Galatians 2:15-21

Phillip Yancy, in What’s So Amazing About Grace, tells a heart-breaking story of a social worker’s interaction with a prostitute in the inner city. The woman was so desperate that she sold her two-year-old daughter to men for an hour at a time because she could make more money for herself. In struggling for some positive word he could say to the woman he asked if she had ever thought of going to church?

“Church! Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They would just make me feel worse.” Indeed we often do make ourselves and others feel worse.

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Yet no hymn is more popular than “Amazing Grace.” Our hearts long for grace. Even secular, postmodern, pre-Christians wonder what it would be life “if God were one of us.”

William Barclay, commenting on today’s text, warns of two dangers in the life of faith: “First, there is the temptation to try to earn God’s favour, and second, the temptation to use some little achievement to compare oneself with our fellow men to our advantage and their disadvantage.”

Paul knew a great deal about both. For much of his life before Christ. he thought his status with God was based upon the covenant established with the giving of the law. He could take great pride in his pure racial identity, religious heritage, convictions and zeal. (Cf. Phil 3:4-11) We are often guilty of the same kind of pride expressed in denominational, ideological or cultural loyalties. God’s people have repeatedly illustrated that if it’s all up to us, God’s will won’t be done!

But the Good News is that it really isn’t all up to us. “Justification by grace alone, through faith alone” became the watchword of the Reformation. Paul’s elaboration on that theme is the centerpiece of his theology. No book, other than Romans, has a stronger emphasis on justification.

We tend to think of justifying ourselves by either denying that we have done wrong in the first place or by explaining our actions and thus absolving ourselves of any guilt. But the biblical idea is more than “just-as-if-I’d-never-sinned.” Justification means that God has declared us righteous.

Paul’s explanation, “What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.” (Gal 2:19-21, The Message)

A Benedictine novice enters the order when he takes his vows, lying prostrate on the floor before the alter where one day his coffin will rest, the death bell sounds, the community is silent as the new Monk, covered with a burial pall, turns his back on his old life identifying with the life of Christ.

I once heard Stuart Briscoe express it like this, “You can’t, and He never said you could. He Can, and always promised that He would.” Or, as a sign I once saw put it, “Grace Happens.” Indeed it does!

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound 

that saves a wretch like me,

I once was lost but now am found,

was blind but now can see.

Sermon brief provided by: L. Joseph Rosas, Pastor of Crievewood Baptist Church, Nashville, TN.