Completed by Our Work?
Galatians 2:20-3:6
October 15, 2023
preached by Scott Sottosanti
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Time of Reflection Quotations
“Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives. Many have so light an apprehension of God’s holiness and the extent of the guilt of their sin that consciously they see little need for justification, though below the surface of their lives they are deeply guilt-ridden and insecure. Many others have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine [of justification through imputed righteousness] but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for their justification… drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their experience of conversion, their recent religious performance, or the relative infrequency of their conscious willful disobedience…
Christians who are no longer sure that God loves them and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons – much less secure than non-Christians… Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce defensive assertion of their own righteousness and defensive criticism of others. They come naturally to hate other cultural styles and other races in order to bolster their own security and discharge their suppressed anger. They cling desperately to legal, pharisaical righteousness, but envy, jealousy, and other branches of the tree of sin grow out of their fundamental insecurity.”
~Richard Lovelace (1930-2020), in Dynamics of Spiritual Life
“When a society rejects the Christian account of who we are, it doesn’t become less moralistic but far more so, because it retains an inchoate sense of justice but has no means of offering and receiving forgiveness. The great moral crisis of our time is not, as many of my fellow Christians believe, sexual licentiousness, but rather vindictiveness. Social media serve as crack for moralists: there’s no high like the high you get from punishing malefactors. But like every addiction, this one suffers from the inexorable law of diminishing returns. The mania for punishment will therefore get worse before it gets better.”
~Alan Jacobs (1958-present), professor of humanities at Baylor University
“To see the law by Christ fulfilled
And hear His pardoning voice,
Changes a slave into a child,
And duty into choice.”
~William Cowper (1731-1800), English poet and hymn-writer
Sermon Passage
Galatians 2:20-3:6 (ESV)
Galatians 2
20 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. 21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
Galatians 3
1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. 2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? 4 Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? 5 Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— 6 just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?