Righteousness Results in Obedience

Transcript

GR 2091
07/02/2017
Righteousness Results in Obedience
Galatians 3:6-9
Gil Rugh

We are going to the book of Galatians in your Bibles. Turn there to Galatians chapter 3. As he writes to the Galatian churches, Paul is confronting the problem of error that had infiltrated in among the churches. Remember, Paul established these churches by carrying the Gospel to the Gentiles’ part of the world on his first missionary journey and, as often happens, after Paul left, others came in and basically said Paul had not given them the complete Gospel. He had told them part of the trut, that it is necessary to recognize your sin and guilt before God, to recognize that Christ died for your sins, paid your penalty in full, was raised from the dead and is alive but that alone is not enough. And these who came from Judaism said you must also be circumcised and keep the Mosaic Law.

As is often the case, the greatest danger in problems comes from that which infiltrates within. We see that in our world with terrorism and so on and issues. People get on the inside of countries and find a certain acceptance and then they turn out to be enemies. Well that is what happens; the way the devil works. He has unbelievers disguised as those who are part of the church to come in and undermine the truth and confuse the people of God and try to lead them away from the truth.

Paul had addressed the leaders at the church in Ephesus when he met with them in Acts chapter 20 and said, “From among your own selves men will arise speaking perverse things, seeking to draw away the disciples after them.” And that sort of becomes a pattern we experience again and again as we move through the New Testament, the letters to the different churches.

Peter wrote in his last letter: “False prophets also arose among the people.” (Referring to Israel in the Old Testament). There will also be “false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies even denying the Master who bought them and they will bring swift destruction upon themselves.” 2 Corinthians 2:1 along with many other references.

This tells us a little bit of what is happening in the church at Galatia. There is a weakening. As I read theological material, look at schools, look at churches you see the pattern repeated. Somewhere along the line they have lost their attachment and commitment and passion for God’s truth, clarity in their understanding and then you start to drift. And the further you drift the more confused you are and the more confused you are the further you drift. So pretty soon the church has been totally led away from the truth.

So this is what Paul is dealing with, the relationship of the truth of Christ and the work of the church and the ministry of the church and the body of Christ that God is building from Acts chapter 2 and onward and how does that relate to Israel? How does that relate to the Jews? There is a racial divide, a religious divide because Israel in its history with the Mosaic Law, they not only had their ethnic identity, national identity but they also had a religious identity that cut them off from all the other nations, a uniqueness in their worship, a uniqueness in the foods they ate and didn’t eat, all these practices served to cut them off.

Now in the church we are being brought together in relationship with oneness in Ephesians chapter 2 that we have looked at earlier in our study that the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile has been broken down so that now they can be brought together in a relationship of oneness in Jesus Christ with one another.

We moved into chapter 3. In chapters 1 and 2 Paul provided his personal defense that he was an apostle appointed by God. That is important because as an apostle he was given truth from God, direct revelation from God. So his personal position as an apostle appointed by God relates to the truth that he taught so he gives a defense of that since they have come under attack.

Now as we move into chapter 3, and we will encompass chapters 3 and 4, Paul begins to defend the doctrines that he has taught and showed how you must evaluate what is being taught and he is frustrated a little bit with the church.

Sometimes under pressure it seems we forget what we have learned. So he started out chapter 3 you remember, “You foolish Galatians;” a word that means unthinking, mindless, a word that we would be less comfortable with, ‘stupid.’ But I looked up in an English dictionary ‘stupid.’ It basically means unthinking, lacking intelligence, just a word, a little more harsh, but this would be harsh. This letter is read to the Galatian churches, “You unthinking, mindless Galatians.” You have come under a spell. “Who has bewitched you?” I presented the gospel to you clearly. You were saved by believing the Gospel, not by adopting a commitment to the Mosaic Law. How do you get off track? “If the Spirit of God was pleased to bring His salvation to your heart when you believed in Christ why now are you wandering off on a different path?” It is mindless. Stop, think.

We talked about it is sort of like when we talk to our kids. When you have taught them, they have learned things, you think they have got it in hand then they just go out and do something stupid and you say, “What were you thinking?” And Paul’s point is – you are not thinking. You are acting like all of a sudden somebody put you under a spell, they hypnotized you, “bewitched you” as we have it translated and now you are just acting totally inconsistently.

What he is going to do now, he has turned to the Old Testament Scriptures. Keep in mind these are Gentile churches being influenced by false Jewish teachers. That brings confusion because these Jewish teachers are those saturated with the Old Testament. These Gentile believers had to learn the Old Testament. They come out of pagan backgrounds. And it seems, well, it makes sense that God gave the Law and so it is necessary to keep the Law as well as believe in Christ. Paul is going to explain now that has never been part of God’s work of salvation.

So we are going to go back and look at the Old Testament Scriptures. Abraham becomes the key person. This will show that these Jewish teachers are off track. So what they are teaching is not consistent with the Old Testament. The issue becomes circumcision because circumcision becomes the identifying mark of a Jew or even of a Gentile who has converted to Judaism. This is the issue for these Gentile churches.

For the Jews, every Jewish baby was circumcised at eight days so now they have come to Gentiles and said, “You know, this is the sign of the covenant God gave to Abraham. You will have to be circumcised to be part of what God promised to Abraham.” Paul is going to show that is not the case and we will have to go back and look at the Old Testament Scriptures and be sure we have that clear.

So he has talked about the Spirit was given to them by faith, verse 5: “So then He who provides you with the Spirit, works miracles among you, does He do it by works of the Law of by hearing with faith?” In other words how does the Spirit do His work in a life? And how has He continued that work? Well so far it has been by faith.

Now these teachers are coming in and saying it is incomplete. Verse 6 and you see connects on now. “Even so (just so) Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Abraham becomes a key person. Abraham is mentioned nine times in this rather short letter to the Galatians. In our New Testament there is only one other Old Testament person who is named more often than Abraham is and that is Moses. So indeed Abraham is a key figure in God’s work, key figure in the Old Testament Scripture and becomes key for the New Testament. It is important for us as believers, Gentile believers, to have a correct understanding of Abraham.

So, “Even so Abraham.” This is true of Abraham what I have been telling you about faith. What happened to you? You were saved by faith in the truth that God revealed. Well Abraham was saved in the same way you know. “Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” credited to him as righteousness.

Let’s go back to the Old Testament, Genesis. Going to the Old Testament can be a challenge. Going to Genesis is easy because it is the first book. Let’s start in chapter 17. This is when circumcision is given as a sign of the covenant to Abraham. Chapter 17 opens up: “When Abram was 99 years old the Lord appeared to him and said ‘I am God almighty, walk before me and be blameless. I will establish my covenant between you, I will multiply you’” all of that; changes his name from Abram to Abraham. It resulted to a father, to a father of a multitude. He gives promises.

You come down to verse 10: “This is my covenant which you shall keep between you and me and you and your descendants after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised, circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. It shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. Every male among you eight days old will be circumcised.” And this is true of anyone who becomes part of Israel and the faith of Israel verse 12 says, you actually do this to your children but anyone who could be brought in from the outside, you buy a servant and so on, this is the sign, the physical mark of the covenant.

Okay, there is when circumcision begins. Now the quote in Galatians chapter 3 is from the book of Genesis, “Abraham believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness.” We have to back up to chapter 15 and there is verse 6: “Then he believed in the Lord and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.” As most of you are aware, this becomes a foundational verse because of the clear statement that “Abraham believed God, God credited it to him as righteousness.” God had spoken to him, given him a promise that he would have a son and from that son would become a huge nation, many people in verses 4 and 5. So Abraham believed what God said, God credited it to him as righteousness.

Well, if circumcision is necessary for salvation, we have a problem because God credits Abraham with his righteousness, declares him righteous in Genesis 15. Abraham is not circumcised until chapter 17. Well, that’s not far, chapter 15, 16, 17. That is pretty close but about 15 years have gone by. So if God declares Abraham righteous 15 years before he is circumcised, circumcision can’t be necessary to be righteous before God. It is not a difficult argument but it is absolutely essential. Remember Abraham was 99 when chapter 17 opened up. “When Abraham was 99 years old.” Now how do we know about 15 years have gone by? Well in chapter 15 Abraham still doesn’t have an heir, a son. So in chapter 16 you have Abraham having a sexual relationship with concubine, if you will, Hagar to produce a son. In chapter 17 when Abraham is 99, when he is circumcised that son, Ishmael is said to be 13. So you add about a year, going to be conceived and born and so on we are already at 14 years and we are not sure a year or two go by to chapter 16, but we are around 15 years between God declaring Abraham righteous when he believed God and God instituting circumcision, the sign of the covenant. That is a crucial argument!

Come over to the book of Romans back into the New Testament. Remember we said when we started Galatians that it is somewhat of a rough outline condensed form of the book of Romans. In Romans chapter 4 Paul uses this same argument in a more elaborate discussion. He has been emphasizing, he has demonstrated through the first three chapters that no one can be saved by keeping the Law. Verse 20 of chapter 3: “Because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.” The word justified means to declare righteous. “Be declared righteous in His sight.” All that you learn through the Law is what sin is. It clarifies that. But no one can be declared righteous by trying to keep the Law, the Ten Commandments which are somewhat of a summary of the 613 commandments that were in the Mosaic Law.

So then verse 21 talks about “Apart from the Law, the righteousness of God has been manifested.” Verse 22: “Though even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ.” So that is the key, it is by faith in Christ, what God has revealed and made known, what He provided in Christ. It is for all those who believe. Remember believe is just the verb form of faith. In Greek you can even see the close connection. Pistis is the noun for faith. Pisteo is the verb for faith. So it is through faith, for those who have faith, for those who believe. There is no distinction. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” so all have to be saved by believing in Christ. “We are justified, declared righteous as a gift by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

God has done it this way so that He can be just and the justifier. He is the righteous God and for Him to declare us righteous, He had to intervene and pay our penalty so we would not have to pay it ourselves. So Christ died on the cross, paid in full our penalty. So God can declare us righteous. All the charges have been taken care of. The penalty has been paid.

So verse 28: “We maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the Law.” And then he goes on to say, “There is only one God. He is the God of the Jews. He is the God of the Gentiles.” Verse 30: “Since indeed God who will justify the circumcised (the Jews, they were circumcised) by faith in the uncircumcised, (the Gentiles) through faith is won.”

The argument is, there is only one God. So He is the same God. The Jews don’t have a different God than the Gentiles if you are worshipping the true God. Gentiles can create their own gods but they are not real gods. They are just a creation of men’s minds. But there is only one true and living God so He has to be the God for all people. So there is only one God. He justifies, declares righteous Jews by faith and Gentiles by faith.

Okay, we come into chapter 4. What about Abraham? What He is going to do is give Abraham as the example. This is a great example because who is the father of the Jewish nation? Abraham. It is the covenant that God established with Abraham, we call it the Abrahamic Covenant that God would bring His blessings on Abraham, his son Isaac, to his son Jacob, to the 12 sons of Jacob and thus the nation Israel develops.

“So what shall we say that Abraham, our forefather?” He has to challenge these Jews who are trying to make keeping the Law even for the Gentiles a requirement. Verse 2: “If Abraham was justified by works he has something to boast about but not before God.” Works are something I accomplish. So if I could be justified by my works, then it is what I did, not God. Not boasting in what God did, I did it kind of thing. “What does the Scripture say?” And here we go, Genesis 15:6 “Abraham believed God. It was credited to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works his wages are not credited as a favor but what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.” So it is amazing.

The problem for sinful human beings is there is the pressure, we want to do it our way and that is where the Jews went. They began to trust in their works in trying to keep the Law. No one could ever be saved by keeping the Law. So the one who does not work, I’m not trying to be saved to be acceptable to God, to be righteous before God because I try to keep the Ten Commandments, I try to do this, I try to do that, trying to keep the Law in this context. No. “The one who believes in Him who justifies the ungodly his faith is credited as righteousness.”

And David even supports this to bring another key figure is Israel’s history. You see the verse is set apart as quotes from the Old Testament in verses 7 and 8. They are quoted from Psalm 32, a Psalm of David. We won’t turn back there because we have it laid out here. “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.” Well that supports what we have been saying because if you have sins that have to be forgiven, lawless deeds, if you have sin you need the Lord not to charge to your account; you can’t be saved by keeping the Law because if you sinned you are a Law breaker.

You are lawless. That is the argument. So David is supporting what is said about Abraham. “Abraham believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness” because in verse 6 David speaks of the blessing on “the man to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works.” Because to be credited as righteousness by your works you would have to be perfect, never sin because “the penalty for sin is death.” You can’t pay that off by good works. So you are either going to pay it or someone else has to pay it for you. That is what Christ did.

So that is the argument here. When David said, “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, whose sins have been covered,” he can’t be talking about being saved by keeping the Law because you are talking about blessings for being forgiven for being a law breaker. The problem with being saved by keeping the Law is, nobody can do it. It requires perfection. Once you have sinned you are not perfect and then as James said in dealing similar kinds of issues when you “break one part of the Law you broke the whole Law” so you are fully, completely guilty.

So then, we pick up here with Abraham’s quote in verse 9 of Romans 4: “Is this blessing then on the circumcised or on the uncircumcised?” That is why we went back to Genesis. “For we say faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it credited, while he was circumcised or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised but while uncircumcised.” That is why we went back and looked at chapter 17. What happened was Abraham was 99? But what happened about 15 years earlier in chapter 15? God declared Abraham as righteous, credited Abraham’s account with God’s righteousness. So he was credited with righteousness quite a ways before the Law. It was while he was uncircumcised.

Verse 11 then says, “He received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith which he had while uncircumcised.” So the point is all circumcision did was a physical sign of his faith and relationship with God but he already had experienced God’s salvation, the provision of righteousness.

So you can’t say circumcision is required. Now it is the result of his believing God and so a natural pattern for Abraham now as one who has believed God, been credited as righteous before God with a desire to obey and please God. But that is not what makes him righteous. It is a result of righteousness and this is an example. God did it with a purpose that salvation would go beyond Abraham and his physical descendants to Jews. So verse 11: “So that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised that righteousness might be credited to them.” And if you are not going to be circumcised, there is no point in keeping the Law. They go together. Circumcision is a mark of those connected to that covenant as a physical descendant and one who would keep the Law. “And the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but those who follow in the faith of Abraham while uncircumcised.” And the promise to Abraham, this goes on down through the chapter as you are aware, by faith, by faith.

We have to be clear on this as believers because this is the dividing line between us and all the other religions and groups and even within the umbrella broadly of the church or Christendom as sometimes we talk about, this distinction. Salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ and His death on the cross. That is it! As soon as you try to tie into something else, you have corrupted the Gospel and nullified its effect. It can’t be both ways.

So God intended and this is where we are going. Let’s come back and take it out of Galatians. Romans proceeds with a little fuller development but look in Galatians. Look at verse 7: “Therefore be sure that it is those who are of faith who are the sons of Abraham.” Now this doesn’t mean the church has replaced the Jews. It means that God has a place in His program and plan and it is revealed in the Abrahamic Covenant as we will see that someday it would include the Gentiles.

Through the Old Testament, it just basically includes the Jews. There are some Gentiles saved but they become in that sense identified with Israel. That is what these Jews want to do. They want to require Gentiles who get saved really to become converts to a form of Judaism. That’s not Biblical. “Those who are of the faith are sons of Abraham.” Well if they are sons of Abraham they were the true Jews so you have this expression used in reformed theology, covenantal theology. They blend Israel and the church and say the church has become Israel. We are the new Israel, these kinds of terms.

That is not true. He goes on to explain here. “The Scripture foreseeing that God would justify (declare righteous) the Gentiles by faith preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, ‘all the nations will be blessed in you.’” So it is the follow through from what he has been saying that it was God’s plan from the beginning that Abraham would have descendants. He would have physical descendants through his son Isaac, grandson Jacob, the 12 sons of Jacob. There is a physical line, they are the physical descendants. But only those in that physical line, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob who have the faith of Abraham are a part of the promises to Abraham. So now there will be a division between believing physical Jews and unbelieving physical Jews. That is why Jesus would say to Nicodemus in John chapter 3, “Unless you are born again you will never see the kingdom of God. It is not enough that you are a teacher in Israel, not enough that you try to keep the law and teach it to others. That won’t save you. You have to be born again.” How are you born again? We are born again through faith in Christ. We are all sons of God through faith in Christ.

Now Abraham has another line of descendants. They are not his physical descendants as well as spiritual descendants they are just spiritual descendants. You see the line. Abraham is the father physically of Jews. It is not enough just to be a descendant of Abraham physically because Abraham had Ishmael and then through his second wife, Keturah, he had a number of other sons. It is only the descendants of Abraham through Isaac, through Jacob, through the 12 sons of Jacob. They are in that physical line of promise. But in that physical line of promise it is only those physical descendants who are also believers who have the faith of Abraham who will inherit the promises.

Now you also have those who were not physical descendants of Abraham but they have the faith of Abraham. So we use this kind of expression today, Paul, he says that Timothy is “his son in the faith.” In that sense “you are my spiritual descendant. I am your spiritual father.” In that sense Abraham is the spiritual father of us all and it says in verse 8: “The Scripture foreseeing.” And since the Scripture is God’s Word, God telling the future that “God would justify (declare righteous) the Gentiles by faith preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, ‘All the nations will be blessed in you.’”

Come back to Genesis chapter 12 and you have the statement of the Abrahamic Covenant. Look at the opening verses. Abraham was to leave his country, leave his family and go to the land I will show you. Verse 2: “I will make you a great nation. I will bless you; make your name great so you shall be a blessing. I will bless you. I will bless those who bless you, curse the ones who curse you.” Now note the last part of verse 3: “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” That is the Gospel beforehand. In a condensed way it is not the death, burial and resurrection of Christ but it is salvation by grace through faith for all who believe what God has said and done of our behalf. “All the families of the earth will be blessed.” So we are experiencing that as the church today.

So the Abrahamic Covenant, that is where people get confused, made provision in the original covenant for the salvation of the Gentiles. That in no way replaces what is promised to Abraham’s physical descendants. It is part and parcel from the beginning.

Turn over to chapter 18 where we have the truth repeated. Verse 18 of chapter 18: “Since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed because I have chosen…” So He repeats that portion of the Abrahamic Covenant.

It is important for us to realize this today, because much of what we call the evangelical church is not what we call dispensational. They don’t take the Scripture in its literal, historical, grammatical way of interpreting so they believe the church has replaced Israel. They call it “replacement theology.” What that means is the church has replaced Israel so there is no literal physical future for Israel as a nation, only as the Jews get absorbed into the church. No. The Abrahamic Covenant has specific promises for the physical descendants of Abraham and for the spiritual descendants and the promises to the physical descendants are only for those who are also spiritual descendants. So it is not, I don’t think, complicated as long as we just let the Scripture speak and be the authority.

So that is what the Gospel is preached beforehand, that “all the nations of the earth will be blessed in you.” How? By having the same kind of faith that Abraham had. He believed what God had revealed to him to that point. That doesn’t mean that Abraham understood the death, burial and resurrection and when he says he believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness, Abraham had foresight of understanding and knowledge that Christ the Son of God would die on the cross, be buried, be raised from the dead. God said, “You are going to have a son and multiple descendants and I am going to bless you.” And Abraham believed God and then his life is a life of walking by faith, trusting God and obeying God.

There is a place for works, our obedience to God, but it is not to bring about our salvation. Those works are not to earn acceptance with God and even our sanctification, that life, the present aspect of our salvation as we have talked about in our previous study is a result of what? Our trusting God and having His Spirit dwelling within us and we exercise our will because we are trusting God and His enabling power.

Come over to Ephesians chapter 2, back in the New Testament. That is just after the book of Galatians. It started out, “We are dead in our trespasses and sins.” He is writing to them, “You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the power of the air.” That characterized us all.

Verse 3: “Among them we too formerly lived in the lust of our flesh indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind. We were by nature children of wrath even as the rest.” That is where we all start. There is nobody here, nobody ever who was born righteous and never needed salvation except Jesus Christ who was unique but nobody in the human race apart from Christ was born that way. We were all rebellious sinners. Some seem to be trying harder to lead “a good life” but never make it; never can make themselves acceptable to God. So that’s where we all were.

Now we don’t say, “I am glad I am not a dirty sinner like that person. I am glad I am not like them. I would have never done that.” It is easy to become self-righteous even as believers. When God looked at us, He looked at the heart which is “deceitful and desperately wicked above all things,” Jeremiah 17:9 says. We want to be careful we keep our perspective.

Remember Paul reminded Titus, you remind them that at one time they were just like that. It is easy to begin to think, “Well we are not like them.” We aren’t because of what? Look at what he says, verse 4 of Ephesians 2: “But God being rich in mercy.” Mercy is something undeserved, unmerited like grace in that sense. You can’t earn mercy. You can’t deserve grace. They are different words but that same idea. They both are bestowed, not earned. “Because of His great love with which He loved us even when we were dead in our transgressions (our sins) He made us alive together with Christ,” spiritually alive. “By grace you have been saved” and now we have a position in the very presence of God as the sons of God and throughout all eternity, verse 7 we will be testimonies there. We are here by God’s grace.

Verse 7, “The surpassing riches of His grace in kindness. For by grace you have been save through faith, that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God not as the result of works that no one should boast.” Note then, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” So that now we have been born into God’s family, we are God’s children, His Spirit dwells in us. We are now to conduct ourselves in accord with His will for us. So there is a place for works. We want to. In our physical families we say that. Sometimes our kids try to excuse. “Well so and so does it. They did that.” We say, “They are not part of our family.” That is what God says to us, “Now you are part of My family. Here is how you conduct yourself.”

You don’t try to get into God’s family by conducting yourself a certain way. You have to be born into His family by faith in Christ. The beautiful thing is anybody can. That is the point. The Jews were thinking you have to convert to Judaism to get this blessing. No you don’t! Jews and Gentiles, every person wherever in the world, there is only one way of salvation. It is the result of God’s grace. He calls you to place your faith in Christ, trusting Him as the only One who could pay the penalty for your sin and when you do, He declares you righteous. He credits His righteousness to your account. That is amazing! My account is marked “Paid in full.” Your account is marked “Paid in full.” It is all a matter of grace. You can’t mix it. Well I trust Christ and the Ten Commandments. I trust Christ and my baptism. I trust Christ and the church. I trust Christ and – and you are lost because you can’t add it.

So come back to Galatians. So verse 7: “Therefore be sure, it is those who are of faith who are the sons of Abraham.” These Judaizers, these Jews who are saying, “Yes, trust Christ but also.” Understand, whether you are a Jew or a Gentile the only way you become connected to Abraham spiritually is through faith and that was proclaimed from the beginning that the Gentiles would be saved.

So verse 9 to summarize it: “So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer,” the believing Abraham as it could possibly be translated as well. That is your connection to Abraham. It is through faith. That is the connection, it is believing. The physical descendants, the Jews who are physical Jews there are certain promises given to that nation that we will be talking about further in our study of the book of Revelation. Ultimately that nation will experience certain promises that are unique to that nation as a result of their faith in Christ but they are saved by faith, period, and we Gentiles get to be connected and call Abraham our spiritual father because we have the same faith as Abraham had but it doesn’t mean the church replaced Israel.

Now Jews who are saved in the church age become connected with the church and they are part of the body. So we are one body today, the church, but the church hasn’t replaced Israel. God’s promises to the nation as you are aware are in effect put on hold until and we are studying the last seven years of God’s program before the establishment of His kingdom in the book of Revelation and that is where God has resumed His program with Israel as a nation but now individual Jews are saved like the Apostle Paul, like Peter, like John and they are incorporated into the church to become part of the bride of Christ during this period of time.

So very simple, clear as long as we stay with the Scripture and literal, historical, grammatical hermeneutics, lines of interpretation. “Abraham was justified by faith,” verse 6. “He believed God. It was reckoned to him as righteousness.” That was before his circumcision so that was 400 years before the Law was given. Abraham was around 2,000 B.C. The Mosaic Law is given. We have the Exodus 1446 or so, 1445, 1446, over 400 years before we have the Mosaic Law given. How can you say the Law is necessary? You are just getting further astray.

So Abraham was justified by faith. Those who have faith in what God has said and done are the true children of Abraham and God had told Abraham that he would be bringing the blessings of his salvation to the nations as a future time. It would be 1500 years plus after Abraham with the establishing of the church so all who would believe are justified with Abraham the believers.

So yes, I believe I have a spiritual relationship to Abraham. That doesn’t mean that I have replaced the Jews in God’s plan but I am joined together with Jewish believers as I am with people of all nations today by faith in Jesus Christ. That is the battle.

Paul is going to go on and go into greater detail because if we are not clear on the Gospel everything else unravels. You can’t replace the Gospel. This truth that saves us is foundational to everything we are and thus everything we will do.

Let’s pray together. Thank You Lord for the riches of Your truth. Thank You Lord this truth is presented in a clear and simple way. You, the true God, the only God have done for us what we could not do for ourselves. You have provided a Savior and You offer Your salvation as a free gift. Abraham was declared righteous by You; not by earning it, not by working for it. Not by trying to live the best life he could. By simply recognizing and believing what You, the true God, had said. Lord, thank You that that same righteousness is available to us today, that Jesus Christ loved us and died for us so that the penalty for our sin might be paid and so by faith in Him You might declare us righteous. The debts are paid in full. Not because we paid them but because You paid them and we believe what You did and thus our account was marked ‘paid in full.’ Lord may we, as a church, maintain clarity on these foundational issues. May we continue to hold them fast and proclaim them as truth. In Christ’s name, amen.