Galatians 2:17-18 Podcast To invest in BYM, click here
17 “But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn’t that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! 18 If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker. (Galatians 2:17-18)
The Law of Moses never taught "justification by works". The Jews made it into a long list of do's and don'ts to obey in order to get God's approval. But, God's purpose behind the Law was to grant Israel a culture defined by Him, and it was given by God in the context of their sanctification (the process whereby we are defined by God in our souls). Our souls have three parts: our minds, our wills, and our emotions.
Justification operates in the arena of our spirits. As a result of us receiving the free gift of salvation through Christ's finished work on the cross, God forgives our sin, then His Spirit awakens our spirits by making it "born again". We are made "born again" to God in our spirits.
In today's text, we learn that when a Jew trusts Christ for justification (rightness before God), he is freed from the Jewish dietary laws in order to fellowship with Gentile Christians. But those who were doing this were called "sinners" by the religious people in Jerusalem. Paul's point is God is not promoting disobedience to the Law, he is promoting freedom from the Law in order to love others.
According to v.18, Paul disassembles the Jews legalistic misuse of the Law. He did so, because when we try to erect the Law as a ladder to heaven on which we demonstrate our moral fitness for salvation, we transgress the Law.
God's goal is to get us to trust him for justification instead of trusting our own moral efforts. In so doing, He is not promoting sin, because what makes a person a transgressor of the Law is turning it into a means of being made right with God through our good behavior.
Being a Christian means making God the reference point for our lives. This is a sanctification issue. When we allow God to define us, we are experiencing sanctification. He is the one who tells us who we are, not our ethnicity or social status or gender or anything else. He is the one who tells us our lives have meaning and purpose. This is a part of sanctification, the process whereby God is changing us from the inside out to think and live as He.
When we understand ourselves in this way, we start seeing ourselves and others differently. We start seeing ourselves and others in all three dimensions (in time, in space and in the spiritual realm). When we are defined by God, He gives us His heart for Him and for others.
If you remember, Paul’s whole summary of the gospel here began with a very practical issue. In Galatians 2:12, Paul presented the question, with whom do you eat? Often, groups of inclusion and exclusion are seen most powerfully around food. Food brings people together, but food keeps people apart as well.
