The gospel is saved by grace alone,
through faith alone, in Christ alone.
Any time you add plus, you've destroyed the gospel.
Well as we've been summarizing these books of the Bible,
it's really impressed me that the zeal of God
for giving us His word is so that we would know
the God of the word.
And that we would know His Son, the Lord Jesus.
The Bible is way more than a religious,
formally religious book or a theological book.
It is the narrative of the person
and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And we've seen that literally in every book of the Bible so far.
While we're in Galatians
and I would entitle this,
"The Gospel's Greatest Enemy."
Galatians is a powerful reminder that the greatest dangers
to the church of Jesus Christ
are never outside of the church,
they're always inside of the church.
And the greatest danger
is that there would be some kind of pollution
of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ
that would weaken the life and the ministry and message
of the church.
And the greatest of those pollution dangers is legalism.
And the reason it's so dangerous is
legalism plays to our pride.
It plays to the self-righteousness of sin.
It plays to that belief that somehow, some way,
by my performance, by my obedience,
I can achieve acceptance with God.
That I could be that good.
I could be that wise.
I could be that faithful.
And so that's the great enemy
that's being addressed in Galatians.
It was addressed because there was this group
called the Judaizers, who said,
"No, no. It's not just the grace of God,
it's the grace of God plus observance of Mosaic Law.
Listen, the gospel is saved by grace alone
Listen, the gospel is saved by grace alone,
through faith alone, in Christ alone.
Any time you add plus, you've destroyed the gospel.
And so that's the challenge of Galatians.
You have the challenge to the gospel in the theology
of the Judaizers, that's where you see it theologically.
You have the challenge of the gospel practically
in Peter, when Peter under pressure refuses
to eat with gentile believers
and sides with the Judaizers
and in that way, he lives out
a contradiction of the gospel of
by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
There are four words or five words here
that sort of summarize the message.
The first word is vain.
If we could be justified by the law,
then the person and work of Jesus Christ
is in vain.
Second word is heirs.
Through the work of Christ, not through our performance,
we become heirs to the promises made to Abraham.
Third word is sons.
By means of the justifying grace of God,
we become sons of God.
We become adopted into God's family.
Fourth word is freedom.
The life, death and resurrection of Jesus
sets us free from the bondage of the law
because Jesus is our righteousness.
And then the fifth word just makes sense.
If it's all through Christ,
it's not through my performance,
then if I'm going to boast, that's the fifth word,
I boast only in the cross.
Jesus is our righteousness.
Jesus fully measured up, perfectly measured up
to God's law because God knew this is very humbling
that we would not measure up.
And so he became our righteousness.
Every act of obedience in Christ's life
was done on our behalf.
Pay the penalty for our sin
so we could be adopted into God's family,
sinners in the hands of a loving God of grace.