A Different Gospel – 08/10/2025

Podcast

Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun

Come Lord, join us today
Sometimes we have hard passages
And sometime our friends and family do.
Sometimes we see it in our neighbors
There are disappointments
Frustrations
Even suffering

And Suffering hasn’t gone out of fashion
Lord
It has grown
Become more abundant
in some places
Even calculated
Planned
Perpetrated
intentionally

And there are endings Lord
Losses to come
Lives that pass
And we ache for them
and for those we know
who are facing them
As we all will one day.

So we ask for compassion for those who suffer
Fill our hearts with mercy
Grant us the courage to not look away
Show us when
and how we can
Come alongside
Caring
Serving
Even sacrificing if need be
To ease the pain
Standing with others in patience
Gentleness
Kindness
Tenderly Lord
And steadfast
Unafraid
Not blinking
Like the lovers
You have made us to be.
Amen.

Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.

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 Galatians 2:17-19

Intro: Paul has shared with the Galatians a brief autobiography

He completed it with a story about his run-in with Peter
– when Peter first came to the Gentile church in Antioch,
• he allowed the wall between Jews and Gentiles to collapse
◦ but when rigid and dogmatic believers arrived from Judea,
◦ he broke away from close contact with Gentile believers
• how sad, when a person withdraws from generous gestures,
◦ ones that represents acceptance and camaraderie,
◦ and make the break for fear of being attacked by narrow-minded zealots
– somewhere along the way, Paul left off telling his story
• it was a backdrop for the point he wanted to make;
• namely, Jesus–and not the law–works God’s righteousness into believers

These verses are a bit tricky, and I tend to get lost in the labyrinth

Biblical scholars have different opinions regarding what Paul is saying
– what I’ll share with you is my interpretation
• I hope this helps make sense of this passage

Paul can imagine an argument a Pharisee might make
“It’s a sin for you, Paul, to say Gentile Christians do not have to follow God’s law”
– in his letter to the Romans, Paul clearly stated his teaching to Gentiles regarding the law
“For by works of the law no human being will be [made righteous] in [God’s] sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” (Ro. 3:20)
• to the Pharisees, this sounded like Paul dishonored the law
◦ the Pharisee party that took a hard line on the law and considered Paul a heretic or rogue apostle
“some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, ‘It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses’” (Acts 15:5)
◦ in other words, they demanded that Gentiles convert to Judaism to become Christians
• what Paul hears them saying about him is something to the effect,
“You are saying that we are ‘sinners’ for trusting God to make us righteous through Jesus rather than through perfect obedience to the law”
– is this starting to make sense?

Before going on, I want to defend Paul’s respect for the law
“So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” (And later in the same chapter, “I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my [body parts] another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my [body parts]” (Ro. 7:12 and 22-23)
– his deep respect for the law and for what it does is obvious
• namely, it separates light from darkness, good from bad, righteousness from wickedness
◦ the delineates clear boundaries, revealing what is sinful
“if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin” (Ro. 7:7)
• I’m convinced this is how people in Old Testament viewed the law; that is,
as a relief from the moral confusion evident in other cultures
◦ so Psalm 19 sings the beauty and perfection of God’s law
◦ and the entire 176 verses of Psalm 119 praise the law
“Oh how I love your law!
It is my meditation all the day” (Ps. 119:97)
– in Romans, Paul argues that faith in Jesus supports the law
“Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary we uphold the law” (Ro. 3:31)
• so here in Galatians 2:17, Paul asks this question, then answers it emphatically:
“If we’re sinning in our attempt to be made righteous in Christ, does that mean Christ is a servant of sin? Certainly not!”
• through Jesus, God does for us what the law could not do
◦ the law doesn’t change people, it doesn’t produce life
◦ it only shows us what we’re doing wrong

Next, in verse 18, Paul says that if he reverted to depending on the law,
– he would be rebuilding what he had torn down
• then he would be a sinner (transgressor)
• he would have given up on his faith in Jesus and shifted his confidence to himself

Humans do not have the capacity to be good enough
to earn or deserve the acceptance of the one true, holy God

◦ yet God loves us, so he provided a way to be right with him and others
◦ therefore Paul could not revert to a legalistic approach to righteousness
– much of Galatians seems to be a brief summary of Paul’s letter to the Romans
• for instance, verse 19 is the very conclusion he drew after the first seven chapters of Romans as he was building his argument
“if it were not for the law, I would not have known sin. . . . I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died” (Ro. 7:7-9)
◦ what the law tells us becoming righteous on our own is, “The bridge is out”
• but if the law kills us (as Paul says) that death of the old self becomes the birth of our new self

Modern Christianity has turned some of Paul’s remarkable theology into slogans

We joyfully confess that we are “saved by grace”
– we defend our freedom from the law, because we’re “justified by faith”
• we know “Christ died for our sins” and though “We’re not perfect, we’re forgiven”
◦ and so on and on, yet many believers barely understand what any of this truly means
• the theological foundation of Christian faith is profound and we may never understand its fullness,
◦ but we can still learn to appreciate its depth

Paul concludes the first big drive of his Galatian lectures
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose Galatians 2:19-20

I’m going to jump over verse 20 for now, but come back to it
– this last sentence has the effect of a crescendo
• it is a daring statement – an “all or nothing” warning
First, we learn that God’s grace can be nullified in a person’s life
– to me, that is a terrifying thought
• especially, because it seems the Galatians were moving this direction without knowing it
Second, he repeats the problem at the heart of his entire argument
– the bogus idea that a person could keep the law perfectly — it can’t be done
Third, if that were possible, then “Christ died for no purpose”
– in the context of our Christian belief and all we know about the life and ministry of Jesus–
◦ that hits us like the greatest tragedy imaginable
• Jesus came to live among us, but also and especially, to give up his life to us

I think it’s obvious that Paul intended to disturb his readers
– he uses extreme statements to reveal the danger they face
– if they had been tempted to take the path of the law,
• they need to know what they were sacrificing

Now, coming back to verse 20, I want to change my tone

There is solid theology in this verse – but also something more
– I believe it’s important to recognize that this is mystical teaching
• in verse 19, Paul said he died to the law,
◦ but how did he die? and in what sense did he die?
◦ he was obviously still alive when he wrote these words
• he died by being “crucified with Christ”
◦ we could say this was a “symbolic” death,
◦ but I think Paul would argue, “No, it was more than that”
– there is a mystical death that occurs at the core of our being (Ro. 6:3-7)
• as we mature, we develop ideas about who we are
◦ we ask questions, like, “What is my purpose?”
◦ “What am I good at?” “Who am I?”
• when we come to Jesus, we present this “fabricated self” to Jesus
◦ he tells us to take that self to the cross. daily
◦ and become our new and true self in him

When Peter was able to identify who Jesus truly was,
– Jesus, in turn, revealed to Peter his true self (Mt. 16:16-18)
• becoming his new self was a process – the cross is not easy
• in Christian mysticism there is a teaching referred to as The Dark Night Of the Soul
(in my opinion, this is at times overplayed and gets more attention than it deserves)
◦ if the dark night enters our lives at all, it isn’t everything or always
◦ it may, however, be a stage or a path, but it is not a destination
• in some way, we need to recognize the dying for what it is
– Paul had this beautiful vision of “being-in-Christ” and Christ living in him
Albert Schweitzer, in The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, wrote,
“The concept of being-in-Christ dominates Paul’s thought in a way that he not only sees in it the source of everything connected with redemption, but describes all the experience, feeling, thought and will of the baptized as taking place in Christ. Thus the phrase ‘in Christ Jesus’ comes to be added to the most varied statements, almost as a kind of formula.” (He then lists more than twenty instances in which Paul mentions being in Christ in different contexts)
“Certainly in this it is entirely different in character from the Hellenistic mysticism, which allowed daily life to go its own way apart from the mystical experience and without relation to it.” [emphasis added]
(Sadly this is what we see that Christianity has become today for too many people in our nation)
• too few believers seek the intimate, inward, and dynamic experience of the real presence of Jesus
◦ or communion with the Spirit of God from one day to the next

Conclusion: I only have enough time left to say this:

Our ongoing relationship with God is experiential
It is not imprisoned in our mind in the form of intellectual concepts or doctrines
God’s close friends who have walked this path before us invite us into the experience of God himself

“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psa. 34:8)