And it really does matter which you choose, because only one of these roads will take you to your destination. The other will take you nowhere near it, and it is so important, therefore, that you make the right choice. Well, it's the same with the two things that Paul mentions over and over again in verse 16, observing the law and faith in Jesus Christ. We may think of them as two ways, two roads, only one of which leads to God. The other will take us nowhere near him. And therefore it is monumentally important that we make the right choice. How do we come to be justified? How do we come to be regarded and treated as righteous in God's sight, sinners as we are, and become heirs of eternal life? Well, the Bible is crystal clear in its answer. It says to us, not this way, but this way. Not by observing the law, by keeping the commandments of God, by being as good as it is possible to be. That is the wrong way to go, but rather by faith in Jesus Christ. That is the way to secure the standing and the privileges and the inheritance of the justified. We must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, obviously, our Lord would have us choose the right road. And my task as a preacher is to persuade and exhort you to do that, and also to remain on that right road if you have already chosen it. And that is particularly Paul's objective in writing this letter to the Galatians. He is anxious that the believers in Galatia should remain on the right road. and that they should go on looking only to Christ and to his righteousness for a right standing and for eternal life and not to the works of the law and we must do the same. So let me take you then in your minds along the wrong road for a little because there is something that I want us to see. Something that is intended to help us to stay on the right road if that's the road that we're on or to choose that road if we have not already done so. Look at verse 21. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness or justification could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing. Now let's suppose you make the wrong road the choice of your conviction. And you endeavor to make yourself right with God and to secure his favor and forgiveness by doing the best you can to keep his commandments. What then? Well, according to verse 16, that has personal implications. The apostle is quite emphatic. By observing the law, no one will be justified. It just won't happen. You just will never attain to righteousness with God if you try to climb up to it by obeying his law. But there are broader implications. Paul says in verse 21 that if righteousness or justification could be gained through the law, that is through obeying the law, Christ died for nothing. If this really is the way to be saved, If I can gain the favour of God by being good enough and obedient enough, then Christ died needlessly. He just needn't have bothered. All the suffering, all the humiliation, all the God-forsakenness of the cross, it was all in vain. Why should He, the Lord of glory, come and do something, especially die upon the cross of Calvary, if I can make it to heaven on my own. You take this observing the law road and you're effectively saying that Christ died for nothing. As indeed he would have done if it were possible for you to get right with God by obedience to his law. Be persuaded then, says the Apostle Paul to us, be persuaded that the wrong road is just that. It's the wrong road. We need to choose the right one. And having chosen it, we need to remain on it. The way to be right with God is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to cast ourselves upon his mercy. And if you have done that, as so many of you by the grace of God have done, let it be your single-minded determination to remain upon that road and go on looking to Christ and to Christ alone as the foundation of all your hopes. Let's return to our text. As Paul comes to the close of what we know as Galatians chapter 2, you remember that when these letters were written there were no verse or chapter divisions. But as he comes to the close of what we know as chapter 2, he does not move from verse 16 to verse 21. There is a section in between verses 17 to 20 and it is confessedly difficult. There has been A great deal of discussion and difference of opinion amongst evangelical scholars as to how parts of this section are to be understood. And I say to you up front, that is going to be reflected this morning in the bits that I do not comment upon. But what it's basically about, I think is really very clear. If someone has been truly justified, their life has been changed. They are no longer the person that they once were and that is particularly brought out in verse 20 in this exquisitely beautiful piece of spiritual autobiography. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. This justified sinner who is speaking here, the Apostle Paul, is no longer what he once was. His life, his life has been totally changed. Now in order to appreciate just how important this is and why Paul was moved to make it, we need to go back for a little to what justification is all about and to an objection that has been and continues to be made to this doctrine. You will recall, perhaps, the illustration of the hospital and the law court that was used last Sunday morning. It's an old illustration and has often been used in connection with the subject of justification When it comes to some aspects of our salvation, we are, as it were, in hospital and God is acting toward us in the character of a surgeon. He's dealing with our hearts, with our natures and with the thinking and behavior that that nature produces. He's performing spiritual surgery in us, removing sin, implanting holiness, making us inwardly and outwardly different, shaping us into the likeness of Christ. When it comes to justification, however, we're not in the hospital, but in the law court. In justification, God is not acting in the character of a surgeon working within us, but rather in the character of a judge. The matter that is being addressed is not our hearts and lives, but rather the whole question of our standing before him in relation to his holy law. And as we saw last Sunday morning, when God justifies us, our standing is transformed On the basis of the righteousness of His Son, Jesus Christ, God grants to us the standing before His law of righteous men and women. Men and women, boys and girls, who have never sinned at all, but who have perfectly kept His law, who have satisfied all its demands. And then He treats us accordingly. He declares us to be free from condemnation and heirs of eternal life. And how does it all come about? Well, as we've noted already this morning, not by observing the law, not by this long course of upward climbing to try and be good enough for him, but simply by casting ourselves upon the mercy of God and Christ as we believe in him. Now it's here that the objection comes in. If I can be justified, pardoned and accepted without obedience to the law of God, simply by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, does that not encourage an indifference to holy living? Why bother, I might ask, why bother resisting temptation and living a holy life of all at once At the moment of faith my sins are pardoned, I am put right with God and become unchangeably the heir of eternal life. Why bother? Am I not free as a justified sinner to live as I like? Does it really make any difference if I live as I like since I have now been justified? Hence the objection, then and now, that justification by faith, apart from keeping the law, encourages sin. Well, it seems that it is this objection that Paul is replying to in the passage that is before us this morning. Now, as we noted a little moment ago, he is, of course, addressing a fellow apostle. The Apostle Peter, who was wholly at one with him in his theology and its outworking. But he is addressing Peter publicly, in all likelihood in the presence of people who very much needed to hear this. And what an important truth it is. If someone has truly been justified, their life, their life has been changed. So much so that they cannot and do not live as they once did. Think about it like this. Justification does not happen in isolation. It is not the only thing that takes place when a person becomes a Christian. When you came as a sinner to the Lord Jesus Christ, it was not just your standing before the law of God that was altered, you were altered at the same time. At the very same moment that your status before the law was changed, your heart and life were changed as well. And it is that, that, that makes it impossible for a truly justified person to live anything other than a truly Christian life. Well, let's see how Paul teaches this. We noted a moment ago that he does so by giving us this exquisitely beautiful piece of spiritual autobiography. I have been crucified with Christ, verse 20, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. That was Paul's testimony. And if you have been truly justified through believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, it is your testimony as well. So let's reflect upon it for a little. It can really be summed up in two statements. I have died and yet I live. And we're going to look at these in turn and work out some of the implications. Well, first of all, the truly justified sinner can say, I have died. As Paul puts it at the beginning of verse 20, I have been crucified with Christ. Now, obviously, and this is not something that needs to be laboured. The apostle here is not referring to physical death. Paul was very much alive when he wrote these words, as is every justified sinner in this building this morning. Paul can speak in verse 20 of the life I live in the body. It's a reference to physical life. He's alive. Nevertheless, there was a sense in which he really had died. And if we have been justified by faith in Christ in the same sense, we have died as well. I have been crucified with Christ. It's a statement that focuses our thoughts on another of the great doctrines of the New Testament scriptures, the doctrine of our union with Christ. You will notice at the beginning of verse 17 that Paul speaks about being justified in Christ. And again in verse 20 he speaks about Christ living in me. It's the language of union. I have come to be in him. He has come to live in me. There is union between us. And by virtue of that union we have been crucified. with Christ. Well, let's think to begin with about Christ himself. He was crucified. Paul speaks of him so movingly here as the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me, that is to crucifixion, to the death of the cross of Calvary. And it is our amazing privilege if we are believers here this morning to say exactly the same. The Son of God loved me and he gave himself for me and he did so for this reason among others that we might die to sin. If you are not a Christian here this morning and I know some of you are not The Bible charges you with living in sin. Sin is the thing that is controlling you, that is shaping and determining the way in which you think and the way in which you live your life. And it was in order to change that that Jesus died upon the cross of Calvary. He gave himself for us that we might die to sin. that sin might cease to be the controlling influence in our lives, that there might be a radical breach with it, the old sin-dominated, sin-controlled way of living, behaving and thinking. And when we come to be united to Him by faith, that is the very thing that happens. The Apostle uses some astonishing language here. He says, I have been crucified with Christ. By virtue of my union with the Christ who was crucified, I too have been crucified. Union with Christ has meant death for me. And it has meant death for you. If you are a believer, think about it like this. There is something that really does radically change when we come into union with Jesus Christ. We are joined to the Christ who died so that sinners might die to sin. And by virtue of our union with Him, that is the very thing that happens. There is a death-dealing power that flows into us when we are united to Him. And its target is the old sin-dominated, sin-controlled life. And the target is not missed. Union with Christ means death for us. We die when we come into union with Jesus Christ. It is an old way of life that comes to an end when we are joined to Jesus Christ and it is to that death, that glorious liberating death. Now the Apostle refers when he says, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer Now it is in this death that we have the first great reason why a sinner who has been truly justified has himself been changed. We are justified, verse 17, in Christ. Justification takes place when by faith we are united to Christ. We become the righteousness of God in Him. But that is not all that happens when we are united to Christ. We also die when we are united to Him. There is an old way of life that comes to an end. And that is why we can say that the truly justified person has not only undergone a change of legal status before the law of God, he has undergone a change of life. He himself has been changed by virtue of his union with the Son of God who died that particular sinner. might die to sin. So there's the first part of Paul's testimony. The first part of your testimony. If you're a truly justified sinner, you can say, I have died. An old way of life has come to an end. And yet, and this is the second part of the testimony, a truly justified sinner can also say, I live. Paul speaks in the second half of verse 20 about the life I live in the body. A life, verse 20 again, that he lives by faith in the Son of God who loved him and gave himself for him. And that is the very same life that every justified sinner in this building lives as well. Notwithstanding the fact that we have died, we live. It's one of those delightful Christian paradoxes. Now a paradox, boys and girls, is something that sounds as if it couldn't be true, but is. Here's the Apostle Paul in the first half of verse 20, and he says that he no longer lives. And yet in the second half of the verse, twice over, he says that he does live. He has died. And yet he lives. Doesn't that sound as if it couldn't be true? But it is. And not just for Paul, but for every true Christian. There is a sense in which we no longer live. And we've just been thinking about that. The old way of life in which we pleased ourselves and lived without God when we were lords and Christ was not, that life is over. And in its place, there is a new life. And there are two things about this new life that illustrate just how different it is from the old life. And the first is the presence of Christ. Verse 20, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. Now there is something that's new. In our old way of living, there was nothing of that kind of presence of Jesus Christ. Sin had separated us from him. It had shut him out of our lives. But when we came to believe in him, he made our hearts his home. In the most mysterious and wonderful way, There has come to be an indwelling of the Saviour in the believer's heart. By the Holy Spirit, Jesus lives in us and it is his presence in us that accounts for all the differences of which we are conscious if we really are Christians. Think about it. We now have a heart for God You can test yourself by this as to whether you really have experienced God's saving grace. We now have a heart for God and there is nothing that gives us greater pleasure than to be close to him and to know his presence and his peace. Why is that? It's now our delight to delight in God and we wish only that we could do it with a greater depth of delight, one that corresponds properly to his greatness and glory. Why is that? We want to walk with him and to please him and to serve him and to worship him and to love him and to see him being honoured in the world by others. Why is that? Why do we love his word and love his house and love his praise and love his people and long to love them more? Why is sin hateful to us? Why is it something that we find ourselves confessing and repenting of day after day? It is because Christ lives in us. These are the fruits of his indwelling. You know how the presence of A certain person in a certain place can make such a massive difference. It may be the presence of a very good headmaster in a school that has gone through very major difficulties. Or it may be the presence of a very capable CEO in a company that has been badly mismanaged. Or it may be the presence of a politician of absolutely inflexible integrity in a party that has been scandalised by corruption. They make a massive difference. Just one person makes such a difference. But you know to those of us who have eyes to see, All of these examples pale by comparison with the massive difference that the presence of Jesus makes. When he comes into the life of a newborn sinner, he comes to transform. And though His indwelling has by no means made any of us perfect and there is still the struggle day by day with sin. What a massive difference nevertheless. And there are all these things that are pointers to that difference. And then there's a second thing about this new life that illustrates just how different it is from the old life. Not just the presence of Christ but faith in Christ. Verse 20. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. It was by faith in Jesus Christ that we came to be united to him in the first place, wasn't it? And it is by faith in him that the union Now, try and picture this. You boys and girls will be able to picture this, I'm sure. You're hauling someone to safety. You're out with someone for a walk, they slip and fall, perhaps into water or perhaps into a hole, and you haul them to safety. And you do so by grasping the other person's hand. So your hand is in theirs and their hand is in yours. You are holding on to them and they are holding on to you. And you're able to pull them to safety. Now it's a bit like that with this union with Jesus Christ that we're thinking about this morning. There are two things that hold us together as it were. By His presence in our hearts, Christ Jesus is holding on to us. And by the continual exercise of faith in Him, we are holding on to Him. We go on believing in Him. We abide in Him. We continually look to Him to be the Lord and the Saviour and the King of our lives. And by that means, as well as by his presence in our hearts, the new life of a Christian continues. Isn't that so different from how things were before? What place did true faith in Jesus Christ have in your life when you were under the control of sin? You may have believed that Christ existed, and you may have said that the Bible's teaching was true, But in terms of true and saving faith, in terms of the faith that looks to him to be the Savior and the Lord of your life, you were an unbeliever. And now it's all so different. Now you live by faith in the Son of God who loved you and gave himself for you. You're not loosening your grip on him, but you're holding on to him and you're looking to him day by day. for grace and strength and eternal life. Do you see then, just to tie this in with what we've seen to be the apostles' great concern, do you see then why it is that if someone has been truly justified, their life has been changed? Justified in Christ. Justification is something that takes place when, by faith, we are united to Jesus Christ. But that is not all that happens when we are united to him. We enter upon a new life when we are united to him. He takes up residence in our hearts, and we, by an ongoing faith, abide in him. And the result is a truly Christian life. A life that is characterised by obedience, by trust, by love, by thanksgiving, by service, by humility in the face of sin and confession and repentance. We have to return then to the objection that we heard being voiced a little earlier in the sermon. If I can be justified, pardoned and accepted Without obedience to the law of God, simply by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, does that not encourage an indifference to holy living? Is there not a danger of the justified sinner saying, since I have been justified independently of all law keeping, am I not free to live as I please? Well, I trust that you know the answer. Justification is something that takes place when we come into union with Christ. And if anyone is in Christ Jesus, says Paul in 2 Corinthians 5, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come. You cannot be in Jesus Christ and be the same as before. Things are different, not perfect. but different because an old life has come to an end and a new life has begun. And that being so, you can understand me when I say that Paul's teaching here calls us to examine ourselves. You say that you have been justified. You're a pardoned sinner accepted by God. An heir of eternal life, you believe that you're safe. There's no condemnation for you. But I ask you, is your life really all that different from what it was before? Now again, I'm not asking if you're perfect. There is no one who is perfect. There is no one. who does not struggle with sin, and the more holy a believer is, the more acutely aware of his imperfection he is. But I am asking, is your life really all that different? Doesn't have the features of the new life of one who is in union with Jesus Christ? Is there the obedience to the will of God and the reliance upon Christ? and the fruit of the Spirit that characterize the man or the woman who is in Christ. Have you a heart for God and a delight in God and a desire to please him? The things that we spoke about earlier. Is there humility in the face of your sin and repentance and confession? And you understand Why I ask, don't you? Because these are the marks of a truly justified sinner. And if they are absent, you have just cause for alarm. Let me quote to you from an old hymn. Joseph Hart was an 18th century hymn writer. and very earthy and blunt, some of his hymns. Let me quote to you a few verses on this theme. When filthy passions are unjust, professors' minds control. By professors, he means professing Christians. Here's the opening line of his hymn. When filthy passions are unjust, professors' minds control. When men give up the reins to lust and interest, that is self-interest, sways the whole. Or when they seek themselves to please, decline each thorny road, indulge their sloth, consult their ease, and slight the fear of God. The faith is vain, such men profess. It comes not from above. The righteous man does righteousness. and true faith works by love. See the point that he's making? If a sinner has been truly justified, it will show itself in a righteous life and if it doesn't, if it doesn't, then you have every cause to suspect yourself and every reason to begin earnestly to seek the mercy of God. So our text calls us to self-examination but doesn't it also call us to praise? So many of us here this morning can make the Apostle's testimony our own. You can say I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. The life I live and the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. And you don't say it because you're free from sin, you say it because you know that there's a way of life that has ended and you've no wish to go back to it. You've entered upon a new life, a life in which Christ by His Spirit lives in you and you by faith abide in Him. And though it has its struggles and its sorrows, you love this new life and the difference that it has made and the prospect that it opens up to you of this new life going on endlessly and just getting better and better and better as the years roll on. And so you see how it calls us to praise. Praise for the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. Praise for the gift of faith and the ministry of the Holy Spirit by which we have come to be united to the Son. Praise for the privilege of being crucified with Christ for the death blow that has been struck to our old way of life. Praise for the constant indwelling of Christ and the massive difference that Him living in our hearts has made and will continue to make forever and ever. Let us pray.