GOSPEL TRUTHS
I have read these verses in Galatians because the words they use are simple and easy to understand, yet they cover the great gospel truths that are given elsewhere in more elaborate language. We might think of these verses as depicting, as it were, the landscape of the gospel. We could go to other verses that do so too – for example Romans 3 says “being justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God has set forth a mercy-seat, through faith in his blood” (vv.24,25). It is the same truth, but the language in Romans needs more explaining.
I want to touch on some of the great matters spoken of in these verses in Galatians without going through them all, or to speak about them in detail. I was struck first of all that everything in these verses was done by God. There is no suggestion here that we have had work to do, or that we have needed to establish anything, or to add to what God Himself has done. Everything that is mentioned here is the work of God. In saying that, I do not mean that there is no room for faith or for repentance – clearly there is – but the work that was needed, the work that underlies the gospel, is something that God Himself has done. In Galatians 2, it says “a man is not justified on the principle of works of law nor but by the faith of Jesus Christ” (v.16). That is evident, and a very clear statement of the truth. There are no works of ours that bring salvation or have a place in what is presented in the glad tidings.
The first work that is presented in the passage we have read is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and then it speaks of Him giving Himself, or dying, for our sins. This is striking. You might expect it to be the other way round – that He died for our sins and then was raised. But the first great truth that lays the foundation on which the gospel is established is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus by God Himself. We know from Scripture that the Lord Jesus had authority to take His life again (John 10:18). But it is interesting to see in the teaching of Scripture that although He had that authority, He acknowledged another principle, which is that authority to raise the dead is placed in the hands of the Father. So the Lord Jesus Himself says, “For even as the Father raises the dead and quickens them …”, John 5:21. You will remember that in the resurrection of Lazarus, the Lord Jesus prayed before exercising the power to raise the dead, so the Father is brought into the matter. When it comes to His own resurrection, it says that He was “raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father”, Rom.6:4. These are wonderful things because they bring the Father before us, as we have here: “the will of our God and Father”. The unfolding and working out of that will has as its cornerstone the raising of the Lord Jesus from among the dead. It is a wonderful matter that in Scripture, resurrection is presented as a selective matter – from among the dead. That is true for believers as well; they will be raised from among the dead. The Lord Jesus has already been raised from among the dead, and that is what we have here: “God the Father who raised Him from among the dead”.
That verse quoted from Romans 3 speaks about justification. Later in that epistle, Paul says that the Lord Jesus “has been delivered for our offences and has been raised for our justification”, Rom.4:25. There is a connection between the reference in Romans to our being justified and this one, which speaks of the Lord Jesus being raised from among the dead. What is that connection? Paul says here that Christ gave Himself for our sins. When we think of the death of Jesus, we say that it settled the penalty that was due to us; it was the price that Christ paid. But Paul writes to the Corinthians, “if Christ be not raised …. ye are yet in your sins”, 1 Cor.15:17. That confirms what we have here, that everything has to rest on the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The explanation for that is very clear. The Lord Jesus took sin upon Himself, He “bore our sins in his body on the tree” as Peter says” (1 Pet.2:24) and He became the sin-bearer. As the sin-bearer, it was not only necessary that He should suffer the wrath and judgment of God, which He did on the cross, but that He should bear the penalty also; He did that by laying down His life. This is what He had to do in order to bear our sins.
We sometimes think of the death of the Lord Jesus as demonstrating that the power of death had been broken, and it was. Death had no power over Him. Another has said that He was the first person who had ever confronted the power of death. Everyone else, and we ourselves in due course if the Lord tarries, will submit to the power of death. We have to, because it claims us, it claims our mortal lives because of the condition we are in, but the Lord Jesus confronted the power of death. And the first Person, the only Person, who was able to confront the power of death, broke it utterly. What a wonderful thing, what a glorious triumph that is. Many are afraid of death and the power of it, but there is Someone who was able to undertake a confrontation with the power of death, and to break it. “Where, O death, is thy sting?”, 1 Cor.15:55. The sea, it says typically, “saw it and fled”, Ps.114:3. The power of death was broken utterly by the Lord Jesus going into death. But that is not the whole story. If that was the whole story, the righteousness of God would be in question. It is important to remember, not only that the Lord Jesus died to break the power of death, but that He died also to bear the penalty that our sins had brought on us. Paul says that the wages of sin is death (Rom.6:23), and it was in order to take that penalty on Himself that Jesus died.
Now, Paul says to the Corinthians, what if Jesus was not raised? If that was so, we would have someone who has taken our sins on Himself, but who lies in death. What Paul says in 1 Cor.15 is very clear: “ye are yet in your sins” (v.17). How can God regard us as clear from our sins without the One who bore our sins? Can you think of Someone who gave Himself for our sins, and whom God has delivered up for us all, that glorious Person, still lying in death? How would God view the sinner? Paul tells us how God would view the sinner – as still in their sins. What a sober thing that is. I think that explains why Paul chooses to refer to the great fact of resurrection in the beginning of his epistle to the Galatians. In the epistle to the Corinthians, he says, “But now Christ is raised from among the dead”, 1 Cor.15:20. What a glorious statement that is. And he also says in Romans, He “has been raised for our justification”. That means that God now has Christ in His presence, and God can view those for whom Jesus died as if the guilt and charge that attaches to their sins no longer exists. It has been taken away. It has not been forgotten, or put under the carpet; there is no question that God has agreed not to consider it, or to so abate its costs and its severity that it no longer matters. No, the penalty has been borne in full, the guilt that underlay the penalty has been borne and it is because Christ is raised from among the dead that God can look at the sinner as someone to whom no guilt attaches. It is not that the history no longer exists, like files on a computer that are deleted, but that no guilt any longer attaches to it; because God in perfect righteousness has put the guilt of the sins of the believer upon the Saviour, and He bore it. The judgment that was due to it, and the penalty that it brought – all that has been borne.
So He has been raised for our justification; we have that justification by faith, and that is, as the apostle Paul says later in his letter to the Galatians, so that we might be justified not by works of law but justified by faith in Christ (Gal.2:16). Think of that! We can put our faith in what Christ has done, and in the testimony that God has accepted what Christ has done. That is how we come into the good of it. Sadly, there are many who do not recognise the importance of faith in what Christ has done, as though they could add to it in some way, as though God would require more. How could He possibly require more? How could anything – penance or self-sacrifice or whatever – add to the mighty and glorious work of the Lord Jesus? How could anything be added to that which God would accept? Search the Scriptures and you will not find any statement of God’s that He either needs or will accept any supplement to the finished work of Christ. To think that I have something to bring or to add to that, or that God needs anything other than Christ’s work, is not supported anywhere in Scripture. I want you to see what God has done, and what God has done is to raise Christ from among the dead. Then as Paul says, He is able to justify the ungodly (Rom.4:5).
Another thing that comes into Romans 3 is redemption – “through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (v.24). I would like to say a few simple words about redemption so that we might get some impression of it. I suggest that redemption has two parts. The first part might be spoken of as the payment of a ransom, and we have that idea in Scripture – “the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all”, 1 Tim.2:6. The Lord also speaks of giving His “life a ransom for many”, Mark 10:45. The purpose of the ransom is very simple – it is to settle and remove every claim upon us. The point is that the sinner has put himself under certain claims, and he needs to be redeemed, and he can only be redeemed from these claims by the payment of a ransom. We will come to what the payment was in a moment.
The sinner is under the bondage of sin. He may also be under the bondage of God’s law, feeling an obligation to comply which he can never fulfil, and does not have the power to fulfil. He is also in bondage to the world. What do we mean by that? The world behaves as though it had a claim on everybody, does it not? You find at school that people around you assume, as a starting point, that you will be interested in what they do, and that your values and tastes are the same as theirs, and that you will share their interests. All that assumes that you will conform to their values. Of course, these values – what are called social norms – change over time and there is an expectation in society that these norms will be followed every time they change. There may be concern about respectability. We know that in Victorian times, respectability was often a mask for things that were unmentionable, but there it was. In our day, respectability is not to the fore, licence is to the fore. The expectation of society now is that other people will accept and allow whatever anyone wants to do, and that if they do have any scruples about these things, they will keep quiet about them. That is bondage. It is the present evil world that acts like that. I am not speaking about anything in particular, but that is the way things go on. You may escape from that to an extent by not going out into the world of work and school, but still, the world works like that. We need to be redeemed from that. Think of the children of Israel in Egypt. The Egyptians had certain expectations of them, certain demands – demands that occupied all their time and all their energy. The expectation of the Egyptians was that the children of Israel would use every atom of their resources and strength to build up the Egyptian system. They expected Israel to contribute, but not in return for anything. The Egyptians benefited from these labours, but the Israelites were building up the system of the Egyptians and they were in bondage to it.
But God was prepared to deliver them from that bondage. In order to do that, He was willing to pay a ransom. It was not paid to the world, of course, and Israel received nothing out of the ransom that God found, but nevertheless the ransom was paid. A ransom has to be paid to deliver us from the power of sin, and from ourselves, and from the world, and from the law, and from the power of death which we have spoken of already. For all of these things, a ransom has to be paid. The scripture says that “the redemption of their soul is costly” (Ps.49:8); it cannot be done for nothing, and we cannot pay. Again, the work has to be entirely from God’s side; “who gave himself for our sins” – that is how the ransom was paid by the Lord Jesus. The scripture in Romans 3 says “through faith in His blood”. What a precious thing that is. The blood has been shed. The witness was not for Egypt but the ransom had been paid, and God could see that it had been paid – there was blood on the outside of the Israelites’ houses that Jehovah could see. We all need to shelter under the blood; we all need to put our faith in it. We are exposed to these claims that bring us into bondage, but we are also exposed to God’s righteousness and to God’s just judgment – unless we shelter under the ransom that has been paid, unless we put our faith in the blood of Another who has undertaken the work of atonement and has shed His precious blood, which is the testimony that the work is finished. We need to put our faith in that precious blood.
The result of the price being paid in the blood of Jesus, and our putting our faith in it, is that God has discharged every claim upon us, except His own. All these other claims have been neutralised, struck out, you might say, from God’s ledger, from His reckoning. One claim alone remains, and that claim is His own. God has established a perfect and inalienable right over those who have put their faith in the blood. That is important. God has plans, which we will come to in a moment, but first of all He must have title. To give an example, if you owned a piece of land somewhere, and you had the idea that you would like to build a house on it, you would need to prove title. You would not think of going ahead and building on it otherwise, because you might find that someone else had a claim. That is why God must establish His claim in the gospel, and prove that no one else has a claim, before He can proceed with His plan, and God has done that in the work of Christ. The Lord Jesus has died, and His precious blood has been shed, as it says here: He “gave himself for our sins”.
That brings me to the second part of the matter. If God has removed every claim that is upon you except His own, He is then free to proceed with His plan for you. That is what we have here: “according to the will of our God and Father”. That is what redemption allows, and God is now able to set you up on the ground of His blessing, where it was always in His heart and mind that you should be. It is not a matter of putting you back where you might have been if you had never sinned; it is much better than that. God is moving forward with His plan, and His desire is that we should be blessed according to His will. The world has nothing to contribute to that. The world is not of the Father; God is not looking to the world for your blessing. He may allow a measure of prosperity in His providence, but He is not looking to the world and its attractions, even its legitimate ones, to accomplish your blessing. No, there is something better than that. Hebrews speaks about “an eternal redemption” (Heb.9:12), and that is the nature of God’s plan. Christ having completed the atoning work, and having paid the ransom, and God having established His incontestable right to those who put their faith in the blood, God then exercises that right to bless us.
I want to use a homely example, and perhaps an inadequate one, to illustrate that God’s redemption has more in mind than the ransom. Let us imagine a man living in debt. Most of his property has gone in his attempts to hold things together; he has one item left of considerable value. Then he comes to the point where he must surrender this item – he decides to pawn it, and someone else establishes their claim over it. That person then has title to it. The man no longer has free title to it; he can no longer have it back because someone else has a claim over it. But God does not simply propose to recover for you what you have lost. No; He wants you to come to something much better which He has prepared for your blessing and enjoyment. The gospel is like Joseph’s word to Jacob, “let not your eye regret your stuff” (Gen.45:20). The “redemption which is in Christ Jesus" puts you in a new place, for the pleasure of God. Now, everything is secured, and secured in a new place.
What a wonderful thing it is to be taken into favour in the Beloved! God is no longer looking at us as bowed down under the weak and beggarly principles that the fall of man has subjected us to, because He has another Man before Him, the Man of His choice. Having delight in Him, He has raised Him from among the dead, and He takes us into favour in Him. He takes us into favour in Him who did the work, because He lives, and lives to God.
These are wonderful things that God has established. Elsewhere in Scripture they are called a kingdom. Why is that expression used? It is a remarkable kingdom. It is not a place where everyone is left to themselves. This kingdom can more than meet all the needs that present circumstances have brought to light. The kingdom of God is a place where everything is supplied to meet every need in fulness and abundance. Every need is met. Those who live there have left behind what was marked by demand and sorrow and bondage. They have come into a kingdom where everything is quite different – they have their part there. They are not simply recipients of divine blessing; they are giving God “glory … unto all generations to the ages of ages. Amen”, Eph.3:21.
That is what God’s return is. That is what He receives from this: He receives worshippers. Despite what their starting point may be, God secures worshippers like that woman in John 4. She had had a history of sorrow and disappointment, but she was brought in as a worshipper. It is that kind of person that God has in mind. She was not a worshipper in name only, she was a worshipper in heart and voice. Paul says at the end of Romans “that ye may with one accord, with one mouth, glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”, Rom.15:6. What a wonderful thing that God would fill our hearts with a blessing – what He has done for us, what He has done in Christ, what He has done in relation to our burdens and our liabilities to bless and enrich and enlarge us, and to give us a place in the greatest of His thoughts. And He is satisfied if these blessings draw out our thanksgiving and blessing.
May He bless the word.
Preaching of the gospel, Colchester
23 May 2021
D Andrew Burr