GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
GALATIANS 2:21
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21 I do not reject the grace of God. For if there could be a righteousness through the law, then Christ died for nothing!”
What if righteousness, forgiveness, and justification were possible through some other means; something entirely different from what we read about in the Scriptures? What if it were only possible if a husband and wife produced a daughter, for example? Imagine the additional, man-made rules and thousands of exceptions that people would immediately try to impose into the world just to account for a legitimately born daughter in every family? “Without a daughter from your marriage, there can be no righteousness,” would be the kind of passage we would expect. Do you see how the law immediately imposes itself on such a thing? Not to belabor the point, but people would wonder: What if a marriage were not a proper marriage? What about families that divorced? What about a husband who died before his daughter was born? What about a couple who produced many sons but no daughter? Does a daughter-in-law count? Does an adoption count? If there is an adoption by one family, does that remove that daughter from her original family? And so on and on.
You see how even taking what should be only a single blessing to a family can lead to a perversion and a confusion of the law! But God in his great mercy, his infinite mercy, has not made justification about the law at all. It is entirely within the realm of his grace. He does not tell us that we must attempt to grasp a certain blessing that might not be possible for some, but he offers a blessing, which is his grace, to all. He only says, “Believe it with your heart” (Romans 10:10). Do not reject it.
What a strong word is “reject,” atheteo (ἀθετέω)! Do not reject the grace of God! David says: “The one who will dwell in God’s sanctuary is the one who… keeps his oath even when it hurts” (Psalm 15:4). “Even when it hurts” is translated into Greek “and does not ever reject it.” A man might have some inkling, some perceived desire, to set aside God’s grace. His human reason might rebel against God’s grace and demand that he must somehow take part in his own salvation. But he must set this aside; he must abandon himself and hold onto Christ alone.
If, Paul says, if righteousness could be from the law, or if righteousness is definitely from the law (and therefore only from the law), then Christ died for nothing. Christ’s death is nothing but the Gospel. Christ’s death is the Son of God rushing down from heaven to rescue sinful mankind from the wrath of the Father. He came as our advocate, but by the holy will of God, Jesus Christ is at the same time our defender in God’s courtroom, and he is also the judge. He argues his case and agrees with his argument. This is something that could never happen in a human court. But more than that. When the judgment fell upon man, that we are truly guilty of our sins, Christ did not wave aside the punishment. He did not give us credit for time served. He stepped in to take our punishment in our place. What a defender he is! He argued on our behalf, and then took the punishment, the death sentence, himself in our place! So now, when the court convenes for the last time on the last day, he will once again be judge, and defender, and he already stood in as the sacrifice. There is no punishment. And there are no further demands of the law. Everything is accomplished in our place by Christ.
He did not die for nothing. He died for us (Romans 5:8; 1 Thessalonians 5:10). He rose again, not as a magic trick, and not to show off his divine powers, as if to say, “Look what I can do– too bad none of you can do this!” No, he rose as the firstfruits of the resurrection. That means that his resurrection is the promise of our resurrection. Because he rose, we will certainly rise, and we must never doubt it. Just as we do not reject earthly authorities (Jude 1:8), we do not reject God’s grace. Just as Israel received the ancient priesthood as a gift (Numbers 18:6-7), so now we receive the only true and acceptable sacrifice as a gift as well. “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 Peter 3:18).
There are many who teach a different kind of grace, calling it “first grace” or some such other name, by which they imagine that God gives or infuses man with a habit of doing good and of keeping the law. They imagine that the will of man can love God, but that this habit stimulates the human will to do the same thing, only more cheerfully. They tell us to credit this first merit by earlier merits, and the keeping of the law as an increase of this habit, and so on, until they finally bury Christ under a vast mound of man’s good works. They lost sight of God’s work on man’s behalf, as if God is incapable of doing what man can do either by force of will or by chance, in the same way that modern disciples of Darwin believe that the universe was never created, but must have always existed, and that the beginning of the present universe was only a continuation of what was already and always there. Like the ancient Greek philosophers, they cannot comprehend that there could be a Beginning, an Almighty God who is the Creator, and that there could have been a fall from perfection into sin, and therefore a need for a Savior. Like the Judaizers, they twist the gospel into something that does not save.
Do not reject the grace of God, either in his promise of forgiveness or in anything else he tells us in his holy word. It is a joy to be rescued; saved by the love of Jesus Christ. Whether a king is saved (Esther 7:9) or a foolish young man (Proverbs 2:16), or little children (Isaiah 49:25), it is by the grace of God that such a great salvation has come to us. And only in this one way.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Galatians 2:21 This one way